Pliny and Roman Botany (article)

Pliny and Roman Botany
By Jerry Stannard, for Isis (1965)

First of all, can I just say that the practice of scholars embedding childish digs at their peers within published articles is clearly just part of the rich continuum that has culminated in whining, vicious teenage blogging?

This article seems to be one aspect of Stannard’s quest to rehabilitate the good name of Pliny: “. . . if Theophrastus was the Father of Botany, to Pliny belongs the honorific Father of the History of Botany” (423). Stannard admits Pliny’s errors: “He was gullible and uncritical, he lacked great originality, and he was not possessed of sufficient training always to understand the details of the scientific and technical problems he discussed” (420). However, he states that “. . . a study of the botanical portions of his writings, long overdue, will reveal not only that Pliny is an invaluable source for tracing the development of early botany, but also that he made important contributions of his own” (420).

In sum:
-Pliny makes liberal use of other sources of information, at times inheriting their errors, and at other times embellishing them with important details for which history has not credited him
-The personal, eyewitness investigations and observations he includes in his accounts point to a rigour and credibility not necessarily shared with his armchair-botanist compatriots
-His accounts include the first literary mentions of a number of plants, the prototypical modern physic garden, lost works hitherto unknown to the field, and a wealth of information on contemporary practices that are rarely recorded by others but provide important context for the study of botany
-Stannard also points to Pliny’s influence on modern botanical vocabulary through his place at the root of the encyclopaedic tradition

I’m not going to go very far with this article, because it’s only tangentially related at best. For my purposes, it’s simply weight behind the claim that Pliny was, in the time the Travels were composed, a botanical authority whose works were well-known throughout Europe and who may arguably have influenced both Mandeville’s text and the botanical imagination of the culture that received it.