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On the Death of Pliny the Elder 

 By JACOB BIGELOW, M. D. 



{Communicated December 9, 1856.) 



It is commonly represented by authors and compilers that Pliny the elder, who 

 died during an eruption of Vesuvius in the year of Christ 79, perished by suffocation 

 from the exhalations of the volcano ; and a great preciseness of expression on this sub- 

 ject has been perpetualed by most Avriters who have touched upon it in modern times. 



In the preface of Broterius to the Life and "Writings of Pliny, it is said : " Flammis et 

 flammarum praenuntio odore sulphuris exanimatus est." Mason, in Smith's " Greek 

 and Roman Biography," says : " He almost immediately dropped down suffocated, as his 

 nephew conjectures, by the vapors." In Lempriere's "Classical Dictionary" the same is 

 stated : " He soon fell down, suffocated by the thick vapors that surrounded him." 

 llees's " Cycloppedia," art. Pliny, has a similar statement : " In his flight he was suff'o- 

 cated, being then in the 56th year of his age." Ciivier, in the Biographie Universelle, 

 thus particularizes the closing scene : " Deux esclaves seuleraent resterent aupres du 

 malheureux Pline, qui perit suff'oque par les cendres et par les exhalaisons sulfureuses 

 du volcau." Simond, in his " Tour in Italy," says of Pliny at Stabise : " Although not 

 much nearer to Vesuvius than Naples is, he there met his death, from mere stiff'ocation 

 probably, as his body Avas afterwards found externally uninjured." Sir Charles Lyell, 

 in his " Principles of Geology," says of Pliny : " In his anxiety to obtain a nearer view 

 of the phenomena, he lost his life, being suff'ocated by sulphureous vapors." 



The only authentic and contemporaneous narrative extant of the death of Pliny, and 

 that on which subsequent opinions are necessarily founded, is that contained in the 

 letter of his nephew, Pliny the younger. After an examination of this celebrated 



