Natural History
An encyclopaedia of the natural world in thirty-seven books by a Roman officer and official, finished in AD 77. Its geography of Judaea includes a short notice of the Essenes living beside the Dead Sea.
Read the text at perseus.tufts.edu ↗Latin text, edited by K. Mayhoff (Perseus) ↗
Pliny the Elder dedicated the Natural History to Titus in AD 77 and died two years later in the eruption of Vesuvius. Books 3 to 6 are a geography of the known world, compiled largely from earlier writers and official lists.
In his description of Judaea he says that the Essenes live on the west side of the Dead Sea, away from the shore, a people without women or money, with only palm trees for company, whose numbers are kept up by newcomers weary of life. “Below” them, he says, was the town of En-gedi, and then Masada. He writes as a geographer passing on a curiosity. He does not say where his information came from, and his remark that En-gedi now lies in ashes shows that the passage was written or revised after the Jewish war of AD 66–70. See the Community of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Cited in
- about 150 BC to AD 68, estimated date
- AD 73 or 74, estimated date