Otium as Luxuria : Economy of Status in the Younger Pliny's Letters

Among Pliny’s more poignant tributes to deceased senatorial colleagues is that honoring C. Fannius, whose death curtailed his writing of a lengthy historical account of the Emperor Nero’s victims and abuses of power. The three volumes completed were diligently researched and stylistically engaging, inter sermonem historiamque medios. Frequent, enthusiastically received readings fired the author’s desire for further production. Pliny attributes the unfinished state of Fannius’s book to his need to economize his time for writing it amidst a schedule of judicial obligations. That Fannius was a public man added value to his work even while impeding its progress. Thus Pliny meditates on the antithesis of voluptates and opera (Epistles 5.5.4):