If Theophrastus is the sober naturalist, Pliny the Elder is the great collector of information. His Natural History, an encyclopaedia in thirty-seven books dedicated to the emperor Titus, ends precisely with gems. This is no accident: for Pliny precious stones are the point where nature concentrates its majesty into the smallest space. Book XXXVII is a mine of anecdotes, names and beliefs, and for centuries it was the main source for anyone who wished to write about stones.
An author and his famous death
Pliny was an official and a commander as well as a tireless reader. He died in AD 79 during the eruption of Vesuvius: he commanded the fleet at Misenum and approached the coast to observe the phenomenon and bring help. The account of his end has reached us through the letters of his nephew, Pliny the Younger. This death, born of curiosity and duty, is almost an emblem of his way of working: looking closely, even at the cost of risk.
Why gems come at the end of the work
Pliny opens the book with a moral reflection. Gems, he says in essence, are where human luxury reaches its peak: a tiny object can be worth a fortune. His attitude is ambivalent. On the one hand he admires the beauty of stones as a work of nature; on the other he criticises the folly of those who spend fortunes to own them. This tension between wonder and judgement runs through the whole book.
Anecdotes that made history
Book XXXVII is rich in stories destined to become famous.
The ring of Polycrates
Pliny recalls the story, already told by Herodotus, of the tyrant of Samos who, too fortunate, decided to throw his dearest ring into the sea to appease fate; the ring came back to him in the belly of a fish. Pliny adds that in Rome a gem believed to be that of Polycrates was shown in the temple of Concord, though he doubts the tradition. The story has become an image of a destiny that cannot be bought.
The opal of Nonius
A senator named Nonius owned an opal of great value. Mark Antony wanted it, and Nonius preferred to go into exile taking only that gem with him rather than give it up. Pliny comments with amazement on this loyalty to a stone that proved stronger than loyalty to his homeland.
The agate of Pyrrhus
Pliny describes an agate that belonged to King Pyrrhus, in which the natural veins drew Apollo with his lyre and the nine Muses, each with her own attribute. It is one of the earliest examples of a "figured stone", in which nature seems to paint by itself.
Nero's emerald
According to Pliny, Nero watched gladiatorial combats through an emerald. Green, for the ancients, was the colour that rested the eye, and Pliny devotes pages of admiration to the emerald precisely for the softness of its colour.
Pliny and the magi
One of the most interesting aspects of the book is its relationship with magical beliefs. Pliny reports many virtues attributed to stones, but he often introduces them with distancing formulas and openly attacks the "vanity of the magi", that is, the claims of those who ascribed extraordinary powers to gems. He reports, for example, that the magi credited certain stones with the ability to make people invisible or to protect against storms, and he mocks them.
This attitude is valuable to the student of symbolism. Pliny preserves the beliefs of his time even as he judges them, allowing us to distinguish three levels:
- observation: colour, origin, hardness, how the gem is worked;
- reported information: legends and tales gathered from earlier authors;
- magical belief: virtues attributed by the magi, which Pliny records with scepticism.
Names that have lasted
Many names of stones still in use today pass through Pliny: diamond, emerald, beryl, opal, agate, amethyst, crystal. Sometimes, however, the same name referred to a mineral different from today's. His sapphirus, for example, was a blue stone with golden specks, which many scholars identify with lapis lazuli rather than the modern sapphire. Reading Pliny therefore requires caution: the name is ancient, but the thing does not always correspond.
The legacy
Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Book XXXVII was plundered, quoted and expanded. Its stories entered sermons, poems and treatises on the virtues of stones. The beliefs Pliny ridiculed sometimes ended up being handed down as truths, losing his critical tone. It is a good example of how tradition transforms texts: what begins as a sceptical chronicle can become, in the hands of later readers, a repertory of marvels.
In short
- Book XXXVII of the Natural History closes Pliny's encyclopaedia with gems, seen as the summit of nature and of luxury.
- It contains famous anecdotes: the ring of Polycrates, the opal of Nonius, the agate of Pyrrhus, Nero's emerald.
- Pliny records the beliefs of the magi but often openly criticises them.
- Many ancient names of stones do not match the minerals that bear the same name today.
