Chapter I: The Elder Pliny: Flavian Science and History (1)

Life—His public appointments—Eruption of Vesuvius—Avidity
for knowledge—Six lost works—Contents and arrangement of
the _Natural History_—Sources and method—Pliny’s lists of
authorities—_Quellenkritik_—Some of its services—Variations
in use of Greek and Latin sources—Difficulties as to
minor authorities—Pre-eminent authorities—A few contrasts
with modern science—Obvious weaknesses—Historical value
of the encyclopaedia—Attractive features—Information
pleasantly conveyed—Stoic outlook—Nature and
man—Mother-earth—Human society—Human progress—Political
views—Literary qualities—Rhetoric, sarcasm, epigram—Pith
of expression—Purple passages—The common-place and the
poetic—Sentence-structure—Survival of influence.

Flavian historians (a) under Vespasian, (b) under Domitian.

THE ELDER PLINY

What everyone knows about an author is not necessarily of supreme importance; but the two most familiar facts about the elder Pliny—that he composed a massive _Natural History_ and that he perished while investigating an eruption of Vesuvius—lie in their implications at the very roots of his title to fame. A meagre life by Suetonius has to be supplemented by information from the colossal work which is his imperishable monument and from his nephew’s admiring testimony in four of his letters.[1008] C. Plinius Secundus[1009] was born of an equestrian family at Novum Comum in A.D. 23 or 24,[1010] and his birth near Lake Como led him to claim Catullus as a fellow-Northerner (_conterraneum meum_).[1011] He must have come early to Rome, because Nonianus, whom the boy saw in his consulate,[1012] held the office in A.D. 35. If we know little about his education, we can see from his style that rhetoric was not omitted; and, while there is no proof that the poet Pomponius Secundus formally trained him in literature, we can at least be sure that he deeply influenced the younger man, who was destined to write his biography. Pliny’s allusions to Pomponius are full of respect, and he recalls how on one occasion he saw at Pomponius’s house specimens—then about two centuries old—of the handwriting of the Gracchi.[1013] Similarity of disposition may have linked them together; for, like Pliny, Pomponius showed ability to combine literary with official duties. Pliny’s youthful pleading at the bar was followed by military service. When twenty-three or twenty-four he was a cavalry officer under Corbulo in Germania Inferior, and his first book was written on the use of the javelin by mounted troops. His comradeship (_castrense contubernium_) which he mentions[1014] with the future Emperor Titus may have happened ten years later, about A.D. 57, when he was in the army of Pompeius Paulinus.[1015] Several allusions attest experiences among peoples near the northern frontier of the Empire;[1016] no doubt it was personal knowledge that united with historical instinct to suggest his lost work on the wars of Germany.

Full detail, however, regarding his life before the accession of Vespasian is not available. It is true that he gives us a few interesting reminiscences: he saw for himself the harbour works in progress at Ostia about the beginning of Claudius’s reign; he could remember Claudius’s Empress Agrippina wearing a mantle of woven gold at a sham naval fight exhibited by the Emperor; and he witnessed the building of Nero’s “golden house” after the fire of 64.[1017] On the other hand, we should like to be sure whether he had official connexion with the East. Was he ever procurator of Syria? Did he serve against the Jews as a staff officer under Titus? and was this the service which he calls _castrense contubernium_? Could he have been present at the siege of Jerusalem in 70? These questions might all be answered in the affirmative, if Mommsen’s hypothesis were accepted that Pliny is alluded to in a Greek inscription from Arados.[1018] But the balance of authority prefers to hold that in 70 Pliny was in Gaul, and that this year began for him a series of procuratorships in Gallia Narbonensis, Africa, Gallia Belgica and Hispania Citerior.[1019] Administered, according to Suetonius, with the highest integrity, these offices at the same time widened his horizon, even though they were all held within the western half of the Empire.

While at Rome, Pliny kept in close contact with the imperial house. A well-known letter by his nephew tells us that it was his custom to visit the palace before daylight to interview Vespasian and then return to his daily task.[1020] He was on duty as admiral of the fleet at Misenum on that summer afternoon in 79 which the younger Pliny’s account of the catastrophe has made memorable. A pine-like cloud of smoky vapour rising above the neighbouring mountains betrayed alarming volcanic activity, and the phenomena, pointed out to him by his sister, the younger Pliny’s mother, were too tempting for an ardent student of nature to miss, even though he was elderly, stout and busily engaged in reading after his midday siesta.

“He called for his shoes and climbed some high ground from which that uncommon sight could best be viewed. Looking at it from this distance, one felt uncertain from what mountain the cloud was rising, though later it was known to be Vesuvius.... It was white at one moment, at another grimy and spotted, as if it had carried up soil or cinders. A man of my uncle’s learning saw that the phenomenon was significant and deserving of closer survey. He ordered a light vessel to be got ready and gave me the chance of going with him, if I wished.”[1021]

Appeals for help reached him: large galleys had to be launched: and the scientific admiral made for the danger zone from which others were fleeing. His nephew’s letter pictures him dictating observations, braving the rain of stones upon the bay, and by his coolness heartening his friend Pomponianus, in whose house he supped and stayed overnight at Stabiae (Castellamare). The next day, one of preternatural darkness, amidst terrific concussions and sulphurous gas-fumes which put his friends to flight, he was left by the seashore and, troubled as he had been with his breathing, succumbed to asphyxiation. When, a day later, light was restored to the land, his body was found uninjured, wearing the appearance rather of sleep than of death (_quiescenti quam defuncto similior_).

