interested in cataloguing natural wonders, and his contemporary Dioscorides explored nature for its uses in Roman medicine in his great work De Materia Medica. In the view of Mary Beagon, writing in The Classical Tradition in 2010:the Historia naturalis has regained its status to a greater extent than at any time since the advent of Humanism. Work by those with scientific as well as philological expertise has resulted in improvements both to Pliny's text and to his reputation as a scientist. The essential coherence of his enterprise has also been rediscovered, and his ambitious portrayal, in all its manifestations, of 'nature, that is, life'.. is recognized as a unique cultural record of its time. See also Famulus – his biography is featured in Natural History Naturales quaestiones – a similar, shorter encyclopedia written by Seneca Notes References Sources External links Primary Latin Complete Latin text at LacusCurtius Complete Latin text with translation tools at Perseus Digital Library Naturalis Historia. Pliny the Elder. Johannes de Spira. Venice. before 18 September 1469. at Corning Museum of Glass. (Once owned by the Earls of Pembroke) Naturalis Historia. Pliny the Elder. Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff. Lipsiae. Teubner. 1906. English First English translation, by Philemon Holland, 1601 Second English translation, by John Bostock and Henry Thomas Riley, 1855; complete, with index Pliny's Natural History Translated by H. Rackham (vols. 1–5, 9) and W.H.S. Jones (vols. 6–8) and D.E. Eichholz (vol. 10) Harvard University Press, Massachusetts and William Heinemann, London; 1949–1954. All Six Volumes free at Project Gutenberg Italian Secondary Article on Pliny by Jona Lendering, with detailed table of contents of the Natural History 1st-century Latin books Ancient Roman medicine Geoponici Incunabula Latin encyclopedias Latin prose texts Natural history books Encyclopedias in classical antiquity