Rome and the Outside World: Senatorial Families and the World They Lived In

Abstract

Abstract Minicius Fundanus, one of Pliny’s closest friends (I. 9; 4. 15; 5. 16; 6. 6; 7. 12), is a person we know better still because he was also one of Plutarch’s friends and appears as a participant in several of Plutarch’s Essays. For a long time it was debated how the acquaintance with Plutarch arose. It seemed plausible to suppose that Fundanus had held office in the province of Achaia at some stage in his preconsular career, either as quaestor or as legate to the governor, or indeed as proconsul. He could have got to know the sage of Chaeronea at this time, as was the case, so it is assumed, with Sosius Senecio, the consul ordinarius of AD 99. The latter may indeed have been quaestor in Greece (Jones 1970: 98 ff.). However, an inscription, long overlooked, which supplies the cursus honorum of Minicius Fundanus up to the point just before his consulship in 107, has made it plain that Fundanus never visited Greece in an official capacity. Where then did these two philosophically inclined persons meet? Ronald Syme, in one of his last papers (1991: 603-19, at 619), argued persuasively, from the fact that Fundanus spent the entire period between quaestorship and praetorship in Rome, that it was at Rome itself that this first contact took place. ‘Plutarch had visited Rome several times, for certain in 88 and 92. Rome was the intellectual centre of the Greek world, the goal of ambition, the resort of talkers and thinkers.’

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