by Daisy Dunn
8 The sculptures are thought to have been erected upon the Loggia del Consiglio in Verona in 1493. See McHam’s ‘Renaissance Monuments to Favourite Sons’, pp. 482–3, and Pliny and the Artistic Culture of the Italian Renaissance, Yale University Press, New Haven; London, 2013, pp. 157–8, on the rivalry.
9 Giovio, Historiae Patriae, Vol. 2, 237–40.
10 PLE 16.5.
11 H. G. Coffin, R. H. Brown, R. J. Gibson, Origin by Design, Review and Herald Publishing Association, Hagerstown, Maryland, 2005, p. 243, citing also W. J. Fritz, ‘Reinterpretation of the Depositional Environment of the Yellowstone “Fossil Forests”’, Geology, Vol. 8, 1980, pp. 309–13.
12 Coffin et al., Origin by Design, pp. 242–6.
13 See H. H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero, Routledge, London and New York, 2006, pp. 254–9 for a concise account of Augustus’ plans.
14 PLY 3.5.4.
15 Tacitus Annals 1.69; Suetonius (Life of Caligula 8) cites Pliny the Elder’s German Wars on Caligula and his birthplace.
16 See Tacitus Annals 1.55 on the death of Varus.
17 Tacitus Germania 4.
18 Tacitus Germania 16.
19 Tacitus Germania 35.
20 Tacitus Annals 11.18. It is generally agreed that Pliny the Elder joined Corbulo’s campaign. I have consulted here the entry on Pliny the Elder in Brill’s New Pauly (H. Cancik and H. Schneider (eds), ‘Pliny the Elder’, Brill’s New Pauly, Phi-Prok, Brill, Leiden, 2007) and R. Syme (‘Pliny the Procurator’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 73, 1969, pp. 205–7), who summarises Münzer, Bonner Jahrbücher, 104, 1899, who established the details of Pliny the Elder’s three Germanic campaigns, which I follow in this book.
21 PLE 16.3.
22 Tacitus Annals 11.18. The leader of the Chauci, Gannascus, had formerly served with the Roman auxiliary.
23 Tacitus Annals 11.19.
24 Catullus Carmina 29.12.
25 Cancik and Schneider (eds), ‘Pliny the Elder’.
26 PLE 31.20, cited by Syme, ‘Pliny the Procurator’, p. 206.
27 Quintilian Institutio Oratoria 10.1.98.
28 PLE 13.83; 7.80.
29 Tacitus Annals 12.28.
30 PLE 13.83.
31 Tacitus Annals 12.56.
32 PLE 33.63, cited by Syme, ‘Pliny the Procurator’, p. 206. The golden cloak is also described by Tacitus in Annals 12.56.
33 Suetonius Life of Claudius 43–4; Tacitus Annals 12.65–67; PLE 2.92.
34 PLE 22.92–5.
35 Suetonius Life of Nero 9–11.
36 Suetonius Life of Nero 33–5.
37 Suetonius Life of Nero 38.
38 Tacitus Annals 15.44.
39 Pliny the Younger Panegyricus 42.1.
40 Tacitus Agricola 2.
41 Tacitus Annals 15.49–74.
42 Tacitus Annals 16.18.
43 PLY 3.5.5.
44 Tacitus Agricola 44.
45 P. Roche, ‘Pliny’s Thanksgiving: An Introduction to the Panegyricus’, p. 4, in P. Roche (ed.), Pliny’s Praise: The Panegyricus in the Roman World, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2011.
46 The two letters, 10.96 and 10.97, predate Tacitus’ descriptions of Nero’s persecution of the Christians – see Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, p. 693.
47 PLY 10.96.8.
48 PLY 3.5.17.
49 The Roman writers were Marcus Terentius Varro and Celsus. Cato the Elder, Aristotle and Theophrastus were also important influences upon Pliny the Elder.
