ШАГИ / STEPS

The text of Natural History contains many references to the scientist geographers such as Eudoxus, Pytheas and Eratosthenes in Books II-VI: these books include both cosmology and geography, while in Book VII, on the contrary, there is almost no reference to the scientist geographers (only Eudoxus is quoted in VII, 24 about the Indians). This book is a sort of container of wonders and seems to have a psycho-literary function: on one hand, it reassures the reader of the “opposition” and “distance” of those places compared to the one in which one lives, and, on the other, it emphasizes the importance of research which, in Pliny’s time, had preserved and updated Greek science. My analysis herein shows that quotations from ancient authors in Books II-VI point to the strong continuity between Eratosthenes and his conception of the world with that of the Romans under the Flavians. Hence, Pliny’s description seems to come from a synthesis of both an astronomical-climatic conception (of Eratosthenes’ origin and Posidonius’ elaboration) and an astrological-climatic one (which derives from Nigidius Figulus). The influence of Posidonius on the Naturalis Historia does not affect the framework of Eratosthenes’ map, but mainly involves the interpretation of the atmospheric phenomena that characterize the earth, thereby allowing us to hypothesize climatic bands. The latter are understood to be an evolution on the thinking of both Eudoxus and Eratosthenes. Then, among Latin sources, Varro (with Nigidius Figulus and Vitruvius) seems to have played an important role in the transmission of Greek science and in the creation of a Latin astronomical lexicon, as witnessed by the work of Pliny.

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The analysis starts from the 6th Book of the Naturalis Historia, where we can find information derived from the historians of Alexander and those others scientists who followed his expedition. Pliny thus proves to know the work of the bematists but doesn’t consider at all the historiographical work of Aristobulus, and mentions Ptolemaeus only in specific dossiers regarding certain subjects. Moreover, the Naturalist declares that he drew his account from Juba II, but in terms of the passages analyzed here he consistently took inspiration from the work of Nearchus. However, Pliny made only sporadic notes about the contemporary historians of Alexander and he did not consider their importance. The passages concerning Alexander’s historians in NH don’t have the kind of significant role as they will have in Arrian’s Anabasis: the historian from Nicomedia thinks that the achievements of Alexander the Great as Res Gestae should be used as exemplum for Trajan, while Pliny doesn’t want and cannot “show as exemplum” anything to emperors Vespasian or Titus. In the contemporary political life of the Plinian age, historiography was not a very neutral refuge (in other words it wasn’t something very advisable to do), especially during the last years of Nero’s empire. The encyclopedic purpose of the work has strongly conditioned the content: the author of “the inventory of the World of the Flavian age” was no longer interested and fascinated by the myth of Alexander, which had been the reference point of the Imitatio Alexandri of Augustan propaganda.

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В статье анализируется (на фоне других античных авторов), как римский ученый Плиний Старший в своих географических описаниях представлял себе океан, окружающий ойкумену, и возможность плавать вдоль океанского побережья. Построенное по принципу перипла описание ойкумены Плиния предполагало последовательный рассказ не только о берегах «Нашего моря» (в которое включались, кроме Средиземного, также и Черное, и Азовское моря), но и об океанических побережьях Атлантики, Северного, Восточного, Индийского и Африканского океанов (если иметь в виду античное понимание расположения ойкумены и окружающих ее океанов). В то время как наиболее исследованные и доступные плаванию Атлантический (от Северной Африки до Скандинавии) и Индийский (от Индии и Шри-Ланки до Сомали и Египта) океаны описаны наиболее подробно, Плинию приходилось домысливать остальные части ойкумены, омываемые океаном, но никогда не пройденные античными мореплавателями. Таким образом, получающаяся картина представляет собой смесь реальных знаний и фантастических домыслов.

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The paper reviews all the inventions Pliny the Elder attributes to the Phrygians (copper working, four-wheeled vehicle, harnessing pairs of horses, transverse flute, double oboe, Phrygian musical mode, and embroidering with a needle) and tries to identify possible sources of these reports and the reasons why these particular discoveries were deemed “Phrygian” in the classical tradition. The analysis is focused on the literary tradition out of which Pliny made a compilation, and not on what we would now call the “real” historical origins of the abovementioned inventions. Each discovery is placed within the context of this tradition, but without isolating it from the immediate context of Pliny’s catalogue. The topics related to the Phrygian people within the frames of the ancient tradition can conventionally be divided into three groups: “mythological”, “sacred” and “realistic”, and the inventions or inventors Pliny mentions can, in fact, be subsumed under these three categories. Even though at first glance there seems to be no logical pattern to the “Phrygian discoveries” as listed by Pliny, this approach helps demonstrate that the scarce information on Phrygian inventors offered by Pliny the Elder only seems random, but in fact the Roman author gives a synthesis of all the aspects of the rich literary tradition about this people.

