Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus (Como, 23 or 24 – Stabiae, 25 August 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( PLIN-ee), was a Roman author, naturalist, scientist, naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, procurator, and friend of the emperor Vespasian. Pliny wrote the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia (Natural History), a thirty-seven-volume work covering a vast array of topics on human knowledge and the natural world, which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field.

Pliny produced seven works spanning 102 volumes, of which only Natural History survives. Among the lost works was the twenty-volume Bella Germaniae (Wars of Germania), used as a source by other prominent Roman historians including Plutarch, Tacitus, and Suetonius. Tacitus may have used Bella Germaniae as the primary source for his work, De origine et situ Germanorum (On the Origin and Situation of the Germani). Also substantial was the thirty-one-volume history A fine Aufidii Bassi, which extended Aufidius Bassus' earlier historical work to Pliny's day.

Pliny the Elder died in AD 79 in Stabiae while attempting to rescue people from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. In his will, Pliny the Elder posthumously adopted his nephew Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, who is known to history as Pliny the Younger.

Pliny's dates are pinned to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 and a statement by his nephew that he died in his 56th year, which would put his birth in AD 23 or 24.

Pliny was the son of an equestrian Gaius Plinius Celer and his wife, Marcella. Neither the Elder nor the Younger Pliny mention these names. Their ultimate source is a fragmentary inscription (CIL V 1 3442) found in a field in Verona and recorded by the 16th-century Augustinian friar Onofrio Panvinio. The form is an elegy. The most commonly accepted reconstruction is:

PLINIVS SECVNDVS AVGV. LERI. PATRI. MATRI. MARCELLAE. TESTAMENTO FIERI IVSSO

Plinius Secundus augur ordered this to be made as a testament to his father [Ce]ler and his mother [Grania] Marcella

The actual words are fragmentary. The reading of the inscription depends on the reconstruction, but in all cases the names come through. Whether he was an augur and whether she was named Grania Marcella are less certain. Jean Hardouin presents a statement from an unknown source that he claims was ancient, that Pliny was from Verona and that his parents were Celer and Marcella. Hardouin also cites the contrary (see below) of Catullus.

Pliny's father took him to Rome to be educated in lawmaking. Pliny relates that he saw Marcus Servilius Nonianus.

In AD 46, at about age 23, Pliny entered the army as a junior officer, as was the custom for young men of equestrian rank. Ronald Syme, Plinian scholar, reconstructs three periods at three ranks.

Pliny's interest in Roman literature attracted the attention and friendship of other men of letters in the higher ranks, with whom he formed lasting friendships. Later, these friendships assisted his entry into the upper echelons of the state; however, he was trusted for his knowledge and ability, as well. According to Syme, he began as a praefectus cohortis, a "commander of a cohort" (an infantry cohort, as junior officers began in the infantry), under Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, himself a writer (whose works did not survive) in Germania Inferior. In AD 47, he took part in the Roman conquest of the Chauci and the construction of the canal between the rivers Maas and Rhine. His description of the Roman ships anchored in the stream overnight having to ward off floating trees has the stamp of an eyewitness account.

At some uncertain date, Pliny was transferred to the command of Germania Superior under Publius Pomponius Secundus with a promotion to military tribune, which was a staff position, with duties assigned by the district commander. Pomponius was a half-brother of Corbulo. They had the same mother, Vistilia, a powerful matron of the Roman upper classes, who had seven children by six husbands, some of whom had imperial connections, including a future empress. Pliny's assignments are not clear, but he must have participated in the campaign against the Chatti of AD 50, at age 27, in his fourth year of service. Associated with the commander in the praetorium, he became a familiar and close friend of Pomponius, who also was a man of letters.

At another uncertain date, Pliny was transferred back to Germania Inferior. Corbulo had moved on, assuming command in the east. This time, Pliny was promoted to praefectus alae, "commander of a wing", responsible for a cavalry battalion of about 480 men. He spent the rest of his military service there. A decorative phalera, or piece of harness, with his name on it has been found at Castra Vetera, modern Xanten, then a large Roman army and naval base on the lower Rhine. Pliny's last commander there, apparently neither a man of letters nor a close friend of his, was Pompeius Paullinus, governor of Germania Inferior AD 55–58. Pliny relates that he personally knew Paulinus to have carried around 12,000 pounds of silver service on which to dine in a campaign against the Germani (a practice which would not have endeared him to the disciplined Pliny).

According to his nephew, during this period, he wrote his first book (perhaps in winter quarters when more spare time was available), a work on the use of missiles on horseback, De Jaculatione Equestri ("On the Use of the Dart by Cavalry"). It has not survived, but in Natural History, he seems to reveal at least part of its content, using the movements of the horse to assist the javelin-man in throwing missiles while astride its back. During this period, he also dreamed that the spirit of Drusus Nero begged him to save his memory from oblivion. The dream prompted Pliny to begin forthwith a history of all the wars between the Romans and the Germani, which he did not complete for some years.

