Pliny's World offers readers a translation of the Natural History's opening books unprecedented for its completeness, accuracy and accessibility. Here, in quirky, often breathless style, Pliny lays the foundation of a hugely influential encyclopedia with coverage of the universe, stars, planets and moon, followed by earth's climate and then its physical and human geography. From Rome as ruling centerpoint, Pliny surveys the known world and its countless peoples in a vast arc from the Atlantic to Sri Lanka, embracing the Danube, Euphrates and Nile lands, Atlas and Caucasus mountains, Germany, Africa, Arabia, India. Passages from later books further illustrating his geographical grasp are appended, on topics as varied as wine, water, trees, birds and fish. Throughout, Pliny's frank expression of strong opinions about religion, distorted human values, abuse of the environment (and more) reveals uncannily modern preoccupations. His work remained an inspirational resource through the Renaissance, and still fascinates today.

As a detailed study of the human animal, described by its author as the raison d'etre of nature, Book Seven of the elder Pliny's Natural History is crucial to the understanding of the work as a whole. In addition, however, it provides a valuable insight into the extraordinary complex of ideas and beliefs current in Pliny's era, many of which have resonances for other eras and cultures. The present study includes a substantial introduction examining the background to Pliny's life, thought, and writing, together with a modern English translation, and a detailed commentary which emphasizes the importance of Book Seven as possibly the most fascinating cultural record surviving from early imperial Rome.

The most important surviving encyclopedia from the ancient world, Pliny the Elder's Natural History is unparalleled as a guide to the cultural meanings of everyday things in first-century Rome. As part of a new direction in classical scholarship, Trevor Murphy reads the work not just for the information it contains, but to understand how and why Pliny collects and presents information as he does. Concentrating on the geographic and ethnographic information in Pliny, Murphy demonstrates the work's political importance. The selection and arrangement of the encyclopedia's material show that it is more than an instrument of reference: it is a monument to the power of Roman imperial society.

Pliny the Elder's Natural History is a vast encyclopaedia, surveying natural phenomena from cosmology to biology, medicine to magic. Direct observation, informed speculation and common knowledge are combined to present a key snapshot of ancient thought and the Romans' perspective on the world around them. Book VII of The Natural History provides a detailed examination of the human animal and is crucial to understanding the work as a whole. In Pliny's eyes, mankind 'for whose sake nature was created', represents the basis for which the natural world was founded and structured. As a result, the book provides valuable insight into the extraordinary complex of ideas and beliefs that were current in Pliny's era. One of the most interesting transitions of subject in The Natural History is that from man to animals (between Books VII and VIII) and for this reason the section on elephants at the beginning of Book VIII is included here, to show how Pliny moves on to his account of the animal he considers 'nearest to the human disposition'. This edition provides the full Latin text accompanied by commentary notes that provide linguistic help and explanations, plus vocabulary lists of Latin terms and an index of proper names. The in-depth introduction provides valuable details about the work's historical, scientific and literary context, as well as an overview of the work's legacy and reception.

“A wonderfully rich, witty, insightful, and wide-ranging portrait of the two Plinys and their world.”—Sarah Bakewell, author of How to Live When Pliny the Elder perished at Stabiae during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, he left behind an enormous compendium of knowledge, his thirty-seven-volume Natural History, and a teenaged nephew who revered him as a father. Grieving his loss, Pliny the Younger inherited the Elder’s notebooks—filled with pearls of wisdom—and his legacy. At its heart, The Shadow of Vesuvius is a literary biography of the younger man, who would grow up to become a lawyer, senator, poet, collector of villas, and chronicler of the Roman Empire from the dire days of terror under Emperor Domitian to the gentler times of Emperor Trajan. A biography that will appeal to lovers of Mary Beard books, it is also a moving narrative about the profound influence of a father figure on his adopted son. Interweaving the younger Pliny’s Letters with extracts from the Elder’s Natural History, Daisy Dunn paints a vivid, compellingly readable portrait of two of antiquity’s greatest minds.

Pliny's Naturalis Historia – a brilliant and sophisticated encyclopaedia of the scientific, artistic, philosophical, botanical and zoological riches of the ancient world – has had a long career in the footnotes of historical studies. This is a phenomenon born of the sense that the work was there to consult, or to ‘use’, as a resource to aid investigation of specific technical issues or passages, of Quellenforschung, or of delimited topic areas. The contributors to the present volume both represent and join a new generation of critics who have begun to try to ‘read’ this monumental text, and – by examining the dominant motifs which give shape and order to the work – to construct frameworks within which we may understand and interpret Pliny’s overarching agenda.