Pliny

plin'i (23-79 A. D.), a Roman naturalist. In the field of natural history Pliny is to Roman scholarship what Aristotle is to Greece. He held various official positions, chiefly military or executive. At the time of the great eruption of Mount Vesuvius he was commander of the Roman fleet in that vicinity, and lost his life in venturing too near. Many of his writings have been lost, but a very interesting treatise on natural history in thirty-seven books remains. It is a sort of encyclopedia of animals and plants, but gives bits of information on every conceivable topic from a test for addled eggs to the nature, cause, and cure of sickness. Farmers were told how to manage animals and how to rotate their crops. His writings give valuable information that would otherwise be lost, and they are interesting as an exhibit of what was known in his day; but Pliny is not altogether trustworthy. He related, for instance, that a dog will not attack a person who promptly sits down; that some people are possessed of an evil eye with the power of killing those on whom they fix their gaze in anger, and that a certain fish in the Mediterranean, though but six inches long, had the power to hold back a ship propelled by 300 oarsmen. All this seems nonsensical now, but it is no more so than a popular notion still held that if a person be bitten by a dog, and the dog should go mad years afterward, the person would go mad also. A nephew, called Pliny the Younger, left a volume of letters valuable for the light they throw on the private life of the Romans. See Vesuvius