So, I read "The letters of Pliny the Younger." A roman statesman and general pal of Trajan.
He writes describing his villas, an eruption of Vesuvius, the demise of his famous uncle and advising and sometimes admonishing his friends. Also some more formal stuff with Trajan asking about how to deal with this or that problem.
The postal service was clearly quite developed, and fairly fast. I'm intrigued. How did it work? Who could use it? Could one just post a letter, or did one have to pay? No mention of stamps, 'franking' or any other detail was apparent.
The tidbits of life at the time fascinate me. Pliny describes several villas he owns in a 'walk through' form that suggests the use of the various spaces; the description of the death of his uncle makes the elder Pliny sound quite remarkable -- he was so curious about a volcanic eruption that he couldn't resist going as close as he might and consequently died of inhaling toxic gases emitted by the volcano. Favorite bits also include a leter to Calvisius, deploring the Circensian games.
They have no novelty, no variety to recommend them, nothing, in short, one would wish to see twice. It does the more surprise me therefore that so many thousand people should be possessed with the childish passion of desiring so often to see a parcel of horses gallop, and men standing upright in their chariots. If, indeed, it were the swiftness of the horses, or the skill of the ment that attracted them, there might be some pretense of reason for it. But it is the dress they like: it is the dress that takes their fancy. And if, in the midst of the course and contest, the different parties were to change colours, their different partisans would change sides,...Not having much taste for team sports myself I find a peculiar satisfaction in an indictment of them so ancient.
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