At the earliest time that Pliny could have left the service, Nero, the last of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, had been emperor for two years. He did not leave office until AD 68, when Pliny was 45 years old. During that time, Pliny did not hold any high office or work in the service of the state. In the subsequent Flavian dynasty, his services were in such demand that he had to give up his law practice, which suggests that he had been trying not to attract the attention of Nero, who was a dangerous acquaintance.

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 witnessed the construction of Nero's Domus Aurea or "Golden House" after the Great Fire of Rome in 64.

Besides pleading law cases, Pliny wrote, researched, and studied. His second published work was The Life of Pomponius Secundus, a two-volume biography of his old commander, Pomponius Secundus.

Meanwhile, he was completing his monumental work, Bella Germaniae, the only authority expressly quoted in the first six books of the Annales of Tacitus, and probably one of the principal authorities for the same author's Germania. It disappeared in favor of the writings of Tacitus (which are far shorter), and, early in the fifth century, Symmachus had little hope of finding a copy.

Like Caligula, Nero seemed to grow gradually more insane as his reign progressed. Pliny devoted much of his time to writing on the comparatively safe subjects of grammar and rhetoric. He published a three-book, six-volume educational manual on rhetoric, entitled Studiosus, "The Student". Pliny the Younger says of it: "The orator is trained from his very cradle and perfected." It was followed by eight books entitled Dubii sermonis (Of Doubtful Phraseology). These are both now lost works. His nephew relates: "He wrote this under Nero, in the last years of his reign, when every kind of literary pursuit which was in the least independent or elevated had been rendered dangerous by servitude."

At the end of AD 69, after a year of civil war consequent on the death of Nero, Vespasian, a successful general, became emperor. Like Pliny, he had come from the equestrian class, rising through the ranks of the army and public offices and defeating the other contenders for the highest office. His main tasks were to re-establish peace under imperial control and to place the economy on a sound footing. He needed in his administration all the loyalty and assistance he could find. Pliny, apparently trusted without question, perhaps (reading between the lines) recommended by Vespasian's son Titus, was put to work immediately and was kept in a continuous succession of the most distinguished procuratorships, according to Suetonius. A procurator was generally a governor of an imperial province. The empire was perpetually short of, and was always seeking, officeholders for its numerous offices.

Throughout the latter stages of Pliny's life, he maintained good relations with Emperor Vespasian. As is written in the first line of Pliny the Younger's Avunculus Meus:

Ante lucem ibat ad Vespasianum imperatorem (nam ille quoque noctibus utebatur), deinde ad officium sibi delegatum.

Before dawn he was going to Emperor Vespasian (for he also made use of the night), then he did the other duties assigned to him.

In this passage, Pliny the Younger conveys to Tacitus that his uncle was ever the academic, always working. The word ibat (imperfect, "he used to go") gives a sense of repeated or customary action. In the subsequent text, he mentions again how most of his uncle's day was spent working, reading, and writing. He notes that Pliny "was indeed a very ready sleeper, sometimes dropping off in the middle of his studies and then waking up again."

During Nero's reign of terror, Pliny avoided working on any writing that would attract attention to himself. His works on oratory in the last years of Nero's reign (67–68) focused on form rather than on content. He began working on content again probably after Vespasian's rule began in AD 69, when the terror clearly was over and would not be resumed. It was to some degree reinstituted (and later cancelled by his son Titus) when Vespasian suppressed the philosophers at Rome, but not Pliny, who was not among them, representing, as he says, something new in Rome, an encyclopedist (certainly, a venerable tradition outside Italy).

In his next work, Bella Germaniae, Pliny completed the history which Aufidius Bassus left unfinished. Pliny's continuation of Bassus's History was one of the authorities followed by Suetonius and Plutarch. Tacitus also cites Pliny as a source. He is mentioned concerning the loyalty of Burrus, commander of the Praetorian Guard, whom Nero removed for disloyalty. Tacitus portrays parts of Pliny's view of the Pisonian conspiracy to kill Nero and make Piso emperor as "absurd" and mentions that he could not decide whether Pliny's account or that of Messalla was more accurate concerning some of the details of the Year of the Four Emperors. Evidently Pliny's extension of Bassus extended at least from the reign of Nero to that of Vespasian. Pliny seems to have known it was going to be controversial, as he deliberately reserved it for publication after his death:

It has been long completed and its accuracy confirmed; but I have determined to commit the charge of it to my heirs, lest I should have been suspected, during my lifetime, of having been unduly influenced by ambition. By this means I confer an obligation on those who occupy the same ground with myself; and also on posterity, who, I am aware, will contend with me, as I have done with my predecessors.

