Pliny the Elder (c. 23 - 79) was a Roman officer, administrator, and author, born at Novum Comum in northern Italy. [1] Alongside a career of military and procuratorial service he compiled the Naturalis Historia, a vast encyclopaedia covering astronomy, geography, zoology, botany, medicine, mineralogy, and art. [2] He died in AD 79 at Stabiae during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which he had approached both to observe and to organise a rescue.
Early life and public career
Gaius Plinius Secundus was born about AD 23 or 24 at Novum Comum, the modern Como, into a prosperous equestrian family. [1] He was educated at Rome and entered military service as a young man, holding cavalry commands in Germania, where he took part in campaigns along the Rhine frontier and wrote works on cavalry tactics and on the German wars, both now lost.
After a period of relative withdrawal from public life under Nero, Pliny returned to service under the emperor Vespasian, with whom he was personally acquainted. He held a succession of procuratorships in the provinces and finally command of the imperial fleet at Misenum on the Bay of Naples. [2] His nephew and adopted son, Pliny the Younger, later described his uncle's extraordinary working habits, including reading and dictating during meals, journeys, and the hours before dawn.
The Natural History
The Naturalis Historia, dedicated to the future emperor Titus, runs to thirty-seven books and is the only one of Pliny's works to survive. [3] He states that it draws on thousands of individual facts gathered from hundreds of earlier authors, and it opens with an index and a list of sources, an unusual scholarly practice for its time.
The work moves from cosmology and geography through human physiology, land and sea animals, trees, agriculture, and medicinal plants and substances, and closes with books on metals, stones, and the history of painting and sculpture. [3] Much of what is known about lost Greek and Roman art, mining, and pharmacology depends on Pliny's summaries. His material combines careful observation with reported marvels and folk remedies, and he did not consistently distinguish between them.
Death at Vesuvius
In August AD 79 Vesuvius erupted, burying Pompeii and Herculaneum. [4] Pliny, commanding the fleet at Misenum, ordered ships across the bay both to observe the phenomenon and to evacuate people from the shore. He landed near Stabiae, where he was overcome and died, most likely from the effects of the volcanic fumes. Two letters by Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus give a detailed account of the eruption and of his uncle's death, and remain the principal eyewitness record of the disaster. [1]
Legacy
The Natural History was copied continuously through the Middle Ages and became one of the first classical texts printed after the invention of movable type, serving for centuries as a standard reference on the natural world. [2] Its authority declined as experimental science advanced, but it remains an indispensable source for ancient technology, art history, and the everyday knowledge of the Roman world. The term Plinian eruption, describing the towering column of ash his nephew described, preserves his name in modern volcanology. [4]
