When it comes to natural history, Sir David Attenborough rules the airwaves. Pliny the Elder (d. ad 79) who, as general of the Roman fleet, ruled rather less compliant waves, composed a 37-volume Natural History 2,000 years ago, expressing exactly the same concerns about the relationship between man and nature.
For Pliny, the earth was divine, and the word ‘god’ meant not some being with shape and form, but Natura, ‘Nature’. Man’s natura, however, was imperfecta, and as a consequence, though Romans were the supreme masters of the world, they and god/Nature were often in conflict.
This was disastrous, Pliny argued, because Nature was providential, as even man’s abuse of it proved. Take man’s search for gold, silver, iron and gems. Nature buried these deep under the earth, or hid them under mountains, because it knew what bloodshed they would lead to (and in the case of iron, ensured that the weapons it was turned into would eventually rust).
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