Chapter I: The Elder Pliny: Flavian Science and History (2)

As to the related subject of human society, Pliny is disappointed with the heedlessness of contemporary Romans, the lack of serious desire for knowledge, the flippant passion for luxury. This latter theme never tires him, though it tires his readers. Historically he connects the inroads of luxury with the conquest of Asia.[1102] Widened maritime control had endangered the old Roman character: “we are not merely fed by risks at sea, we are clothed as well:” even shellfish had involved a devastation of morals (_populatio morum_), and, as regards the parade of wealth in pearls, “it is not enough to wear them—people must walk on them!”[1103] Censuring the expenditure of fortunes upon costly incense for funeral pyres, Pliny claims that the old salted cake of simple worship used to win more divine grace, and complains that millions on millions of sesterces are drained out of the Roman Empire annually by China, India and Arabia in return for Oriental exports like silks, pearls and scents—“a dear price to pay for our extravagance and women” (_tanti nobis deliciae et feminae constant_).[1104] Elsewhere, he ranks perfumes as the most superfluous of luxuries: “pearls pass to an heir: garments enjoy a respite: but perfumes breathe their last on the spot—they die in what may be called their own hour: their chief recommendation is that, as a lady passes by, the scent may draw the attention of those who have other business on hand.”[1105] Forced fruits and vegetables share his condemnation with iced water for the full purse.[1106] We have seen that he prefers natural dyes from Gallic plants to other sorts: Gaul therefore does not need to ransack the ocean for purples which the vicious use for seductive purposes. Gravely he adds that these more innocent vegetable dyes will not wash: and then, avoiding a detailed homily, pulls himself up with a rhythm that amusingly anticipates the mediaeval student’s song _Mihi est propositum in taberna mori_.[1107] The same liking for simplicity comes out in his admiration for the ancient plainness of the oak wreath (_ciuica corona_) conferred for life-saving in war—a custom worthy of deathless memory, because rescue of a citizen must not be matter for gain.[1108] Pliny’s own frugal habits of life and industrious husbandry of time give point to his protests against the shallowness of his day: he grieves in particular that the discoveries of the past are neglected and sound knowledge contemned owing to a pernicious worship of money (_auaritiae tantum artes coluntur_). In spite of free intercommunication throughout the Empire and the advantages of peace for quiet study, ground has been lost: preoccupation with the means of enrichment has engendered a lethargic attitude to antiquity as well as a brood of social evils.[1109] Early in his work he had struck a similar note of regret over the unrewarded toil of ancient investigators (_sine praemio alio quam posteros iuuandi_), the contemporary failure to add to learning (_nihil addisci noua inquisitione_), and the cramping concentration on lucre (_lucri non scientiae gratia_).[1110] The same revulsion against the carelessness of voluptuaries acts along with his ever-present desire for knowledge and his humanitarian regard for the thousand ills that flesh is heir to (_millia morborum singulis mortalium timenda_) among the motives which underlie Pliny’s enthusiasm for the healing art.[1111]

Bias in favour of simplicity and belief in nature’s perfection combined to produce a curious anomaly in Pliny’s attitude towards life. This appears in a distrust of inventions which, if pressed logically, would argue actual hostility to human progress. One is prepared to find his discontent with contemporary society impelling him, like Rousseau, to conceive an ideal picture of primitive tribes: and so his raptures[1112] on the charming innocence of unsophisticated man, supposing there were no mines in a wicked world, will not deceive a modern reader into fancying a dainty existence among Hottentots or Andaman islanders. When, however, he denounces the audacious manufacture of _linum_ into sails (XIX. 4-6), and a Roman admiral has thus declared war on ships, one asks how far this is merely a conventional pose. It is at least infinitely ridiculous when contrasted with Sophocles’s famous ode on man as greatest of wonders, first and foremost because he “fares across the white sea before the stormy South.”[1113] By degrees we realize that Pliny, in spite of his passion for knowledge, was not sympathetic towards daring exploration or scientific discovery. Well aware that nature has her secrets, he is yet chary about probing too deeply. We have seen that he has no inkling of the fundamental conceptions of pure science. Nor could applied science ever have obtained his benediction or thriven on his cautious methods. He would have been out of touch with an age of rapid industrial development and mechanical improvements. Upon his reflections about the evil uses of iron,[1114] Philemon Holland appends a marginal note: “O Pliny, what wouldest thou say if thou diddest see and hear the pistols, muskets, culverines and cannons in these daies!” To transpose the Elizabethan apostrophe to more modern times, what would he have said of inventions like gas, incandescent mantles, photography, telegraph, telephone, electric light, electric transmission of force, gramophone, cinematograph, anaesthetics, bacteriological tests, applications of Röntgen rays, wireless broadcasting, and, after his objections to navigation, what would he have said about aeronautics?

