PLINY

NATURAL HISTORY

PREFACE

PLINY SECUNDUS TO HIS DEAR VESPASIAN GREETING

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

For 'twas ever your way
To deem my trifles something worth Catullus 1.3-4

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 you complained about in another impudent letter of mine—