Telling Tales of Wonder: Mirabilia in the Letters of Pliny the Younger

Abstract

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Several letters in the epistolary oeuvre of Pliny the Younger deal with various wondrous occurrences. We can distinguish between accounts of dreams and supernatural experiences on the one hand and descriptions of marvels of nature on the other hand - both types of mirabilia seem to have been deliberately arranged by Pliny in letter-cycles. The cycle on dreams and visions (Epist. 1.18

9.13), reaching from the first to the last book of the collection, links important phases of Pliny’s biography and is part of a larger political narrative which stages crucial moments of Pliny’s life under and after Domitian. In the cycle on marvels of nature (4.30

9.33) we can observe an alternation between the depiction of loci amoeni and narratives about the destructive power of nature. Most of the letters belonging to this cycle are set in the sphere of otium and can be read as implicit reflections on Pliny’s role as a writer. Through these texts he competes both with the elder Pliny and his contemporaries such as Tacitus and Caninius Rufus. Pliny’s skills in creating enargeia turn the absent addressees (and general readers) into beholders and witnesses by enabling them to gaze at the marvels of nature with their mind’s eye.