Pliny the Elder: The Natural History's Index and the Vesuvius Rescue

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Gaius Plinius Secundus, Pliny the Elder, was born around AD 23 or 24 into an equestrian family in Como, in northern Italy. As a young cavalry officer on the Germanic frontier he recorded details like Roman ships fending off uprooted trees in a river, and wrote his first book on throwing a javelin from horseback without stirrups. Under Nero he kept clear of politics, watched the aftermath of the great fire and the building of the Golden House, and wrote safe works on rhetoric and doubtful phraseology. When his old comrade Vespasian took power, Pliny became a procurator in North Africa, Spain, and Gaul. He met Vespasian before dawn, had scribes read to him in the bath, and dictated in carriages, wearing gloves in winter so he could hold a scroll.

His 37-volume Natural History, completed around AD 77 and dedicated to Titus, drew on about 160 volumes of notes and covered astronomy, geology, zoology, botany, and minerals. Book one was a detailed table of contents listing his sources, letting readers look up facts. In AD 79 he commanded the fleet at Misenum when Vesuvius erupted. He readied a light ship to study the cloud, then launched heavy galleys after a plea from his friend Rectina. Told by his helmsman to turn back, he said fortune favors the brave. At Stabiae with his friend Pomponianus, an onshore wind trapped them, and Pliny, heavyset with a breathing condition, collapsed on the beach and died.

• In Spain he documented ruina montium, hydraulic mining that collapsed mountains from the inside with water.
• In Africa he documented people handling venomous toads and the plants of coastal oases.
• The Natural History preserves accounts of water mills, painters' pigments, and bronze casting.
• Survivors at Stabiae tied pillows to their heads against falling pumice.
• His nephew Pliny the Younger described his death in a letter to the historian Tacitus.