Pliny the Elder [Arabia in ...]

Gaius Plinius Secundus (23–79 CE) (Pliny the Elder) was a Roman scholar, military commander and governor whose only extant work is a 37-volume encyclopaedia of the known world called 'Historia Naturalis' or 'Natural History' (abbreviated here as NH, although HN is also used) which includes numerous references to Arabia and Arabian products that were available in the Roman Empire.

The NH was dedicated to the emperor Titus and aimed to display the world as available to Roman power (Naas 2002; Murphy 2004). In the four volumes of Pliny’s NH dedicated to geography, he defines the geographical extent of Arabia (NH 6.142–143) as the peninsula between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf and extending as far north as the slopes of the Amanus mountain range (the Nur Mountains in modern Turkey). He refers to parts of this area throughout his geographical volumes including in a long section describing the Arabian Peninsula itself (NH 6.142–162). Numerous other references to places described as Arabia and peoples described as Arabes show the extent of his understanding of “Arabia” as a region, including:

• the Sinai Peninsula (NH 5.65);
• Nabataea, around Petra (NH 6.144-146);
• Arabia Nomadum (“of the Nomads”), east of the Dead Sea (NH 5.72, 74),
• Osrhoene, the region around ancient Edessa, modern Urfa, Turkey, and Singara, modern Sinjar (NH 5.85-86, 6.118, 129);
• Adiabene, the region around Arbela, modern Erbil (NH 6.129);
• Charax, the main city of Characene at the head of the Persian Gulf (NH 6.136), refounded as Spasinou Charax by a neighbouring Arab king, Spaosines son of Sagdonacus (NH 6.139);
• Arabia Deserta, the interior of the modern Arabian Peninsula, and Arabia Felix, southern Arabia (NH 6.104, 142-162).

In his geographical volumes, Pliny is mostly concerned with listing peoples and places; accordingly, most of these references to Arabia give little political or ethnographic detail. His descriptions of Arabia Felix are the most notable exceptions, attesting to the production and trade of aromatics and spices (NH 6.104), notes on local dress and appearance (NH 6.162), and the wealth of the region (NH 6.162). The other exception is the frequent attestation of Scenitae (“tent-dwelling”) Arabs, a group he usually characterises as a “tribe”, but which probably reflects an observation about an itinerant pastoral mode of production rather than a coherent political unit or kinship group (NH 5.65, 87, 6.125, 6.143-144). Pliny describes the Scenitae as nomades (“nomads”, 6.125, 143, 146). Although many editions print Nomades as a proper noun rather than nomades as a common noun, “nomades” in NH should be taken as descriptive of the people and their pastoralism rather than giving a formal name of a population group.

Pliny drew on a wide variety of sources on Arabia. Near the beginning of his section on the Arabian Peninsula, he states that he prefers to follow Roman military accounts and the volumes that Juba II of Mauretania wrote for Gaius Caesar (20 BCE–4 CE) before the latter’s expedition to Arabia (NH 6.141; similar statements at 12.56, 32.10; Roller (2003: 221) argues that Juba wrote using information obtained during the campaign, rather than before the campaign as Pliny suggests). Little is known of Gaius’ expedition: it reached Nabataea but possibly no further, was probably conducted in 1 CE when Gaius was consul and is mostly known from brief remarks in Pliny’s text (Bowersock 1983: 56; Roller 2003: 223–225). Juba’s work (conventionally known as On Arabia) is cited frequently in NH, which thus provides most of the surviving fragments of the work (Roller 2003: 227–243).

Pliny mentions various Arabian products that were available in the Roman Empire from exotic animals and plants, to perfumes, incense and aromatics, to precious and semi-precious stones. Of note are his longer descriptions of the spices for which Arabia was most famous in the Roman world: cardamon, frankincense, myrrh, and cinnamon among others (NH 12.50–94, 98–99). These descriptions include ethnographic and economic notes about southern Arabia, especially those relating to its role as a source of high value goods or as a transhipment hub for goods from further east.

Hamish Cameron

References and suggested readings

• Beagon, M. 1992. Roman Nature: The Thought of Pliny the Elder. Oxford, New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press.
• Bowersock, G.W. 1983. Roman Arabia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Gibson, R.K. & R. Morello (eds) 2011. Pliny the Elder: Themes and Contexts. Leiden, Boston: Brill.
• Murphy, T. 2004. Pliny the Elder’s Natural History: The Empire in the Encyclopedia. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
• Naas, V. 2002. Le projet encyclopédique de Pline l’Ancien. Rome: Ecole française de Rome.
• Roller, D.W. 2003. The World of Juba II and Kleopatra Selene: Royal Scholarship on Rome’s African Frontier. London, New York: Routledge.

_{Alternate spellings: Plinius, Pline}