An insatiable desire for knowledge and indefatigable industry in amassing it are the outstanding characteristics of Pliny. A hard-working official, he could never have completed so many volumes on intricate subjects without marvellous self-denial and an extraordinary faculty for dispensing with sleep. The small hours after midnight found him ready to begin study long before the time came for repairing to the Emperor Vespasian—another early riser. His very meals could be utilized for listening to a trained reader: during leisure hours, as he basked in summer sunlight, he would have a book read aloud, and take notes or extracts. A favourite, but very risky, remark of his was that there was no book so bad as not to contain something profitable.[1022] In the country only bathing-time was exempt from study, and immediately after a bath, while he was being rubbed down, he listened to a reader, or himself dictated. In winter the close attendance of a secretary, with hands gloved against the cold and equipped with books and tablets, ensured that nothing should impede the acquisition and distribution of knowledge. Once at dinner a book was being read aloud, when one of the guests stopped the reader for mispronouncing some words and made him repeat them: upon which Pliny said, “You understood him surely.” “Yes,” replied the friend. “Then why did you stop him? We have lost more than ten lines by this interruption of yours.” Such was his parsimony in time.[1023]

On another occasion he remonstrated with his nephew for taking a walk: “You might,” said he, “have avoided wasting those hours.” The nephew, in recalling the incident long afterwards, made the comment that his uncle thought all time lost that was not devoted to study.[1024] By dint of this intense application he left to the younger Pliny no fewer than one hundred and sixty volumes of extracts written on both sides and in an extremely small hand, which, as the embarrassed legatee realized, “is tantamount to increasing their number.”[1025] It is rare for so passionate a student to fill so many practical offices, and there is a legitimate force in the younger Pliny’s question, “Who among the lifelong devotees of letters must not, when compared with him, blush for yielding to slumber and sloth?”[1026]

Of the half-dozen lost works by Pliny, of which his nephew gives a chronological list,[1027] one was a technical military manual, one a biography, two were on language under oratorical or grammatical aspects, and two were historical. They mark that all-roundness of interest which reappears in the _Natural History_. His literary career began when, as a young officer, he wrote his handbook on the use of javelins by cavalry, _De iaculatione equestri_.[1028] The two books _De uita Pomponii Secundi_ were intended for a tribute of affection to the memory of one who was both a literary friend and Pliny’s commanding officer in Germany.[1029] The _Bellorum Germaniae XX Libri_ gave an account of the wars between Rome and the Germans. The idea came to the author on one of his German campaigns when he dreamt that the ghost of Drusus asked that his fame should be rescued from oblivion.[1030] Tacitus quotes the work, which seems to have been in existence as late as the time of Symmachus in A.D. 396.[1031] _Studiosi III Libri_, “The Student,” or, according to Gellius, “The Students,”[1032] had each of its three long books divided into two volumes. Like Quintilian after him, Pliny treated the education of an orator from infancy (_ab incunabulis_). Choice specimens from controversial declamations were included. The work impressed Quintilian on the score of carefulness, and therefore surprised him all the more by incidentally introducing fantastic views upon the secret of the long gown which Cicero used to wear and on the advisability of tidy or untidy hair for a speaker.[1033] It was in the latest years of Nero’s reign, when even learning had to walk warily, that Pliny turned to a grammatical subject[1034] in _Dubius Sermo_, “doubtful forms in language.” He thus made his contribution, as Julius Caesar had done, to the conflict between anomaly and analogy in linguistic forms, though Pliny’s love of variety made him a less rigid stickler for analogy than Caesar had been. Its eight books carried weight with many grammarians including Charisius.[1035] Next, in the thirty-one books _A Fine Aufidi Bassi_ Pliny went back to history, continuing the work of Bassus. It is, however, not clear when that historian stopped: what we do know is that of three definite citations of Pliny’s history by Tacitus,[1036] the earliest refers to A.D. 55. The guess has been made—and opposed—that the thirty-one books treated annalistically the equal number of years from Caligula’s fall in 41 to the triumph of Vespasian and Titus in A.D. 71.[1037] Fabia, who, like Nissen, sees in the lost work a principal source for the _Histories_ of Tacitus, suggests that Pliny started from the later years of Claudius’s reign. Unfortunately, the surviving fragments[1038] are too scanty to aid a decision; but, touching the _terminus ad quem_, it should be pointed out that Pliny’s words show that he certainly treated Nero’s last year, and suggest that he carried this history of his own times well into the reign of Vespasian.[1039] Completed in A.D. 77, the work was left for publication by the younger Pliny, who notes in his uncle’s historical composition the same scrupulous exactitude[1040] that struck Quintilian in his oratorical treatise. Care alone, however, does not create literature; and no one can now say how far Pliny’s methods in political and social history differed from his methods in natural history. That Tacitus by writing on the same period eclipsed and superseded him as artist and historian we may be quite sure. But it is likely enough that, even if he was no historical genius, we have lost much attractive material in the shape of Pliny’s first-hand impressions and experiences during a period with which he was contemporary.

The supreme memorial to his energy is his one extant production, the _Naturalis Historia_ in thirty-seven books, admirably characterized by his nephew as “a diffuse work, learned, with a variety equal to nature’s own.”[1041] The author found a patron, to whom he might address it, in the prince Titus—himself the composer of a poem on the appearance of a comet. Although dedicated to Titus in A.D. 77,[1042] it was published, at least in the main, posthumously. Probably, either the first decade alone was issued in 77,[1043] or even it may have been subjected to alterations after being presented to Titus: there is general agreement that the author during the last two years of his life continued his task, but did not succeed in giving a final revision to the remaining books. The arrangement is as follows. Book I, which is preceded by an epistle dedicatory, forms an introduction consisting of an exhaustive table of contents book by book (expressly designed to save time and trouble for busy readers[1044]) with an imposing array of authorities employed in each: II, the single physical book, giving Pliny’s cosmography in relation to God, the universe and its elements: III-VI, on the geography and ethnography of Europe, Africa and Asia, starting in the west at the Pillars of Hercules and, after two books allotted to countries on the northern side of the Mediterranean, restarting eastwards from Mauretania for India and Mesopotamia: VII, his anthropological section, treating man and human physiology: VIII-XI, four books on zoology—land animals (with the elephant first, because biggest), sea creatures, birds, insects receiving each a book: XII-XIX, eight books on botany, under which come forest trees and fruit trees and (in XVIII) agriculture: XX-XXVII, eight books devoted to materia medica from botanical sources: XXVIII-XXXII, five books devoted to materia medica from zoological sources: XXXIII-XXXVII, mineralogy and metallurgy, embracing a survey of their application to medicine and the fine arts, so as to bring in the healing properties of metallic substances, artistic productions in gold, bronze or other metals, the manufacture of colours and achievements of great painters, stones and their employment by architects and sculptors, precious stones and their value.

