Presently it is thought that the mythological character Lusus derives from a mistranslation of the expression lusum enin Liberi patris (" from lusus father Liber derives "), in Pliny's Naturalis Historia.

When Pliny the Younger was 18, his uncle Pliny died attempting to rescue victims of the Vesuvius eruption, and the terms of the Elder Pliny's will passed his estate to his nephew.

The elder Domitia Lucilla had inherited a great fortune ( described at length in one of Pliny's letters ) from her maternal grandfather and her paternal grandfather by adoption.

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.

Among very few representations of Protesilaus, a sculpture by Deinomenes is just a passing mention in Pliny's Natural History ; the outstanding surviving examples are two Roman copies of a lost mid-fifth century Greek bronze original represent Protesilaus at his defining moment, one of them in a torso the British Museum, the other at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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.

Pliny's remark that Myron's works were numerosior than those of Polycleitus and " more diligent " seem to suggest that they were considered more harmonious in proportions ( numeri ) and at the same time more convincing in their realism: diligentia connoted " attentive care to fine points ", a quality that, in moderation, was characteristic of the best works of art, according to critics in Antiquity.

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.

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 ).

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.

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 ”.

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.

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.

As those Gutones are put forward as Pliny's interpretation, not Pytheas ’, the early date is unconfirmed, but not necessarily invalid.

The work is dedicated to the emperor Titus, son of Pliny's close friend, the emperor Vespasian, in the first year of Titus's reign.

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.

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.

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 documentation was the last significant contribution to ichthyology until the European Renaissance.

According to Pliny's Natural History, Ageladas of Argos was his teacher.

Lorenzo, furthermore, is not only magnificent but, as was Alexander in Pliny's story, also magnanimous, as well.

10 ) states that it grew in Syria ; and, according to Pliny's Natural History, it was also a native plant of the Niger River and the Euphrates.

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.

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.

He continued translating and publishing his edition of Hippocrates ' writings, which was not completed until 1862, and he published a similar edition of Pliny's Natural History.

This was followed by the text of Polyaenus, an editio princeps, 1589 ; a text of Aristotle, 1590 ; and a few notes contributed to Estienne's editions of Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Pliny's Epistolae.

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.

In Pliny's account, Menes was credited with being the inventor of writing in Egypt.

Pliny's book was widely enjoyed and uncritically believed through the European Middle Ages, during which the manticore was sometimes illustrated in bestiaries.

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.

According to the scholar Pliny, the city of Kapiśi ( also referred to as Kaphusa by Pliny's copyist Solinus and Kapisene by other classical chroniclers ) was destroyed in the sixth century BCE by the Achaemenid emperor Cyrus ( Kurush ) ( 559-530 BC ).

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.

Argenteus, meaning " of silver " in Latin, was first used in Pliny's Natural History in the phrase " argenteus nummus " ( silver coin ).

In Pliny's time, 49 independent communities still existed in Umbria, and the abundance of inscriptions and the high proportion of recruits in the imperial army attest to its population.

Pliny's description of the exposed portion of the tomb is intractable ; Pliny, it seems clear, had not observed this structure himself, but is quoting the historian and Roman antiquarian Varro.

Pytheas described his travels in a work that has not survived ; only excerpts remain, quoted or paraphrased by later authors, most familiarly in Strabo's Geographica, Pliny's Natural History and passages in Diodorus of Sicily's 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.

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.

5 ; Pliny's Natural Historyiv.

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.

They also appear in Pliny the Elder's Natural History, together with Moses, as famous magicians of antiquity ; Pliny's citation is also referred to in Apuleius.

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 ).