by Daisy Dunn
In honouring Pliny so extravagantly on their cathedral, the people of Como had made a choice. After all the time that had passed since his death, they preferred to remember him for the good he had done for his people rather than the pain he had inflicted upon their Christian forefathers. To gloss over his final years in Bithynia was to show him forgiveness. For all his advantages in life, Pliny had proven himself capable of ‘Christian’ qualities, empathising with the unfortunate and maligned philosophers, if not with the Christians themselves. The Como people’s rivalry and one-upmanship with the Veronese had steadily been supplanted by an appreciation of the role Pliny had played in transforming their city. He had left Como far more illustrious than he had found it. His library, his baths, the provisions he made for the education of children – his own name – had made Comum a respectable town, and these buildings and the extensive letters that described them became the very seeds of humanist learning in the Renaissance city. They fuelled the Giovio brothers’ quest to re-establish the role that both Plinys had played in their history.5
Pliny survived a potential backlash from the Christians. His uncle survived the attempts of humanists to discredit him. In 1492, a short time after the people of Como commissioned the Pliny statues, a physician named Niccolò Leoniceno tore into the dubious science of the Natural History in a tract entitled De Plinii et aliorum medicorum in medicina erroribus. Not only had Pliny the Elder confused Greek plant names, Leoniceno complained, he had even described the moon as larger than the earth on the basis that: ‘If the earth were bigger than the moon, it would not be possible for the entire sun to be eclipsed when the moon passed between it and the earth.’6 As if it was not serious enough that the Natural History had been disseminated by a modern press, its errors had crept into other scholars’ books. The passage on the relative size of the earth and moon had found its way into the works of the Venerable Bede, who drew heavily on the Natural History in his own De Natura Rerum (On the Nature of Things) and De Temporibus (On Times).7
Pliny the Elder’s more fanciful passages may have irritated some readers but they enchanted far more. Even scholars were eager to leap to his defence. At the same time as Leoniceno was fulminating against his methods, a Venetian humanist named Ermolao Barbaro was preparing his Castigationes Plinianae, in which he claimed to correct thousands of errors made, not by Pliny the Elder, but by the copyists of his manuscripts: ‘I have cured almost five thousand wounds inflicted on that work by the scribes, or at the very least shown how they might be cured.’8 The same year, 1493, saw the publication of Pandolfo Collenuccio’s Pliniana defensio adversus Nicolai Leoniceni accusationem, a riposte to Leoniceno’s assault on the Natural History. Leoniceno might have prompted some readers to think more carefully before relying on what was handed down to them in ancient textbooks, but his publication did little to diminish Pliny the Elder’s appeal to Renaissance men: Francis Bacon, Leonardo da Vinci, Giorgio Vasari, the great patrons of the Italian courts.
Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger were Renaissance men in their own time. Beneath their statues on Como Cathedral their rich lives are precised in four small panels. Pliny the Elder is in his study surrounded by books, reading, oblivious to the citizens who are massing outside his doorway. In the next frame he turns away from the volcano, aloof and untroubled as Vesuvius erupts and envelops panicking Campanians in flame. His nephew is absorbed in his reading in a study of his own. When Pliny has finished with his research he makes his way to the senate house, mounts a podium, and prepares to deliver his speech to Trajan. He takes a deep breath and begins …
Picture Section
The most complete set of horse-trappings to survive from ancient Rome happens to feature the name and position of Pliny the Elder. The inscription on this attractive roundel, Plinio praef(ecto) eq(uitum), refers to his command of the cavalry, probably in the 50s AD, when he was in the Rhineland.
Pliny the Elder recorded that the town of Stabiae, where this wall painting was found, was destroyed in the Social War that broke out in 91 BC when Rome’s allies in Italy demanded Roman citizenship. To judge by this painting, which probably shows its harbour, and the archaeological remains of luxurious villas, Stabiae had been largely rebuilt by the time Pliny the Elder died there during the eruption.
