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Abstract.
This essay assembles Pliny's mentions of Roman emperors, with full discussion, adding bibliographical details down to early 1994. Elements stressed include the frequent novelty of these items (being often absent from Suetonius, Tacitus and Dio Cassius), their relative neglect by modern writers, and the glimpses they may offer of what was in Pliny's own lost Histories. The general modern view of Pliny on Augustus is modified, while his services to Flavian propaganda make a recurring and connecting theme.
Apart from the fact that it has not previously been thus done,2 there are four good reasons for marshalling the references to Roman emperors in Pliny's Natural History: 1) their intrinsic interest; 2) their frequent novelty, being items absent from the major Roman accounts of the Julio-Claudian and Flavian rulers; 3) their neglect by modern writers; and 4) the glimpse they may afford of what will have been in Pliny's own lost Histories.3 As to this last, we cannot, of course, assume that style and content of the two works were of a kind.4 However, in his own two cross-references (NH 2.199, 232, both to Nero), Pliny revives anecdotes of miraculous phenomena, clearly not alien to his concept of formal historiography. He is cited along with Livy for the early history of Roman racing by the sixth century Byzantine chronicler John Malalas,5 and it is not always remembered how long his reputation as a historian persisted, an amnesia bred of the extremely scanty remains.6 In addition to the references mentioned, and Pliny's own advertisement (NH praef. 20) of the work, the only other remnants7 are two mentions in Tacitus' Annals (13.20, 15.53, both to do with Nero) and one in his Histories (3.27, on the civil wars of AD 69).
As almost always, Syme provides the starting point and signals. In one of his last and most agreeable papers,8 he assembles and expounds upon five Tiberian matters, observing that they are Of unique value in estimating a personality, yet not often adduced in the recent time', and later that 'not one of the five items here discussed found entry in recent biographies of Ti. Caesar'.9 Incidentally, in these days of deconstructed texts and political 'correctness', Syme deserves applause for insisting that 'no genuine biography...