A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. By various writers. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

PLINIUS. PLINIUS. 415i
devoted the time which he still had remaining to ships at Retina, who had just escaped from the
study. After a slender meal he would, in the imminent danger, urged him to turn back. He
summer time, lie in the sunshine while some one resolved, however, to proceed, and in the hope of
read to him, he himself making notes and extracts. rendering assistance to those who were in peril,
lie never read anything without making extracts ordered the ships to be launched, and proceeded
in this way, for he used to say that there was no to the point of danger, retaining calmness and
book so bad but that some good might be got out self-possession enough to observe and have noted
of it. He would then take a cold bath, and, after down the various forms which the cloud assumed.
a slight repast, sleep a very little, and then pursue Hot cinders and pumice stones now fell thickly
his studies till the time of the coena. During this upon the vessels, and they were in danger of
meal some book was read to, and commented on by being left aground by a sudden retreat of the sea.
him. At table, as might be supposed, he spent He hesitated for an instant whether to proceed or
but a short time. Such was his mode of life when not; but quoting the maxim of Terence, forles
in the midst of the bustle and confusion of the city. fortzusza acdjvat, directed the steersman to conduct
When in retirement in the country, the time spent him to Pomponianus, who was at Stabiae, and whom
in the bath was nearly the only interval not allotted he found preparing to set sail. Pliny did his best
to study, and that he reduced to the narrowest to restore his courage, and ordered a bath to be
limits; for during all the process of scraping and prepared for himself. He then, with a cheerful
rubbing he had some book read to him, or himself countenance, presented himself at the dinner-table,
dictated. When on a journey he had a secretary endeavouring to induce his friend to believe that
by his side with a book and tablets, and in the the flames which burst out with increased violence
winter season made him wear gloves that his were only those of some villages which the peawriting might not be impeded by the cold. He sants had abandoned, and afterwards retired to
once found fault with his nephew for walking, as rest, and slept soundly. But, as the court of the
by so doing he lost a good deal of time that might house was becoming fast filled with cinders, so
have been employed in study. By this incessant that egress would in a short time have become
application, persevered in throughout his lifetime, impossible, he was roused, and joined Pompohe amassed an enormous amount of materials, and nianus. As the house, from the frequent and
at his death left to his nephew 160 volumina of violent shocks, was in momentary danger of fallnotes (electorunz cosmmenztarii), written extremely ing, it appeared the safer plan to betake themselves
small on both sides. While procurator in Spain, into the open fields, which they did, tying pillows
when the number of them was considerably less, upon their heads to protect them from the falling
he had been offered 400,000 sesterces for them, by stones and ashes. Though it was already day,
one Largius Licinius. With some reason might the darkness was profound. They went to the
his nephew say that, when compared with Pliny, shore to see if it were possible to embark, but
those who had spent their whole lives in literary found the sea too tempestuous to allow them to do
pursuits seemed as if they had spent them in so. Pliny then lay down on a sail which was
nothing else than sleep and idleness. When we spread for him. Alarmed by the approach of
consider the multiplicity of his engagements, both flames, preceded by a smell of sulphur, his compublic and private, the time occupied in military panions took to flight. His slaves assisted him
services, in the discharge of the duties of the to rise, but he almost immediately dropped down
offices which he held, in his forensic studies and again, suffocated, as his nephew conjectures, by
practice, in visits to the emperor, and the per- the vapours, for he had naturally weak lungs.
formance of the miscellaneous commissions en- His body was afterwards found unhurt, even his
trusted to him by the latter, the extent of his clothes not being disordered, and his attitude that
acquisitions is indeed astonishing. From the ma- of one asleep rather than that of a corpse.
terials which he had in this way collected he com- It may easily be supposed that Pliny, with his
piled his celebrated Historia Nactzeralis, which he inordinate appetite for accumulating knowledge
dedicated to Titus, and published, as appears-from out of books, was not the man to produce a
the titles given to Titus in the preface, about A. D. scientific work of any value. Ile had no genius,
77. as indeed might have been inferred from the bent
The circumstances of the death of Pliny were of his mind. He was not even an original obremarkable. The details are given in a letter of server. The materials which he worked up into
the younger Pliny to Tacitus (Ep. vi. 16). Pliny his huge encyclopaedic compilation were almost
had been appointed admiral by Vespasian, and in all derived at second-hand, though doubtless he
A. D. 79 was stationed with the fleet at Misenum, has incorporated the results of his own observation
when the celebrated eruption of Vesuvius took in a larger number of instances than those in
place, which overwhelmed Herculaneum and Pomr- which he indicates such to be the case. Nor did
peii. On the 24th of August, while he was, as he, as a compiler, show either judgment or disusual, engaged in study, his attention was called crimination in the selection of his materials, so
by his sister to a cloud of unusual size and shape, that in his accounts the true and the false are
rising to a great height, in the form of a pine- found intermixed in nearly equal proportion, -
tree, from Vesuvius (as was afterwards disco- the latter, if any thing, predominating, even with
vered), sometimes white, sometimes blackish and regard to subjects on which more accurate informspotted, according as the smoke was more or less ation might have been obtained; for, as he wrote
mixed with cinders and earth. He immediately on a multiplicity of subjects with which he had no
vent to a spot from which he could get a better scientific acquaintance, he was entirely at the
view of the phaenomenon; but, desiring to ex- nmercy of those from whose writings he borrowed
amine it still more closely, he ordered a light his information, being incapable of correcting their
vessel to be got ready, in which he embarked, errors, or, as may be seen even from what he has
taking his tablets withl him. The sailors of the borrowed from Aristotle, of determining the rela,