The eruption of AD 79 is believed to have changed the shape of the volcano from a single cone, like the one depicted in this wall painting from Pompeii, to the famous twin peaks we see today. Vesuvius was formed within the caldera of the older and now inactive Monte Somma.
In the Iliad, Zeus’ mortal son Sarpedon is speared in the chest by the Greek warrior Patroclus. As he falls he is said to resemble an oak, white poplar, or pine tree felled for ship timber.
In this fifteenth-century manuscript, as in the reliefs on Como Cathedral, Pliny the Elder is closeted in his study. The scene outside encapsulates the breadth of his encyclopedia. The artist has omitted from his painting some of the more outlandish creatures to feature in Pliny the Elder’s book, including the tritons and nereids (the equivalent of mermen and mermaids) which many people in his time claimed to have seen.
A cast of a victim of the eruption. Remains of humans and animals continue to be found in the areas surrounding Vesuvius. In late 2018, a particularly rare discovery was made at Pompeii of a horse with harness and saddle.
The two Plinys would have kept on their desks a selection of papyri for formal work, an inkwell, and wax tablets for drafts. Incised with a pen-like tool known as a ‘stylus’, wax tablets were often joined together by hinges like books and could be warmed, scraped clean and re-used. The English phrase ‘clean slate’ comes from the Latin for ‘smoothed tablet’, tabula rasa.
Pliny tells the daughter of his mentor Corellius Rufus of his great respect for him and hopes for her son in this letter preserved in a remarkably early manuscript from the late fifth (or possibly early sixth) century. Written in black ink enlivened by the occasional red adornment, the surviving leaves are plain by comparison with Renaissance manuscripts, but precious for their rarity.
In the early second century, Emperor Trajan granted Pliny his request to be made a priest. In the honorary role of ‘augur’, Pliny was required to study and interpret the movement of birds and other signs which were supposedly issued by the gods.
Readers have been attempting to reconstruct Pliny’s villas from the descriptions in his letters for hundreds of years. Clifford Fanshawe Pember, an Oxford graduate and trainee architect, created this 3D model of Pliny’s Laurentine villa in the 1940s.
Emperor Constantine established his new capital at Byzantium in AD 324, two centuries after Pliny visited. He credited his victory over his co-emperor Maxentius to the support of the Christian God. Depicted at the right of the mosaic, he holds a model of his city up to the Madonna and Child, while Emperor Justinian, who lived from AD c.482–565 and reformed Roman law, holds a model of Hagia Sophia.
The Romans were forbidden from burying their dead inside the pomerium or sacred boundary line that surrounded the city. An exception was made for Emperor Trajan, whose ashes were interred in the base of his Column in the city itself.
Francesco I de’Medici intended his private study in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence as a celebration of Art and Nature and as a home for his ‘rare and precious things’.
Domitian’s wife, the Empress Domitia, was more fortunate than her husband with her locks, sporting here the most fashionable hairstyle of the period, the so-called ‘Toupetfrisur’ beehive.
Pliny was fascinated by the movement of water. In the region of his Tuscan villa he visited the source of a river that honoured a deity called Clitumnus. At Comum he strove to discover what determined the rise and fall of the spring pictured here.
Sculpture of Pliny the Elder in Como.
Sculpture of Pliny the Younger in Como.
