He might also have been influenced by the name of a legendary island mentioned in The Natural History by Pliny the Elder.

However, it is clear he was familiar with the works of Virgil and with Pliny the Elder's Natural History, and his monastery also owned copies of the works of Dionysius Exiguus.

According to Pliny the Elder in Achaea, the garland worn by the winners of the sacred Nemean Games was also made of celery.

Aelian's anecdotes on animals rarely depend on direct observation: they are almost entirely taken from written sources, often Pliny the Elder, but also other authors and works now lost, to whom he is thus a valuable witness.

Pliny also considers the possibility of an imperfect sphere, " shaped like a pinecone ".

Books on the subject included the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder, which not only described many different minerals but also explained many of their properties, and Kitab al Jawahir ( Book of Precious Stones ) by Muslim scientist Al Biruni.

Ancient Romans such as Pliny ( N. H. 5. 10 ) thought that the river near Timbuktu was part of the Nile River, a belief also held by Ibn Battuta, while early European explorers thought that it flowed west and joined the Senegal River.

Later Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt and contemporary of Ashoka the Great, is also recorded by Pliny the Elder as having sent an ambassador named Dionysius to the Mauryan court.

Strabo also wrote that Sesostris started to build a canal, and Pliny the Elder wrote:

Stalactites are first mentioned ( though not by name ) by the Roman natural historian Pliny in a text which also mentions stalagmites and columns and refers to their creation by the dripping of water.

The term was understood in the Latin world as well, where Pliny the Elder glossed it as follows: " each is the equivalent of a kingdom, and also part of one " ( regnorum instar singulae et in regna contribuuntur ).

Pliny also quotes Agriopas regarding a tale of a man who was turned into a wolf after tasting the entrails of a human child, but was restored to human form 10 years later.

In Rome, writers and philosophers like Cicero, Seneca, Pliny the elder, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Cato and Collumella also expressed important ideas on this ground.

It is not improbable that it is here that a part of the cliff fell in, in the manner recorded by Pliny Two gates of the city are also still distinctly to be traced.

Pliny also came into contact with many other well-known men of the period, including the philosophers Artemidorus and Euphrates during his time in Syria.

It is also discussed by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia.

Pliny does not name the prostitute ; however, the Restoration playwright Nathaniel Richards calls her Scylla in The Tragedy of Messalina, Empress of Rome, published in 1640, and Robert Graves in his novel Claudius the God also identified the prostitute as Scylla.

220 A. D .) Aconite was also described in Greek and Roman medicine by Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny the Elder, who most likely prescribed the Alpine species Aconitum lycoctonum.

The generic name was first used by Pliny the Elder ( 23-79 ) for a plant also known as strychnos, most likely S. nigrum.

Pliny the Elder also recorded that a Roman general who had his arm cut off had an iron one made to hold his shield up when he returned to battle.

It enjoyed great prosperity, however, due to their growing of spelt, a grain that was put into groats, wine, roses, spices, unguents etc., and also owing to its manufacture, especially of bronze objects, of which both the elder Cato and the elder Pliny speak in the highest terms.

Most of what we have from the Babylonians was inscribed in cuneiform with a metal stylus on tablets of clay, called laterculae coctiles by Pliny the Elder ; papyrus seems to have been also employed, but it has perished.

Arrian mentions many others by name, but they would seem to have been little more than mountain torrents: the most important of them were Charieis, Chobus or Cobus, Singames, Tarsuras, Hippus, Astelephus, Chrysorrhoas, several of which are also noticed by Ptolemy and Pliny.

He is also mentioned by Celsus, Caelius Aurelianus, and Pliny.

Pliny the Elder also gives us some statements about Abnoba ( Natural History, 4. 79 ).

The connection is made as follows: Pliny reports that " Timaeus says there is an island named Mictis ... where tin is found, and to which the Britains cross.

Pliny reports that " Pytheas of Massalia informs us, that in Britain the tide rises 80 cubits.

In contrast, Pliny reports that the 6th century BC poet Hipponax wrote satirae that were so cruel that the offended hanged themselves.

Pliny bluntly reports that Octavian went hiding into a marsh.

Scholars and historians since then viewed the reports on Venedi / Venethi by Tacitus, Pliny and Ptolemy as the earliest historical attestation of Slavs.

Other ancient sources include Pliny ( not from personal experience, but he collected other reports ), Pausanias, and Juvenal.

Pliny the Elder reports that Aristotle ascribed the invention of the quadrireme (;, tetrērēs ) to the Carthaginians.

