Pliny in Space (and Time)

In their original call for papers, the organizers of this volume rightly lamented the fact that work on Pliny has tended to fall into one of two traps. “We have [either] plundered him for snippets on” various aspects of Roman civilization or “confined ourselves to analysis of individual letters.” In a sense, I will commit both sins in this paper, so let me offer some pre-emptive justification. My main interest in Pliny here will indeed be to exploit him in service of something else—in this case the history of geography. I am not, however, looking for pre-existing facts for which Pliny’s record is the incidental conduit. Rather, his record will itself be the salient set of facts. As for the second problem, I will primarily be reading two letters, and a hackneyed pair at that. On this point I can only ask the reader to suspend judgment on the novelty and broader significance of my reading until the end. The two letters I have in mind are the famous descriptions of his Laurentine (2.17) and Tuscan (5.6) villas. Numerous attempts have been made to reconstruct the respective floor plans from the texts. Most have been plausible, but none demonstrably correct. The difficulty, I suggest, is that Pliny is not trying to do what scholars seem to have assumed he is attempting. In fact, his project is incommensurable with theirs in at least two important respects. In the first (and longer) section of this paper, I treat Pliny’s treatment of space in the villa letters and its inextricable connection with his treatment of time. In the second section, I offer a possible extension of this analysis to an urban context, though the relative lack of evidence