Timeline
BC
264 First Punic War (to 241)
218 Second Punic War (to 201)
189 Triumph
of Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus and ‘birth of luxury’ in Rome
149 Third Punic War (to 146)
106 Births of Cicero and Pompey the Great
100 Birth of Julius Caesar
74 King Nicomedes IV bequeaths Bithynia to Rome
63 Cicero becomes consul
59 Julius Caesar founds Novum Comum
42 Octavian is named son of deified Caesar
38 Octavian marries Livia and becomes stepfather to her sons Drusus and Tiberius
30 Deaths of Antony and Cleopatra
27 Octavian becomes ‘Augustus’ and first emperor of Rome
13 Tiberius becomes consul
9 Death of Drusus
AD
4 Augustus adopts Tiberius
6 Judaea becomes a Roman province
9 Defeat of Varus and loss of Roman legions in Germania
14 Death of Augustus and accession of Tiberius
19 Jews expelled from Rome
23/24 Birth of Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder) in Comum
37 Death of Tiberius and accession of Caligula
c.38 Birth of the poet Martial
41 Death of Caligula and accession of Claudius, who grants power over Judaea to Herod Agrippa
43 Claudius invades Britain
47 Pliny the Elder confronts the Chauci
50 Claudius adopts Nero
c.50 Pliny the Elder confronts the Chatti
54 Death of Claudius and accession of Nero
55 Death of Britannicus
c.56 Birth of Cornelius Tacitus
59 Death of Agrippina the Younger
60/61 Rebellion of Boudicca
c.62 Birth of Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (Pliny the Younger) in Comum
64 Fire at Rome. Persecution of Christians
65 Pisonian Conspiracy; Suicides of Seneca the Younger and Lucan; Death of Poppaea
66 Thrasea Paetus condemned to death; Suicide of Petronius; Start of the Jewish War
67 Vespasian leaves for Judaea
68 Death of Nero and accession of Galba
69 ‘Year of the Four Emperors’: Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian
70 The Temple of Jerusalem burns
c.70 Birth of Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus
73–4 Siege of Masada and conclusion of the Jewish War
79 Death of Vespasian and accession of Titus Eruption of Vesuvius
Death of Pliny the Elder
80 Fire in Rome. Pliny the Younger enters the Court of One Hundred
81 Death of Titus and accession of Domitian
83 Domitian celebrates a triumph for war against the Chatti
85 Agricola recalled to Rome from Britain after Battle of Mons Graupius. Domitian’s conflict with Dacia
93 Expulsion of philosophers. Stoic trials
96 Death of Domitian and accession of Nerva
c.97 Death of Pliny the Younger’s first wife; Pliny the Younger falls ill
98 Death of Nerva and accession of Trajan
Pliny the Younger, now married to Calpurnia, becomes prefect of the Treasury of Saturn
100 Pliny the Younger becomes consul and delivers his Panegyricus
101 Beginning of Trajan’s Dacian Wars
c.103 Pliny the Younger becomes augur
c.109–13 Pliny the Younger in Bithynia and condemnation of Christians.
Death of Pliny the Younger (c.113)
115 Trajan’s Parthian campaign
117 Death of Trajan and accession of Hadrian
324 Constantine founds new capital at Byzantium
List of Illustrations
Integrated pictures
Here Relief showing the earthquake from shrine in House of Lucius Caecilius Iucundus, Pompeii. (DEA/A. DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini/Getty Images)
Here Roman coin featuring the Colosseum. (DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/De Agostini/Getty Images)
Here Emperor Domitian. (© José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro/CC BY-SA 4.0)
Here Skull, Museo Storico Nazionale dell’Arte Sanitaria, Rome. (Photo: Flavio Russo/Historisches Nationalmuseum für die Kunst der Medizin/dpa – Rome/Italy/Agefotostock)
Here Relief from the Arch of Titus, Rome. (Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Here Roof tile stamped with Pliny initials. (J. Uroz Sáez, ‘Fundiary property and brick production in the high Tiber valley’ in F. Coarelli and H. Patterson (eds), 2008, Fig. 14)
Here Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing of Curio’s Revolving Double Theatre. (akg-images/Album)
Here Roman mosaic showing cat with bird, ducks and sea life, Pompeii, 2nd century BC, National Archaeological Museum, Naples. (Prisma Archivo/Alamy Stock Photo)
Here Ground plan of Pliny’s Tuscan villa by Karl Friedrich Schinkel. (Historic Images/Alamy Stock Photo)
Picture section
Silvered bronze phalera from a horse-harness, inscribed with Pliny the Elder’s name. (© The Trustees of the British Museum)
