Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
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Pliny the Elder

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Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus (born 23 or 24 CE; died 79 CE), known in English as Pliny the Elder (/ˈplɪni/ PLIN-ee), was a Roman author, naturalist, scientist, naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and friend of the emperor Vespasian. Pliny wrote the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia (Natural History), a comprehensive thirty-seven-volume work covering a vast array of topics on human knowledge and the natural world, which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field.

Among Pliny's greatest works[according to whom?] was the twenty-volume Bella Germaniae ("Wars of Germania"), which is no longer extant. Bella Germaniae, which began where Aufidius Bassus' writings on Germani wars left off, was used as a source by other prominent Roman historians, including Plutarch, Tacitus, and Suetonius. Tacitus may have used Bella Germaniae as the primary source for his work, De origine et situ Germanorum ("On the Origin and Situation of the Germani").

Pliny the Elder died in AD 79 in Stabiae while attempting to rescue people from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

Pliny's dates are pinned to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE and a statement by his nephew that he died in his 56th year, which would put his birth in 23 or 24 CE.

Pliny was the son of an equestrian Gaius Plinius Celer and his wife, Marcella. Neither the Elder nor the Younger Pliny mention these names. Their ultimate source is a fragmentary inscription (CIL V 1 3442) found in a field in Verona and recorded by the 16th-century Augustinian friar Onofrio Panvinio. The form is an elegy. The most commonly accepted reconstruction is

PLINIVS SECVNDVS AVGV. LERI. PATRI. MATRI. MARCELLAE. TESTAMENTO FIERI IVSSO

Plinius Secundus augur ordered this to be made as a testament to his father [Ce]ler and his mother [Grania] Marcella

The actual words are fragmentary. The reading of the inscription depends on the reconstruction, but in all cases the names come through. Whether he was an augur and whether she was named Grania Marcella are less certain. Jean Hardouin presents a statement from an unknown source that he claims was ancient, that Pliny was from Verona and that his parents were Celer and Marcella. Hardouin also cites the conterraneity (see below) of Catullus.

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