Pliny's Natural History and the epigram writer Martial both credit Cnaeus Matius Calvinus, in the circle of Julius Caesar, with introducing the first topiary to Roman gardens, and Pliny the Younger describes in a letter the elaborate figures of animals, inscriptions, cyphers and obelisks in clipped greens at his Tuscan villa ( Epistle vi, to Apollinaris ).

In antiquity, it covered more-or-less anything which is connected with nature or which uses materials drawn from nature ; see for example the contents of Pliny's encyclopedia of this title, published circa 77 to 79 AD.

Milner observes that it was " one of the most popular Latin technical works from Antiquity, rivalling the elder Pliny's Natural History in the number of surviving copies dating from before AD 1300.

Milner observes that it was " one of the most popular Latin technical works from Antiquity, rivalling the elder Pliny's Natural History in the number of surviving copies dating from before AD 1300.

Pliny's Natural History affirmed that the " Imperial Porphyry " had been discovered at an isolated site in Egypt in AD 18, by a Roman legionary named Caius Cominius Leugas.

In the 1st century AD, the Iazyges settled in the west of Dacia, on the plain between the Danube and the Tisza rivers, according to some scholars ' interpretation of Pliny's text: “ The higher parts between the Danube and the Hercynian Forest ( Black Forest ) as far as the winter quarters of Pannonia at Carnuntum and the plains and level country of the German frontiers there are occupied by the Sarmatian Iazyges, while the Dacians whom they have driven out hold the mountains and forests as far as the river Theiss ”.

A description of Marcus Sergius is found in the seventh book of Pliny's Natural History, published in AD 77:

* The Elder Pliny's Chapters on the History of Art, ( AD 77 ), trans.

Pliny's Scatinavia is generally believed to have referred to the Scandinavian peninsula, which in the 1st century AD had not yet been fully explored by the Romans and was therefore described as an island.

Of his prose works the most distinguished for animation and eloquence is the Panegyric on Trajan, composed in a transport of indignation at the supposed feebleness of Pliny's eulogium.

There was only one in Egypt and one in Asia Minor, as Pliny's letters to Trajan attest.

May I say that you have just demonstrated the truth of an old proverb -- the younger Pliny's, if memory serves me -- which, translated freely from the archaic Latin, says, ' The more haste, the less peed ' ''.

Pliny's obscure reference may be to the statue of Attus Navius in front of the Curia Hostilia: he stood with his lituus raised in an attitude that connected the Ficus Navia and the accompanying representation of the she-wolf to the Ficus Ruminalis, " as if " the tree had crossed from one space to the other.

In order to reconcile these conflicting statements, some suppose that Pliny's date is wrong and that the statue of Heracles had been made by Ageladas long before it was set up at Melite.

The earliest printed books and broadsheets were known as incunabula and the first printed herbal appeared in 1469, a version of Pliny's Historia Naturalis: this was published nine years before Dioscorides De Materia Medica was set in type.

Some stillblow three times over a strange spoon before using it, and in Alaska the medicineman blows into the nose and mouth of a patient to drive out the daemon of disease .< ref > Xavier F. M. G. Wolters, < cite > Notes on Antique Folklore on the basis of Pliny's " Natural History " Bk.

Pliny's uncle, Pliny the Elder, helped raise and educate him.

Next to Phidias, Myron and Kresilas, he is considered the most important sculptor of Classical antiquity: the 4th-century catalogue attributed to Xenocrates ( the " Xenocratic catalogue "), which was Pliny's guide in matters of art, ranked him between Phidias and Myron.

) Pliny's idiocy drives Histor to insanity and, eventually, he murders him by stuffing him with eggs until he bursts, as he keeps using the word " egg " so it has no connection or relation to the context of what Histor was saying, ( only for Histor to be subsequently haunted by Pliny's equally pun-obsessed ghost ).

Little is known about him apart from Pliny's Natural History.

Others think that Pliny's date is correct, but that Ageladas did not make the statues of the Olympic victors mentioned by Pausanias until many years after their victories ; which in the case of three persons, the dates of whose victories are so nearly the same, would be a very extraordinary coincidence.

Pliny's own table of contents for his encyclopedic Historia naturalis (" Natural History ") may be viewed online in Latin and in English ( following dedication ).

It has been speculated that the plant may also have functioned as a contraceptive, based partly on Pliny's statement that it could be used " to promote the menstrual discharge ".