His political views may be in a measure divined from his close intimacy with the Flavian house, the tone of his preface to Titus, and allusions like that to the _salutaris exortus Vespasiani_ (XXXIII. 41). Accepting the imperial system as indispensable to Rome, he is grateful for the security guaranteed by a world-wide order (_immensa Romanae pacis maiestate_, XXVII. 3). It is in virtue of this system that Italy holds the principate on earth and rules the nations aright (XXXVII. 201). Nevertheless his patriotism is wider than a single political system: he is intensely national and proud of Rome as Rome. He therefore feels himself free to praise the qualities which constituted the moral strength of the republic (XVI. 14); and, without Livy’s dominant bias for the aristocracy, he still venerates the renowned families who made history. Cincinnatus, Curius Dentatus and the elder Cato are among his heroes—men who could take a lead in defending the state and its land. The decline of agriculture was in his eyes the most painful symptom of the deterioration of Rome (XVIII. 21 and 35). Literary judgements are not germane to his subject, but his reverence for Homer, Cicero and Virgil can be observed.[1115] It was part of his patriotism that, as already noted, he made the fullest possible use of Latin authorities in collecting the substance of his work. His preference for the writers of Rome is intensified because of his conviction that foreign influences had damaged the nation. Great as had been the intellectual services of Greece to the world, Pliny quotes with gusto the warning from Cato which ends like the jest about the Scots’ revenge for Flodden: “That country (Greece) will present us with her literature, and corrupt everything—even more so, if she sends her physicians here. They have sworn to kill off every non-Greek with medicine!”[1116]

Pliny’s literary qualities form an extraordinary and somewhat irritant mixture. If one had to characterize his style, one might call it piebald; for there is an enormous difference between his lack-lustre catalogues and his intentional purple passages. Certain ingredients too are drawn from authors whose words have been worked into his text. In his preface he avows that he makes no claim to write an elevated style: his theme, he points out, is a dry one, calling for unadorned treatment, giving few opportunities for amusing a reader (_neque admittunt ... iucunda dictu aut legentibus blanda_), and necessitating in some portions the use of words from country life or from abroad (_rusticis uocabulis aut externis, immo barbaris_) to suit the subject-matter.[1117] But, in general, his writing bears unmistakably the imprint of the Silver Age: alongside of the usual rhetorical paraphernalia such as antitheses, exclamations, questions and figures of speech, it exhibits the presence of poetic colouring and a particularly formless structure of sentence. At the same time there are elements of individuality. Though Pliny can be insufferably dull, he can also furnish a lively description and tell a good story. The former gift may be illustrated by his sketch of a struggle between an eagle and its prey, condensed in jerky jingling clauses,[1118] or by the account in Book X of the bee-republic, the spider’s web, and organization among ants. Among many stories which Pliny, better than his promise in the preface, introduced to secure variety of interest, one may refer to Cleopatra’s boastful bet that she could spend ten million sesterces at a banquet and her way of doing it (IX. 119-121); the schoolboy of Baiae who used to bathe with a tame dolphin (IX. 25, followed by a similar tale which the younger Pliny seems to forget having found in his uncle’s work); the cobbler’s pet raven and why it got a public funeral (X. 121-122); the freedman who raised far better crops than his neighbours and who, when arraigned for sorcery, exhibited in court his implements and workmen with the words, “These be my spells!” (XVIII. 41-43, _ueneficia mea, Quirites, haec sunt_.) One of the best Roman examples shows appreciation of the sardonic flavour in Tiberius’s joke about invalid wine from Sorrento: “doctors,” said the Emperor, “have laid their heads together to give Surrentine a testimonial—and I must say it’s excellent vinegar!” (XIV. 64). The anecdotes about Greek artists have the merit of retelling the competition of Zeuxis’s picture of grapes _versus_ Parrhasios’s picture of a curtain (XXXV. 65), and the equally famous incident of the cobbler who, as a conceited art-critic, proved that he ought to have stuck to his last (_ne supra crepidam sutor_, XXXV. 85).

