Pliny Sentence Examples

He would thus have married and had at least one child, from whom the contemporary of Pliny was descended.

The colossus stood for fifty-six years, till an earthquake prostrated it in 224 B.C. Its enormous fragments continued to excite wonder in the time of Pliny, and were not removed till A.D.

Tridentum or Trent was in the time of Pliny included in the tenth region of Italy or Venetia, but he tells us that the inhabitants were a Raetian tribe.

Pliny knew that flies emerge from galls.

Even though this sea-route was known, the author of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, published after the time of Pliny, recites the old itinerary around the coast of the Arabian Gulf.

He died in 956, and was known, from the comprehensiveness of his survey, as the Pliny of the East.

Its chief distinctions are that during the later Republic and earlier Empire it yielded excellent soldiers, and thus much aided the success of Caesar against Pompey and of Octavian against Antony, and that it gave Rome the poet Virgil (by origin a Celt), the historian Livy, the lyrist Catullus, Cornelius Nepos, the elder and the younger Pliny and other distinguished writers?

Vectius Marcellus (probably mentioned by Pliny, H.N., II., 19 9) and Helvidia Priscilla.

The classics, " as low as Tacitus, Pliny the Younger and Juvenal," had been long familiar.

Pliny, on the other hand, calls it Sabine.

The Norway spruce seems to have been the "Picea" of Pliny, but is evidently often confused by the Latin writers with their "Abies," the Abies pectinate of modern botanists.

The revival of learning was at hand, and William Turner, a Northumbrian, while residing abroad to avoid persecution at home, printed at Cologne in 1544 the first commentary on the birds mentioned by Aristotle and Pliny conceived in anything like the spirit that moves modern naturalists.'

In Pliny their activity is limited to the practice of medicine and sorcery.

Herodotus describes the oil pits near Ardericca (near Babylon), and the pitch spring of Zacynthus (Zante), whilst Strabo, Dioscorides and Pliny mention the use of the oil of Agrigentum, in Sicily, for illumination, and Plutarch refers to the petroleum found near Ecbatana (Kerkuk).

But Strabo, Pliny and Ptolemy, as well as the y better Moslem geographers, drew the eastern only under the Graeco-Roman administration that we find a definite district known as Syria, and that was at first restricted to the Orontes basin.

The work was very much used (mention is made of an abridged edition) by Pliny the elder, Asconius Pedianus (the commentator on Cicero), Nonius, and the philologists.

We learn from Cicero, Vitruvius, Seneca, Suetonius, Pliny and others, that the Romans had both general and topographical maps.

Thus, Varro (De rustici) mentions a map of Italy engraved on marble, in the temple of Tellus, Pliny, a map of the seat of war in Armenia, of the time of the emperor Nero, and the more famous map of the Roman Empire which was ordered to be prepared for Julius Caesar (44 B.C.), but only completed in the reign of Augustus, who placed a copy of it, engraved in marble, in the Porticus of his sister Octavia (7 B.C.).

Pliny's great work, the Natural History, was written during Vespasian's reign, and dedicated to his son Titus.

Pliny tells us that Caecilius, a freedman of the time of Augustus, left by his will as many as 4116.

The greater part is taken from Pliny's Natural History and the geography of Pomponius Mela.

According to Mommsen, Solinus also used a chronicle (possibly by Cornelius Bocchus) and a Chorographia pliniana, an epitome of Pliny's work with additions made about the time of Hadrian.

The tufted head or umbel is likened by Pliny to a thyrsus.

The two layers thus " woven " - Pliny uses the word texere in describing this part of the process - formed a sheet (plagula or net), which was then soaked in water of the Nile.

The different kinds of papyrus writing material and their dimensions are also enumerated by Pliny.

An interesting question arises as to the accuracy of the different measurements given by Pliny.

A town of the Veneti, mentioned by Pliny, iii.

The early printed editions of Pliny erroneously named the discoverer Obsidius, and the rock obsidianus.

The mineral was probably included with selenite under Pliny's term lapis specularis.

The lapis specularis of Pliny, scattered over the Circus Maximus to produce a shining whiteness, was probably mica.

Pliny treats of these two metals as plumbum nigrum and plumbum album respectively, which seems to show that at his time they were looked upon as being only two varieties of the same species.

In regard to the ancients' knowledge of lead compounds, we may state that the substance described by Dioscorides as, uoXv,3Saiva was undoubtedly litharge, that Pliny uses the word minium in its present sense of red lead, ana that white lead was well known to Geber in the 8th century.

Pliny mentions it under the name of minium, but it was confused with cinnabar and the red arsenic sulphide; Dioscorides mentions its preparation from white lead or lead carbonate.

This pigment is of great antiquity; Theophrastus called it kibOhov, and prepared it by acting on lead with vinegar, and Pliny, who called it cerussa, obtained it by dissolving lead in vinegar and evaporating to dryness.

In ancient times it was disputed whether the original was the work of Praxiteles or Scopas, and modern authorities are not agreed as to its identity with the group mentioned by Pliny.

