Citation with stable link: Philip A. Harland, 'Guide to Pliny the Elder,' Ethnic Relations and Migration in the Ancient World, last modified February 17, 2024, https://philipharland.com/Blog/?p=16961.
This post is aimed at providing a guide for reading sequentally through ethnographic passages dealing with peoples other than Greeks or Italians in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History. Books 3-6 are focussed primarily on geography and peoples, but there are other ethnographically important sections as well:
Geographic / ethnographic survey section (books 3-6):
- Framing the ethnographic section – Europeans (claimed as superior), Asians, Africans – 3.1-6 (link)
- Gauls / Celts with three Roman subdivisions – 4.17-19 (link)
- Scythians and Germanic peoples – 4.80-83, 88 (link)
- Hyperboreans – 4.89-91 (link)
- Libyans / Africans – 5.1-48 (link)
- Judeans and Essenes specifically – 5.70-73 (link)
- Sarmatians, Sauromatians and others along the eastern coast of the Black Sea in “Asia” – 6.19-22 (link)
- Asian Albanians, Iberians, Mardians and others – 6.28-52 (link)
- Serians (Chinese), Ottorokorians and others – 6.53-56 (link)
- Indians, Taprobanians (Sri Lankans), and Serians (Chinese) – 6.56-91 (link)
- Peoples of Arachosia and Ariana – 6.92-95 (link)
- Karmanians, Gedrosians, Ichthyophagians and others around the Persian Gulf – 6.96-101, 108-111 (link)
Various other sections with ethnographic interests:
- Indians, Ethiopians and other “unbelievable” peoples – 7.6-32 (link)
- Eastern peoples subjected by Pompeii – 7.95-98 (link)
- Peoples around the world characterized as inventors – 7.191-215 (link)
- Persians and Magians – parts of books 28, 30, and 37 (link)