SOURCE: Mary Beagon, "Divina Natura: The Roots of Pliny's Thoughts," in Roman Nature: The Thought of Pliny the Elder, Clarendon Press, 1992, pp. 26-54.

[In the following excerpt, Beagon offers a study of Pliny's religious skepticism, examining his belief in the importance of the human relationship with nature and his conclusion that "Nature is what we mean by God."]

1. Natura as Divinity

The world … is fitly believed to be a deity, eternal and immeasurable, a being that was never born and will never perish. What lies outside it does not concern men to explore and is beyond the capability of the human mind to guess. It is sacred, eternal, immeasurable, wholly within the whole, or rather itself the whole, finite and resembling the infinite, certain of all things and resembling the uncertain, holding in its embrace all things that are within and without, at once the work of nature and nature herself (HN [Historia Naturalis] 2.1).

Pliny starts the first book proper of the HN in grand style. The scale of his chosen subject could not have been more emphatically described. Natura is the world, both as a whole and as its separate components; she is both the creator and the creation. The comprehensiveness of Pliny's analysis defies further elaboration: Natura is everything. Notwithstanding, long sections of commentaries¹ have been devoted to this and succeeding paragraphs of Pliny's introduction to the cosmos. But too detailed an exposition is of limited usefulness in the case of an eclectic and non-specialist author. Pliny's ideas need to be viewed more broadly in terms of general tradition, key ideas, and recurring patterns of thought.

A long tradition of Greek writing bore witness to the prime importance of thought on the nature of the cosmos,² not only from the famous philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, but also from more general writers as early as Hesiod. Pliny's opening words leave no doubt as to the main tradition which he is following. His divine, eternal, immeasurable, but finite mundus is directly derived from the cosmological theories of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. While each of these had distinctive teachings, they all, broadly speaking, accepted the picture Pliny gives here. The main opponents of this tradition are given short shrift by Pliny. After briefly deriding as mad those 'who have taught that there are a countless number of worlds' (2.3), he completely ignores³ the atomists. The theories evolved principally by Democritus and followed most notably by Epicurus and Lucretius were opposed to most facets of the cosmology Pliny here espouses. The atomists believed that the world was perishable and, as Pliny's remark in HN 2.3 suggests, that it was infinite. They also taught that it was mechanistic and denied the concepts of teleology and of a providential deity. Both these ideas were of central importance to Stoic cosmology generally and to Pliny's in particular (see sects. 3-4).

The atomists were, however, in a minority and destined to remain so for many centuries. The broad tradition Pliny adopts was in fact the prevalent view in the ancient world. Stoicism in particular, with its emphasis on duty in public as well as private life, was especially appealing to Romans. Yet Pliny's choice should not be seen as inevitable. At least one other Roman general writer with practical and scientific interests had, a century before, seen the world differently. Vitruvius' perception of architecture is coloured by an atomic view of the universe. Whether he is describing the proportions of the elements in building materials (De Architectura I. 2.1 ff.) or the balance, symmetry, and proportions of the buildings themselves, the architect, perhaps appropriately, sees a mathematical, mechanical universe. In contrast, Pliny's interests centre upon human life. The Stoic cosmos was not only divine but also rational and intelligent. Stoic doctrine was also, by Pliny's day, becoming increasingly preoccupied with human issues (sect. 2). Against such a background, Pliny is often able to create an intimate and vivid picture of the relationship between man and nature.

Within the framework of a mainstream tradition, then, Pliny brings to his portrait of Natura some more individual emphases. Even the most cursory reading of HN 2.1-27 reveals one out-standing factor: the divinity of Natural/Mundus. Pliny's very first statement is that she is rightly believed to be divine. In 2.13, he stresses the divinity of her principale regimen, the sun, also described as her soul and mind. Above all, more than half this section of book 2 (14-27) is taken up with a detailed discussion of the nature of God.

The trend of Pliny's discussion may be summed up as follows. To see God as having shape or form is a mark of human weakness. God is not a concrete entity. He consists entirely of self, sight, hearing, mind, and soul, a description with obvious similarities to that of mundus in 2.1. By creating innumerable gods, human folly trivializes the concept of deity. Some of these human inventions ironically feature all too human failings, as the mythical stories of their loves and quarrels illustrate (2.16-18). Others are assigned the ludicrously undignified forms of animals by foreign peoples. What matters is the relationship between man and man: 'Deus est mortali iuvare mortalem' (2.18).⁴ Man can be godlike by means of surpassing qualities rather than gods being human in the crudest sense. In essence, Pliny is expressing the Stoic ideal of service to one's fellow men, called by Seneca 'divina potentia' (Clem 1.26.5).

At this point, Pliny digresses to dispose of two recently invented superstitions, astrology and the goddess Fortuna. In the case of Fortuna, he effectively stresses the paradox of placing faith in the personification of fickleness: 'Chance herself, by whom God is proved uncertain, takes the place of God' (2.22-3).⁵ The devotees of astrology adopt a parody of God as certus rather than incertus as in the case of Fortuna. Stoic philosophy included an element of determinism but God was still a vital power always at work.⁶ In astrology, however, men adopt an extreme fatalism and believe in a future predetermined to the extent of God's being idle: '… God's decree has been enacted once for all, while for the rest of time leisure has been granted to him' (ibid.).

What, then, is 'God'? For the next few paragraphs, Pliny continues to be negative in his search for a definition. The belief that God has a concern for human affairs is to be encouraged mainly for sociopolitical reasons and it stresses only the punishment of the wicked (2.26). The good are rewarded, if at all, by their fellow men (2.18).

Only in the final stages of the discussion does Pliny become more positive. His concluding remarks serve not only to define God but also to place man in a position of harmony and understanding with regard to him. Pliny admits man's inperfecta natura but says he is compensated for this by a knowledge that even God has limitations. These limitations are the inability to change the fact of his own existence, the course of history, or mathematical rules. For Pliny, these are proof of naturae potentia. That is, they are all laws of nature and he therefore concludes that Nature is what we mean by God.⁷

The whole passage raises a number of interesting points. Firstly, it highlights the extreme scepticism of Pliny with regard to popular religious beliefs (see Ch. III). Its importance in this respect seems to have escaped the attention of those who have been content to label him a credulous writer. The significance of the mainly negative tone of the arguments will be examined shortly (sect. 3). Above all, his discussion illustrates well the of astrology difference between the exponent of Stoic philosophy and Pliny the writer with Stoic beliefs. In HN 2.14-27 there is an allusiveness, a sense of unwritten assumptions, and a lack of strict clarity and coherence. This is more readily appreciated if the full text is read, rather than a summary. As suggested earlier, detailed philosophical criticism would serve no useful purpose here. Some background explanation and clarification is, however, clearly necessary if we are to gain a proper understanding of Pliny's views.

Overall, this view may be characterized as pantheistic. God is subsumed in the universe, rather than existing separately above it. Pliny talks of nature potentia rather than natura in his final definition in HN 2.27. While both Platonic and Stoic cosmological thought had mystic elements, the god of Timaeus, separate from and ruling over the universe, is clearly less relevant to Pliny than is the idea of a divine power permeating the universe, as generally held by the Stoics.⁸ In HN 2.208, Pliny himself talks of 'divine power of the nature which is diffused through everything' (diffusae … per omne naturae … numen) to which may be compared Chrysippus' view as recorded by Cicero that vis divina 'is to be found in reason (ratio) and in the soul and mind which pervades the whole of nature'.⁹ The Stoic doctrine of pneuma¹⁰ could encourage pantheistic ideas, and Philo of Alexandria (De Aet. Mundi 84) said that the Stoics believed God was the psyche of the world. Seneca suggests a pantheistic concept of God in the Natural Questions, when he says that God is all one can see (NQ 2.45) and also all that one cannot see (NQ 1 pref. 13). Cicero's De Natura Deorum contains both concepts of God, but has several passages clearly identifying mundus and deus (e.g. 2.46 and 2.29) and, most importantly for comparisons with Pliny, a passage identifying God with both mundus and natura: '… deum esse mundum omnemque vim mundi natura divina contineri' (ND 2.29, cf. Sen. NQ 2.45).

