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MINERVA ON THE SURREY DOWNS: READING PLINY (AND HORACE) WITH JOHN TOLAND

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 August 2014

Christopher Whitton
Christopher Whitton*
Affiliation:
Emmanuel College, Cambridge / Rostock University
*
*Email: clw36@cam.ac.uk.
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Abstract

John Toland's Description of Epsom (1711) is one of the most remarkable creative responses, ancient or modern, to Pliny's Epistles. Drawing on the villa letters and the collection as a whole for both topographical description and self-styling, Toland moulds himself after an intensely ruralist – and strikingly Horatian – Pliny. This article reads Epsom together with Toland's translations from the Epistles (1711–12) as a case study in reception which can also shed fresh light on Pliny's own epistolary self-portraiture.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Cambridge Classical Journal , Volume 60 , 30 April 2014 , pp. 127 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2014. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This article originated in a chance encounter in the Rare Books Room of Cambridge University Library. That I had time to pursue it is due to the generous support of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. My thanks to Emily Gowers, John Henderson, Michael Squire and an anonymous reader for the Cambridge Classical Journal for their helpful comments on a draft.

References

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