PLINY. GAIUS PLINIUS SECUNDUS (known as Pliny the Elder).

Caii Plinii Secundi Veronensis NATURALIS HISTORIAE LIBRI XXXVII. diligenti studio ex multorum observationibus auctorum in varietate lectionis. Emendatius que unquam antea in famigerabili Parhisiorum lyceo impressi & fidelius recogniti.

      Parisiis per Nicolaum de Pratis 1516 - Date and imprint from colophon, Latin text, small folio, bound mainly in eights, prelims in sixes, 290 x 195 mm, 11¼ x 7¾ inches, wood engraved title page with wide pictorial border and central engraving depicting an elephant, decorated initials throughout, 36 unnumbered pages of prelims, CCLXII leaves numbered on rectos only, signatures AA3 and AA4 in the prelims misnumbered BB3 and BB4, all text present in the correct order and nothing is missing, bound in full modern vellum, raised bands and blind rules to spine, no lettering or label. Title page slightly browned, soiled in the margins, 4 small ink stains, 2 affecting image in border, other light stains including a light brown stain to inner edge, repeated intermittently to a greater or lesser degree throughout the volume, 2 lines of ink notes partially erased or crossed through, first 4 leaves of prelims have small very neat old repairs to lower part of fore-edge, first few leaves of prelims lightly soiled and lightly damp stained in fore-edge margins, damp staining persisting but decreasing to leaf I, some pages lightly age-browned, pale damp staining to a few upper and lower margins, light soiling to a couple of margins, slight brown staining to 2 facing pages, no loss of legibility, single wormhole runs from title page to leaf CIII affecting text, but with no loss of legibility, occasional underlining and early marginal ink notes, mostly very neat, 5 small closed margin tears, 2 others go slightly into text, neatly repaired with no loss, piece torn off lower edge of leaf XIIII with loss of most of lowest 2 lines of text, small hole in 1 lower margin, neatly repaired, small chip to 1 lower margin. Binding tight and firm. A good copy of an early edition of this classic encyclopedic work (2 lines of text lacking on 1 leaf as noted). Gaius Plinius Secundus, the man we know as Pliny the Elder, was born in Como, Italy, in A.D. 23 (not Verona as stated in the title). By the time he died 56 years later, he had been a cavalry officer, an adviser to emperors and the author of at least 75 books, not to mention another 160 volumes of unpublished notebooks. He is remembered today for just one of those works, his 37-volume Naturalis Historia (also known as Historia Mundi), in which he planned to "set forth in detail all the contents of the entire world." Pliny describes in detail the nature of the physical universe: astronomy, mineralogy, geography, meteorology, anthropology, zoology, botany, and the medicinal uses of plants and curatives derived from animals, among a host of other topics. He states that he has covered 20,000 subjects of importance drawn from 100 selected writers, to whose observations he has added many of his own. Botany, agriculture, and horticulture appear to interest him most. For example the fourteenth book consists of 21 chapters on the cultivation of vines and the making and uses of wines plus 1 chapter on avoiding drunkenness. Although dubious as a work of science, Pliny's Historia Naturalis provides a unique glimpse into the world view of ancient Rome. It is a wonderful melange of the real and the fantastic, the never was and the never could be. He wrote of dog-headed people who communicated by barking, and people with no heads at all, their eyes in their shoulders. He wrote of snakes that launch themselves skyward to catch high-flying birds, and of the "basilisk serpent" of Africa, which kills bushes on contact, bursts rocks with its breath and is so venomous that when one was killed by a man on horseback, "the infection rising through the spear killed not only the rider but also the horse." The work became a model for all later encyclopedias in terms of the breadth of subject matter examined, the need to reference original authors, and a comprehensive index list of the contents. The work was dedicated to the emperor Titus, son of Pliny's close friend, the emperor Vespasian, in the first year of Titus' reign. It is the only work by Pliny to have survived, a