Last episode, Imperial China broke under the strain of one honorable man’s weighty ambitions: Wang Mang. As we start this episode, that country is currently entering a transition period they’ll quickly recover from due to the leadership of one China’s greatest emperors in their long history: that same rebel leader who defeated the Imperial general in the battle of kunyang.

Meanwhile, Rome just lost their first and greatest emperor: Augustus, the great nephew of Julius Caesar. His multi-decade reign smoothly transitioned the 500-year old Republic of Rome into the Roman Empire, which’ll last almost the exact same number of years.

This smooth transition has ushered in a golden era history has dubbed Pax Romana that will endure 160 years past when we start today’s episode, ending in approximately 180 AD. Pax Romana means Roman Peace, but like any empire in history, there’s rarely true peace. Weak rebellions rise and fall, and Rome takes land in places like Germany and Britain, but largely they’ll maintain their borders established by their first emperor. Augustus had viewed the following lands as the natural borders Rome could logistically hold: most of Northern Africa... Europe, west of the Rhine river in Western Germany and south of the Danube as it cuts across northern Austria before dipping south of Romania, and then out East as far as Syria. Given how similar the borders will look almost 400 years from now, it’s just a small piece to illustrate how much of a visionary Augustus was.

Oh, and to be clear, I’ll almost always use modern borders because I don’t want you to have to consult a map from 2000 years ago to know what I’m talking about—Google Maps will work just fine. What matters here is someone’s life and that someone is Pliny the Elder.

He’s born in 23 AD, and Augustus has been dead 9 years. The empire is run by his stepson Tiberius, a man who didn’t really want the job but gives it a go, mainly following the guidebook left by his stepdad. Outside of that, he generally delegates work to the Senate, who weren’t particularly useful, but they could maintain status quo pretty well.

So, Pliny begins his life inside an empire that is stable both economically and politically, best evidenced by the proliferation of literature—especially poetry—during this time that vies with conquest for the hearts and minds of Roman citizenry. Unfortunately, also that year, Tiberius’s only son dies and he starts going off the deep end, to the point where people practically sing ding dong the witch is dead in the street following his death a decade from now, until they realize they’ve entered the twilight zone in which the next 2 of their 3 emperors will be some of Rome’s maddest mad emperors, Caligula and Nero. Pliny will live through it all, and we’ll get our glimpse of it through history.

In that currently stable year of 23, Pliny is born in a town now known as Como in Italy, a mile from Switzerland’s border. Of course, his parents don’t name him Pliny the Elder. Though, it’s funny to imagine the babe entering the world looking like a wrinkled old man, and they say screw it, Pliny the Elder it is, his name is a product of history. His given name is Gaius Plinius Secundus, and here’s how names worked in Rome.

The first name, Gaius, is the one family and close friends call him. The second name, Plinius, is a broad family categorization, used to define a common ancestor. It’d be like you and your cousin with different surnames sharing this name in common to show a relationship. The third name is comparable with our modern surnames. And you might think: why not call him his first name, Gaius? Well, the names Gaius, Lucius, and Marcus were—no joke—the names of half the men in Rome. And of course for women, Gaia, Lucia, and Marcia were about as common. It’s no wonder that history opted to refer to this man by one his two surnames.

Pliny’s father is the first Plinius we have records of, but he’s quite literally a footnote in history. Pliny puts his family on the historical map, so that’s where we get his name. He grows up in the equites class, which is second in status only to Senators. They’re the lower 1%ers of the 1%ers in Imperial Rome, with a few rules for admittance. Members need a networth of 100,000 denarii, equal to the annual salary of 450 legionaries’s, Rome’s professional soldiers, and is comparable to around 4 million US dollars today. Equites also had to be of sound moral character—no burying randos in ditches or cavorting with prostitutes—and maintain a minimal level of physical fitness. Like if running a mile sent you into paroxysmal coughing fit, you were out. Though that particularly requirement became less and less as time went on.

