PLINY THE ELDER. - Scholar, b. at Como in 23 A.D., d. near Misenum on 24 Aug. 79 A.D. during the eruption of Vesuvius that buried Stabiae, Herculaneum and Pompeii. He studied at Rome in the school of the rhetorician and tragedian Pomponius Secundus, fought in Germany, held various posts in the public administration, and was lastly prefect of the fleet at Misenum.
A typical representative of the age of the Flavians, averse to political struggles, a functionary devoted to authority and a spirit fond of erudition, he wrote on the most varied subjects: on military technique (De iaculatione equestri), on rhetoric (Studiosi libri III and Dubii sermonis libri VIII), on history (De vita Pomponii Secundi [his teacher]; Bellorum Germaniae libri XX and A fine Aufidii Bassi libri XXXI
[a work that linked up with the lost one of Aufidius Bassus, perhaps from the end of the reign of Tiberius down to at least 71]); but the most important work, and the only one preserved, is the Naturalis historia, dedicated to the emperor Titus, published in 36 books in 77 and then reissued posthumously by his nephew Pliny the Younger in 37 books (this is the recension handed down to us). It is an immense apparatus of information, drawn, according to P. himself, from 2000 vols. (rolls, that is, books: the works will have been a little more than a hundred), by a hundred different authors (P., however, cites about 500, evidently at second hand): it treats cosmography and astronomy (Bk. II), geography (Bks. III-IV), anthropology (Bk. VII), zoology (Bks. VIII-IX), botany (Bks. XII-XIX), medicine (Bks. XX-XXXII), mineralogy and the figurative arts in relation to the materials used by them (Bks. XXXIII-XXXVII).
P. excels over his predecessors (Cato, Varro, Cornelius Celsus) in the mass of materials collected, but he lacks organic arrangement: in him there is the curiosity of the scholar, not the genius of the thinker (indeed, different doctrines converge in him without amalgamating), so that his work, far removed from the powerful synthesis of the Aristotelian encyclopedia, is precious essentially as a source of information, even if a certain personality cannot be denied the author, especially of style. Despite the professor's contempt for transcendence, the Naturalis historia exercised, more or less directly, a very wide influence on ancient culture from Solinus (end of the 3rd century) to the anonymous author of the so-called Medicina Plinii (4th century), and throughout the Middle Ages, perhaps on Cassiodorus (v.), certainly on Isidore of Seville (v.) and on the various Tesori of the following centuries.
Bibliography3 works
Alessandro Pratesi