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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2016
For well over a decade Pliny's Historia Naturalis has been recognised as a work which deals with moral questions and imperial culture as much as (perhaps more than) science and nature. These reassessments of the Elder Pliny move away from the disdainful and anachronistic judgments of his writings as ill-judged, naïve and unscientific, and towards a more productive analysis of the Historia Naturalis' symbolic significance and coherence within its first century Roman context. Mary Beagon finds that Pliny is representative of a particular first century ‘emphasis on humanity and its needs and aspirations’, while commenting that it is at this period that mundus and kosmos (Latin and Greek respectively for ‘world’ or ‘universe’) take on the specific meaning of ‘the inhabited world’. The coherence that Beagon finds in Pliny's work is therefore concentrated around the relationship between nature and humankind. It is this relationship, and the symbolic value given to natural phenomena, which allows so much of the Historia Naturalis to act as a cultural commentary on contemporary society. For example, Beagon, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill and Trevor Murphy identify luxuria (‘luxury’) as a key term in Pliny, and insist not only upon his aversion to this concept, but also on his transcendence of the traditional Roman diatribe against decadence and extravagance. For Beagon, Pliny's objection to luxury is partly determined by contemporary political and economic factors, as she claims that Pliny's stance mirrors that of Vespasian, who was attempting to rebuild the state's finances after Nero had squandered them. More particularly, luxuria is the antithesis of uita (‘life’), to the extent that it corrupts and distorts life, leading to passivity and desidia (‘lethargy’)—the exact opposite of the programmatic statement found in the Historia Naturalis Preface 19: uita uigilia est (‘life is being awake’).
1. In particular Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew, ‘Pliny the Elder and Man’s Unnatural History’, G&R 37 (1990), 80–96Google Scholar; also Beagon, Mary, Roman Nature: The Thought of Pliny the Elder (Oxford 1992 Google Scholar), and Murphy, Trevor, Pliny the Elder’s Natural History: The Empire in the Encyclopedia (Oxford 2004 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).
2. Rawson, Elizabeth, Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (London 1985), 252 Google Scholar; Goodyear, F.R.D., ‘Technical Writing’, in E.J. Kenney and W.V. Clausen (eds.), The Cambridge History of Classical Literature ii.4 (Cambridge 1983), 667–78Google Scholar, at 670–72; Rackham, H., Pliny: Natural History I: Books I-II (Cambridge MA 1938), ix Google Scholar. See Evans, Rhiannon, ‘Ethnography’s Freak Show: The Grotesques at the Edge of the Roman Earth’, Ramus 28 (1999), 54–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 54f., for a discussion of scholars’ attitudes to imperial science and geography.
3. Beagon (n.l above), 53.
4. For Roman geography and ethnography as metaphor see O’Gorman, Ellen, ‘No Place Like Rome: Identity and Difference in the Germania of Tacitus’, Ramus 22 (1993), 135–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Evans (n.2 above); and now Murphy (n.l above), 91–95, 135.
5. Wallace-Hadrill (n.l above); Murphy (n.l above), 96–113.
6. Beagon (n.l above), 191.
7. Beagon (n.l above), 74f.
8. Wallace-Hadrill (n.l above), 87.
9. Douglas, Mary, Purity and Danger (London 1966), 55 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10. Although Natura herself is a revered goddess: HN 2.208. Cf. Beagon, Mary, ‘Nature and Views of her Landscapes in Pliny the Elder’, in Graham Shipley and John Salmon (eds.), Human Landscapes in Classical Antiquity: Environment and Culture (London and New York 1996), 284–309Google Scholar, at 285 and 308; Beagon (n.1 above), 26–54.
11. Wallace-Hadrill (n.1 above), 90–92. Pliny’s assessments of correct behaviour are predicated upon the assumed social status of the reader, for which see Sinclair, Patrick, ‘Rhetoric of Writing and Reading in the Preface to Pliny’s Naturalis Historia ’, in A.J. Boyle and W.J. Dominik (eds.), Flavian Rome: Culture, Image, Text (Leiden 2003), 277–99Google Scholar, at 277–79 and 285–87.
12. Wallace-Hadrill (n.1 above), 92.
13. Stahl, William H., Roman Science: Origins, Development and Influence to the Later Middle Ages (Madison 1962), 61 Google Scholar.
