AP Latin · Pliny's Letters · Unit 3
Pliny, Letters 10.5–7
A provincial governor petitions the emperor for Roman citizenship for his personal doctor — and finds he has done the paperwork in the wrong order.
Who is writing, and to whom. Around 110 CE Pliny the Younger was sent by Trajan as a special imperial legate to reorganise the finances and administration of the province of Bithynia–Pontus (north-west Asia Minor). Book 10 of the Letters preserves his official correspondence with the emperor — queries and reports from the governor, and Trajan's crisp replies. It is our best surviving picture of how a Roman province was actually run.
What is happening. When Pliny nearly died of an illness the year before, an Egyptian ex-slave and medical masseur, Harpocras, nursed him through it. In 10.5 Pliny asks Trajan for Roman citizenship for Harpocras (and full civic rights for two freedwomen of a friend). In 10.6 he reports that he has learned Egyptians must first be made citizens of Alexandria, and re-submits the request in order. In 10.7 Trajan grants it — because the Roman grant is already made, not because it was done correctly.
How to read these. The register is formal and courteous: Pliny addresses the emperor as domine throughout, and asks with rogo + subjunctive (ut often left out: rogo des … rogo … tribuas). Watch the vocabulary of imperial favour — indulgentia, beneficium, gratiam referre, indulgeo — and Trajan's famously terse, precedent-bound reply.
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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.