However, the question of whether God was in or above the universe was still an open one, even for Stoics. At any rate, Seneca suggests as a suitable topic of philosophical speculation in De Otio 4.2 'whether God encompasses his creation from outside or whether he pervades the whole of it'. The poet Manilius, whose ideas are mainly Stoic, is not consistent on this issue. He refers to a God of nature who permeates land, sea, and sky (Astronomica 2.61) in language similar to Pliny's description of 'diffusae … per omne naturae … numen' (HN above, 2.208). Yet, in other passages, he uses language more suited to the God of the Timaeus.¹¹ Seen against this background of uncertainty, the slight anomalies which occasionally appear in Pliny's pantheistic concept are not surprising and need not concern us. It is somewhat redundant, for example, in a pantheistic view of creation, to describe sol as rector of the universe.¹²

Another type of ambiguity in the philosophical conceptions of natura/deus/mundus may be discerned in, the Stoic idea of Natura artifex, which is adopted by Pliny (e.g. 11.1). This in effect makes her a deliberately creative power, rather than the impersonal, mechanical physis of atomists like Lucretius,¹³ or the natural forces of the Peripatetic Strato of Lampsacus (ND 1.35).¹⁴ Cicero had translated the great mastercraftsman of the Timaeus, demiourgos, as aedificator and opifex (ND 1.18). But he also showed (ND 2.57) how the Stoic life-force, pneuma or pyr technikon, could become identified with Natura. His Stoic speaker, Balbus, says that Nature 'is a creative fire and the teacher of all other arts … but Nature in the universe as a whole is not an artist only but the master-artist … such is the nature of the mens mundi, so that it may be properly called the divine wisdom or providence, the Greeks' Pronoia, which has formed the world'. For the Stoic, the order and harmony achieved by Natura as artifex presupposed a conscious intelligence, ratio or mens. Far from being blind and accidental, she displays a benevolent purpose in making everything perfectly adapted to man's needs (ND 2.81-167).¹⁵ The benevolent providence of a rational deity is to be seen in Pliny's Natura,¹⁶ and will be examined in sect. 3.

To conclude: the components are familiar, the picture Pliny builds with them is unique. The Stoic concept just described, combining a vague, impersonal pantheism with more personal notions of deity, coincides closely with the Natura described in the HN. The emphasis which Pliny lays on this pantheism is, however, unusual. In fact, the all-embracing general quality of his concept symbolizes the fundamental difference between his and Seneca's approaches to philosophy. Despite the appearance in his work of the pantheistic idea, Seneca often emphasizes a distinct heavenearth divide. Describing the city of the world (Ad Helv. 8.5), he says: 'no matter where you lift your gaze from earth to heaven, the realms of God and man are separated by an unattainable distance'. Unlike Pliny, Seneca the philosopher is concerned to stress the vital role of philosophy as the only means of bridging the gap between the human and the divine. For Pliny, no such void exists. The human and divine worlds are bound together. It is a relationship which forms the core of Pliny's thought and to which we now turn.

2. Nature's Divinity, Man's Supremacy: Unity and Tension

When the whole universe is vaguely divine, the position of man may be emphasized since there is no divine figure dwelling above to balance him. Conversely, Pliny's divina natura possesses the more personal qualities of the Stoic divinity which indicate a relationship with man. Her providentia and benignitas, impulses of an intelligent rather than mechanical being, are directed towards him. Pliny admires the ingenium with which she also provides plant cures even for the animals (22.30). Ratio acts as a link between Natura and man, since man, too, has a share in it.¹⁷

It would, however, have been possible for Pliny to banish all ideas of divinity in the universe and concentrate on his human ideal, expressed clearly and succinctly in HN 2.18: 'Deus est mortali iuvare mortalem'. Indeed, despite his deification of Natura, Pliny is often negative, and more of a sceptic than a Stoic in his approach to the question of God. In HN 2.14-27, he arrives at the conclusion that Natura is God by process of elimination, ruling out a once-for-all creation which might imply a Platonic creator-god (2.23), as well as the Olympian deities and more recent beliefs such as astrology (2.17–20, 23). The 'invention' of the goddess Fortuna by man himself makes conjecture about God even more obscure as far as Pliny is concerned (2.22). Natura is God—provided that there is a God at all (2.14). Not only is Pliny's process of argument essentially negative; his definition of God as the whole of nature is so wide as to make it only one step from Plinian pantheism to atheism. Yet, while the discussion in HN 2.14-27 is interesting for its attack on many traditional beliefs and superstitions (Ch. III. 1), it leads nevertheless to the conclusion that Nature is God (2.27). In practice, this just means that Pliny can vary the stress on Nature's divinity according to his context. The overall result is that he achieves a remarkable harmony between the concept of divina Natura and a human interest which is concerned primarily with the everyday existence of man.

The pragmatism of Pliny's emphasis on man is to be seen, for example, in a difference of emphasis between his and Lucretius' concern for human fears. Pliny wishes to dispel fear as it is encountered in the day-to-day existence of man. To a certain extent, this is true of Lucretius also, but he is more concerned than is Pliny over the ultimate superstitious fear of an afterlife. To this end, he is at pains to dissociate the human world from all divine influence and advances a purely mechanistic view of the universe (see Ch. II. 3).

'Human interest' is often remarked upon as a characteristic of later Stoicism,¹⁸ but even Seneca is largely concerned with moral values and with the ultimate fear of death, and advocates disregard of life generally.¹⁹ Pliny, in contrast, gives the impression that he approves of practical comfort, of a life that is healthy and reasonably pleasant.²⁰ His interest in man need not be attributed solely to Stoic influence. There is much in his mode of thought to be compared with Protagoras and the early Sophists. Such a comparison must be a general one, rather than a specific comparison with the stricter meaning of Protagoras' 'man is the measure' saying.²¹ The character of the Sophists' ideas—rational, humanist, and utilitarian—bears a general resemblance to Pliny's outlook.²² Despite the divinity of Natura, man is, loosely speaking, very often the measure of all things for Pliny. 'Deus est mortali iuvare mortalem' suggests that moral virtue is very much a human concept. It is interesting in this respect that he rejects the deification of virtues (2.14).²³ This idea could be seen as an extension of the Stoic notion that all good is part of the divine, and was approved by the Stoic speaker in Cicero's ND (2.61). Another concept absent from Pliny's Natura is the idea of the 'goodness' of the universe. Although she is provida and benigna, she is never said to possess virtus. Cicero, on the other hand, had come closer to Plato's concept of goodness (Timaeus 30 A-B) when he said that virtus 'can show itself in man, but how much more readily in the universe', since nothing is more perfect, and the highest quality, virtus, has to exist in the absolute and perfect (ND 2.38-9). This use of virtus does, of course, lay stress on the idea of perfection rather than morality.²⁴ However, Cicero indicates that he is quoting an earlier source, Chrysippus, for this Platonically derived idea. This amoral sense may have already faded a little by his, and certainly by Pliny's, time as later Stoic ideas concentrated more upon virtus as a moral quality primarily applicable to man.

By not assigning virtus to his cosmic deity, Pliny is able to keep the divine aspect of Natura unobtrusive and our attention focused on man's activities. The stress he lays on this activity might be compared with the Sophists' emphasis on the human evolution of society but, unlike them, Pliny is concerned to show the harmony rather than the opposition of man with nature.²⁵ This is not to say that Natura is merely a neutral background for man's activities. The relationship between the two contains tension as well as harmony; it is complex and often ambiguous, but it is always close. The following chapters will explore particular aspects of human qualities and achievements and their relation to Natura. For the moment, attention will be focused on complexities of this relationship which have a particular bearing on the idea of Natura as divine.

3. Natura provida or Natura saeviens?

This partnership or opposition of man and nature needs to be put in the context of the ancient views on teleology. In a general sense, the term denotes the view that the universe was created for a purpose, whether the unconscious teleology of an impersonal nature or the working out of a divine plan. In a more particular sense it is applied especially to the idea that the universe and its parts are planned for the benefit of the highest creation, man. The centrality of man in the universe was a fundamental aspect of the Greek outlook on life from earliest times and exerted a major influence right through to the later Christian era.²⁶ Such a view was reinforced by the ancient idea of man as a microcosm of the universe,²⁷ which could be carried to physical comparisons. In the Timaeus, man's head is said to be constructed on the model of the universe's divine sphere (44D). The creator Natura is said by Manilius (Astr. 3.50-1) to unite the limbs (membra) of the universe into a single body.

