The name is derived from the type genus Apium, which was originally used by Pliny the Elder circa 50 AD for a celery-like plant.

Another early reference to Amber was Pytheas ( 330 BC ) whose work " On the Ocean " is lost, but was referenced by Pliny.

Pliny is presenting an archaic view, as in his time amber was a precious stone brought from the Baltic at great expense, but the Germans, he says, use it for firewood, according to Pytheas.

Earlier Pliny says that a large island of three days ' sail from the Scythian coast called Balcia by Xenophon of Lampsacus is called Basilia by Pytheas.

It is possible that Pliny refers to an island named Basilia (" kingdom " or " royal ") in On the Ocean by Pytheas.

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.

It might be connected with " glowing coals ", or " fire ", but it could equally go back to, or be influenced by, the Latin name Brundisium of the city of Brindisi ( aes Brundusinum, meaning " copper of Brindisi ", is attested in Pliny ).

Much of the early development of purification methods is described by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia.

There are few direct testimonies to the language of the Cimbri: Referring to the Northern Ocean ( the Baltic or the North Sea ), Pliny the Elder states: " Philemon says that it is called Morimarusa, i. e. the Dead Sea, by the Cimbri, until the promontory of Rubea, and after that Cronium.

Yet, given that Pliny had not heard the word directly from a Cimbric informant, it cannot be ruled out that the word is in fact Gaulish instead.

This diagnosis is mainly attributed to Caligula's irritability and his " stare " as described by Pliny the Elder.

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.

It is remarkable that the composition of this league does not reflect that of the Latin people who took part in the Latiar or Feriae Latinae given by Pliny and it has not as its leader the rex Nemorensis but a dictator Latinus.

Also in Roman times, some Essenes settled on the Dead Sea's western shore ; Pliny the Elder identifies their location with the words, " on the west side of the Dead Sea, away from the coast ... the town of Engeda " ( Natural History, Bk 5. 73 ); and it is therefore a hugely popular but contested hypothesis today, that same Essenes are identical with the settlers at Qumran and that " the Dead Sea Scrolls " discovered during the 20th century in the nearby caves had been their own library.

The earliest allusion to pandeism found to date is in 1787, in translator Gottfried Große ’ s interpretation of Pliny the Elder ’ s Natural History:

Here Gottfried says that Pliny is not Spinozist, but ' could be called a Pandeist ' whose Nature or God ' is not a being separate from the world.

One of the earliest encyclopedic works to have survived to modern times is the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder, a Roman statesman living in the 1st century AD.

Although many of the mining methods are now redundant, such as hushing and fire-setting, it is Pliny who recorded them for posterity, thereby helping us understand their importance in a modern context.

Also often advanced as a possible context for 1 Peter is the trials and executions of Christians in the Roman province of Bithynia-Pontus under Pliny the Younger.

For biblical scholar John Knox, the use of the word “ name ” in 4: 14-16 is the “ crucial point of contact ” with that in Pliny ’ s letter.

In addition, many scholars in support of this theory believe that there is content within 1 Peter that directly mirrors the situation as portrayed in Pliny ’ s letter.

But by the 1st century AD, Pliny the Elder was in a position to claim that everyone agrees on the spherical shape of Earth, although there continued to be disputes regarding the nature of the antipodes, and how it is possible to keep the ocean in a curved shape.

The earliest written references that have survived relating to the islands were made by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, where he states that there are 30 " Hebudes ", and makes a separate reference to " Dumna ", which Watson ( 1926 ) concludes is unequivocally the Outer Hebrides.

Pliny may have mentioned them, although there is some debate as to the exact nature of the stone he referred to as Adamas ; In 2005, Australia, Botswana, Russia and Canada ranked among the primary sources of gemstone diamond production .< ref >

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.

Pliny the Elder, a Roman scholar, was thought to describe the first techniques of wax crayon drawings.

The Basilisk, the venomous " king of serpents " with the glance that kills, was hatched by a serpent, Pliny the Elder and others thought, from the egg of a cock.

Pliny thought that he was of Etruscan origin, and one of the nine gods of thunder.

Pliny the Elder declared that " a sacrifice without prayer is thought to be useless and not a proper consultation of the gods.

In antiquity, its healing properties were thought so reliable that Pliny advised wearing the plant as an amulet to expel all evil ( Natural History 20. 120 ).

Pliny the Elder is the earliest writer to mention Adulis ( N. H. 6. 34 ), who misunderstood the name of the place, and thought its name meant that it had been founded by escaped Egyptian slaves.