Seneca’s brevity, acting on a sarcastic vein in Pliny, sent him in expression half-way on to Tacitus. With less toilsome accumulation to face and more leisure for reflection, he might have developed a pretty wit: as things are, the mass of his work is so huge that he does not always get credit for his ingenuity. This pre-Tacitean irony colours his implication that some emperors had divinity thrust upon them, when in reference to “that god Augustus” he gravely adds the aside, “and I can’t say whether he simply got heavenly honours or deserved them” (VII. 150); and there must be a spice of mischievous raillery when in Book XXI he applies the phrase “God’s letters” to Augustus’s epistles complaining about his daughter Julia’s nocturnal revelries. Sometimes, the jest may be at the expense of idolatry: “once on a time wood served for images of the gods, for as yet nobody had discovered the value of beasts’ carcases, but nowadays by divine concession to luxury, the ivory (of elephants) makes gods’ heads and table-legs!” (XII. 5). Or it may be at the expense of civilization: he contrasts the honesty in Arabian forests—where the trees tapped for liquid incense need no watch set upon them; but in the perfume establishments of Alexandria “no supervision can sufficiently guard the workshop and the workman has his pants sealed up” (XII. 59). Much of his mockery, like Martial’s, is expended on medicine. “A tiny ulcer must have a drug from the Persian Gulf” (_ulcerique paruo medicina a Rubro Mari imputatur_, XXIV. 5). “In matters affecting health, people are less trustful if they understand” (XXIX. 17: that is why a mysterious Greek practitioner is appreciated). “Physicians learn at our risk and conduct experiments through deaths” (_ib._ 18). “It’s not modesty but competition that brings medical fees down” (_neque enim pudor sed aemuli pretia summittunt_, _ib._ 21): “the hot baths prescribed for digestion so reduce the strength that the doctor’s most obedient patients are carried to their graves!” (_ib._ 26). Apropos of the wrangling among physicians over invalids and the epitaph on the man who “died of a crowd of doctors” (_turba se medicorum perisse_), Pliny remarks: “It’s an open secret that the most loquacious among these Greek doctors becomes straightaway the arbiter of a Roman life or death”: the fact is “Greek talent is the breeze that drives us Romans” (_ingeniorum Graeciae flatu impellimur_, XXIX. 11).

Some of the above are general enough in application to approach the semi-proverbial _sententia_, which gains in force if scathing and disdainful, like “When all hope is away, it is high time to pray” (_tum praecipuus uotorum locus est cum spei nullus est_, VIII. 57); “Absolutely nothing pleases man as it pleases nature” (_nihil utique homini sic quomodo rerum naturae placet_, XIX. 55); and “It is fitting that even luxury must be protected against faked gems” (_quando etiam luxuriam aduersus fraudes muniri deceat_, XXXVII. 198). Pliny displays aptness of personification in such conceptions as “nature at play” amidst the variety of her shells (_magna ludentis Naturae uarietas_, IX. 102), or the Nile-water “filling the rôle of farmer” (_Nilus coloni uice fungens_, XVIII. 167). He gives also many pithy summaries of a situation. _Latifundia perdidere Italiam_, on the ruin of agriculture, has been already quoted: by way of contrast, he lays it down that “cultivation consists in labour, not outlay” (if the reading is _opera non impensa cultura constat_)—that is why our ancestors said “The master’s eye is the most fertilizing thing” (XVIII. 43). Other epigrams touch neatly on the dangerous pursuit after riches, “We mine for wealth in the depths of hell” (_in sede manium opes quaerimus_, XXXIII. 2); on the deterioration caused by luxury, “The life of pleasure began, real life stopped” (_uoluptas uiuere coepit, uita ipsa desiit_, XIV. 6); and on the drawbacks entailed by the Empire on Rome in the loss of her ancient customs, “Our victory has meant moral defeat: we are dependents of the foreigner” (_uincendo uicti sumus: paremus externis_, XXIV. 5).