A big part of this is because of the class’s historic relationship to the military. Equites used to get drafted as cavalrymen, but military reforms ended this compulsory element for the elites about 100 years before Pliny’s birth. These reforms hit their full stride under Emperor Augustus, who reorganized the army and transitioned it from a heavily conscripted force to a professional one, reducing the army from 400,000 soldiers—about the size of Imperial China’s army—down to 250,000 by the time Pliny is born. However, the class structure maintains a tight relationship with the army, with most equites serving as officers in at least one military campaign.

And this will influence Pliny as a child. He grows up with 1 sister in his hometown of modern-day Como. These lands were settled as an official colony 82 years prior to his birth, 325 miles North from Rome. 500 Aristocratic Greeks and 4,500 others from provinces all across the empire relocated here, creating a multi-ethnic town as varied as any one might find in the empire.

To give you an idea of Rome expansion speed, 27 years after Pliny’s birth, Cologne in modern day Germany will be officially settled as a colony, 869 miles from Rome. This puts Rome’s average northern expansion at a rate of 50 miles per decade. To be fair, this is an oversimplification because Rome is technically expanding Eastward more than Northward, but Cologne is pretty well due North of Como, and what really matters is that when Pliny is born, the inhabitants of his town all consider themselves proper Roman, regardless of their origins.

Como blossoms into a city rich with mosaics and sculptures, public baths to relax in, a theater to watch plays—where equites like Pliny’s family get front row seating after Senators—and various craftsman workshops...all of this is supported by labor via the town’s sizeable slave population. While the Chinese Han only enslaved 1% of their population, 10% of Imperial Rome were slaves, perhaps as high as 40% in the capital, and the average elite equites family owned dozens of them. We don’t know many slaves Pliny’s family actually owned, but Roman citizens outside of Rome itself tended to own less, so let’s call it an even two dozen.

We also don’t know how Pliny viewed slavery as an adult, but implicit evidence suggests that while he (like many Romans at the time) viewed the practice as just part of life, he believed slaves were still humans who happened to have drawn an unlucky lot. Slaves came from all over the empire and its outskirts, as they often originated from war or traveling merchants. That, coupled with the diverse colonists who founded the relatively small town, likely plays a role in developing the curious nature that blossoms during Pliny’s childhood. But just as important as people were his environment.

I’ve never personally been to Como, but a quick search online shows a city teeming with natural beauty, with both a soothing lake and scenic mountains. Beyond this wondrous vista lay a world Pliny wished nothing more than to discover. With his family’s wealth, he would’ve had access to whatever he wanted, assuming his father allowed it. Like China in the East, Roman families were heavily patriarchal, to the point where freed slaves often continued to represent the heads of their house for their lifetime. So young Pliny’s opportunities begin and end with his dad. 

In Pliny’s case, his father encourages his interests. Personal tutors teach the young boy much, but Rome stands at center of the Western world, so as boy verging on puberty, he leaves for the capital to further his education. Rhetoric, scholarship, and legal knowledge form the bedrock of Roman nobility, and it behooves Pliny’s family for the child to learn in the capital, though Pliny’s father certainly couldn’t have predicted to what degree this experience this would impact his son, nor how it would shape humanity’s access to this era’s historical accounts.

Pliny likely arrived in Rome as a 10-year-old in 33 AD, and would’ve witnessed the first of Rome’s major failings after the rule of Augustus: a financial crisis with parallels to the modern era’s American financial housing crisis in 2007 and 8. You see, Emperor Tiberius had been hoarding state money, and the money that the aristocracy held often went out of the country for imports from place’s like China for silk and India for lime, peaches, and medicinal fruits. Thus, the money supply was running tight, and then a legal change results in banks calling back loans early, so the demand for money ran high. That disparity results in swathes of bankrupt businesses and failed banks, ultimately resolved by interest-free loans to landowners that totaled 25 million denarii, or roughly 1.1 billion in US dollars today.

