nunc communiter ad omnium gemmarum observationem pertinentia dicemus opiniones secuti auctorum.
cavae aut extuberantes viliores videntur aequalibus. figura oblonga maxime probatur, deinde quae vocatur lenticula, postea epipedos et rotunda, angulosis autem minima gratia.
veras a falsis discernere magna difficultas, quippe cum inventum sit ex veris generis alterius in aliud falsas traducere, ut sardonyches e ternis glutinentur gemmis ita, ut deprehendi ars non possit, aliunde nigro, aliunde candido, aliunde minio sumptis, omnibus in suo genere probatissimis. quin immo etiam exstant commentarii auctorum - quos non equidem demonstrabo - , quibus modis ex crystallo smaragdum tinguant aliasque tralucentes, sardonychem e sarda, item ceteras ex aliis; neque enim est ulla fraus vitae lucrosior. nos contra rationem deprendendi falsas demonstrabimus, quando etiam luxuriam adversus fraudes muniri deceat. igitur praeter illa, quae in principatu cuiusque generis privatim diximus, tralucentes matutino probari censent aut, si necesse est, in quartam horam; postea vetant. experimenta pluribus modis constant: primum pondere, graviores enim sunt verae; dein frigore, eaedem namque in ore gelidiores sentiuntur; post haec corpore. ficticiis pusula e profundo apparet, scabritia in cute et capillamenta, fulgoris inconstantia, priusquam ad oculos perveniat, desinens nitor. decussi fragmenti, quod in lamina ferrea uratur, efficacissimum experimentum excusate mangones gemmarum recusant, similiter et limae probationem. obsianae fragmenta veras gemmas non scariphant, in ficticiis scariphatio omnis candicat. iam tanta differentia est, ut aliae ferro scalpi non possint, aliae non nisi retuso, omnes autem adamante. plurimum vero in iis terebrarum proficit fervor.
gemmiferi amnes sunt acesinus et ganges, terrarum autem omnium maxime india. etenim peractis omnibus naturae operibus discrimen quoddam rerum ipsarum atque terrarum facere conveniet.
ergo in toto orbe, quacumque caeli convexitas vergit, pulcherrima omnium est iis rebus, quae merito principatum naturae optinent, italia, rectrix parensque mundi altera, viris feminis, ducibus militibus, servitiis, artium praestantia, ingeniorum claritatibus, iam situ ac salubritate caeli atque temperie, accessu cunctarum gentium facili, portuosis litoribus, benigno ventorum adflatu. quod contingit positione procurrentis in partem utilissimam et inter ortus occasusque mediam, aquarum copia, nemorum salubritate, montium articulis, ferorum animalium innocentia, soli fertilitate, pabuli ubertate. quidquid est quo carere vita non debeat, nusquam est praestantius: fruges, vinum, oleum, vellera, lina, vestes, iuvenci. ne equos quidem in trigariis ullos vernaculis praeferunt. metallis auri, argenti, aeris, ferri, quamdiu licuit exercere, nullis cessit terris et nunc intra se gravida pro omni dote varios sucos et frugum pomorumque sapores fundit. ab ea exceptis indiae fabulosis proximam equidem duxerim hispaniam quacumque ambitur mari, quamquam squalidam ex parte, verum, ubi gignit, feracem frugum, olei, vini, equorum metallorumque omnium generum, ad haec pari gallia. verum desertis suis sparto vincit hispania et lapide speculari, pigmentorum etiam deliciis, laborum excitatione, servorum exercitio, corporum humanorum duritia, vehementia cordis.
rerum autem ipsarum maximum est pretium in mari nascentium margaritis; extra tellurem crystallis, intra adamanti, smaragdis, gemmis, myrrinis; e terra vero exeuntibus in cocco, lasere, in fronde nardo, sericis vestibus, in arbore citro, in frutice cinnamo, casia, amomo, arboris aut fruticis suco in sucino, opobalsamo, murra, ture, in radicibus costo; ex iis, quae spirare convenit, animalibus in terra maximum dentibus elephantorum, in mari testudinum cortici; in tergore pellibus, quas seres inficiunt, et arabiae caprarum villo, quod ladanum vocavimus; ex iis, quae terrena et maris, conchyliis, purpurae. volucrum naturae praeter conos bellicos et commagenum anserum adipem nullum adnotatur insigne. non praetereundum est auro, circa quod omnes mortales insaniunt, decumum vix esse in pretio locum, argento vero, quo aurum emitur, paene vicensimum.
salve, parens rerum omnium natura, teque nobis quiritium solis celebratam esse numeris omnibus tuis fave.
The Biographies
The Porta Nigra Roman gate, Trier, Germany — Pliny’s last official position was procurator of Gallia Belgica. The capital of this Roman province was Augusta Treverorum (Trier), named for the Treveri surrounding it.
