Mr. Clifford Pember's enthusiastic and attractive presentation of his reconstruction of this seaside residence (Pliny, Ep. ii, 17), in the Illustrated London News, no. 5653 (23 August, 1947), 220–1, together with his skilfully executed model now exhibited at the Ashmolean Museum, is sure to render good service to Roman studies: partly through directing the attention of the larger public to one of the most significant literary and administrative personalities of the age of Trajan, and partly as an affirmation of faith in the possibility of using the indications in the famous letter for the purpose of a reconstruction, not only graphic but plastic, of the epistolographer's beloved retreat: a reaction from the extreme view of some recent scholars, e.g. A. M. Guillemin, that the letter in question is so profoundly steeped in the conventions of the literary genre to which it belongs as to defy practical interpretation—that it is less a description of an actual villa than a gesture of politeness towards a friend.