The link between man and cosmic deity was enhanced by the Stoic identification of the all-pervading spirit of the universe with man's highest attribute, mind or reason. As early as Plato there had been gradations in this attribute as it went down the animal to the vegetable kingdom (Timaeus 77). By assigning ratio only to man, the Stoics laid emphasis on his unique position as opposed to the rest of creation. As we shall see (Ch. IV), it is a division to which Pliny, despite his fascination with the animal kingdom, adheres.

Teleological stress on the supremacy of man in creation also complemented the humanitarian trend of later Stoicism which we have already noted as a characteristic of Pliny's thought. Marcus Aurelius was to adapt the teleological idea to the ideal of social obligation when he wrote that the lower things were made for the sake of the higher and the higher for one another (Med. 5.30).

It is typical of Pliny that he makes no direct philosophical statements²⁸ about man's unique superiority and central position in the universe. Instead, he expresses it through the cumulative effect of the HN; that is, through the actual structure of the work and through the ideas emphasized within it. His main discussion of the human race in book 7 follows the books describing the world and its features but precedes those devoted to the rest of the animal kingdom (bks. 8-11). His fascination with human society and achievements is not, however, confined to a single book but is impressed upon the whole work. Above all, the centrality of man in Pliny's universe is expressed in the recurring theme of Nature's Providence towards the human race.

The quality of providentia in the universe is, as we saw (sect. 1) closely linked with that of a divine mind as the guiding force. This is clear from the wording of Lucretius' objection in De Rerum Natura: 'I would venture to assert … that nature was certainly not created for us by divine power: it is so full of imperfections' (5.196-9). Thus it is, initially, surprising when Pliny, who does not share Lucretius' mechanistic view of the universe, still comments on limits and contradictions to the providential view and does not try to hide them. Savage Nature threatens the land with volcanoes (HN 2.236); she condemns part of the world to be permanently dark and snowbound (4.88); her jealousy allows the rough sea to encroach on the land (6.1). But it is worth bearing in mind two things. Firstly, Pliny's interest is not directed exclusively at the human race. The undoubted emphasis on man in the HN is to some degree balanced by his broadminded curiosity, which takes an interest in the whole of Nature. He wishes to make the HN as wide-ranging as possible, both in the general subject-matter covered (pref. 14) and also in the sense of giving a complete picture of Nature: 'It is a difficult task to give … Nature to all things and all her properties to Nature' (ibid. 15). He also sees the craftsmanship of Nature as much in her smallest and most insignificant works as in her greatest. With regard to insects, he says 'Nature is to be found in her entirety nowhere more than in her smallest creations' (11.4). Other animals, besides man, can to a certain extent be seen as microcosms. It is this, together with the interest in the range of species in the overall totality of Nature, which helps to balance the stress on man's supremacy.

Secondly, Pliny sometimes makes elaborate excuses for Nature's apparent lapses in providence which serve only to underline his predominantly anthropocentric outlook. There was a Stoic tradition of exculpating Nature, for example by arguing that her evils were only apparent and were in fact beneficial to man. This is the theme Pliny picks up in his remarks about poisonous honey, where he says that Natura intends to make man more prudent and less greedy thereby (21. 77-8).

The discussion of providence in Cicero's De Natura Deorum gives an idea of other arguments with which Pliny would have been acquainted. The Sceptic Cotta argues against Stoic ideas of providence in book 3. Even if the Stoics say that man's abuse of ratio is his own sin, a real providence would have foreseen and provided against this (ND 3. 78). It is this problem which leads Pliny to remark that iron is the best and worst of things (HN 34. 138). It enables man to practise agriculture, but, in order to kill other men more quickly, he has, by inventing arrows, even made it fly, 'sceleratissima humani ingenii fraus'. The culpa is not Natura's but man's inasmuch as he has perverted Natura's intention and made iron fly (34. 138).²⁹ Therefore, he concludes, it is due to naturae benignitas … eademque providentia that, because of rust, nothing is more mortal than the substance most hateful to mortality. It is typical of Pliny's layman's approach to philosophy that he is not interested in solving the problem posed by Cotta, but accepts it as an interesting paradox, 'cutting the knot' (see Ch. II.2). Elsewhere, he appeals to practical compromise, the general rule. Thus, in HN 18. 5, he just points out that in Natura the bad things are far outweighed by the good ones, so no one need doubt naturae maiestas.³⁰ This is related to the manner in which his moral arguments make one evil cancel out another. As poisonous honey discourages men from greed, so do snakes discourage him from the impious greed of mining. The apparent nuisance to man, rust, prevents to some extent his perverted use of iron.

Occasionally, the providential view of Nature is replaced by a more impersonal notion of the natural balance of elements in mundus as a whole.³¹ Thus, in HN 36. 1, Pliny says that, while everything he has described so far may be considered to have been created for man, Natura made mountains in order that she might curb her most restless elements, such as the violent force of heavy waves. Such comments are exceptional. These natural barriers are more often seen as Natura's protection of man against the moral evil of his mistaken desire for gold and other luxury materials (e.g. 33. 3).

One part of Natura is always provida and benigna towards man in the HN. Terra is often personified and, in one passage, is even called sacra parens (33. 1-2), like Natura (e.g. 24. 1). Logically, his concept of Natura as both the material mundus and the spirit permeating it makes any deification of Terra redundant, but this, too, was a Stoic tendency, if less common than deification of mundus (SVF. ii. 92). Archidemus made it hegemonikon of the universe in much the same way that others portrayed the sun. Seneca suggests that the Stoics believed that the earth was a living body.³² He develops an analogy between veins and arteries and the earth's inner channels for water and air (NQ 3. 15. 1). Pliny makes such a parallel even more vivid when he talks about the earth's viscera (33. 2). Italy (37. 202) is said to be gravida. The idea of the special divinity of the earth was no doubt encouraged by the commonly held theory that she formed the stable centre-point of the universe (2. 1). In the Timaeus, she is the first and oldest of the secondary gods created by the Demiurge (40 B-C). For the author of the De Mundo (written between c.50 BC and AD 100), she is imperishable because of her biological balance and harmony (397^a24-^b8) despite being the heavenly body that is furthest away from the God's seat in the ether and therefore feeble, incoherent, and confused (397^b30-3).

More generally, it was a commonplace that Earth was man's nurse and mother, providing all his real needs. Philo (De Aet. Mundi 63 ff.) eulogizes Earth as the Pandora who gives both benefit and pleasure to man. However commonplace, a beneficent Terra enables Pliny, consciously or not, to gloss over the problems of an imperfect providence. In a famous passage (7.1 ff.), probably derived from a similar one in Cicero's Republic,³³ Pliny wonders whether Natura is not a stepmother rather than a mother to man. In contrast, Terra is always parens, never noverca. As we shall see, her functions in this role are important in the consideration of Pliny's remarks on man's use of the land in farming or gardening (Ch. V. 1; Ch. II. 5). In naturalistic terms, she is man's proper element and as such often contrasts with the dangerous and untrustworthy sea (Ch. V intro.).

The main features of Pliny's idea of providence in Natura, especially as displayed in man's own element, Terra, are conveniently summed up in his descriptions of mining (33. 1 ff., 70 ff.). In HN 33. 1 Pliny uses vivid similes of earth gaping or trembling (dehiscere … intremescere) as her viscera are probed.³⁴ This stresses the impiety of man's behaviour towards the divine—indignatione sacrae parentis (sect. 4)—as well as the immorality of seeking the material of luxury (gold) or of violence (iron).³⁵ A more worthy motive would have been the search for medicines. Medicina metallica was a recognized concept and various medicinal uses of minerals are described by Pliny in HN 34. 166 ff. Yet, as Pliny remarks ironically, such remedies are hardly ever the object of these excavations. In any case, all the essentials for life, including many medicines, can be found on the earth's surface. But earth does not limit herself to the provision of bare essentials. If man took only what lay to hand, without digging under earth's surface, 'how innocent, how happy, how luxurious (delicata), even, life might be!' (33. 3). Earth has concealed things precisely because they are harmful to man; that is, Natura has made certain provisions against man's tendency to pervert ratio.³⁶ The good things which man is meant to have are given willingly and easily (larga facilisque, 33. 2).