The arrangement is not illogical in broad outline, though the treatment of medicaments got from the animal kingdom is, with a curious lack of symmetry, deferred until both the vegetable kingdom and its medicaments have been treated at great length. That the plan of division was the author’s own is manifest from cross references within the text.[1045] Even a brief summary of the scheme shows how much the subject is related to human concerns. In addition to thirteen predominantly medical books, the mineralogical portion contains a large amount bearing on the healing of man’s ailments: and it was the human factor that fortunately prompted—what would not have occurred to many writers on mineralogy—a valuable digression on the history of art.

Pliny calculated that his work was a repertory of twenty thousand facts, or what he took for facts, compiled from about two thousand volumes and one hundred selected authors.[1046] This last number, however, does not cover his obligations to all sources, because the lists or indices of Roman and foreign authorities, which he appends to his table of contents for each book, yield totals of 146 Roman and 327 foreign authors, or something approaching 500 in all. The discrepancy between this total in the indices and the hundred _exquisiti_ is more apparent than real. It was a professed point of honour with Pliny, though not with ancient writers as a rule, frankly to own obligation to all from whom literary material had been derived: “I hold it for courtesy and ample proof of an honourable modesty to acknowledge by whom one has profited.”[1047] Therefore he feels gratitude not only to his hundred special authors, but to earlier writers whose knowledge they have enabled him to use. This avoidance, however, of any suspicion of plagiarism has been turned against him. Attempts have been made to charge him on this score with an empty parade of learning,[1048] as if, even without his nephew’s explicit testimony, any reader should fail to see that the author had drawn upon multitudes of books. He carries out his promise of acknowledgement to all authorities by recording their names (with subjects sometimes, but only sometimes, specified) in his indices for each book and to a less extent by mentioning authorities in the text. Here, however, he considers himself dispensed from systematic or exhaustive mention of the authors given in the lists: some are cited on incidental or isolated points, others can be inferred to be of more importance, and occasionally others are said to be followed for a considerable portion of the work.[1049] Usually when an author is cited the information is indirectly reported in dependence upon such phrases as _Fenestella tradit_ (IX. 123), _scribit Annaeus Seneca_ (IX. 167), _Varro auctor est_ (XVIII. 307), _L. Piso prodidit_ (XXXIV. 30); but there are passages where authors are quoted _verbatim_ for some lines on end, _e.g._, Trebius (IX. 93), Nepos (IX. 137) and Cato (XXIX. 14). One cardinal misfortune is that Pliny did not decide expressly to distinguish among principal, secondary, and still more remote authorities, such as those Greek writers who were known to him solely through intermediary writers, Greek or Roman. If he had even revealed the names of his hundred _exquisiti_, we should have possessed a canon for his main authorities, and thereby known which were subordinate, although the degree of their subordination might still have been perplexing to determine. Again, if we could have been certain of the principle underlying the order of names in each author-list, much would have been clearer about the origin and value of the material. Brunn’s well-known pamphlet of 1856,[1050] which has had great influence in Plinian criticism, laid it down that the order of names in each list broadly corresponded with the order in which the authors were originally used in the particular book to which the list was applicable. Unluckily, this principle, as Brunn himself saw, is not so simple as it looks; and on examination it is burdened with so many exceptions due to Pliny’s subsequent insertions and to disturbances in the text, intentional or accidental, that one must reluctantly doubt its validity.[1051] Another puzzle lies in the figures given after most of the tables of contents to represent totals of “facts, stories, and observations” (_res et historiae et obseruationes_). The figures vary considerably (417 for Book II, 2214 for VI), while they are absent for III-V.[1052] They may have been taken over from the excerpt-books containing Pliny’s raw material.

Such uncertainties engender speculation, and, since Montigny’s tractate of 1844 examined the relation of Pliny to Aristotle,[1053] a formidable mass of books or brochures has appeared on the sources of the _Natural History_. This subject of _Quellenkritik_, though dry, is not barren, because it bears on the progress of human knowledge in antiquity and on Pliny’s mode of work. At the same time, a salutary reminder is given in Teuffel’s _Geschichte der römischen Literatur_ that sure ground is likeliest where the inquiry deals with authors whose works still exist in whole or in part—Aristotle, Theophrastus, Cato, Varro, Virgil, Ovid, Vitruvius, Celsus, Mela and Columella—and that, where intermediary or original authorities are lost, modern research has had wide room—and used it freely—for the play of imagination.[1054] This play of imagination accounts for some arbitrary and extreme positions. Rose, for example, declared Pliny to be an untrustworthy compiler who never handled Aristotle in Greek; Birt was confident that Pliny used Aristotle only through Pompeius Trogus (whereas others have laid much stress on King Juba, Nigidius Figulus, and Varro as intermediaries); Koebert uncompromisingly denied to Pliny the slightest intelligence in art criticism; Rabenhorst scrapped Pliny’s author-lists along with Brunn’s attempted explanation of their order, to make way for his theory that Pliny did apparently little else than plunder the encyclopaedia of Verrius Flaccus.[1055] Some proportion, however, ought to be observed in theorizing. Common sense refuses to believe that all Pliny’s authenticated toil could have been spent on summarizing and annotating scores of authors for his excerpt-rolls, if his _Natural History_ were merely a compilation from Verrius Flaccus’s _rerum dignarum memoria libri_. Other reasons, if necessary, could be advanced to demolish such a contention; but we may rest content with the argument that the man who filled a series of distinguished offices with absolute integrity (_procurationes splendidissimas et continuas summa integritate administrauit_, Sueton.) would scarcely in his writing stoop, under an assumed cloak of gratitude, to a fraudulent invention of authorities to whom he in reality owed nothing.

