22 Pliny s Epistle to T. Vespasian. [BOOK I. 



CcBsar called the Cymbal of the World (whereas, indeed, he 

 deserved to be rather named the Drum of public Fame), was 

 so vainglorious, that he professed to confer Immortality on 

 all those whom he mentioned in his Writings. I am not 

 ashamed I have not devised a prettier Title for my Book ; 

 yet because I would not be thought altogether to condemn 

 the Greeks, I am willing to be regarded in this Behalf like 

 those excellent Masters in Greece for Painting and Statuary, 

 whom you shall find in these Reports of mine, to have enti- 

 tled their rare and perfect Pieces of Work (which the more 

 we look upon, the more we admire) with Half-Titles and im- 

 perfect Inscriptions, in this Manner : Apelles worked at this 

 Picture*: or,Polycletus undertook this Image: as if they were 

 but begun and never finished, and laid out of their Hands : 

 which was done (no doubt) to this End, that for all the 

 Diversity of Men's Judgments scrutinising their Work, yet 

 the Artificer thereby had Recourse to an Apology, as if he 

 meant to have amended any Thing therein amiss, in Case he 

 had not been prevented. These noble Workmen, therefore, 



heard of in Egypt. It seems to have been his practice to regard every 

 thing in proportion to the wonders it would enable him to relate. He is 

 the sole authority for some curious facts in Natural History ; which Pliny 

 seems to have taken from him. Aulus Gellius admits that he was prone 

 greatly to embellish the truth ; and Josephus has given evidence of his 

 emptiness and scurrility, which he poured out abundantly against the 

 Jews, to whom he bore a mortal antipathy. He had an opportunity of 

 displaying this in an address before the Emperor Caligula, when he repre- 

 sented their refusal to worship him as a god as a proof of their disaffec- 

 tion to his person and government ; by which he excited the indignation 

 of the emperor against the illustrious Philo and his companions. His 

 notoriety for reviling and noisy opposition was such as to cause his name 

 to be selected by a Christian writer of the third century, who assumed 

 the name of Clement of Rome, as the fictitious opponent of St. Peter, in 

 a disputation concerning the Christian religion : as mentioned by Eusebius 

 and Lardner. His conceit appears from what Pliny says of him ; and 

 it would have been to him the deepest mortification, could he have been 

 told that he would only be known to posterity through the mention made 

 of him by his opponents. He is sometimes called Plistonicus and Poly- 

 histor. Wern. Club. 

 1 Apelles faciebat. 



