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.

Pliny the Elder's Natural History has a few brief references to Caligula.

* Imperator ( as, for example, in Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia ).

In another example, believing the black rock of the Schlossberg at Stolpen to be the same as Pliny the Elder's basalt, Agricola applied this name to it, and thus originated a petrological term which has been permanently incorporated in the vocabulary of science.

Pliny the Elder's Natural History ( 36. 90 ) lists the legendary Smilis, reputed to be a contemporary of Daedalus, together with the historical mid-sixth-century BC architects and sculptors Rhoikos and Theodoros as two of the makers of the Lemnian labyrinth, which Andrew Stewart regards as " evidently a misunderstanding of the Samian temple's location en limnais the marsh '.

The port is mentioned in Pliny the Elder's Natural History ( III. v ) and in Tacitus ' Histories ( III. 42 ), when Valens was forced to put into the port ( Fabius Valens e sinu Pisano segnitia maris aut adversante vento portum Herculis Monoeci depellitur ).

In book 8, chapter 16 of Pliny the Elder's Natural History from 77 AD the elk and an animal called achlis, which is presumably the same animal, are described thus:

The thermal springs of Wiesbaden are first mentioned in Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia.

Agricola applied " basalt " to the volcanic black rock of the Schlossberg ( local castle hill ) at Stolpen, believing it to be the same as Pliny the Elder's " very hard stone ".

Facio records that van Eyck was a learned man, and that he was versed in the classics, particularly Pliny the Elder's work on painting.

The oft-repeated tale of Messalina's all-night sex competition with a prostitute comes from Book X of Pliny the Elder's Natural History.

The phrase comes from Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia, regarding the discovery of a recipe for an antidote to a poison.

Pliny the Elder's Natural History tells us the prices in Rome around 77 CE: " Long pepper ... is fifteen denarii per pound, while that of white pepper is seven, and of black, four.

* Pliny the Elder's:

Natural history, as a discipline, had existed since classical times, and fifteenth-century Europeans were very familiar with Pliny the Elder's Historia Naturalis.

Common as it is now on some of the lower slopes of the Alps of Piedmont and Savoy, it is uncertain whether the Romans were acquainted with the gooseberry, though it may possibly be alluded to in a vague passage of Pliny the Elder's Natural History ; the hot summers of Italy, in ancient times as at present, would be unfavourable to its cultivation.

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.

He claimed to have corrected 5000 mistakes between two editions of Pliny the Elder's Naturalis historia, a work he found very similar to Materia Medica for which he used at least two editions as well.

According to Pliny the Elder's Natural History, in order to conserve the marble of these sculptures, oil receptacles were placed in the temples so that the ivory would not crack.

Of northern Europe his knowledge was imperfect, but he speaks of a great bay (" Codanus sinus ") to the north of Germany, among whose many islands was one, " Codanovia ," of pre-eminent size ; this name reappears in Pliny the Elder's work as Scatinavia.

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.

The practice of encyclopedism dates back to the days of the Roman Empire, with Pliny the Elder's Natural History having been one of the earliest extant encyclopedias to survive antiquity.

In 1685 he published a version of Pliny the Elder's Natural History in which he claimed that most Greek and Roman texts had been forged by Benedictine monks.

* 1st century – Pliny the Elder's Historia Naturalis Book X is devoted to birds.

Pliny the Elder's ( 23 – 79 CE ) encyclopaedic Naturalis Historia ( c. 77 – 79 CE ) is a synthesis of the information contained in about 2000 scrolls and it includes myths and folklore ; there are about 200 extant copies of this work.

After mentioning the crossing ( navigatio ) from Berrice to Tyle, Pliny makes a brief statement that:

Some authors claim that the argument relating to Seleucus handing over more of what is now southern Afghanistan is an exaggeration originating in a statement by Pliny the Elder referring not specifically to the lands received by Chandragupta, but rather to the various opinions of geographers regarding the definition of the word " India ":

Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy both make the same brief statement: the towns of the Aequiculi were Cliternia or Cliternum and Carsoli or Carsioli Pliny places them in Augustus ' Regio IV ; Ptolemy adds that they were to the east of the Sabini.

Also, a formal statement by Pliny indicated the river Vistula as the western boundary of Dacia, according to Nicolet ( 1991 ).

Pliny, on the other hand, worked from east to west ( 4. 13. 94 ).

As the Eudoses are the Jutes, these names probably refer to localities in Jutland or on the Baltic coast, in which case their inhabitants would be Cimbri or Teutones for Pliny.

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.

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.

Furthermore, contemporary historians such as Pliny the Younger, Tacitus and Suetonius all authored the information on his reign after it had ended, and his memory had been condemned to oblivion.

Pliny locates them " on the west side of the Dead Sea, away from the coast … the town of Engeda ".

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.

Early medieval writers often had fuzzy and imprecise impressions of both Ptolemy and Aristotle and relied more on Pliny, but they felt ( with one exception ), little urge to assume flatness.

The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that books on magic were invented by the Persians, with the 1st century CE writer Pliny the Elder stating that magic had been first discovered by the ancient philosopher Zoroaster around the year 6347 BC, but that it was only written down in the 5th century BC by the magician Osthanes — his claims are not however supported by modern historians.

Pliny the Elder gives vivid examples of the popularity of gladiator portraiture in Antium and an artistic treat laid on by an adoptive aristocrat for the solidly plebeian citizens of the Roman Aventine:

One example of such a midwife is Salpe of Lemnos, who wrote on women ’ s diseases and was mentioned several times in the works of Pliny.

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.

The translation into English of Natural History written by the elder Pliny of Greece shows a few sentences on the subject of a volcanic glass called Obsian, so named from its resemblance to a stone found in Ethiopia by Obsius ( obsiānus lapis ).

Pliny adds that it has no nights at midsummer when the sun is passing through the sign of the crab ( summer solstice ), a reaffirmation that it is on the Arctic Circle.

* Pliny the Younger advances to consulship, giving his panegyric on Trajan in the process.

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.

Pliny described it as a colony, the only on the island in his time, suggesting that there was previously no town on the spot, but merely a fort or castellum.

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

In Natural History, Pliny the Elder calls butter " the most delicate of food among barbarous nations ", and goes on to describe its medicinal properties.

Strabo speaks of it as one of the places on the north coast of Sicily which, in his time, still deserved the name of cities ; and Pliny gives it the title of a Colonia.

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.