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Gaius Plinius Secundus, ( 23 – 79 ) better known as '''Pliny the Elder''', was an ancient Author and Natural Philosopher of some importance who wrote '' Naturalis Historia ''.
CHRONOLOGY OF HIS LIFE
He mentions the he became a keen student of Philosophy and Rhetoric , and began practicing as an Advocate .
In , he had a dream in which the victor enjoined him to transmit his exploits to posterity (Plin. Epp. iii.5, 4). The dream prompted Pliny to begin forthwith a history of all the War s between the Romans and the Germans.
Meanwhile he was completing the twenty books of his ''History of the German Wars'', the only authority expressly quoted in the first six books of the '' Annals '' of Tacitus (1.69), and probably one of the principal authorities for the '' Germania ''. It was superseded by the writings of Tacitus, and, early in the 5th Century , Symmachus had little hope of finding a copy (Epp. xiv.8). He also devoted much of his time to writing on the comparatively safe subjects of Grammar and rhetoric. A detailed work on rhetoric, entitled ''Studiosus'', was followed by eight books, ''Dubii sermonis'', in 67 .
He also virtually completed his great work, the '' Naturalis Historia '', an Encyclopedia into which Pliny collected much of the knowledge of his time. The work had been planned under the rule of Nero. The materials collected for this purpose filled rather less than 160 volumes in 23 , when Larcius Licinus , the Praetorian Legate of Hispania Tarraconensis, vainly offered to purchase them for a sum equivalent to more than £3,200 (''1911 estimated value'') or £200,000 (''2002 estimated value''). He dedicated the work to the emperor Titus Flavius Vespasianus in 77 . VESUVIUS Soon afterwards he received from Vespasian the appointment of '' Praefect '' of the Roman Fleet at Misenum . On August 24 , 79 A.D., he was stationed at Misenum, at the time of the great Eruption of Mount Vesuvius , which overwhelmed Pompeii and Herculaneum . A desire to observe the phenomenon directly, and also to rescue some of his friends from their perilous position on the shore of the Bay Of Naples , led to his launching his galleys and crossing the bay to Stabiae (near the modern town of Castellammare Di Stabia ). His nephew, Pliny the Younger, provided an account of his death, and suggested that he collapsed and died through inhaling poisonous gases emitted from the volcano. However, Stabiae was 16 km from the vent, and his companions were unaffected, so it is more likely that he died through a different cause, such as a Stroke or Heart Attack {Link without Title} . He is still remembered in Vulcanology where the term ''plinian'' (or ''plinean'') refers to a Very Violent Eruption Of A Volcano after a long period of being dormant. The term ''ultra-plinian'' is reserved for the most violent type of plinian eruption such as the 1883 destruction of Krakatoa . The story of his last hours is told in an interesting letter addressed twenty-seven years afterwards to Tacitus by the Elder Pliny's nephew and heir, Pliny The Younger (Epp. vi.16), who also sends to another correspondent an account of his uncle's writings and his manner of life (iii.5):
His only writings to have survived to modern times is the ''Naturalis historia''. It was used as an authority over the following centuries by countless scholars. LITERATURE At the conclusion of his literary labours, as the only Roman who had ever taken for his theme the whole realm of nature, he prays for the blessing of the universal mother on his completed work. In literature he assigns the highest place to .
It was his scientific curiosity as to the phenomena of the eruption of Vesuvius that brought his life of unwearied study to a premature end; and any criticism of his faults of omission is disarmed by the candour of the confession in his preface: ''nec dubitamus multa esse quae et nos praeterierint; homines enim sumus et occupati officiis''.
About the middle of the 3rd Century an abstract of the geographical portions of Pliny's work was produced by Solinus ; and early in the 4th Century the medical passages were collected in the ''Medicina Plinii''. Early in the 8th Century we find Bede in possession of an excellent manuscript of the whole work. In the 9th Century Alcuin sends to Charlemagne for a copy of the earlier books (Epp. 103, Jaffé); and Dicuil gathers extracts from the pages of Pliny for his own ''Mensura orbis terrae'' (ca. 825 ). Pliny's work was held in high esteem in the Middle Ages . The number of extant manuscripts is about 200; but the best of the more ancient manuscripts, that at Bamberg , contains only books xxxii-xxxvii. Robert Of Cricklade , Prior of St. Frideswide at Oxford , dedicated to Henry II a ''Defloratio'' consisting of nine books of selections taken from one of the manuscripts of this class, which has been recently recognized as sometimes supplying us with the only evidence for the true text. Among the later manuscripts, the ''codex Vesontinus'', formerly at Besançon ( 11th Century ), has been divided into three portions, now in Rome, Paris , and Leiden respectively, while there is also a transcript of the whole of this manuscript at Leiden.
RESEARCH AFTER 1500 Sir Thomas Browne expressed a wholesome skepticism about Pliny's dependability in his '' Pseudodoxia Epidemica '' ( 1646 ): "Now what is very strange, there is scarce a popular error passant in our days, which is not either directly expressed, or diductively contained in this Work; which being in the hands of most men, hath proved a powerful occasion of their propagation. Wherein notwithstanding the credulity of the Reader is more condemnable then the curiosity of the Author: for commonly he nameth the Authors from whom he received those accounts, and writes but as he reads, as in his Preface to Vespasian he acknowledgeth." Most of the recent research on Pliny has been concentrated on the investigation of his authorities, especially those which he followed in his chapters on the History Of Art - the only ancient account of that subject which has survived. A Carnelian inscribed with the letters C. PLIN. has been reproduced by Cades (v.211) from the original in the Vannutelli Collection . It represents an ancient Roman with an almost completely bald forehead and a double chin; and is almost certainly a portrait, not of Pliny the Elder, but of Pompey The Great . Seated statues of both the Plinies, clad in the garb of scholars of the year 1500 , may be seen in the niches on either side of the main entrance to the Cathedral church of Como. The elder Pliny's anecdotes of Greek artists supplied Vasari with the subjects of the Fresco es which still adorn the interior of his former home at Arezzo . REFERENCES
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