Certain longer passages, where he indulges in “fine writing,” exemplify his fanciful style and hankering after point. Here is an encomium upon Italy introduced with an apology for his brief treatment of Italian geography:

“Neither am I ignorant that it might be taken, and that justly, for a sign of an unthankful and a lazy mind, if one should speak merely in passing, after this cursory manner, of a land which is at once foster-child and parent of all lands. Divine grace has chosen Italy to make heaven itself more glorious, to unite scattered empires, to civilize manners, to draw together by interchange of speech the discordant and savage tongues of so many nations, to give to humanity humane culture, and in a word become for all peoples in the whole world their one and only country.... The city of Rome that stands alone therein—how worthy a face upon so charming a neck!—by what means ought she to be set forth?”

He proceeds to praise the climate, fertility and trade of the peninsula, “An open bosom for the commerce of the world from all parts, herself as it were eagerly running out into the sea to help mankind. The very Greeks—a stock most unrestrained in self-laudation—have delivered judgement on Italy by giving to what is but a small part of her the name of ‘Great Greece.’”[1119]

A parallel passage near the close of the work comes near to being a sort of peroration:

“Now that we have fully treated all the works of nature, it is fitting to draw some distinction among things themselves and among countries. Over all the globe, then, everywhere beneath the dome of heaven, the most beautiful land, the one that holds for products the highest rank in nature is Italy—queen and second mother for the world (_rectrix parensque mundi altera_),”[1120] and there follows a summary of her pre-eminence in men and women, soldiers and slaves, arts and talents, position and healthiness, water-supply and fertility.

His rhetoric may be elaborate, like his apostrophe to Cicero (VII. 116-117) and the passage on the question “What did Dame-Nature mean by making some honies poisonous?” (XXI. 78); or it may consist in short swallow-flights of sentiment like his regret over decay in bronze-work (XXXIV. 5-6), his pleasure over the power of art to draw the eyes of the Senate (XXXV. 28), and his allusion to the fall of the Carthaginian Hercules into dishonour (XXXVI. 39). All this betrays artifice designed to counterbalance the commonplace technicalities forced upon him by agriculture, medicine and mining. Another side of this desire to escape from his subject-matter appears in the poetic ingredients of his vocabulary—forms such as _senecta_ and _iuuenta_ shared with poets and the later prose-writers, or a word like _gemmans_ employed in the Ovidian and Manilian sense of “sparkling.” When Pliny wrote _sortis humanae uolumina_ (VII. 147), meaning “revolutions or reversals of human fortune,” he gave a metaphorical turn to the poetic use of _uolumen_ in the sense of “whirl” or “eddy.” A Livian word like _sugillatio_ (VII. 150; XXXII. 74) is also characteristic: it may have come direct from Livy, who in many respects is a forerunner of Silver Latin, or Pliny may have got it through Valerius Maximus. Further symptoms are noticeable in personifications and use of abstract nouns for concrete: _leonum feritas inter se non dimicat_ (VII. 5, for _leones feri_), _uniuersa mortalitas_ (VII. 147, for _cuncti mortales_, _cf._ _mortalitati_, XXXIV. 141), _potestatum_ (IX. 29 “of men in power”), _seruitus_ (XIV. 5, “slaves”), _seruitia_ (XXXIII. 23, “slaves”), _ministeriorum_ (XXXI. 7, for _ministrorum_).