14. Dilke, O.A.W., Greek and Roman Maps (Baltimore 1998), 62 Google Scholar.
15. Nicolet, Claude, Space, Geography, and Politics in the Early Roman Empire (Ann Arbor 1991), 41–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See Clarke, Katherine, Between Geography and History: Hellenistic Constructions of the Roman World (Oxford 1999), 128 Google Scholar, on Ptolemy’s distinction between geography and chorography, as universal and detailed works respectively (Geog. 1.1.1).
16. For a critique of Pliny’s and others’ periplus methodology, see Bunbury, E.H., A History of Ancient Geography (London 1883), 355 Google Scholar.
17. This omission is against expectations, set up not only by Strabo and Mela, but the whole ethnographic-geographical tradition from Herodotus onwards. See Murphy (n.1 above), 137. On the relationship between historical and geographical genres in Strabo and other Greek writers, see Clarke (n. 15 above).
18. See Sinclair (n.11 above), 283–91, for discussion of Pliny’s use of birth (and other gendered activities) as metaphors for the production of his text in his preface.
19. Sinclair (n.ll above), 284f., notes that Pliny’s preface figures the writing of his encyclopedia as an ‘act of birth’ (fetura, HN praef. 1), thereby both feminising and naturalising the text’s creation. By the same token, the similar discourse of female nurturing here could be interpreted as naturalising and legitimising Europe’s preeminence.
20. Murphy (n.1 above), 129, comments that ‘although the Natural History cannot ignore history, its will toward complete enumeration resists it.’ I argue that the resistance becomes less and less successful through the geographical books.
21. This is in sharp contrast with Strabo, who insists upon geography as historically contingent: ‘However, the writer concerned with a description of the earth is forced to speak both of what is happening now, and what has happened in the past, especially when it is notable’ (Geog. 6.1.2).
22. The 31 books which follow are, however, replete with remarks on various races, and show a marked antipathy towards all things Greek on Pliny’s part. See Richlin, Amy, ‘Pliny’s Brassière’, in Judith P. Hallett and Marilyn B. Skinner (eds), Roman Sexualities (Princeton 1997), 198f Google Scholar., on Pliny’s aggressive dismissal of Greek doctors (HN 29.1-28).
23. Clark, Stuart (ed.), The Annates School: Critical Assessments (London 1985), 180 Google Scholar.
24. Clark (n.23 above), 182.
25. Numerous examples can be found throughout HN Books 3-6, e.g. 3.24 (the 55 races of people who live in Caesaraugusta in Hispania); 3.50-52 (Etruria’s towns); 4.2 (the races inhabiting Epirus); 4.20 (Arcadia’s towns); 4.33-83 (the 150 races of Macedonia); 5.29-30 (African towns with Roman citizenship, Latin rights etc.); 5.49 (the nomes of Egypt); 5.137 (islands near Ephesus); 6.50 (the Scytharum populi); 6.154-55, 157-59 (the gentes of Arabia).
26. Stahl (n.13 above), 116, on Pliny’s lists: ‘He will be as brief as possible—which we discover means that he will do little more than list names of places and peoples.’ Stahl sees his exhaustive lists as derived from suasoriae and controuersiae, and comments that they are ‘mostly jumbled but sometimes arranged consecutively’, they give ‘a vague sense of progressing in a general direction’, but do not locate places ‘with respect to each other’ and reflect ‘Pliny’s capacity for inflicting tedium’ (ibid.). Marchetti, Sandra Citroni, ‘La rappresentazione del denaro in Plinio il Vecchio e nel moralismo romano’, in Gianpaolo Urso (ed.), Moneta Mercanti Banchieri: I precedent greci e romani dell’Euro (Atti del convegno internazionale, Cividale del Friuli, 26-28 settembre 2002) (Pisa 2003), 283-300Google Scholar, at 285, has more recently, and more neutrally, noted the historical detail lacking in Pliny’s geographical lists, and comments that the only additional information given relates to a location’s place within nature.
27. Thomas, R.F., Lands and Peoples in Roman Poetry (Cambridge 1982), 37 and 45-48Google Scholar.
28. Former towns occasionally appear elsewhere, particularly in Greece (HN 4.13, 14, 24, 59, 62, 68), indicating, amongst other things, the antiquity of the region, but nowhere outside of Italy is there a coherent list of deleted place-names.
