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T HE first century of our era was a period of great literary activity at Rome, but of little creative power. We must allow, indeed, one conspicuous exception in Tacitus—but then Tacitus was a republican born out of due time. Perhaps we must allow a second in Juvenal, only that the genius of the satirist is, so to speak, generated by the very corruption of the age in which he lives.
No one is more representative of this literary activity than the writer who, to distinguish him from his nephew and adopted son, is spoken of as the Elder Pliny. Caius Plinius Secundus was a native of Gallia Transpadana. Verona (in Venetia), and Como (in Lombardy), contended for the honour of having been his birth-place. The balance of probability inclines to the former. His family connections were certainly with this town. His family was respectable and wealthy, but not distinguished. He was the first of this name known to history. He seems to have been educated at Rome. In his twenty-third year he entered the army, receiving what we may call a commission in a troop of auxiliary horse. (A young Roman gentleman entered the army either as a centurion in the infantry or a prefect in the cavalry. He was "dry-nursed" by an experienced officer who had risen from the ranks.) Here his literary tastes found their first employment. The young captain wrote a treatise on the art of using the javelins which a trooper carried in a quiver on his back, and began a more serious work, which he afterwards completed, on the "Campaigns of Rome in Germany." He used to say that this was suggested by a dream. Drusus, the younger brother of Tiberius, who had formed a plan of reducing Germany from the Rhine to the Elbe into a province, but died before it could be executed, seemed to implore him not to allow his achievements to be forgotten.
His time in the army completed, he returned to Rome, and wrote a treatise in three books, each so large that it had to be divided into three books, on the Training of the Orator. At the same time he engaged in actual practice in the courts. Employment in Spain as collector of imperial revenues followed. Still the book-making went on; but as the times were perilous (Nero was on the throne), and neutral subjects were safest, he wrote a treatise in eight books on "Doubtful Points in Style and Grammar."
Under Vespasian and Titus he still had high official employment. What this was we do not know, except that at the time of his death (of which more hereafter) he was admiral of the fleet at Misenum. His pen was still busy. To this period, including the last ten years of his life, belong the History of Rome in twenty-one books, taking up the subject where Aufidius Bassus left it off, probably at the beginning of the reign of Claudius, and the voluminous work by which alone he is known to us, the Natural History in thirty-seven books.
This somewhat dry catalogue of his official and literary employments is illustrated in a very interesting way by the account which his nephew has given (Epp. iii. 5) of his habits as a student and a man of business. In both capacities he seems to have been absolutely indefatigable.
He rose very early; in summer, before dawn; in winter, never later than six o'clock, and sometimes as early as half-past four. This very short allowance of sleep he could make up in the course of the day; sometimes he would take a nap over his books. When he was at Rome, his first hours were given to business. Vespasian was as early a riser as himself, and used to give him audience before it was light. His instructions from the Emperor received, he proceeded to transact the business put into his hands. This finished, the rest of the day was his own, and was given to study or composition. First came a light breakfast, bread dipped in wine, or, perhaps, eaten with honey; sometimes, it may be, figs or a little cheese. This would bring him to about nine o'clock in the morning. After breakfast, if the weather was fine, he basked awhile in the sun, listening, however, to the reading of some book, and taking notes and extracts. It was one of his sayings that no book was so bad but that some part of it might be made use of. Then came a cold bath; after this, luncheon and a brief siesta. This brings him on, it will be seen, to noon. The siesta ended, another day of study began.
Neither the bath nor dinner was allowed to interrupt it. While he was actually in the water, the reader had to stop, but when the student was either scraping himself down (using, i.e., the strigil, a very rough flesh-brush, but made of horn or metal) or drying himself, he would either listen or dictate. At dinner the reading went on, as it goes on in a monastic refectory. He was so parsimonious of his time that, when a guest on one occasion corrected a mistake of pronunciation, he reproved him. "Did you not understand him?" he asked. The guest allowed that he had understood. "Then why did you make him go over it all again? You have made me lose ten lines of reading." He rose from table in summer before it was dark (Spurinna, it will be remembered, prolonged the repast till far into the night), in winter before six o'clock. (The hours, I may remind my readers, are very indefinite.) In vacation time, i.e., when he had no official duties, the whole day was given to study. Even the time that had to be spent on journeying to and from Rome was not lost. A short-hand writer always sat by his side in the carriage; in winter the man wore gloves lest the cold should hinder him from writing. As it was impossible to read, listen, dictate, or write while walking, he never used to walk. In the country he used a carriage, in town a litter. His nephew incurred his reproof for indulging in an exercise so wasteful of time. "You have lost all these hours," he said; for all time not given to study was, he thought, lost.
The fruits of this prodigious industry were very great. Besides the works mentioned above, he left at his death—and he died in his fifty-sixth year—a hundred and sixty "commonplace books," filled on both sides of the page, (a very uncommon practice) and in a very small hand-writing, with the extracts that he had been making all his life from books. For these volumes he was offered between three and four thousand pounds, and this was when he was in Spain, and the number was considerably less than it afterwards became. "It amuses me," writes his nephew, "to hear people speak of me as a student. In comparison with him I am an absolute idler."
