The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny

by Daisy Dunn

Overview

“A wonderfully rich, witty, insightful, and wide-ranging portrait of the two Plinys and their world.”—Sarah Bakewell, author of How to Live

When Pliny the Elder perished at Stabiae during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, he left behind an enormous compendium of knowledge, his thirty-seven-volume Natural History, and a teenaged nephew who revered him as a father. Grieving his loss, Pliny the Younger inherited the Elder’s notebooks—filled with pearls of wisdom—and his legacy. At its heart, The Shadow of Vesuvius is a literary biography of the younger man, who would grow up to become a lawyer, senator, poet, collector of villas, and chronicler of the Roman Empire from the dire days of terror under Emperor Domitian to the gentler times of Emperor Trajan. A biography that will appeal to lovers of Mary Beard books, it is also a moving narrative about the profound influence of a father figure on his adopted son. Interweaving the younger Pliny’s Letters with extracts from the Elder’s Natural History, Daisy Dunn paints a vivid, compellingly readable portrait of two of antiquity’s greatest minds.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631496394
Publisher:	Liveright Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	12/10/2019
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	737,466
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Daisy Dunn is an award-­winning author, classicist, and cultural critic based in London. She is a leading authority in her field and a regular commentator and columnist, writing for The Spectator and Literary Review. She is also the author of The Missing Thread: A Women's History of the Ancient World. Follow her on Instagram @daisydunnauthor.

Table of Contents

Maps ix

Nota xiii

Part 1 Aut-

Prologue Darker than Night 3

1 Roots and Trees 17

Part 2 Winter

2 Illusions of Immortality 35

3 To Be Alive Is to Be Awake 51

4 Solitary as an Oyster 70

5 The Gift of Poison 81

Part 3 Spring

6 Pliniana 105

7 The Shadow of Verona 121

8 Portrait of a Man 129

9 The Death of Principle 137

Part 4 Summer

10 The Imitation of Nature 153

11 A Difficult, Arduous, Fastidious Thing 164

12 Head, Heart, Womb 177

13 After the Solstice 190

Part 5 -umn

14 Life in Concrete 203

15 Depraved Belief 216

Epilogue Resurrection 231

Timeline 235

List of Illustrations 239

Endnotes 241

Select Bibliography 283

Acknowledgements 305

Index 307

Editorial Reviews

If only Daisy Dunn's book had been around back when I was an aspiring classicist. There were actually two Roman writers named Pliny…and I could never keep them straight, let alone understand why they were worth studying. Dunn makes a persuasive case for both…Dunn is a good writer, with some of the easy erudition of Mary Beard, that great popularizer of Roman history, and her translations from both Plinys are graceful and precise. Ultimately her enthusiasm, together with her eye for the odd, surprising detail, wins you over, and the younger Pliny gradually emerges as a mostly sympathetic character, interesting for his ordinariness and for the ways he resembles us today.

The New York Times Book Review - Charles McGrath

01/06/2020

Historian Dunn (Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet) intertwines the lives of Pliny the Elder and his nephew, Pliny the Younger, in this illuminating chronicle of the Roman Empire in the latter half of the first century CE. After narrating the elder Pliny’s heroic death in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, Dunn traces the younger Pliny’s career as a lawyer and provincial governor, detailing his rivalry with politician Regulus, friendships with historians Tacitus and Suetonius, and loving marriage to his second wife, Calpurnia. Drawing from Pliny’s Letters, Dunn spotlights her subject’s yearning for his quiet countryside estate; his desire to write a magnum opus like his uncle’s seven-volume Natural History; and his philosophical musings on such topics as oysters, sleep, and snow. She ends her account with the fleeting but famous correspondence between Pliny and Emperor Trajan as the former, near the end of his life, sought guidance on how to stem the tide of Christianity in his role as the governor of Bithynia (in modern Turkey). Skillfully mining primary and secondary source material, Dunn offers a comprehensive study of how the elder Pliny influenced his equally perceptive and ambitious nephew. This eloquent and accessible history offers a revealing glimpse into the daily life of ancient Rome. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

"Enthusiastic and vividly drawn.... An appreciation of both men, with frequent digressions on the Elder's opinions on oysters and metal scripture, the Younger's poetical ambitions and villas along Lake Como, and the effect of their dual legacy on future eras."

Kathleen McCallister

"Only a writer as sure-footed as Ms. Dunn would even attempt such a challenge…. Her exploration of his life and times, and that of his uncle, has much to offer to readers, with its ground-up, kaleidoscopic view of a nine-decade span of Roman history."

James Romm

"The Shadow of Vesuvius is the definitive guide to Plinydom."

New York Times - Franz Lidz

"A delightful biography, interweaving extracts from [Pliny the] Elder’s Natural History with [Pliny the] Younger’s letters, speeches, and poetry into an insightful portrait of the men, their world, and their influence on people such as Giorgio Vasari, Frances Bacon, and Percy and Mary Shelley.... This is a rich, entertaining dual biography of two fascinating men, a revealing portrait of ancient Rome, and a celebration of nature that will appeal to fans of Mary Beard."

Merle Jacob

"If only Daisy Dunn’s book had been around back when I was an aspiring classicist… Dunn is a good writer, with some of the easy erudition of Mary Beard, that great popularizer of Roman history, and her translations from both Plinys are graceful and precise. Ultimately her enthusiasm, together with her eye for the odd, surprising detail, wins you over."

