""A wonderfully rich, witty, insightful, and wide-ranging portrait of the two Plinys and their world."-Sarah Bakewell, author of How to Live. When Pliny the Elder perished at Stabiae during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, he left behind an enormous compendium of knowledge, his thirty-seven-volume Natural History, and a teenaged nephew who revered him as a father. Grieving his loss, Pliny the Younger inherited the Elder's notebooks-filled with pearls...

Lisa Jardine is professor of Renaissance studies at University College London, where she is also director of the UCL Centre for Humanities Interdisciplinary Research Projects and the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters. The name Erasmus of Rotterdam conjures up a golden age of scholarly integrity and the disinterested pursuit of knowledge, when learning could command public admiration without the need for authorial self-promotion. Lisa Jardine,...

Biographical sketches of 376 Greek and Latin authors covering the years 800 B.C. to 1000 A.D. Includes a list of works of doubtful attribution and a chronological list of authors by century.