Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder, Gaius Plinius Secundus (23-79), was a Roman naturalist and writer. He was also in charge of the Roman fleet at Misenum on the Bay of Naples when Vesuvius erupted.
Books by Pliny the Elder
“Pliny covers a lot of ground. The Natural History was written in the first century AD and is a bit like going on a fantastical adventure trail through the natural world. He writes in detail about bees, covering everything from the division of labour inside the hive—some build, others polish…others prepare food—to the origin of honey: it is the saliva of stars, he writes, or the perspiration of the sky, or some kind of moisture produced by the air purging itself. Many Classical thinkers wrote about honeybees, and I especially love reading their descriptions for the role that their imaginations played. With Pliny, you can almost feel him filling the gaps in his knowledge with flights of fancy as he writes that honey falls to earth from a great height, picking up a great deal of dirt on the way down, sliding over foliage and becoming tainted by the juice of flowers—thereby explaining its different colours, scents and consistencies. Sometimes this guesswork proved surprisingly accurate.” Read more...
Helen Jukes, Nonprofit Leaders & Activist
Interviews where books by Pliny the Elder were recommended
The best books on Honeybees, recommended by Helen Jukes
Humanity has a long history of keeping bees. But what do we really know about them? Beekeeping memoirist Helen Jukes selects five books that examine both the behaviour of bees as individuals and colonies as ‘superorganisms.’
The Best Books for Growing up in the Anthropocene, recommended by Caspar Henderson
Welcome to life in the Anthropocene, a new epoch in the history of life where the impact of humanity on the Earth system is so great, we need a new term for it. Author and journalist Caspar Henderson offers a rich reading list to help ourselves and our children grow up in the Anthropocene.
