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Pliny the Elder: Themes and Contexts
Pliny's Naturalis Historia – a brilliant and sophisticated encyclopaedia of the scientific, artistic, philosophical, botanical and zoological riches of the ancient world – has had a long career in the footnotes of historical studies. This is a phenomenon born of the sense that the work was there to consult, or to ‘use’, as a resource to aid investigation of specific technical issues or passages, of Quellenforschung, or of delimited topic areas. The contributors to the present volume both represent and join a new generation of critics who have begun to try to ‘read’ this monumental text, and – by examining the dominant motifs which give shape and order to the work – to construct frameworks within which we may understand and interpret Pliny’s overarching agenda.
Pliny the Elder on Science and Technology
The Elder Pliny's Natural History provides a wide-ranging account of human achievement in the arts and sciences in the first century AD. This book re-examines Pliny's work for the first time since the 1920s. Modern experiments, simulating the techniques described by Pliny, and an in-depth study of his development of a technical language, confirm his unique contribution to our knowledge of science in early imperial Rome.
The Elder Pliny on the Human Animal
Publisher description
Natural History
Pliny's Natural History is an astonishingly ambitious work that ranges from astronomy to art and from geography to zoology. Mingling acute observation with often wild speculation, it offers a fascinating view of the world as it was understood in the first century AD, whether describing the danger of diving for sponges, the first water-clock, or the use of asses' milk to remove wrinkles. Pliny himself died while investigating the volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii in AD 79, and the natural curiosity that brought about his death is also very much evident in the Natural History - a book that proved highly influential right up until the Renaissance and that his nephew, Pliny the younger, described 'as full of variety as nature itself'.
The Letters of The Younger Pliny
The Letters of Pliny the Younger, also known as the Epistles of Pliny the Younger, have been studied for centuries, as they offer a unique and intimate glimpse into the daily life of Romans in the 1st century AD. Through his letters, the Roman writer and lawyer Pliny the Younger (whose full name was Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus) discusses philosophical and moral issues; but he also talks about everyday matters and topics related to his administrative duties. One of these letters, Letter 16 from Book VI, addressed to Tacitus, holds unparalleled historical value. In it, Pliny describes the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, which destroyed the city of Pompeii. Many scholars claim that wi...
Pliny the Elder and the Emergence of Renaissance Architecture
The Naturalis historia by Pliny the Elder provided Renaissance scholars, artists and architects with details of ancient architectural practice and long-lost architectural wonders - material that was often unavailable elsewhere in classical literature. Pliny's descriptions frequently included the dimensions of these buildings, as well as details of their unusual construction materials and ornament. This book describes, for the first time, how the passages were interpreted from around 1430 to 1580, that is, from Alberti to Palladio. Chapters are arranged chronologically within three interrelated sections - antiquarianism; architectural writings; drawings and built monuments - thereby making it possible for the reader to follow the changing attitudes to Pliny over the period. The resulting study establishes the Naturalis historia as the single most important literary source after Vitruvius's De architectura.
Pliny the Elder's Natural History
The most important surviving encyclopedia from the ancient world, Pliny the Elder's Natural History is unparalleled as a guide to the cultural meanings of everyday things in first-century Rome. As part of a new direction in classical scholarship, Trevor Murphy reads the work not just for the information it contains, but to understand how and why Pliny collects and presents information as he does. Concentrating on the geographic and ethnographic information in Pliny, Murphy demonstrates the work's political importance. The selection and arrangement of the encyclopedia's material show that it is more than an instrument of reference: it is a monument to the power of Roman imperial society.
