Pliny, Letters 7.27

Who is writing, and to whom. Pliny the Younger to Licinius Sura, a learned senator and confidant of the emperor Trajan. The two are at leisure, and Pliny puts a philosophical question to him by letter (as he does elsewhere with Tacitus).

What is in the letter. Pliny frames the question in §1 (real apparitions with a power of their own, or empty shapes we take on ex metu nostro?), then offers his evidence: (1) §§2–3, the figure of ‘Africa’ that foretells the whole career of Curtius Rufus; (2) §§4–11, the haunted house at Athens, where the philosopher Athenodorus follows a chained old man to a buried skeleton; (3) §§12–14, two hair-cuttings in Pliny’s own household, which he reads as an omen about his own near-prosecution under Domitian. He closes (§§15–16) by asking Sura to weigh in.

How to read this letter. Pliny grades his own evidence — audio, narratur, ut accepi, ita narrat for hearsay; affirmare aliis possum for what he witnessed — so watch the verbs of reporting. The Athenodorus story (§§8–9) is told largely in historic infinitives (bare present infinitives standing for the imperfect: concuti, moveri, crebrescere); their tell is a nominative subject. Note phantasma, idolon — Greek words for a Greek topic.