PLINY THE FABULIST: PLINY THE ELDER AND ANIMALS AS ROLE MODELS By RACHEL L. ASH A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2016 © 2016 Rachel L. Ash To my parents, who raised me to love learning. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Dr. Konstantinos Kapparis of the Classics Department at the University of Florida. First, because he introduced me to the author at the center of my thesis and taught me to enjoy and appreciate Pliny’s enthusiasm for knowledge and science, and second, because Dr. Kapparis encouraged my interest in Pliny and helped me develop Pliny’s purpose in my own paper. He offered me advice and encouragement throughout the research process, and helped me resolve my ideas into the paper here. I would also like to thank Dr. Andrew Nichols for joining Dr. Kapparis to complete my review committee and for reading my paper; his feedback was invaluable for helping me improve the clarity of my paper. In addition, I would like to acknowledge the Department of Classics and especially the head of the Distance program there, Velvet Yates, for their professionalism and support. Finally, I would like to thank my family for sacrificing so much while I sequestered myself to research and write. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................... 4 LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................................ 6 ABSTRACT.......................................................................................................................... 7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 8 2 VOCABULARY SURVEY ANALYSIS ........................................................................ 21 3 THE MORALITY OF ANIMALS .................................................................................. 42 The Hunters: Lions and Panthers .............................................................................. 45 The Hunted: Deer and Bovines .................................................................................. 49 Man’s Best Friends: Dogs and Horses ...................................................................... 53 Birds that Talk: the Raven .......................................................................................... 57 Hunters and Prey: Eagles, Kites, Pigeons and Doves .............................................. 60 Birds and Aesthetics: Peacocks and Nightingales .................................................... 63 Fleas, Bees, and Other Small Things ........................................................................ 65 Models of Morality: Bees and Ants ...................................................................... 65 Behaving Badly: Flies and Moths ........................................................................ 72 4 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION ............................................................................... 76 LIST OF REFERENCES ................................................................................................... 84 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH................................................................................................ 85 5 LIST OF TABLES Table page 2-1 Words describing the sacred ................................................................................. 23 2-2 Words describing luxury and excess ..................................................................... 24 2-3 Words of pride and humility ................................................................................... 26 2-4 Words implying loss of control ............................................................................... 27 2-5 Words measuring greed and generosity ............................................................... 28 2-6 Words of anger ....................................................................................................... 29 2-7 Words implying malicious intent ............................................................................ 31 2-8 Words measuring usefulness ................................................................................ 32 2-9 Words of intelligence, both prudent and sinister ................................................... 33 2-10 Words of honesty and deceit ................................................................................. 35 2-11 Words about insult.................................................................................................. 37 2-12 Words of contentment ............................................................................................ 37 2-13 Words describing virtues ........................................................................................ 38 2-14 Words of admiration and worth .............................................................................. 40 6 Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts PLINY THE FABULIST: PLINY THE ELDER AND ANIMALS AS ROLE MODELS By Rachel L. Ash August 2016 Chair: Konstantinos Kapparis Major: Latin Pliny the Elder has commonly been criticized by scholars as unscientific, disorganized, and undiscerning, dismissed as a mere collector of stories. This paper explores Pliny’s books on animals and offers commentary on a pattern of moralizing that implies that there was organization to his compendium, and further, deliberate intention to use engaging stories as mediums for instructing his readers on ethical behavior. The paper utilizes another author, Phaedrus, who explicitly wrote stories about animals to teach morals and acceptable behavior (i.e., fables), as a foil for Pliny’s subtler approach. Using animal-to-animal and lexical comparisons, the paper draws connections between fables and the commentary Pliny included within his descriptions of animals, commentary that invites the reader to either approve or disapprove of the animal’s actions, and thus apply that same judgement to himself. The paper concludes that Pliny’s digressions from pure scientific report are not due to flippancy but to his intent that the stories act as vehicles for moral and ethical change. 7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Pliny the Elder died doing what he loved best: seeking knowledge. The author of a lost history and an extant natural catalogue enjoyed a successful military career and a close relationship with the emperor of Rome before perishing in an investigation of the unusual phenomena haloing Mt. Vesuvius. Aside from knowledge he gathered in person during his military travels, Pliny read historians, philosophers, and the natural collections authorized by Alexander the Great. His fascination with nature is reflected throughout his Naturalis Historia, and has led some critics to misinterpret that enthusiasm as unscientific and his unmodern system of organization as meaningless. Viewing the Pliny’s books through a modern lens is unproductive, however; the only means to understand his approach is by finding the objective of his writing. The Naturalis Historia is composed not only as a scientific treatise, but a philosophical guide, educating the reader in morality by using the behavior of animals to communicate expectations. Long disparaged by Classicists as a “gullible”1 sensationalist who was not capable of discerning truth from fiction, Pliny the Elder has been neglected in the scholarly world until relatively recently; perhaps this is due to earlier scholars’ wish to distance themselves from the “gullible” catalogue writers of the medieval period, for whom Pliny was a favorite resource of the weird, monstrous, and fantastic. However, starting in the 1990s, Plinian scholarship has changed in tone, from one of gentle mockery to an increasingly interesting focus on what, if anything, Pliny was trying to 1 Heironimus (1935) 297 says it all: “The gullible Pliny often had his leg pulled by nature fakers.” 8 achieve with his immense work, the Naturalis Historia. Pliny himself downplays the value of his work, as he states in the preface (12-14): Meae quidem temeritati accessit hoc quoque, quod levioris operae hos tibi2 dedicavi libellos. nam nec ingenii sunt capaces, quod alioqui in nobis perquam mediocre erat, neque admittunt excessus aut orationes sermonesve aut casus mirabiles vel eventus varios, iucunda dictu aut legentibus blanda sterili materia: rerum natura, hoc est vita, narratur, et haec sordidissima sui parte ac plurimarum rerum aut rusticis vocabulis aut externis, immo barbaris etiam, cum honoris praefatione ponendis. praeterea iter est non trita auctoribus via nec qua peregrinari animus expetat. nemo apud nos qui idem temptaverit, nemo apud Graecos, qui unus omnia ea tractaverit. Indeed this work of mine approaches impertinence, since I have dedicated these little books of frivolity to you. For they aren’t capable of great talent, which, in myself, is most certainly otherwise and middling, nor do they allow digression or speeches or conversations or strange accidents or other various matters, or material pleasant to talk about or charming to read, due to the sterile subject: the nature of the universe, life as it is, is told within, and these things told in their grittiest details; the terms for very many of the topics