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Peter Martyr’s Use of Pliny

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Abstract

Peter Martyr of Anghiera’s De Orbe Novo was the first historical account of the discovery of, and early contacts with, the New World. His successor as chronicler of the Indies, Fernandez de Oviedo, sought to establish his own authority in the wake of a distinguished predecessor by emphasizing that his was an eye-witness account (Martyr had never visited the New World) and defending his use of Spanish rather than the scholarly Latin of Martyr’s account. Oviedo also sought to enhance his standing by portraying himself as the emulator of the great natural historian of antiquity, Pliny the Elder. This paper suggests that this ploy, too, may in part have been directed at Martyr. It will be argued that Martyr’s writing exhibits deep-seated familiarity and affinity with Pliny’s text and modes of thought. Moreover, Pliny, like Martyr, was (ironically for Oviedo), not for the most part an eye-witness. It will be argued that Martyr evolved strategies to overcome any perceived disadvantages of his Plinian position. Moreover, his place at the centre of information-gathering even had its advantages when attempting to obtain an overview, an idea already current 1,500 years before.

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Notes

  1. References are to the edition of Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, De Orbe Novo Decades I–VIII, ed. R. Mazzacane and E. Magioncalda, 2 vols, Genoa, 2005.

  2. See G. Eatough, Selections from Peter Martyr, Repertorium Columbianum vol. V, Brepols, 1998, esp. pp. 13–22. Some parts of the Decades started life in letters, while letters are themselves subject to manipulation e.g., through revisions.

  3. References are to the reproduction of the 1530 text, with introduction by E. Woldan, Petrus Martyr de Angleria Opera: Legatio Babylonica, De orbe Novo Decades Octo, Opus Epistolarum, Graz, 1966.

  4. See, e.g., A. Gerbi, Nature in the New World: from Christopher Columbus to Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, 1975, trans. J. Moyle, Pittsburgh, 1985, pp. 231–8; F. Cantù, ‘Ideologia e storiografia in Pietro Martire d’Anghiera: rapporti tra vecchio e nuovo mondo’, in Pietro Martire d’Anghiera nella storia e nella cultura: Atti del Secondo Convegno Internazionale di Studi Americanistici, Genova-Arona 16–19 ottobre 1978, Genoa, 1980, pp. 229–30.

  5. References are to the edition of J. Pérez de Tudela y Bueso, Historia general y natural de las Indias de Gonzalo Férnandez de Oviedo, 5 vols, Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, Madrid, 1955.

  6. Hist. xii. 7, II. 34: ‘…Pedro Mártir no pudo, desde tan lejos, escrebir estas cosas tan al proprio como son e la materia lo require; e los que le informaron, o no se lo supieron decir, o él no lo supo entender.’

  7. Oviedo was by no means uneducated, however: see K. A. Myers, Fernández de Oviedo’s Chronicle of America, Austin, 2007, pp. 25, 29.

  8. Gerbi, Nature (n. 4 above); A. Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery, Cambridge MA, 1992. Among others, note especially A. Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man. The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology, Cambridge, 1982; J. H. Elliott, The Old World and the New, 1492–1650, Cambridge, 1970; F. Surdich, Verso il nuovo mondo: L’immaginario europeo e la scoperta dell’America, Florence, 2002. There are important collections of papers in W. Haase and M. Reinhold, eds, The Classical Tradition and the Americas, I: European Images of the Americas and the Classical Tradition, Berlin and New York, 1994; F. Chiappelli with M. J. B. Allen and R. L. Benson, eds, First Images of America: The Impact of the Old World on the New, Berkeley and London, 1976; and S. Greenblatt, ed., New World Encounters, Berkeley, 1993. Helpful specialist works on Martyr include Eatough, Selections (n. 2 above) and his ‘Story Telling in Peter Martyr’, Studi Umanistici Piceni, 13, 1993, pp. 69–78; Pietro Martire, De Orbe Novo, ed. Mazzacane and Magioncalda, (n. 1 above); E. Lunardi, E. Magioncalda and R. Mazzacane, eds, The Discovery of the New World in the Writings of Peter Martyr of Anghiera, trans. F. Azzola, rev. L. Farina, Nuovo Raccolta Colombiana, Rome, 1992; and the papers in Pietro Martire d’Anghiera nella storia e nella cultura:Atti del Secondo Convegno Internazionale di Studi Americanistici, Genova-Arona, 16–19 ottobre 1978, Genoa, 1980. On Oviedo see Myers, Oviedo’s Chronicle (n. 7 above). On the zoology of the New World, see especially M. De Asúa and R. French, A New World of Animals: Early Modern Europeans on the Creatures of the New World, Aldershot, 2005.

