Letter to Sura

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information and to find out
how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Read
by Clareca letter to Sura by Pliny the Younger. Our

(00:21):
leisure furnishes me with the opportunity of learning from you,
and you with that of instructing me accordingly. I particularly
wish to know whether you think there exists such things
as phantoms possessing an appearance peculiar to themselves and a
certain supernatural power, or that mere empty delusions receive a

(00:42):
shape from our fears. For my part, I am led
to believe in their existence, especially by what I here
happened to courteous Rufus, while still in humble circumstances and obscure.
He was a hanger on in the suite of the
Governor of Africa. While pacing the colonnade one afternoon, there

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appeared to him a female form of superhuman size and beauty.
She informed the terrified man that she was Africa and
had come to foretell future events. For that he would
go to Rome, would fill offices of state there, and
would even return to that same province with the highest powers,
and die in it all which things were fulfilled. Moreover,

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as he touched at Carthage and was disembarking from his ship,
the same form is said to have presented itself to
him on the shore. It is certain that, being seized
with illness and auguring the future from the past, and
misfortune from his previous prosperity, he himself abandoned all hope

(01:49):
of life, though none of those about him despaired. Is
not the following story again, still more appalling and not
less marvelous. I will relate it as it was received
by me. There was at Athens a mansion, spacious and commodious,
but of evil repute and dangerous to health. In the

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dead of night, there was a noise as of iron,
and if you listened more closely, a clanking of chains
was heard, first of all from a distance, and afterwards
hard by. Presently a specter used to appear, an ancient man,
sinking with emaciation and squalor, with a long beard and

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bristly hair, wearing shackles on his legs and fetters on
his hands, and shaking them. Hence the inmates, by reason
of their fears passed miserable and horrible nights in sleeplessness.
This want of sleep was followed by disease, and their
terrors increasing by death. For in the daytime as well,

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though the apparition had departed, yet a reminiscence of it
flitted before their eyes, and their dread outlived its cause.
The mansion was accordingly deserted and condemned to solitude, was
entirely abandoned to the dreadful ghost. However, it was advertised
on the chance of some one ignorant of the fearful

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curse attached to it, being willing to buy or rent it.
Athenodorus the philosopher came to Athens and read the advertisement.
When he had been informed of the terms, which were
so low as to appear suspicious, he made inquiries and
learned the whole of the particulars. Yet none the less
on that account, nay all the more readily did he

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rent the house. As evening began to draw on, he
ordered a sofa to be set for himself in the
front part of the house, and called for his note books,
writing implements, and alight the whole of his servants. He
dismissed to the interior apartments, and for himself applied his soul, eyes,
and hands to composition, that his mind might not, from

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want of occupation, picture to itself the phantoms of which
he had heard, or any empty terrors. At the commencement
there was the universal silence of night. Soon the shaking
of irons and the clanking of chains was heard. Yet
he never raised his eyes nor slackened his pen, but
hardened his soul and deadened his ears by its help.

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The noise grew and approached. Now it seemed to be
heard at the door, and next inside the door, he
looked round, beheld and recognized the figure he had been
told of. It was standing and signaling to him with
its finger, as though inviting him. He, in reply, made
a sign with his hand that it should wait a moment,

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and applied himself afresh to his tablets and pen. Upon this,
the figure kept rattling its chains over his head as
he wrote. On. Looking round again, he saw it making
the same signal as before, and without delay, took up
a light and followed it. It moved with a slow step,
as though oppressed by its chains, and after turning into

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the courtyard of the house, vanished suddenly and left his company.
On being thus left to himself, he marked the spot
with some grass and leaves, which he plucked. Next day
he applied to the magistrates and urged them to have
the spot in question dug up. There were found there
some bones attached to and intermingled with fetters. The body

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to which they had belonged rotted away by time, and
soil had abandoned them. Thus naked and corroded to the chains,
they were collected and interred at the public expense, and
the house was ever afterwards free from the spirit which
had obtained due sepulture. The above story I believe on
the strength of those who affirm it what follows. I

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am myself in a position to affirm to others. I
have a freedman who is not without some knowledge of letters.
A younger brother of his was sleeping with him in
the same bed. The latter dreamed he saw some one
sitting on the couch, who approached a pair of scissors
to his head and even cut the hair from the
crown of it. When day dawned, he was found to

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be cropped round the crown, and his locks were discovered.
Lying about a very short time Afterwards, a fresh occurrence
of the same kind confirmed the truth of the former. One.
A lad of mine was sleeping in company with several
others in the page's apartment. There came through the windows,
so he tells the story two figures in white tunics

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who cut his hair as he lay, and departed the
way they came. In his case, too, daylight exhibited him shorn,
and his locks scattered around. Nothing remarkable followed, except perhaps this,
that I was not brought under acusation, as I should
have been if Domitian, in whose reign these events happened,

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had lived longer. For in his desk was found in
information against me which had been presented by Caras from
which circumstance it may be conjectured, inasmuch as it is
the custom of accused persons to let their hair grow,
that the cutting off of my slave's hair was a
sign of the danger which threatened me being averted. I

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beg then, that you will apply your great learning to
this subject. The matter is one which deserves long and
deep consideration on your part. Nor am I, for my part,
undeserving of having the fruits of your wisdom imparted to me.
You may even argue on both sides as your way
is provided, you argue more forcibly on one side than

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the other, so as not to dismiss me in suspense
and anxiety, when the very cause of my consulting you
has been to have my doubts put an end to
end of letter to Surah by Pliny the Younger