Roman wall painting, Stabiae. (CM Dixon/Print Collector/Getty Images)
Wall painting from Pompeii, showing Vesuvius and Bacchus with snake. (DEA/L. PEDICINI/De Agostini/Getty Images)
The Euphronios Krater, c.515 BC, showing Sarpedon speared in the chest by Patroclus. (Historic Collection/Alamy Stock Photo)
Fifteenth-century manuscript showing Pliny the Elder writing in his study and a landscape. (British Library, London, UK/© British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images)
A cast of a victim of the Vesuvius eruption. (Art Media/Print Collector/Getty Images)
Wall painting of writing materials, 1st century AD, Pompeii/National Archaeological Museum, Naples. (Werner Forman Archive/Bridgeman Images)
Page of letter by Pliny from late fifth (or possibly early sixth) century manuscript. (The Morgan Library and Museum, New York. MS M.462. Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913) in 1910)
Wall painting of bird, Pompeii (© The Trustees of the British Museum)
Model of Pliny’s Laurentine villa by Clifford Fanshawe Pember, 1940s. (Mixed media, English School (20th century)/Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, UK/Bridgeman Images)
Christian mosaic of Constantine and Justinian from Hagia Sophia Church Museum, Istanbul. (Chris Hellier/Alamy Stock Photo)
Trajan’s Column. (National Geographic Image Collection/Alamy Stock Photo)
Francesco I de’Medici’s private study, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. (Courtesy of the author)
Empress Domitia. (Adam Eastland Art + Architecture/Alamy Stock Photo)
Pliny’s spring, Como. (Courtesy of the author)
Sculpture of Pliny the Elder, Como. (Universal Images Group North America LLC/De Agostini/Alamy Stock Photo)
Sculpture of Pliny the Younger, Como. (akg-images/De Agostini Picture Lib./A. Vergani)
Footnotes
PROLOGUE: Darker than Night
fn1 The volcano known as ‘Vesuvius’ today is the inner cone that formed inside ‘Monte Somma’ – thought to be the remains of the older volcano that erupted in AD 79.
fn2 In a surviving fragment of a biography attributed to Suetonius, it is said that some people thought Pliny the Elder was in fact killed by a slave, whom he urged to hasten his death in the agonising heat.
fn3 The discovery of the ‘bones of Orestes’ at Tegea, in the Peloponnese, was described by other ancient historians, too, including Herodotus in the fifth century BC. The bones probably belonged to a mammoth.
ONE: Roots and Trees
fn1 To be an equestrian one needed to possess property to the value of 400,000 sesterces. The property qualification for the senatorial class was a million sesterces. A labourer typically earned about 1000 sesterces a year.
fn2 Pliny the Elder was evidently admiring of small handwriting. He recorded in his encyclopaedia that Cicero had known of a complete manuscript of Homer’s Iliad that was so tiny it could be enclosed in a single nutshell. This fact, included in the seventh book of his Natural History, is thought to be the origin of the phrase ‘in a nutshell’.
/> TWO: Illusions of Immortality
fn1 When later Regulus passed away, Pliny said: ‘Regulus did well to die; it would have been better if he had died sooner.’
FOUR: Solitary as an Oyster
fn1 Though, according to modern research, elephants are in fact most terrified of bees, whose stings cannot penetrate their skin but can hurt their eyes and the insides of their trunks.
FIVE: The Gift of Poison
fn1 Pliny the Elder was critical of suicides by drowning and sword. He was also critical of antidotes to poison. In the first century BC, Pompey the Great had conquered the kingdom of Pontus on the south coast of the Black Sea and carried home with him new knowledge of the nature of poisons. The vanquished King of Pontus, Mithridates VI Eupator, had discovered that, by ingesting a little poison every day, you can build up an immunity to it. He allegedly became so resistant that he found himself unable to commit suicide by poison following his defeat. According to Pliny the Elder, Mithridates had also developed an antidote against poison that consisted of fifty-four ingredients. The recipe for the ‘mithridate’ was tweaked over the years at Rome and became steadily more opiate in its composition. The supposed antidote of the foreign king remained popular in medieval times, when it was optimistically employed as protection against plague. Pliny the Elder derided the ostentation of the science.