Pliny's description of Laocoön as " a work to be preferred to all that the arts of painting and sculpture have produced " has led to a tradition which debates this claim that the sculpture is the greatest of all artworks.

Kambysēnē ) as well as the river names Cyrus ( Kurosh ) and Cambyses ( Kambujiya ) occurring in Strabo's Geography and Pliny's Histories may be related to the ethno-geographical name Kambuja / Kamboja and Kuru of the Sanskrit texts.

The twelfth century legend was based on a reference in Pliny's Natural History that the ichneumon lay in wait for the crocodile to open its jaws for the trochilus bird to enter and pick its teeth clean.

The account in Germania is inconsistent with Strabo's and Pliny's on a major point.

Until that time, Pliny's work Historia Naturalis was the main source of information on metals and mining techniques, and Agricola made numerous references to the Roman encyclopedia.

It seems generally agreed that Pliny's account of the matter is correct in most of the particulars ; and there have been various dissertations on the way in which a statue of Venus could have been changed into one of Nemesis.

Except for the geographical parts of Pliny's Historia naturalis ( where Mela is cited as an important authority ) the De situ orbis is the only formal treatise on the subject in Classical Latin.

Narnia is inhabited by Marsh-wiggles ( creatures of Lewis ' own invention ), and Dufflepuds ( adapted from Pliny's Monopods ) live on a distant island.

Pliny's Natural History records the westward progress of the plane " introduced among us from a foreign clime for nothing but its shade ", planted first at the tomb of Diomedes on the island of Tremiti, then imported to Greek Sicily by Dionysius the Elder ( c. 432-367 BC ), tyrant of Syracuse.

Pliny's comment on a leader named Raetus is typical of mythologized origins of ancient peoples, and not necessarily reliable.

Bochart's Hierozoicon sive bipartitum opus de animalibus sacrae scripturae ( 2 vols., London 1663 ), a zoological treatise on the animals of the Bible was more than a Christianized Pliny's Natural History nor just an expansion of Conrad Gesner's Historiae animalium.

The area described by Tacitus has therefore sometimes been treated as being the equivalent of Pliny's island Scatinavia, although variants on Scandiae and Scandinavia are not names used by Tacitus for this region.

The name ' Evodia ' may in turn originate from the seven ' Haemodae ' of uncertain identification in Pliny's Natural History ( IV 16 ( 30 ) or Pomponius Mela's Chronographia ( III 6, 54 ).

In the 16th century, Olaus Magnus, a Swedish cartographer who was familiar with Pliny's writings, created a map where he placed the name " Scandia " in the middle of today's Sweden.

Pliny's narrative dwells upon a gigantic portrait-bust of Pompey, a thing of “ eastern splendor ” entirely covered with pearls, and with the benefit of hindsight, has this disembodied head anticipate Pompey ’ s later defeat at Pharsalus and subsequent decapitation in Egypt.

Another difficulty is that manuscripts of early writers were often incomplete: it is apparent that Bede had access to Pliny's Encyclopedia, for example, but it seems that the version he had was missing book xviii, as he would almost certainly have quoted from it in his De temporum ratione.

Claudius is the source for numerous passages of Pliny's Natural History.

Although there were earlier works of similar nature, by Marcus Terentius Varro for example, Pliny's was the only one to survive the Dark Ages.

However, the description of the wine would also fit, for example, Dureza, and Pliny's observation that the vines of Allobrogica was resistant to cold is not entirely consistent with Syrah.

Pliny's career is commonly considered as a summary of the main Roman public charges and is the best-documented example from this period, offering proof for many aspects of imperial culture.

In Rome, the land tax exemption for the noble senatorial families had a similar effect, leading to Pliny's famous observation that the latifundia ( vast landed estates ) had ruined Rome, and would likewise ruin the provinces.

The Hyantes, descendants of Hyas — or rather of the Hyades, for the fertility of rain-nymphs needs no male consort — were the original (" Pelasgian ") inhabitants of Boeotia, from which country they were expelled by the followers of Cadmus ( Peck ; Pliny's Natural History, iv. 12 ).

The Villa Madama was the first of the revived Roman type of suburban villas designed for parties and entertainment built in 16th century Rome, and it was consciously conceived to rival descriptions of the villas of Antiquity, like Pliny's famous description of his own.

Pliny's complaint was made in the context of Rome spending enormous amounts for importing India's ' useless ' pepper and pearls, as worn by Lollia Paulina even around her shoes.