Pliny the Elder

I was an equestrian of Rome who preferred books to banquets and dawn to daylight. Soldiering along the Rhine and Danube taught me how the world works: winds, ores, timber, rivers, and the crafts that keep men alive. As procurator I learned accounts; as a commander I learned obedience. I saved my leisure for reading and notes. Secretaries read to me at meals and in the carriage; I answered with dictation, never letting a page pass without extracting its use.

From that labor came my Natural History: thirty-seven books, offered to Titus, in which I set down roughly twenty thousand things drawn from two thousand volumes. I named my authorities so that you might weigh them, and me. I sought what might help—how to grind a stone, a remedy from a weed, the measure of a shoreline, a sculptor’s manner—and I kept the marvels, too, when report was constant or curiosity demanded it.

I did not claim to see all I recorded. I marked what I observed, what sailors swore, what physicians prescribed, and what poets embellished. Where judgment failed, I let the list of names speak. Better an honest catalogue than a sleek falsehood. If I erred, I did so openly, hoping another would correct me.

In the year of Vesuvius I commanded the fleet at Misenum. Seeing the strange cloud and hearing of friends in danger, I put to sea. Smoke and ash overcame me at Stabiae—my chest was not strong. If you ask me why I went, I will answer as I lived: to help, and to know.