Everything about Pliny The Elder totally explained
Gaius or
Caius Plinius Secundus, (
AD 23 –
August 24,
AD 79), better known as
Pliny the Elder, was an ancient
author,
naturalist or
natural philosopher and naval and military commander of some importance who wrote
Naturalis Historia. He is known for his saying
"True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written; in writing what deserves to be read".
He was the son of a
Roman equestrian with the
cognomen Celer by one Marcella, some say the daughter of the
Senator Gaius or Caius Caecilius of
Novum Comum (
Como) others of one Titus, which suggests a possible connection with the
Titii Pomponii, and being the connection with the
Caecilii from
Celer,
cognomen used by that
Gens. He was born in
Como, not (as is sometimes supposed) at
Verona: it's only as a native of
Gallia Transpadana that he calls
Catullus of Verona his
conterraneus, or fellow-countryman, not his
municeps, or fellow-townsman. A statue of Pliny on the facade of the Duomo of Como celebrates him as a native son.
Life
Student and lawyer
Before AD
35 Pliny's father took him to
Rome, where he was educated and did his military service in
Germania on his command under his father's friend, the poet and military commander,
Publius Pomponius Secundus, who inspired him with a lifelong love of learning. Two centuries after the death of the
Gracchi, Pliny saw some of their autograph writings in his preceptor's library, and he afterwards wrote that preceptor's
Life.
He mentions the
grammarians and
rhetoricians,
Remmius Palaemon and
Arellius Fuscus, and he may have been their student. In Rome he studied
botany in the
topiarius (garden) of the aged
Antonius Castor, and saw the fine old
lotus trees in the grounds that had once belonged to
Crassus. He also viewed the vast structure raised by
Caligula, and probably witnessed the triumph of
Claudius over
Britain in
44. Under the influence of
Seneca the Younger he became a keen student of
philosophy and
rhetoric, and began practicing as an
advocate.
Junior officer
He saw military service under
Corbulo in
Germania Inferior in
47, taking part in the Roman conquest of the
Chauci and the construction of the canal between the rivers
Maas and
Rhine. As a young commander of
cavalry (
praefectus alae) he wrote in his winter-quarters a work on the use of
missiles on horseback (
De jaculatione equestri), with some account of the points of a good
horse.
In
Gaul and
Hispania he learned the meanings of a number of
Celtic words. He took note of sites associated with the Roman invasion of Germany, and, amid the scenes of the victories of
Drusus, he'd a dream in which the victor enjoined him to transmit his exploits to posterity. The dream prompted Pliny to begin forthwith a history of all the
wars between the Romans and the Germans.
He probably accompanied his father's friend Pomponius on an expedition against the
Chatti (
50), and visited Germany for a third time (50s) as a comrade of the future
emperor,
Titus Flavius.
Literary interlude
Under
Nero Pliny lived mainly in Rome. He mentions the map of
Armenia and the neighbourhood of the
Caspian Sea, which was sent to Rome by the staff of Corbulo in
58. He also saw the building of Nero's
Domus Aurea or "Golden House" after the fire of
64.
Meanwhile he was completing the twenty books of his
History of the German Wars, the only authority expressly quoted in the first six books of the
Annals of
Tacitus, and probably one of the principal authorities for the
Germania. It was superseded by the writings of Tacitus, and, early in the
5th century,
Symmachus had little hope of finding a copy.
He also devoted much of his time to writing on the comparatively safe subjects of
grammar and rhetoric. A detailed work on rhetoric, entitled
Studiosus, was followed by eight books,
Dubii sermonis, in
67, which like the books on the German Wars, are now
lost works.
Senior officer
Under his friend
Vespasian he returned to the service of the state, serving as
procurator in
Gallia Narbonensis (
70) and
Hispania Tarraconensis (
73), and also visiting the province of
Gallia Belgica (
74). During his stay in Hispania he became familiar with the
agriculture and especially the
gold mines of the country, besides paying a visit to
Africa. His time in
Hispania must have included visits to the gold mines in the north, because his descriptions of the various methods of mining bear the hallmark of the
eye-witness, as discussed below. On his return to Italy he accepted office under Vespasian, whom he used to visit before daybreak for instructions before proceeding to his official duties, after the discharge of which he devoted all the rest of his time to study.
Famous author
He completed a
History of His Times in thirty-one books, possibly extending from the reign of Nero to that of Vespasian, and deliberately reserved it for publication after his death. It is quoted by Tacitus, and is one of the authorities followed by
Suetonius and
Plutarch. However, it's now a
lost work, like all of his other books apart from the Naturalis Historia.
