Pliny natural history full text
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Natural History (Pliny)
Encyclopedia written by Pliny the Elder
The Natural History (Latin: Naturalis Historia) is a Latin work by Pliny the Elder. The largest single work to have survived from the Roman Empire to the modern day, the Natural History compiles information gleaned from other ancient authors. Despite the work's title, its subject area is not limited to what is today understood by natural history; Pliny himself defines his scope as "the natural world, or life".[2] It is encyclopedic in scope, but its structure is not like that of a modern encyclopedia. It is the only work by Pliny to have survived, and the last that he published. He published the first 10 books in AD 77, but had not made a final revision of the remainder at the time of his death during the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius. The rest was published posthumously by Pliny's nephew, Pliny the Younger.
The work is divided into 37 books, organised into 10 volumes. These cover topics including astronomy, mathematics, geography, ethnography, anthropology, human physiology, zoology, botany,
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Pliny the Elder
and the Rediscovery
of Classical Art
During the Renaissance
One must go back to Ancient Rome in order to study the burgeoning relationships between art and society at a time when images had already become the dominant means of expression. Valérie Naas offers us a valuable critical appreciation of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, a key source on ancient art. She thus reveals the role art-as-war-booty played for the victors who had brought countless statues back to Rome.
Alexandre Grandazzi emphatically shows how original was the framework within which these transfers took place, and he also brings out the political impact of this form of art that was not yet so named. The Romans carried off the masterpieces of Greece, but also and especially they brought back with them a model, stealing thereby from the vanquished their creative powers while admiring them to the point of imitating their style and making a host of copies. By imposing a new context and new edifying figures on this largely borrowed form of art, the Romans conferred upon it a new role as
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C. Pli'nius Secundus or the elder Plinius or Plinius the elder
the celebrated author of the HistoriaNaturalis,was born A. D. 23, having reached the age of 56 at the time of his death, which took place in A. D. 79. (Plin. Jun. Epist.3.5.) The question as to the place of his birth has been the subject of a voluminous and rather angry discussion between the champions of Verona and those of Novum Comum (the modern Como). That he was born at one or other of these two towns sees pretty certain; Hardouin's notion, that he was born at Rome, has nothing to support it. The claim of Comum seems to be, on the whole, the better founded of the two. In the life of Pliny ascribed to Suetonius, and by Eusebius, or his translator Jerome, he is styled Novocomensis. Another anonymous life of Pliny (apparently of late origin and of no authority) calls him a native of Verona; and it has been thought that the claim of Verona to be considered as his birth-place is confirmed by the fact that Pliny himself (Praef. init.) calls Catullus, who was a native of Verona, his conterraneus.On the other hCopyright ©dewpant.pages.dev 2025