by Terry Deary
Historians learned a lot about Roman life from the letters of Pliny. They told of the famous day when the Mount Vesuvius volcano erupted and swallowed the city of Pompeii. Pliny’s uncle was one of the people who died there.
Pliny also wrote about some of the fantastic feasts the rich people in Rome would eat. All the food in this story was eaten at some time in Rome – even parrot heads and pheasant tongues, hares with wings and roast boar filled with singing birds.
One of Pliny’s most famous letters contains the story about the ghost in the garden. He told it just as it’s told here. It’s one of the world’s first-ever ghost stories.
Is it true? We will never know. But Pliny was a clever man, and he believed it. The Romans believed some odd things. We can be sure most Romans would have believed Pliny’s famous ghost story. Do you?