[Sidenote: Pliny the elder.] Among the many learned writers of this period the most important is the elder Pliny. Gaius Plinius Secundus was born at Novum Comum, in northern Italy, in 23 A. D. At an early age he went to Rome, where he came under the influence of Pomponius Secundus, whose example may have led him to combine public service with diligent study and authorship. Pliny’s life was passed in the service of the state. He was an officer in the cavalry, serving in Germany and perhaps also in Syria; he was a trusted counsellor and agent of Vespasian, and held at different times the important post of procurator or governor in several provinces. His nephew mentions especially his procuratorship in Spain. These various and important official duties did not, however, withdraw Pliny’s mind from his studies. When he was carried in the litter through the streets in the evening, after his official duties were performed, while he was bathing, and at his meals, he read or was read to constantly. He believed that no book was so poor as not to contain something worth recording, and therefore he took notes of all he read. At his death he left one hundred and sixty rolls of manuscript notes, closely written on both sides. With all this reading Pliny was not a mere bookworm, but a practical man of affairs and an interested observer of men and things about him. His zeal for knowledge cost him his life; for when the great eruption of Vesuvius took place, in 79 A. D., Pliny, who was in command of the fleet at Misenum, went in a war galley to the neighborhood of the volcano to investigate the strange phenomenon and to aid those in peril, landed, and finally succumbed to the ashes and noxious gases. The description of this event is the most interesting of the letters of his nephew, the younger Pliny.