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Acknowledgements
While working on this book I endeavoured to pay homage to the Plinys by adapting my writing life, as they did, to the seasons, plunging myself into Pliny’s snow in the bitterest winters and ploughing through his harvests in the dog days of summer (there have inevitably been moments when I have been shivering under a blanket and writing about drought). In the process I have come to know something of Pliny’s temptations. Forbidden from having what is too easily within reach, I have held an oyster in my palm, pressed its shell against my nose, caressed its silky hollow, but not tasted its meat. I am horribly allergic to oysters.
I thank everyone who has sustained me through the seasons of this project. I am extremely grateful to my agent Georgina Capel, and Rachel Conway and Irene Baldoni. My editor, Arabella Pike, and copyeditor, Kate Johnson, have been wonderful, and I warmly thank them both. At HarperCollins I also thank Iain Hunt, Katherine Patrick and Marianne Tatepo.
At Liveright, I wish to thank Pete Simon, Bob Weil, and Katie Pak for bringing this edition to life. The artist Amanda Short, my mother, did the beautiful illustrations with which I am delighted.
I was very privileged to have as my first reader Barbara Levick, Emeritus Fellow in Classics at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. Barbara offered a number of helpful suggestions on my text and I am so grateful to her for the time she gave me. Paul Cartledge, A. G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge and A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture Emeritus in the Faculty of Classics, has been a pillar of support from the beginning, and I am hugely thankful for the incisive notes he made on my manuscript.
The Plinys have sent me to many places. I’d like to thank the staff of the London Library, British Library, the Joint Library of the Hellenic and Roman Societies and Institute of Classical Studies, Senate House Library and the Bodleian. The Palazzo Vecchio in Florence and Museo Civico in Como were very accommodating. The Villa Pliniana/ Sereno Hotels on Lake Como were kind enough to provide me with private access to the building and ‘Pliny’s spring’. Mena Terranova of the Museo Storico dell’Arte Sanitaria in Rome updated me on progress in the investigation into the ‘skull of Pliny the Elder’. The Charles Dickens Museum in London, and particularly Louisa Price, were very helpful.
Thanks also to Sir David Attenborough, Amanda Claridge, Peter Hicks, Emily Kearns, Ellida Minelli, Andrew Roberts and Greg Woolf, who answered my sometimes esoteric questions.
James Cullen was the most patient and entertaining of friends on my Italian research trips. Lucy Purcell I thank for her friendship, encouragement, and remarkable strength. Simon has been marvellously supportive.
I could not have written this book without the love and support of my parents, Amanda and Jeremy, my sister, Alice and my grandparents, Don and Wendy – to whom this book is dedicated. I am forever grateful to you all.
Index
Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.
Achilles, 90
Aeneas, 3, 4, 13, 15, 24, 46, 69
Aeneid (Virgil), 4, 13, 15, 35, 46, 53, 69, 73
Aesop’s Fables, 137
Agamemnon, 14–15
Agricola (Tacitus’ father-in-law), 88, 237
agriculture, 4–5, 106–9, 191, 204; Hesiod on, 107, 192, 193, 195; Horace’s farm, 193; Pliny’s estate in Perugia, 29, 32, 153, 154, 167–68, 191–95, 196–97, 198–99, 204; Pliny the Elder’s ideal plot size, 193
Agrippina the Elder, 21
Agrippina the Younger, 24–25, 236
Alberti, Leon Battista, 162
Alexander the Great, 64, 72, 84, 197
Ambiguities of Grammar, The (Pliny the Elder), 27
Annals (Tacitus), 35, 207
Antony, Mark, 28, 78, 160, 197, 235
Apelles (artist from Kos), 161, 162
Apennines, 155, 193
Apollodorus of Damascus, 209–10
Apollonius (Pythagorean), 95
Archestratus (poet from Sicily), 64
Aretino (Dolce), 162
Aristotle, 71–72, 159, 184
Armenia, 208
Arpocras (doctor), 180, 181, 182
Arria (wife of Caecina Paetus), 142
