SOURCE: Harold L. Axtell, "Some Human Traits of the Scholar Pliny," in Classical Journal, Vol. 22, No. 2, November, 1926, pp. 104-13.

[In the following essay, Axtell attempts to illuminate the passages in Pliny's writings that offer insight to his personality, calling Pliny earnest, skeptical, and conceited.]

Sad is the present fate of Gaius Plinius Secundus. After all his tireless efforts to acquaint mankind with the wonders of the world, ungrateful posterity in the twentieth century, even the lovers of the veteres, has all but forgotten him. Nobody cares to contribute a volume on "Pliny and His Influence," or to annotate his work, or even to constitute a reliable text for it. No university offers a course in it and no classical reading circle includes it in its program. Except as an old worked-over mine to dig in at odd times for the extraction of curious information with which to complete the treatment of some special topic, the Naturalis Historia is not glanced at. And after students take a look at the man himself through the eyes of his nephew, they do not look again, despite the old scholar's heroism revealed at the eruption of Vesuvius. Pliny to us is no longer a man, but a dust-covered tome.

The causes of this oblivion are not far to seek, of course. The portrait of this paragon of learning, this forerunner of the modern clipping bureau, whose motto seems to have been that of Life, "aut scissors aut nullus," who slept like Edison, who had books read to him while dressing from the bath, whose stenographer wore gloves in winter to take down his notes, who was impatient at losing ten lines when his reader was interrupted, may have been attractive in the cloisters of the Middle Ages, but not to moderns. We may be overwhelmed with awe by unparalleled erudition and industry, but we are not charmed.

Then, too, the historians of Latin literature have not urged any inquisitive soul to try him out. Confronted by their dicta that only the antiquarian is interested in him,¹ that his work is at times dry and bald, at others enswathed in rhetoric to conceal the dryness of its subject,² that it contains the wildest sentence in Latin literature,³ that the most famous phrase in the whole work is the remark that Greek sculpture ceased one year and was suddenly revived thirty-five Olympiads later,⁴ who would be so hardy as to open the book? And if one did so, the abrupt, apparently careless brevity in which he sometimes seems to challenge the reader to find his meaning, would be too forbidding to encourage a venturer to read much without an overpowering desire to collect the information therein contained. Indeed, through his own style, so typical of Silver Latinity, Pliny is the worst enemy of his own popularity—a popularity, to be sure, for which he would disclaim any desire.

Yet this writer does not deserve the absolute neglect he now receives. His book is not, and was not when he wrote, a "thriller" or a "best seller," but neither was it a scrap-basket, nor merely an encyclopaedia, though he calls it such; and he himself was far from an impersonal, machine-like compiler. One would never get the impression from his work of a board of contributors, nor of a mere general editor. His personality is conspicuous. Submerged it may be for pages in a bare catalog of names, a recitation of genera and species, of stars, winds, metals, lands, and peoples, yet it crops out here and there most unexpectedly. At times it seems lugged in to give variety and relief to the subject matter; at others it appears in a spontaneous outburst of interest in the special matter under discussion. Especially notable is it whenever there is an opportunity to express his pet predilections or aversions. Sometimes it talks to us in long continuous passages; sometimes it flashes in a cryptic or sly remark and at once vanishes behind the subject matter.

In short, the author of the Naturalis Historia is a real man and not merely a book-worm, and the sole raison d'etre of this brief paper is to instance some examples of his human qualities, likable and not likable, in order to set them in relief against the encyclopaedic dry-as-dustness of that work.

The first quality I wish to note in Pliny is his earnestness, a very human trait, although possibly not so common nowadays as in other generations. Yet even in these days of universal jest and badinage the life-is-real, life-is-earnest man is to be seen and heard. When a certain citizen saw in a barber-shop the members of a basket-ball team who had come from afar to play the final games for the championship of the Pacific Coast, he said to his barber, "Think of grown men traveling around to play games like children!" Pliny is serious-minded and knows it. It makes him so thorough, on the one hand, that he must set down every detail in order that those who wish it may find it ready for use!⁵ It makes him so practical, on the other hand, that he won't repeat long-established and unimportant facts⁶ nor will he speculate on useless questions.⁷ "Let now someone ask," he suddenly bursts out, "if there was but one Hercules or how many Father Tibers! … Behold in the case of an object which is tiny and close to our farmhouses, of which a constant supply is available, authorities are not agreed whether the king bee is armed merely by his majestic appearance or whether nature has given him a sting but denied him its use."