29. As Alcock, Susan E., Graecia Capta: The Landscapes of Roman Greece (Cambridge 1993), 27-29Google Scholar, discusses, lost settlements have often been equated with loss of population (oliganthropia) and cultural decline, becoming a literary trope with regard to Greece. At the same time, this discourse does imply a glorious past. Conversely, large populations, such as Rome’s (or here Italy’s), are associated with growth and plenty. Italy therefore has both a past and a present—and a solid body of peoples in both time periods.
30. Romm, J.S., The Edges of the Earth in Ancient Thought (Princeton 1992), 157f Google Scholar.
31. It is unclear whether this is Gaius, who may have planned an invasion (Suet. Gaius 19.5), or Claudius, who carried it out (Suet. Claud. 17); see Parroni, P., Pompeio Mela: De chorographia libri tres (Rome 1984), 16-22Google Scholar, for a discussion of the date of composition. Most scholars prefer 53-54 CE under Claudius, as the circumstances surrounding Caligula’s invasion are hazy. Brodersen, K., Pomponius Mela: Kreuzfahrt durch die alte Welt (Darmstadt 1994 Google Scholar), 1, and Romer, F.E., Pomponius Mela’s Description of the World (Ann Arbor 1998), 3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argue for a pun on Claudius’ name in the description of Britain as tamdiu clausam. On the significance of Britain in Flavian ideology see Rhiannon Evans, ‘Containment and Corruption: The Discourse of Flavian Empire’, in Boyle and Dominik (n.1 1 above), 255-77.
32. HN 5.17, 32-33,34, 36-37,43,44, 65,95, 105-06, 109, 120, 146-47. HN 5.36-37 forms the African triumphal list of Cornelius Balbus (triumphed 19 BCE); compare the place-name list of Augustus’ Alpine triumphal arch at HN 3.136, discussed below.
33. See Murphy (n.l above), 30-36, for a discussion of Pliny’s apparent disorganisation and diffuse rambling prose style.
34. See Fear, A.T., Rome and Baetica: Urbanization in Southern Spain c. 50 BC-AD 150 (Oxford 1996 Google Scholar), 1. It is also worth noting that ‘Hispania Citerior’ and ‘Hispania Ulterior’ had changed their ‘value’ over time, according to the depth of Roman penetration: the provinces consisted of small patches of land along the southern and western coast of the peninsula in the early second century BCE, and the entire peninsula at the end of the Cantabrian Wars in 19 BCE (see Keay, S.J., Roman Spain [London 1988], 26-46Google Scholar). The enlarged Hispania Citerior was reconstituted as Tarraconensis by 5 BCE (Keay, 49).
35. The lists of the geographical books are in some ways analogous to the lists of sources which comprise the whole of the Historia Naturalis Book 1. Although, clearly, the context is different in the opening book, nevertheless the reader may be overwhelmed by the presentation of so many names, facts and figures in so little space. As Doody, Aude, ‘Finding Facts in Pliny’s Encyclopaedia: The Summarium of the Natural History ’, Ramus 30 (2001), 1-22CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has commented, the presentation of Book 1’s summarium has varied across different editions of the text, indicating that its use is unclear, not definitive and open to reinterpretation.
36. See Purcell, Nicholas, ‘The Creation of Provincial Landscape: The Roman Impact on Cisalpine Gaul’, in Thomas Blagg and Martin Millett (eds), The Early Roman Empire in the West (Oxford 1990), 6-29, at 9fGoogle Scholar., and Murphy (n.1 above), 135, on the ways that ancient maps may have been constructed and read.
37. See Trevor Murphy, ‘Pliny’s Naturalis Historia: The Prodigal Text’, in Boyle and Dominik (n. 11 above), 303-08, for an analysis of this incident.
38. Levick, Barbara, Vespasian (London 1993), 73 Google Scholar.
39. P.-W. iii.2, 1779, s.v. Castulo.
40. P.-W. iii.2, 1778f, s.v. Castulo; Keay (n.34 above), 64.
41. Lists of places and peoples occur in regions of special interest: Italy as the location of Rome and generator of the text, and Greece as centre of cultural tradition and the provider of so many of Pliny’s sources (but see n.22 above for Pliny’s conflicted relationship with Greek civilisation). The Spanish provinces were significant as the site of conflict with Carthage, for their wealth, and because they had long been Romanised; in addition Pliny was procurator of Hispania Tarraconensis early in the Flavian period, between 72 and 74 CE (Beagon, Mary, The Elder Pliny on the Human Animal [Oxford 2005], 32 Google Scholar; Syme, R., ‘Pliny the Procurator’, HSCP 73 [1969], 201-36Google Scholar, at 203-36).