In fact, throughout an investigation which has to a great extent become a controversy, three schools of criticism are discernible—one, radical in its attitude to Pliny, which, with Montigny, Rose, Rabenhorst and others, would dismiss his lists as totally untrustworthy; a second, conservative in attitude, which with Brunn, Urlichs, Gruppe and Detlefsen, would champion Pliny against a charge of pedantic or dishonest parade; and a third, probably now represented by the majority of scholars, moderate in attitude which would admit that Pliny’s lists of authorities cannot be taken at their face-value, but require minute sifting so as to discover, as far as is feasible, the relative importance of the authors named.

Yet amidst a welter of hypotheses, sometimes mutually destructive, real service has been rendered to learning. Brunn’s rule, already mentioned about the order in the author-lists, was well worth formulating as an endeavour to disentangle Pliny’s system of quotation. Aly made temperately stated contributions to the subject of the zoological sources, and Münzer has illuminated in particular Pliny’s employment of Latin authorities like Cato and Varro, and their dependence in turn upon Greek originals. He has argued that Juba was for Pliny a channel for much of the older Greek learning, as Varro was for much of the older Latin learning.[1056] In tracing sources for the fine arts treated in Pliny’s last books, progress has been made on the lines laid down by Otto Jahn,[1057] who, after detecting the homogeneous nature of many of the art-criticisms, indicated their immediate Varronian authorship and ultimate Greek origin. Since Brieger[1058] made the first attempt to determine the names of the Greek writers whose opinions Varro had latinized, a series of scholars have developed or modified the views of the pioneers in this subject.[1059]

Looking broadly at the whole vexed problem, one cannot find compelling reasons against believing that Pliny sometimes went back to the Greeks, and sometimes did not. In detail, if for a moment one considers zoology alone, there is ground for thinking that Pliny in certain parts of his work used the Greek _Zoica_[1060] which passed for Aristotle, and in other parts used intermediary authors either Greek or Latin. It is a large assumption to make that a learned industrious Roman of the Flavian age never consulted the original Greek sources. Pliny probably obtained Aristotelian and Theophrastian material both indirectly through different intermediaries and directly from the Greek. As regards Latin authors, we know that he used Cato both directly and indirectly; for we find that a quotation in Varro refers him to a passage in Cato, whom he then evidently consults by way of verification, because he quotes more of Cato’s passage than Varro did.[1061] A presumption is thus raised in favour of believing that a parallel desire for verification would at times carry Pliny back from Roman authors to Greek authors whom they cited. An apposite instance occurs in a passage[1062] where divergent views of Aristotle and Trogus are contrasted, suggesting the inference that Pliny had both the Greek and the Latin author in front of him. Elaborate as have been the pains devoted to the inquiry,[1063] one cannot hope fully to recreate the working methods of an omnivorous excerptor and annotator like Pliny;[1064] but one may picture his closely written notebooks packed with extracts, comments, and references, under appropriate headings or rubrics.[1065] Beyond that, to descend into _minutiae_ is guesswork. Pliny’s arrangement in those overflowing excerpt-rolls[1066] and his way of serving up material for his _magnum opus_ are alike matters of speculation, not of dogma. Much of his grouping came from predecessors—categories of animals, for example, classified, unscientifically enough, according to their environment as terrestrial, aquatic, aerial, were ready found for him; but how many tables of interesting points, more or less relevant, Pliny himself added as fruits of discursive reading can only be faintly conjectured. We can fancy his notebooks contained countless headings like “Earthquake, miraculous accidents due to,” “Fortune, examples of mutability in,” “The Sea, wonderful things observed in,” “Death, signs of,” “Elephants, remarkable traits in,” “Of Tritons and Nereids,” “Eagle, a strange case,” “Wood, valuable kinds of,” “Diet—for a man’s health,” “Headache, remedies for,” “Crabs, what they cure,” “Mining, methods of,” “Gold, ancient uses of,” “Colours, natural and artificial,” “Precious stones, tests for”: many such are echoed in the _Natural History_. As to actual writing, his procedure was probably variable—involving now concentration upon one author or a very few authors, now dispersion among many authors or extracts from them. For larger and well-defined portions of his subject he would rely on one or more authors of highest importance—his authorities of first rank to be reinforced by others of inferior weight. Some such kind of hierarchy of sources has been sketched for the zoological books. Aly[1067] has maintained that, whatever Pliny’s reliance upon Roman sources by preference, this reliance does not hold for Books VIII-XI. Here in zoology, according to his argument, the Aristotelian tradition reigned supreme, and no Latin author could compete; but Pliny liked patriotically to adduce the authority of his fellow-countrymen, and he therefore on special subjects turned from Aristotle—on domestic animals to Varro and Columella, on bees to Hyginus. Other authorities in this second rank were Nigidius, Trebius Niger, and Trogus, who themselves had drawn copiously from Aristotle. To ensure a spice of attractive variety, Pliny resorted to sources of a third rank, and thus imported anecdotes from the royal dilettante Juba,[1068] or the travelled consular Licinius Mucianus. Enlivening items could also be hunted up in Roman annalists, antiquaries, poets, and jurists, or, if already entered in the notebooks, could be fitted into a suitable place in the big work. Besides, there was the added personal touch due to Pliny’s own recollections and comments.

