Collated and Perfect: Pliny the Elder’s Natural History at the Natural History Museum in London

This post is part of BHL at 20: Treasures from the Biodiversity Heritage Library, a series contributed by members of the BHL community, highlighting remarkable works from across the collection in celebration of its 20th anniversary.

One afternoon in AD 79 a family had gathered at a villa overlooking the Bay of Naples. Outside, a mother and her seventeen-year-old son observed a strange cloud which had appeared in the distance. The mother, Plinia, saw it first, but it would be her son, Pliny the Younger, who recorded for posterity the sight on the horizon and the terrible events that had long since started but were now nearing their catastrophic conclusion. The teenager rushed inside where his uncle, who was also Admiral of the Roman Fleet in the Bay, Pliny the Elder, was reading. The younger Pliny described a cloud in the shape of a pine tree, its branches supported by a thick trunk. From the perspective of a post-twentieth century world, we might now call it a mushroom cloud. But to Pliny the Elder, ever inquisitive, it was like nothing ever seen before and he hastened to investigate.

Anyone with a passing knowledge of Roman history will know that what that confusingly named family had observed was the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Very soon, Pompeii and Herculaneum would be lost, covered in a pyroclastic flow. What had started as the attractive prospect of observing a volcanic eruption first hand quickly turned to the realisation that a rescue mission was required. Events for the elder Pliny would end at Stabiae. Already suffering from troubled breathing, he was overcome by fumes, or perhaps suffered a heart attack, and died.

Much of what we know of Pliny the Elder comes to us from two letters written by his nephew to the historian Tacitus. Pliny the Elder’s writings were extensive, spanning the wars in Germania, where he served in the cavalry, and a treatise on throwing a lance from horseback to a Latin grammar. All are now lost. Yet one great monument to his learning survives, the Historia Naturalis, here called the Natural History. Divided into 37 books, and likely published posthumously, the Natural History covers topics from astronomy to horticulture.

Book one’s summarium allowed readers to navigate the Natural History. In the NHM’s copy, annotation identifies where in the main work information can be found. Contributed in BHL from the Natural History Museum, London.

The Natural History is sometimes referred to as the first encyclopaedia, yet some recent scholarship has viewed this classification as overly simplistic. There was no ancient tradition of encyclopaedias to which Pliny himself could identify and whilst the author celebrated his accumulation of 20,000 distinct pieces of information, he also intended his work to stand as a coherent whole. By bringing together as much known information as possible, and not just about natural history, Pliny’s work can be seen as an Imperial project. He is laying claim to knowledge for Rome.

The decorated page at the beginning of Book One immediately identifies the work as a luxury product for an elite clientele. Contributed in BHL from the Natural History Museum, London.

From the time of its publication in manuscript form, Pliny’s Natural History was extraordinarily influential. It circulated widely and prior to its first printing some 200 manuscript copies were known to survive. Thus, when the Venetian Senate granted Johann de Speyer a commercial printing licence in 1469, just a decade and a half after Gutenberg used moveable type to publish his Bible, the Natural History was one of the first titles he printed. The copy in the Library of the Natural History Museum in London is one of those 1469 first editions.

Annotations to the margins, here to Book 33, demonstrate use of the volume. Contributed in BHL from the Natural History Museum, London.

Printing in the fifteenth century was, as now, a commercial endeavour and Johann de Speyer knowingly produced a product that would appeal to a wealthy clientele. His edition featured wide margins and decorated letters which echoed manuscript production and spoke of luxury and prestige. These margins also allowed the reader to make annotations, often as a means of navigating the text. In the NHM’s copy, those signs of use are present and at least two hands can be identified in the marginal annotations.

BHL contains a number of incunabula of Pliny (incunabula is the term used to indicate books printed before 1501). There is the 1469 edition from Venice contributed by the NHM and the 1472 edition, also from Venice, held by Boston Public Library. McGill University Library has contributed the 1473 (Rome), 1481 (Parma) and 1497 (Venice) editions. The NHM also holds the 1472 Venice and 1481 Parma editions as well as later copies such as the first English translation produced by Philemon Holland in 1601. Yet it is the de Speyer’s 1469 edition that is the oldest book in our library.

The flyleaf gives provenance and condition information about the volume. Contributed in BHL from the Natural History Museum, London.

At the recent BHL Annual Meeting in London, delegates were given the opportunity to view the NHM’s 1469 Pliny. It has been suggested that only 100 copies of this edition were produced, and it is a wonderful survival of arguably the first printed book on natural history. As noted on the flyleaf, the volume was ‘collated’ and identified as ‘perfect, which is almost a miracle’. In actual fact, two facsimile folios were added at a later date, though this only makes for a more interesting object.

So much has been written about Pliny the Elder and his Natural History. My text lays no claim to originality. Indeed, even the NHM’s copy is relatively well known, having once been celebrated as the oldest item on BHL. As an earlier blog announced that baton has now been passed to the Circa Instans at the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botanical Garden, evidence, were it needed, that BHL continues to thrive, with new material added all the time. It’s an endeavour we can be proud of, and one of which Pliny the Elder would certainly have approved.

From the Biodiversity Heritage Library

For 20 years, BHL has made treasures like this freely accessible to the world. With your support, we can ensure these treasures – and the knowledge they hold – remain open for generations to come.

Further reading

The literature on Pliny the Elder and his Natural History is extensive, but the following were useful when preparing this blog.

Chibnall, M., ‘Pliny’s Natural History and the Middle Ages’ in T.A. Dorey (ed.), Empire and Aftermath, Silver Latin II (London, 1975).

Di Tommaso, L., ‘Pliny the Elder: Historia Naturalis’ in J. Magee (ed.), Rare Treasures from the Library of the Natural History Museum (London, 2017), pp. 6-11.

Doody, A., Pliny’s Encyclopaedia: The reception of the Natural History (Cambridge, 2010).

Dunn, D., In the Shadow of Vesuvius: A life of Pliny (London, 2019).

Gudger, E.W., ‘Pliny’s Historia Naturalis: The most popular natural history ever published’, Isis, vol. 6, no. 3 (1924), pp. 269-81.