His capacity for serious work lies at the base of his contempt for credulous or careless writers and his hatred of falsifiers, whom he calls too lazy to hunt down the truth, but not too lazy to lie through shame of their ignorance. "There is no quicker loss of faith than when a distinguished man stands responsible for a falsehood."⁸ To him the veteres were reliable, but even Xenophon incurred his anger by saying a barbarian king lived 600 years and "to make a real good lie" his son lived 800.⁹ The romancing Greek writers especially provoke him. One of them, Euanthes, relates a story of a man's changing into a wer-wolf and becoming human again after nine years, on which Pliny comments:¹⁰ "And he even adds that the man received the same clothing he had laid aside. It's marvelous how far Greek credulity will go. No falsehood so brazen but it has its witness." Neither does he spare his own compatriots. He takes Cornelius Nepos to task for believing fairy tales about a little African colony, as, for example, that once it was larger than great Carthage.¹¹

No foolish credulity for him! He's a sceptic. He disbelieves in werwolves, in pegasi, griffins, Sirens,¹² in inhabitants of the nether regions,¹³ in prodigies from the motions of the stars.¹⁴ He is astonished that Aristotle taught that scattered teeth, very long fingers, a leaden complexion, and numerous wrinkles in the hand were signs of a short life.¹⁵ And as to immortality, he works himself into a page of excited denunciation of the vanity and folly of that childish belief. "Confound it, what madness to think that life is repeated in death! What rest would creatures ever have if the sensation of the soul remains above, and that of the shade remains among the lower regions. Surely such beguiling belief destroys the special boon of nature, which is death.¹⁶

Another truly human quality is nonchalant inconsistency, and in this respect Pliny is indeed unus multorum. While he strains at Aristotle's prognostications from physical peculiarities, he swallows the story of the wolf and the twins, adding naively that it is fairer to ascribe that miracle to the magnitude of the Fates than to the nature of wild animals.¹⁷ In India he says locusts grow to three feet in length and their legs and thighs are sawed up when they have dried.¹⁸ In Africa was a tribe whose feet were so large as to be used for parasols, and a mouthless people who lived on the perfume of flowers.¹⁹ And while he protests against omens for human beings, he knows that chickens follow them. "They shudder when an egg is laid, shake themselves, and ceremoniously purify themselves and eggs with some straw." We shudder, too, I think, when we recall that in the Dark Ages Pliny's marvelous tales were accepted as gospel fact.²⁰

Yet in all this his honesty is as clear as his complete lack of criteria for distinguishing the true from the false. He is aware that much of his information will seem incredible, but he promises to cite authorities for all doubtful cases.²¹ And he is honest toward his authorities, for he hates plagiarists. "It is generous, I think, and frank and modest to confess through whom you have profited." He found few who thought likewise, for most of his own authorities he had detected copying their sources, not in Vergil's spirit of emulation nor with Cicero's phrase, "I follow Crantor here," but verbatim and without according credit. "Surely," he concludes, "it is a craven spirit and unlucky character that prefers to be caught in a theft than to return a loan."²²

There are qualities, however, of our author which are not so admirable as serious-mindedness, honesty, and even occasional inconsistency, though they are decidedly human. Conceit is one. We are amused to hear him speak of collecting Aristotle's treatises on animals and of adding facts himself that the great Greek did not know, in order that readers by his pains might be able to travel abroad, so to speak, in the accounts of the world.²³ His sly dig at Vergil (while he praises him) for naming only fifteen kinds of grapes also provokes a smile. Yet he expresses dislike for egotism and wants to be like the painters or sculptors who signed their works, "Apelles faciebat," not 'fecit, "²⁴

