Take the Pliny Challenge
Pliny the Elder was born in 23 A.D. He became a cavalry officer, then commander of an entire army. He was chubby, fond of baths, hardly slept. By age 36, he’d written three books: a treatise on how to throw spears from horseback, a biography of a friend, and a history of the Germanic wars in 20 volumes. Eighteen years later he published the Natural History, a loopy, strangely compelling encyclopedia that consists of 37 separate books and tackles everything from geography to crystallography to the ability of hyenas to spontaneously change their gender. Sometimes it is remarkably astute; other times it is hysterically, dreadfully wrong. Pliny died in 79 A.D., after sailing toward the erupting Mount Vesuvius to observe, in his nephew’s words, “the various movements and shapes of that evil cloud.”
TMN Contributing Writer Anthony Doerr lived in Rome for a year and wrote a series of letters for TMN. Now he has a marvelous new memoir out about that time, Four Seasons in Rome, in which Pliny plays a major role. Says Adam Gopnik of Four Seasons, “This book will lift the heart of every parent and delight the mind of every lover of Italy.”
Three of the following excerpts are from Pliny’s Natural History. One isn’t. Guess the quotation that’s not Pliny’s and win a signed hardcover of Four Seasons in Rome. The first four people to email in the correct answer (along with their mailing addresses) will receive a book in the mail. Bona fortuna!
Friday
1. “Because of wine thousands of crimes have been committed, and drinking occasions so much pleasure that a huge section of mankind knows no other reward in life.”2. “Woman is, however, the only animal that has monthly periods; consequently she alone has what are called moles in her womb. This mole is a shapeless and inanimate mass of flesh that resists the point and the edge of a knife; it moves about, and it checks menstruation, as it also checks births”
3. “Mark Antony broke lions to the yoke and was the first person at Rome to harness them to a chariot, and this in fact during the civil war, after the decisive battle in the plain of Pharsalia, not without some intention of exhibiting the position of affairs.”
4. “[Vedius Pollio] kept in reservoirs huge lampreys that had been trained to eat men, and he was accustomed to throw to them such of his slaves as he desired to put to death. Once, when he was entertaining Augustus, his cup-bearer broke a crystal goblet, and without regard for his guest, Pollio ordered the fellow to be thrown to the lampreys.”
Thursday
1. “When the late lamented Augustus was sacrificing at Spoleto on the first day he was in power, the livers of 6 victims were found with the bottom of their tissue folded back inward, and this was interpreted to mean that he would double his power within a year.”2. “Violent animosity rages between the mullet and the sea-bass.”
3. “Wine initiates us into the volcanic mysteries of the soil, and its hidden mineral riches; a cup of Samos drunk at noon in the heat of the sun or, on the contrary, absorbed of a winter evening when fatigue makes the warm current be felt at once in the hollow of the diaphragm and the sure and burning dispersion spreads along our arteries…”
4. “The testicles in sheep and oxen hang down against the legs, but in pigs they are closely knit to the body. In the dolphin they are very long, and stowed away in the lower part of the belly, and in the elephant they are also concealed.”
Wednesday
1. “At this time many of the magistrates and many young men of noble families run through the city naked, and, in their jesting and merrymaking, strike those whom they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of high rank purposely stand in their way and hold out their hands to be struck, like children at school.”2. “The world thus shaped then is not at rest but eternally revolves with indescribable velocity, each revolution occupying the space of 24 hours: the rising and setting of the sun have left this not doubtful.”
3. “The flesh of the tortoise is reported to be useful for fumigation and for countering magic tricks and poisons.”
4. “Elephants are very cold-blooded, and consequently in hot weather are specially sought after by the snakes; and that for this reason they submerge themselves in rivers and lie in wait for the elephants when drinking, and rising up coil round the trunk and imprint a bite inside the ear… the snakes are so large that they can hold the whole of an elephant’s blood, and so they drink the elephants dry, and these when drained collapse in a heap and the serpents being intoxicated are crushed by them and die with them.”
Tuesday
1. “Man is the only species in which the male has teats; with the rest of the animals there are only the marks of teats.”2. “Two chariots were brought up, each drawn by four horses. Mettius was tied, spread-eagled, to both of them. At a touch of the whip the two teams sprang forward in opposite directions, carrying with them the fragments of the mangled body still held by the ropes.”
3. “There are said to be locusts in India three feet long, with legs and thighs that when they have been dried can be used as saws.”
4. “There was a famous contest between a Roman and an elephant when Hannibal compelled Roman prisoners to fight one another. He matched a survivor against an elephant and agreed to let him go if he killed the animal. The prisoner engaged the elephant single-handed and, to the great indignation of the Carthaginians, killed it. Hannibal, realizing that the account of this contest would bring contempt for the beasts, sent horsemen to kill the man as he left the arena.”
Monday
1. “Athletes when sluggish are revitalized by love-making and the voice is restored from being gruff and husky. Sexual intercourse cures pain in the lower regions, impaired vision, unsoundness of mind, and depression.”2. “The story goes that during the reign of Tarquinius Priscus, a penis suddenly emerged from the ashes on the hearth and that a captive girl who was sitting there—Ocresia, a servant of Queen Tanaquil—rose up pregnant from in front of the fire. This was how Servius Tullius, who succeeded to the throne, came to be born.”
3. “At a given signal all the able-bodied men burst through the crowd and seized the young women. Most of the girls were the prize of whoever got hold of them first, but a few conspicuously handsome ones had been previously marked down for leading senators, and these were brought to their houses by special gangs.”
4. “The morning after, the breath reeks of the wine-jar and everything is forgotten—the memory is dead. This is what people call ‘enjoying life;’ but while other men daily lose their yesterdays, these people also lose their tomorrows.”