The Letters of the Younger Pliny, First Series — Volume 1

He discloses his character therein so completely, and, in spite of his glaring fault of vanity and his endless love of adulation, that character is in the main so charming, that one can easily understand the high esteem in which Pliny was held by the wide circle of his friends, by the Emperor Trajan, and by the public at large.

The correspondence of Pliny the Younger depicts for us the everyday life of a Roman gentleman in the best sense of the term.