Natural History

ex libris th?

CAIUS PLINIUS TO HIS MARCUS, GREETINGS.

Either in the Florentine catalog below... [illegible scribbles]?
II
Catalog of inscriptions
G. I.
[Arabic or shorthand script]?

It is a great pleasure to me that you read my uncle's books so diligently that you wish to have them all, and that you inquire which they all are. I shall fulfill your request by indicating the parts and the order in which they were written, and I shall make it known to you. For this is also a pleasant sort of knowledge for the studious: On Equestrian Javelin-throwing, one volume. He composed this with equal talent and care when he was serving as a cavalry commander. On the Life of Pomponius Secundus, two volumes; he fulfilled this as a debt owed to the memory of a friend by whom he was singularly loved. The German Wars, twenty volumes, in which he collected all the wars that we have waged with the Germans. He began this while he was serving in Germany, warned by a dream. For the shade of Drusus Nero, who won the widest victory in Germany and died there, stood by him while he rested. He commended his memory to him and begged that he would save him from the injury of oblivion. The Student, three volumes, which he divided into six books because of their size, in which he trains the orator from the cradle to perfection. Ambiguous Grammar, eight volumes, written under Nero in his final years when every kind of study had become somewhat more free and elevated, yet dangerous under that tyranny. A Continuation of Aufidius Bassus, thirty-one volumes. Natural History, thirty-seven volumes, a work as diffuse and learned as nature itself. You wonder how a man so occupied could have finished so many volumes, many of which contain such meticulous details? You will wonder more if you know that for some time he practiced law. He died in his fifty-sixth year. The intervening time was stretched and impeded by the greatest official duties and his friendship with the emperors. But he had a sharp talent, incredible diligence, and supreme vigilance. He began to work by lamp-light from the festival of Vulcan August 23rd, not for the sake of good omens but for the sake of study, immediately from deep night. In winter, from the seventh or at the latest the eighth hour, often the sixth. He was indeed very sparing of sleep. Sometimes even during his studies he would doze and wake again. Before daybreak he would go to the Emperor Vespasian, for he also used the nights. From there he went to his delegated office. Returning home, he gave what remained of his time to his studies. After a meal, which during the day was light and easy according to the custom of the ancients, in summer if there was any leisure, he would lie in the sun. A book was read, he would make notes, and he would make excerpts. For he never read anything that he did not excerpt. He also used to say that there was no book so bad that it did not benefit in some part. After the sun, he was usually bathed in cold water. Then he would take a snack, and sleep a very little. Soon, as if it were another day, he studied until the time of dinner. Above this, a book was read and noted, and indeed cursorily. I remember one of his friends scolded the reader when he had pronounced something wrongly and forced him to repeat it. My uncle said to him: "Did you understand it?" When he nodded, he asked: "Why then did you call him back? We have lost more than ten lines by your interruption." Such was his economy of time. He rose in summer at daybreak. Dinner in winter was before the first hour of the night, as if compelled by some law. These things were done amidst the labors and the noise of the city. In retirement, only the time of the bath was taken from his studies. When I say bath, I mean the inner chambers. For while he was being rubbed down and dried, he listened to something or dictated. On a journey, as if released from other cares, he was free for this alone. At his side was a scribe with a book and tablets, whose hands were protected by sleeves in winter, so that not even the sharpness of the weather could take any time away from his studies. For this reason, he was also carried in a chair in Rome. I remember that I was scolded by him when I was walking. "You could have not wasted these hours," he said. For he considered that all time was lost which was not devoted to study. With this intensity, he finished all those volumes and left me 160 notebooks of excerpts, written on both sides of the page opistographos written on both sides and in a very minute script. By this method, this number is multiplied. He himself said that when he was a procurator in Spain, he could have sold these notebooks to Larcius Licinius for 400,000 sesterces, and there were somewhat fewer of them. Does it not seem to you, when you recall how much he read and how much he wrote, that he was involved in no official duties and had no friendship with the emperors? Again, when you hear what labor he spent on studies, does it not seem that he neither wrote nor read enough? For what is there that his occupations could not impede, or his intensity could not accomplish? Therefore, I usually laugh when some people call me a student, for if compared to him, I am the laziest of all. And yet I, who am pulled in different directions partly by public duty and partly by the duties of friends, compare myself to those who devote their whole life to letters, and I blush that I am not given to questions and idleness. I have extended this letter, though I had intended to write only what you asked: which books he left. I trust that these will be no less pleasing to you than the books themselves, and that they might perhaps stir in you the spurs of emulation, not only to read them but to strive to accomplish something similar. Farewell.

FROM SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS IN HIS BOOK ON FAMOUS MEN.

Pliny Secundus of Novum Comum modern-day Como, having advanced through military service, also administered the most splendid and continuous offices with the highest integrity. And yet he devoted so much effort to the liberal arts that not many in leisure have written more. Thus, he encompassed all that was ever done with the Germans in twenty volumes. Likewise, he finished thirty-seven books of Natural History. He perished at the Gulf of Campania. For when he was in command of the Misenum fleet, and Vesuvius was burning, he set out in light ships liburnitias fast, light galleys to investigate the causes of the phenomenon; and when he could not return because of opposing winds, he was overwhelmed by the force of dust and ash. Or, as some think, he was killed by his own slave, whom he had begged, as he was failing from the heat, to hasten his death. In these books, he encompassed 20,000 worthy facts from the reading of about 2,000 volumes.

Circular library stamp at bottom right: "EX LIBR. FR. FRANCRATME ADAMI".