50 PLE 11.6.
51 PLE 2.207.
52 PLE 25.9.
53 PLE 29.85. The Natural History inspired numerous other reference books besides, including Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum Maius in the thirteenth century and Conrad Gesner’s Bibliotheca Universalis in 1545.
54 R. P. Duncan-Jones, ‘The Finances of a Senator’, in R. K. Gibson and C. Whitton (eds), The Epistles of Pliny, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016, p. 91, suggests that Pliny possessed more than twice the 8 million sesterces normally deemed a reasonable capital for a senator.
55 Plutarch Lucullus 39.4. Like Pliny, Lucullus owned an estate near Tusculum and used it as a summer residence.
56 The first nine volumes of Pliny’s letters are thought to have been released in his lifetime, but the tenth book, which contains the letters he sent Trajan and Trajan’s replies, was probably published posthumously.
57 Although the ten books of Pliny’s letters progress roughly chronologically, the letters within them are often out of sequence. Later letters often intersperse the sequences of earlier ones. J. Bodel, ‘The Publication of Pliny’s Letters’, provides in pp. 13–35 of I. Marchesi (ed.), Pliny the Book-Maker: Betting on Posterity in the Epistles, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2015, a useful examination of the arrangement of the letters and a summary of the attempts of Mommsen, Syme and Sherwin-White to order and date them.
TWO: Illusions of Immortality
1 PLY 2.1.6.
2 PLY 7.20.4.
3 PLY 2.1.8.
4 Pliny always admired a well-earned, well-structured retirement – see Letters 6.10 and 3.1.
5 PLY 6.10.3.
6 PLY 7.33.1. Tacitus probably used Pliny’s account of the eruption to write a section of his Histories that is now lost.
7 PLY 6.16.1.
8 PLY 6.20.20.
9 PLY 6.16.22.
10 Sigurdsson et al., ‘The Eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79’, p. 44.
11 U. Eco, The Limits of Interpretation, Indianapolis Press, Bloomington, Indianapolis, 1994, p. 136.
12 Francis Bacon, Letter to the Earl of Arundel and Surrey, The Letters and The Life of Francis Bacon, edited by J. Spedding, Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, London, 1874, 7.550. A. Doody quotes from and discusses Bacon’s letter in her book on the reception of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History – Pliny’s Encyclopedia: The Reception of the Natural History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2010, pp. 32–3. Doody observes that Bacon was reflecting on Pliny’s description of his uncle in his second letter on the eruption. This letter of Bacon is also discussed in relation to Pliny the Elder by L. Jardine and A. Stewart, Hostage to Fortune: The Troubled Life of Francis Bacon, Victor Gollancz, London, 1998, pp. 502–8 (work cited in Doody, Pliny’s Encyclopedia, p. 33) and by G. Darley, Vesuvius: The Most Famous Volcano in the World, Profile, London, 2011, pp. 38–9.
13 John Aubrey, Life of Francis Bacon, ‘Brief Lives’, chiefly of Contemporaries: set down by John Aubrey, between the years 1669 & 1696, edited from the Author’s MSS, by Andrew Clark, Vol. 1, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1898, pp. 75–6.
14 Francis Bacon, Letter to the Earl of Arundel and Surrey, in J. Spedding (ed.), The Letters and The Life of Francis Bacon, 7.550.
15 Aubrey, Life of Francis Bacon, in Clark (ed.), Vol. 1, pp. 75–6. Aubrey was here recording the account of Bacon’s former secretary Thomas Hobbes.
16 Doody, Pliny’s Encyclopedia. Writing on the causes of Bacon’s death, L. Jardine and A. Stewart (Hostage to Fortune, pp. 504–8) have suggested that Bacon had been taking opiates in an attempt to extend his life when he fell ill. The fact that Bacon’s fingers were too ‘disjointed’ [numb] to hold a pen is, they argue, evidence that he died from ‘an overdose of inhaled nitre or opiates’.
