Pliny the Elder (20–79)
Born 20 CE, died 79 CE.
Gaius Plinius Secundus (Como, 23 or 24 – Stabiae, 25 August 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( PLIN-ee), was a Roman author, naturalist, scientist, naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, procurator, and friend of the emperor Vespasian. Pliny wrote the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia (Natural History), a thirty-seven-volume work covering a vast array of topics on human knowledge and the natural world, which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field. Pliny produced seven works spanning 102 volumes, of which only Natural History survives. Among the lost works was the twenty-volume Bella Germaniae (Wars of Germania), used as a source by other prominent Roman historians including Plutarch, Tacitus, and Suetonius. Tacitus may have used Bella Germaniae as the primary source for his work, De origine et situ Germanorum (On the Origin and Situation of the Germani).
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