Solder, lawyer and writer, Pliny the Elder’s (23 – 79 AD) research into the natural world formed the basis of scientific authority for centuries to come. He died during the eruption of Mount ...

Pliny the Elder. "On the 24th of August, about one in the afternoon, my mother desired him to observe a cloud..." he wrote in a letter to Tacitus, a Roman senator and historian, about the events ...

His own father died when Pliny was still very young and he was adopted by his uncle, Pliny the Elder. This was clearly a life-changing experience, but one that was common to most Romans.

As Pliny, the Elder famously said, "There's truth in wine." At the high point in the empire's history of wine, experts estimate that a bottle of was being consumed each day for every citizen.