17 Francis Bacon, Letter to the Earl of Arundel and Surrey, 7.550.
18 On some of the eyewitness accounts of the eruption of 1631 see J. E. Everson, ‘The melting pot of science and belief: studying Vesuvius in seventeenth-century Naples’, Renaissance Studies, Vol. 26, No. 5, November 2012, pp. 691–727.
19 Sir William Hamilton, Letter to the Right Honourable the Earl of Morton, President of the Royal Society, 29 December 1767, Observations on Mount Vesuvius, Mount Etna, and Other Volcanos: In a Series of Letters to the Royal Society, T. Cadell, London, 1773, Letter II, p. 25.
20 Sir William Hamilton, Letter to the Right Honourable the Earl of Morton, 29 December 1767, Observations on Mount Vesuv
ius, 1773, Letter II, p. 27. There was a handsome display of pictures from Hamilton’s Campi Phlegraei at the ‘Volcanoes’ exhibition at the Bodleian in Oxford in spring 2017.
21 See D. Camardo, ‘Herculaneum from the AD 79 eruption to the medieval period: analysis of the documentary, iconographic and archaeological sources, with new data on the beginning of exploration at the ancient town’, Papers of the British School at Rome, Vol. 81, 2013, pp. 328–37.
22 Sir William Hamilton, Letter to Mathew Maty, M. D. Secretary to the Royal Society, 4 October 1768, Observations on Mount Vesuvius, Letter III, pp. 48–9.
23 E. Dwyer, Pompeii’s Living Statues, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2010, p. 26; S. L. Dyson, In Pursuit of Ancient Pasts, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2006, p. 49.
24 For the range of dates given by the manuscripts see M. Borgongino and G. Stefani, ‘Intorno alla data dell’eruzione del 79 d.C.’, Rivista di Studi Pompeiani, Vol. 12/13, 2001–2, p. 178.
25 Berry, Complete Pompeii, p. 20.
26 Description based on the findings outlined by Borgongino and Stefani, ‘Intorno alla data dell’eruzione del 79 d.C.’, pp. 177–215.
27 Though, as Roberts notes, it is strange that this warmer clothing was also found on bodies indoors (Roberts, Life and Death in Pompeii, p. 278).
28 R. Abdy, ‘The Last Coin in Pompeii: A Re-evaluation of the Coin Hoard from the House of the Golden Bracelet’, Numismatic Chronicle, Vol. 173, 2013, pp. 79–83. Cf. G. Stefani and M. Borgongino, ‘Ancora sulla data dell’eruzione’, Rivista di Studi Pompeiani, Vol. 18, 2007, pp. 204–6.
29 G. A. Rolandi, A. Paone, M. di Lascio, G. Stefani, ‘The 79 AD eruption of Somma: The relationship between the date of the eruption and the southeast tephra dispersion’, Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, Vol. 169, 2007, pp. 87–98. In 2018, a charcoal graffito was discovered at Pompeii bearing the date of 17 October. Given that charcoal does not survive for long, the inscription has been taken as evidence that the eruption took place later that month. Like so much of the evidence, however, it fails to offer proof of when exactly in AD 79 Vesuvius erupted.
30 See Dio Cassius Roman History 66.21, where it is said that the eruption took place in the waning of the year, or ‘late autumn’.
31 PLY 5.8.8; 1.18.3.
32 Tacitus Dialogus 38.
33 On decrees and edicts and the development of Roman law see A. M. Riggsby, Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2010, especially pp. 25–39.
34 PLY 6.12.2.
35 See Tacitus Dialogus 20.
36 PLY 9.26.4.
37 As the years went by the court grew steadily noisier and less salubrious, or at least, Pliny became increasingly aware of its shortcomings. See PLY 2.14.
