Pliny's encyclopaedia.

I’ve been reading Pax, Tom Holland’s awesome history of Rome’s ‘Golden Age’, the two centuries beginning in AD 69, with the Empire teetering on the edge of collapse and civil war. It’s heaps good.

I’ll write it up properly when I’m done but this par from the chapter describing the destruction of Pompeii stayed with me, because it reminded me of how much I used to enjoy reading encyclopaedias as a kid. It’s about Pliny’s efforts to compile the very first in the world.

Even so, exhausting though his duties and responsibilities might

be, they were not, in Pliny's own opinion, exhausting enough.

Despite his return to public service, he had scorned to lay down his

pen. Even the hardest working among his associates were stupefied

by his stamina. 'His indefatigability was beyond belief, his powers of

application exceptional." Here were the same qualities that Corbulo,

Pliny's old commander, had identified as the prerequisites for success:

the essential requirements for the projection of Roman power. Only

by submitting to an iron-forged discipline could the legions hope to

maintain the rule of the world; only by committing to a relentless

programme of research could a scholar hope to catalogue everything

in the universe. Pliny was not just looking to continue writing, but

to write a book on a truly epic scale, one that might serve his read-

ers as an all-round education: an encyclopaedia. It was, as he proudly

acknowledged, an unprecedented ambition - 'for not even a Greek

has attempted such a massive project single-handedly before!°

Perhaps this was because only a Roman could ever have conceived it:

for it was only the Romans who had the world in their hands.

I really want to go find a copy of this thing now. When I was kid we had a collection of cheap, children’s encyclopaedias at home and most nights I would pluck one at random from the shelf and just start reading about whatever subject took my fancy.

Honestly, I still think it’s why I breezed through school for so many years without putting in much of an effort. It was only when I got to the business end of my senior years that I discovered to my horror that I had to do some more study.