The Natural History () is a Latin work by Pliny the Elder written around 50AD. The largest single work to have survived from the Roman Empire to the modern day, the Natural History compiles information gleaned from other ancient authors. Despite the work's title, its subject area is not limited to what is today understood by natural history; Pliny himself defines his scope as "the natural world, or life".Natural History Book II, I.2 idemque rerum naturae opus et rerum ipsa natura. It is encyclopedic in scope, but its structure is not like that of a modern encyclopedia. It is the only work by Pliny to have survived, and the last that he published. He published the first 10 books in AD 77, but had not made a final revision of the remainder at the time of his death during the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius. The rest was published posthumously by Pliny's nephew, Pliny the Younger.

The work is divided into 37 books, organised into 10 volumes. These cover topics including astronomy, mathematics, geography, ethnography, anthropology, human physiology, zoology, botany, agriculture, horticulture, pharmacology, mining, mineralogy, sculpture, art, and precious stones.

Pliny's Natural History became a model for later encyclopedias and scholarly works as a result of its breadth of subject matter, its referencing of original authors, and its index.

Overview

Pliny's Natural History was written alongside other substantial works (which have since been lost). Pliny (AD 23–79) combined his scholarly activities with a busy career as an imperial administrator for the emperor Vespasian. Much of his writing was done at night; daytime hours were spent working for the emperor, as he explains in the dedicatory preface addressed to Vespasian's elder son, the future emperor Titus, with whom he had served in the army (and to whom the work is dedicated). As for the nocturnal hours spent writing, these were seen not as a loss of sleep but as an addition to life, for as he states in the preface, Vita vigilia est, "to be alive is to be watchful", in a military metaphor of a sentry keeping watch in the night.Natural History. Dedication to Titus: C. Plinius Secundus to his Friend Titus Vespasian Pliny claims to be the only Roman ever to have undertaken such a work, in his prayer for the blessing of the universal mother:Natural History XXXVII:77

The Natural History is encyclopedic in scope, but its format is unlike a modern encyclopedia. However, it does have structure: Pliny uses Aristotle's division of nature (animal, vegetable, mineral) to recreate the natural world in literary form."Introduction" to Natural History, Bks. I–II, Loeb Classical Library (rev. ed. 1989), pp. vii–x. Rather than presenting compartmentalised, stand-alone entries arranged alphabetically, Pliny's ordered natural landscape is a coherent whole, offering the reader a guided tour: "a brief excursion under our direction among the whole of the works of nature ..."Natural History VIII:44 (Loeb) The work is unified but varied: "My subject is the world of nature ... or in other words, life," he tells Titus.

Nature for Pliny was divine, a pantheistic concept inspired by the Stoic philosophy, which underlies much of his thought, but the deity in question was a goddess whose main purpose was to serve the human race: "nature, that is life" is human life in a natural landscape. After an initial survey of cosmology and geography, Pliny starts his treatment of animals with the human race, "for whose sake great Nature appears to have created all other things".Natural History VII:1 (Rackham et al.) This teleological view of nature was common in antiquity and is crucial to the understanding of the Natural History.Natural History VII The components of nature are not just described in and for themselves, but also with a view to their role in human life. Pliny devotes a number of the books to plants, with a focus on their medicinal value; the books on minerals include descriptions of their uses in architecture, sculpture, art, and jewellery. Pliny's premise is distinct from modern ecological theories, reflecting the prevailing sentiment of his time."Introduction" to Natural History, Books III-VII, Loeb Classical Library (rev. ed. 1989), pp. xi–xiii.

Pliny's work frequently reflects Rome's imperial expansion, which brought new and exciting things to the capital: exotic eastern spices, strange animals to be put on display or herded into the arena, even the alleged phoenix sent to the emperor Claudius in AD 47 – although, as Pliny admits, this was generally acknowledged to be a fake. Pliny repeated Aristotle's maxim that Africa was always producing something new. Nature's variety and versatility were claimed to be infinite: "When I have observed nature she has always induced me to deem no statement about her incredible."Natural History XI:2 (Rackham et al.) This led Pliny to recount rumours of strange peoples on the edges of the world. These monstrous races – the Cynocephali or Dog-Heads, the Sciapodae, whose single foot could act as a sunshade, the mouthless Astomi, who lived on scents – were not strictly new. They had been mentioned in the fifth century BC by Greek historian Herodotus (whose history was a broad mixture of myths, legends, and facts), but Pliny made them better known.Natural History VII:2

"As full of variety as nature itself",Pliny the Younger, Letters, 3.5 stated Pliny's nephew, Pliny the Younger, and this verdict largely explains the appeal of the Natural History since Pliny's death in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79. Pliny had gone to investigate the strange cloud – "shaped like an umbrella pine", according to his nephew – rising from the mountain.Pliny the Younger, Letters, 6.16

The Natural History was one of the first ancient European texts to be printed, in Venice in 1469.Healy, 2004. Introduction:xxxix Philemon Holland's English translation of 1601 has influenced literature ever since.

Structure

The Natural History consists of 37 books. Pliny devised a summarium, or list of contents, at the beginning of the work that was later interpreted by modern printers as a table of contents. The table below is a summary based on modern names for topics.