The story of Pliny's last days is a curious illustration of many of the characteristics here ascribed to him, while it supplies others of a very creditable kind. He was at Misenum, in command, as has been said, of the fleet, had had his cold bath and luncheon, and was busy with his books. (It was about one o'clock p.m. on the 25th. of August.) His sister (the younger Pliny's mother) told him of a strange cloud that was visible on the summit of Mt. Vesuvius. He took a look at it, and resolved to make a nearer investigation. He invited his nephew (who tells the story) to join him. The young man excused himself, pleading a task which his uncle had given him to do. Just as he left the house news reached him which changed his scientific curiosity into an eager anxiety to give any help he could in what he guessed to be some terrible convulsion of nature. A number of ships were launched, and steered, by his command, straight to the scene of danger. All the while, he was taking and recording observations of phenomena. Ashes had begun to fall upon the ships, growing hotter and thicker as they approached the shore. Now came a shower of stones. Then the water grew suddenly shallow. It was suggested that they should turn back. "No," said the philosopher, "Fortune favours the bold. Make for Pomponianus's house." This was at Stabiae (four miles south of Pompeii). Pomponianus had put all his goods on shipboard, and was waiting till the wind, which was blowing strongly on shore, should subside. Pliny cheered him up, said that he should like to have a bath, and then sat down to dinner. He was cheerful, or what, says his nephew, was equally courageous, feigned to be so.
The flames from the crater of Vesuvius were now visible in the darkness. Pliny thought, or pretended to think, that they came from houses that had been left and had caught fire. Then he went to bed and slept soundly, being heard to snore loudly (he was very stout, says his nephew, and we do not wonder after what we have heard of his aversion to exercise). His host and the rest of the party were too much alarmed to sleep. Meanwhile the open court in the house was becoming choked with cinders. The philosopher was roused: if he slept longer, it would be impossible for him to leave his chamber. As the inmates of the house were now assembled, they consulted as to what had best be done. To stay within doors was dangerous, for the house might fall at any moment, so severe were the shocks of earthquake. The danger would be scarcely less if they went out. Large masses of pumice stone were perpetually falling, and these, though not heavy, might be fatal to life. Still, the latter course seemed, on the whole, the safer. All put cushions on their heads, and so sallied forth.
It was now day, but still as dark as night. The party made their way down to the shore, wishing to see whether they could embark. All looked gloomy and forbidding, and the wind still blew strongly from the sea. Pliny then lay down on a sailcloth, which had been spread for him, and asked twice for a draught of cold water. A strong smell of sulphur was then observed. The rest of the party fled in terror, but his curiosity was excited. He lifted himself from the ground by the help of two slave boys, and almost instantly fell. The rest of the party seem to have fled for their lives and to have escaped; how, we are not told. Some days afterwards the body of the philosopher was found, without any marks of external injury, and with the calm look of a sleeper. This makes one think that he could not have been suffocated by the sulphurous vapours, as his nephew thinks, but that he died from heart-disease, or other similar cause.
It must be confessed that the anxiety to personally investigate remarkable natural phœnomena is not characteristic of the Natural History, the great work—for it is great in some respects—on which rests Pliny's claim to the character of a man of science. He was an arm-chair philosopher. His industry, as we might expect, was boundless. In his list of authorities—this and his table of contents are features almost peculiar to him among the writers of antiquity—he enumerates his authorities. These amount to a hundred; a wonderful total when we consider how small was the whole literature of the world as compared to what it is now. As a matter of fact, he quotes from more than four times as many writers, but most of these he did not rank as authorities. But he was a collector, not an investigator; he does not verify or criticise, but heaps up astonishing masses of facts or fictions more or less marvellous. He writes on zoology, botany, mineralogy, astronomy, perhaps I ought to add, anthropology, without having any pretension to be really acquainted with any of these sciences. Sometimes he makes mistakes that are really inexcusable, as when he overstates the length of the year of the planet Venus by more than a half (348 days instead of 225). He seems to have transferred the contents of his note-books, which were probably labelled with the names of various branches of knowledge, with little thought either of where he was putting them or whether they were worth putting anywhere.
Sometimes he may have corrected his authorities; the story that I have told of his end shows him in the character of an enquirer, but the whole tenor of his life was that of a man who sought the ultimate sources of knowledge in books. In this he contrasts remarkably with his great predecessor Aristotle, who set the highest value on the specimens which his pupil Alexander collected for him. Aristotle had a museum, but Pliny had nothing but a library. His book is vastly entertaining; he preserves a numbers of facts which we should not have known without his help. And when he mentions geographical or historical facts, he sometimes fills up gaps that could hardly be supplied anywhere else. And he is not incapable of vigorous thought. Commonly, indeed, he somewhat reminds us of the man of whom, when commended on the score of wisdom, Robert Hall is reported to have said, "He has put so many books on the top of his head that his brains cannot move." Yet sometimes he can express himself with force, and rises to a really lofty and philosophical plane of thought.
Thus, for instance, in his Second Book, really the Introduction to his work, he says: "It is a proof of human weakness to try to imagine the form and likeness of God. Whoever He be, wheresoever He be, He is all feeling, all sight, all hearing, the fulness of life, of Spirit, of Himself. To believe in gods without number, fashioned even of the vices and virtues of men, is only double dulness. Our frail and troublesome mortality has made all these partitions, remembering its own infirmity, that each might worship piecemeal as his need required."
Pliny was, in fact, something of a Pantheist. Perhaps this habit of thought disposed him to accept the marvellous. "My view of the operations of nature has convinced me," he says in one place, "to think nothing that is told concerning her incredible." It may have also taught him something of his low opinion of man, "the most miserable, but the most arrogant of creatures," as he calls him.
Perhaps it is an unlucky fate which has preserved as an example of Pliny's work just that which the modern world has most outgrown. Possibly any natural history, however carefully put together, would seem somewhat grotesque after the lapse of eighteen centuries. We can value the author quite apart from the merits or demerits of his book. There have been many men of greater genius in literature and in science, but never a more single-minded and indefatigable student.