INTRODUCTION

The book is valuable as an anthropological document: it is a repository of scattered facts that reveal the history of humanity's reaction to the environment—the gradual growth of accurate observation, systematic nomenclature, and classification, which constitutes Natural Science.

Pliny’s general outlook on life, like that of other educated men of his time, can be described as a moderate and rational Stoicism a philosophy emphasizing virtue, reason, and accepting the natural order.

A vivid account of his writing habits, penned by his nephew, is worth appending here. The younger Pliny, in response to an inquiry from a friend who greatly admired his uncle, provides a complete list of his works in Epistles, III, v, totaling seven items and filling 102 volumes. Among these, the Naturae historiarum libri triginta septem original: "thirty-seven books of natural history" is the latest. He describes it (section 6) as an opus diffusum, eruditum, nec minus varium quam ipsa natura original: "a work that is extensive, learned, and no less varied than nature itself". He continues by describing how a busy lawyer, occupied with major affairs and the friend of emperors, managed to find time for such prolific authorship (section 7):

‘He possessed a keen intelligence, incredible devotion to study, and a remarkable capacity for functioning without sleep. His method was to begin during the last week of August, rising by candlelight long before daybreak—not to take omens, but to study. In winter, he started working at 1:00 or, at the latest, 2:00 a.m., and frequently at midnight. He was a very ready sleeper, sometimes drifting off in the middle of his studies only to wake up again. Before dawn, he would wait upon the Emperor Vespasian, who also worked through the night, and then he would depart to fulfill his assigned duties.