Gaius Plinius Secundus (23 or 24 – 25 August 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( ), was a Roman author, naturalist, scientist, naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, procurator, and friend of the emperor Vespasian. Pliny wrote the encyclopedic (Natural History), a 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.
Pliny produced seven works spanning 102 volumes, of which only Natural History survives. Among the lost works was the twenty-volume Bella Germaniae (Wars of Germania), 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). Also substantial was the thirty-one-volume history A fine Aufidii Bassi, which extended Aufidius Bassus' earlier historical work to Pliny's day.
Pliny the Elder died in AD 79 in Stabiae while attempting to rescue people from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. In his will, Pliny the Elder posthumously adopted his nephew Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, who is known to history as Pliny the Younger.
Life and times Background
Pliny's dates are pinned to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 and a statement by his nephew that he died in his 56th year, which would put his birth
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:
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.So also is the further speculation by Metello that she was the daughter of Titus, which suggests a possible connection with the Titii Pomponii on his mother's side, and a connection with the Caecilii (Celer was a cognomen used by that Gens) on his father's side: 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 contrary (see below) of Catullus.
How the inscription got to Verona is unknown, but it could have arrived by dispersal of property from Pliny the Younger's estate at Colle Plinio, north of Città di Castello, identified with certainty by his initials in the roof tiles. He kept statues of his ancestors there. Pliny the Elder was born at Como, not at Verona: it is only as a native of old Gallia Transpadana that he calls Catullus of Verona his conterraneus, or fellow-countryman, not his municeps, or fellow-townsman. A statue of Pliny on the façade of the Como Cathedral celebrates him as a native son. He had a sister, Plinia, who married into the Caecilii and was the mother of his nephew, Pliny the Younger, whose letters describe his work and study regimen in detail.
In one of his letters to Tacitus (avunculus meus), Pliny the Younger details how his uncle's breakfasts would be light and simple (levis et facilis) following the customs of our forefathers (veterum more interdiu). Pliny the Younger wanted to convey that Pliny the Elder was a "good Roman", which means that he maintained the customs of the great Roman forefathers. This statement would have pleased Tacitus.
Two inscriptions identifying the hometown of Pliny the Younger as Como take precedence over the Verona theory. One (CIL V 5262) commemorates the younger's career as the imperial magistrate and details his considerable charitable and municipal expenses on behalf of the people of Como. Another (CIL V 5667) identifies his father Lucius' village as present-day Fecchio (tribe Oufentina), a hamlet of Cantù, near Como. Therefore, Plinia likely was a local girl and Pliny the Elder, her brother, was from Como.
Gaius was a member of the Plinia gens: the Insubric root Plina still persists, with rhotacism, in the local surname "Prina". He did not take his father's cognomen, Celer, but assumed his own, Secundus. As his adopted son took the same cognomen, Pliny founded a branch, the Plinii Secundi. The family was prosperous; Pliny the Younger's combined inherited estates made him so wealthy that he could found a school and a library, endow a fund to feed the women and children of Como, and own numerous estates around Rome and Lake Como, as well as enrich some of his friends as a personal favor. No earlier instances of the Plinii are known.
In 59 BC, only about 82 years before Pliny's birth, Julius Caesar founded Novum Comum (reverting to Comum) as a to secure the region against the Alpine tribes, whom he had been unable to defeat. He imported a population of 4,500 from other provinces to be placed in Comasco and 500 aristocratic Greeks to found Novum Comum itself. The community was thus multi-ethnic and the Plinies could have come from anywhere. Whether any conclusions can be drawn from Pliny's preference for Greek words, or Julius Pokorny's derivation of the name from north Italic as "bald" is a matter of speculative opinion. No record of any ethnic distinctions in Pliny's time is apparent—the population considered themselves to be Roman citizens.
Pliny the Elder did not marry and had no children. After his death, he left his estate to his adopted nephew, Pliny the Younger. This adoption was probably testamentary, wherein Pliny the Younger assumed the name "Plinius" while gaining nothing recognizable by Roman jurisprudence beyond what was already guaranteed as an heir. The amount of interaction between the two Plinies before this is uncertain, though Pliny the Younger wrote about his adopted father with some familiarity, and for at least some time Pliny the Elder resided in the same house in Misenum with his sister and nephew; they were living there when Pliny the Elder decided to investigate the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, and was sidetracked by the need for rescue operations and a messenger from his friend Rectina asking for assistance.