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The article is devoted to a critical revision of information about the essence, history and content of ancient magic, which Pliny the Elder presents in Books 28 and 30 of his Natural History, as well as to analyzing a number of theoretical and source-study approaches to this information, which have developed to date in modern scholarship. The general reconsideration of Pliny the Elder's concept of magic is caused, firstly, by the fact that our knowledge of magic and its theoretical underpinnings among the ancients has greatly expanded over the past half century, and, on the other hand, by the fact that in the past few decades the scientific approach to Natural History has greatly changed. Without ceasing to be, as it was for the medieval reader, a wonderful grandmother's chest from which a variety of things can be obtained for various research purposes, Naturalis Historia became interesting in and of itself, as an opus sui generis. In the article, discussion of magic in Pliny the Elder derives primarily from the philosophical and ideological premises of Natural History itself. The author briefly summarizes Pliny's information about magic and comes to the conclusion that all that Pliny says about magic (which he treats with undisguised contempt, see his rhetorical attacks on magic in Book 28 and in the essay on the history of magic in Book 30) in essence rests on two firm and interrelated ideas. The first - the obvious primacy and supremacy of Rome over the whole orbis terrarum, and the second - the idea of humanitas, which, like the Platonic Good, emanates from Rome to the whole world subject to it, even to those places where the truly human is practically absent.

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The article analyzes information about the plant(s), named after an otherwise unknown mythological character Alcibius, which are found in Theriaka of Nicander of Colophon and in the Natural History of Pliny the Elder. The bulk of the two passages in Nicander (regarding Ἀλκιβίου ἔχις Ther. 541-549 and Ἀλκιβίοιο ποίη 666-675 respectively) consists of detailed etiological excurses, each telling about how the plant was found by Alcibius. Whether the plant is the same one in both cases, remains a subject of controversy. As for Pliny, he makes no mention of Alcibius as an eponym, but he nevertheless mentions two plants, names of wich very likely refer to this mythological figure: archebion (NH 22.51), whose external description overlaps in large part with the first account in Nicander, and alcibium (22.39), for which Pliny gives no description, but only a recipe - just like Nicander does in the second passage. Thus, the way Pliny arranges his information reflects the structure of both Nicandrian places. The example of Alcibius’ plants, in the author’s opinion, supports the hypothesis that Pliny was directly familiar with the poems of Nicander and also illustrates the methods of organizing the material in the medical books of Naturalis Historia. The article also contains a list of eponymic plants referred to in the corpus of Nicander’s works, with corresponding places in Pliny’s encyclopedia.

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The article focuses on the so-called “first” preface to Solinus’ Collectanea rerum memorabilium, and especially on the way its functions (stylistic, structural, rhetorical and genre-defining) are revealed against the background of the third-century rhetorical system. The genre status and semantic connections of the preface, the similes, metaphors and various rhetorical elements created on their basis are discussed. By analyzing them we should be able to better understand the figure of the author himself, his methods, intentions and even personal tastes, as well as the aim and focus of this work as a whole. While utilizing themes and common places that are traditional for Latin prefaces, Solinus reveals the methods of selecting material for his compilation, the features of the material, he even comments on the attraction of paradoxography and on his own vision of of composing a geographical work; all this, as a result, creates a unique text. As for Solinus’ rhetorical devices, these include, but are not limited to, the use of synonyms and polysemy; special attention is paid to the sound of words and phrases (he uses diminutives, assonances, etc.); and to the use of metaphors and juxtapositions of contrasting words. A distinctive feature of Solinus’ work is that he starts a geographical account (a description of the oikoumene) with a passage about Rome’s founding and a brief history of the Roman Empire as the author tells already in the Preface.

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Two successive abridgements of Pliny’s Natural History are discussed in the paper: the Collectanea rerum memorabilium by C. Julius Solinus and a medieval abridgement of Solinus, made in verse by a certain Theodericus. The main attention is paid to the biggest part of the Collectanea which gives a geographical account of the Universe corresponding to Pliny’s Books 3-6. The geographical part of the Collectanea is of particular interest for understanding the poem of Theodericus. An analysis of the text structures reveals deep differences between the studied authors. These differences can be interpreted as changes in global concepts of the World geographic space. For Solinus, the large World space was a basis for arranging the encyclopedic material drawn from Pliny, and he created a universal continuum of information that looks somewhat similar to the modern data-base structure: I call it the ramifying catalogue. In contrast to Solinus, Theodericus completely lost the idea of a World continuum. Theodericus does not mention the greater part of the geographical names, and names of large regions are all omitted, save for a few exceptions. Theodericus, however, shows a tendency to reduce the matter of the Collectanea to thematic units. Since Theodericus had but a very vague idea of how the World was arranged in geographical space, he could not recognize evident scribal errors of his copy of Solinus’ work which affected the coherence of the geographical continuum. A neglect of the geographical space can be explained by the fact that the poem was probably intended to be read as a multilevel allegory where geographical localization would be of little importance.

