PLINY NATURAL HISTORY

PREFACE

PLINIUS SECUNDUS TO HIS DEAR VESPASIAN [Titus] GREETING

Most Gracious Highness (let this title, a supremely true one, be yours, while that of "Most Eminent" grows old with your sire)—I have resolved to recount to you, in a somewhat presumptuous letter, the offspring of my latest labor, my volumes of Natural History (a novel task for the native Muses of your Roman citizens)—

For ’twas e’er your way

To deem my trifles something worth

• Catullus wrote meas esse aliquid putare nugas.
• Perhaps alter Latin to give "made it a little harsher than he wished it to be thought."
• Catullus 12.16, ut Veraniolum meum et Fabullum.

—to give a passing touch of polish to my "opposite number"—you recognize even this military slang—Catullus (for he, as you know, by interchanging the first syllables made himself a trifle harsher than he wished to be considered by his "darling Veraniuses and Fabulluses") and at the same time that my present sauciness may effect what in the case of another impudent letter of mine lately you complained of as not coming off.