During the Roman period, according to Pliny, there were settlements of 26 indigenous tribes extending from the Ampsaga as far as Cyrenaica.

As the equites practically monopolized the farming of the taxes, they came to be regarded as identical with the publicani, not, as Pliny remarks, because any particular rank was necessary to obtain the farming of the taxes, but because such occupation was beyond the reach of all except those who were possessed of considerable means.

These names were known not only to Jewish but also to heathen writers, such as Pliny and Apuleius.

He has ever been the patron saint of Mediterranean sailors, who regard St Elmo's fire as the visible sign of his guardianship. The phenomenon was known to the ancient Greeks, and Pliny in his Natural History states that when there were two lights sailors called them Castor and Pollux and invoked them as gods.

The word alumen, which we translate alum, occurs in Pliny's Natural History.

Pliny informs us that alumen was found naturally in the earth.

Pliny says that there is another kind of alum which the Greeks call schistos.

Possibly in certain places the iron sulphate may have been nearly wanting, and then the salt would be white, and would answer, as Pliny says it did, for dyeing bright colours.

Several other species of alumen are described by Pliny, but we are unable to make out to what minerals he alludes.

By the introduction of a method of classification which was due to the superficial Pliny - depending, not on structure, but on the medium inhabited by an animal, whether earth, air or waterWotton is led to associate Fishes and Whales as aquatic animals.

They had from early times a very complicated system of superstitious medicine, or religion, related to disease and the cure of disease, borrowed, as is thought, from the Etruscans; and, though the saying of Pliny that the Roman people got on for six hundred years without doctors was doubtless an exaggeration, and not, literally speaking, exact, it must be accepted for the broad truth which it contains.

It was not meant for the physicians, and was certainly little read by them, as Celsus is quoted by no medical writer, and when referred to by Pliny, is spoken of as an author not a physician.

Of Pliny, another encyclopaedic writer, a few words must be said, though he was not a physician.

Pliny disliked doctors, and lost no opportunity of depreciating regular medicine; nevertheless he has left many quotations from, and many details about, medical authors which are of the highest value.

Certain compilations still extant bear the falsely-assumed names of eminent writers, such as Pliny and Hippocrates.

In chapter 25 of the same book Pliny describes five varieties of " magnes lapis."

The scene of the discovery of glass is placed by Pliny on the banks of the little river Belus, under the heights of Mount Carmel, where sand suitable for glass-making exists and wood for fuel is abundant.

Pliny has so accurately recorded the stages by which a permanent glass was developed that it may be assumed that he had good reason for claiming for Syria the discovery of glass.

Pliny states that glass was made in Gaul, and there is reason to believe that it was made in many parts of the country and on a considerable scale.

If there really was an important manufacture of glass in Ceylon at this early time, that island perhaps furnished the Indian glass of Pliny.

It lay off the main roads, and is hardly mentioned by ancient writers, though Pliny speaks of the Silis as flowing "ex montibus Tarvisanis."

The characters of the syllabary were all arranged and named, and elaborate lists of them were drawn up. The literature was for the most part inscribed with a metal stylus on tablets of clay, called laterculae coctiles by Pliny; the papyrus which seems to have been also employed has perished.

Pliny states that in ancient times it was navigable for six Roman miles from its mouth.

Pliny explicitly speaks of a mineral Katiµ€ia or cadmic as serving for the conversion of copper into aurichalcum, and says further that the deposit (of zinc oxide) formed in the brass furnaces could be used instead of the mineral.

The same process was used for centuries after Pliny, but its rationale was not understood.

Kharid, the ancient Caminacum, and Kharibat el Beda, the Nesca of Pliny, where the Sabaean army was defeated by the Romans under Aelius Gallus in 24 B.C. From El Jail Halevy travelled northward, passing the oasis of Khab, and skirting the great desert, reached the fertile district of Nejran, where he found a colony of Jews, with whom he spent several weeks in the oasis of Makhlaf.

Pliny says that their wood was everlasting, and therefore images of the gods were made of it; he makes mention also of the oil of cedar, or cedrium, distilled from the wood, and used by the ancients for preserving their books from moths and damp; papyri anointed or rubbed with cedrium were on this account called ced ati libri.

A contemporary t ccount of this event has been preserved in two letters of the tl ounger Pliny to the historian Tacitus.

Comparing the si tatements of Pliny with the facts still observable in the district, 0

By the end of the 15th century n he mountain had resumed much the same general aspect as it is resented before the eruption described by Pliny.

Varro speaks of its apple trees which gave fruit twice in the year and Pliny praises its wine also.

With regard to the history of the metallurgy of gold, it may be mentioned that, according to Pliny, mercury was employed in his time both as a means of separating the precious metals and for the purposes of gilding.

Pliny shows that for this purpose the gold was placed on the fire in an earthen vessel with treble its weight of salt, and that it was afterwards again exposed to the fire with two parts of salt and one of argillaceous rock, which, in the presence of moisture, effected the decomposition of the salt; by this means the silver became converted into chloride.

When the Elder Pliny was summoned to Rome by Vespasian in A.D.