The question is: how did this crisis impact a young Pliny? Hard to say, but later in his life he’ll scribe his distaste for opulence into the history books. When Caligula takes the throne in 37 AD and starts spending that surplus of money like he’d just won the lottery, Pliny notices the excess. He’ll make a historical record in his one surviving work, Natural History, to point out that Caligula’s wife once wore jewelry worth 12.5 million denarii, so HALF Of the money used to bailout the entire country from a financial crisis that’s on par with the modern world’s worst depression since The Great Depression. In Natural History, he further criticizes greedy individuals, stating essentially that the dogged pursuit of money is for slaves trying to earn their freedom. It’s easy to see how this whole financial crisis of 33 AD might’ve disillusioned the young Pliny similarly to current-day Gen Z and their negative take on capitalism in the wake of our recent financial crisis.

 As I alluded to, the mad emperor Caligula has taken over for his Uncle Tiberius. This coincides with Pliny turning 14 as he starts learning from a man by the name of Publius Pomponius Secundus. Since his parents named him something somewhat original, I’ll call him Publius. This man was arguably Rome’s best writer of tragedies in his day, drawing praise from multiple major contemporaries. He wrapped a unique literally style around thinly veiled political statements to espouse his views. Only a mere few lines of his works have survived, but given the respect earned by his peers and by historians decades after his death, we can assume he just wanted a world where Romans could be Romans without worrying about a random purge. All I can say to that is: dare to dream, my friend.

Publius had been jailed by Emperor Tiberius for the last 4 years of his reign for being friends with the guy who turns out had orchestrated the murder of Tiberius’s son. Caligula released Publius upon ascending the throne, then gave him front row seats to his mad reign by granting him a governorship following Caligula’s marriage to Publius’s half-sister. The timing of Publius’s release was almost serendipitous for Pliny, coinciding with his transition from a boy to a teenager, where he seeks both a worldly and moral education. Everything else related to living in Rome during Caligula’s reign was...not great.

I don’t want to spend too much time talking about the mad emperor, but he was traumatized by his Uncle Tiberius, who allegedly killed Caligula’s dad and definitely killed his mom and 2 siblings while basically only providing the boy a summer internship before he took over ruling all of Rome. This twisted upbringing to things like... rewarding soldiers stationed in Britain with all the seashells they could collect as spoils of war, inviting his horse to drink wine with him, and executing a man for being too handsome...all while racing to bankrupt Rome of its vast coffers that Tiberius had filled during his reign.

And this is the emperor that will “guide” Rome during the bulk of Pliny’s teenage years. It was impossible to predict anything Caligula did, so Pliny studies the art of tact, learns how to keep out of view when necessary, and develops an affinity for the arts. This, coupled with his childhood fascination with natural science, built a foundation of interests that would span his lifetime. He also makes connections that would pay dividends later in his career.

Men of the equites class tended to follow the same career path, starting with some minor administrative position for a few years before joining the army. There’s no record of Pliny’s career before joining the army, but let’s just assume that he spent his early 20’s, I don’t know, allocating the funds necessary for the construction of a random bathhouse and temple in Rome. Maybe throw in a few audits to make sure there wasn’t too much corruption from these projects, and you basically can sum up his first foray into professional life as a Roman citizen. 

Then we can dive into the professional career he cherished—that of a military commander. The Roman army was all about discipline, and delivering the order of the empire to the chaos of the outside world. I can’t overstate how much this order meant to Pliny. It allowed culture to flourish in the form of the arts and civilization to prosper rather than say the barbarism of the Germanic Tribes, who ran amok with no formal laws.

Laws formed of the basis of Rome’s greatness, to the point that almost all nobles studied it. Law & Order go hand in hand, and there’s a joke about the TV show I’m not funny enough to tell, but these were values Pliny fully bought into. I’d venture to guess the arbitrary ...uhh...laws, if we can call them that, of Caligula and Tiberius’s final years emphasized these values. The societal breakdowns that occur due to their scatterbrained policies leave it clear to educated, diligent men like Pliny how important Roman order is. Taking it a step further, Roman order is what keeps the empire running smoothly despite so much incompetent rule from Augustus’s descendants.