In HN 33. 70 ff., Pliny describes a particularly difficult method of mining. Man eventually overcomes Natura in an unholy conquest which he compares unfavourably even with the seeking of luxuries (pearls and purple dyes) from the dangerous sea.³⁷ 'Spectant victores ruinam naturae' is the terse embodiment of his moral indignation.³⁸ The mountains which protect Natura from man and man from himself have been destroyed. Yet Pliny cannot avoid his optimistic tendency to admire the human achievement, even in an activity which violently rejects Naturae providentia. It comes across in his vivid description of the difficult procedure in HN 33. 71–3,³⁹ as he follows the process step by step, up to the final collapse of the rock. Moreover, Pliny's last thought on the matter adds an interesting pragmatic touch to his otherwise idealistic criticisms: 'Yet even now gold has not yet been found, nor did they positively know there was any there when they began to dig; the mere hope of obtaining their coveted object was sufficient reason for encountering such dangers and expense' (33. 73). Pliny implies that the trouble taken to obtain the substance is disproportionate when set against its moral worth. This is an idea which will gain significance in the interpretation of Pliny's attitude towards luxury and morality (Chs. II. 4, V. 2. D).

4. Contemplation or Investigation?

Equally significant is the attitude to Nature herself displayed by such investigations. There was a general feeling in the ancient world that it was permissible to try to understand but not to control Nature. The ambiguities of man's intrusions into and alterations of the natural order are, as we shall see, a major and recurring theme in Pliny.

The ambivalent attitude of the ancients towards natural inquiries had a religious element. This can be glimpsed, for example, four and a half centuries earlier in fifth-century Athens, at the notorious trial of the philosopher Socrates. Political hostility had undoubtedly played an important role in this attack. However, by charging him with impiety, Socrates' enemies presumably reckoned they could also arouse some religious prejudice against a free-thinking intellectual. They may have been encouraged by his talk of his admonitory 'divine voice'. But more significant in the present context is the fact that he apparently felt the need to dissociate himself from a theory of the natural philosopher Anaxagoras that the sun and moon were not divine but merely lumps of rock (Plato, Apology 26 D-E).

Doubt surrounds the confused tradition that Anaxagoras had himself been prosecuted earlier for impiety. The point remains that a certain amount of popular superstition about natural philosophy must have existed to make stories like this at all plausible.⁴⁰ The same may be said of the anecdote (Plutarch, Pericles 32. 2) about Diopeithes the diviner's decree allegedly aimed at blackening Pericles through his association with Anaxagoras. This allowed prosecution of anyone who 'did not believe in the gods or who taught theories about what was in the sky'. Here we may at least have an interesting indication of the religious attitudes of Diopeithes and his supporters.⁴¹"

Prior to the trial of Socrates, popular feeling that intellectual probing of the natural world led to impiety provided a basis for a caricature of the philosopher in Aristophanes' Clouds (423 BC). His Socrates was not only an immoral rhetorician but also a godless intruder into the secrets of nature. Socrates referred directly to this portrait when sketching the general prejudice against his meddlesomeness (periergia, cf. polypragmosyne, 31 B). He insisted that his inquiries were limited to the moral sphere and that he had no interest in 'things below the earth and in the sky' (Apol. 19 B).

In the first centuries of our era, this Socratic rejection of such investigations as irrelevant to arete was enthusiastically endorsed by certain Christian writers. Calculations of the earth's shape and shadow, of the formation of eclipses or of the positions and numbers of the stars, were declared trivial and useless since they did not lead to the divine truth. Polypragmosyne and periergia should be controlled (Basil, Hex. 1. 3, 8). It was sufficient to trust the Bible's information and remember that Moses had no need for such calculations (Hex. 1. 7). Irrelevance rather than impiety seems to be the predominant objection. Yet there are also hints of religious hostility, and these occur even in those Christian writers most steeped in classical culture.⁴² Too much interest in the futile subtleties of the philosopher can lead to heresy (Hex. 3. 8). His is the attitude of 'one who considers himself wiser than the revelations of the Spirit' (Hex. 9. 1). Here, Basil attacks human intellectual arrogance, which in these cases seems also to amount to impiety.

Does Pliny place any such limitations on natural inquiries and, if so, to what extent are they moral, religious, or intellectual? In particular, does the concept of Divine Nature in any way impair his scientific zeal? The answer is not simple. On several occasions, he expresses reservations with regard to clever calculations about the earth and the heavens. Hipparchus is criticized because he 'dared to give the number of the stars to posterity and to enumerate the heavenly bodies by name', a feat 'etiam deo improbam' (2.95). Eratosthenes' attempt to measure the circumference of the earth is also 'improbum ausum', 'but achieved by such subtle reasoning that one is ashamed to be sceptical' (2.247, cf. 2.87). These philosophers have clearly gone 'too far', but in what sense? Which worries Pliny more, the fact that man has overstepped his intellectual capacity or the fact that, in so doing, he may have overstepped a religious boundary? In spite of the fact that Hipparchus' attempt was 'etiam deo improbam', he is none the less introduced by Pliny at the beginning of the passage (2.95) as someone who 'can never be sufficiently praised' for his work generally. Moreover, this work is described in highly religious and philosophical terms: 'No one has done more to prove the relationship of the stars with man and that our spirits are a part of heaven.' Clearly then Hipparchus is not to be regarded as a habitual attacker of religious concepts of the universe.

In the present instance, Pliny's vocabulary suggests he thought Hipparchus overambitious intellectually. Certainly the word improbus in these passages should be compared with Pliny's general use of it elsewhere in the HN to denote something that is 'too large'. It may, for instance, be used of Nature's power, in the sense that it is too large to comprehend: 'What is more powerful than a magnet? … Where in nature will you find a greater immensity (maior improbitas, 36.126)?' Elsewhere, he talks of the potentia and improbae vires of Natura opifex when he admires the miraculous mora, the fish which can stop a ship whatever the weather (immensum potentiae occulate documentum, 32.1). In the case of the philosophers it is their temerity (audacia) which is improba, a combination which suggests excess in a bad sense. They have been overambitious in seeking to measure potentia occulta so precisely. Nature for Pliny is essentially immeasurable by human minds and to think otherwise is self-delusory and pretentious. Eratosthenes' subtlety was a borderline case, Pliny being uncertain whether to condemn or admire the results. At the other end of the scale from these cosmic investigations, the painstakingly minute measures of natural substances in certain medical compounds induce him to cry out against ostentatio artis (medicinae): 'Which of the gods in the name of Truth fixed these proportions? It was certainly beyond the capability of man!' (29.25, see Ch. 11.2, refs. and n.26).

In contrast, when Pliny himself offers explanations of Nature, he does so in very general terms. Regular winds, for instance, may be caused by continuous motion of the world, or the fluctuation of the 'life spirit' itself, or by air whipped up by the movements of the planets (2.116). He 'investigates' only how such phenomena fit into a basic system of precepts governing the workings of the universe as a whole. He is content with the conclusion that the regularity of these winds proves that there is a law of nature at work (2.121).⁴³ When he says (2.116) that this law is not 'unknown' even if it is not yet fully known (percognitum), we suspect that he is referring to this knowledge of its existence and that 'full' knowledge will be limited to the choice of one of the possible general causes that he lists.

Rather than condemning the principle of discovery, Pliny is concerned that some claims to truth are misleading. Yet his intellectual misgivings cannot be divorced from religious ones. Pliny's vague, matter-of-course references to 'deity' in the Hipparchus and medical passages quoted earlier, point to two things: to the prevalence in ancient thought of a religious outlook on the world and to the consequent impossibility of assigning attitudes exclusively 'intellectual' or 'religious' labels. In the case of Pliny himself, while overt mention of the divinity of Natura is not to be found in every chapter of the HN, it underlies the work as a whole. As the ensuing chapters will illustrate, the interaction of man and nature is to an extent the interaction of man and the divine. To overstep the bounds of human ratio is to challenge the supreme ratio divinae naturae (Ch. 11.2). It is not merely intellectually unsound but also an implicit attempt to devalue the divine power of Nature. We shall also see that human motivation is of critical importance to Pliny's assessment of man's investigations into Nature. The philosophers Pliny criticized were overambitious but did not act in a spirit of impious attack on divina Natura. The fruits of their researches can often be put to admirable humanitarian uses as Pliny himself recognizes with approval in the case of eclipses (Ch. 11.3). The intellectual inquiries which Pliny does unambiguously condemn are those of the magicians. The concept of control rather than understanding is perhaps important here. The magician aims to control the power of Nature. Yet even in these instances, as we shall see (Ch. III.2.A. i-iv), the condemnation is not solely for 'impiety' towards Nature. Rather. Pliny abhors their intentions towards humanity. In contrast to the predictor of eclipses, the magician aims to harm rather than to help other men; that is, to hinder rather than aid vita (Ch. IL. I), to disrupt rather than to cement the bond between man's life-force and its ultimate source.

