English a great learned compendium of historical knowledge, not simply a single ancient author. In 1601 Holland published in two folios "an equally huge translation" from Latin, Pliny the Elder's The Historie of the World, dedicated to Sir Robert Cecil, then the Queen's Principal Secretary. This was perhaps the most popular of Holland's translations. Considine says of it: This encyclopaedia of ancient knowledge about the natural world had already had a great indirect influence in England, as elsewhere in Europe, but had not been translated into English before, and would not be again for 250 years. Indeed, after four centuries, Holland is still the only translator of this work to attempt to evoke its literary richness and beauty. In 1603 Holland published The Philosophie, commonly called, the Morals, dedicating it to King James. This was the first English translation of Plutarch's Moralia. Holland followed the Greek of Plutarch's original, and made use as well of a Latin translation and of the French translation of 1572 by Jacques Amyot. Holland is said to have claimed that he wrote out the whole of his translation of the Moralia with a single quill, which was later preserved by Lady Harington: This Booke I wrote with one poore Pen, made of a grey Goose quill A Pen I found it, us'd before, a Pen I leave it still. Summing up this early period of extraordinary productivity, Considine points out, "In all, over the four years 1600–1603, Holland published 4332 folio pages of translations of the very highest quality." Three years later came The Historie of Twelve Caesars (1606), his translation of Suetonius's De Vita Caesarum, dedicated to Lady Anne Harington (c. 1554–1620), daughter of Robert Keilway, Surveyor of the Court of Wards and Liveries, and wife of John Harington, 1st Baron Harington of Exton. In 1609 he published his translation of the surviving books of Ammianus Marcellinus's history of the Roman Empire in the later 4th century AD, dedicating it to the mayor and aldermen of Coventry. The Corporation paid £4 towards the publication. In 1610 Holland translated the 1607 edition of William Camden's Britannia into English. Although he appears to have been solely responsible for the translation, the work was expanded with a certain amount of new material supplied by Camden. One of the printer-publishers of the volume was John Norton, to whom Holland's son, Henry, had been apprenticed, and it was probably