Pliny The Elder Analysis

Pliny the Elder or Gaius Plinius Secundus in Latin, is best known for his extensive work Natural History or Naturalis Historia (Purcell: 2005). Pliny's only surviving work spans over 37 books covering the of topics, astronomy, geography, animals including humans, plants and agriculture, medicine, and metals and minerals (Stannard: 2013). In 23AD, Pliny was born at Novum Comum, in Gallia Cisalpine, Italy, to a prosperous equestrian family (Purcell: 2005). He was a military man serving in Germany eventually rising the the position of cavalry commander, he studied law practices, and was a naturalist and an author. Pliny met his demise on August 24th, 79AD when he was asphyxiated by the volcanic fumes from the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius near Pompeii.

The majority of the writing in these sections are just lists of rivers, and towns, its seems as though he has included these for the sake of being complete in his collection of books. I felt bored and unengaged while reading through it, though it was informative. Pliny appears to be accurate as he takes the time to disprove a few beliefs of his time, as well he consults several different sources albeit he does not give all of his sources a name. At times he will specifically name his source and at others he will simply credit them as authors, authorities or historians. He enjoys including the distances between towns to give readers a perspective of how far away a town would be from the sea, but I find it difficult to believe that these measurements are primary evidence, rather I believe that he gathered them from secondary sources. I doubt that Pliny would have travelled to such great lengths to calculate the distance. When he does include distances and acknowledges a secondary source, he does not give specific names, he labels them as 'authorities'. Pliny may have just made relative estimations of the distances to make himself sound more credible by having numerical figures in his work. In section 16, Pliny writes, “ one is ashamed to borrow an account of Italy from the Greeks” (Pliny: III § 16). From what I have gathered from biographies of Pliny he utilized Greek texts as a valued resource throughout his work, yet here he is ashamed to have consulted from them. Unfortunately I am unable to say for sure as to how accurate Pliny's accounts truly are. Many of the towns that Pliny writes of can only be found in his Natural History as a majority of them no longer exist in modern Italy. The resources and documents that Pliny referred to may not have survived making it difficult to gage his reliability. It is a reversal in a way, during Pliny's time people believed his accounts to be true as they did