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Person

Pliny the Elder

A portrait of an elderly man with long, white hair and a flowing beard, wearing a brown robe and a gold necklace, set against a dark background.

Roman naturalist, military commander, and author of Naturalis Historia, a thirty-seven-book encyclopaedia of the known world finished around 77 CE. He recorded recipes for concrete, observations on metallurgy, and dubious claims about most animals. He died in 79 CE while attempting to rescue friends from the eruption of Vesuvius, suffocated by fumes on the beach at Stabiae.

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