By his will the Elder Pliny had made his nephew his adopted son, and the latter now assumed the nomen and praenomen of his adoptive father.

Besides the Panegyric, we possess the nine books of Pliny's Letters, and a separate book containing his Correspondence with Trajan.

In the first letter of the first book Pliny states that he has collected certain of his letters without regard to chronological order (non servato temporis ordine).

Pliny's learned biographer, the Dutch scholar, Jean Masson (1709), wrongly assumed that this statement referred to the whole of the collection.

He inferred that all the nine books were published simultaneously; and he also held that Pliny was governor of Bithynia in A.D.

In his Letters Pliny presents us with a picture of the varied interests of a cultivated Roman gentleman.

Pliny's Correspondence with Trajan supplies us with many interesting details as to the government of Bithynia, and as to the relations between the governor and the central authority.

On reaching the province, Pliny celebrates the emperor's birthday, and proceeds to examine the finances of Prusa.

Pliny also asks for a decision on the status and maintenance of deserted children (65), and on the custom of distributing public doles on the occasion of interesting events in the life of a private citizen.

Owing to a destructive fire at Nicomedia, Pliny suggests the formation of a volunteer fire-brigade, limited to 150 members.

This, however, they had ceased to do as soon as Pliny had published a decree against collegia, in accordance with the emperor's edict.

Trajan in his reply (Epp. 97) expresses approval of Pliny's course of action in the case of the Christians brought before him.

Hardy that the "double aspect of Trajan's rescript, which, while it theoretically condemned the Christians, practically gave them a certain security," explains "the different views which have since been taken of it; but by most of the church writers, and perhaps on the whole with justice, it has been regarded as favourable and as rather discouraging persecution than legalizing it" (Pliny's Correspondence with Trajan, 63, 210-217).

It was the birthplace of both the elder and the younger Pliny, the latter of whom founded baths and a library here and gave money for the support of orphan children.

Cicero follows the account of Varro, which is also in general adopted by Pliny.

Pliny rightly praises Trajan as the lawgiver and the founder of discipline, and Vegetius classes Augustus, Trajan and Hadrian together as restorers of the morale of the army.

The arrival of the emperor had been awaited in the capital with an impatience which is expressed by Pliny and by Martial.'

On the 1st of September in the year zoo, when Trajan was consul for the third time, Pliny, who had been designated consul for a part of the year, was appointed to deliver the "Panegyric" which has come down to us, and forms a most important source of our knowledge concerning this emperor.

During part of that time Pliny was imperial legate in the provinces of Bithynia and Pontus, and in constant communication with Trajan.

The provinces (hitherto senatorial) were in considerable disorder, which Pliny was sent to cure.

In advising Pliny about the different free communities in the provinces, Trajan showed the same regard for traditional rights and privileges which he had exhibited in face of the senate at Rome.

The famous letter to Pliny about the Christians is, according to Roman ideas, merciful and considerate.

Trajan, who had no children, had continually delayed to settle the succession to the throne, though Pliny in the "Panegyric" had pointedly drawn his attention to the matter, and it must have caused the senate much anxiety.

Our best authority is the 68th book of Dio Cassius; then comes the "Panegyric" of Pliny, with his correspondence.

The method of making these "mild" alkalis into "caustic" alkalis by treatment with lime was practised in the time of Pliny in connexion with the manufacture of soap, and it was also known that the ashes of shore-plants yielded a hard soap and those of land-plants a soft one.

But this is unlikely, notwithstanding the fact that even some pagan writers, such as Juvenal, Pliny and Martial (?), traced a resemblance between Domitian and Nero.

The author's chief sources were Varro, Pliny, Solinus, Aquila Romanus, and Aristides Quintilianus.

Pliny uses it similarly of the oath by which the Christians of Bithynia bound themselves at their solemn meetings not to commit any act of wickedness.

The Christians' of Bithynia were evidently quite frank about them to Pliny (c. 112), and Justin in his Apology reveals everything to a pagan emperor (c. 150).

His work, which probably began with the civil wars or the death of Caesar, was continued by the elder Pliny, who, as he himself tells us, carried it down at least as far as the end of Nero's reign.

He was on intimate terms with the elder Pliny, who wrote a biography of him (now lost).

No doubt he was employed mainly, as Pliny testifies, in retouching and elaborating his general history.

Pliny tells us that.

The remains of the villa of Pliny, too, were excavated in 1713 and in 1802-1819, and it is noteworthy that the place bears the name Villa di Pino (sic) on the staff map; how old the name is, is uncertain.

The name Albion was taken by medieval writers from Pliny and Ptolemy.

The opinion of Pliny, that it is the most ancient aliment of mankind, appears to be well-founded, for no less than three varieties have been found in the lake dwellings of Switzerland, in deposits belonging to the Stone Period.

The Catabanes produce frankincense and Hadramut myrrh, and there is a trade in these and other spices with merchants who make the journey from Aelana (Elath, on the Gulf of `Akaba) to Minaea in seventy days; the Gabaeans (the Gaba'an of the inscriptions, Pliny's Gebanitae) take forty days to go to Hadramut.