He completed his great work the
Naturalis Historia, an
encyclopedia into which Pliny collected much of the knowledge of his time. The work had been planned under the rule of Nero. The materials collected for this purpose filled rather less than 160 volumes, which
Larcius Licinus, the
praetorian legate of Hispania Tarraconensis, vainly offered to purchase them for a sum equivalent to more than £3,200 (
1911 estimated value) or £200,000 (
2002 estimated value). Aside from minor finishing touches, the work in 37 books was completed in AD 77. Pliny dedicated the work to the emperor
Titus Flavius Vespasianus in
77.
The Natural History
The only extant work of Pliny's is the
Natural History; its survival is due to the very nature of the work, covering as it does almost the entire field of ancient knowledge, based on the best authorities. As a result it was used for reference over the following centuries by countless scholars, especially in medicine, plants and plant products (
for example,
wine), agriculture, architecture, sculpture, geology and mineralogy.
Literature
At the conclusion of his literary labours, as the only Roman besides
Lucretius who had ever taken for his theme the whole realm of nature, he prays for the blessing of the universal mother on his completed work.
In literature he assigns the highest place next to
Homer,
Cicero and
Virgil.
He takes a keen interest in nature, and in the natural sciences, studying them in a way that was then new in Rome, while the small esteem in which studies of this kind were held doesn't deter him from endeavouring to be of service to his fellow countrymen.
The scheme of his great work is vast and comprehensive, being nothing short of an
encyclopedia of learning and of art so far as they're connected with nature or draw their materials from nature. He admits that
» My subject is a barren one - the world of nature, or in other words life; and that subject in its least elevated department, and employing either rustic terms or foreign, nay barbarian words that actually have to be introduced with an apology. Moreover, the path isn't a beaten highway of authorship, nor one in which the mind is eager to range: there isn't one of us who has made the same venture, nor yet one Greek who has tackled single-handed all departments of the subject.
And he admits the problems of writing such a work:
» It is a difficult task to give novelty to what is old, authority to what is new, brilliance to the common-place, light to the obscure, attraction to the stale, credibility to the doubtful, but nature to all things and all her properties to nature.
For this work he studied the original authorities on each subject and was most assiduous in making excerpts from their pages. His
indices auctorum are, in some cases, the authorities which he's actually consulted (though they're not exhaustive); in other cases, they represent the principal writers on the subject, whose names are borrowed second-hand for his immediate authorities. He frankly acknowledges his obligations to all his predecessors in a phrase that deserves to be proverbial,
» "plenum ingenni pudoris fateri per quos profeceris".
or
» to own up to those who were the means of one's own achievements
It was his scientific curiosity as to the phenomena of the eruption of Vesuvius that brought his life of continual study to a premature end; and any criticism of his faults of omission is disarmed by the candour of the confession in his preface:
» "nec dubitamus multa esse quae et nos praeterierint; homines enim sumus et occupati officiis".
or
» Nor do we doubt that many things have escaped us also; for we're but human, and beset with duties
Style
His style betrays the influence of Seneca. It aims less at clearness and vividness than at epigrammatic point. It abounds not only in antitheses, but also in questions and exclamations, tropes and metaphors, and other mannerisms of the Silver Age. The rhythmical and artistic form of the sentence is sacrificed to a passion for emphasis that delights in deferring the point to the close of the period. The structure of the sentence is also apt to be loose and straggling. There is an excessive use of the ablative absolute, and ablative phrases are often appended in a kind of vague "apposition" to express the author's own opinion of an immediately previous statement, for example , » "dixit (Apelles) ... uno se praestare, quod manum de tabula sciret tollere, memorabili praecepto nocere saepe nimiam diligentiam".
Highlights
A special interest attaches to his account of the manufacture of the
papyrus, and of the different kinds of
purple dye, while his description of the notes of the
nightingale is an elaborate example of his occasional felicity of phrase. He also gave eye-witness accounts of
gold mining in Hispania, accounts which have been confirmed by the visible remains especially at
Las Medulas.
Some of Pliny's wisest and most famous adages include:
» Among these things, one thing seems certain - that nothing certain exists and that there's nothing more pitiful or more presumptuous than man.
» Because of a curious disease of the human mind, it pleases us to enshrine in history records of bloodshed and slaughter, so that those ignorant of the facts of the world may become acquainted with the crimes of mankind.
Vesuvius
.]]
