Pliny: Natural History, Vol. I (Loeb)

PLINY: NATURAL HISTORY

PREFACE, 9-14

This was the occasion of that famous sigh of Cicero: “O happy Marcus Porcius Cato the Younger, whom no one dares to ask for something underhand!” Lucius Scipio Asiaticus, by appealing to the tribunes—one of them being Gracchus—testified that his case could be made good even to an unfriendly judge: in fact, a judge whom one chooses oneself one makes the supreme arbiter of one’s case—this is the source of the term “appeal.”

You yourself indeed, I know, being placed on the loftiest pinnacle of all mankind, and being endowed with supreme eloquence and learning, are approached with reverential awe even by persons paying a visit of ceremony, and consequently care is taken that what is dedicated to you may be worthy of you. However, country folk, and many natives, not having incense, make offerings of milk and salted meal, and no man was ever charged with irregularity for worshipping the gods in whatever manner was within his power.

My own presumption has indeed gone further, in dedicating to you the present volumes—a work of a lighter nature, as it does not admit of talent (of which in any case I possessed only quite a moderate amount), nor does it allow of digressions, nor of speeches or dialogues, nor marvelous accidents or unusual occurrences—matters interesting to relate or entertaining to read. My subject is a barren one—the world of nature, or in other words, life; and that subject in its least elevated department, and employing either rustic terms or foreign, nay barbarian, words that actually have to be introduced with an apology. Moreover, the path is not a beaten highway of authorship, nor one in which the mind is eager to range: there is not one person to be found among us who has attempted the same.