Pliny's account of Yemen, too, must be largely drawn from the expedition of Gallus, though he also used itineraries of travellers to India, like the Periplus Maxis Erythraei just quoted.

Besides this road, they had the sea-route, for, according to Pliny, their allies, the Gebanites, held the port of Ocelis.

Sun-worship seems to have been peculiar to the Sabaeans and Hamdanites; and, if the Sabis of Sabota (Pliny) was in fact the sun deity Shams, this must be ascribed to Sabaean influence.

Pliny speaks of the whiteness of its linen, and the productiveness of its vines is mentioned.

It is included by Pliny among the municipal towns of Etruria.

The elder Pliny described about a thousand plants, many of them famous for their medicinal virtues.

Pliny, who flourished under Vespasian, speaks particularly of a male and female palm, but his statements were not founded on any real knowledge of the organs.

Its vineyards and potteries are mentioned by Pliny, the latter doing a considerable export trade.

The general opinion is, that the sal ammoniac of the ancients was the same as that of the moderns; but the imperfect description of Pliny is far from being conclusive.

Klaproth, has no resemblance to the salt described by Pliny.

Pliny's derivation is from the sand (iz,uµos) in which it occurred.

This was the state of things in the time of Trajan, when the younger Pliny was appointed governor of the combined provinces (103-105 A.D.), a circumstance to which we are indebted for valuable information concerning the Roman provincial administration.

His most famous pupil was Varro (116-27), the six surviving books of whose great work on the Latin language are mainly concerned with the great grammatical controversy on analogy and anomaly - a controversy which also engaged the attention of Cicero and Caesar, and of the elder Pliny and Quintilian.

His standard authors in Latin prose are Cicero, Livy, Pliny, Frontinus and Orosius.

Pliny's Panegyric was discovered by Aurispa at Mainz (1433), and his correspondence with Trajan by Fra Giocondo in Paris about 150o.

The name Ambrosia was also applied by Dioscorides and Pliny to certain herbs, and has been retained in modern botany for a genus of plants from which it has been extended to the group of dicotyledons called Ambrosiaceae, including Ambrosia, Xanthium and Iva, all annual herbaceous plants represented in America.

The ferret was well known to the Romans, Strabo stating that it, was brought from Africa into Spain, and Pliny that it was employed in his time in rabbithunting, under the name Viverra.

The so-called Dard races are referred to by Pliny and Ptolemy, and are supposed to be a people of Aryan origin who ascended the Indus valley from the plains of the Punjab, reaching as far north as Chitral, where they dispossessed the Khos.

Pliny states the Egyptian talent at 80 librae = 396,000; evidently = the Abydus lion talent, which is divided by 100, and the mina is therefore 3960, or 50 x 79.2.

In the time of Cicero it had lost all importance; Strabo names it as a mere village, in private hands, while for Pliny it was one of the lost cities of Latium.

Among his antiquarian works are Recueil d'antiquites egyptiennes, etrusques, grecques, romaines, et gauloises (6 vols., Paris, 1752-1755), Numismata Aurea Imperatorum Romanorum, and a Memoire (1755) on the method of encaustic painting with wax mentioned by Pliny, which he claimed to have rediscovered.

The pteron consisted (according to Pliny) of thirty-six columns of the Ionic order, enclosing a square cella.

In Pliny's time there existed in many towns public schools controlled by the municipal authorities, concerning which Pliny remarks that they were a source of considerable disturbance in the town at the times when it was necessary to appoint teachers.

The Hebrides are mentioned by Ptolemy under the name of "E330uSat and by Pliny under that of Hebudes, the modern spelling having, it is said, originated in a misprint.

Pliny regarded their meal as identical in character with the common meals of hetairiae, i.e.

If, then, this afternoon meal did not include it, Pliny's remark that their food was ordinary and innocent is unintelligible.

Probably Strabo was then in Rome; the fact that his work passed unnoticed by Roman writers such as the elder Pliny does not prove the contrary.

At this time it probably became a colony, as it certainly was in Pliny's days.

It answers well for fence-posts and river piles; many of the foundations of Venice rest upon larch, the lasting qualities of which were well known and appreciated, not only in medieval times, but in the days of Vitruvius and Pliny.

After the death of his father, he was brought up under the care of Arrius Antoninus, his maternal grandfather, a man of integrity and culture, and on terms of friendship with the younger Pliny.

It is the vacOa of Dioscorides, and the naphtha, or bitumen liquidum candidum of Pliny.

It was probably increased by Augustus and in Pliny's time had reached 180.

The original accounts we have of them are confined to three authors - Philo, Pliny the Elder, and Josephus.

Solinus, who was known as " Pliny's Ape," echoed the words of his master about a century after that writer's death, which took place in A.D.

In Pliny they are a perennial colony settled on the western shore of the Dead Sea.

A city mentioned by Stephanus and Pliny as situated near the Tigris, the identification of which is still uncertain.

He wrote, after Aristotle and Theophrastus, books on the natural history of animals and plants, frequently quoted by the elder Pliny.