38 PLY 6.33.8.
39 PLY 1.2.2–4.
40 PLY 1.20.22–3.
41 PLY 1.20.3.
42 Homer Iliad 3.221–2; PLY 1.20–2.
43 Homer Odyssey 19.204–9.
44 PLY 1.20.16.
45 Quintilian Institutio Oratoria 11.3.
46 PLY 1.20.17.
47 PLY 1.20.14–15.
48 Tacitus Histories 4.42; Pliny (PLY 2.20.13) says that Regulus rose from poverty to great wealth.
49 Juvenal Satires 4.140–3 (assuming it is the same Montanus); Tacitus Histories 4.42. The unfortunate victim was Piso, who was nominated as successor to Galba, one of the ‘four emperors’ of AD 69. According to Pliny, the legacy-hunting Regulus also conned Piso’s widow Verania, the daughter of a former governor of Britain.
50 PLY 1.5.14.
51 PLY 2.20.7–8.
52 PLY 4.7.4.
53 PLY 1.5.13 expalluit notabiliter, ‘grew paler than usual’.
54 PLY 2.19.
55 PLY 6.2.2.
56 PLY 2.20.14.
57 PLY 4.2.5.
58 Martial Epigrams 1.12.1–2; 1.82.1; PLY 6.2.4.
THREE: To Be Alive Is to Be Awake
1 PLE 17.210.
2 PLY 3.5.
3 Suetonius Life of Vespasian 4.
4 On the Jewish revolt against Rome see M. Goodman, The Ruling Class of Judaea, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987. The most remarkable document from this period is Claudius’ letter of AD 41 to the Alexandrians in which he promoted peace and reaffirmed Jewish rights.
5 As B. Levick explains in Vespasian, Routledge, London and New York, 2016, pp. xiii–xiv, the capture of Jerusalem must have been ‘a prime objective’ of Vespasian’s campaign, but he needed first to pacify the surrounding territories.
6 Josephus Jewish War 3.342–408. The book was translated into Greek and published at Rome.
7 S. Schama observes in The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words (1000 BCE–1492 CE), Bodley Head, London, 2013, p. 299, that the collective suicide of the Jews at Masada and martyrdoms under Hadrian later inspired debates over whether suicide might ever be chosen over forced transgression. On the Jews’ arguments that suicide would be in keeping with established nomoi, see R. Gray, Prophetic Figures in Late Second Temple Jewish Palestine, Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1993, pp. 48–50.
8 Tacitus Histories 1.11.
9 Suetonius Life of Titus 1. As B. W. Jones observes in The Emperor Domitian, Routledge, London and New York, 1992, p. 8, this honour was ordinarily reserved for sons of foreign princes but could also be conferred upon eminent Italians.
10 Suetonius Life of Titus 7.
11 Suetonius Life of Titus 3.
12 On the trappings and their connection to Pliny the Elder see I. Jenkins, P. Craddock, and J. Lambert, ‘A Group of Silvered-Bronze Horse-Trappings from Xanten (“Castra Vetera”)’, Britannia, Vol. 16, 1985, pp. 141–64.
13 Jenkins, Craddock, and Lambert, ‘A Group of Silvered-Bronze Horse-Trappings from Xanten (“Castra Vetera”)’, p. 157.
14 PLE 5.73.
15 PLE 12.111.
16 Suetonius Life of Vespasian 21.
17 Suetonius Life of Vespasian 16.
18 From the lost biography of Pliny the Elder, attributed to Suetonius.
19 Suetonius Life of Vespasian 23.
20 PLE Preface 18.
21 PLY 3.5.8.
22 PLE 7.167.
23 PLE Preface 18.
24 Red Figure Calyx Krater by Euphronios, c.515 BC.
25 PLE Preface 3.
26 Dio Cassius Roman History 66.24; Suetonius Life of Titus 8.
27 PLY 5.8.3 citing Virgil Georgics 3.9–10.
28 Martial, quoted by Pliny in Letter 3.21.
29 PLY 3.21.2.
30 PLY 3.5.15.
31 PLY 1.15. ‘Dancing girls’ from Cadiz were notorious (see Martial Epigrams 5.78); the satirist Juvenal knew just how much they aroused their audiences with their moves (see Juvenal Satires 11.162–6).
32 On Pliny’s balanced diet and balanced life see E. Gowers, The Loaded Table: Representations of Food in Roman Literature, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993, pp. 267–78.
