The natural history of Pliny

Emasculation as empowerment: lessons of beaver lore for two Italian humanists

“…41 While the story of the crane had specific military significance, the performance that Giovio's impresa for Piccolomini depicted also resonated with an ideal described in contemporary Hausvater literature: household managers were similarly enjoined to show vigilance in their responsibilities. 42 Thus a wider conception of vigilance, which flourished in sixteenth-century Italy, could help to define appropriate masculine behaviour both in warfare and in civil society.…”

“…14 In fact Pliny himself, in another book of the Natural History, had cited Sextius's description of the medicinal use of castoreum from the beaver, which had similarly pointed to the inaccessibility of the testicles, and thus the impossibility of the animal castrating itself. 15 The discrepancy evidently did not, however, bother Pliny. And, for centuries to come, many would treat the lore as credible.…”

Cicero,the republic,2.5–9: On the disadvantages of a maritime city

“…It was easily circumvented. That paragon of virtue, the elder Cato, who compared ways of money-making other than agriculture to murder, 30 and who scolded Roman merchants for trespassing in the waters of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean in search of merchandise that yielded no more profits than a diligently cultivated farm, 51 was himself deeply involved in the shipping business, using strawmen. 52 The business was highly risky but also extremely remunerative, and although our evidence is scarce, it is highly plausible that many noblemen engaged in maritime trade through intermediaries, mostly their own freedmen.…”

An aspect of the object habit: Pliny the Elder, audience and politics

“…In particular, they have been reassessing the usefulness of Pliny the Elder's contribution and the subsequent receptions of his Naturalis Historiae (hereafter referred to as Natural History), a 37 book compendium covering astronomy, geography, ethnography, anthropology, human physiology, zoology, botany, agriculture, horticulture, medicine, pharmacology, mining, mineralogy, sculpture, painting, and precious stones. It is a study in objects found in the natural world including things found in nature and worked by humans, but the text does not differentiate between Praxiteles' Apollo Sauroktonos, 2 an Egyptian centaur preserved in honey, 3 or a certain type of magpie. 4 Pliny's universalist approach to objects, documenting both the banal and the fantastical (mirabilia), is necessary to the ideological goals of the text: what is known is entirely dependent on Roman power and control over the physical world.…”

“…It is a study in objects found in the natural world including things found in nature and worked by humans, but the text does not differentiate between Praxiteles' Apollo Sauroktonos, 2 an Egyptian centaur preserved in honey, 3 or a certain type of magpie. 4 Pliny's universalist approach to objects, documenting both the banal and the fantastical (mirabilia), is necessary to the ideological goals of the text: what is known is entirely dependent on Roman power and control over the physical world.…”