While reading Pliny, I felt as if I were in an alternative world where he was a reincarnation of Herodotus writing Wikipedia entries. Pliny also reminds me of the bibliographer Thomas Frognall Dibdin, in that his excitement is infectious. Pliny’s breadth and easy writing style soften the blow that at times he’s a little confused and, at other times, flat out wrong. Pliny was not doing original research. He collected broadly from the ideas and writings available to him and added his own analysis. This was a fun romp through one of the original prototype encyclopedias.

I found interesting facts on paper (Book XIII, 68-91), bay leaves (XV, 137), olive trees (XV, 1-11), women painters (XXXV, 147-148), and perfume (XIII, 1-25). I liked reading about mercury (XXXIII, 99), mostly because I liked reading its Latin name argentum vivum, literally living silver. Finally, even in the year 77, women were interested in removing wrinkles and making their skin soft, using the craziest of concoctions, e.g. ass’s milk (XXVIII, 183).

Pliny is still relevant today. He writes how many people are focused on the accumulation of wealth rather than the enrichment of the mind (XIV, 4-5; XXXIII, 8, 48). He calls out doctors for focusing on how much they could charge instead of working to cure and aid their patients (XXIX). He takes joy in calling out the evils of drinking, especially to excess (XIV, 142) and even jokes how that with beer, “We have even discovered how to make water intoxicating” (XIV, 149).

Pliny says that the two greatest crimes against human life were the first person to put gold on his fingers and the first person to introduce coinage (XXXIII, 8, 42-43). In an astute discussion of mining, Pliny writes:

We penetrate her [the Earth’s] inmost parts, digging into her veins of gold and silver and deposits of copper and lead. We search for gems ... by sinking shafts into the depths. We drag out Earth’s entrails; we seek a jewel to wear on a finger. How many hands are worn by toil so that one knuckle may shine! If there were any beings in the nether world, assuredly the tunnelling brought about by greed and luxury would have dug them up. (II, 158)

On the madness of artificial nations and land, he says:

This is the land in which we drive out our neighbours and dig up and steal their turf to add to our own, so that he who has marked his acres most widely and driven off his neighbours may rejoice in possessing an infinitesimal part of the earth. (II 175)