So, at 23 years old, Pliny is ready and eager to leave Rome as bureaucrat and begin life as a militaryman. As is common for an equestrian, he joins the army as a junior officer. Less common is the location of his post. He’s stationed around what is today the French-Belgian border, one of the frontiers of Rome as it borders Germany’s fiercely independent tribes. Most nobles at this time joined the army to check a box, but Pliny entered with a sense of duty foremost in his mind.

His position saw him overseeing a cohort of 480 infantrymen. In a numerical sense, that’s roughly comparable to a captain in the US Army today. In a realistic sense, he had no tactical or strategic authority. Part of the reason for his likely administrative experience with erecting bathhouses or temples or whatever was to apply that organizational skillset to the army—fulfilling tasks like making sure his cohort got fed, had proper equipment, made it to training, etc. And you can be damn sure his cohort ate dinner on time.

Pliny’s fellow equestrians generally lasted a decade in the army before peacing out, but he embraced military life and partook in several campaigns. While his peers in safer posts indulged in wine and simple tasks, he studied those who commanded troops in earnest military action, whether from a professional soldier who had risen through the ranks or a general bred from noble stock. Station and status do not earn Pliny’s respect. Talent and hard work do.

He’s content to learn for many years and help where he can, exhibiting patience and shying away from ambition, at least in the sense of growing and consolidating a power base. Very different than Wang Mang from our last episode.

It helps that Pliny often finds himself in legions with others who value the pursuit and proliferation of knowledge. Not only was he bringing order to the world, he learns and later imparts those learnings to other educated individuals. Over his first 5 years as a soldier he witnesses his legion creep into the modern day Netherlands, conquering a couple tribes. This earns him a promotion to military tribune, expanding his administrative responsibilities, and a transfer under the command of a familiar face— his former teacher, Publius. While the informal tutorship during Pliny’s youth acquainted the two men, this military command forges their friendship.

Pliny writes his first book at age 28, a treatise on how their German foes threw short spears. Riveting stuff I’m sure, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it came when serving under Publius. The two form a powerful bedrock of the Roman legions under Publius’s command, but it’s not like it’s military life 24/7, and downtime likely allowed the pair to discuss worldly theories as equals rather than teacher and student. Demonstrating the value of this pairing, the army pushes deep into Germanic territory, reaching as far as modern day Mainz, and frees a number of Romans enslaved from an ambush four decades prior from a host of German tribes who killed or captured the bulk of 3 Roman legions. This earns Publius a small parade in Rome called an Ovation, and about as much respect as Pliny can hold for one man.

Pliny escorts his friend back to Italy so they can attend this parade. On the way, he makes note of Fucine Lake, a painful source of flooding and malaria. Locals as far back as a century ago when Julius Caesar ruled begged the man to drain the lake. It took Emperor Claudius, the new emperor and successor to the insane Caligula, before the people would have a partial solution via a manmade outlet for the lake’s overflow. What set the empire abuzz though wasn’t the eleven years of work or the manual labor of 30,000 workers who tunneled almost 4 miles through rocky hills with merely the technology of the 1st century. No, what got people talking was instead the battle that commemorated the achievement. The emperor orchestrated a show of 19,000 gladiators and criminals placed on numerous warships, then divided them into two sides in a fight to death, all the while catapults rained stones and debris down on them.

The audience loved it. Bread and circus, am I right?

But Pliny merely alludes to the battle in his works. Like any gladiatorial battle, he recognized the positive impact it on had on public opinion, but couldn’t personally be bothered to care about the show one way or the other. Building the world’s largest tunnel though, a feat that would last until 1871? Yeah, Pliny was all in on that. As for the tunnel’s actual purpose...it didn’t completely drain the lake, but alleviated some flooding and irrigated surrounding farmland.

No doubt Publius put in a good word for his friend, and Pliny earns another promotion and a transfer back to modern day Belgium, with a new title that made him responsible for a cavalry cohort, a rather prestigious position given that it comprised only 10% of the legion and horses don’t come cheap. He perhaps starts participating in military strategy, though it’s unclear whether he put himself in any real danger. I suspect not, based on the lack of resistance across the frontier and how he acted once the insane Nero took control of Rome. We’ll get to that second one in a bit.