Its Mediterranean habitat, elegant details of leaf and habit and dramatic show of fruit with flowers made Arbutus unedo notable in Classical Antiquity, when Pliny thought it should not be planted where bees are kept, for the bitterness it imparts to honey, but the first signs of its importation into northern European gardens was to England from 16th-century Ireland rather than from the Mediterranean basin ; in 1586 a correspondent in Ireland sent plants to the Elizabethan courtiers Lord Leicester and Sir Francis Walsingham.

Maud Grieve recorded that Pliny and medieval writers had thought it could return hair to bald heads and that in the early modern period it had been believed to be a remedy for headaches, plague, canker sores, vertigo, and jaundice.

The works have been attributed to Rhodian sculptors Hegesandros, Athenedoros, and Polydoros, and are thought to be the same authors of the group of " Laocoön and His Sons " ( as attributed by Pliny the Elder ).

The Hilleviones lived in the only part of the island that was known, and according to Pliny, they thought of their 500 villages as a separate ( alterum ) world.

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

Some modern scholars and archaeologists have argued that Essenes inhabited the settlement at Qumran, a plateau in the Judean Desert along the Dead Sea, citing Pliny the Elder in support, and giving credence that the Dead Sea Scrolls are the product of the Essenes.

After mentioning that this fish was sacred to Hecate, Alan Davidson writes, " Cicero, Horace, Juvenal, Martial, Pliny, Seneca and Suetonius have left abundant and interesting testimony to the red mullet fever which began to affect wealthy Romans during the last years of the Republic and really gripped them in the early Empire.

Metal-coated glass mirrors are said to have been invented in Sidon ( modern-day Lebanon ) in the first century AD, and glass mirrors backed with gold leaf are mentioned by the Roman author Pliny in his Natural History, written in about 77 AD.

Until recently the grape was rumoured to have ancient origins, perhaps even being the Biturica grape used to make ancient Roman wine and referenced by Pliny the Elder.

It seems to have received a colony in the time of Augustus, whence we find mention in inscriptions of the Ordo et Populus splendidissimae Coloniae Augustae Himeraeorum Thermitanorum: and there can be very little doubt that the Thermae colonia of Pliny in reality refers to this town, though he evidently understood it to be Thermae Selinuntiae ( modern Sciacca ), as he places it on the south coast between Agrigentum ( modern Agrigento ) and Selinus There are little subsequent account of Thermae ; but, as its name is found in Ptolemy and the Itineraries, it appears to have continued in existence throughout the period of the Roman Empire, and probably never ceased to be inhabited, as the modern town of Termini Imerese retains the ancient site as well as name.

It was said by Pliny the Elder to have been founded by the Laevi and Marici, two Ligurian tribes, while Ptolemy attributes it to the Insubres.

Pliny indeed mentions a great calamity which the city had sustained, when ( he tells us ) half of it was swallowed up by the sea, probably from an earthquake having caused the fall of part of the hill on which it stands, but we have no clue to the date of this event ; The Itineraries attest the existence of Tyndaris, apparently still as a considerable place, in the fourth century.

Possibly in certain places the iron sulfate may have been nearly wanting, and then the salt would be white, and would answer, as Pliny says it did, for dyeing bright colors.

Plant resins have a very long history that was documented in ancient Greece by Theophrastus, in ancient Rome by Pliny the Elder, and especially in the resins known as frankincense and myrrh, prized in ancient Egypt.

The earliest report of this story comes from Pliny the Elder and dates to about 100 years after the banquet described would have happened.

Modern engineers have put forward a plausible hypothesis for the statue construction, based on the technology of those days ( which was not based on the modern principles of earthquake engineering ), and the accounts of Philo and Pliny who both saw and described the remains.

Much of the information we have gathered about the Mausoleum and its structure has come from a Roman historian Pliny.

It is one of the largest single works to have survived from the Roman Empire to the modern day and purports to cover the entire field of ancient knowledge, based on the best authorities available to Pliny.

It is the only work by Pliny to have survived and the last that he published, lacking a final revision at his sudden and unexpected death in the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius.

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.

While no indubitably attributable sculpture by Praxiteles is extant, numerous copies of his works have survived ; several authors, including Pliny the Elder, wrote of his works ; and coins engraved with silhouettes of his various famous statuary types from the period still exist.

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.

The painter and the humanist scholars who probably advised him would have recalled that Pliny the Elder had mentioned a lost masterpiece of the celebrated artist, Apelles, representing Venus Anadyomene ( Venus Rising from the Sea ).