Search Results: Pliny the Elder

Aside from the usual contributions of its noble politicians and military commanders, the story of a nation also records the invaluable literary influences of its poets, dramatists, and historians. The long history of the Roman Empire is no...

Pliny the Younger (61-112 CE) was the nephew of Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE), the author of the 37-volume Natural History. He had a remarkable political career and gained a reputation as an excellent lawyer and orator, but he is most famous...

Pliny the Elder from a 1635 CE printing of Historia Naturalis.

Pliny the Younger's (61-112 CE) letter (Epistulae X.96) to Roman Emperor Trajan (r. 98-117 CE) is one of our earliest sources on Christianity from an outsider's point of view. It highlights the Christian movement's impact on the old Roman...

The silphium plant of Cyrene, valued as a seasoning, aromatic, and for its medicinal properties, is referenced by several notable ancient writers, but two of the best-known descriptions come from Theophrastus (l. c. 371 to c. 287 BCE) and...

Silphium (also known as laser) was an uncultivated plant that grew in Cyrene, North Africa (modern Shahhat, Libya) and became the cash crop of the region of Cyrenaica between c. 631 BCE and the 1st century CE when, according to Pliny the...

Amber, the fossilised resin of trees, was used throughout the ancient world for jewellery and decorative objects. The main source was the Baltic region where amber, known to mineralogists as succinite, was washed up onto beaches and easily...

Sometime around 330 BCE, Pytheas, a little-known Greek merchant, embarked on an astonishing voyage. It was a voyage that would take him far beyond the known boundaries of the Mediterranean, into lands thought to exist only in myth and legend...

Chariot racing was very big business in ancient Rome. There was a whole industry built around the factions, the four professional stables known by their team colour – Blue, Green, Red, and White –, providing all that was required for a race...

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was located on the western coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and built in the 6th century BCE. Such was its tremendous size, double the dimensions of other Greek temples including the Parthenon, that it...