Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus or Pliny the Elder (b. 23/4–d. 79 ce) is famous for two things: his monumental Natural History (Historia naturalis), which describes the world in thirty-seven volumes, and his death in the eruption of Vesuvius, which was carefully described by his nephew, Pliny the Younger, in one of two letters about his uncle that have survived to us (Plin. Ep. 6.16). In the second of these letters, Pliny the Elder is described as a man who read insatiably and the author of a large number of lost works, including histories of the German Wars and of the later Julio-Claudian period, as well as a treatise on how to throw a javelin from a horse (Plin. Ep. 3.5). Born in Novum Comum in the Transpadane regions, Pliny the Elder served in Germany alongside the future emperor Titus, practiced law at Rome under Nero, and went on to a prominent career as an equestrian administrator under the Flavians, holding a series of important procuratorships, including that of Hispania Tarraconensis, and serving as commander of the fleet at Misenum. The Natural History is dedicated to Titus, and Pliny’s closeness to both Vespasian and Titus seems reflected in his political views in the work, most obviously in his animosity toward Nero and his court. The Natural History is a key document in the history of science and scholarship in Europe. In this encyclopedic text, Pliny gathers together and arranges data from his reading and from his experience to present an account of nature that has Roman concerns at its heart. Pliny is not particularly concerned with philosophical schools, though he is usually seen as influenced by Stoicism. Nature is knowable through a succession of itemized facts that he puts at the disposal of his readers, to encourage them to marvel at the wonderful and unexpected inventiveness of the natural world. The burden of his text can be seen as a moral or a political one: Pliny promotes a return to old Roman values and a renewed spirit of intellectual inquiry in the rhetorical passages of the text, and the work as a whole is dependent on, and produced in the service of, Roman imperial interests. The work is organized in thirty-seven volumes. The first contains the preface and—unusually—a list of the contents and sources for each of the ensuing volumes. The following thirty-six deal with the heavens (Book 2); geography (Books 3–6); humans and other living creatures (Books 7–11); plants (Books 12–19); medicines from plants (Books 20–27); medicines from living creatures (Books 28–32); and an account of metals, minerals, and gemstones and the art that has been produced from them (Books 33–37).