ABSTRACT
Pliny and his contemporaries, writing in the middle of the first century A.D., introduced a new era in the history of science.2 The enquiring tradition of the Greeks gave way to the literary approach of the encyclopaedic writers who were content to give an account of natural phenomena which was a synthesis of the views to be found in previous works. They did not necessarily go back to original works or even to Pliny, from whom this type of work was ultimately derived, nor did they as a rule show any personal knowledge, except of a very general kind, of the subjects they were discussing.