For want, however, of any exact criterion, we are left with a double difficulty in absolutely pronouncing, firstly, which authorities are minor, and, secondly, what is the relative importance of different minor authorities. It is obvious that some writers must have been very seldom used: thus in the second book, on the universe, we should assume from the nature of its contents that Livy, Nepos, Sebosus and Caelius Antipater, though named in the author-list, are not primary authorities on physics: very likely Nepos and Caelius are included solely in virtue of the incidental citations from them regarding the circumnavigation of Africa.[1069] Again, how can we assess Pliny’s debt to Vitruvius and Valerius Maximus? Both names appear in a few of the author-registers, but they are never named in the text. Yet Pliny beyond a doubt used both, and, as they were post-Varronian, used them, not through Varro, but by direct consultation. In this connexion, it is judicious to observe that even as to pre-Varronian writers in Latin, though his debt to Varro is great, the exact amount of his independent research must remain undetermined. His reading in Roman literature earlier than Varro’s time may have been considerably wider than some critics of late have given him credit for. Pliny was not a lazy man.

From this preliminary consideration of problems involved in the study of Pliny’s sources we pass to a brief mention of his outstanding authorities for the principal branches of his work. In Physics he took over the inherited teaching of a large number of Greek thinkers, of whom he names, in his list for Book II, twenty-six as compared with seventeen Romans. He shows keen interest in such problems of Greek mathematicians as the size of the earth or distance of heavenly bodies. Enthusiasm evokes outbursts of praise for the wonderful scientific attainments of Greeks like Aristarchus and Hipparchus.[1070] Matter is drawn from Posidonius; and Varro’s authority acts influentially here, as in most books—it is rare to find his name absent from the author-lists. One cannot but think it peculiar that neither the _De Rerum Natura_ of Lucretius nor the _Quaestiones Naturales_ of Seneca earned for their authors a mention in this list, though their names appear later in the work. In Geography[1071] Varro was supplemented by Agrippa’s wall-chart of the known world which Augustus had completed. Pomponius Mela and Juba were also used, but not Strabo. An important Greek source was Eratosthenes, who flourished early in the second century B.C. and drew from Pytheas, Hanno, and Nearchus. The book on mankind was specially indebted to Varro, Trogus and Verrius Flaccus. Coming to the twenty-five books (VIII-XXXII) assigned to Zoology and Botany under various aspects, one does well to remember, with regard to the Greek sources, that Alexandria had shown less interest in the “descriptive sciences” than in Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy. Zoology and Botany had been subordinated to the art of healing, and it is not without significance that Pliny devotes so large a space to their medicinal side. The development of technical applications appealed to the practical Roman temperament, which preferred empirical concentration upon externals to a Hellenic quest after universals. Doubtless Pliny often felt spiritually more at home with Roman writers—with Vitruvius’s applications of mathematics rather than with Euclid’s theorems, and with actual Roman achievements in engineering rather than with the problems of Archimedes. Thus in Zoology, while Aristotle’s influence remains paramount, it acts also through intermediaries like Nigidius Figulus, Trogus, and Juba. In Botany, material is borrowed from Theophrastus (who had given close attention to the healing properties of plants) but also from Varro, Juba, and Sextius Niger (whose Ὕλη—for he wrote in Greek—was a source common to Pliny and Dioscorides). Alongside of a clear respect for many Greek writers on botany, it is noticeable that Pliny shows fondness for Latin works with botanico-pharmacological contents: phrases like _proximi herbarii nostri_ or _quidam e nostris_ mark his national interest. On bees, Pliny, as we have noted, used Hyginus; on medicine, Celsus, Pompeius Lenaeus, Pompey’s freedman, who made available Mithradates’s lore on poisons, and Antony’s freedman, Antonius Castor, a man of high renown in botany;[1072] on agriculture, Cato, Varro and Columella. The Carthaginian Mago’s treatise on husbandry had long been accessible through the Latin translation authorized by the Senate. Mineralogical material was first collected in the fourth century by Theophrastus; but Pliny, who used his work on stones, is our principal surviving authority. In art, Pliny’s chief guide to Greek authorities was Varro, whom he often cites. Varro had taken occasion to sketch the history of art in connexion with architecture, an important branch in his scheme of education (_disciplinae_). The three ultimate Greek originals were Duris of Samos, born about 340 B.C., and his juniors Xenocrates[1073] of Sicyon and Antigonus of Carystus. From the first of these came biographic and anecdotic matter concerning artists, from the second a sketch of developments in art with information about workers in bronze and colour, and from the third miscellaneous items of aesthetic interest. In more than one index appear the names of Pasiteles as a writer on wonderful works and of Heliodorus as a writer on monuments dedicated at Athens. Cornelius Nepos, Fenestella, Vitruvius, and Seneca are among Latin authors in the art-lists. The contemporary general and historian Licinius Mucianus supplied the author with facts bearing on art in Asia Minor.

