Natural History: A Selection (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder) (Author), John F. Healey (Introduction)

Book Description

Release date: December 3, 1991 | ISBN-10: 0140444130 | ISBN-13: 978-0140444131 | Edition: Reprint

Pliny’s Natural History is an astonishingly ambitious work that ranges from astronomy to art and from geography to zoology. Mingling acute observation with often wild speculation, it offers a fascinating view of the world as it was understood in the first century AD, whether describing the danger of diving for sponges, the first water-clock, or the use of asses’ milk to remove wrinkles. Pliny himself died while investigating the volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii in AD 79, and the natural curiosity that brought about his death is also very much evident in the Natural History — a book that proved highly influential right up until the Renaissance and that his nephew, Pliny the younger, described ‘as full of variety as nature itself’.

John F. Healy has made a fascinating and varied selection from the Natural History for this clear, modern translation. In his introduction, he discusses the book and its sources topic by topic. This edition also includes a full index and notes.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Greek

About the Author

Gaius Plinius Secundus (23 - 79AD), better known as Pliny the Elder, studied botany and philosophy in Rome before serving in the military. He was later Porcurator in Gallia, whilst continuing to accumulate knowledge on everything from grammar to the history of the German wars. He created the first known encyclopedia.

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics; Reprint edition (December 3, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140444130
• ISBN-13: 978-0140444131
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 1 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #73,485 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #38 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Ancient & Classical Literature > Greek
  • #39 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Movements & Periods > Medieval
  • #39 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Natural History

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

81 of 82 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Selections from the worlds first real encyclopaedia! April 5, 2001

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

For those of you who wish to get acquainted with Pliny, learn more of ancient customs and practices, or if you just look for something different and enlightening to read for a change this book is highly recommended.

As the title rightly suggests this Penguin Classic consists of eclectic samples taken from the 37 books that comprise the Natural History. It is based on an updated, accurate and easy to read translation by John Healy and includes a 32 page introduction, the official section numbering, a key to ancient places mentioned in the text and an index. At 400 pages it is substantial enough to offer many pleasurable hours of thought provoking reading, although, to be honest, I had expected considerably more material to be included. This selection also reflects the translators interest in mineralogy and metallurgy (22 pages are for example devoted to a treatise on gold and silver while no selections have been made from book XIX on vegetable gardening). A curiosity which deserves a note here is book XIV (pp. 182-193 in this edition) in which Pliny gives an eminent account of the art of wine and viticulture. It is an absolute must read for all connoisseurs of good drink.

Considering that the complete works are both very expensive and bulky this is a good introductory option. But this is only an appetiser. Those who wish to indulge in more serious reading, or look to read Pliny in a more scholarly manner for the possibility of making good and well informed quotes, will undoubtedly do better by consulting the separate volumes which contain the whole unabridged text (eg. H. Rackham's authoritative translation with parallel Latin-English text published in 10 volumes by Harvard University Press). Had this Penguin edition covered more material I would have rated it at 5 stars.

// J. Silvennoinen

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An ancestor of Borges, Kafka and Calvino March 3, 2006

By Martin Monreal

Format:Paperback

It is ridiculous to dismiss Pliny on account of his many mistakes and factual errors and so on.

The way to read this book is the way in which you read that kind of fantastic literature that gives the "illusion" of fact; Borges and Italo Calvino come to mind - the first one had plans for making an edition of Pliny in Spanish, with his prologue, but died before finishing the project (you can check the notes of Borges' Selected Non-Fictions for that); Calvino in fact wrote a wonderful essay on Pliny, included in "Why Read the Classics?", a book everyone giving "Natural History" less than four stars should read urgently.

Let's say it: if Pliny had got everything "right", he would still be used to teach natural science in high-school... and, for that reason, nobody would care about him.

There are people who think that the only documents that tell us something about the past are those written with a clinical, cold eye: the look of an outsider. This book is fun PRECISELY because Pliny wrote down everything that reached his ears without checking the facts -Zeus bless his heart-, and because of his welcoming disposition, a geography of the common imagination of that time has been preserved; something that otherwise would be lost.

Not long ago some people around this parts believed the Russians ate their own children. A good number among us are certain that paying someone to listen to your problems for fifty minutes every week, allows you to confront your unearthed traumas and clean up your life. Maybe in a thousand years all this will be just the mythology of our time. A few days ago scientists started to suspect Pluto is not a planet after all, so all those books written about it in the past century... they are mutating already into vintage science fiction.