There is another, more straightforwardly religious, aspect to man's understanding of Nature which influences Pliny. For the Stoics, contemplation of the beauty and artistry of the world proved there was a divine creator in or above the universe (Cic. ND 2.87 ff.), an aspect of thought which comes close to the Christian one of contemplating God through his works: 'We are not born in order to see what has been created but in order that we may contemplate the creator himself, that is that we may see him with our mind' (Lact. Inst. 3.9.13).⁴⁴ The tradition is also to be found in Jewish writings.⁴⁵ Rather than seeking to improve on Nature, man is invited to stand back and admire the truly perfect. The Stoic's contemplation of Nature was one aspect of living in harmony with it. It was a means of fulfilling the individual's ratio and identifying with the divine. Cicero says (ND 2.37): 'Man was himself born to contemplate and imitate the universe'.⁴⁶ The imitation idea has links with that of man as a microcosm.⁴⁷

Expressions of awe and wonder at the greatness and majesty of Nature as displayed in her works are found throughout the HN. In HN 7.7, for example, Pliny claims that it will not be possible to appreciate naturae vis atque maiestas fully if the mind takes in only specific details without grasping the whole picture. What makes his view rather more unusual, however, is the stress he lays on the contribution made by the smallest and humblest creations (sect. 3) to this grand overall picture. The divine creator is praised for the insect, one of her most wonderful efforts: 'Nowhere is there to be found a more striking example of her artistry' (11.1-2). A Stoic definition of mundus refers to it as a balance of 'heaven, air, earth … and the sea and all the living things in them' (SVF ii. 528). However, later Stoics tended to stress the contemplation of only the most exalted aspects of nature,⁴⁸ such as the heavenly phenomena, and this is reflected in Seneca's distinction in the NQ 2.3-4 between partes which are essential to the wholeness of mundus and quasi partes which are not. The whole of the animal and vegetable kingdoms between them constitute a single pars. This implies that separate species, as well as individual animals or plants, are dispensable quasi partes.⁴⁹ In contrast, Pliny is more interested in all aspects of the natural world for their own sake. If some of his defences of his humble subject are made with literary prejudices in mind,⁵⁰ he is also aware of such philosophical ones: in HN 11.4, he criticizes both types of prejudice: 'I beg my readers not to let their contempt for many of these creatures lead them also to despise what I relate about them, since in the contemplation of Nature nothing can possibly be considered superfluous.'

This contrast between Pliny and Seneca with regard to the parts of Nature each considers worth studying is paralleled by their respective views concerning the extent of her divine element. Unlike the vague and variable pantheist Pliny, Seneca at the beginning of the NQ makes a clear distinction between study of the obvious parts of nature and that of the loftier mysteries of God and the secrets of the universe. For Seneca, man's animus, 'pars (mundi) magnificentissima' (Ad Helv. 8.4), can start by contemplating earthly things,⁵¹ but only as a means to progressing to the divine celestial sphere, where it contemplates an eternity of time and space (Ad Helv. 20.2; Ad Marc. 26.5). Eventually, sense-perception should be abandoned for pure meditation: in De Vita Beata (8.4), he says that reason may at first investigate external things at the instigation of the senses, but it should eventually fall back on itself, for the soul is 'melius et certius lumen' than the eyes (Vit. Beat. 2.2). Any limitations are due to the restrictions of ability caused by human inferiority to the divine: only after death can the soul learn arcana naturae not ex coniectura but ex vero (Ad Marc. 25.2). Seneca's exaltation of contemplation is sometimes enhanced by language suggestive of religious awe: in De Otio 5.8, he describes himself as nature's admirer and devotee (cultor). However, he retains a clear division between the human and divine worlds: there is a philosophy which deals with man and a philosophy which deals with God (NQ 1.1.1). The latter is 'higher … and more spiritual … and not embraced by the eyes'. That dealing with man is publica, while the other is secretiora (NQ 1.1.3). Pliny sees no such division.

A Senecan simile offers an appropriate conclusion. In NQ 7.30.6, he compares the higher philosophical approach to Nature to the more esoteric revelations associated with the mystery religions: 'Nature does not reveal all her mysteries at once, just as Eleusis keeps something in reserve to show those who revisit there … These secrets are not open to all indiscriminately. They are withdrawn and closed up in the inner sanctum.' These words suggest the intellectual exclusiveness of such philosophy, a contrast to Pliny's layman's approach. His Natura is, in comparison, more akin to those traditional gods whose wanton behaviour he complains about (2.17). Although her benevolent side, described in the previous section, is the one most often seen, there is another, darker side, with more than a touch of the heartless caprice and cruelty of the Olympians, or even of the despised 'man-made' goddess Fortuna (2.22). Pliny's natura ludens or lasciviens is not a cosy image; she revels in her own power, the luxuriant abundance of spontaneous growth (Ch. 11.5). When Pliny describes her creation of human freaks and oddities as 'ludibria sibi, nobis miracula' (7.32), the power of the Natura divinity is shown to have rather a cruel streak. Again, while many of the things harmful to man in Natura are either hidden blessings, or become harmful through his perversion of them (see above, sect. 3), there is sometimes no reason for Natura's wild savagery. Eruptions are a good example. When Etna erupts, 'natura savagely threatens the lands with fire' (2.236). Such upheavals of the normally beneficent Earth are 'scelera naturae' (HN 2.206). Productive or destructive, Pliny's Natura is wild.⁵² Pliny was right not to attribute 'goodness' to Natura (above, sect. 3): amorality is more appropriate. Yet an element of unpredictable savagery enhances rather than detracts from the power and majesty of an otherwise beneficent and providential deity.

5. Postscript: Pliny's Cosmology in Context

We have seen that Pliny built up his portrait of divina Natura by drawing on a long and rich tradition of cosmological theories and speculations in the ancient world. The result is a complex and ambivalent Natura whose characteristics often seem contradictory. The benevolent deity who serves the interests of her supreme creation, man, can sometimes unleash a chaos of unruly elements which threaten his very existence. On some occasions, she is no more than a backdrop for the works and deeds of man. At other times, her power imposes limitations on the ambitions of man's inferior intellect. She is stressed as the creator of mankind but also as the creator of the insect. Pliny encompasses the totality of Nature, investigating animal, vegetable, or mineral components in scientific detail.

It is not easy to interpret this in terms of the history of ancient thought. The ambiguity in Pliny's outlook has somethimes been elevated to the status of a key point⁵³ in the history of ancient science. He is held to embody a tension between two strains of thought; the Aristotelian and Presocratic analysis of precise phenomena, and the philosophical idea of sympathy and old Socratic prejudice against investigation unless it is aimed at arete. This places him between a more rational, analytical age and a less rational, increasingly superstitious, era that is developing. Pliny certainly displays different strands of thought in his work. However, it is unlikely that he was aware of such tensions. His acquisition of philosophy was more a matter of absorption than conscious critical analysis. He just was not interested in solving philosophical problems (see sect. 3). As for his chronological significance, it is, as has often been observed, difficult to isolate points of greater or lesser rationality in a development so obviously complex and non-linear as ancient scientific thought. After all, the great physician Galen wrote some hundred years after Pliny, but he can hardly be called less 'analytical' or more 'superstitious' than his encyclopaedist predecessor.

It may be less precise but more rewarding to approach the question from a slightly different angle and take notice of Pliny's own testimony in the HN. He sees himself as the inheritor of the wisdom of the past in the broadest sense. He follows the example of all his predecessors who have assimilated and handed knowledge down to successive generations. He is, in short, an omnivorous inheritor of the classical tradition. Comments in the HN⁵⁴ show his awareness of this tradition. He is acutely conscious of the debt owed to men of earlier times, both for specific scientific discoveries and for the handing down of knowledge. He is anxious both for the advance of the former and for the continuation of the latter, an attitude belonging to the classical tradition of inquiry in general.

