A senator and consul, nephew of the Elder Pliny. A close friend of Trajan and Tacitus, he governed Bithynia (in present-day Turkey). His ‘Letters’, which are really essays, give a detailed picture of the lifestyle adopted by wealthy Romans of his class. Other letters, written after 100, provide the only detailed accounts of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79, in which his uncle perished, and the devastation of Campania of which he was a youthful eyewitness.