Natural History

This encyclopedic work, compiled in the first century, surveys the natural and human world as a Roman admiral and scholar understood it. Thirty-seven books move from the cosmos and the geography of the known earth through animals, trees, crops, medicines, metals, stones, and the history of painting and sculpture. Pliny records wonders, practical recipes, and reports from earlier Greek and Roman writers, often naming his sources. The tone is utilitarian and curious rather than systematic in a modern scientific sense. The book is a storehouse of ancient knowledge, not a narrative history of Rome.

Three-quarter bound in blue buckram with Modigliani paper sides blocked and printed with a colour designs by Randy Asplund for each volume. Blue five-volume slipcase.