Unfortunately for present Pliny, life takes a turn for the worse, though not in any dramatic fashion. Word reaches him about the death of his friend Publius, a man he’d much rather be with than his current commander. The man in charge of Pliny’s new legion carries heaps of money to keep his fine dining going in the midst of a military campaign, and possibly worse, the dude didn’t write. Like at all.

It’s okay because Pliny more than makes up for his commander’s shortcomings. He immediately begins work on a biography for his late friend. Once he finishes that, he takes inspiration from a dream involving the great-grandfather of the now current emperor Nero. The first 3 emperors after Augustus were all assassinated, and that may have influenced his dream as Pliny would no doubt yearn for a more stable, ordered empire. In the aforementioned dream, Nero’s great grandfather begs Pliny to save his memory from oblivion. This guy’s primary claim to fame was military success in Germanic campaigns a decade before Pliny’s birth. The dream persuades Pliny to write a book about it. A book, that’s all it would take, right? to cover one commander’s conquests in Germany. Okay, maybe two or three...but no, Pliny writes twenty. The man takes his dreams seriously.

To be fair, these were more novella length than novel, but the point is that Pliny doesn’t do anything half-assed. He’s a self-disciplined individual, ever dedicated to the pursuit and proliferation of knowledge. It’s a big reason why he respected Claudius, the most scholarly of all the emperors Pliny would live to see. That respect is completely absent for Nero, who has been the emperor for five years when Pliny leaves army life and returns to live in Rome in 59 AD.

At 36 years old, as an accomplished military commander and scholar, with connections that now include a future emperor, and wealth afforded to him by his social class, he’s eager and ready to move up the ranks in the empire. When word reaches him that Nero has murdered his mother just before Pliny’s arrival, he instead plays it cool. He stays out of government, resigning himself to practicing law here and there.

One theory is he didn’t want to get caught up in Nero’s burgeoning tyrannical streak. Now, Pliny is a good judge of character and might have seen that coming. I think equally likely is Pliny didn’t respect Nero and wanted no part of his government. Whereas he felt a kinship to Claudius over scholarly pursuits, he and Nero couldn’t be further apart. Nero never seems to care about ruling Rome but instead wants to play his lyre, act in plays, and compete as a charioteer. He’s basically Peter Pan and never wants to grow up from his 16 years of age from when he takes the throne. Nero’s personal ambitions are so focused on the arts, his dying words will later be, “What an artist the world is losing.” 

This alienates Nero from the ruling elite, who viewed artists as the basest of jobs—even though they loved experiencing the arts. Go figure. They thought Nero didn’t act like a proper ruler, and Pliny shared this sentiment. Worse though, Nero never shed that high school mind set of craving popularity. This drive to be liked will direct most of Nero’s political initiatives, and it will lead to a spending frenzy and cut taxes that any educated person would see as disastrous.

Pliny then engages in a short debate with himself about whether to take the next step in his government career, the result of which is him saying nuh uh and retracting into obscurity. He publishes increasingly milquetoast books, veering into an 8-volume set on grammar. At the same time, Nero goes all in on purging any perceived opposition, separating these chosen individual from their political posts if they were lucky, and their lives if not. While Pliny’s path might seem like early retirement, he hardly takes it easy. The man criticizes laziness and mama didn’t raise a hypocrite. He spends most of his time in Rome, but takes a number of trips to elsewhere in the empire. He takes notes, writes, reads books, and jots down first-hand accounts of the natural world.

Pliny the Younger, technically the nephew of the Elder but who will be named his son in his will, later describes his stepdad’s work ethic in detail but here’s the gist. When not working in an official capacity as a lawyer (or future government posts after Nero’s end), Pliny the Elder relaxed by reading books. He never read books without taking notes though, but he couldn’t write his notes fast enough...so he dictated them to multiple slaves. When he bathed, slaves read him books. When he got out of the tub, he’d finish listening to the slave’s oration or dictate a new set of notes. If he went out on a morning stroll or to meet a friend, a slave walked beside him, reciting text in a manner not dissimilar to us listening to a podcast.

