CalendarEvent details

Pliny the Younger 109 CE · Tuscan villa

Walk, exercise and bathe

14:30–16:00 · Estimated

Estimated by typical tue. 14:30–16:00 is an estimated afternoon slot between the midday reading and the main meal. The gap before this block is unassigned.Source timing: After reading aloud, before dinner

“exercise and a bath”

Short verbatim excerpt · Pliny the Younger
Open the original for the surrounding passage.

Letter describing daily habitsOpen

Letters, Book IX, Letter 36, to Fuscus

Pliny the Younger

J. B. Firth translation · 1900 · Attalus transcription with minor wording changes

Book IX, Letter 36 · summer routine at his Tuscan villa; Letter 40 identifies the nap as a midday sleep
Passage: Letter 9.36 · end of the paragraph beginning “Then I snatch”

Timing & context
A note on this hour

His sequence is another walk, anointing, exercise, and a bath. The letter gives the order, not clock times or durations.

Summer at his Tuscan villa · early second century CE · Self-reported summer routine

Letter 9.36 describes his recurring summer routine, with variations, rather than one recorded day. All clock times and block lengths here are editorial estimates. Roman daylight was divided into twelve seasonal hours; the calendar uses an illustrative summer day with daylight around 05:00–19:00, not an exact modern conversion. This is his country-villa routine, not a day of public duties in Rome. No weekday is specified.

109 CE is a representative display year chosen by Typical Tuesday from the conventional dating of Book IX. Letter 9.36 is not explicitly dated to that year, and the collection is not strictly chronological.

Dating of Book IX · Dickinson College Commentaries ↗