Charles McGrath

"Rather than provide us with merely a biography of a magistrate, Dunn gives us a portrait of an entire way of life…. Dunn also knows how to work a sentence. Without ever veering into historical fiction, she consistently succeeds in bringing what might otherwise seem dusty and remote to vivid life…. If there is much about Pliny’s world that she makes seem familiar, then there is just as much that she makes seem very strange….The result is a portrait of the Roman Empire that gives the reader something of the shiver down the spine that Herculaneum can inspire: a sense that we are as close to the vanished world of two millennia ago as we are ever likely to get."

Literary Review (UK)

"If you were writing a biography of Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus—or Pliny the Younger, the author of one of the most famous collections of letters surviving from the early Roman Empire—it would be hard not to start with the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, on the Bay of Naples, in 79 A.D., for Pliny was the only writer to leave us an eyewitness account of the catastrophe. The English classicist Daisy Dunn… wisely does not resist the temptation… She succeed[s] in making Pliny [the Younger]…a poignant character, the kind of person who has to do the dirty jobs of an empire and, having done them, gets no compliments…. Neither Pliny knew that his homeland’s great mountain, Vesuvius, was nourishing in her bosom the extermination of so many of her people. This somehow makes the two men’s kinship closer."

The New Yorker - Joan Acocella

11/01/2019

When Vesuvius erupted in 79AD, author and natural historian Pliny the Elder ventured out to provide assistance to a friend and died in the attempt. His teenage nephew Pliny the Younger headed in the opposite direction and survived to become a magistrate, lawyer, and prolific letter-writer. Classicist Dunn's new work ostensibly focuses on the Younger with a nod toward the Elder's influence on his life. But by offering nearly as many references to the Elder's encyclopedic Natural History as to the Younger's vast correspondence, the author seems to want to give equal space to her subject's bolder uncle. Dunn's decision to avoid a linear recounting of events in favor of a thematic narrative of Pliny the Younger's life results in a book that feels less like a biography than an appreciation of both men, with frequent digressions on the Elder's opinions on oysters and metal sculpture, the Younger's poetical ambitions and villas along Lake Como, and the effect of their dual legacy on future eras. VERDICT Not ideal for those looking for a straightforward biography of Pliny, the book will appeal to readers who are willing to follow Dunn's enthusiastic and vividly drawn, if meandering, story about the lives and influences of both men.—Kathleen McCallister, William & Mary Libs., Williamsburg, VA

Library Journal

2019-09-15
The Roman Empire comes to life through the biographies of two influential men.

Classicist Dunn (Catullus' Bedspread: The Life of Rome's Most Erotic Poet, 2016, etc.) creates a vivid tapestry of the Roman world focused on naturalist Pliny the Elder (23/24-79 C.E.), who perished when Vesuvius erupted, and his nephew—and adopted son—Pliny the Younger (c. 62-133 C.E.), a lawyer, senator, landowner, and poet who lived "at the very center of things in the first and early second centuries." Drawing largely on the Elder's encyclopedic, 37-volume Natural History and the Younger's prolific letters and speeches, Dunn depicts them as "Renaissance men in their own time," revered among their peers and by later generations. Darwin, for example, a member of the Plinian Society as a medical student, owned a "well skimmed translation" of Natural History, which influenced his thinking about heredity. Although both Plinys shared "an enquiring mind, an eye for minutiae, obsessive diligence," and a "love of stories, not only of the natural world, but of extremes of human behavior," the younger man could be pompous, self-centered, "attuned to detail and hard fact, obedient to protocol. Where his uncle was creative," Dunn notes, "Pliny was pedantic." He worked happily in solitude, preferring his rural villas—served by some 500 slaves—to the bustle of the city. Like his uncle—and also Cicero, Virgil, and Emperor Marcus Aurelius, among many other prominent Romans—Pliny adhered to Stoicism, "a philosophy for achieving equilibrium in a frantic world, through which you learned to become master of yourself and your emotions." Besides exploring his philosophical beliefs, Dunn examines Pliny's attitudes about medicine, agriculture, and marital relations along with his role in the political intrigues and rivalries that marked the reigns of the cruel Emperor Domitian, who exiled philosophers from Italy, and Emperor Trajan, a popular ruler for whom Pliny served as deputy. Their correspondence reveals the tensions that arose from the burgeoning of Christianity, portending "a change that was to come at the heart of Rome's empire."

A sensitive, spirited investigation of the ancient world.

Kirkus Reviews

This biography of Pliny the Younger, with many references to his uncle, Pliny the Elder, interposes episodes from his life, such as the eruption of Vesuvius, rather than telling a chronological story. That approach gives a full but rather foggy sense of his life in ancient Rome. Mike Grady’s narration takes the listener past the book’s limitations. His intelligence and sensitivity go beyond the basics of a clear, incisive voice, a British accent, and good pacing. He reads in a kind of confidential tone, as if speaking of personal matters with care and consideration, all of which engage the listener. Beyond that, he gives an elegiac sense to this story of a life now long gone, making this audiobook affecting as well as informative. W.M. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

MARCH 2020 - AudioFile