Now, a key difference in Pliny the Younger’s account and mine are the slaves. The Younger felt a moral obligation to treat his slaves well, but when it came to accomplishments, the slaves were out of sight, out of mind. In reality, as tirelessly as Pliny the Elder worked, so too did his slaves. In a manner, they were his Internet of the day, and without them, his accomplishments might not have been significant enough to endure the 2000 years that they did. Imagine how much more you’d get done with a couple dozen unpaid uhh...employees at your beck and call. Thus, it’s important to note that Pliny’s contributions to the world were part of a group effort and those who assisted him deserve substantial credit.

 Meanwhile, Nero is now setting Rome on fire. OK, not true, but the fact so many Roman citizens believed he purposefully set fire to Rome in 64 AD—a notion held by commoners and nobles alike—speaks volumes to the empire’s growing resentment.

Nobody sums it up better than Pliny himself, calling Nero a poison after the Emperor Claudius’s death, a blame he lays squarely at the feet of his mother. As became common sentiment, he believed Agrippina the Younger, Nero’s mother, murdered her husband...hmm /uncle Emperor Claudius. Oh, the Roman Imperial family...

I’ll take a slight detour here somewhat because Pliny brings it up, but also because Linked by History seeks to compare and contrast people across cultures and time. And I promise this will all circle back to Pliny by the end.

You might remember from the last episode that Wang Mang is largely believed to have poisoned one emperor, and I laid out circumstantial evidence that he poisoned another, but that there’s no direct proof of this. You won’t find a lot of historians even discussing the possibility. Meanwhile, Agrippina is commonly believed to have killed Claudius. But here’s the thing, there’s no direct evidence of that either. It’s a similar situation, with heavy elements of context creating a rumor that essentially became fact. It didn’t help Agrippina’s cause that her son killed her—the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and all that—but everything pointing to her is still circumstantial.

At risk of derailing us, I’ll just cover the key difference as to why. The Han Chinese focused on moral philosophy, impartial record keeping, and reinforcing Confucian ideals. Romans wrote about almost whatever they wanted, so their agendas also flowed down the river of time to us today. And Rome’s patriarchal society certainly had an agenda against Agrippina.

To illustrate how patriarchal/sexist their society was, when a woman named Boudica rightfully inherited her father’s kingdom in Britain, Roman officials condemned the act. They flogged her and raped her daughters because a woman simply was not allowed to rule, even when she paid the same tributes and gave the same respects. This led to a massive but ultimately failed uprising that would later enshrine Boudica as a British symbol for justice and independence. 

So, when Agrippina tries to rule via her son, noblemen would’ve scoffed at her at best, actively worked against her at worst. One theory suggests Nero—who is again, obsessed with popularity—killed his mother to appease the Senate who hated her for overreaching past her gender’s bounds. This isn’t like Han China where former wives of emperors—empress dowagers—were expected to influence rulers and impart their wisdom. Don’t get me wrong, women in both Ancient China and Rome are roughly equal in terms of rights or lack thereof, but at the very top of the food chain, Chinese women were better off.

It’s easy to see how Agrippina never had a chance with the chroniclers of her day. Scholarship is more professional nowadays, so there are multiple theories on who killed Claudius. Agrippina remains the chief culprit—and to be fair, I think that too, I love my circumstantial evidence—but it’s not a fact.

...Now I can come back to our star character.

Pliny is shaped by the world in which he grew up—and remember he loves order, or more precisely, Rome’s order and that order includes rich men at the top. This and the bit about slaves staying out of sight, out of mind probably comes across as a criticism of Pliny’s character. 

It shouldn’t. He didn’t abuse his position to mistreat random slaves or women or those in lesser stations. In fact, he didn’t romantically interact with women—or men—at all... and may have spent his entire life in celibacy.

It’s not that to him, as a rich Roman male, he’s necessarily a better person, but that Roman order has led to amazing advances. It’s an “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” situation. And that order has provided much, including on a personal level for Pliny, desire and means to discover and disseminate information. Seriously, this man’s self-discipline and work ethic was next level. He hustled, gave 100%, left nothing in the tank, and every other cliché that defines something so valued by modern societies and those throughout the ages that we have 50 ways to say it. This is what makes Pliny who he is, and as we’ll see, will also be his undoing.