art and sculpture: Aphrodite of Knidos, 161; in Como, 19, 123, 124, 206, 231–32, 233, 234, 263n10; Corinthian bronze, 129–31; Francesco’s Studiolo in Florence, 158, 160; naturalism, 161–62; at Pliny’s Tuscan villa, 162–63, 178, 230; Pliny the Elder on, 130–31, 161–62; statues of the Plinys in Como, 19, 206, 231–32, 234; Vasari’s Lives, 125
Artemidorus (Stoic), 96, 149, 171
Arulenus Rusticus, 92, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 267n21
Asclepiades (doctor from Bithynia), 181
Athenodorus (philosopher in ghost story), 78–80
Atilius Septicianus, Publius, 136
Attia Viriola, court case involving, 45–46
Aubrey, John, 39
Aufidius Bassus, 52
Augustine, Saint, 53
Augustus, Emperor, 21, 52, 85, 123, 205, 235, 263n10
Bacchus, 5
Bacon, Francis (scientist and statesman), 38–40, 234, 248n16
Baetica (modern Andalusia), 174, 195
Baiae (town), 65, 203
ball games, 153n
Barbaro, Ermolao, 233–34
Bay of Naples, 3–11, 42–44, 65, 126, 211
Bede, Venerable, 233
bees, 71n, 116, 190
Bithynia, 28–29, 216–28, 232–33, 235, 237, 279n11
Borghini, Vincenzo, 158
Boudicca, revolt of, 66, 236
Brindisi (Brundisium), 65
Britain, 23, 52, 66, 236; Battle of Mons Graupius, 88, 237
Britannicus (stepbrother of Nero), 25, 236
British Library in London, 159
Butades (potter), 131
Byron, Lord, 117, 118
Byzantium, 218, 228, 237
Caecilius, Lucius Secundus, 123, 263n9
Caecilius Cilo, Lucius, 123, 262n6
Caesar, Julius, xiv, 23, 25, 78, 111, 122, 143, 189, 235
Caledonia (Scotland), 88
Caligula, Emperor, 21, 23, 225, 236
Calpurnia (second wife of Pliny), 113–14, 115, 163, 164, 237, 260n39; in Bithynia with Pliny, 216–17, 228; in Campania, 185–87, 189; miscarriage suffered by, 183, 184–85, 261n40
Calvus (poet), 46, 110–12, 115
Campania: Calpurnia in, 185–87, 189; earthquake in (AD 63), 8–9; grapevines in, 5, 196, 199; landscape and agriculture in, 4–5; Lucrine Lake, 65; ‘Pliniana’ (cherry) in, 106; pre-eruption tremors in, 8; sickness in survivors of eruption in, 15; see also Vesuvius
Caninius Rufus, 124, 125, 126, 135, 138–39, 209
Capitoline Games, 157
Carbone, Ludovicus, 245n5
Carthage, sacking of, 108
Carus, Mettius, 148–49, 171
Cassius Dio, 85–86, 256n15, 274n38
Castigationes Plinian
ae (Barbaro), 233–34
Castor, Antonius, 31, 140
Catius, Titus (Epicurean), 129n
Cato the Elder, 108, 155, 199
Cato the Younger, 143, 188–89
Catullus, 18, 19, 46, 111–12, 115, 128, 129n, 218
Centum Cellae (Civitavecchia), 210, 228
Ceres, 177–78
Charles III, King of Spain, 41
Chatti (Germanic tribe), 23, 24, 54, 87–88, 158, 236, 237
Chauci (Germanic tribes), 22, 236
cherry trees, 106
Chimaera, Mount, 4
Christianity, 26, 28–29, 53, 147–48, 221–28, 229, 232–33, 237
cicadas, 190, 235
Cicero, 28, 29n, 46, 51, 75, 92, 114, 115, 206, 212, 215, 235
Cisalpine Gaul, 111
City of God (St. Augustine), 53
Clairmont, Claire, 118
Claudius, Emperor, 23, 24–25, 52, 54, 66, 87, 91, 222, 224, 236
Clemens, Flavius, 147, 169
Clement VII, 19
Cleopatra, 159–60, 235
Collenuccio, Pandolfo, 234
Columbus, Christopher, 159
Como (ancient Comum): art and sculpture in, 19, 123, 124, 206, 231–32, 233, 234, 263n10; Bellagio near, 126–28; as birthplace of both Plinys, 20, 31, 116, 122, 236; Bishop of Vercelli’s visit to (1578), 231–32; Caninius Rufus’ house in, 124–25, 126; cathedral in, 231–32, 234; dispute over birthplace of the Plinys, 18–20, 126–28, 232; education in, 133–36, 233, 265n26; founding of (59 BC), 122–23; Giovio’s Plinian museum in, 125, 126, 128; Lake Como (Larius), 116–20, 122, 124, 126–28, 140, 149; Museo Civico in, 128; Pliny’s gifts and generosity to, 129, 133–36, 232, 233, 265n26; Pliny’s houses in, 32, 126–28; public buildings in, 123–24, 128, 136, 233; spring/fountain at Torno, 116, 117, 118, 123, 127, 210; statues of the Plinys in, 19, 206, 231–32, 234
concrete, 211
Constantine, Emperor, 218, 228, 237
Cophantus, Mount, 4
Corbulo, Gnaeus Domitius, 22, 91, 246n20
Corellius Rufus, 36, 172, 188–89
Cornelia (chief Vestal), 89–90, 91–92, 257n40
cosmology, 14, 92
Cossutianus Capito, 267n17
Cowper, William, 62
Crates (Cynic philosopher), 93
Creusa, 13
Cynic philosophers, 93