THE
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF PLINY.
Caius Plinius Secundus was born either at Verona or Novum Comun[1], 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 Rome, and attended the lectures of the grammarian Apion. It was in about his sixteenth year that he there saw Lollia Paulina[2], as in the following she was divorced by Caligula, and it was probably in his twentieth that he witnessed the capture of a large fish at Ostia, by Claudius and his attendants[3], and in his twenty-second that he visited Africa[4], Egypt, and Greece.
In his twenty-third year Pliny served in Germany under the legates Pomponius Secundus, whose friendship he soon acquired, and was in consequence promoted to the command of an ala, 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[5] as far as the shores of the German Ocean, besides visiting Belgic Gaul. In his twenty-ninth year he returned to Rome, 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. Coiscius, who it was said had been changed from a woman into a man. See B. vii. c. 3. Phlegon Trallianus and Ausonius also refer to the story.
- ↑ See B. xvi. c. 2, and B. xxxi. c. 19.
