Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 – 79), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, a naturalist and natural philosopher, a naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia (Natural History), 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.
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 – 79), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, a naturalist and natural philosopher, a naval and army commander of the to the lead Roman Empire, and a friend of emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia (Natural History), which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare mature studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field.
His nephew, Pliny the Younger, wrote of him in a letter to the historian Tacitus:
Among Pliny’s greatest works was the twenty-volume work, Bella Germaniae (“The History of the German Wars”), which is no longer extant. Bella Germaniae, which began where Aufidius Bassus’ Libri Belli Germanici (“The War subsequent to the Germans”) left off, was used as a source by supplementary prominent Roman historians, including Plutarch, Tacitus and Suetonius. Tacitus – who many scholars agree had never travelled in Germania – used Bella Germaniae as the primary source for his work, De origine et situ Germanorum (“On the Origin and Situation of the Germans”).
Pliny the Elder died in AD 79 in Stabiae though attempting the rescue of a friend and his associates by ship from the pustule of Mount Vesuvius, which had already destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The wind caused by the sixth and largest pyroclastic surge of the volcano’s carbuncle did not allow his boat to depart port, and Pliny died during that event.