For now, while Nero is still in charge, Pliny keeps his mouth shut. The emperor has resurrected the treason trials from past emperors. He executes multiple folks, including a man named Rubellius Plautus for well, plotting a rebellion. I love that I don’t have to make that up. But Nero might have—we have no proof of said plot.

Then comes that Great Roman Fire of 64 I referenced earlier in which 70% of the city of Rome burns to the ground. More objective sources note how he acted in haste to help the city when word found him, but most people point their fingers at him. It probably didn’t help that he built a giant palace with a 100 ft bronze statue of himself, atop the ruins.

At this point, it’s not about the fire, but who to blame. Nero needs a scapegoat and finds it in the Christians. The citizens are okay with that at first because people sadly are generally OK pointing the fingers at those different—and Christians at this time overwhelmingly weren’t Italian. But Nero takes it too far with heinous acts like setting them on fire to light his garden at night. People were not OK with cruelty for cruelty’s sake.

This cycle of Nero seeking popularity, popularity falling due to appeasing momentary whims while ignoring the big picture, then doing something evil and insane to try to recapture popularity, only to see it fall again cause it’s evil and insane eventually leads to everyone turning against him. The Senate declares him an enemy of the state and Nero commits suicide.

The empire is left without an heir, and a short civil war ensues called the Year of the Four Emperors. 

The eventual winner is Vespasian, that future emperor Pliny had befriended in the army. Both came from the equestrian class and held much in common. Vespasian was a down to earth, no BS kind of guy. He didn’t indulge in excess or frivolities like Caligula and Nero. Instead, he implemented tax reforms that stabilized the empire and initiated key projects like building the Colosseum—though neither Pliny nor Vespasian would live to see its completion. He also pensioned the salaries of many scholars and authors.

When Vespasian needed men he could trust, Pliny was happy to answer his call. Unlike Wang Mang in the Western Han, Pliny didn’t see the chaotic final years of Nero’s reign as an opportunity. He saw it as a warning sign, and he stayed the hell away. 

But now there’s a man in charge who he trusts to put the country back on top. After staying out of public service for 10 years, he reenters the scene in 69 AD and is trusted to handle the governance of one key province or another.

Don’t get me wrong, Pliny never abandons his scholarly pursuits. He just reorganizes a bit and sleeps a little less to fit it all in. Do you ever remember cramming for a test and falling asleep face down on the book? Yeah, that’s Pliny every night. In fact, although it’s not stated anywhere, I think his scholarly pursuits play a large role in the positions he takes. He ends up governing in Tunisia, Spain, France, and Germany over the next 10 years, and it’s easy to imagine Pliny listening to his buddy Vespasian ask for his help in ruling the empire, needing his support to help keep the peace between the army and its local inhabitants, and Pliny agreeing as long as he gets to the tour the world and take some notes.

Pliny is a trustworthy, intelligent, educated man with ambitions for knowledge, not power. Vespasian would’ve taken that deal in a heartbeat.

Early into his first governorship, Pliny starts work on his magnum opus, Natural History, considered the first encyclopedia ever written. So close is the relationship between Pliny and Vespasian that Pliny dedicates the book to the emperor’s son, who would succeed his father shortly before Pliny’s own death.

I could say a lot about Natural History, and it would be a disservice to say little. Pliny’s work guided common knowledge in Rome for centuries and as common knowledge become an oral tradition, he impacted the world as far reaching as today. For instance, the reason why we think that elephants are scared of mice is because Pliny said so (incidentally, this is sort of true...fast moving creatures like mice put them on edge but... fear... is a strong word).

Rather than delving deep into the book, let me list the topics he covered: zoology, botany, medicine, astronomy, geology, mineralogy, geography, anthropology, and by now you’ve stopped listening. It’s easier to summarize as: it’s, like, a lot.

