Pliny the Elder
In late August of 79 CE, at Stabiae, a Roman writer, naturalist, and military commander died, leaving behind a body of work that recorded the natural and artistic world of antiquity in considerable scope.
Born in Novum Comum at a date variously recorded as 20, 23, or 24 CE, Pliny the Elder was a citizen of Ancient Rome who took on an unusually broad range of roles across his lifetime. He served as military personnel and as a military commander, and held positions as a civil servant alongside these duties. His intellectual pursuits were equally varied: the facts of his life identify him as a writer, philosopher, poet, historian, art historian, and naturalist. He worked in both Latin and Ancient Greek, giving him access to sources across multiple traditions.
Among the works he produced, the one recorded as his notable work is the Natural History. This text reflects the wide range of occupations and intellectual identities that defined his career, touching on areas consistent with his roles as naturalist, historian, and art historian. He composed it in Latin, the primary language of Roman intellectual life, though his facility with Ancient Greek informed the range of material he could engage.
He died in 79 CE, with dates recorded variously as August 22nd or 23rd of that year, at Stabiae. The convergence of his death date with his recorded place of death at Stabiae, far from his birthplace of Novum Comum, marks the geographical span of a life conducted across the military, civil, and literary worlds of Ancient Rome. The Natural History remains the work by which his name as a writer and naturalist is most concretely attached to the historical record.
Quotes by Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder's insights on:
Man has learned how to challenge both Nature and art to become the incitements to vice! His very cups he has delighted to engrave with libidinous subjects, and he takes pleasure in drinking from vessels of obscene form!
The invention of money opened a new field to human avarice by giving rise to usury and the practice of lending money at interest while the owner passes a life of idleness.
We trace out all the veins of the earth, and yet, living upon it, undermined as it is beneath our feet, are astonished that it should occasionally cleave asunder or tremble: as though, forsooth, these signs could be any other than expressions of the indignation felt by our sacred parent!
Of all wonders, this is among the greatest, that some fresh waters close by the sea spring forth as out of pipes: for the nature of the waters also ceaseth not from miraculous properties.
The world and that which, by another name, men have thought good to call Heaven (under the compass of which all things are covered), we ought to believe, in all reason, to be a divine power, eternal, immense, without beginning, and never to perish.
Hardly can it be judged whether it be better for mankind to believe that the gods have regard of us, or that they have none, considering that some men have no respect and reverence for the gods, and others so much that their superstition is a shame to them.
What is there more unruly than the sea, with its winds, its tornadoes, and its tempests? And yet in what department of her works has Nature been more seconded by the ingenuity of man than in this, by his inventions of sails and of oars?
How innocent, how happy, how truly delightful, even, would life be if we were to desire nothing but what is to be found upon the face of the earth: in a word, nothing but what is provided ready to our hands!