While keeping to such broad definitions, we can, none the less, further clarify Pliny's historical context. This classical attitude towards his intellectual heritage evokes an obvious contrast with the Christian outlook as it developed in the first centuries of our era. The major Church Fathers were well grounded in classical ideas and classical philosophy was adapted to the exposition of Christian belief.⁵⁵ Yet the actual recognition and appreciation of the classical tradition is conspicuously missing in official Christian writings, whatever the author's private view.⁵⁶ In the context of cosmological thought this is most appropriately illustrated by the hexaemera, or commentaries on the six days of the Mosaic account of creation. Like the classical cosmologies mentioned earlier in this chapter, those of Plato, Philo, or Cicero, they derived much from teleological thought.⁵⁷ With them, they create a continuous tradition of cosmological writing before and after Pliny's time. It is their motivation that is different: the upholding of faith is of paramount importance.

A glance at the first extant hexaemeron,⁵⁸ written in the fourth century by Basil of Caesarea, soon reveals modes of thought alien to Pliny. In a number of passages, philosophers are abused, misinterpreted, and dismissed in favour of biblical tradition and ideals of faith. Faith is, in fact, all too often the enemy of reasoned argument. In the second century, when Christianity was expanding, pagan writers such as Galen and Celsus criticized the Christian writings on precisely these grounds.⁵⁹ Pliny, writing in an earlier era, before this expansion, would be even less likely to understand the Christian ideal of faith and its claim to a monopoly of the truth. Basil contrasts the unartificial utterances of the Bible with the philosophers' forced reasonings: 'let the simplicity of faith be stronger than the deductions of reason' (Hex. 1.10).⁶⁰ He dismisses them as liars, and the argument that they all contradict one another acquires a conclusive finality in Christian argument which is far removed from the scepticism of Cotta in the De Natura Deorum and from the uncertainty on the nature of God as expressed by Pliny himself in HN 2. 14-27. A similar stress on the primacy of faith as opposed to the contentious, over-subtle, and contradictory pagan disputations is to be found in Ambrose's adaptation of Basil's Hexaemeron (2.7.25; 3.2.5; 3.27). Even Basil's condemnation of the theory of the music of the spheres, as being useless for the Christian concept of God, is in a very different vein from Pliny's remark that it is iucunda magis quam necessaria (2. 84).

We must, then, assign Pliny a place in the history of thought on the general grounds of attitude and tradition. We cannot assign him a more positive and specific intellectual role. The development of thought is gradual and complex and not to be encapsulated in the writings of any one author, especially when he is a generalist rather than a philosopher, an inheritor rather than an innovator. Yet perhaps we can still ask whether there is any mode of thought which can place Pliny's writings in the first century, as opposed to the obvious echoes of earlier thought, and the supposed indications of future developments. In this case, it is his emphasis on humanity and its needs and aspirations which can most fairly be described as a general firstcentury phenomenon: it is found both in pagan philosophy—later Stoicism—and in Christian writings of this era and later. Of course, ideas on the supremacy of man were not in themselves new. Yet it is interesting that from this time, mundus/kosmos seems to broaden in meaning and more often denotes not just the world as the natural, physical structure of the universe, but especially the inhabited world. Longinus, in a wellknown passage, talks of a 'cosmic' decline of literature (44.1). The Gospels, particularly that of John, and then patristic literature, produce a number of meanings, all of which refer to the cosmos as inhabited by man; 'mankind', 'the inhabitants of the world', 'the sphere of man's activity', 'the scene of life'.⁶¹' Pliny himself indicates this meaning of the term in the contents of his Historia Naturalis. Long sections are devoted to man's arts as well as to the natural materials used; the uses of plants are given more space than descriptions of the plants themselves. Man and his cities are as much a part of mundus as are rivers and islands (7.1).⁶² Such an emphasis once again underlines the importance of the linking theme in this and the following chapters: the relationship between man and Nature in Pliny.

Works cited

Plinio e la natura: atti del ciclo di conferenze sugli aspetti naturalistici dell'opera pliniana: Atti della giornata di studi su plinio e 1'erboristeria (Como, 1982).

D. J. Campbell, Naturalis Historiae liber secundus (Aberdeen, 1936) [commentary].

H. Rackham and W. H. S. Jones (Loeb Classical Library edn.; Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1938-63).

H. von Arnim, Stoicorum veterum Fragmenta, 4 vols. (Leipzig, 1903-24).

Notes

¹ Esp. W. Kroll, Die Cosmologie des Plinius (Breslau, 1930). Less fully, J. W. Caspar, Roman Religion as Seen in Pliny's Natural History (Chicago, 1934). Older editions are listed by J. Beaujeu in the Bude edition of bk. 2, pp. 115 ff. He also provides a succinct but useful commentary on these paragraphs.

² See S. Sambursky, The Physical World of the Greeks (London, 1963), 184 ff. The first exponent of a scientific cosmology was Anaximander. On Hesiod, see Philo, De Aet. Mundi 17.

³ Works on magic (see Ch. III. 2. A) attributed to Democritus earn him Pliny's condemnation on several occasions (e.g. 24.160; 25.13; 26.19; 27.141). In 30.9-10, he rejects the tradition that these writings were spurious. In 2.14-15, Pliny claims that Democritus believed in only two gods, Punishment and Reward.

⁴ A phrase probably derived from a commonplace (Caecil. 264 Ribbeck 'homo homini deus est, si suum officium sciat'; Cic. Lig. 38, see D. J. Campbell's edn. of HN 2 (Aberdeen, 1936), 53.

⁵ On the rhetorical nature of this passage, see L. W. Rutland,' "Fortuna sola invocatur": Pliny's Statement', Class. Bull, 56 (1979), 28-31.

⁶ See R. W. Sharples, Alexander of Aphrodisias on Fate (London, 1983), 8ff. for a brief outline of the 'soft determinism' of the Stoic position. Chrysippus devised a compromise whereby the universe was governed by fate, yet room was left for human responsibility: men are responsible for those actions which, though predestined, depend primarily on themselves. Determinism must not be an excuse for fatalism. Cf. SVF ii. 956; J. M. Rist, Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge, 1969), 112-32; S. Sambursky, The Physics of the Stoics (London, 1959), 49-80; F. H. Sandbach, The Stoics (London, 1975), 101-4; A. A. Long, Problems in Stoicism (London, 1971), 173-99. See also Ch. III. 1, fin, and n., 2. A i, B n. 51).

⁷ The actual examples are not as trivial or contrived as they appear at first glance. Each in its way expresses an idea of central importance to a Roman and a Stoic: (i) God cannot commit suicide. Suicide was God's greatest gift to men in Pliny's view (2.27, cf. 28.9, Ch. VI. 2. E) and that of Stoics generally. Pliny's example here thus enhances the ultimate freedom of the philosopher. (ii) God cannot alter men's acquisition of honores. Strictly speaking, a Stoic should regard honores with indifference. However, they were the obvious mark of success for a Roman performing his public duty. Pliny echoes the importance the Romans attached to the concept of memoria. The achievements of one man depend on the memoria of others in successive generations, rather than on any outside force. (iii) God cannot make 10 x 2 not equal to 20. Numbers were the basic bricks of the universe. Pliny says that Natura has to follow her own laws and is supreme precisely because they are unalterable. Is he once again thinking of a parallel with the Stoic, who was supreme if he lived 'according to nature'?

⁸Timaeus, esp. 28, 41 ff. Stoic pantheism: SVF ii. 1008-105, esp. 1022, 1026. The view that the whole universe is God is attributed to Chrysippus in Cic. ND 1.39.

⁹ND 1.39, cf. SVF ii. 1025.

¹⁰Pneuma: SVF ii. 1028-48. See Sambursky, Greeks (n. 1), 133-4, where the history of the word's usage is given. The Stoics give active qualities to the fire and air making up pneuma; Sambursky stresses in particular the biological reason for this. Organic growth was thought to be inseparable from thermal processes. Thus, 'Natura is a creative fire proceeding methodically to the work of generation' (ND 2.57, attributed to Zeno).

¹¹ Manilius, Astr. 2.68: Mundus is a machina obedient to its overlord (magistro); 75-7: a world equal in its parts by the fairness of its creator; 81-2: over the whole mundus, things follow the guidance of a master (dominum), '… hic igitur deus et ratio quae cuncta gubernat …'.

