A skull, on view at the Museo Storico Nazionale Dell'Arte Sanitaria in Rome, thought to have once held the brain of Pliny the Elder

A skull, on view at the Museo Storico Nazionale Dell'Arte Sanitaria in Rome, thought to have once held the brain of Pliny the Elder.
Like Mary Beard, I'm afraid I'm skeptical about pointing to a particular skeleton from the Vesuvius disaster 2000 years ago and making claims it is a famous person. Sort of like all those people across the centuries claiming to have bits of the "true cross." I, too, like Professor Dunn, also immediately wondered why, if Pliny's body was found and said to look asleep why it would not have been removed and cremated like most other Romans of the period. Matrone, the original discoverer of the skeleton, also sold off the jewels so that portion of the find context has been lost (if the objects ever existed in the first place). It was interesting, though, that the DNA analysis points to someone born in the region where Pliny the Elder is said to have been born. But the Naples area was a hub of trading activity so that could probably have been said about a number of local people. I had to smile about the quote "fortune favors the brave". Since Pliny the Younger chose not to accompany his uncle to the site of the disaster, how would he have known what his uncle actually said unless someone who was with him survived, although that may have been the case. So often in the ancient sources, we read long, complex speeches made by famous people (Cassius Dio's accounts are rife with them) and recorded often years or even centuries later and I always wonder who was actually present and did they know shorthand? (Cicero's secretary Tiro invented a version of it). If it was a major speech I suppose the person could have had it recorded prior to delivery but some of the comments appear to be made at the spur of the moment. Tacitus, normally considered a solid historian, attributes a long speech to Calgacus, the Caledonian chieftain that opposed Agricola (Tacitus' father-in-law) in which Calgacus rallies his warriors ending with the famous line "To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude (sometimes referred to as desert) and call it peace." It was very inspiring but is thought by many to be a creation by Tacitus to dramatize the success of his father-in-law."

Credit...Photo by Lucilla Flo

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