Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/428

Rh 416 PLINIUS. tv/e importance of the facts which he selects and those which he passes over. His love of the marvellous, and his contempt for human nature, lead him constantly to introduce what is strange or wonderful, or adapted to illustrate the wicked- ness of man, and the unsatisfactory arrangements of Providence. He was, as Cuvier remarks, (^Bioyraph. Univ. art. Pline^ vol. xxxv.), "an author without critical judgment, who, after hav- ing spent a great deal of time in making extracts, has ranged them under certain chapters, to which he has added reflections which have no relation to science properly so called, but display alternately either the most superstitious credulity, or the declamations of a discontented philosophy, which finds fault continually with mankind, with nature, and with the gods themselves." His work is of course valuable to us from the vast number of subjects treated of, with regard to many of which we have no other sources of information. But what he tells us is often unintelligible, from his retailing accounts of things with which he was himself personally unacquainted, and of which he in consequence gives no satisfactory idea to the reader. Though a writer on zoology, botany, and mineralogy, he has no pretensions to be called a naturalist. His compilations exhibit scarcely a trace of scientific arrangement ; and frequently it can be shown that he does not give the true sense of the authors whom he quotes and translates, giving not uncommonly wrong Latin names to the objects spoken of by his Greek authorities. That repeated contradictions should occur in such a work is not to be wondered at. It would not, of course, be fair to try him by the standard of modern times ; yet we need but place him for an instant by the side of a man like Aristotle, whose learning was even more varied, while it was in- comparably more profound, to see how great was his inferiority as a man of science and reflection. Still it is but just to him to add, that he occa- sionally displays a vigour of thought and expres- sion which shows that he might have attained a much higher rank as an author, if his mental energies had not been weighed down beneath the mass of unorganized materials with which his memory and his note-tablets wwe overloaded. In private life his character seems to have been esti- mable in a high degree, and his work abounds with grave and noble sentiments, exhibiting a love of virtue and honour, and the most unmi- tigated contempt for the luxury, profligacy, and meanness which by his time had so deeply stained the Roman people. To philosophical speculation on religious, moral, or metaphysical subjects he does not seem to have been much addicted. All that is very distinctive of his views on such matters is that he was a decided pantheist. With the exception of some minute quotations from his grammatical treatise (Lersch, Sprach- pJiilosophie der Alien, vol. i. p. 179, &c.), the only work of Pliny which has been preserved to us, (for it does not appear that any reliance can be placed on the statement that the twenty books on the Gennanic wars were seen by Conrad Gesner in Augsburg,) is his Historia Naturalis. By Natural History the ancients understood more than mo- dern writers would usually include in the subject. It embraced astronomy, meteorology, geography, mineralogy, zoology, botany, — in short, every thing that does not relate to the results of human PLINIUS. skill or the products of human faculties. Pliny, however, has not kept within even these extensive limits. He has broken in upon the plan implied by the title of the work, by considerable digres- sions on human inventions and institutions (book vii.), and on the history of the fine arts (xxxv. — xxxvii.). Minor digressions on similar topics are also interspersed in various parts of the work, the arrangement of which in other respects exhibits but little scientific discrimination. The younger Pliny fairly enough describes it as opus dijfusum, eruditum, nee minus varium quam ipsa Natura (Epist iii. 5). It com.prise8, as Pliny says in the preface (§ 17), within the compass of thirty-six books, 20,000 matters of importance, drawn from about 2000 volumes, the works of one hundred authors of authority, the greater part of which were not read even by those of professedly literary habits, together with a large number of additional matters not known by the authorities from which he drew. Hardouin has drawn up a catalogue of the authors quoted by Pliny in the first book, or in the body of the work itself, amounting to be- tween 400 and 500. When it is remembered that this work was not the result of the undis- tracted labour of a life, but written in the hours of leisure secured from active pursuits, interrupted occasionally by ill health (^Praef. § 18), and that too by the author of other extensive works, it is, to say the least, a wonderful monument of human industry. Some idea of its nature may be formed from a brief outline of its contents. The Hisloria Naluralis is divided into 37 books, the first of which consists of a dedicatory epistle to Titus, followed by a table of contents of the other books. It is curious that ancient writers should not more generally have adopted this usage. No Roman writer before Pliny had drawn out such a table, except Valerius Soranus, whose priority in the idea Pliny frankly confesses. (Fraef. § 26.) Pliny has also adopted a plan in every way worthy of imitation. After the table of the subject-matter of each book he has appended a list of the authors from whom his materials were derived ; an act of honesty rare enough in ancient as well as modern times, and for which in his prefatory epistle (§§ 16, 17) he deservedly takes credit. It may be noticed too, as indicating the pleasure which he took in the quantity/ of the materials which he ac- cumulated, that he very commonly adds the exact number of facts, accounts, and observations which the book contains. The second book treats of the mundane system, the sun, moon, planets, fixed stars, comets, meteoric prodigies, the rainbow, clouds, rain, &c., eclipses, the seasons, winds, thunder and lightning, the shape of the earth, changes in its surface, earth- quakes, the seas, rivers, fountains, &c. He makes no attempt to distinguish between astronomy and meteorology, but jumbles both together in utter con- fusion. The book opens with a profession of the pan- theistic creed of the author, who assails the popular mythology with considerable force on the ground of the degrading views of the divine nature which it gives (ii. 5, or 7)- The consideration of the debasing, idle and conflicting superstitions of man- kind draws from him the reflection : Quae singula improvidam mortalitatem involvunt, solum ut inter ista cerium sit nihil esse certi, nee miserius quidquam liomine, aut superlnus. Similar half gloomy, half contemptuous views of human nature, and com-