Pinning Pliny down

written by Greta Hawes

We’re well into semester two in this part of the world and so: time to assemble another crack team of Macquarie University PACE interns and tackle something new!

Long on our wishlist for MANTO has been adding data from Pliny’s Natural History. This 37-book encyclopedia covers an extraordinary breadth of topics. And of course, because myth was tangential to almost every branch of knowledge, there are fascinating tidbits scattered through it. Most important to this project will be the geographical material in the early books, and Pliny’s catalogue of ancient artworks that fills the final books.

We started our work in book 7, with Pliny’s account of who invented what. Here’s a taste:

Cinyra son of Agriopas invented tiles and the mining of metals, both in Cyprus. He also invented tongs, hammer, crowbar, and anvil. Wells were invented by Danaus after he sailed from Egypt to the part of Greece known as 'Dry' Argos; quarries by Cadmus at Thebes or, according to Theophrastus, in Phoenicia; walls by Thrason; towers by the Cyclopes according to Aristotle, or the Tirynthians according to Theophrastus.

Woven fabrics were invented by the Egyptians, wool-dyeing by the Lydians in Sardis, the spindle for wool-working by Closter son of Arachne, thread and nets by Arachne herself, the art of fulling by Nicias of Megara, and the art of shoemaking by Tychius of Boeotia.

The Egyptians claim to have discovered medicine themselves, but others attribute it to Arabus, the son of Babylon and Apollo. Botany and pharmacy were discovered by Chiron, son of Saturn and Philyra.

(Pliny, NH 7.196-7, trans. Mary Beagon)

Throughout this part of his account, Pliny weaves stories of inventions from both myth and history, from the Greco-Roman world and further afield. We have our work cut out for us in identifying which parts of this belong in MANTO. Some familiar characters keep appearing: Cadmus, as resident in both Boiotia and Phoinicia; Arachne as an innovative weaver; Danaus as a migrant from Egypt; and Chiron as a skilled healer. But then Pliny appends new “mythic” characters that appear in our surviving ancient sources only here, like “Closter” (“spindle”) as son of Arachne, Thrason, Arabus, and Nicias. Most fun are the easter-egg allusions to obscure mythic characters. So, the shoemaker “Tychius” is surely the skilled leatherworker that Homer says made Aias’ huge shield by layering up seven oxhides (Iliad 7.220).

Sorting out these allusions means that adding Pliny to MANTO is slow work; but it will be an important addition. The very fact that Pliny can drop names like this and expect his readers to fill in the details of the stories shows how central this kind of mythic knowledge was in first-century Roman culture.

Thanks go to the PACE interns on this project — Ariella Aird, Mitchell Clark, Claudia Kappely, Victoria Kassis, and Xavier Trott; and to Yvonne Inall and the team at the Gale History Museum for hosting us.

Thanks also to Scott Smith for providing his notes on myth in Pliny’s geographic books, which were the basis for his article in Polymnia 3 (2017).