THE LIFE OF PLINY by Suetonius
Translated by Alexander Thomson
PLINIUS SECUNDUS, a native of New Como , having served in the wars with strict attention to his duties, in the rank of a knight, distinguished himself, also, by the great integrity with which he administered the high functions of procurator for a long period in the several provinces intrusted to his charge. But still he devoted so much attention to literary pursuits, that it would not have been an easy matter for a person who enjoyed entire leisure to have written more than he did. He comprised, in twenty volumes, an account of all the various wars carried on in successive periods with the German tribes. Besides this, he wrote a Natural History, which extended to seven books. He fell a victim to the calamitous event which occurred in Campania. For, having the command of the fleet at Misenum, when Vesuvius was throwing up a fiery eruption, he put to sea with his gallies for the purpose of exploring the causes of the phenomenon close on the spot. But being prevented by contrary winds from sailing back, he was suffocated in the dense cloud of dust and ashes. Some, however, think that he was killed by his slave, having implored him to put an end to his sufferings, when he was reduced to the last extremity by the fervent heat.
INTRODUCTION TO PLINY THE ELDER by H. Rackham
GAIUS PLINIUS SECUNDUS — usually called Pliny the Elder to distinguish him from his nephew and ward, Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, whose collected correspondence has preserved such a vivid picture of Roman life in the time of Trajan — belonged to a family of wealth and position in the North of Italy. He was born at Como in AD 23. After studying at Rome he started when twenty-three years old on an official career, serving in Germany under L. Pomponius Secundus, and rising to the command of a cavalry squadron. Seven or eight years later he came back to Rome and took up the study of law. During most of Nero’s principate he lived in retirement, but towards the close of it he re-entered public life and became Procurator in Spain. He held this post until Vespasian won the principate, when he returned to Rome and was admitted to the Emperor’s intimate circle; they had been acquainted in earlier days when at the front in Germany. He also launched into another field of activity, receiving a naval commission.
Throughout his busy career as a man of action he had kept up a constant practice of study and authorship. His interest in science finally cost him his life, at the age of 56. He was in command of the fleet at Misenum on the Bay of Naples in AD 79 when the famous eruption of Vesuvius took place on August 23 and 24, overwhelming the little towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Pliny as a man of science sailed across the bay to obtain a nearer view; he landed at Stabiae, and there was killed by poisonous fumes. The circumstances are recorded by his nephew in a letter to Tacitus (Pliny, Epp. VI. xvi). Vespasian had died and had been succeeded as Princeps by his son Titus two months before.
Pliny’s earlier writings were on subjects suggested by his professional experiences, e.g., the use of the javelin by cavalry, a history of the German wars, the training of the orator. During his retirement he produced Dubius Sermo, a treatise on grammar, and later a continuation down to his own time of the history of Rome by Aufidius Bassus; and lastly Natural History, the largest and most important of his works and the only one that has survived, although his historical writings on the defence of the German frontier and on the events of his own period were clearly works of value, the loss of which is much to be regretted. The substance of both, however, is doubtless largely incorporated in the writings of Tacitus and Suetonius, the former indeed repeatedly citing Pliny as his authority both in Annals and in Histories.
Natural History is dedicated to Titus, who is referred to in the Preface, § 3, as ‘sexies consul’; this dates the completion of the work at A.D. 77, two years before the author’s death and the accession of Titus. It is an encyclopaedia of astronomy, meteorology, geogr
aphy, mineralogy, zoology and botany, i.e. a systematic account of all the material objects that are not the product of man’s manufacture; but among these topics, which are implied by the title, Pliny inserts considerable essays on human inventions and institutions (Book VII), as well as minor digressions on similar subjects interspersed in various other parts of the work. He claims in his Preface that the work deals with 20,000 matters of importance, drawn from 100 selected authors, to whose observations he has added many of his own; some of the latter he has indicated as they occur, and there are doubtless others not so labelled, but even so they form only a small fraction of the work, which is in the main a second-hand compilation from the works of others. In selecting from these be has shown scanty judgement and discrimination, including the false with the true at random; his selection is coloured by his love of the marvellous, by his low estimate of human ability and his consciousness of human wickedness, and by his mistrust of Providence. Moreover his compilations show little methodical arrangement, and are sometimes unintelligible because he fails to understand his authority, or else because he gives wrong Latin names to things dealt with by his authorities in Greek.
