Chapter 5 - Again on Corinthian Bronzes and Vases and on the Use of Cicero’s Verrine Orations in Pliny’s Works

Summary

Using the example of the Corinthian bronzes, this chapter aims to investigate how the encyclopaedist and the epistolographer dealt with luxury items. It analyses two famous passages from the Naturalis Historia on the Corinthian bronzes (34.6-7 and 48), two references to the same material in Pliny the Younger’s third book (3.1 and 3.6) and discusses the treatment of the topic within the frame of the Roman debate on private and public luxury. Rocchi discusses possible intertextual references made by both authors to Cicero’s speech De Signis against Verres in order to show how Cicero’s moralistic remarks on dealing with luxury items such as bronze statues and vessels propound a model of behaviour to Pliny the Younger as a donor of a bronze figurine to his home town of Comum. Finally, Rocchi addresses Pliny’s knowledge and use of the Verrine Orations more generally. In an appendix, he adds some remarks on the Corinthium signum described in Ep. 3.6 and on its lost plinth, as well as on further Corinthian bronzes mentioned in Latin inscriptions.