¹²Sol rector: HN 2.12-13, an idea perhaps to be linked with Plato, Rep. 6.508. According to D.L. 7.139, Cleanthes called the sun to hegemonikon tou kosmou, cf. Cic. ND 2.40 ff. The Stoic emphasis on heat as life-giving (above, n. 10) and the sun's role in creating and preserving life may be of relevance here. For more speculative connections with Pythagorean ideas, see Beaujeu (n. 1), 125 n. 7.

¹³ Lucretius does use the phrase 'natura creatrix (1.629; 2.1117; 5.1362), but as no more than a figurative way of describing the impersonal mechanics of the atomic system. Bailey on 1.629 suggests an analogy with Lucretius' equation of Venus with the creative power of Nature in the Prooemium.

¹⁴ In Cic. Acad. 2. 121, Strato is said not to make use of the idea of divine activity in creating the world, but not to follow atomic theories either: creation is caused by natural forces of gravitation and motion.

¹⁵ The idea of mind as the guiding principle of the universe appears first in fragments of Diogenes of Apollonia's On Nature which mention noesis. Better known is Anaxagoras' nous. See A. S. Pease, 'Caeli enarrant', Harv. Theol. Review 34 (1941), 163-200, esp. 164.

¹⁶Natura's providentia and benignitas: e.g. 2. 154 (Mother Earth eulogy), 18.5, 22.1; see further sect. 3.

¹⁷ For ratio as expressing a relationship between man and God, see Sen. NQ 1, pref. 14: the higher part of man is animus, but God is nothing but animus. He is all ratio, cf. Ep. 66. 12, 'ratio autem nihil aliud est quam in corpus humanun pars divini spiritus mersa'. He goes on to ask 'Quid est ergo ratio? Naturae imitatio' (66.9).

¹⁸ Sen. Clem. 1.3.2: 'man is a social animal born for the common good'; De Vit. Beat. 24.3, Nature bids us do good to all men, whether slave or free; 'wherever there is a human being, there is a chance to perform a service'. Cf. Marcus Aurelius, Med. 7.55, 8.59; Epictetus 3.13.3, 3.24.58, 4.4.27, fr. 7.

¹⁹ Sen. Ep. 87.36, on the difference between advantages and real goods. Goods admired by the crowd are not real goods (Ep. 66.31) but are illusory and fleeting (De Brev. Vit. 17.3). Life is said to be lamentable (Ad Marc. 11.1) and is compared to slavery (De Tranq. Animi 10.3). He advocates scorn of life (De Tranq. Animi 11.4; Ep. 4.4,8), and postulates a celestial abode for the soul (Ep. 75.18; 102.22, 28; Ad Marc. 23.1-3). In NQ 6.32. 4-7, he argues against fear of death and regard for life: 'rerum natura te, quae genuit, exspectat et locus melior ac tutior' (6).

²⁰ See Chs. II. 4; V. 2. D on luxury, and VI, esp. 2. E on health.

²¹ See W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, iii [Cambridge, 1969], 171 ff. See Intro., p. 13.

²² Guthrie (n. 21), 14-26, 44-8. It is also interesting that Protagoras was a declared agnostic, an attitude which may be compared with Pliny's air of uncertainty in HN 2.14 (… 'Whoever God is—if there is a God …'). Protagoras' practical and humanistic reaction led him to reject the contradictory speculations of the natural philosophers (Guthrie 186, and 51, noting Gorgias, Hel. 13). Pliny expresses a very similar scepticism, but on the contradictory speculations concerning the nature of God, rather than the makeup of the universe (2.14-27), see Ch. III. 1 on his rhetorical use of the diversity and contradiction of these speculations. For the difference in tone between this scepticism, based in classical rationality, and the Christian dismissal of Greek cosmological theories, see below, sect. 5.

²³ For such deifications, see Beaujeu (n. 1), 127 n. 3. The only other non-Christian critic listed by A. S. Pease (ed. and comm.), M Tulli Ciceronis De Natura Deorum (Cambridge, Mass., 1955), 693, is Lucian, Deorum Concilium 13.

²⁴ See Pease ad loc.

²⁵ Cf. the celebration of man's material progress attributed to Protagoras in Plato's dialogue of that name. The contrast with the Sophists' stress on man's opposition to nature is, once again, applicable in a general sense only. There is nothing to suggest that Pliny took a conscious position on anything as complex as the nomos-physis controversy of the 5th c. BC; see Guthrie (n. 21) 64-5, and Ch. 4.

²⁶ R. Renehan, 'The Greek Anthropocentric View of Man', HSCP 85 (1981), 239-59. Pease, 'Caeli enarrant' (n. 15), 172, stresses that Aristotle, even in his later works, still saw animals as created for the sake of man. See further, Ch. IV. 1. A, B init.

²⁷ In the more general sense, the microcosm idea is a means of envisaging the divine purpose in the makeup of all parts of creation. See Pease, 'Caeli enarrant' (n. 15), 164, on Xen. Mem. 1. 4. 2-14. It is supported by the Stoic doctrine of sympathy (Pease (n. 15) 177). For the interest in the smallest parts of creation, see Pliny, HN 11. 4; Sen. Clem. 1. 19. 4; Galen, De Usu Part. iii. 238 Kühn, and a Christian adaptation in Tert. Adv. In Marc. 1.14. See further below, sect. 4.

²⁸ Though note HN 2.95 (links between the souls of men and the heavens established by the studies of Hipparchus, cf. sect. 4), HN 2.22 (above, sect. 1), 27. 3 (Roman race compared to the sun, rector of the universe, Ch. V.2.c).

²⁹ This idea that the fault lies not with Nature or her produce but with man's perversion of them recurs frequently in Pliny. See Ch. II. 2, 4.

³⁰ This citation of the need for an overall view may be compared to a passage of Maximus of Tyre (41. 4 Hobein), who said that, as with a human artist, it was necessary to look at Nature's work as a whole, not at individual defects.

³¹ On the balance of Nature see the quotation of SVF ii. 528 in sect. 4 below. However, this goes on to say that the cosmos is 'the dwelling-place of gods and men, and the balance of those things created for their sake'. If man himself is the purpose for which the whole universe exists, there is little point in viewing him merely as one of the parts of the universe which must be kept in balance with the rest of Nature: the balance itself is teleological.

³² See H. M. Hine (ed. and comm.), Seneca Natural Questions, Book 2 (New York, 1981), 141-2.

³³Rep. 3. 1, see Ch. II. 3 and nn.

³⁴ Cf. Sil. It. 1. 231-3: 'Sed scelerum causas operit deus: Astur avarus/visceribus lacerae telluris mergitur imis.'

³⁵ He ignores in this instance the uses of iron in agriculture (34. 138).

³⁶ However, she has not made it impossible, only more difficult; the objection of Cotta is not answered. Cf. Sen. Ep. 110. 9-10 on injurious things hidden by Natura below the earth.

³⁷ According to Pliny, an old senatorial decree prohibited mining in Italy (33. 78, cf. 37. 202). Even outside Italy, mining was, in at least one case, subject to restrictions: the censors decreed that publicani could not have more than 5,000 men working in the gold-mines at Victumulae in the territory of Vercellae in NW Cisalpine Gaul (33. 78). Pliny's tone suggests that the senatorial decree had a moral purpose. Restrictive practices of the type he describes at Victumulae were, apparently, rare (see P. R. Lewis and G. D. B. Jones, 'Roman Gold-Mining in North-West Spain', JRS 60 (1970), 169 ff., App. 1, p. 181 on 33. 70 ff.). The purpose is not clear. Some sort of economic balance is assumed in the article cited. It is also possible that there was a fear of a large concentration of slaves in this area. But an element of moral concern over the profits reaped by overzealous exploitation of the mines by individual publicani need not be discounted.

³⁸ These victores are to be contrasted with the heroes who have conquered in 2. 54. Their probing of the heavens, unlike these men's probing of the earth, was righteous because it freed man by conquering his irrational fear. See Ch. II. 3.

³⁹ See intro., p. 4.

⁴⁰ K. Dover, 'The Freedom of the Intellectual in Greek Society', Talanta 7 (1976), 24-54, doubted whether this and other 'impiety' stories reflect official repression of intellectual freedom in democratic Athens; political and personal enmities featured prominently in their backgrounds. But more recently (The Greeks and their Legacy (Oxford, 1988), 158) he writes that he now attaches more weight to the mood of superstitious fear and less to the political aspects in the case of Socrates' trial.