42. See Murphy (n.l above), 154-57, who also makes the parallel between imperial geography and triumphal display, including tablets (tituli) bearing the names of conquered cities.
43. Lists of places and peoples conquered are often an integral part of epitaphs, for example the third century inscription for Barbatus in the tomb of the Scipios (CIL 12.6-7 = ILS 986).
44. Augustus is even less specific than Pliny in delineating the extent of the provinces, and does not even mention, for example, that Hispania is divided into Baetica, Lusitania and Tarraconensis (compare HN 3.6-8 and n.22 above).
45. There is also an account of Cornelius Balbus’ triumph, in which were carried the names and images of towns he had conquered in Africa (HN 5.37); see discussion in Murphy (n.l above), 161.
46. As Murphy (n.1 above), 131, suggests, the frequent use of the ‘view from on high’ in the Historia Naturalis constructs the earth as ‘a thing to be possessed’.
47. This strategy is reminiscent of that employed by Lucan, Pliny’s younger contemporary, in a speech which he places in Pompey’s mouth (BC 2.568-95): Caesar’s activities are shown to form a negative triumphal list, while Pompey legitimises his own campaign by extolling his many foreign victories.
48. For example there are two towns named ‘Pompeiopolis’ in Asia Minor, which form part of longer lists of settlements (HN 5.92, 6.7); Pompey’s operations near the Caspian Sea in the Mithridatic Wars are recalled to establish water quality and distances between points locally (HN 6.51-52); and his tomb near Pelusium is listed along with towns in the area (HN 5.68). See also HN 3.18, 101, 124; 6.120.
49. Permanent sculptural trophies had been set up across the empire by Augustus, for example, at La Turbie (Formigé, Jules, Le Trophée des Alpes (La Turbie) [Paris 1949]Google Scholar); and Trajan would erect one at Adamklissi (Florescu, Florea Bobu, Das Siegesdenkmal von Adamklissi: Tropaeum Traiani [Bucharest 1965]Google Scholar). The base of Trajan’s Column, with its mélange of Dacian arms carved in careful relief, provides another piling up of the proof of conquest.
50. Holliday, Peter J., ‘Roman Triumphal Painting: Its Function, Development, and Reception’, ABull 79 (1997), 130-47Google Scholar; Beacham, Richard C., Spectacle Entertainments of Early Imperial Rome (New Haven 1999), 20 Google Scholar.
51. Murphy (n.37 above), 310, comments that Pliny’s lack of originality and his position as a compiler reflect his conviction that all knowledge is at his disposal, and connects this confidence to the reach of Rome’s empire.
52. This is an association made by art historians in particular, as both statuary and numismatic depictions of provincial peoples are often viewed as increasingly sympathetic in the second century; see e.g. Ungaro, Lucrezia, La Rocca, Eugenio and Meneghini, Roberto, I luoghi del consenso imperiale: il Foro di Augusta, il Foro di Trajano (Rome 1995), 103 Google Scholar, who see the figures of Dacians in Trajan’s Forum in a condition of redemption and integration. Toynbee, Jocelyn, The Hadrianic School (Cambridge 1934), 10 Google Scholar, claims that it is anachronistic to maintain that the Romans saw themselves as a race of conquerors by the time of Hadrian, and even detects a movement towards a ‘Mediterranean nationality’. See also M.K., and Thornton, R.L., Julio-Claudian Building Programs: A Quantitative Study in Political Management (Wauconda 1989), 446–60Google Scholar, for a discussion of the manifestations of a ‘change in attitudes toward the provinces’ in coin types, building programs, and administration of the army, law and religion.
53. Roman intellectual interest in the origins of words was well-established, as shown by the work of the 1st century BCE scholar Varro: of the extant books, 5-7 of the De Lingua Latina deal mostly with words and the entities they represent, and do include some passages on etymologies of loca (see esp. 5.31-56 and 146-65 on the origins of place names in Rome). While Varro narrates anecdotes which explain name origins, Pliny develops a specifically historical and evolutionary focus.
54. Africa does return intermittently in HN 6.168-205, in the discussion of the islands and territories on either side of the Nile, sharing the spotlight with the Asian side of the river.
