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Pliny, the Elder

Pliny, the Elder

c. 24 CE–c. 79 CE · Rome

Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus, c. 23/24-79 CE) was a Roman official, soldier, and prolific writer best known for his Natural History, a vast encyclopedia gathering ancient knowledge of the cosmos, geography, animals, plants, medicine, minerals, and the arts. He died during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius while attempting to observe the disaster and rescue people by sea. His nephew and adopted son was the writer Pliny the Younger, with whom he should not be confused.

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RomeרומאItaly

We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.

About Rome

Rome, on the Tiber in central Italy, grew from an Iron Age settlement into the capital of the Roman Republic and then of an empire that by the 1st century CE ruled the whole Mediterranean. Its Jewish community, attested from the 2nd century BCE, is among the oldest in Europe. Christian tradition holds that the apostles Peter and Paul died there, and the city became the seat of the popes. After the Western Empire ended in 476 it passed to Gothic kings, to Byzantium and then to papal rule as capital of the Papal States, until it became the capital of unified Italy in 1871. Vatican City, independent since 1929, lies within it.

In Rome at the same time

Strabo, Seneca the Elder, Tiberius, Celsus, Valerius Maximus, Phaedrus

Across the traditions, in Rome at the same time

See other sages who lived in Rome→

In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Pliny, the Elder’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

Across the traditions

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Pliny, the Elder’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(1)