In the meantime, how can anyone not be interested to know that "there is a record of 120 (mice) being born from a single mother, and in Persia of mice already pregnant being found in the parent's womb; and it is believed that they are made pregnant by tasting salt"(X, LXXXIV)? Or that "the day on which King Pyrrhus died, the heads of his victims, when cut off, crawled about licking up their own blood"(XI, LXXVII)? Or that "some people are born with a hairy heart, and that they are exceptionally brave and resolute. An example being a Messenian named Aristomenes who killed three thousand Spartans. He himself, when severely wounded, was taken prisoner and for the first time escaped through a cave from confinement in the quarries by following the routes by which foxes got in. He was again taken prisoner, but when his guards were fast asleep he role to the fire and burnt off his thongs, burning his body in the process. He was taken a third time, and the Spartans cut him open alive and his heart was found to be shaggy"(XI, LXIX)?

How can anyone not enjoy fragments like this one: "The most learned authorities state that the eyes are connected with the brain by a vein; for my own part I am inclined to believe that they are also thus connected with the stomach: it is unquestionable that a man never has an eye knocked out without vomiting."(XI, LIV)? Or his unique way of defining the eyes, "the most precious part of the body and the one that distinguishes life from death by the use it makes of daylight"(XI, LII)?

How can this miniature ancestor of Kafka be forgotten: "It is surprising that elephants can even climb up ropes, but especially that they can come down them again, at all events when they are stretched at a slope. Mucianus, who was three times consul, states that one elephant actually learnt the shapes of the Greek letters, and used to write out in words of that language: 'I myself wrote this and dedicated these spoils won from the Celts'"(VIII, III)? (Note: all quotations are from the Loeb's edition).

Other reviewer compared the Natural History with the Guinness Book of Records. He probably took a minute off to write the review and then jumped right back to reading his number of People magazine. The Guinness is a compilation of isolated (and insipid) facts. Pliny's is an organic work, as Shakespeare's crowded plays or Montaigne's essays are organic.

Like any great work in human history -from Plato to Galileo, from Dante to Stephen Hawkings- Pliny's Natural History is, first of all, a work of imagination.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Amusing, informative, and delightful May 27, 2006

By Jon Shemitz

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

You can discount this review by the way that I bought this seeking to read the famous account of Vesuvius' eruption. I couldn't remember which Pliny wrote it - and since I have free shipping through Amazon Prime, I just went ahead and impulse-bought the Natural History, without even Googling the Plinys.

Anyhow.

These selections from the Natural History are fascinating. Pliny was an energetic man, hugely desirous of literary immortality, who wrote his books in the interstices of a full career as a soldier and an administrator. Pliny worked when others were asleep; Pliny read and dictated in a sedan chair as he moved about urban areas.

The book is rambling and discursive, full of vignettes, asides, and diatribes. Parts are straightforward precises of other authors (for example, I recently read Vitrivius, and Pliny's section on water and pipes reads almost like a New Yorker review of Vitrivius' coverage of water detection and pipe construction) while other parts are based on Pliny's personal observations. The whole is laced with Pliny's rants about the evils of luxury and greed and the decline of the desire for fame; anyone who wonders about the sustainability of contemporary society will find his complaints about the frivolity and vanity of "modern" men to be nearly as appropriate today as they were almost 2000 years ago.

Healy's translation is clear and easy to read. However, Healy's selections are occasionally jarring, and some of the section titles are annoying and condescending. The footnotes can be repetitive, and are often rather ill-chosen; Healy footnotes Latin terms that are pretty obvious from cognates, while leaving some more mysterious terms completely unexplained. (It's almost as if he were aiming at a particularly incurious high-school audience.) The index is rather poor, but the Key To Place Names struck me as quite good; it's interesting to see how some names have survived (with modification) while others have been swept away by conquering tides, and it's nice to be able to put a location to places that I've seen in other works and just sort of filed under "exotic locations".

Overall, Pliny is not for everyone. I certainly wouldn't recommend it as a first exposure to Roman literature! However, I think any omnivorous reader with even a passing interest in the classics will think their time with Pliny was time well spent. Pliny ranges; Pliny amuses; Pliny will be nice to have on your shelf if industrial civilization does collapse.