Rocky Road: Pliny the Elder

Pliny the Elder

From The Beginnings of Western Science by David C. Lindberg

Next to Aristotle, Pliny the Elder was probably the single most influential scholar in Antiquity. More than a millennium after his death, Pliny's work was at least as widely read as that of Renaissance greats Conrad Gesner and Ulisse Aldrovandi. By the middle of the 15th century, some two hundred manuscript versions of his Natural History were floating around the educated world.

Born into provincial nobility in northern Italy around 23 AD, Pliny was educated in Rome, advanced himself through a military career under Emperor Vespasian, and finally turned to writing. Pliny wrote several books on Roman history and a grammar book, but by far his greatest achievement was Natural History. In writing Natural History, Pliny or his assistants extracted roughly 20,000 facts from 2,000 volumes by 100 authors. The 37-volume history had a table of contents that, when translated into English, required more than 70 pages.

In Pliny's 37 volumes of Natural History, Volume 1 mostly summarized the remaining 36 books. Volume 2 covered cosmology and astronomy. Volumes 3 through 6 described geography. Volumes 7 through 11 covered zoology — everything from people to fish to bugs — relying strongly on the teachings of Aristotle. Volumes 12 through 19 covered botany, including much of the work of Theophrastus. Volumes 20 through 32 were devoted to drugs and medicine. Volumes 33 through 37 covered rocks, metals, and precious stones.

Compiling so much information didn't leave much time for fact checking, and Pliny verified little of what he wrote. Among the marvels he described were monstrous races in far-off places: evil-eyed Illyrians, one-legged Monocoli and animal-human hybrids like the one shown here. Monsters particularly congregated, he suspected, in places like India and Ethiopia. He also described a boy who rode to and from school on a dolphin's back, and the gigantic skeletal remains of the mythical hunter Orion. He described a battle between an elephant and a dragon, whose blood combined, to account for the origin of cinnabar. He wrote of elephants walking to a river for a purification ritual at the new moon then carrying their young in a procession afterwards. He described petrified shark teeth as glossopetrae (tongue stones), and wrote of the octopus, "No animal is more savage in causing the death of a man in the water." He recommended treating a scorpion's bite by consuming the animal's ashes in a glass of wine.

Not surprisingly, one modern science historian (Brian Cummings) has described Pliny as "endearingly batty."

Pliny's fantastic descriptions and anecdotes weren't accompanied by pictures. He opposed the use of illustrations, thinking they would be degraded by repeated copying. He was probably right, though even degraded images might have been more reliable than some of his text.

If Pliny's accuracy was lacking, his productivity certainly wasn't. According to his nephew, Pliny the Elder rose around midnight to start working and hardly slept. He insisted on having a book read to him during his leisure time while he took notes, "being accustomed to say that no book was so bad as not to contain something useful." He even had himself carried from place to place rather than walk, so as to keep reading.

Unlike the work of other scholars from Antiquity, Pliny's work fared quite well during the Middle Ages. Natural History proved such an enormous influence on medieval thought that no full-scale critique of the work was produced until 1492. Savants and collectors throughout the Renaissance likewise saw him as a role model. One reason Pliny's work survived so well was that it was written in Latin — for centuries, the privileged few who could read anything could read Latin as easily as their own language.

Pliny the Elder was killed during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, apparently suffocated by volcanic ash. In command of the Roman fleet at the time, he was headed for the volcano, hoping to get a closer look and, rather ironically, to reassure the locals.

For more information:
The Beginnings of Western Science by David C. Lindberg
Cultures of Natural History edited by Jardine, Secord and Spary
The First Fossil Hunters by Adrienne Mayor
Possessing Nature by Paula Findlen
The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages by Edward Grant
Renaissance Beasts edited by Erica Fudge
Monsters of the Sea by Richard Ellis
The Naming of Names by Anna Pavord
The Great Naturalists edited by Robert Huxley
Pliny the Elder (http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9060423/Pliny-the-Elder)
Matters of Exchange by Harold J. Cook
Nature and Its Symbols by Lucia Impelluso, translated by Stephen Sartarelli
Fossils: Evidence of Vanished Worlds by Yvette Gayrard-Valy
Dragons, Unicorns, and Sea Serpents by Charles Gould
Fossil Revolution by Douglas Palmer
Color by Victoria Finlay