Pliny Natural History, Vol. I (Loeb Latin-English)

winter protected by mittens, so that even the severity of the weather might not steal any time from his studies; and with this object, he used to travel about in a sedan chair even while in Rome. Once, I remember his reprimanding me for going somewhere on foot, saying, "You need not have wasted those hours!"—he believed that all time not spent in study was wasted. This resolute application enabled him to get through all those volumes, and he bequeathed to me 160 sets of notes on selected books, written on both sides of the paper in an extremely small hand—a method that multiplies the volume of the work! He used to tell how, during his lieutenant-governorship in Spain, he had an offer of £3,500 for these notes, and at that date, they were considerably fewer in number.

TEXT

A large number of manuscript copies of Pliny's Natural History have been preserved; the oldest date back to the 9th or possibly the 8th century A.D. Attempts have been made by scholars to classify them in order of merit, but it cannot be said that even those that appear to be comparatively more correct carry any paramount authority, or indeed show much agreement on doubtful points. Furthermore, the mass of scientific detail and terminology, along with the quantity of curious and unfamiliar learning that the book contains, has necessarily afforded numerous opportunities for copyists' errors and for the conjectural emendation (correction) of scholars. Many of the textual problems raised are clearly impossible to solve. Only a few variants of special interest are provided in this edition.

Many editions have been printed, beginning with