Pliny the Elder
The enigma of Juba II, ‘the most fortunate captive ever taken’
The Numidian prince, raised in Julius Caesar’s household, remains a shadowy figure, but we get some good stories about his contemporaries, including Pliny the Elder and the Emperor Caligula
Has Daisy Dunn chosen the wrong Pliny to write about?
I couldn’t help thinking, as I read this book, of an old story, vaguely recalled from English A-level classes, about…
The new treasures of Pompeii
One afternoon in AD 79 an unusual cloud appeared above Vesuvius in the Bay of Naples. ‘It was raised high…
Pliny on the joy of elephants
In order to deter poachers, hundreds of tons of elephants’ tusks are being incinerated in Kenya. But even for Romans,…
