Quaestiones Plinianae: Pliny and His Greek Models
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4312/keria.12.1.65-83Keywords:
Latin, Silver Latin, translation, natural history, sourcesAbstract
The paper focuses on two aspects of Pliny the Elder’s encyclopaedic work, Natural History, which are closely linked to the author’s application and adaptation of Greek science and terminology: on his use of sources and his language. The sources employed by Pliny in composing his Natural History raise a number of unanswered questions: studies in this field are effectively hampered by the loss of most works quoted by the author, while his influence on the writers of Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the early Modern Age has been relatively well explored. The uniqueness of the work lies not in its originality but in the author’s singular compilation method, with which he sought to summarise for his Roman audience the Greek and Roman knowledge of nature. In addition, Natural History is a unique document of Silver Latin, containing style characteristics (such as inconcinnity, ellipsis, brevity, parentheses, periphrases) and language peculiarities (such as loan words, neologisms, technical terminology) which remain valuable materials for research into the Latin language and style. The discussion concludes with a detailed presentation of the difficulties and challenges faced by the translator of Pliny’s Natural History.Downloads
Download data is not yet available.
Downloads
Published
24.07.2010
Issue
Section
Scholarly Articles
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors are confirming that they are the authors of the submitting article, which will be published (print and online) in Keria by Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani (University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Aškerčeva 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia). Author’s name will be evident in the article in journal. All decisions regarding layout and distribution of the work are in hands of the publisher.
- Authors guarantee that the work is their own original creation and does not infringe any statutory or common-law copyright or any proprietary right of any third party. In case of claims by third parties, authors commit their self to defend the interests of the publisher, and shall cover any potential costs.
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.