The letters of Pliny the Younger (ca. AD 61-ca. 112), a polished social document of his times, include descriptions of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 and the earliest pagan accounts of Christians. The Panegyricus is an expanded, published version of Pliny's oration of thanks to the emperor Trajan in AD 100.
Pliny's polished and wonderfully descriptive letters--discussing personal, public, and literary concerns--offer a picture of his own large circle of friends (which included Tacitus, Martial, and Suetonius) and of Roman society in all its diversity. Justly famous in this collection are two letters in which he describes in detail the eruption of Vesuvius in < FONT SIZE="-1">
