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

416 PLINIUS. PLINIUS.
tive importance of the facts which he selects and skill or the products of human faculties. Pliny,
those which he passes over. His love of the Ihowever, has not kept within even these extensive
marvellous, and his contempt for human nature, limits. He has broken in upon the plan implied
lead him constantly to introduce what is strange by the title of the work, by considerable digresor wonderful, or adapted to illustrate the wicked- sions on human inventions and institutions (book
aess of man, and the unsatisfactory arrangements vii.), and on the history of the fine arts (xxxv. -
of Providence. He was, as Cuvier remarks, xxxvii.). Minor digressions on similar topics are
(Biograph. Univ. art. Pline, vol. xxxv.), "an also interspersed in various parts of the work, the
author without critical judgment, who, after hav- arrangement of which in other respects exhibits
ing spent a great deal of time in making extracts, but little scientific discrimination. The younger
has ranged them under certain chapters, to which Pliny fairly enough describes it as opus dififsunm,
he has added reflections which have no relation to eruditum, nee minus variumn quam ipsa Nature
science properly so called, but display alternately (Epist. iii. 5). It comprises, as Pliny says in the
either the most superstitious credulity, or the preface (~ 17), within the compass of thirty-six
declamations of a discontented philosophy, which hooks, 20,000 matters of importance, drawn from
finds fault continually with mankind, with nature, about 2000 volumes, the works of one hundred
and with the gods themselves." His work is of authors of authority, the greater part of which
course valuable to us from the vast number of were not read even by those of professedly literary
subjects treated of, with regard to many of which habits, together with a large number of additional
we have no other sources of information. But matters not known by the authorities from which
what he tells us is often unintelligible, from his he drew. Hardouin has drawn up a catalogue of
retailing accounts of things with which he was the authors quoted by Pliny in the first book, or
himself personally unacquainted, and of which he in the body of the work itself, amounting to bein consequence gives no satisfactory idea to the tween 400 and 500. When it is remembered
reader. Though a writer on zoology, botany, and that this work was not the result of the undismineralogy, he has no pretensions to be called a tracted labour of a life, but written in the hours of
naturalist. His compilations exhibit scarcely a leisure secured from active pursuits, interrupted
trace of scientific arrangement; and frequentlyit occasionally by ill health (Praef. ~ 18), and that
can be shown that he does not give the true sense too by the author of other extensive works, it is,
of the authors whom he quotes and translates, to say the least, a wonderful monument of hunlan
giving not uncommonly wrong Latin names to industry. Some idea of its nature may be formed
the objects spoken of by his Greek authorities. from a brief outline of its contents.
That repeated contradictions should occur in such a The Historia Naturalis is divided into 37 books,
work is not to be wondered at. It would not, of the first of which consists of a dedicatory epistle to
course, be fair to try him by the standard of Titus, followed by a table of contents of the other
modern times; yet we need but place him for an books. It is curious that ancient writers should
instant by the side of a man like Aristotle, whose not more generally have adopted this usage. No
learning was even more varied, while it was in- Roman writer before Pliny had drawn out such a
comparably more profound, to see how great was table, except Valerius Soranus, whose priority in
his inferiority as a man of science and reflection. the idea Pliny frankly confesses. (Praef. ~ 26.)
Still it is but just to him to add, that he occa- Pliny has also adopted a plan inll every way worthy
sionally displays a vigour of thought and expres- of imitation. After the table of the subject-matter
sion which shows that he might have attained a of each book he has appended a list of the authors
much higher rank as an author, if his mental from whom his materials were derived; an act of
energies had not been weighed down beneath the honesty rare enough in ancient as well as modern
mass of unorganized materials with which his times, and for which in his prefatory epistle (~~
memory and his note-tablets were overloaded. In 1 6, 17) he deservedly takes credit. It may be
private life his character seems to have been esti- noticed too, as indicating the pleasure which he
mable il a high degree, and his work abounds took in the quantity of the materials which he acwith grave and noble sentiments, exhibiting a cumulated, that he very commonly adds the exact
love of virtue and honour, and the most unmi- number of facts, accounts, and observations which
tigated contempt for the luxury, profligacy, and the book contains.
meanness which by his time had so deeply stained The second book treats of the mundane system,
the Roman people. To philosophical speculation the sun, moon, planets, fixed stars, comets, meteoric
on religious, moral, or metaphysical subjects he prodigies, the rainbow, clouds, rain, &c., eclipses,
does not seem to have been much addicted. All the seasons, winds, thunder and lightning, the
that is very distinctive of his views on such shape of the earth, changes in its surface, earthmatters is that he was a decided pantheist. quakes, the seas, rivers, fountains, &c. He makes
With the exception of some minute quotations no attempt to distinguish between astronomy and
from his grammatical treatise (Lersch, Sprach- meteorology, but jumbles both together in utterconphilosophie der Alten, vol. i. p. 179, &c.), the only fusion. The book opens with a profession of the panwork of Pliny which has been preserved to us, theistic creed of the author, who assails the popular
(for it does not appear that any reliance can be mythology with considerable force on the ground
placed on the statement that the twenty books on of the degrading views of the divine nature which
the Germanic wars were seen by Conrad Gesner in it gives (ii. 5, or 7). The consideration of the
Augsburg,) is his Historiac Naturalis. By Natural debasing, idle and conflicting superstitions of manHistory the ancients understood more than mo- kind draws from him the reflection: Quae singula,
dern writers would usually include in the subject. improvidam mortalitatem involvunt, solum ut inter
It embraced astronomy, meteorology, geography, ista certium sit nihil esse certi, nec msiserius quidqualn
mineralogy, zoology, botany,- in short, every hornine, act szuperbius. Similar half gloomy, half
thing that does not relate to the results of human contemptuous views of human nature, and coln