18 MEMOIR OF PLINY. 



in the Fifth Book of his Researches, the most 

 scientific by Baron Cuvier, in the Biographic Uni- 

 verselle. Where so little has been communicated, 

 it is not to be expected that our narrative can be 

 either very copious or very explicit in its details ; 

 but scanty as the materials are, enough has been 

 preserved to enable us to delineate the character, as 

 well as to appreciate the merits, of this extraordinary 

 man, whose Natural History has been aptly denomi- 

 nated the Encyclopaedia of Ancient Knowledge. 



CAIUS PLINIUS SECUNDUS, surnamed the Elder, 

 and also the Naturalist, was descended of a noble 

 family, and born in the reign of Tiberius, in the 

 20th, or according to others the 23d year of the 

 Christian era. The place of his nativity has been 

 disputed, three cities in Italy having contended for 

 that honour. Father Hardouin, one of the ablest of 

 his editors and commentators, supposes, but without 

 any good authority for his opinion, that he was born 

 at Rome. Suetonius, St Jerome in his Chronicle 

 of Eusebius, the learned Spanheim, Paul Cigalini, 

 who has written two elaborate dissertations on the 

 subject, the Count Rezzonico, and some others, 

 make him a native of Comum, a city in the Mi- 

 lanese territory ; but from an expression which he 

 himself uses in the dedicatory epistle prefixed to his 

 History, wherein he calls the poet Catullus his coun- 

 tryman (conterraneus) ; and since Catullus was born 

 at Verona, this latter city has claimed the Naturalist 