⁴¹ See Dover, art. cit. 39-40, The Greek and their Legacy, 146-7.

⁴² Pointlessness of natural inquiries: see D. S. Wallace-Hadrill, The Greek Patristic View of Nature (Manchester, 1968), Ch. I. Clement of Alexandria and Origen were more favourable: natural science was worthy of study, but only as a preliminary step towards the final goal, knowledge of God. The student must quickly move on from it towards eternal things (Clem. Strom. 2. 2. 5. 1). On the cultured background of Basil, see J. M. Rist, 'Basil's "Neoplatonism": its Background and Nature', in P. Fedwick (ed.), Basil of Caesarea, Christian, Humanist, Ascetic, i (Toronto, 1981), 137-220. The complexity of the Christian response to natural philosophy must not be underestimated. It varies according to time and place and is complicated by more general feelings of hostility to classical culture, found, for instance, in later Latin writings, or in non-Greek Easterners like Tatian. On the hexaemeral literature and the general Christian attitude to pagan culture, see further below, sect. 5 and nn. 55-60.

⁴³ Note that lex naturae is equivalent to ratio naturae in HN 2.113, where the irregular movements are contrasted with the regular in that they are fortuita and occur nulla … ratione naturae. The regular movements are 'fatidica ex alto [cf. the divine nature of the stars from which they come], statisque de causis et ex suis venire sideribus'. The contrast between fortuita and ratione naturae is interesting, since it can be related to the difference between ratio and casus, discussed in Ch. II.2.

⁴⁴ However, Christian writers were careful to guard against ideas of pantheism, which such a link between the spiritual and material worlds might induce, emphasizing that the ultimate object of admiration was the creator not the creation. See Wallace-Hadrill (n. 42) 127 ff. on this and on their use of facets of nature as symbols or anagogues of the spiritual world.

⁴⁵ Pease, 'Caeli enarrant' (n. 15), 190-1 and nn. 212a, 214, gives as examples the Nineteenth Psalm and the Wisdom of Solomon, though pointing out that these, like the later Christian writings, may have been influenced by Greek thought.

⁴⁶ See Pease on ND 2.37. As an aspect of living in harmony with Nature, see Sen. De Otio 5.8.1: '… ergo secundum naturam vivo si totum me illi dedi, si illius admirator cultorque sum. Natura autem utrumque facere me voluit, et agere et contemplationi vacare.'

⁴⁷ Plato had already suggested (Timaeus 90 C-D) that contemplation of the revolutions and harmonious circuits of the universe should be practised, as these motions were akin to the divine element in man. In this way, man would more easily attain to truth and immortality.

⁴⁸ Cf. Sen. NQ 1, pref. 3,1-3, 12-13: the more exalted the object of contemplation, the nearer it brings the viewer to the divine Mind.

⁴⁹ The ambiguity of physeis (living things) in passages like SVF ii. 528 just quoted is noted by Hine (n. 32), 164-71, on NQ 2.3-4. It can refer to individuals or to species. In either case, Pliny is closer to this than he is to Seneca's definition.

⁵⁰ e.g. pref 12-14, 18.5. See Ch. V. 1. B. ii.

⁵¹ Earthly phenomena are not always unappreciated. In Ad Marc. 18.2 ff., Seneca suggests turning to the spectacle of earth only after the viewer has been sated with the celestial spectacle. Yet he lists cities, plains, mountains, animals, cornfields, etc. with enthusiasm, and does not explicitly say that they are inferior, only 'alia forma rerum, aliterque mirabilis'. For Pliny, such sights supply man with pleasure and entertainment, as well as evidence of Natura's grandeur. (See index s.vv. 'landscape' and 'spectaculum').

⁵² See Ch. II. 5 on cultivation and Ch. V intro. and 2. E on the sea as an aspect of Natura's savagery. The existence of a wild, irrational element in Natura is suggested also by a passage in the Timaeus (48 A) in which it is said that the world is not the product of Reason alone, but of the combination of Reason and Necessity. Reason controlled Necessity by persuading it for the most part to bring about the best result. This does indeed imply that, in certain areas, reason may not be uppermost and that the confusion of the primeval chaos may still exist. See also Ch. II n. 37 on rabies in man the microcosm.

⁵³ 0. Gigon, 'Pline', in Plinio il Vecchio, 41-52.

⁵⁴HN 2.54, 2.62, 14.1; see Ch. II. 1.

⁵⁵ See F. E. Robbins, The Hexaemeral Literature (Chicago, 1912), Ch. 1. Complex biblical argument might be based on acquaintance with the Greek philosophical tradition. See Robbins 55 ff. on the detailed discussion of whether the fires of heaven destroy the waters below them in Gregory of Nyssa's Hexaemeron. He takes issue with Basil's view and makes use to a certain extent of Aristotelian theories. This learned Christian adaptation of pagan philosophy may in some respects be contrasted less with the classical tradition than with more unscientific and credulous Christian writers who discussed 'less important and even fantastic questions as suggested by the biblical text' (Robbins 59-63 on the school of Theodorus of Mopsuhestia). A pre-eminent example of the Christian learned in classical philosophy is, of course, Origen. On the background to his Contra Celsum see the introduction to H. Chadwick's translation and commentary (Cambridge, 1965), pp. ix-xxii.

⁵⁶ On the complexities of the Christian attitude to classical learning see W. Jaeger, Early Christianity and Greek Paideia (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), cf. N. G. Wilson, St. Basil on Greek Literature (London, 1975), intro. 9-11.

⁵⁷ Pease, 'Caeli enarrant' (n. 15), 194, points to the continuity of the Christian hexaemeral tradition with that of Philo. The De Op. Mundi combined Mosaic and Greek ideas from a Jewish viewpoint, while the later authors did the same from the Christian viewpoint. On teleology, see Ch. I. 3.

⁵⁸ The most influential of these works, widely imitated and adapted by later writers. Robbins (n. 55), Ch. 4; Pease, 'Caeli enarrant' (n. 15), 194 ff.

⁵⁹ Jaeger (n. 56), 32-3 and nn., cf. Robbins (n. 55), 46-7: Basil 'believed that matter was made out of nothing by God, but rather as an article of faith dependent upon the revelation to Moses, than as a thing logically to be proved'. Summary dismissals of philosophical theories which conflict with articles of faith may be seen in other Christian writings. Combating of heresy was, of course, an important consideration in the Christian emphasis on faith, e.g. Ambrose, Hex. 2. 8. 30.

⁶⁰ Basil, Hex. 1. 4, 3. 8: see sect. 4 and n. 42, and E. Amand de Mendieta, 'The Official Attitude of Basil of Caesarea as a Christian Bishop towards Greek Philosophy and Science', Studies in Church History, 13 (1976), 25-49.

⁶¹ John 1: 10; 3: 17; 7: 7; 12: 13; 14: 17, 22; 15: 18, 19; 17: 14, 21. Patristic literature: see A Patristic Greek Lexicon, ed. G. W. H. Lampe (Oxford, 1961). Mankind/inhabitants of the world: I Clem. 7.4; Origen, Comm, in Mt. 13. 20. Sphere of activity: Dam. Papa, Ep. Illyr. ap. Thdt. HE 2. 22. 5. Scene of life: I Clem. 38. 3; Arist. Apol. 1. 1. In patristic literature, the word kosmikos often comes to mean worldly as opposed to spiritual and as such is rather ambiguous: see Gregory of Nyssa, Traité de la Virginité, ed. M. Aubineau (Sources Chrétiennes, 119; Paris, 1968), 480.

⁶² 'Mundus … et in eo terrae, gentes, maria, flumina insignia, insulae, urbes …'. That man was a part of the cosmos was part of the classical cosmological tradition, cf. [Arist.] De Mundo 2, 391^b19-10; 3, 392^b19-20. It is the overall importance of the human element in Pliny which is remarkable. Cicero (ND 2.88) uses the idea of man and his works being part of mundus, but it is in the context of a wider argument to prove that the universe must be guided by an intelligent force if some of its elements are in themselves rational and creative. Note also Seneca's use of the theme, emphasizing an interest in the heaven-earth divide which Pliny ignores (see above, n. 51). He describes man's entry into tota vita, the city of gods and men, lists the contents of the heavens, and follows with those of the earth, which include urbes and nationes (Ad Marc. 18. 2. ff.).