Worse than conceit, however, is his pessimism and cynicism. How much of this is to be laid to the demands of his rhetoric and his Stoicism is uncertain. But there is undoubtedly a genuine querulousness about the world and society at large. I am reminded of a modern periodical which a colleague of mine said he always read when he had a "grouch" in order to realize by comparison how little the latter was. One of Pliny's pet grievances is the general neglect of learning by the vulgus. His surprise that certain old trees in Italy and their names were forgotten leads him into a long tirade. "You would expect," said he, "that as the Roman empire extended, people would have made use of information hitherto concealed through fear. But, by heavens! you can't find any who know many things handed down by the ancients."²⁵ Again, "Who knows with what plants the poets or Father Tiber or Silenus are crowned?"²⁶ "Nothing new is learned nowadays, not even the discoveries of the ancients are thoroughly mastered."²⁷"Est quaedam publica etiam eruditorum reiectio"²⁸—a complaint that rings familiar to us. But despite the clamor for "gripping studies"²⁹ he will not stoop as the Greeks did to garnish his solid pabulum with alluring titles, like the "honey-comb," "Amalthea's horn of plenty," "violets," "the Muses," "the meadow," "the handy manual," and the like—"titles attractive enough to make a man forfeit his bail, but when you get into the book, ye gods and goddesses, what nothings you will find!"³⁰

The insignificance of man in relation to the universe and the vanity of his proud boastings and endless contentions are other themes of his pessimism."³¹ "We steal our neighbor's ground and extend our own domains, but when one has acquired the largest estate ever known, pray how much of it does he occupy when he has passed away?" The introduction of his seventh book, in which he deals with the human race, is a dirge on the helplessness of infants—"ah the madness of those who think that from such beginnings they have been born to pride!"—and on the ills and miseries and vices of men, which sounds like Ecclesiastes.³² He devotes a page to the sorrows of Augustus, concluding with the remark that though he died and was made a god he left as heir his enemy's son.³³ One feels that the quotation, "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?" might have been Pliny's favorite.

Man's avarice and luxury are frequent subjects of his cynicism. It would be wearisome to quote in full even one of his rhetorical outbursts against them.³⁴ For here he avails himself of all his arts of declamation, of dramatic picturing, epigrammatic point, and hyperbole. Here are a few brief samples: "Let us confess," he cries, "the earth makes us a remedy for our ills; we make it a poison for life."³⁵ "How many hands are worn away that one little joint may sparkle. If there were any dwellers in the world below, by this time surely the tunnelings of avarice and luxury would have dug them up again."³⁶ "We live in perils; but that is not enough, we must needs wear them," referring to the dangers of pearl-divers. "When voluptuous pleasure began to live, life itself passed away."³⁷ Nature is the one conspicuous exception to his pessimism.³⁸ There are no gods, Nature is god. This deification of nature and eulogy of the childhood of the world before human vices had developed, are akin to H. G. Wells's apparent preference for primitive man.

These more solid, substantial features of Pliny's humanness, which we have been viewing, might lead us to think him dull and heavy. But there are lighter qualities. He is abundantly supplied with wit. This, indeed, is exercised more often in satire and sarcasm or epigram, but there are also touches of humor. At the outset of his preface, where he basks in the recollection of familiar camp-days with the emperor Titus, his tone is playful and genial throughout, albeit somewhat fulsome.³⁹ In another connection we see him laughing at his own thoroughness, when he winds up a list of edible sea-food with these words, "other kinds likewise, not to take a complete census of the kitchens."⁴⁰ He is not too scholastic to indulge in slang in the use of the word nullus for trifling.⁴¹ Once he seems to twit himself for his long-windedness, for he concludes his description of Mt. Atlas by the abrupt remark, et satis superque de Atlante.⁴² Again, he says Cicero's son used to down two pints of wine at a time "in order, I presume, to wrest the bibulous honors from Mark Antony, who slew his father."⁴³

He has imagination, too, apart from his satire, where it is most often found. "Nature pits an elephant and dragon together in order to watch a good match."⁴⁴ "Pride's favorite seat is on the eyebrows, for no loftier and steeper place on the body could she find to make herself solitary."⁴⁵ He likens the ships' beaks on the Rostra beneath the speaker's feet to a garland of power on the head of the populus Romanus. Then shifting the picture, he says, "When individuals seized the power of the state, these beaks rose from their feet to their heads while they spoke."⁴⁶ Note also this passage: "The flower is the joy of the trees. It is then they show themselves new and other than they are: then they luxuriate vying in varied color pictures. But to many trees this is denied. In not all is flower, but some are sad and do not feel the joys of the years. So, too, for many men their fortune is flowerless."⁴⁷ Compare also Nature's address to the farmer when she presents him with glow-worms as lights additional to the stars.⁴⁸

