ABSTRACT
In this chapter, as in the next two, we are looking not at one but at a (linked) series of trials. Here the trials are all for the same offence and before the same court, but the different cases show different aspects of, and development in, both practice and policy. Tacitus probably thought of himself as above all a writer, who also carried
out the normal functions of a senator. Pliny, however, was something close to a ‘professional’ advocate. Further, the Pliny we know from the letters seems a conscientious, truthful man, self-important but hard-working, somewhat vain but not ungenerous, clearly not given to self-analysis. In this chapter we are looking at trials in which our author himself took part, where there is no reason to doubt his account, provided one makes the natural allowance for partiality.1 He was writing for publication, true, but in the interests of literary fame, not with an essentially moral objective; unlike Tacitus, he will not invariably have had a sub-text.