In the last decade of his life, Pliny would become known as a just governor, committed to building up the infrastructure of his provinces, ensuring the welfare of the inhabitants of his domain, and imbuing Rome’s magnificent order into wherever he worked. But we’d likely know little about that if the scholars after him didn’t care so much about Natural History.

Unfortunately, as I foreshadowed earlier, it’s this pursuit of knowledge that costs him his life. His final appointment by Emperor Vespasian is as a naval commander, stationed close to Mount Vesuvius when it erupts over Pompeii in 79 AD. Armageddon is already raining down on the city by the time the fleet reaches them. Pliny’s helmsman advises he turn back but the scholarly commander replies, “Fortune favors the bold.”

Ahh...if only.

Three things draw Pliny to brave the wrath of Vesuvius. First, one of his buddies is trapped there. Second, he wants to rescue as many people under his protection as possible. Third, he’s got front row seats to a freaking volcano exploding. There’s no way Mr. “How does the natural world work?” is gonna miss this opportunity. He was probably already plotting his Volcanology section for Natural History right after witnessing the first salvo of volcanic ash.

He would never get to write this volume though. While Pompeiians are running around with pillows tied to their heads in an attempt to shield themselves from falling rocks, Pliny dies doing what he loved, either from asphyxiation by volcanic fumes or a heart attack brought on by the stress of a natural disaster on par with 100,000 atomic bombings of Hiroshima.

His obsession with scholarly pursuits had afforded him little time for exercise, so he’d become rather fat and out of shape. Given that, his age of 56, and strenuous efforts that helped save the lives of up to 2,000 people, a heart attack...seems likely.

Despite all these accomplishments, Pliny the Elder is today perhaps best known for a beer in California named after him. The brewery claims Pliny is the first to mention hops in a roundabout way. Did he? Eh. If you stretch one thing into another, sure. And it’s not a big deal. Beer is fun, and stretching history can be too. I certainly love to speculate if given enough context to do so logically.

What’s funny and ironic about naming the beer after him is that true Romans didn’t drink much beer, thinking it for barbarians. When Pliny drank, he drank wine, but he didn’t drink that much in a single sitting. Responsibility and order stayed foremost in his mind, even when in indulging in adult beverages. He loved wine and everything surrounding its creation. He believed nature gave humans all we need, and he recognized wine as a medium through which people share joy. What he expressly admonished was imbibing without moderation. 

So, the next time you’re drunk on Pliny the Elder and you sit there in a stupor looking at that green and red labeled bottle, know that he’s judging you. And yeah, the beer is Pliny the Elder while his actual name was Pliny, so that should’ve probably been a clue that something was a little off. But it does let me read a script with Pliny and Pliny, with me knowing I’ll pronounce them differently, but leaving a stranger reading that same transcript very confused. It’s like potato/potato, also a fun one, though I’ve never heard anyone said puhtato. 

Tangential tangents aside, Pliny also lamented all of the wealth Rome had stored in their wine cellars. So, if you got ‘em, drink ‘em. And if you’ve got too much, invite some friends.

That’s it for this episode. In 79 AD, The Roman Empire has righted the wrongs from a series of mostly incompetent rulers following Augustus, and China’s Eastern Han has not only recovered from Wang Mang’s usupration but is now enjoying a golden age. But, surely there are other civilizations in the world, right?

Yeah, there are, but they lack the whole written records thing. And they certainly weren’t as powerful as Rome or China. Possibilities that come to mind are Parthia, who rivals the hegemony of Rome along their middle eastern borders, and the Xiongnu, the steppe nomads who ever pose a threat to China’s northern border. There are a few others on par with these “second-tier empires” but one is poised to clearly rises to the world’s third-largest power over the next several decades, and you’ve probably never heard of them.

Next episode, I will cover the rise of the Kushan empire, who in 79 AD is situated around where Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan’s modern borders collide and will triple in size in less than a century, leaving a legacy not just of themselves but one that will catapult Buddhism from a regional religion onto the world stage. It’s a story that can only be told by following the ruler who will thrust them from obscurity and into prominence: Kanishka the Great.