Pliny's last work, according to his nephew, was the Naturalis Historia (Natural History), an encyclopedia into which he collected much of the knowledge of his time. Some historians consider this to be the first encyclopedia written. It comprised 37 books. His sources were personal experience, his own prior works (such as the work on Germania), and extracts from other works. These extracts were collected in the following manner: One servant would read aloud, and another would write the extract as dictated by Pliny. He is said to have dictated extracts while taking a bath. In winter, he furnished the copier with gloves and long sleeves so his writing hand would not stiffen with cold (Pliny the Younger in avunculus meus). His extract collection finally reached about 160 volumes, which Larcius Licinius, the Praetorian legate of Hispania Tarraconensis, unsuccessfully offered to purchase for 400,000 sesterces. That would have been in 73/74 (see above). Pliny bequeathed the extracts to his nephew.

When composition of Natural History began is unknown. Since he was preoccupied with his other works under Nero and then had to finish the history of his times, he is unlikely to have begun before 70. The procuratorships offered the ideal opportunity for an encyclopedic frame of mind. The date of an overall composition cannot be assigned to any one year. The dates of different parts must be determined, if they can, by philological analysis (the post mortem of the scholars).

The closest known event to a single publication date, that is, when the manuscript was probably released to the public for borrowing and copying, and was probably sent to the Flavians, is the date of the Dedication in the first of the 37 books. It is to the imperator Titus. As Titus and Vespasian had the same name, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, earlier writers hypothesized a dedication to Vespasian. Pliny's mention of a brother (Domitian) and joint offices with a father, calling that father "great", points certainly to Titus.

Pliny also says that Titus had been consul six times. The first six consulships of Titus were in 70, 72, 74, 75, 76, and 77, all conjointly with Vespasian, and the seventh was in 79. This brings the date of the Dedication probably to 77. In that year, Vespasian was 68. He had been ruling conjointly with Titus for some years. The title imperator does not indicate that Titus was sole emperor, but was awarded for a military victory, in this case that in Jerusalem in 70.

Aside from minor finishing touches, the work in 37 books was completed in AD 77. That it was written entirely in 77 or that Pliny was finished with it then cannot be proved. Moreover, the dedication could have been written before publication, and it could have been published either privately or publicly earlier without the dedication. The only certain fact is that Pliny died in AD 79.

Some historians consider Natural History to be the first encyclopedia ever written. It was the earliest encyclopedia to survive. There were many ancient histories written before Pliny the Elder's Natural History, but scholars still recognize Natural History as an encyclopedia, setting it apart from the other ancient histories. Regardless of if it was first, it is certainly the most significant. Through Natural History, Pliny the Elder gives modern experts a view into meanings of various things from first century Rome in a way that no other surviving text does. Each book of the Natural History covers a different topic, and the work is meant to cover every topic. Given the organization of the work, it is clear that it was meant to be a reference resource. Even modern scholars will sometimes compare an unknown object mentioned in a different ancient text with the objects described by Pliny and make comparisons. Modern scholars are also able to use Natural History to understand the traditions, fantasies, and prejudices in Ancient Rome.

The work became a model for all later encyclopedias in terms of the breadth of subject matter examined, the need to reference original authors, and a comprehensive index list of the contents. It is the only work by Pliny to have survived, and the last that he published, lacking a final revision at his sudden and unexpected death in the AD 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

Pliny, who had been appointed praefectus classis (admiral) in the Roman navy by Vespasian, was stationed with the fleet at Misenum at the time of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. On the 24th of August at around one in the afternoon, Pliny was informed of an unusual cloud in the distance by his sister, and he began making preparations to investigate. The mission suddenly became one of rescue when a message arrived containing an urgent plea for help from his friend Rectina, who was stranded in Stabiae. Pliny boarded one of several galleys that he dispatched across the Gulf of Naples to Stabiae.

As Pliny's vessel approached the shore near Herculaneum, cinders and pumice began to fall on it. The helmsman advised turning back, to which Pliny replied, "Fortune favours the bold; steer to where Pomponianus is." Upon reaching Stabiae, they found Senator Pomponianus, but the same winds that brought them there prevented them from leaving. The group waited for the wind to abate, but they decided to leave later that evening for fear that their houses would collapse. The group fled when a plume of hot toxic gases engulfed them. Pliny, a corpulent man who suffered from a chronic respiratory condition, possibly asthma, died and was left behind. Upon the group's return three days later after the plume had dispersed, Pliny's body was found, with no apparent external injuries.

An account of Pliny the Elder's fatal journey to Stabiae is contained in a letter from Pliny the Younger to Tacitus, written twenty-seven years after the events transpired. The younger Pliny believed that his uncle had been killed by toxic gases. Suetonius shared an additional rumor that Pliny the Elder asked a slave to kill him to avoid heat from the volcano. In 1859, Jacob Bigelow, after summarizing the information about Pliny's death contained in Pliny the Younger's letter to Tacitus, concluded that Pliny had died from apoplexy (stroke) or heart disease. The dramatic circumstances of his death led encyclopédiste Louis de Jaucourt to assess that: "He is of particular interest to humanity for his tragic end, and to scholars worldwide for his writings, which are, in the arts and sciences, the most precious monuments of all antiquity."