REVISTA ESPAÑOLA
DE HISTORIA DE LAS CIENCIAS DE LA NATURALEZA
Y DE LA TECNOLOGÍA
SPANISH JOURNAL OF HISTORY OF NATURAL SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGY
Historia de la Biología.
Facultad de Biología.
Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
DL: M-34954-1995. ISSN:
1136-2049.
1995. Vol I. Review nº 2.
Plinio el Viejo, Historia natural.
Libros I-II. (Madrid, Editorial Gredos, 1995).
ISBN: 84-249-1684-0
2.900 ptas
General introduction: Guy Serbat.
Translation and notes: Antonio Fontán, Ana Mª Moure Casas and other.
The collection Biblioteca Clásicaof the Editorial Gredos, that in other occasions have published works of notable Greek and Roman scientists, offers in this occasion the first volume of the Natural History of Pliny the Elder. This first volume, that only includes the first two books of the work and a short preface, correct and carefully edited, as all the collection in the one which is framed, counted with a long general introduction (approximately of some two hundred pages) of the French teacher Guy Serbat.
It is not our intention in this review to examine the content of the work of Pliny, though fits be congratulated for its appearance in an attainable issue of great diffusion; our desire is to analyze the general introduction, that presents some mistakes and lack that impoverish the edition.
The author of the introduction structure his study in eight paragraphs, the first two, devoted to a short biographical statement of Pliny and a valuation of his work (excluded the Natural History), are succeeded and constituted an acceptable approximation to the classic author.
The third point, devoted to the description and study of the manuscripts and printed issues of the Natural History has a serious lack: it is especially serious in the introduction to a Spanish edition forget the translations accomplished in the 16 and 17th centuries by Francisco Hernández and Jerónimo de la Huerta. The first did not see the light in life of the translator, but it was edited in the sixties by the Universidad Nacional de Méjico (volumes IV and V Francisco Hernández’s Complete Works); the second appeared in Madrid in 1624 and it has been object recently of a facsimile issue (Madrid, Instituto Geológico y Minero, 1982). The lack of check and valuation of these translations is meaningful because these were the first versions of the Natural History in a modern language, and both present interesting additions from the translators, especially important in the case of Hernández, notable scientific of his era.
The fourth and fifth points of the general Introduction are devoted to the composition and summary analysis of the work, respectively. The author insists on the encyclopedian character of the text, showing himself surprised by the absence of information on mathematics (p. 69). This attitude evidence a serious ignorance of the object of study of the Natural History, such as it was understood until the 19th century. The live beings and the inanimate objects of mineral origin, as well as the chemical physical phenomena related to them, are the axis on the one which was developed the Natural History from the classic antiquity. The interest by the utilitarian aspects of this knowledge (not only in Medicine and Pharmacy, also for the development of natural resources), as well as the utilization of the natural phenomena as models for stories of moralizing character, that the author of the introduction indicates as a demerit of the Pliny’s work, have been a constant in the historical development of the discipline.
Respect of the point seven, devoted to the documental value and the scientific quality of the Natural History, surprises disagreeably the absence of analysis of related secondary literature. The author of the prefatory study did not reference, even between the final bibliography, the work of Roger French and Frank Greenway (ed.), Science in the Early Roman Empire: Pliny the Elder, his sources and influence. (London, Croom Helm, 1986), specifically devoted to this issue. The study in this paragraph of the statement of Pliny the Younger or the humorous connotations in the work emphasizes the deception that this introduction generates in the reader interested in the scientific problems.
The existence of the points VI and VIII, devoted to the language and style and the political and moral opinions of Pliny, examinated carefully, move us to think that the author of the introduction studies the text more as specialist in classic philology and Roman history, than interested in the scientific content of the work, the influences received and the impression let in the Natural History of the Middle and Modern Ages.
Luis Alfredo Baratas Díaz.