The Castilian use of the word in the sense of a right, privilege or charter is most probably to be traced to the Roman conventus juridici, otherwise known as jurisdictiones or fora, which in Pliny's time were already numerous in the Iberian peninsula.

Pliny says that Athos was 87 m.

The dream prompted Pliny to begin forthwith a history of all the wars between the Romans and the Germans.

Pliny's principal authority is Varro.

Greek epigrams contribute their share in Pliny's descriptions of pictures and statues.

For a number of items relating to works of art near the coast of Asia Minor, and in the adjacent islands, Pliny was indebted to the general, statesman, orator and historian, Gaius Licinius Mucianus, who died before A.D.

Like many of the finest spirits under the early empire, Pliny was an adherent to the Stoics.

About the middle of the 3rd century an abstract of the geographical portions of Pliny's work was produced by Solinus; and, early in the 4th, the medical passages were collected in the Medicina Plinii.

In the 9th Alcuin sends to Charles the Great for a copy of the earlier books (Epp. 103, Jaffe); and Dicuil gathers extracts from the pages of Pliny for his own Mensura orbis terrae (c. 825).

Pliny's work was held in high esteem in the middle ages.

Jacob Grimm, in the first paragraph of c. 37 of his Deutsche Mythologie, writing with his own fellow-countrymen in view, has commended Pliny for condescending, in the midst of his survey of the sciences of botany and zoology, to tell of the folklore of plants and animals, and has even praised him for the pains that he bestowed on his style.

Most of the recent research on Pliny has been concentrated on the investigation of his authorities, especially those which he followed in his chapters on the history of art - the only ancient account of that subject which has survived.

It represents an ancient Roman with an almost completely bald forehead and a double chin; and is almost certainly a portrait, not of Pliny the Elder, but of Pompey the Great.

The elder Pliny's anecdotes of Greek artists supplied Vasari with the subjects of the frescoes.

On Pliny's supposed portrait, see Bernoulli, Rom.

Amongst private persons who owned villas at Praeneste were Pliny the younger and Symmachus.

This mountainous character and the absence of any tolerable harbour - Pliny, in enumerating the islands of the Aegean, calls it "importuosissima omnium" - prevented it from ever attaining to any political importance, but it enjoyed great celebrity from its connexion with the worship of the Cabeiri, a mysterious triad of divinities, concerning whom very little is known, but who appear, like all the similar deities venerated in different parts of Greece, to have been a remnant of a previously existing Pelasgic mythology.

But the island appears to have always enjoyed the advantage of autonomy, probably on account of its sacred character, and even in the time of Pliny it ranked as a free state.

Many of the smaller places mentioned in the list of Dionysius, or the early wars of the Romans, had altogether ceased to exist, but the statement of Pliny that fifty-three communities (populi) had thus perished within the boundaries of Old Latium is perhaps exaggerated.

Latiuvi NovUM or Adjectum, as it is termed by Pliny, comprised the territories occupied in earlier times by the Volsci and Hernici.

But it was not separated from the adjacent territories by any natural frontier or physical boundaries, and it is only by the enumeration of the towns in Pliny according to the division of Italy by Augustus that we can determine its limits.

But one or other of the remaining varieties mentioned by Pliny (the Macedonian, the Arabian, the Cyprian, &c.) may be the true diamond, which was in great request for the tool of the gem-engraver.

Pliny further informs us that Taricheae was at the south end of the Sea of Galilee.

During the early Tertiary age it belonged to the Sarmatian Ocean, which reached from the middle Danube eastwards through Rumania, South Russia, and along both flanks of the Caucasus to the Aralo-Caspian region, and westwards had open communication with the great ocean, as indeed the ancient geographers Eratosthenes, Strabo and Pliny believed it still had in their day.

It is called - as usual without any authority - the villa of Arrius Diomedes; but its remains are of peculiar interest to us, not only for comparison with the numerous ruins of similar buildings which occur elsewhere - often of greater extent, but in a much less perfect state of preservation - but as assisting us in understanding the description of ancient authors, such as Vitruvius and Pliny, of the numerous appurtenances frequently annexed to houses of this description.

The "chalcedonius" of Pliny was quite a different mineral, being a green stone from the copper-mines of Chalcedon, in Asia Minor, whence the name.

It superseded Babylon as the industrial focus of Babylonia and counted some 600,000 inhabitants (plebs urbana) according to Pliny, N.H.

Garlic was placed by the ancient Greeks on the piles of stones at cross-roads, as a supper for Hecate (Theophrastus, Characters, AECUISacµovias); and according to Pliny garlic and onions were invocated as deities by the Egyptians at the taking of oaths.

The Promontorium Cimbrorum is spoken of in Pliny, who says that the Sinus Codanus lies between it and Mons Saevo.

The ancient Eburum was a Lucanian city, mentioned only by Pliny and in inscriptions, not far distant from the Campanian border.

Livy gives their chief towns as Brixia (Brescia) and Verona; Pliny, Brixia and Cremona.

According to Artemidorus (whose authority is followed by Strabo), the towns that formed the Lycian league in the days of its integrity were twentythree in number; but Pliny states that Lycia once possessed seventy towns, of which only twenty-six remained in his day.