Volume Books Contents I 1 Preface and list of contents, lists of authorities 2 Astronomy, meteorology II 3–6 Geography and ethnography 7 Anthropology and human physiology III 8–11 Zoology, including mammals, snakes, marine animals, birds, insects IV–VII 12–27 Botany, including agriculture, horticulture, especially of the vine and olive, medicine VIII 28–32 Pharmacology, magic, water, aquatic life IX–X 33–37 Mining and mineralogy, especially as applied to life and art, work in gold and silver,Natural History XXXIII:154–751 statuary in bronze,Natural History XXXIV art,Natural History XXXV:15–941 modelling,Natural History XXXV:151–851 sculpture in marble,Natural History XXXVI precious stones and gemsNatural History XXXVII

Production

Purpose

Pliny's purpose in writing the Natural History was to cover all learning and art so far as they are connected with nature or draw their materials from nature. He says:

Sources

Pliny studied the original authorities on each subject and took care to make excerpts from their pages. His indices auctorum sometimes list the authorities he actually consulted, though not exhaustively; in other cases, they cover the principal writers on the subject, whose names are borrowed second-hand from his immediate authorities. He acknowledges his obligations to his predecessors: "To own up to those who were the means of one's own achievements."Pliny the Elder. Praefatio:21

In the preface, the author claims to have stated 20,000 facts gathered from some 2,000 books and from 100 select authors. The extant lists of his authorities cover more than 400, including 146 Roman and 327 Greek and other sources of information. The lists generally follow the order of the subject matter of each book. This has been shown in Heinrich Brunn's Disputatio (Bonn, 1856).Cf. Heinrich Brunn's Kleine Schriften Gesammelt Von Hermann Brunn Und Heinrich Bulle...: Bd. Zur Griechischen Kunstgeschichte. Mit 69 Abbildungen Im Text Und Auf Einer Doppeltafel, 1905 reproduction by Ulan Press (2012).

One of Pliny's authorities is Marcus Terentius Varro. In the geographical books, Varro is supplemented by the topographical commentaries of Agrippa, which were completed by the emperor Augustus; for his zoology, he relies largely on Aristotle and on Juba, the scholarly Mauretanian king, studiorum claritate memorabilior quam regno (v. 16). Juba is one of his principal guides in botany; Theophrastus is also named in his Indices, and Pliny had translated Theophrastus's Greek into Latin. Another work by Theophrastus, On Stones was cited as a source on ores and minerals. Pliny strove to use all the Greek histories available to him, such as Herodotus and Thucydides, as well as the Bibliotheca Historica of Diodorus Siculus.Cf. Mary Beagon, Roman Nature: The Thought of Pliny the Elder, Clarendon Press (1992), s.v.; Trevor Murphy, Pliny the Elder's Natural History: The Empire in the Encyclopedia, OUP (2004), pp. 196–200 and passim.

Working method

His nephew, Pliny the Younger, described the method that Pliny used to write the Natural History:Pliny the Younger. Book 3, Letter V. To Baebius Macer . in "Letters of Pliny the Younger" with introduction by John B. Firth.

Pliny the Younger told the following anecdote illustrating his uncle's enthusiasm for study:

Style

Pliny's writing style emulates that of Seneca.Cf. Trevor Murphy, Pliny the Elder's Natural History: The Empire in the Encyclopedia, OUP (2004), pp. 181–197. It aims less at clarity and vividness than at epigrammatic point. It contains many antitheses, questions, exclamations, tropes, metaphors, and other mannerisms of the Silver Age.Cf. P. L. Chambers, The Natural Histories of Pliny the Elder: An Advanced Reader and Grammar Review, University of Oklahoma Press (2012), s.v., and Latin syntax in Pliny; see also Roger French & Frank Greenaway, Science in the Early Roman Empire: Pliny the Elder, his Sources and Influence, Croom Helm (1986), pp. 23–44. His sentence structure is often loose and straggling. There is heavy 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, e.g.,Natural History XXXV:80

+ A sentence illustrating Pliny's writing style   First half: description Second half: Pliny's opinion Pliny Grammar Active sentence Ablative absolute phrase TranslationHealy, 2004. page 331 (translation of XXXV:80 In one thing Apelles stood out, namely, knowing when he had put enough work into a painting, a salutary warning that too much effort can be counterproductive. 

Publication history

First publication

Pliny wrote the first ten books in AD 77, and was engaged on revising the rest during the two remaining years of his life. The work was probably published with little revision by the author's nephew Pliny the Younger, who, when telling the story of a tame dolphin and describing the floating islands of the Vadimonian Lake thirty years later,Pliny the Younger, Letters, 8.20, 9.33 has apparently forgotten that both are to be found in his uncle's work. He describes the as a Naturae historia and characterises it as a "work that is learned and full of matter, and as varied as nature herself."Pliny the Younger, Letters, 3.5; see also The True Story of Lake Vadimo .

The absence of the author's final revision may explain many errors, including why the text is as John Healy writes "disjointed, discontinuous and not in a logical order";Healy, 2004. Translator's Note:xliii and as early as 1350, Petrarch complained about the corrupt state of the text, referring to copying errors made between the ninth and eleventh centuries.Healy, 2004. Introduction:xxxviii-xxxix

Manuscripts