ArLT Summer School 2007
Aspects of Pliny the Elder
Professor John Henderson
22nd July 2007
Prof Henderson began by boasting that he has actually read the Natural History!! His lecture is not easy to summarise, being based on a list of over 80 quotations from NH in a handout.
This therefore is a collection of jottings.
Pliny the Younger describes his uncle's work as 'opus diffusum'. Is this a fair comment, or is Pliny the Younger being snide about his uncle?
Although Prof Henderson suggests the theme is "giant strides across the cosmos with Uncle Pliny," in fact a close study of the work shows how carefully organised it is. It is laced with cross-referencs, e.g. book 33.58 refers to book 7:
primos inventores auri ... septimo volumine diximus. These references are accurate.
There is a preface to the whole work, and then a book (Book 1) which serves as an index to the remaining 36 books.
Pliny announces NH as a finished work, a circular composition. He has tried to match the form of the book to the nature of its subject.
formam eius in speciem orbis absoluti globatam.
He starts each topic with the prime example and works downwards, ending with impure examples and hybrids.
An example of Pliny's careful organisation is Book 11.121-271. He begins:
Nunc per singulas corporum partes praeter iam dicta membratim tractetur historia. (9.121)
At the end of the section he writes:
ante omnia explanatio animi, quae nos distinxit a feris et ipsos quoque homines discrimen alterum, aeque quam a beluis, fecit.
Built-in rhythm of descent, a bathos factor. 6 Catacresis - writing down.
7 We have done most of the universe by now, now we go down to the stupid things.
8 Back to the beginning. Preface - self-reference; no one picks up on references to himself.
9 Rhyme and fusion between words and world.
10 Self-enacting symbols
11 More elaborate version of the same - things are intertwined, complex; so is my writing.
12 Writing about prehistory is a problem. How can you find names for things before history?
13 Europe is the same area as Asia and Africa put together. Books 3 and 4 given to Europe, Bk 5 and 6 Africa and Asia.
14 The wow factor
15, 16 Editorial language
17 Preface. He compares himself to Catullus. If he changes word order of Catullus' preface, he changes the whole feel. P intends to finesse.
37 volumes - he emphasises the number.
20 Preface refers to 36 books. Book 1 is contents guide to books 2-37.
21 Interest in titles. Not like the Greeks. End of preface explains the title NH. It will be a visionary work (of Physics).
22, 23 I wish I could take your bythe hand and use all computer graphics etc to show you the universe. Tour of creation.
24-5 similar.
26 Book 1, the index. Speedy way of getting to the heart of the universe. You can see the structure clearly. Book 1 is concise; the rest is the same 'diffusum'. For each topic in 2-29 res et historiae et observationes - but slight changes later.
28-9 Book 19 on gardening.
30-31 I shall tell you more later, and you'll have to remember this bit.
Five books of this, five of that so, starting from the end also. Chiasmus.
Ring closes in bk 37 Geology and chemistry.
Filling in sandwich of universe is vegetable kingdom.
Bks 20-27 what fills the book is what we smell.
Demarcation points. between bk 19020, 27-28. 2 and 6 match 7 and 11.
Where does the human race fit in?
He has his own book. But 44-5 mundus is limit of our sensibility. Predominance of man, 47. You get the positioning of man if you read beyond man.
48 Plants
52-3 agriculture, fruit trees, cultivated crops. Flowers, spontaneous plants.
58 Climax is flax. Rope is the world-shrinker. Rope brings France closer to Italy.
59 Reprise of vines and olives.
60 You remember meeting these things before?
Bk 28 medicine and man.
67 names of all aquatic creatures.
68 Ovid started list of water creatures, then died.
69 Book 1 promised to cover everything, then again showing the pretia (value) of them all.
72 reference back.
76 Man's use of natural materials to keep alive (=medicina).
77 Ultimately, reflecting on every term he dug up from every corner of the universe.
79 Last reflection. The medicines, and names, and the chance to tell reality from illusion.
82 Humans put in their place as bipeds, like ostriches.
Later, man is given a much greater role. Man is a super-creator of excess.
From book 36, abuse of nature.
Title from David Attenborough when converted to global morning.
To read the whole of Pliny will not improve your lives or your Latin. Use the index!
