ABSTRACT
Pliny has a long tradition of textual collections to follow. It is the tradition created by the antiquarians which was taken over by Pliny's ideal vir bonus, M. Terentius Varro, who had assembled along with an actual collection (33.155; 36.41), a textual one of portraits. Other antiquarians, like Atticus, were also devoted to such projects. Even artists like Pasiteles (first century) had assembled in five volumes the ''opera nobilia in toto orbe', all the noble works of art in the city - and Pliny uses him as a source in Books 34 to 36 (Rouveret, 1989: 459). Just the title of Pasiteles' work is indicative: it is an appreciation of all the works of art produced until then, in a wide geographical and chronological spectrum, expressed in an assemblage, and a reclassification of a sort that reminds one of an imaginary museum. Rouveret (1989: 460) attributes to Pliny a similar wish achieved in the 'art history' chapters, especially in Book 36, where Pliny most explicitly adopts a wider stance and views the world with the eyes of a critic (as Rouveret argues). I would suggest that this is undoubtedly true in HN, but the scope is much wider than has been indicated, so that it includes the whole of HN and not just the art history chapters. Pliny aimed to assemble, to hoard, a musée imaginaire - that is, the universe. The sanctity of the subject reifies the outcome as well. Words, images, and texts are incorporated into a universal encyclopaedia of knowledge.
