Pliny the Younger (c. 61/62-113) was a wealthy Roman lawyer, government official, and general statesman with an impressive network of friends in the empire. Due to his career in government offices and the courts of law, Pliny gave many speeches in his lifetime and was deemed a talented orator and writer by his peers. As such, some of Pliny’s friends would ask him to give their own speech manuscripts a look-over, and other contacts would commission him as a speechwriter. His clients were evidently pleased with his work, for Pliny had repeat customers. Recipients of his speeches were encouraged to review and edit the works to their preference. Later in his speechwriting career, Pliny the Younger realized that there was a common trend in the revisions and edits made to his speeches—many took out the jokes and humorous lines that he wrote into his pieces, and they also often toned down his word choice and style. Pliny’s witty and quirky humor was showcased in a letter he wrote to a certain Minicius Fundanus, in which he addressed this very subject in a tone nearing passive aggressiveness. Pliny wrote, “Here is the short speech which you asked me to write, for your friend (or rather for our friend, as we have everything in common) to use if he needs it. I have sent it at the last minute, to leave you no time to correct, which means to spoil it. Doubtless though you will find time—for spoiling certainly, for correcting I can’t say: you purists cut out all the best passages!” (Pliny the Younger, Letters, 7.12).
Despite the passive aggressive protests, Pliny the Younger accepted the revisions to his speeches with his characteristic humor. As Pliny said, “I shan’t care, for I can pass the result off as my own some day, and take the credit for your fastidiousness…” (Pliny the Younger, Letters, 7.12). Quips aside, Pliny was willing to make changes and revisions to his speechwriting projects on his clients’ behalf, and sometimes he did this preemptively. In the case of the speech he sent to Minicius Fundanus, Pliny sent two editions of the piece—one with more grandiose verbiage and another containing simpler wording. On this, Pliny wrote, “[there is] an alternative version written between the lines. For I suspected that you would find its sonority and grandeur rather too pompous, so I thought it would be best to put you out of your misery by adding something shorter and plainer straight away—a meaner, inferior version, in fact, though you may think it an improvement” (Letters, 7.12). In the end, it seems that Pliny would let his friends get what they wanted in the speeches they commissioned, but the revisions came at the price of facing Pliny’s witty criticism of his clients’ taste in oratory style.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Illustration of an ancient figure, by Georg Martin Preißler (1700-1754), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the Finnish National Gallery).
Sources:
- The Letters of Pliny the Younger, translated by Betty Radice. New York: Penguin Classics, 1963, 1969.
