Pliny's Epistle 1.6 is a relatively short, apparently personal letter within the first book of Epistles, addressed to his friend Cornelius Tacitus. Besides intertextual references to Lucretius, Calpurnius Siculus and Tacitus, there is also an interesting allusion to Seneca's tragedy Phaedra, which influenced Pliny in the conception of the letter's frame story, as the present study aims to prove.