Pliny the Elder reports that Germanicus ' son, the future emperor Gaius ( Caligula ), was born " among the Treveri, at the village of Ambiatinus, above Koblenz ", but Suetonius notes that this birthplace was disputed by other sources.

The animal was described by Pliny in his Naturalis Historia: " There are reports of a wild animal in Paionia called the bonasus, which has the mane of a horse, but in all other respects resembles a bull ; its horns are curved back in such a manner as to be of no use for fighting, and it is said that because of this it saves itself by running away, meanwhile emitting a trail of dung that sometimes covers a distance of as much as three furlongs m, contact with which scorches pursuers like a sort of fire.

Pliny reports that Hipparchus produced the first systematic star catalog after he observed a new star ( it is uncertain whether this was a nova or a comet ) and wished to preserve astronomical record of the stars, so that other new stars could be discovered.

Pliny reports that under Tiberius the druids were suppressed — along with diviners and physicians — by a decree of the Senate, and Claudius forbade their rites completely in AD 54.

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.

He appears to be known to Pliny the Elder through his description of constructing mosaics in Naturalis Historia.

We learn from Vitruvius that Satyrus and Phytheus wrote a description of their work which Pliny likely read.

He was the first Roman to cross the Atlas Mountains, and Pliny the Elder quotes his description of the area in his Natural History.

The main configurations are the borders that it had during the floruit of the Oscan speakers, from about 600 BC to about 290 BC, known historically in the Roman Republic, and the borders as they were defined to be by the emperor Augustus, published in his official manifesto, Discriptio Italiae, lost to moderns, but serving as the basis of Pliny the Elder's description of Italy.

i. p. 540 ) justifies Ptolemy in this matter by supposing that he follows a description of Italy made before the new divisions of Augustus, which we know from Pliny.

While Pliny does not explicitly name the grape responsible for these Pollenzo wines, his description of the wine bears similarities to later descriptions of Nebbiolo-based wines, making this potentially the first notation of wine made from Nebbiolo in the Piedmont region.

In his Natural History Pliny the Elder describes a race of silvestres ( wild ) creatures in India who had humanoid bodies but a coat of fur, fangs, and no capacity to speak-a description that fits gibbons indigenous to the area.

He also referred to Pomponius Mela's description of Codanonia ( called Scatinavia by Pliny the Elder ) which was located in the Codanian Gulf ( probably Kattegat ).

Ronald Syme supposed that Tacitus closely copied the lost Bella Germaniae of Pliny the Elder, since the Germania is in some places outdated: in its description of the Danubian tribes, says Syme, " they are loyal clients of the Empire.

Pliny the Elder's Natural History adds to the obligate description — that they " abound in fruit and birds of every kind "— the unexpected detail " These islands, however, are greatly annoyed by the putrefying bodies of monsters, which are constantly thrown up by the sea ".

The sources for the life of Silius Italicus are primarily letter 3. 7 of Pliny the Younger, which is a description of the poet's life written on the occasion of his suicide, some inscriptions, and several epigrams by the poet Martial.

The first documented description of the wine came form Roman author Pliny the Elder.

The stepped tower is influenced by Pliny the Elder's description of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, and topped with a statue of King George I in Roman dress.

Pliny never saw this tomb, so his description was based on a report from Varro and perhaps a conflated comparison to the Minoan labyrinths he describes before this tomb.

Man becomes man as he refines himself ; he even becomes godlike: “ Deus est mortali iuvare mortalem ,” wrote Pliny, translating a Greek Stoic, “ To help man is man ’ s true God .” Finally, the man who practiced humanitas cultivated his aesthetic sensibilities as he listened to his reason: " Cum musis ,” wrote Cicero, “ id est, cum humanitate et doctrina habere commercium ".< ref > Peter Gay's citation of the phrase, Cum musis, etc., refers to an anecdote in the Tusculan Disputations, in which Cicero recounts how during a visit to Syracuse, in Sicily, he had chanced to discover the tomb of Archimedes, at that time unknown to the inhabitants of the city, but which he, Cicero, recognized from its description in a line of poetry he had memorized ; and he contrasted the enduring fame of Archimedes, the mathematician, to the obloquy of the notorious Sicilian tyrant Dionysius the Elder, buried nearby: “ Who is there who has had anything at all to do with the Muses, that is, with humanity and learning, who would not prefer to be this mathematician rather than that tyrant?

Later, Pliny the Elder includes the Phryni ( which he names " Phruri ") in his description of the people of the Far East: