Pliny the Elder: Themes and Contexts

Pliny’s Naturalis Historia - a brilliant and sophisticated encyclopaedia of the scientific, artistic, philosophical, botanical and zoological riches of the ancient world - has had a long career in the footnotes of historical studies. This is a phenomenon born of the sense that the work was there to consult, or to ’use’, as a resource to aid investigation of specific technical issues or passages, of Quellenforschung, or of delimited topic areas. The contributors to the present volume both represent and join a new generation of critics who have begun to try to ’read’ this monumental text, and - by examining the dominant motifs which give shape and order to the work - to construct frameworks within which we may understand and interpret Pliny’s overarching agenda.

Roy K Gibson, Ph.D. (1993) in Classics, University of Cambridge, is Professor of Latin at the University of Manchester. He has published extensively on Augustan poetry, and is co-editor with Ruth Morello of Re-imagining Pliny the Younger (Arethusa 36.2, 2003), and co-author also with Ruth Morello of Reading the Letters of Pliny the Younger: an Introduction (Cambridge, 2011).

Ruth Morello, Ph.D. (1994) in Classics, Cornell, is Lecturer in Classics at the University of Manchester. She has published extensively on historiographical texts of the early imperial period and - in addition to co-editing with Roy Gibson Re-imagining Pliny the Younger (Arethusa 36.2, 2003), and co-authoring also with Roy Gibson Reading the Letters of Pliny the Younger: an Introduction (Cambridge, 2011) - has co-edited with Andrew Morrison Ancient Letters (Oxford, 2007).

Contributors: Rhiannon Ash, Mary Beagon, Cynthia Damon, Aude Doody, Andrew Fear, Roy Gibson, Eugenia Lao, Ruth Morello, Valérie Naas, Ernesto Paparazzo, Clemence Schultze, Michael Reeve.