In an aristocratic house such as Pliny's the term "family" (familia) had a wider meaning than it does today. It included those slaves who functioned as nurses, cooks, butlers, performers, and private secretaries. It often happened that free Romans trusted their slaves and ex-slaves (liberti) more than members of their own class.
In this letter, we see that Pliny, as pater familias, could adopt a very "paternal" attitude to his servants. He is thinking of the deaths of his freedmen, Zosimus and Encolpius, who had served him by reading books out loud at his table and elsewhere. In this capacity, they were constant companions of his literary studies.
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Paterno: Plinius Paternus, a friend of Pliny's, but not related to him.
meorum: "my people."
facilitas manumittendi: "(my) readiness to free slaves." As an incentive for good service, many Romans paid their slaves wages which could be saved up toward the "purchase" of freedom. Slaves were also freed on the spot for exceptional service. Of course, the final decision about when and under what conditions a slave should be freed was up to the master. Pliny praises himself for being generous in this regard.
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quasi testamenta facere: a person who was still a slave was not legally entitled to make a will. Even the money he had saved toward freedom legally reverted to the master if he died before manumission. Pliny, however, allowed his slaves to make unofficial wills and respected their final wishes.
mandant rogantque: some provisions of a will take the form of a bequest ("I leave my stamp collection to..."); others take the
form of a command or request ("scatter my ashes in the Tiber"). Here Pliny refers to the latter.
quod visum (est): videor can mean "seem best."
intra domum: the heirs had to be members of Pliny's own household, since the "will" was an in-house fiction.
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humanitate: a loaded word in Pliny. It means about the same thing as "humanity," in the sense of "respect for fellow men," but also has overtones of "enlightened sensibility."
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damnum: a (financial) loss, i.e., "spilled milk," nothing to get worked up about.
Qui ... sint: the clause is introduced by the conjunction an; the relative pronoun qui, whose antecedent is alios, functions here like a personal or demonstrative pronoun: "they, these men."
sapientes videri: Pliny may be referring (somewhat unfairly) to the Stoic philosophers, who advised detachment from strong emotional ties. Pliny's contemporary, the Greek philosopher Epictetus (c. 55-135 CE), himself a former slave, has some stern advice on grief-management (see Enchiridion.16)