Among questions affecting this elaborately stratified fabric of ancient knowledge, the temptation may arise to inquire what is its scientific worth to-day. Certain drawbacks lie on the surface. One sees that the author was too bookish to be original, too receptive to be experimental, too acquisitive to be discriminating. He tended rather to be overpowered by his enormous material than to marshal it with unerring critical control. We hear in him no Baconian trumpet-call towards research as a condition of intellectual advance; but, then, can experiment be demanded at a stage when, in spite of mechanical discoveries in Alexandria and Rome, scientific instruments and appliances were as yet imperfectly developed? It is, in truth, easy, though not over-helpful towards a just estimate, to criticize Pliny for all his weakness in science when compared with standards of the present. Modern conceptions have, however, left much in the thought of less than a hundred years ago hopelessly antiquated—still more so an encyclopaedist of the first century. The gap between ancient Rome and ourselves is perceived the moment that we think of contemporary theories on the constitution of the universe, on astro-physics, on the properties of matter, on energy, on the meaning of life, on the origin of species, on disease, and on art. Such terms as electro-magnetics (_electrum_ is only “amber” for Pliny), ether-waves, spectrum analysis, radio-activity, relativity, anthropology, evolution, bacteriology and aesthetics have no place in this old encyclopaedia. One has only to pick out a dozen names like Galileo, Newton, Laplace, Faraday, Huxley, Kelvin, Linnaeus, Lamarck, Lyell, Darwin, Mendel and Pasteur, and associate with them their teaching, to see at once how far Pliny has been outdistanced in Physics, Natural History and Medicine. To-day any visitor to Como, the birthplace of the Plinies, might readily fancy that the city itself bears witness to the advance in scientific achievement since the _Natural History_ was written. In the façade of the cathedral are statues of both uncle and nephew, and a piazza not far away contains a statue in honour of another native of Como, the renowned Volta, who heralded an era of electricity. Along with electricity the sciences most conspicuously absent in the _Natural History_ are Chemistry, Geology and Biology. All this is a reminder that, if defects are pointed out, many of them were inevitable in Pliny’s time, and to enter into minute detail would be implicitly to rehearse the history of scientific thought between then and now.

Pliny’s physics, being pre-Copernican, give, a geocentric plan of the universe; and no deeper explanation of the constitution of matter is vouchsafed than the doctrine of the four elements. His geography is unscientific, in some respects untrustworthy, and too much of a dry catalogue, in which many chances of winning interest are missed. In justice, it should be said, that he prepares us for this, and apologizes indeed for his brevity.[1074] How disappointingly unentertaining he can be is clear from the bald treatment of such an island as Sicily, or of such a country as Italy, which ends in his matter-of-fact dismissal of the subject, _haec est Italia, diis sacra, hae gentes eius, haec oppida populorum_.[1075] Only at the outset does he let himself go regarding Italy; but a panegyrical excursus[1076] does not atone for sins of omission. It is notorious that in his zoology there are many vulgar errors, and yet there is no dearth of the valuable and attractive. Here in the main the worth of what had been handed down from his master Aristotle ensured that much in Pliny must live; for Aristotle was a first-hand observer and exact recorder of the animal world, at any rate within the Aegean area which he knew: if he was overtaken by fable and fantasy, it was usually in the case of distant and semi-romantic regions. His fame as a naturalist has grown almost in inverse proportion to the decline of his fame as a physicist; for, whereas Copernicus and Galileo overturned his physics, the labours of men like Cuvier and Richard Owen have established his greatness in zoology. Of this Aristotelian tradition Pliny, though a less acute observer than his predecessor, inherited enough to win the grateful admiration of Buffon, just as his avowedly encyclopaedic aim won the sympathetic regard of von Humboldt. Neither in zoology nor in botany can his classifications be accepted to-day: nor yet are his descriptions, although many have merit, exhaustive or accurate. If we find cities confused in geography,[1077] we are prepared for still worse confusion in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. To treat the elephant first of land animals or the whale first of sea creatures—at least after Tritons and Nereids!—is a negation of scientific order. Unfortunately, too, Pliny revived some of the fabulous element largely rejected by Aristotle. But here and there gleams betoken conceptions of the future. For example, had facts been more scientifically grasped, the assertion of sex in plants and the account of artificial fertilization among date-palms might have carried the author far further. About his medicine what can be said? The quite imaginary healing powers ascribed to a vast assemblage of animals, plants and substances prove a great deal of his pharmacology to be a farrago of old-world and superstitious remedies. Still, here again the qualification of a critical sense is not entirely absent, inasmuch as Pliny realizes that the absurd claims of wonder-workers[1078] tended to discredit the genuine virtues of herbs. His credulity has its limits. While Pliny, like many a Stoic, accepts portents, as is plain from his record of monstrous births in Book VII, he, on the other hand, rejects the werwolf fable (_homines in lupos uerti rursusque restitui_, VIII. 80) as only to be believed if all tales are true! Supposing, then, he ever read the excellently told story of the werwolf in Petronius, he read it in the same spirit as a modern reader would.

No number of shortcomings, however, can rob this encyclopaedia of its historical value. The most comprehensive document on the current science of imperial Rome, it is at the same time an index to the attainments of previous epochs in man’s pursuit after knowledge. Tested by its sources, it represents the intellectual stage reached through the manipulation and amplification of Greek—especially Aristotelian—knowledge by Alexandrian and Roman savants. Defects notwithstanding, it therefore abides an irremovable landmark. Admittedly a great deal of the _Natural History_ is neither literature nor science: its style, which has yet to be considered, is often forbidding, and only under serious reservations can it be credited even with that informative quality which makes the literature of knowledge. Much of it, as we have seen, would be disowned by science. Yet its worst mistakes bear a significance in the chronicle of human thought. On the positive side, we owe an infinite amount of instruction to it and to it alone. Think as we choose of Pliny—picture him merely as an intelligent, painstaking, sincere official eager to know but limited in acumen, and dismiss, as we may by modern standards, his science as contemptible, we have still to place to his lasting credit the merit of seeing that the world around teemed with curious things of fascinating interest which demanded record, though they might elude explanation. Besides, the human note (quite apart from the book devoted to man) rings out again and again. Whatever he might, during moments of despondency, write in disparagement of mankind, Pliny recorded enough by way of entertaining stories to place man in strange and sometimes romantic settings. Much that would otherwise have perished was rescued by him from oblivion. Some of the toilers for human progress in the distant past would be unknown but for his mention, and important details about Rome itself and Roman ways can be learned from no other ancient witness. Dreary tracts of second-hand matter redolent of the lamp rather than of nature are compensated for by information, often the fruit of Pliny’s personal experience, concerning such a miscellany of subjects as German forests and Spanish mining, animals imported for table-delicacies or public shows in the capital, harbour-works, roads, embankments, bridges, the sewage system, aqueducts with other great engineering feats of which he is justifiably proud, and (not always, it must be owned, without mistakes) the artistic treasures of the author’s day.

