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A review by dee9401
The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny by Daisy Dunn
3.0
This is a wonderful reference for Pliny the Elder's Natural History and Pliny the Younger's letters. I enjoyed many of the tidbits the author brought up throughout the book. The bibliography at the end, as well as the end notes, are very valuable. My only problem with the book is that it read more like an afternoon on Wikipedia than a coherently laid out book. I didn't find the organization of the material useful and felt like I was bopping around too much. A straight out chronological approach also would have been bad, to be honest, but I wonder if there were some other way to organize the material? I will easily refer to this book in the future, and treat it like a reference that I pull down to find one thing and then put back on the shelf. I'm very happy to have read it.
As for two specific items of note (out of many), Pliny the Elder nails it when he wrote "If fire, war and general collapse did not lead to the destruction of the world, then he believed that man’s greed would" (Natural History 2.207). And, as I love the Iliad and Odyssey, I liked Pliny the Younger's view of Odysseus: "He liked to remember how Odysseus stood as stiff as a skittle in the Iliad, but when he ‘spoke from his big chest his words were like the snowflakes of winter, and no other mortal could then rival Odysseus'" (Pliny the Younger's Letters, 1.20-2).
As for two specific items of note (out of many), Pliny the Elder nails it when he wrote "If fire, war and general collapse did not lead to the destruction of the world, then he believed that man’s greed would" (Natural History 2.207). And, as I love the Iliad and Odyssey, I liked Pliny the Younger's view of Odysseus: "He liked to remember how Odysseus stood as stiff as a skittle in the Iliad, but when he ‘spoke from his big chest his words were like the snowflakes of winter, and no other mortal could then rival Odysseus'" (Pliny the Younger's Letters, 1.20-2).