Pliny’s frequent curtness does not make for limpidity. Too often he writes as one in a hurry, with the result that both expression and structure suffer. The ordinary Plinian sentence, in its badly fitted series of condensed clauses and phrases, forms a great contrast to the finished Ciceronian period; it loses proportionately in rhythm, logic and clearness. Any schoolboy will detect the inelegantly loose employment of the present participle in writing _inde eductum custodia bibere iussit illico exspirantem_ (XXI. 12) to convey the fact that “She (Cleopatra) had a prisoner brought from custody, whereupon she ordered him to drink, and he died on the spot.” Nowhere, however, is Pliny more exasperating than in his maltreatment of the ablative case. He uses ablatives in a slack sense, accumulates them cumbrously, introduces contiguous ablatives in confusingly different meanings, plasters a heap of ablatives absolute on to a sentence, or awkwardly suspends a gerund to the close (_e.g._ _prodendo_, XII. 17). Thus _tenui gutta ploratu lanis_ (XII. 116) is intended to mean “after exuding in thin drops on to linen”; and the lumbering collocation _adhibetur et ars iecori feminarum, sicut anserum, inuentum M. Apicii, fico arida saginatis a(c) satie(tate) necatis repente mulsi potu dato_ (VIII. 209) refers to the mode of securing sow-liver as well as goose-liver—“the sows being stuffed with dry figs, and then, when fattened, suddenly killed after having honied wine given to them to drink.” Fortunately the world has not judged Pliny by his style.

Himself a pre-eminent epitomator and excerptor, Pliny in turn fell into the hands of the epitomators and excerptors of the third and fourth centuries. Their interest lay chiefly in his geographical and medical portions.[1121] The _Collectanea rerum memorabilium_ by Solinus in the third century shows much of his influence acting either directly or indirectly;[1122] and the so-called _Medicina Plinii_ of the next century drew copiously on his medical books, as the third-century poem in 1115 hexameters by Serenus Sammonicus had also done. Abridgement brought upon many ancient originals the fate of disappearance; but this did not befall the _Natural History_. From Symmachus in the fourth century we learn that it was widely read; certainly it was used by Martianus Capella and Isidorus of Seville. In the surviving MSS. we have about a couple of hundred witnesses to its popularity in the Middle Ages. Bede in the eighth century possessed a copy,[1123] and an astronomical work in an Anglo-Saxon monastery drew material from at least two of the books.[1124] In the next century Alcuin applied to Charlemagne for part of the text; a poem by Alcuin includes Pliny among the volumes of the library at York; and the Irish monk Dicuil made extracts from Pliny for his _Mensura orbis terrae_. In the twelfth century Robert of Cricklade (in North Wilts), Prior of St. Fridewide at Oxford, dedicated to Henry II of England his elaborate _Defloratio_ in nine books excerpted from the _Natural History_.[1125]

Writers of every period, in fact, profited by the diligence of a compiler who took advantage of all moments to construct a main conduit whereby the science of the ancient world might pass on to later times. But it is natural that, while during less enlightened centuries he was accepted as an authority, the modern spirit of research should demand a fresh orientation towards his work judged as science. It is significant that “a large part of Pliny’s work has gradually passed into folk-keeping, so that through its agency the gipsy fortune-teller of to-day is still reciting garbled versions of the formulae of Aristotle and Hippocrates of two and a half millenia ago.”[1126] That, however, is only one phase of his survival. On the permanence of his historical value stress has already been laid. It is under this aspect that the gigantic encyclopaedia best justifies the author’s unremitting pains and a reader’s interest to-day.

FLAVIAN HISTORY

As Pliny was a historian, it is in place to give here the brief chronicle of Flavian history. Primarily a business-like emperor, Vespasian himself wrote memoirs. Cluvius Rufus[1127] connects the Claudian and Flavian epochs. Of consular rank when Caligula was assassinated in 41, he was governor of Spain in 69, and in his later years under Vespasian composed his work on Nero’s reign which Tacitus used. Another recent historian used by Tacitus was Fabius Rusticus[1128] who seems to have been alive as late as A.D. 108. Vipstanus Messalla, an orator like Quintilian with a preference for the old style, was a friend of Tacitus’s youth and author of historical studies.[1129]

Under Domitian, history could not but suffer blight. The only names that call for mention are those of Vibius Maximus, destined to become prefect of Egypt in A.D. 104, and author of a universal history in which Statius saw qualities recalling Sallust and Livy;[1130] and the two Stoics Arulenus Rusticus and Herennius Senecio, composers of eulogies upon Paetus Thrasea and Priscus Helvidius respectively, which, with their philosophical independence, cost them their lives.[1131] These were days when sentence of death was passed on Hermogenes of Tarsus because his history offended the Emperor, and on Mettius Pompusianus because he was interested enough in Livy to keep a volume of speeches by kings and generals extracted from his pages.[1132]