Sunday, June 30, 2024

16.08.24: follow-up; food and drink [9]; getting to grips with fruit

If you want to know about Roman fruits, you can ask Pliny the Elder although you may need to find a needle in a haystack because he sometimes only mentions them once!

Naturalis Historia comprises 37 books in 10 volumes, the first ten of which were published in 77AD. Pliny the Elder was in the process of completing the rest of them when, in 79AD, he decided to investigate a certain erupting volcano - and that was the last we ever saw of him. His nephew, Pliny the Younger, who wrote the Vesuvius letters, published the remaining volumes posthumously.

Image: first page of the 1469 edition of Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia. Further posts will include quotations from the work.



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