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In the Margins: Humanist Scholars on Pliny in Print

By Clare Woods

As one of the first "scientific" texts to receive a print edition (Sarton, 1938), Pliny the Elder's Natural History looms large not only literally - most incunabula editions are weighty folio volumes - but as monuments in the history of print. More pertinently for this paper, Pliny's text loomed large as a proving ground for humanists to showcase their philological expertise (Davies, 1995; Fera, 1995; Monfasani, 1988; Nauert, 1980). The numerous early editions name for the most part the humanist scholars who contributed to the text they present.

Empire of Magic: Imperial Historiography in Pliny the Elder's History of Magic

By Trevor Stacy Luke

This paper examines Pliny the Elder's history of magic in Book 30 as imperial historiography. Ordinarily studied as an ancient forerunner of the encyclopedia, the Historia Naturalis is less often studied as historical literature. Nevertheless, Pliny, who first wrote an imperial history a fine Aufidii Bassi (Momigliano 1932), frequently comments on emperors in a manner that suggests the considered views, however idiosyncratic, of a historical thinker. The history of magic is no exception.

Animal Speech, Sermo, and Imperialism in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History

By Wesley J Hanson

Early in the Natural History, Pliny praises Italy for its ability to unite distant enemies and bring into agreement the discordant dialects of the world through common use of the Latin language (3.39). The phrase that Pliny uses, sermonis commercium, aligns his interest in speech with potential benefits that Roman imperialism could generate by connecting cultures that span the known world – a world that Pliny felt his Natural History had a role in illuminating.

Epitome in the Age of Empire: Florus and the (Re)Written Republic

By Rachel L Love

When Livy began his monumental history of Rome at the close of the 1st century BCE, he became the latest in a long line of historians who composed sprawling histories of Rome beginning with the founding of the city—ab urbe condita—and continuing to the author's own time. Yet while Livy is generally considered (in his own time and now) to be the greatest practitioner of this style of historiography, it is rarely acknowledged that he is also the last.

Columella’s Prose Preface: A Paratextual Reading of De Re Rustica Book 10

By Victoria Austen-Perry

As part of Columella’s wide-ranging agricultural manual, Book 10 of De Re Rustica jumps out at the reader immediately. For here, in comparison to eleven other books written in didactic prose, is a 436-hexameter verse poem dedicated solely to the hortus, a formal and obvious departure from the style and subject matter of the rest of the manual. Why all the fuss about gardens? As Gowers (2000) states, ‘it is not often that artichokes and cucumbers get forced into such lurid focus’.