THE SECOND BOOK 



HISTORY OF NATURE 



WRITTEN BY 



C. PLINIUS SECUNDUS. 



CHAPTER I. 

 Whether the World be finite, and but one. 



HE World 1 , and that which, by another Name. 

 Men have thought Good to call Heaven 

 (under the Compass of which all Things are 

 covered), we ought to believe, in all Reason, to 

 be a Divine Power, eternal, immense, without 

 Beginning, and never to perish. What is beyond the Compass 



1 The Author manifests a philosophic, as well as pious spirit, in begin- 

 ning his work with a reference to Divine power ; but in giving this idea 

 of the nature of the world, and representing it as a separate and inde- 

 pendent divinity, he adopts an ancient speculative opinion derived from the 

 Oriental philosophy, in preference to the popular opinion of his country, 

 which is selected by Ovid in his Introduction to the " Metamorphoses;" and 

 which ascribed the creation of the world to an already existing or eternal 

 God " whichever God he was :" though not to the highest in rank of the 

 Heathen Mythology ; for the latter is represented as descended from pre- 

 viously existing, or humanly deified, parents, and consequently was of a 

 subsequent age. The knowledge of the Great Eternal having been left 