Nevertheless it is a mistake to underrate the value of his work. He is diligent, accurate, and free from prejudice. Though he had no considerable firsthand knowledge of the sciences and was not himself a systematic observer, he had a naturally scientific mind, and an unaffected and absorbing interest in his subjects. If he gives as much attention to what is merely curious as to what has an essential importance, this curiosity has incidentally preserved much valuable detail, especially as regards the arts; moreover anecdotes that used to be rejected by critics as erroneous and even absurd have now in not a few cases been corroborated by modern research. The book is valuable as an anthropological document: it is a storehouse of scattered facts exhibiting the history of man’s reaction to his environment — the gradual growth of accurate observation, of systematic nomenclature and of classification, i.e. of Natural Science.
Pliny’s own general attitude towards life, like that of other educated men of his day, may be styled a moderate and rational Stoicism.
A vivid account of his authorship written by his nephew may be appended here. The younger Pliny in reply to an enquiry from a friend, a great admirer of his uncle, gives (Epistles, III, v) a full list of his works, numbering seven in all and filling 102 libri or volumes. Of these the Naturae historiarum (libri) triginta septem is the latest. He calls it (§ 6) opus diffiusum, eruditum, nec minus vermin quam ipsa nature; and he goes on to describe by what means a busy lawyer, engrossed in important affairs and the friend of princes, contrived to find time for all this authorship (§ 7): ‘He had a keen intelligence, incredible devotion to study, and a remarkable capacity for dispensing with sleep. His method was to start during the last week of August rising by candlelight and long before daybreak, not in order to take auspices but to study; and in winter he got to work at one or at latest two a.m., and frequently at 12 p.m. He was indeed a very ready sleeper, sometimes dropping off in the middle of his studies and then waking up again. Before dawn he used to wait on the Emperor Vespasian, who also worked during the night; and then he went off to the duty assigned to him. After returning home he gave all the time that was left to study. Very often after lunch — with him a light and easily digested meal, as the fashion was in old days — in the summer, if he had no engagements, he used to lie in the sun and have a book read to him, from which he made notes and extracts; he read nothing without making extracts from it — indeed he used to say that no book is so bad but that some part of it has value. After this rest in the sun he usually took a cold bath, and then a snack of food and a very short siesta, and then he put in what was virtually a second day’s work, going on with his studies till dinnertime. Over his dinner a book was read aloud to him and notes were made, and that at a rapid pace. I remember that one of his friends, when the reader had rendered a passage badly, called him back and had it repeated; but my uncle said to him, “Surely you got the sense? and on his nodding assent continued, Then what did you call him back for? This interruption of yours has cost us ten more lines!” Such was his economy of time. He used to leave the dinner table before sunset in summer and less than an hour after it in winter — this rule had with him the force of law. These were his habits when in the thick of his engagements and amid the turmoil of town. In vacation, only the time of the bath was exempted from study; and when I say the bath I mean the more central portions of that ritual, for while he was being shampooed and rubbed down he used to have something read to him or to dictate. On a journey he seemed to throw aside all other interests and used the opportunity for study only: he had a secretary at his elbow with book and tablets, his hands in winter protected by mittens so that even the inclemency of the weather might not steal any time from his studies; and with this object he used to go about in a chair even in Rome. Once I remember his pulling me up for going somewhere on foot, saying “You need not have wasted those hours! he thought all time not spent in study wasted. This resolute application enabled him to get through all those volumes, and he bequeathed to me 160 sets of notes on selected books, written on both sides of the paper in an extremely small hand, a method that multiplies this number of volumes! He used to tell how during his Lieutenant-governorship in Spain he had an offer of £3,500 for these notes, and at that date they were considerably fewer in number.’
TEXT
A large number of MS. copies of Pliny’s Natural History have been preserved; the oldest date back to the 9th or possibly the 8th century A.D. Attempts have been made by scholars to class them in order of merit, but it cannot be said that even those that appear to be comparatively more correct carry any paramount authority, or indeed show much agreement on doubtful points, while the mass of scientific detail and terminology and the quantity of curious and unfamiliar erudition that the book contains has necessarily afforded numerous opportunities for copyists’ errors and for the conjectural emendation of the learned. Many of the textual problems raised are manifestly insoluble. Only a few variants of special interest are given in this edition.
Many editions have been printed, beginning with that published by Spira at Venice, 1469, an edition by Beroaldus published at Parma, 1476, and that of Palmarius at Venice, 1499. Commentaries start with Hermolai Barbari Castigatianes Plinianae, Romae, 1492, 3.
The text of the present edition is printed from that of Detlefsen, Berlin, 1866; it has been checked by the Teubner edition of Ludwig von Jan re-edited by Karl Mayhoff in two volumes, 1905, 1909 (Volume I reissued 1933), which is admirably equipped with textual notes.
Useful are the commentary by C. Brotier in usum Delphini (1826); Pliny: Chapters on the Hist. of Art by K. Jex-Blake and B. Sellers (1896) and more recently Pliny’s Chapters on Chemical Subjects by K. C. Bailey (1929); and D. J. Campbell’s commentary on Book II (1936).
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