Like the Cubi, they also are called liberi by Pliny.

India to the east of the Indus was first made known in Europe by the historians' and men of science who accompanied Alexander the Great in 327 B.C. Their narratives, although now lost, are condensed in Strabo, Pliny and Arrian.

According to the commonest account, on the 23rd of August of that year Pliny the elder, who had command of the Roman fleet at Misenum, set out to render assistance to a young lady of noble family named Rectina and others dwelling on that coast, but, as there was no escape by sea, the little harbour having been on a sudden filled up so as to be inaccessible, he was obliged to abandon to their fate those people of Herculaneum who had managed to flee from their houses, overwhelmed in a moment by the material poured forth by Vesuvius.

But the text of Pliny the younger, where this account is given, has been subjected to various interpret ations; and from the comparison of other classical testimonies and the study of the excavations it has been concluded that it is impossible to determine the date of the catastrophe, though there are satisfactory arguments to justify the statement that the event took place in the autumn.

The torrent ran in a few hours to the sea, and formed that shallow or lagoon called by Pliny Subitum Vadum, which prevented the ships approaching the shores."

It had been previously called by the Portuguese "Ilha do Cerne," from the belief that it was the island so named by Pliny.

Lerida is the Ilerda of the Romans, and was the capital of the people whom they called Ilerdenses (Pliny) or Ilergetes (Ptolemy).

Pliny calls it the last town of Italy on the north-west, and its position at the confluence of two rivers, at the end of the Great and Little St Bernard, gave it considerable military importance, which is vouched for by considerable remains of Roman buildings.

Among these are the supposed traces of 2nd-century Gnosticism and " hierarchical " ideas of organization; but especially the argument from the relation of the Roman state to the Christians, which Ramsay has reversed and turned into proof of an origin prior to Pliny's correspondence with Trajan on the subject.

But the middle age in science must include much of antiquity, including Pliny.

According to Pliny, Spanish, Gallic and Greek wines were all consumed in Rome during the 1st century of the Christian era, but in Gaul the production of wine appears to have been limited to certain districts on the Rhone and Gironde.

Under the constraining power of the Roman Empire the older city states were reduced to the position of municipalities, and their financial administration became dependent on the control of the Emperor - as is abundantly illustrated in the correspondence of Pliny and Trajan.

Thirdly, what matter, I ask, if the description of the instances should fill six times as many volumes as Pliny's History?.

Besides copper, according to Strabo, the island produced considerable quantities of silver; and Pliny records it as producing various kinds of precious stones, among which he mentions diamonds and emeralds, but these were doubtless nothing more than rock crystal and beryl.

As, according to Pliny, the Roman supply was chiefly drawn from Cyprus, it came to be termed aes cyprium, which was gradually shortened to cyprium, and corrupted into cuprum, whence comes the English word copper, the French cuivre, and the German Kupfer.

Other early Roman writers, Mela and Pliny, mention the country under the name Scandinavia (Skane), a name which in native records seems always to have been confined to the southernmost district in the peninsula.

It was probably finished by the end of the century; for Pliny the Elder states that its cypress-wood doors had been in existence for 400 years up to his time.

According to Pliny and Pomponius Mela, who both wrote in the 1st century A.D., it was the rival of Cordova and Seville.

Remains of it existed in the time of Pliny.

The Arabic name for the naturally occurring stibnite is "kohl"; Dioscorides mentions it under the term v-riµµc, Pliny as stibium; and Geber as antimonium.

Pliny and Martial mention instances of enormous fortunes amassed by those who carried on this hateful calling.

We should infer also that he was not dependent on any professional occupation, and that he was separated in social station, and probably too by tastes and manners, from the higher class to which Tacitus and Pliny belonged, as he was by character from the new men who rose to wealth by servility under the empire.

It is noticeable that, while Juvenal writes of the poets and men of letters of a somewhat earlier time as if they were still living, he makes no reference to his friend Martial or the younger Pliny and Tacitus, who wrote their works during the years of his own literary activity.

It is equally noticeable that Juvenal's name does not appear in Pliny's letters.

The fifth is a social picture of the degradation to which poor guests were exposed at the banquets of the rich, but many of the epigrams of Martial and the more sober evidence of one of Pliny's letters show that the picture painted by Juvenal, though perhaps exaggerated in colouring, was drawn from a state of society prevalent during and immediately subsequent to the times of Domitian.

The hot springs mentioned by Josephus (and also by Pliny) are about half an hour's journey to the south.

The design was as farreaching as that of the Natural History of Pliny.

That the Leguminosae (a group of plants including peas, beans, vetches, lupins, &c.) play a special part in agriculture was known even to the ancients and was mentioned by Pliny (Historia Naturalis, viii.).

Apart from a doubtful reference by Pliny to a statement of the early traveller Pytheas, the first notices we have of the Goths go back to the first years of the Christian era, at which time they seem to have been subject to the Marcomannic king Maroboduus.