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The paper deals with the description of Britain in the Natural History of Pliny the Elder. The author traces the sources of Pliny and the place of his description in the classical geographical tradition. The Roman author had the opportunity to rely on a number of predecessors, starting with the semi-legendary Pitheas of Massalia (fourth century BCE) who allegedly navigated to the north along the western coast of Europe. Though by the time Pliny wrote Britain had already been a Roman province, the author of the Natural History mostly uses scholarly tradition rather than eyewitness accounts. The Natural History became the basis for most of the Late Antique and medieval descriptions of Britain (by Solinus, Orosius, Gildas, Bede etc.). It included several of the usual topoi: Britain is an island in the Ocean, it is situated at the edge of the known world, it is remote and hard to reach, but is also fertile and rich in nature resources. For Roman authors, the conquest of Britain was a natural end to the spread of the power of the Eternal City to the remotest limits of the world. The last part of the article is devoted to an analysis of Plinian influences on medieval views on the geography of Britain. It is demonstrated that at least some 12th and 13th-century writers (including the chronicler Matthew Paris) drew information directly from Natural History and sometimes compared various sources, noting their discrepancy.

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The main subject of the paper is the representation of Pliny’s ‘bestiary’ in Late Antiquity. In particular, it concerns the image of the lion depicted in Book 8 of Historia Naturalis as the most gentle and merciful of carnivores. I try to argue that a Carthaginian 5th century author, Blossius Aemilius Dracontius, used this image to construct political allegories, but not in a complimentary way; rather, it served as a kind of ‘camouflage’, an instrument to disguise the criticism present in his texts, which were, in essence, political pamphlets. The main idea is that texts of different genres, written by Dracontius at different times, can be treated as one system, constructed by using of cross-cutting terms, characters and images in each poem. The image of a lion is one of the most popular in this sequence: it appears both in early works by the Carthaginian poet (dedication to Felicianus Grammaticus, known as Romulea 1; Controversia de statua viri fortis) and in later ones (Satisfactio; De Raptu Helenae; Orestis Tragoedia). Analysis of intertextual links shows that with the help of this image Dracontius tried to depict Vandal kings as rude and bloodthirsty creatures - not directly, because this could be too dangerous, but rather implicitly: the lion image, traditionally associated with Pliny’s description, served here as a kind of mask.

This article discusses the controversial subject of the use - whether direct or indirect, through intermediary sources or excerpta - of Pliny’s Naturalis Historia in Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae. The types of sources used by Isidore are analysed according to the classification established by Fontaine [1960: 149]: 1) sources documented thanks to a specific parallel text; 2) sources used in a non-literal way; 3) evidence from previous sources on the same subject, which Isidore probably did not use himself; 4) texts that, without having a direct relationship to a passage in Isidore, contain a string of words identical to those used by him. On the basis of various examples, some direct mentions of Pliny, other indirect uses and possible direct uses are analysed, even if the author is not mentioned. We also consider how Isidore works, through a comparison of some texts. Here, the technique called ‘conflatio’ is claimed as a form of work of Isidore when composing his Etymologies. In the conclusion, we defend Isidore’s knowledge and use of Pliny’s Naturalis Historia. It is likely that Isidore had Pliny’s entire work in his library, even if he used it only in a timely manner for what he needed. We also discuss the actual need to carry out an in-depth, systematic study of this issue.

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Статья посвящена проблеме использования «Естественной истории» Плиния Старшего (ок. 23-79) как одного из источников средневековой хроники «История Испании» («Estoria de Espanna»), составленной на разговорном (средневековом кастильском) языке при дворе Альфонсо Х Мудрого (1252-1284) после 1270 г. Прямых рукописных свидетельств использования Плиниева текста в королевском скриптории не сохранилось. Анализ текста хроники показывает, что в «Истории Испании» (как, впрочем, и во «Всеобщей истории», создававшейся в том же скриптории) заимствования из «Естественной истории» имеют явно вторичное происхождение. Вместе с тем не вызывает сомнений высокий авторитет трудов Плиния в Кастилии и Леоне указанного периода, ставший следствием общего роста интереса к античной культуре в контексте «долгого XII века». Этот интерес лишь нарастал в следующее столетие, в период укрепления культурных связей с Италией и влияния итальянского Возрождения. Среди прочего эта тенденция четко прослеживается и на примере рукописной традиции «испанского Плиния» XIV в.

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The author’s aim, in collaboration with a colleague, is to supersede the standard English translation of Pliny the Elder’s geographical books in the Natural History, one produced for the Loeb Classical Library around 1940, but with clear limitations (explained here) and long outdated. The article discusses the challenges of determining the intended audience for the new translation (broad, without knowledge of Latin), the scope (Books 3-6, preceded by 2 on the universe and its elements, followed by notable geographical passages in 7-37), the editions of the Latin text to follow (Budé where available, otherwise Sammlung Tusculum), and the need to balance accuracy with readability. Close attention is paid to effective means of handling toponyms and ethnonyms, as well as to appropriate replication of Pliny’s style, especially its staccato shorthand, with lists lacking verbs, as well as loose rambling sentences. How far the descriptive terms in Pliny’s Latin can, and should, be consistently translated by the same English word gains attention. The matter of aids - notes and an accompanying map (seamless, digital) - is also addressed; a commentary separate from the translation is planned, to be contributed by a further colleague.

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