Student and lawyer Pliny's father took him to Rome to be educated in lawmaking. Pliny relates that he saw Marcus Servilius Nonianus.
Junior officer In AD 46, at about age 23, Pliny entered the army as a junior officer, as was the custom for young men of equestrian rank. Ronald Syme, Plinian scholar, reconstructs three periods at three ranks.Beagon (2005) pg.3.Syme (1969), pg. 207.
Pliny's interest in Roman literature attracted the attention and friendship of other men of letters in the higher ranks, with whom he formed lasting friendships. Later, these friendships assisted his entry into the upper echelons of the state; however, he was trusted for his knowledge and ability, as well. According to Syme, he began as a praefectus cohortis, a "commander of a cohort" (an infantry cohort, as junior officers began in the infantry), under Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, himself a writer (whose works did not survive) in Germania Inferior. In AD 47, he took part in the Roman conquest of the Chauci and the construction of the canal between the rivers Maas and Rhine. His description of the Roman ships anchored in the stream overnight having to ward off floating trees has the stamp of an eyewitness account.
At some uncertain date, Pliny was transferred to the command of Germania Superior under Publius Pomponius Secundus with a promotion to military tribune, which was a staff position, with duties assigned by the district commander. Pomponius was a half-brother of Corbulo. They had the same mother, Vistilia, a powerful matron of the Roman upper classes, who had seven children by six husbands, some of whom had imperial connections, including a future empress. Pliny's assignments are not clear, but he must have participated in the campaign against the Chatti of AD 50, at age 27, in his fourth year of service. Associated with the commander in the praetorium, he became a familiar and close friend of Pomponius, who also was a man of letters.
At another uncertain date, Pliny was transferred back to Germania Inferior. Corbulo had moved on, assuming command in the east. This time, Pliny was promoted to praefectus alae, "commander of a wing", responsible for a cavalry battalion of about 480 men. He spent the rest of his military service there. A decorative phalera, or piece of harness, with his name on it has been found at Castra Vetera, modern Xanten, then a large Roman army and naval base on the lower Rhine. Pliny's last commander there, apparently neither a man of letters nor a close friend of his, was Pompeius Paullinus, governor of Germania Inferior AD 55–58.Griffin (1992), pg. 438. Pliny relates that he personally knew Paulinus to have carried around 12,000 pounds of silver service on which to dine in a campaign against the Germani (a practice which would not have endeared him to the disciplined Pliny).
According to his nephew, during this period, he wrote his first book (perhaps in winter quarters when more spare time was available), a work on the use of missiles on horseback, De Jaculatione Equestri ("On the Use of the Dart by Cavalry"). It has not survived, but in Natural History, he seems to reveal at least part of its content, using the movements of the horse to assist the javelin-man in throwing missiles while astride its back. During this period, he also dreamed that the spirit of Drusus Nero begged him to save his memory from oblivion. The dream prompted Pliny to begin forthwith a history of all the wars between the Romans and the Germani, which he did not complete for some years.
Literary interlude At the earliest time that Pliny could have left the service, Nero, the last of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, had been emperor for two years. He did not leave office until AD 68, when Pliny was 45 years old. During that time, Pliny did not hold any high office or work in the service of the state. In the subsequent Flavian dynasty, his services were in such demand that he had to give up his law practice, which suggests that he had been trying not to attract the attention of Nero, who was a dangerous acquaintance.
Under Nero, Pliny lived mainly in Rome. He mentions the map of Armenia and the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea, which was sent to Rome by the staff of Corbulo in 58. He also witnessed the construction of Nero's Domus Aurea or "Golden House" after the Great Fire of Rome in 64.
Besides pleading law cases, Pliny wrote, researched, and studied. His second published work was The Life of Pomponius Secundus, a two-volume biography of his old commander, Pomponius Secundus.
Meanwhile, he was completing his monumental work, Bella Germaniae, the only authority expressly quoted in the first six books of the Annales of Tacitus, and probably one of the principal authorities for the same author's Germania. It disappeared in favor of the writings of Tacitus (which are far shorter), and, early in the fifth century, Symmachus had little hope of finding a copy.