Pliny the Elder's World

Cover image of book: a ruined white stone monument with some remaining columns on a large rectangular base. The monument sits atop a hill with other hillsides and the ocean visible in the background. In a blue border at the top, the title appears in large white characters: "Pliny the Elder's World: Natural History, Books 2-6." In another blue border at the bottom, white text reads: "Translated by Brian Turner and Richard J.A. Talbert"This page provides access to a growing collection of digital resources related to geography and world view in the work of Pliny the Elder. These maps and research database extracts were developed by Brian Turner (Portland State University) and Richard Talbert (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) concurrent with the preparation of their translation of books 2-6 of Pliny's Natural History, which is now available for purchase from Cambridge University Press.

Duane W. Roller's A Guide to the Geography of Pliny the Elder, the first detailed English commentary on Pliny's books 2-6, is available from Cambridge University Press.

Turner and Talbert are long-time ISAW collaborators. The research database they assembled while working on Pliny the Elder's World was prepared for digital publication in collaboration with the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places, which is hosted by ISAW under the editorial direction of Tom Elliott. Gabriel Moss, Ryan Horne, and Jamie Ditzel helped prepare the database.

Maps

The following maps from the book serve as a schematic illustration of Pliny's geographic descriptions. The overview map shows the broad division of Pliny's four geographic books (3-6). On the individual book maps, the labels refer to paragraph numbers in each book. The Ancient World Mapping Center and Lindsay Holman helped prepare these maps.

Digital Map

The Geography of Pliny the Elder web application compiles and maps the geographic data in Pliny's Natural History. The underlying database, available here, includes some 6,500 unique entries. The web application maps all those entries that are locatable. Users can click on a feature or use the search function to find citations in Pliny and a link to a feature's associated Pleiades entry, where further data, much of it beyond the scope of Pliny, can be found.

The map is displayed using ESRI's free online viewer. The geography (terrain, coastlines, and river courses) are derived from tiles compiled by the Ancient World Mapping Center and currently hosted at the University of Iowa. These tiles represent scholarly consensus regarding the shape of the ancient world. Location data (i.e. geographic coordinates) are derived from Pleiades.

The application was developed by Grace Bell, Gabe Moss, Brian Turner, Richard J. A. Talbert, and the staff of the Ancient World Mapping Center. Special thanks to Tom Elliott, Henry Gruber, Ryan Horne, Phil McDaniel, and Gracie Riehm.

Research Database

The project's research database underpins both the digital map prepared by the AWMC, as well as the addition and enhancement of gazetteer entries in Pleiades (ongoing). Users may send queries or corrections to brian.turner@pdx.edu.

Version 2 (Feburary 2025) of the database is available in three formats (the data in each is identical):