The imaginative passages, added to the many others of his satire, are sufficient to cause one to believe that this laborious, painstaking scholar might have been in the days of the Republic a poet or an essayist like Cicero. That he loved the beautiful and did not look at everything through jaundiced eyes is clear from his graphic account of the nightingale's song,⁴⁹ his splendid panegyric of Italy,⁵⁰ and the following passage from his long description of Mt. Atlas:

It lifts itself from the midst of the sands to heaven, rough, unkempt where it slopes to the shore of the Ocean on which it has imposed its name, but dark and wooded and watered with gushing springs where it looks on Africa—fruits of every sort springing up of their own will so that a surfeit of delights is never missing there. No dweller is to be seen by day; all is silent in the awe of solitude. The hearts of those who approach come under the spell of an unspoken religious feeling and fearsome veneration before an object that towers above the clouds and into the neighborhood of the moon's disc. At night it flashes with frequent fires, it is filled with the revelry of Pans and Satyrs, it rings with the melody of pipes and flutes and the sound of tympana and cymbals.⁵¹

He appreciated keenly the loftiness of the writer's work. "It is an arduous task," he writes, "to bring freshness to old themes, authority to new statements, splendor to the obsolete, light to the obscure, charm to the disdained, belief to the dubious, and to give Nature to all, and to Nature all her possessions. So even for those who have not attained this ideal it is abundantly fine and magnificent to have desired to do so."⁵² This eminently human observation, revealing a heart full of sympathy for all who aspire, even if unsuccessfully, to achieve worthy aims, we may make concerning Pliny himself. Though the Naturalis Historia be left in almost total oblivion, its author should be gratefully remembered as a man who desired, and also labored, finely and magnificently to accomplish many great and useful projects.

Notes

¹ Cruttwell, p. 404.

² Teuffel-Schwabe, 313, 5.

³ Norden, Antike Kunstprosa, p. 316.

⁴ Lawton, Classical Latin Literature, p. 288.

⁵N. H. ii, 220; iv, 121 (References are cited by the marginal pagination in the Teubner text.)

⁶ xvii, 9.

⁷ xi, 8.

⁸ v, 12.

⁹ vii, 155.

¹⁰ viii, 81-82.

¹¹ v, 4.

¹² x, 136.

¹³ ii, 158.

¹⁴ ii, 97.

¹⁵ xi, 273.

¹⁶ vii, 188-190.

¹⁷ viii, 61.

¹⁸ xi, 103.

¹⁹ Dimsdale, Latin Litcrature, p. 438.

²⁰ Breasted, Ancient Times, p. 656.

²¹ vii, 8.

²² praefatio, 21-23.

²³ viii, 44.

²⁴ xiv, 7.

²⁵ xiv, 2-6.

²⁶ xvi, 155.

²⁷ ii, 117.

²⁸ praef. 7.

²⁹ praef. 14.

³⁰ praef. 24.

³¹ ii, 175; vii, 43-44.

³² See especially vii, 18.

³³ vii, 147-150.

³⁴ ix, 104-105; 117-121; 139-140; ii, 125.

³⁵ ii, 157.

³⁶ ii, 158.

³⁷ xiv, 6.

³⁸ xviii, 4.

³⁹ praef. 1-15.

⁴⁰ ix, 169.

⁴¹ xi, 2.

⁴² v, 16.

⁴³ xiv, 147.

⁴⁴ viii, 34.

⁴⁵ xi, 138.

⁴⁶ xvi, 8.

⁴⁷ xvi, 95.

⁴⁸ xviii, 251-3. Cf. also xxii, 17.

⁴⁹ x, 81-82.

⁵⁰ iii, 39-42; also iii, 138.

⁵¹ v, 6-7.

⁵² praef. 15.