Pliny the Elder, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Pliny the Elder

Roman military commander and writer

Date of Birth: 01-Jan-0001

Place of Birth: Como, Lombardy, Italy

Date of Death: 24-Aug-0079

Profession: naturalist, writer, lawyer, military personnel, poet, historian, philosopher

Zodiac Sign: Capricorn

Pliny the Elder (; born Gaius Plinius Secundus, AD 23–79) was a Roman author, a naturalist and natural philosopher, a naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of emperor Vespasian.
He wrote the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia (Natural History), which became an editorial model for encyclopedias.
He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field. His nephew, Pliny the Younger, wrote of him in a letter to the historian Tacitus: For my part I deem those blessed to whom, by favour of the gods, it has been granted either to do what is worth writing of, or to write what is worth reading; above measure blessed those on whom both gifts have been conferred.
In the latter number will be my uncle, by virtue of his own and of your compositions. Pliny the Younger refers to Tacitus’s reliance upon his uncle's book, the History of the German Wars.
Pliny the Elder died in AD 79 in Stabiae while attempting the rescue of a friend and his family by ship from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which had already destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
The wind caused by the sixth and largest pyroclastic surge of the volcano’s eruption did not allow his ship to leave port, and Pliny probably died during that event.