While working on this book I endeavoured to pay homage to the Plinys by adapting my writing life, as they did, to the seasons, plunging myself into Pliny’s snow in the bitterest winters and ploughing through his harvests in the dog days of summer (there have inevitably been moments when I have been shivering under a blanket and writing about drought). In the process I have come to know something of Pliny’s temptations. Forbidden from having what is too easily within reach, I have held an oyster in my palm, pressed its shell against my nose, caressed its silky hollow, but not tasted its meat. I am horribly allergic to oysters.
I thank everyone who has sustained me through the seasons of this project. I am extremely grateful to my agent Georgina Capel, and Rachel Conway and Irene Baldoni. My editor, Arabella Pike, and copyeditor, Kate Johnson, have been wonderful, and I warmly thank them both. At HarperCollins I also thank Iain Hunt, Katherine Patrick and Marianne Tatepo.
At Liveright, I wish to thank Pete Simon, Bob Weil, and Katie Pak for bringing this edition to life. The artist Amanda Short, my mother, did the beautiful illustrations with which I am delighted.
I was very privileged to have as my first reader Barbara Levick, Emeritus Fellow in Classics at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. Barbara offered a number of helpful suggestions on my text and I am so grateful to her for the time she gave me. Paul Cartledge, A. G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge and A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture Emeritus in the Faculty of Classics, has been a pillar of support from the beginning, and I am hugely thankful for the incisive notes he made on my manuscript.
The Plinys have sent me to many places. I’d like to thank the staff of the London Library, British Library, the Joint Library of the Hellenic and Roman Societies and Institute of Classical Studies, Senate House Library and the Bodleian. The Palazzo Vecchio in Florence and Museo Civico in Como were very accommodating. The Villa Pliniana/ Sereno Hotels on Lake Como were kind enough to provide me with private access to the building and ‘Pliny’s spring’. Mena Terranova of the Museo Storico dell’Arte Sanitaria in Rome updated me on progress in the investigation into the ‘skull of Pliny the Elder’. The Charles Dickens Museum in London, and particularly Louisa Price, were very helpful.
Thanks also to Sir David Attenborough, Amanda Claridge, Peter Hicks, Emily Kearns, Ellida Minelli, Andrew Roberts and Greg Woolf, who answered my sometimes esoteric questions.
James Cullen was the most patient and entertaining of friends on my Italian research trips. Lucy Purcell I thank for her friendship, encouragement, and remarkable strength. Simon has been marvellously supportive.
I could not have written this book without the love and support of my parents, Amanda and Jeremy, my sister, Alice and my grandparents, Don and Wendy – to whom this book is dedicated. I am forever grateful to you all.