Josiah
DAVIS Pliny's Revisions: Emending the Republic
in the Preface to the Naturalis
Historia
Considerations of genre
have determined how scholars interpret the relationship
between Pliny's preface to the Naturalis
Historia (NH) and the narrative.
I show that Pliny's instructions on how to read the narrative
are a form of political address to Titus himself.
Pliny speaks to Titus in terms of three paratextual
apparatus: the epistula,
the titulus and the summarium. Pliny cites a Republican author as
precedent for each device.
As Pliny revises these literary models, he provides Titus with
an aesthetic for his own political behavior.
He uses the technology of the book as a space within which to
advise Titus on how to perform his imperial role as
patron to the populus
Romanus.