33 PLE 20.64. Lettuces could be sown at any time of year, but Pliny the Elder recommended doing so upon the winter solstice (PLE 19.130–1).
34 PLY 7.3.2–5.
35 PLE 19.55.
36 M. de Montaigne, ‘Of Ancient Customs’, translated by Charles Cotton, p. 58 in Michel de Montaigne Selected Essays, edited by W. C. Hazlitt, Dover Publications Ltd, New York, 2011. Montaigne’s reference to snow and wine is cited by H. N. Wethered, A Short History of Gardens, Methuen & Co., London, 1933, p. 85.
37 S. Bakewell, How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, Vintage Books, London, 2011, p. 29. Montaigne sourced his quotation from PLE 2.25.
38 PLE 32.64.
39 See A. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘Pliny the Elder and Man’s Unnatural History’, Greece & Rome, Vol. 37, No. 1, April 1990, p. 87.
40 PLE 9.105.
41 PLE 32.63.
42 PLE 9.107; 11.129.
43 PLE 32.60.
44 PLE 9.107–9.
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sp; 45 PLE 2.189.
46 PLE 32.60.
47 PLE 9.168–9.
48 PLE 32.59.
49 PLE 32.64–5.
50 PLE 9.104.
51 PLY 2.9.4. S. E. Hoffer suggests in The Anxieties of Pliny the Younger (Scholars Press, Atlanta, 1999, p. 26), that Septicius Clarus shared Pliny’s distaste for these extravagant suppers, but was obliged to dine elsewhere to court a patron, perhaps to develop support for his nephew.
52 Scriptores Historiae Augustae Hadrian 11.3. This source dates to the fourth century AD.
53 AE 1953.73.
54 PLY 1.24; 3.8. On some of Pliny’s lacklustre friends see R. Syme, ‘Pliny’s Less Successful Friends’, Roman Papers, Vol. 2, edited by E. Badian, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1991, pp. 477–95.
55 Suetonius was probably sitting on the drafts of his De viris illustribus, which in the fourth century AD would inspire Jerome’s work of the same title. For the arguments for the work in question being the De viris illustribus see, for example, T. J. Power, ‘Pliny, Letters 5.10 and the Literary Career of Suetonius’, Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 100, 2010, p. 141ff. Suetonius also wrote a work on Nature, the so-called Prata, which is now fragmentary.
56 PLY 5.10.2.
57 PLY 5.9.2.
58 Artemidorus of Ephesus On the Interpretation of Dreams 1.79.
59 PLY 1.18.4. The words were originally spoken by Hector in Homer Iliad 12.243.
60 Homer Odyssey 19.560–7.
61 Virgil Aeneid 6.896.
62 PLY 1.18.1; Homer Iliad 1.63.
63 Homer Iliad 2.1–40.
FOUR: Solitary as an Oyster
1 Catullus Carmina 14.15.
2 Martial Epigrams 14.1.
3 Statius Silvae 1.6. Pliny the Elder criticised his contemporaries who travelled to Georgia and Numidia in search of fowl and suffered the heat of Ethiopia when there were perfectly good views from the windows at home – PLE 19.52.
4 PLY 2.17.22.
5 Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Stave I.
6 PLY 2.17.2.
7 The layers as found in the test trench are described by A. Claridge, ‘Report on excavations at the imperial vicus 1995–1998’, Laurentine Shore Project, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2010 (https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/laurentineshore), p. 9.
8 R. A. Lanciani, Wanderings in the Roman Campagna, Constable & Co., London, 1909, pp. 307–11, citing Varro De re rustica 3.13.2–3 and an inscription (CIL VI 8583) that lists Tiberius’ freedman Tiberius Claudius Speculator as procurator Laurento AD elephantos; collegio saltuariorum – AE 1920 no. 122. Lanciani’s book is cited by and available in extract via the Royal Holloway Laurentine Shore Project. It was a role of aediles to stage such spectacles.