He received from Vespasian the appointment of
praefect of the
Roman Navy. On
August 24,
79 A.D., he was stationed at
Misenum, at the time of the great
eruption of
Mount Vesuvius, which overwhelmed
Pompeii and
Herculaneum. A desire to observe the phenomenon directly, and also to rescue some of his friends from their perilous position on the shore of the
Bay of Naples, led to the launching of his galleys and crossing the bay to
Stabiae (near the modern town of
Castellammare di Stabia). His nephew, whom he'd adopted,
Pliny the Younger, provided an account of his death, and suggested that he collapsed and died through inhaling poisonous gases emitted from the volcano. His body was found interred under the ashes of the
Vesuvium with no apparent injuries on
26 August, after the plume had dispersed, tending to confirm
asphyxiation or
poisoning.
The story of his last hours is told in an
interesting letter
addressed twenty-seven years afterwards to Tacitus by the Elder Pliny's nephew and heir,
Pliny the Younger, who also sent to another correspondent an account of his uncle's writings and his manner of life:
Pliny is still remembered in
volcanology where the term
Plinian (or
Plinean) refers to a
very violent eruption of a volcano marked by columns of smoke and ash extending high into the stratosphere. The term
ultra-Plinian is reserved for the most violent type of Plinian eruption such as the
1883 destruction of
Krakatoa.
Research after 1500
A
carnelian inscribed with the letters C. PLIN. has been reproduced by Cades (v.211) from the original in the
Vannutelli collection. It represents an ancient Roman with an almost completely bald forehead and a double chin; and is almost certainly a portrait, not of Pliny the Elder, but of
Pompey the Great. Seated statues of both the Plinies, clad in the garb of scholars of the year
1500, may be seen in the niches on either side of the main entrance to the
cathedral church of Como.
The elder Pliny's anecdotes of Greek artists supplied
Vasari with the subjects of the
frescoes which still adorn the interior of his former home at
Arezzo.
Modern research
Pliny's description of
gold mining methods (book xxxiii, chapter 21) has been confirmed by field work and
archaeology, especially the use of water power in sluicing
alluvial gold ores, both in Britain at
Dolaucothi in
South Wales, at
Las Medulas and many other mines in northern
Spain. His description of construction of the
aqueducts needed to prospect for gold-bearing ore by removing overburden and work the alluvial deposits bears the hall marks of the
eye-witness, and he served as
Procurator in northern Hispania when the region in 73 AD was experiencing a
gold rush. The memory must thus have been fresh in his mind when he wrote Book xxxiii. As the mines grew, more water was supplied simply by building new aqueducts along the line of the original, and the remains of such multiple systems are still visible at
Dolaucothi and
Las Medulas.
Such methods of
hydraulic mining were used widely during the
gold rushes of
California and
Australia in the
Victorian period. By contrast with aqueducts providing potable water for towns and cities, those used in mining had a higher gradient so as to provide a faster stream top speed operations, and consequently a shorter life. It seems clear that the methods of
hydraulic mining such as
hushing were a Roman innovation, nothing comparable being known in previous times. No doubt their skills at aqueduct building promoted their less well-known use in large-scale mining, as attested by Pliny.
The research at
Dolaucothi has shown how aqueducts could be used not just for prospection, but also for removing waste rock. A large tank would be built at the end of the aqueduct, and once a vein found, it was attacked using fire-setting (building a fire against the rock, then dousing with water) and the precious ore-bearing minerals extracted by hand. The waste or barren rock surrounding the vein was then washed away, again by using the wave of water from a full tank to scour the waste away. Pliny actually recommends a particular size of tank (200 by 200 feet, and 10 feet deep), but those found on the ground at Dolaucothi vary greatly in size, and are smaller than he says. The same water supply was then used as a gentle stream to wash the crushed ore, the gold particles being collected in riffle boxes. At least two of the tanks used at the gold mine still hold water, a tribute to their builders nearly 2000 years ago.
Trivia
- Pliny is a significant character in the novel Pompeii by Robert Harris.
- Due to his death in the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius, he frequently portrayed in docudramas and dramas set around that eruption, such as:
- The quote "True glory consists of doing what deserves to be written, and writing what deserves to be read" appears in the PC/Mac game Civilization IV upon the discovery of the Writing technology. The quote is attributed to Pliny the Elder and is spoken by Leonard Nimoy.
Notes
Also see
De Architectura
Hispania Tarraconensis
Pliny the Younger
Roman aqueducts
Roman architecture
Roman engineering
Roman technology
Vesuvius
Vitruvius
VolcanologyFurther Information
Get more info on 'Pliny The Elder'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://pliny_the_elder.totallyexplained.com">Pliny the Elder Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
