Pliny’s descriptions of the planet’s animals included the fantastical - from unicorns to creatures that could kill with their eyes. As the late classicist David Eichholz wrote, Pliny’s motivation was “his anxiety to save the science of past ages from the forgetful indifference of the present.” He reviewed hundreds of ancient texts by the most illustrious authors in all scientific fields, extracting from them thousands of specific facts to preserve for posterity. His Natural History, a 37-volume masterpiece of high literary quality yet immense factual density, attempted to record and systematize the totality of human knowledge about nature. An indefatigable worker of intense curiosity about everything, he disdained sleep because it kept him from his tasks, and hated walking, because he could not walk and write at the same time. Apart from his Roman Empire obligations as a military commander and provincial governmental official, he was a student of law, language, history, geography and every single branch of natural science.
Pliny was like a Renaissance man a millennium and a half before the Renaissance. His death was on August 25, 79 CE, a date established by an unfortunate event associated with a volcano. Nobody knows his exact date of birth, but we can infer the year 23 CE because his nephew reported how old he was when he died.
If he were immortal, Pliny would be celebrating his 2,000th birthday this year.
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