The cruel rite had ceased in the Arcadian worship before Pliny wrote, but seems to have continued in Cyprus till the reign of Hadrian.

A hypothesis favoured by Dr Frazer, that the victim is usually a divine man, a priest-king 4 Pliny, Nat.

Some allusions will also be found in Dio Cassius, Pliny and Athenaeus.

Pliny refers them to the Etruscans.

At Pavia in 1494 we find him taking up literary and grammatical studies, both in Latin and the vernacular; the former, no doubt, in order the more easily to read those among the ancients who had laboured in the fields that were his own, as Euclid, Galen, Celsus, Ptolemy, Pliny, Vitruvius and, above all, Archimedes; the latter with a growing hope of some day getting into proper form and order the mass of materials he was daily accumulating for treatises on all his manifold subjects of enquiry.

After them the district was called Orrhoene (thus in the inscriptions, in Pliny and Dio Cassius), which occasionally has been changed into Osroene, in assimilation to the Parthian name Osroes or Chosroes (Khosrau).

The word was introduced to English readers in a translation (1601) of Pliny's Natural History by Philemon Holland, who defined "insects" as "little vermine or smal creatures which have (as it were) a cut or division betwene their heads and bodies, as pismires, flies, grashoppers, under which are comprehended earthworms, caterpilers, &c."

Pliny and Martial often praise the fertility of its neighbourhood.

It is subsequently mentioned by Strabo as a place of some size, and by Pliny as a free city.

A rudely carved stone lion, which lies on the roadside close to the southern extremity of the city, and by some is supposed to have formed part of a building of the ancient city, is locally regarded as a talisman against famine, plague, cold, &c., placed there by Pliny, who is popularly known as the sorcerer Balinas (a corruption of Plinius).

It is remarked by Pliny that, previous to the existence of the Indian demand, the Gauls were in the habit of using it for the ornamentation of their weapons of war and helmets; but in his day, so great was the Eastern demand, that it was very rarely seen even in the regions which produced it.

After Pliny the city is not again mentioned.'

The very various periods named make it probable that the periodical return of the phoenix belongs only to vulgar legend, materializing what the priests knew to be symbolic. Of the birds of the heron family the gorgeous colours and plumed head spoken of by Pliny and others would be least inappropriate to the purple heron (Ardea purpurea), with which, or with the allied Ardea cinerea, it has been identified by Lepsius and Peters (Alteste Texte des Todtenbuchs, 1867, p. 51).

The book is unfinished, and treats only of the first luminary, Cicero; the others intended were apparently Seneca and Pliny.

Poets, philosophers, historians and naturalists (among whom may be mentioned Virgil, Aristotle, Cicero and Pliny) have eulogized the bee as unique among insects, endowed by nature with wondrous gifts beneficial to mankind in a greater degree than any other creature of the insect world.

Pliny describes in detail the apparatus and processes for obtaining olive oil in vogue among his Roman contemporaries, who used already a simple screw press, a knowledge of which they had derived from the Greeks.

The second was first printed at Naples about 1472, in 4to, under the name of Pliny (the younger), and the fourth at Strassburg in 1505.

When the milk-like juice (" spuma pinguis," Pliny) which exudes has hardened by exposure to the atmosphere, the incision is deepened.

Pliny describes a model of a four-horse chariot made out a piece of ivory smaller than a fly's wing.

They were praised by Pliny and over the centuries their strength and flavor have come to be appreciated by connoisseurs all over the world.

Pliny, H.N. 35.6 Regulations concerning an undertakers ' service " contracted out " by the local authorities.

Carales was the only city with Roman civic rights in Sardinia in Pliny's time (when it received the privilege is unknown) and by far the most important place in the island; a Roman colony had been founded at Turris Libisonis (Porto Torres) and others, later on, at Usellis and Cornus.

Pliny is also our authority for the reverence in which the mistletoe when found growing on the robur was held by the Druids.

According to VelleIus Paterculus and Pliny, he was a hypocrite and cared for nothing but amassing wealth.

In its native lands it attains a vast age; Pliny attributes to several trees then growing in Rome a greater antiquity than the city itself.

Probably a mere variety of the black poplar, its native land appears to have been Persia or some neighbouring country; it was unknown in Italy in the days of Pliny, while from remote times it has been an inhabitant of Kashmir, the Punjab, and Persia, where it is often planted along roadsides for the purpose of shade; it was probably brought from these countries to southern Europe, and derives its popular name from its abundance along the banks of the Po and other rivers of Lombardy, where it is said now to spring up naturally from seed, like the indigenous black poplar.

According to Pliny, the only authority on this point, the period of the voyage was that of the greatest prosperity of Carthage, which may be taken as somewhere between 570 and 480 B.C. The extent of this voyage is doubtful, but it seems probable that the farthest point reached was on the east-running coast which bounds the Gulf of Guinea on the north.

These hetairiae or clubs were forbidden (except in cities formally allied to Rome) by Trajan and other emperors, as being likely to be centres of disaffection; and on this ground Pliny forbade the agape of the Bithynian churches, Christianity not being a lawful religion licensed for such gatherings.