While there is a sense, then, in which Pliny remains in part true knowledge, he also remains literature in part, because a good deal of him can be read with pleasure. He is not, of course, to be continuously perused: his own recommendation, if needed, is against any such attempt, and Roman common sense would have prescribed for a work of reference exactly what a character in Ennius prescribed for philosophy—sips in preference to a sousing plunge.[1079] For anyone not too rigidly concerned with Pliny’s Latin, an excellent way to enjoy him would be to prop Philemon Holland’s folio translation on a table, and browse, as one lists, among the big pages that give a feeling of spacious leisureliness by their size no less than by their generously expanded allowance of quaint English. An appropriate attitude finds a certain charm in anachronisms whereby the _ager Gallicus_ has become “the French pale about Ariminum,” or a Roman emperor in an inscription has been, as Pontifex Maximus, turned into an “Archbishop.” So _Diuus Augustus_ is “Augustus Caesar of happie memorie” and Eratosthenes “a great clerke verily for all kind of literature.” But even in Pliny’s own Latin there is often the attractive feature of readability. He has a knack of recounting familiar things with freshness, and so one reads without boredom about the marvellously indiscriminate digestion of an ostrich (_concoquendi sine delectu deuorata mira natura_) and its foolish notion that, its head once hidden, its whole body is out of sight (_cum colla frutice occultauerint latere sese existimantium_, X. i.). His passage on the nightingale is, no doubt, in essence incommensurable with Keats’s _Ode_, but it will be felt that no one has ever described in prose with more enthusiasm than Pliny the musical variations in the bird’s minstrelsy, the marvel of sound so loud from so small a throat, the marvel of notes in rise and fall so true to perfect harmony.[1080] Judged solely by its information, that is to say its facts and anecdotes, apart from manner of telling—which is variable—the _Natural History_ is one of the half-dozen most interesting books in the world. To turn over its pages almost casually will prove this. Now we read about Nature’s wonderful equipment of the mosquito (XI. 2-3), now about products of civilization, whether, like paper,[1081] essential in Pliny’s opinion, or less so, like citronwood tables (_mensarum insania_, XIII. 91-95), or oysters brought from Brindisi and refattened in the Lucrine lake (IX. 169). Again, we are told that soap or _sapo_—not, by the way, a Roman word or invention—was originally produced for reddening the hair in the form of a Gallic pomade, which was compounded of tallow and ashes, might be hard or soft, and gained more popularity in Northern Europe with men than with women (XXVIII. 191). Here we chance upon an account of the ways to find gold (XXXIII. 66 _sqq._), and there a case of a military officer being fool enough to take 12,000 lbs. weight of silver plate with him on a campaign against barbarians (_ib._ 143). One gets to know what the eyes of five emperors were like (XI. 143-144), how madly fond Tiberius was of Lysippus’s statue, the “Apoxyomenos,” and how Nero spoiled Lysippus’s “Alexander” by gilding it (XXXIV. 62-63). Or it may be only isolated scraps that we note—what ship brought the Egyptian obelisk to the Vatican, who first served a boar whole, who first served goose-liver at Rome, when bakers first came to the city, who was the earliest doctor. Or the subject may be, as it is in Book XIV, famous vineyards and vintages—what Augustus’s favourite brand was, what was a good invalid wine, what the wines at Julius Caesar’s banquets, what the evils of drunkenness or next morning’s feelings after a debauch—“a cask’s breath from the mouth, oblivion of almost everything, the death of memory.”[1082] It is all the more entertaining that his individual impress is left on some at least of his catalogues. Thus his sketch of the imposing structures of Rome,[1083] interspersed with outbursts of commendation as well as censures upon luxury, can hardly fail to amuse the modern reader by its picture of the supposedly dignified Roman people whirling through the air in two reversible theatres and actually cheering at the risk it ran (_ad periculum suum plaudens_, XXXVI. 118).

Pliny’s outlook on life was largely determined by his Stoic sympathies. Epicurean, Academic and Neo-Pythagorean grains had fallen upon his mind, but had not taken root there as did Stoicism. There was much to draw him to the system. He knew the most high-souled of its adherents, Paetus Thrasea, and he had studied Seneca.[1084] A philosophy which pointed towards the study of nature, and was yet more engrossed in the attainment of virtue through wise conduct, could not but appeal to a grave, diligent, self-sacrificing spirit like Pliny’s. It claimed to hold the solution for the riddle of Providence and the universe; and its ascetic position of disdain for pleasure so suited his own simple tastes and laborious days as to confirm him in a heart-felt dislike of luxury and of fools. His characteristic views, then, those to which he most regularly adheres, regarding God, the world and nature, man and society, are traceable to, or at least consistent with, Stoicism. Thus he is inclined to believe in a providential government of the world, whose soul is a divine power acting beneficently on earth as among the stars above.[1085] Only human weakness could seek to associate God with an image made by human hands:[1086] there is one God and, echoing Xenophanes’s conception that “He is all eye, all thought, all ear,” Pliny believes Him to be a mighty principle of Life and Soul, beside whom the manifold deities of Greece or Rome are simply a jest; for such diversity of gods makes “the population of heaven outstrip mankind!”[1087] With this pantheistic creed Pliny sees around him a divine organism at work for human good; and something noble animates his perception of godhead in the service of humanity. For mortal to help mortal, he feels, is to rise to the rank of divinity and to glory everlasting.[1088] A sense of piety, then, must have lightened his own toil upon the encyclopaedia, since his explicit aim therein was to help his fellows and posterity.[1089]

