Pliny, the Younger, has given a description of the uncle's studi ous habits. He would call upon the Emperor Vespasian before daybreak and then after performing his official duties, return home and devote what time remained to study. After a light luncheon, if it were summer and he had leisure, he would lie in the sun while a book was read, annotated and extracts made : he never read a book without making extracts, holding that no book was so bad as not to contain something good. Next he had a cold bath, a snack, and a short siesta, after which, "as if it were another day," he studied till dinner-time. During dinner a book was read and notes made. He rose from the dinner table in summer before night-fall, in winter within the first hour of night. Thus at Rome; but in vacations no time was exempt from study, save bath-time, nay, even then, he had something read to him or he dictated something, while he dressed. When traveliing he was accompanied by a shorthand writer armed with book and notebook and in winter provided with gloves. To pro cure time for study he generally drove even in Rome and his nephew tells how he was once reproved by him for wasting valu able time in walking. When he died he bequeathed to his nephew 160 volumes of annotated selections (electorurr commentarios) "written on both sides and in the minutest hand," for which, when he was procurator in Spain (A.D. 73) and when the number of volumes was rather less, he had declined an offer from Largius Licinus of 400,00o sesterces.
The Natural History, which was dedicated to Titus, son of Vespasian and his successor as emperor, and of which the first ten books were probably published in A.D. 77, is, as we have seen, in 37 books. Bk. I. has a general preface and contains a table of contents of the other books, to each being appended a list of the authors consulted, the order of enumeration corresponding to the order in which they are utilised. These lists contain the names of 146 Latin and 327 foreign authors. Bk. II. is devoted to a mathematico-physical description of the world and deals with the heavenly bodies—sun, moon, planets, fixed stars; various meteor ological phenomena; the succession of the seasons, the earth's shape and surface phenomena; seas, rivers, springs, and the like. The subject matter of this book affords Pliny an opportunity, of which he readily avails himself, to expound his own philosophic creed, which is a modified Stoicism. His view of nature is pan theistic (N.H. II. I). Bks. are devoted to geography and ethnography. This is unscientific and uncritical but extremely valuable from the incidental facts which it presents. There is an interesting mention of a map of Armenia (N.H. VI. 4o).
Books VII.–XI. are occupied with zoology and are the most generally interesting section. The seventh book deals with man and is occupied less with the normal than with the marvellous and portentous, which the scientific creed of the author and his belief in the infinite power of ingeniosa natura enabled him to accept or at least not forthwith to reject. Thus we have tales such as would have charmed the ear of Desdemona—of men whose feet were turned the wrong way, of the Mouthless Men (Astomi) who subsisted upon the mere fragrance of flower and fruit, of the Umbrella-foots (Sciapodae) who used their extensive feet by way of parasol to protect them from the sun ; monstrous births; precocity or exceptional development of physical strength or speed, of sight or hearing, of mental powers; of men who were unconscionably long of dying. Incidently (c. 55) he
declares his disbelief in immortality. The eighth book treats of terrestrial animals other than man. Here again, amid much that is interesting in detail, there is an unfortunate absence of scientific arrangement and an excessive proneness to accept the marvellous of which he was so unconscious that he expresses surprise at the credulity of the Greeks (N.H. VIII. c. 22 mirum est quo procedat Graeca credulitas). Hence side by side with sound science, mostly taken from Aristotle and, so far as con cerns Africa, from Iuba, we have a host of imaginary animals— winged horses, unicorns, and the like monstrosities. Book IX. deals with aquatic animals and scientifically is the soundest of all the zoological books, which is no doubt due to the fact that his information is mainly derived from the History of Animals of Aristotle, who treats of aquatic animals with unusual fullness. The marvellous in this book is chiefly represented by his belief in Nereids and Tritons and the usual stories of the human sym pathies of the dolphin. The tenth book treats of birds, com mencing, according to Pliny's practice of beginning with the largest, with the ostrich. Such classifications as he makes of birds is of an empirical kind and based on very superficial observations. The first part of the eleventh book is occupied with insects—the bee being treated with some fullness—and the latter part with what may be called comparative anatomy. Books XII.–XIX. deal, generally speaking, with botany, includ ing forestry and agriculture, the subject of Book XVIII., which is one of the most interesting in this section. Books XX.–XX VII. treat of medical botany or the medicines derived from plants. Books XXVIII.–XXXII. deal with other than botanical materia medica, i.e., of medicines derived from the bodies of man and other land animals (XXXII.). The remaining books are occu pied with what may be described roughly as mineralogy, i.e., with metals and metallic products, the precious metals, gold and silver, being discussed in bk. XXXIII., bronze and bronze statu ary in bk. XXXIV., painting in bk. XXXV., stone as used in building and sculpture in bk. XXXVI., gems and precious stones in bk. XXXVII.
The style of the Natural History gives an impression at once of affectation and of slovenliness which may in some degree be attributable to the condition of the text. On the Natural History was based the Collectanea rerum memorabilium of Julius Colinus (3rd cent. A.D.) and on Bks. XX.–XXXII. the Medicina Plinii, a compilation of the 4th century.