AP Latin · Pliny's Letters · Unit 3
Pliny, Letters 10.37 & 10.90
Two cities in Pliny's province have wasted fortunes on aqueducts that were never finished. He reports the mess to the emperor and asks for a real engineer.
Who is writing, and to whom. Around 110 CE Pliny the Younger was sent by Trajan as a special imperial legate to put the province of Bithynia–Pontus in order — above all its cities' finances. Book 10 preserves the resulting correspondence: Pliny's on-the-spot reports and queries, and Trajan's brief replies. (The companion reader, Citizenship for a Doctor, covers Letters 10.5–7.)
What is happening. In 10.37 Pliny reports that Nicomedia spent over three million sesterces on an aqueduct that was abandoned and torn down, then a further sum on a second that also failed — and the city still has no water. He has surveyed the ground himself, costed the rebuild, and asks Trajan to send a professional. In 10.90 the colony of Sinope is short of water; a source sixteen miles off looks promising, but there is a stretch of unstable ground near the intake that Pliny has had tested.
How to read these. This is administrative prose: technical and financial vocabulary (HS, censum, arcuato opere, lapide quadrato, testaceo opere), and Pliny weighing options on cost and practicality (et facilius et vilius; modico impendio). Watch the personal passive of videor (videtur aqua debere perduci; quae videtur … posse perduci), gerundives of obligation, and the flattering close aimed at the emperor's name.
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Reading check
Answer in your head, then open each to compare. These target the same skills the AP asks for: literal accuracy, recognising constructions, and citing Latin.