THE 



LIFE AND WRITINGS OF PLINY. 



Cattts Plinius Sectjndus was bom either at Verona or 

 Novum Comum\ now Como, in Cisalpine Gaul, in the year 

 A.u.c. 776, and a.d. 23. It is supposed that his earlier years 

 were spent in his native province ; and that he was still a 

 youth when he removed to Eome, and attended the lectures 

 of the grammarian Apion. It was in about his sixteenth year 

 that he there saw Lollia Paulina', as in the foUo^ong she 

 was divorced by Caligula, and it was probably in his twen- 

 tieth that he witnessed the capture ot a large fish at Ostia, 

 by Claudius and his attendants', and in his twenty-second 

 that he visited Africa'', Egj-pt, and Greece. 



In his twenty-third year Pliny served in Germany under 

 the legatus Pomponius Secundus, whose friendship he soon 

 acquired, and was in consequence promoted to the command 

 of an a?«, or troop of cavalry. During his military career 

 he wrote a treatise (now lost) " On the Use of the Javelin 

 by Cavalry," and travelled over that country^ as far as 

 the shores of the German Ocean, besides visiting Belgic 

 Gaul. In his twenty-ninth year he returned to Kome, 

 and applied himself for a time to forensic pursuits, which 

 however he appears soon to have abandoned. About this 

 time he wrote the life of his friend Pomponius, and an 

 account of the "Wars in Germany," in twenty books, 

 neither of which are extant. Though employed in writing a 



^ The weight of testimony inclines to the latter. The mere titles of 

 the works which have been written on the subject would fill a volume. 



' At a wedding feast, as mentioned by him in B. ix. c. 58. She was 

 then the wife of Caligula. ^ Related in B. ix. c. 5. 



* Here at Tusdrita, he saw L. Coisicius, who it was said had been 

 changed from a woman into a man. See B. vii. c. 3. Phlegon TraUianus 

 and Ausonivis also refer to the story. 



* See B. xvi. c. 2, and B. xxxi. c. 19. 