55. The comparison with Mela, Pliny’s near contemporary and source, as discussed here, is marked. Even more telling is the contrast with Strabo, who devotes two sub-chapters to the city (Geog. 17.3.14-15) giving considerable detail about its location, topography, appearance, architecture, foundation, history and ethnography.
56. This is often the case with north-eastern barbarians, notably Scythians and Androphagi (cannibals), who are separated by a deserted sector as early as Herodotus (4.18). There is clearly a strong symbolic message of placing subcivilised and subhuman creatures literally and spatially apart from the central culture and its reach. See Evans (n.2 above), 56-59.
57. There is confusion in Pliny’s text between the Atlantes and Herodotus’ Atarantes, who are nameless at Herodotus 4.184.1, while the Garamantes, not the Trog[l]odytae, squeak in Herodotus (4.183.4), but are chased by the Garamantes (4.183.4). These conflations may come via Mela 1.23 and 43-47.
58. Doody (n.35 above), 4, discusses the various manuscript traditions of positioning the sum-maria, and describes them as ‘the first advertisement and final monument to the magnitude of the work ahead’, if placed together in the first book. Beagon (n.39 above), 30-32, reads the lists of sources as essentially useless, but comprehensible if seen as part of Pliny’s ’universal enterprise’.
59. Here, in the latter part of the description of the southern Nile’s banks (HN 6.195-97), after another deserted area, subcivilised and deformed peoples appear on both sides, including cannibals and four-legged beings ‘who rove about like wild animals’ (ferarum modo uagi, HN 6.195) and yet are identified as an (albeit invented) human tribe.
60. Again the opening words of Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum (cited above) are recalled. Pliny constructs and divides the land in a similar process of scriptural conquest.
61. Strabo (Geog. 2.3.8) also shows the lack of racial basis for continental division by using the example of the Ethiopians who live in Asia and Libya, but ‘differ in no respect from each other’; Pliny, on the other hand (as discussed below), utilises race-based reasoning effectively in his sympathetic retelling of the two-continent model, suggesting that the Europeans are superior in character (and thus produced the Romans), and formulating a clear distinction between the European self and the indiscriminate other.
62. Pliny here, as often, draws on Pomponius Mela, who simply states: quod terrarum iacet a freto ad ea flumina ab altero latere Africam uocamus, ab altero Europen: ad Nilum Africam, ad Tanain Europen. ultra quicquid est, Asia est (‘The lands which lie from the sea to the rivers, on one side we call Africa, on the other Europe: [the land up to] the Nile [we call] Africa, [the land up to] the Tanais [we call] Europe. Whatever is outside of that is Asia’, Chorog. 1.38). Yet for Mela there is no suggestion at all that this may cause problems in the placing of Egypt or Ethiopia: he contradicts himself by using the ‘Catabathmos Valley’ in Cyrenaica as the continental boundary (Chorog. 1.40,49). Manilius also seems to have it both ways at Astronomica 4.622-27.
63. In fact, Pliny later states that Europe represents totius terrae tertiam…partem et octauam paulo amplius (about 47% of the earth) while Asia covers quartam et quartam decimam (32%) and Africa brings up the rear with quintam et…sexagesimam (21%) (HN 6.210).
64. Pliny reiterates and expands on this idea (HN 3.39) with particular respect to Italy as both the omnium terrarum alumna and parens (‘nurturer and parent of all lands’) in Europe. Besides general civilising (ritusque molliret, making a community of language from feras linguas [‘savage tongues’]) Italy also unites scattered empires (sparsa congregaret imperia) and thus reconstructs landscapes in a more directly political fashion.
65. Sallust (Jug. 17), who subscribes to the three-continent scheme, also claims that some authorities divide the world into two continents, but that Africa is included in Europe (giving Asia and Africa-Europe). The arbitrary nature of continent number and division suggests even more strongly the political nature of Pliny’s model. It is noteworthy that Africa is the continent which is consistently submerged.
66. E.g. HN 5.6-7, 15-17, 34, 38, 43, 45-46; this trend stops as soon as Pliny’s description reaches Egypt (HN 5.48).
67. I am grateful to Amy Richlin for reading and discussing an early draft of this article, and to Sarah Hyslop, Anne Vasey and the anonymous reader for Ramus for valuable comments on the later versions.