The same ultimate belief underlies his attitude to nature and to the earth, which are not always in his mind absolutely distinguished, and which logically indeed must be partially identified in respect of the divine element ascribed to both. Despite a few inconsistencies, there is no mistaking his general position; but the profundity of a philosopher is not to be expected from him. An honest simple-minded observer, Pliny did not arrogate to himself a power of penetration into the innermost recesses of nature. Perhaps he is chargeable with having been over-readily content to contemplate merely the outward appearance of things—their phenomenal existence. Yet this was at least sincerer than bedimming nature under a misty cloud of unwarrantable hypotheses. On the whole, he saw life and the world with remarkable clearness: finding in it matter for wonder, indignation, and pity, he did not stay to analyse the momentous theories logically implicit in such sentiments. His criticism is at best on the surface: and he is more fully satisfied with a rapturous apostrophe or a puritanic tirade or a moralizing reflection than with any systematic pursuit of a _vera causa_ or any attempt to read the enigma of the universe. So he is not strictly consistent even with regard to this mighty “Nature” whom he personifies as a Universal Mother. In one mood, thinking of man, poor wretch, whom she lays all naked upon the earth on his very birthday to wail in helplessness,[1090] Pliny wonders whether after all she may be only a grim Stepdame (_parens melior homini an tristior nouerca_, VII. 1). But the mood does not last. As a rule, he is enamoured of Nature rather than of man: she does everything well, whereas man abuses and degrades her products. This spirit prompts Pliny’s repeated invectives against the refinements of pleasure. From his standpoint the herbal dyes of Gaul are more innocent than the purple got from the _murex_, because the former are ready to hand, while the latter must be sought in the unfathomed depths of the sea (_intacta etiam ancoris_, XXII. 3). So then man is at fault. Man’s pride is but folly after his lowly start at birth: man’s inhumanity to man makes most of the world’s mourning: man perverts the kindly boons of nature.[1091] In contrast with his folly, his ingratitude, his extravagances, nature is the inspired artificer whose perfect workmanship ought never to be improved upon.[1092] Virtues in herbs are so many proofs that nature produces nothing without some secret reason—really for the sake of man.[1093] Her simple remedies far excel his artificial drugs.[1094] Her infinite and joyous variety is such that painting cannot do justice to her festive hues.[1095] In keeping with such affectionate enthusiasm, the author has a characteristic retort for scoffers at his devoted toil upon the _Natural History_, when he claims the consolation of suffering neglect in company with Nature the beneficent (XXII. 15, _plerisque ultro etiam inrisui sumus ista commentantes atque friuoli operis arguimur, magno quamquam immensi laboris solatio sperni cum rerum natura_). Finally, if we can take the text as authentic, it is to her that he addressed a pious farewell as he laid down his pen: “Hail, Nature, parent of all things, vouchsafe thy blessing on the work of one who alone of Romans has celebrated thee in thine every phase” (XXXVII. 205).

A parallel attitude is adopted towards Earth, whom with some forgetfulness of nature’s beneficence he regards at once as part of nature, and yet as a mother enfolding man when finally cast off by the rest of nature. The typically Plinian eulogy translated below appears to ignore nature as parent of all:

“The Earth is the one portion of nature on whom for her singular services we have conferred a surname expressive of revered motherhood. She is to man as the heavens to God. She welcomes us at birth, feeds us when born, and once we have issued into this world supports us continually: at the last she folds us in her bosom when the rest of nature has abandoned us, then most our mother as she covers us: in none of her services more blessed than in that which makes us also blessed—even bearing our monuments and titles, prolonging our name, and extending our money in despite of quick-passing time. Her final power we men in our anger pray should lie heavy on an enemy who is now no more,[1096] as though we knew not that she is the only one never angry with mankind. The waters steal into rain-clouds, harden to hail, swell in waves, dash headlong in torrents: the air thickens in mist and raves in the storm-blast. But Earth is bountiful, tender, indulgent. Ever the handmaiden of mortal needs, what does she breed at our compelling, what yield at her own will—what scents and savours, what juices, what things to touch, what wealth of colour! How true her honesty to repay with interest a loan entrusted to her! What plenty she maintains for our sake!”[1097]

When at the beginning of his book on agriculture he renews his praises of Earth, it is to this passage that he refers, as one in which he has already championed her cause.[1098] Yet man has repaid her bounty with gross maltreatment: “with iron, wood, fire, stone, and crops she is tortured every hour, and much more to serve our pleasures than our needs.... How many hands are worn to enable a finger-joint to glitter with a gem! If there were a hell, the excavations of greed and luxury would have dug it up by now!”[1099]

How empty, he reflects, is all man’s striving. This Earth, the theatre of our ambitions, is but a speck in the universe (_mundi punctus_). To those who are avaricious for land he preaches a sermonette on the vanity of human wishes, anticipates Juvenal’s _sarcophago contentus erit_ on the close of Alexander’s career.[1100] In a gayer mood, however, he overlooks the tortures of Mother-earth by crop-raising, and fancifully assigns as one explanation for the ancient fertility of the soil that it liked being ploughed by ex-generals of the Cincinnatus type, whereas in later days it underwent the ignominy of cultivation by slaves instead of retired dictators.[1101]

Pliny’s exaltation of nature proportionately depresses his views on man, society and progress. Good men, he thinks, are due to nature’s kindness in providing the antidote with the poison:

“Some men too are born poisons. Like the black dart of the serpent’s tongue, their venomous souls blight what they touch. They denounce everything, and, comparable with unhallowed birds, begrudge their own darkness, and disturb the quiet of night itself with their howls—the only utterance they have—so that their mere encounter, as much as that of ill-omened creatures, paralyses action or kind-heartedness. Universal hatred is the one known gain from their loathsome breath. But in this sphere too the majesty of nature has produced good and honest men, just as she is more fertile in plants that heal and nourish. Rejoicing in the esteem of the good, we will abandon such human scum to the bitterness that burns within them, and proceed to make life fairer (_excolere uitam_): and this with firmer resolution, as our aim is the pleasure, not of reputation won, but of service rendered” (XVIII. 4-5).