“Toeing the line?” Pliny the Younger and the senatorial opposition to Domitian

Abstract

Under Trajan, men like Pliny the Younger (and his friend Tacitus) found themselves in an awkward position. They had participated fully in Domitian’s reign and enjoyed the majority of their career promotions during this time; however, after Domitian’s assassination and damnatio memoriae, they needed to explain and justify their behaviour and, in the light of the anti-Flavian sentiments current in Trajanic Rome, align themselves with the so-called “senatorial opposition.” In rationalising the paradox of public demeanour and private belief, Pliny constructs a path of resistance which lies somewhere between conspicuous opposition and abject compliance. This moderate approach, Pliny claims, may be superior and a greater expression of pietas because it allowed a senator to continue serving the state, even if he must submit to tyranny. Five aspects of Pliny’s attempt to refashion his narrative are discussed: first I examine the way in which Pliny uses the exitus stories of Corellius Rufus, Verginius Rufus and Gaius Fannius to re-define their (and his own) dissent from Domitian’s tyranny; next comes a detailed reading of the death notice of Ummidia Quadratilla as a defence of Quadratilla and her grandson, Quadratus, and as a demonstration of a specific type of pietas whereby one submitted to another to whom respect was owed, notwithstanding palpable differences in morality between the two parties; third is an examination of the luxuria of Silius Italicus, Domitius Tullus and Aquilius Regulus, which Pliny damned as self-indulgent and eccentric; next discussed is the concept that a person’s morality was reflected in his rhetorical style, and Pliny’s exploitation of this notion in order to emphasise his disassociation from the delatores of the Domitianic era; and last, an investigation of the use of one’s otium as a measure of social and political worth - in Pliny’s case to assert his affiliation with Trajan.