Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2010 Pliny's defense of empire Thomas Raymond Laehn Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Laehn, Thomas Raymond, "Pliny's defense of empire" (2010). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 3314. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/3314 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. PLINY’S DEFENSE OF EMPIRE A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Political Science by Thomas Raymond Laehn B.A., Drake University, 2004 M.A., Louisiana State University, 2008 December 2010 © Copyright 2010 Thomas Raymond Laehn All rights reserved ii Crescat scientia; vita excolatur. ~ Paul Shorey iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A lengthy list of acknowledgments is a particularly appropriate beginning for an essay on the Elder Pliny. Pliny himself begins the text of his Natural History with a detailed list of his sources, and he thereby affirms one of the text’s central messages – namely, that at any point in human history, a man’s individual achievements are dependent upon the achievements of the human species as a whole and upon the antecedent efforts of the members of the previous generation to pass on the collective patrimony of the human race. Indeed, Pliny reminds us that on our natal day Nature cast each of us “naked on the naked ground … know[ing] nothing … other than how to weep.” Man’s pitiable state upon his birth and the contingent and conditional character of human flourishing is one of the great lessons contained in Pliny’s Natural History, and in an age in which the myth of individual self-creation has attained the status of dogma in our schools and is increasingly identified with the promise of American life, renewed attention to Pliny’s admonitions against human pride and against a belief in individual self-sufficiency is especially timely. The myth of self-creation evaporates when confronted with the fact of human birth. One must only read Joyce or Sartre to see that postmodern man has never fully reconciled himself to the fact that he was born. Pliny, however, denies both the poet and the philosopher the power to become his own cause – how can a man be a god, asks Pliny, when his incipient life could have been brought to an abrupt end if his mother had sneezed in the moments following his conception? My parents provided me and my brother with a loving home – a home in which our father gave us Flintstones vitamins at breakfast and our mother read to us at night. Our parents taught us the most important lessons we will ever learn, and they continue to support and encourage us in our efforts to fill in the details. I am especially grateful to my father for having iv read early drafts of each chapter of my dissertation and for all of his suggestions for their improvement. Pliny teaches that all faculties and forms of knowledge acquired by man are gained through education, and there is simply no better place to gain an education in political theory than Louisiana State University (LSU). Dr. Cecil L. Eubanks, Dr. G. Ellis Sandoz, and Dr. James R. Stoner, Jr., are not only three of the world’s finest political theorists, but also three exemplary men. I am indebted to each for his instruction and for his example. Dr. Sandoz sponsored the Earhart Fellowship that made it possible for me to devote four years of my life to my studies without the responsibilities attending a research or teaching assistantship. Under Dr. Sandoz’s leadership, the Eric Voegelin Institute at LSU provides graduate students with unparalleled opportunities for intellectual growth, and I will always be grateful to Dr. Sandoz for helping me to gain a true appreciation for the Western philosophical tradition and for the responsibility that comes with being the inheritor of such a rich patrimony. Dr. Stoner’s advice and guidance during my time at LSU always proved sound, revealing a depth of wisdom and insight proportionate to the wide breadth of his abilities as a scholar. The topic of my dissertation is largely due to his efforts to help me narrow and more carefully define my original thesis, and many of the insights contained in the pages which follow are the result of the application of a model of textual interpretation and analysis Dr. Stoner exemplifies in his own research and teaching. I am especially indebted to Dr. Eubanks. A man is considered blessed if he has a great father. I feel as though I have been given two. Dr. Eubanks contributed to my development not merely as a student or as a political scientist, but more fundamentally as a human being, and he thereby taught me what it means to be a truly great teacher. Dr. Eubanks has provided me with v an inimitable model as I begin my career in the Academy, and I hope that I will be able to repay the great debt I have incurred by playing a role in the lives of my future students similar to that which he has played in mine. Finally, there are several people who read early drafts of my dissertation, either in whole or in part, whose comments and criticisms resulted in immeasurable improvements in both the quality of my writing and the substance of my thesis. I am grateful to Dr. Kristopher Fletcher (LSU), Dr. Stefan Dolgert (University of Toronto), Ms. Lara Porter (Queens College), and Mr. Brett Maiden (Yale University) for their time, their insight, and their candor. I am especially grateful to Dr. Fletcher, whose careful reading of each chapter of my dissertation resulted in several fruitful exchanges and ensured my fidelity to both Pliny’s original Latin text and the highest standards of scholarship. In addition to the four-year fellowship I received from the H. B. Earhart Foundation, my graduate studies at LSU were made possible through three additional fellowships: the Sidney Richards Moore Fellowship in Political Philosophy, the Frank Grace Memorial Fellowship in Political Philosophy, and the Roderick L. Carleton Fellowship. I am grateful to the donors whose generous contributions sustain these and other fellowship programs in the Department of Political Science at LSU. I also want to express my gratitude to The Hebrew University of Jerusalem for providing me with a place to live and to conduct the final stages of my research as I finished my dissertation. As a result of the University’s Visiting Research Fellowship program, and the funding I received in the form of a Dalck and Rose Feith Scholarship, I was able to spend my final year of graduate school in one of the world’s greatest cities studying at one of the world’s finest universities. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................. iv LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................................... viii LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... ix ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................x INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1. THE STRUCTURE OF PLINY’S NATURAL HISTORY ..................................10 CHAPTER 2. PLINIAN MAN .....................................................................................................58 CHAPTER 3. PLINY’S DEFENSE OF EMPIRE ......................................................................104 CHAPTER 4. ROMAN SCIENCE .............................................................................................165 CONCLUSION: PLINY’S REDEMPTION...............................................................................210 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................225 VITA ............................................................................................................................................237 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Pliny’s Catalogue of Inventors and Inventions ...............................................................46 Table 2. Divergent Accounts of the Origin of Amber, Natural History 37.33-41 .....................190 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. The Spiraliform Structure of Natural History 7.191-215 ..............................................53 ix ABSTRACT Despite perennial interest in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History as a record of the prodigious, the quotidian, and the useful in Rome in the first century AD, for over half of a millennium Pliny has been considered little more than an inept compiler of facts and marvels intellectually incapable of formulating a cogent argument supported through the selective marshalling of his materials. It is my contention that Pliny’s encyclopedic text is in fact a first-rate