C. Agostini 1 REAL, UNREAL AND MAGIC IN PLINY THE ELDER’S NATURALIS HISTORIA

Pliny the Elder was the first author to accomplish a treatise on the totality of nature.1 Knowledge on magic, relating to the period of time from the founding of Rome to the end of the first century AD, can be reconstructed using Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia, the first treatise that refers to the achievements of Asian magic and culture in a specific way. Objectivity, even if a distant goal, is among the best qualities in historical writing and Pliny is careful in the presentation of his auctores.2 At the same time, there can never be a truly objective presentation of medicine when a writer aims at including hisemotional and personal opinion as well as historic data. However, it holds true that such an inside perspective can be useful in terms of our modern understanding and interpretation of such facts. Our knowledge of what the ancients selected to be part of everyman’s lore in matter of medicine and healing, in fact, comes from this encyclopaedia which was widely read until the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century. Categories of thought, underlying the way the Roman understood life in terms of attainable knowledge, were present in all sciences, and ways of healing deriving from such knowledge of human anatomy. Medicine stands in contrast with witchcraft and magic, which subvert a cosmic order, as well as science is opposed to non-science, truth to falsity, and, furthermore, religion to magic.3 The opening lines of Book XXX (1-2) list the three obstacles to humankind’s full understanding of nature, ie. magicas vanitates, medicina, and artes mathematicas. Of all three, however, magic is the biggest threa to nature, both in the sense of physical elements overcome by obscure forces, and in 1 A proud (I am not sure assertions can be proud) assertion of which is found in Praefatio I