18 
MEMOIR OP PLINY. 
in the Fifth Book of his Researches, — the most 
Bcientihc by Baron Cuvier, in the Biographie 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 
ilisputed, three cities in Italy having contended for 
that hononr. Father Hardouin, one of the ablest of 
his editors and commentators, supposes, but without 
any good authority for his opinion, that he was bom 
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 bom 
at Verona, this latter city has claimed the Naturalist 