That the passion which she inspired in him was tender, pure and fitted to raise to a higher level a nature which in some 1 The Journal for 1755 records that during that year, besides writing and translating a great deal in Latin and French, he had read, amongst other works, Cicero's Epistolae ad familiares, his Brutus, all his Orations, his dialogues De amicitia and De senectute, Terence (twice), and Pliny's Epistles.

Neither Aristotle nor Pliny attempted to classify the birds known to them beyond a very rough and for the most part obvious grouping.

Pliny, relying wholly on characters taken from the feet, limits himself to three groups - without assigning names to them - those which have " hooked tallons, as Hawkes; or round long clawes, as Hennes; or else they be broad, flat, and whole-footed, as Geese and all the sort in manner of water;foule " - to use the words of Philemon Holland, who, in 1601, published a quaint and, though condensed, yet fairly faithful English translation of Pliny's work.

Some have supposed that certain chemical properties of which the Nile water was possessed acted as a glue or cement to cause the two layers to adhere; others, with more reason, that glutinous matter contained in the material itself was solved by the action of water, whether from the Nile or any other source; and others again read in Pliny's words an implication that a paste was actually used.

Varro's statement, repeated by Pliny, that papyrus was first made in Alexander's time, should probably be taken to mean that its manufacture, which till then had been a government monopoly, was relieved from all restrictions.

Even the "ground frankincense" or "ground pine" (Ajuga chamaepitys) was known to the Romans as Tus terrae (Pliny), although they called some plant, from its smelling like frankincense, Libanotis, and a kind of Thasian wine, also from its fragrance, Libanios.

Schmidt, contains the Mechanics in Arabic, Greek fragments of the same, the Catoptrica in Latin with appendices of extracts from Olympiodorus, Vitruvius, Pliny, &c. Vol.

The Guanches, now extinct as a distinct people, appear, from the study of skulls and bones discovered, to have resembled the Cro-Magnon race of the Quaternary age, and no real doubt is now entertained that they were an offshoot of the great race of Berbers which from the dawn of history has occupied northern Africa from Egypt to the Atlantic. Pliny the Elder, deriving his knowledge from the accounts of Juba, king of Mauretania, states that when visited by the Carthaginians under Hanno the archipelago was found by them to be uninhabited, but that they saw ruins of great buildings.

This would suggest that the Guanches were not the first inhabitants, and from the absence of any trace of Mahommedanism among the peoples found in the archipelago by the Spaniards it would seem that this extreme westerly migration of Berbers took place between the time of which Pliny wrote and the conquest of northern Africa by the Arabs.

The Letters of C. Plinius Caecilius Secundus or Pliny the Younger (61-c. 115), though they do not contradict the representation of Tacitus and Juvenal regarded as an exposure of the political degradation and moral corruption of prominent individuals and classes, do much to modify the pervadingly tragic and sombre character of their representation.

Pliny (Epp. 96) states that he had never taken part in formal trials of Christians, and was therefore unfamiliar with precedents as to the extent of the investigation.

Pliny's eulogy of Trajan and his denunciation of Domitian are alike couched in extravagant phrases, but the former perhaps rests more uniformly on a basis of truth and justice than the latter.

Juba, according to Pliny, who constantly refers to him, is mainly memorable for his writings.

Their insect origin appears to have been entirely unsuspected until within comparatively recent times, though Pliny, indeed, makes the observation that a kind of gnat is FIG.

He made a collection of the speeches and letters of the Romans of the older republican period, probably including a corpus of proceedings of the senate (Ada senatus), and was the author of a work, chiefly dealing with the natural history and geography of the East, which is often quoted by Pliny as an authority, especially for fabulous statements.

The ferret was well known to the Romans, Strabo stating that it, was brought from Africa into Spain, and Pliny that it was employed in his time in rabbithunting, under the name Viverra; the English name is not derived from this, but from Fr.

For authorities see Cimbri; also Pliny, xxxvii.

Allusions to silk and its source became common in classical literature; but, although these references show familiarity with the material, they are singularly vague and inaccurate as to its source; even Pliny knew nothing more about the silkworm than could be learned from Aristotle's description.

The Romans learned of their existence through Juba, king of Mauretania, whose account of an expedition to the islands, made about 40 B.C., was preserved by the elder Pliny.

It is quite possible that she was the Rectina whom Pliny the elder wished to assist during the disaster of Vesuvius, for her husband, Voconius Romanus, was an intimate friend of Pliny the younger.

Under the Roman Empire Paphlagonia, with the greater part of Pontus, was united into one province with Bithynia, as we find to have been the case in the time of the younger Pliny; but the name was still retained by geographers, though its boundaries are not distinctly defined by Ptolemy.

These writings were used as a quarry by the compilers and dilettanti of later times, such as Pliny, Plutarch, Gellius, Festus, Macrobius, and by Christian champions like Tertullian, Arnobius and Augustine, who did not disdain to seek in heathen literature the means of defending their faith.

Oral tradition held that the wine descended from various Roman wines mentioned by Pliny the Elder.

The term first appeared in Pliny the Elder's Historia Naturalis.