The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny

If “The Shadow of Vesuvius” were a movie up for an Oscar, Pliny the Elder would be nominated for best supporting actor. His nephew, Pliny, would win Best Actor. Such are their relative roles featured in this combined biography.The two had much in common. Pliny the Elder was tormented thinking about “the injustice of being forgotten.” Pliny, according to author Daisy Dunn, believed “a man is happiest when he can be confident his name will live forever.” Both worked hard enough to make Pliny’s happy wish come true, producing work still in print; the Elder’s encyclopedic “Natural History,” and Pliny ‘s Letters.Both men boiled with a ferocious work ethic driving themselves to work endless hours. In fact, the younger Pliny wrote of the Elder, “he had a sharp intellect, incomparable concentration, and a formidable ability to stay awake.”The Elder was unquenchably curious, the trait that got him killed by the volcano. The younger Pliny, aside from his work as a lawyer, senator, and public official was, at heart, a speechwriter/orator, described as one who believed “his reputation depended upon what people remembered of his speeches.” To that end, quoting Virgil, he wouldn’t even mind (or so he wrote to an admired friend) being recalled as “second best but by a long way.” (One doubts it.)A charming book, centered largely on the younger Pliny, “The Shadow of Vesuvius” sparkles with random factoids, from the source of the phrase “in a nutshell,” to the possible origin of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” These small digressions feed rather than impede the narrative.Compared to the voluminous work left behind by the Pliny’s, this book is but an index card of their lives. But it’s a well-written, illuminating, enjoyable card enthusiastically recommended.

This book is an interesting combination of the lives of Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger using the eruption of the Vesuvius as the starting point of the book, where Pliny the Elder dies, while Pliny the Younger survives and starts his adult life.The main focus of the book is to tell the life of Pliny the Younger, from which the author drew mostly from the many surviving letters written during his lifetime. This is not presented as a chronological list of events, but as a combination of events and how his daily life went, both in his work and at his home away from Rome. While this is not strictly a history book, it provides information of some historical events, also providing the sociological context in which those events ocurred, but on a very local scale.The author did a good job to also be able to present Pliny the Elder's thoughts and beliefs in the book, using the little surviving information and what can be read in his surviving works. The connecting point between both men's lifes is presented by their family ties and the admiration the Younger had for the Elder.The only difficult part of the book is keeping track on which Pliny the author is talking about. The Elder is always referenced using that "Last Name", but it's easy to get lost with the names.Light read, informative, and enjoyable.

This is a magnificent biography of both Pliny the Elder and Younger. It begins with the eruption of Vesuvius and Pliny the Elder's heroic attempts at rescue. Pliny the Younger chose to stay at his uncle's villa, but his memory of this event is dramatically told in his letters to the historian Tacitus. It was something he could never forget nor can we.Daisy Dunn explores thoroughly this era of early imperial Rome and the reception both Plinies received during the Renaissance. Her style is easy and sensitive. Her insights into Roman life in the first and second centuries are valuable in their own right buttressed by citation of the Natural History and Pliny the Younger's Letters and speeches.As a classicist I found much to enjoy and appreciate in this marvelous book. We learn of Regulus, Tacitus, Domitian and Trajan, the marvelous landscape of northern Italy especially Comum, the flora of the region, the floating islands of Lake Vardamon.For anyone wishing to learn more about this period, Daisy Dunn's The Shadow of Vesuvius is a must read.

Daisy Dunn's meticulous scholarship crafts a nuanced portrait of a renowned Roman Senator and the times in which he lived. While I had three years of Latin in High School, I have neither the interest nor time to study all of the original texts and historical commentaries through which she labored so patiently. I do spend considerable time in modern day Italy, and have visited many of the locales there and in Asia Minor which were in turmoil during his lifetime. They are still in turmoil, of different sorts.The picture of political intrigue, amoral violence, primitive medicine and paganism makes me glad to be living in a different time, although clearly we have our share of all of the above. Still, the striving for philosophical ideals, scholarship, husbandry of the lands and equitable treatment of citizens and non-citizens suggest Pliny was one of the better men of his time and one who learned and preserved some of the lessons of history and attempted to exemplify good government in his writings.Pliny has been studied by scholars over the centuries, indeed millennia. This distillation corroborates why for us non-academics.

If you, for any reason, is intereted in the life of a second rate personage of first century of the Roman empire, a letter writer that shed some light in the uses of high circles, then this book is OK; If you do not know nothing about first century roman history, it could be of some but limited use too. If any of those conditions are not accomplished, then there is not reason at all to read it. Sometimes you anyway read a book of a period you know well in order to get another insight OR to enjoy a charming writting style, as it happens with missed Mr Nortwich, but this is not the case here. Some enthusiastic critics has said that miss Daisy writes "beautifully", but it is a judgement somehat beyond the pale. She writes good enough, but not "beatifully" Her writting is mostly clear and to the point, but sometimes boring and always lacking humor and originality.