  9. Essays 1.26: see M. Beagon, ‘Pliny the Elder’, in The Classical Tradition, A. Grafton, G. W. Most and S. Settis, eds, Cambridge MA and London, 2010, pp. 744–5 (744).

  10. For Martyr as humanist writer, see G. Ponte, ‘Pietro Martire scrittore’ in Pietro Martire nella storia e nella cultura (n. 8 above), pp. 151–174.

  11. ON 1.1.47; 1.9.39; 2.9.33; 2.10.75; 3.2.5; 5.4.57; 5.7.98, 99; 6.9.7; 6.9.14; 7.7.7; 10.30.

  12. Decades 2–4 were dedicated to Leo X, Decade 5 to Adrian VI and Decade 8 to Clement VII. Asúa and French, Animals (n. 8 above), p. 64, n. 49, note that, while Charles was not the formal dedicatee of Oviedo’s History, the address to him in the preface was clearly based on Pliny’s to Titus. Cf. also Oviedo’s first work on the Americas, the Sumario (1526). Pliny recounts the story of Alexander commissioning a survey of the animals of his empire from Aristotle (HN 8.43-4), implying a parallel with the relationship between him and Titus: an imperial discourse involving Plinian and Aristotelian comparisons on the part of their authors was an enduring feature of later writing on the New World (ibid., pp. 97, 232).

  13. ON 8.3.5: ‘…Pontificibus…sub quorum thronis cuncta haec, in dies, magis coalescent’.

  14. For the imperial aspect of Pliny’s work, see S. Carey, Pliny’s Catalogue of Culture: Art and Empire in the Natural History, Oxford, 2003; T. Murphy, Pliny the Elder’s Natural History: The Empire in the Encyclopaedia, Oxford, 2004; A. Fear, ‘The Roman’s Burden’, in Pliny the Elder: Themes and Contexts, ed. R. K. Gibson and R. Morello, Leiden and Boston, 2011, pp. 21–34; T. R. Laehn, Pliny’s Defense of Empire, London and New York, 2013, esp. pp. 57–90. Martyr, like Pliny, gained an authority from his politically central situation and control of information which counterbalanced Oviedo’s attempts to portray him as remote from the realities of the actual discoveries. See further below, Through the Lens of Pliny, para 4.

  15. Oviedo himself will only admit that he cannot match Pliny stylistically, but immediately sets this defect against his superiority in first-hand experience (Hist. xiii prol, II. 56).

  16. N. Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispana Nova, sive Hispanorum Scriptorum qui ab Anno MD ad MDCLXXXIV Floruere Notitia, 2 vols, Madrid, II, 1783–8, p. 373. ‘Praeter haec ad Plinii omnes libros Synopsin Latinam versibus edidit, cum facultate poetica aevo suo in paucis floreret; quorum aliquos epistolis intexuit’ (‘He published a Latin Synopsis in verse for all the books of Pliny, since he was gifted with a poetic talent matched by few in his era; he incorporated some of these verses into his letters’). The Latin ‘quorum’ ought strictly to refer back to the versified Synopsis, but, without any trace of the Synopsis, or any idea of how long or detailed it was, it would be more or less impossible to identify versified lines specifically belonging to it. It is also possible that the break in sequence caused by the intervening clause could have diverted Antonio’s thought to Martyr’s poetic talent generally, which would fit in well with Pomponio’s comments. Martyr’s oeuvre contained other poems, a number of which appeared in the 1511 edition of his Opera and again, separately and with revisions/variations, in 1520. See F. Della Corte, ‘I Carmina di Pietro Martire’, in Pietro Martire nella storia e nella cultura: Atti del Secondo Convegno Internazionale di Studi Americanistici, Genova-Arona, 16–19 ottobre 1978, Genoa, 1980, pp. 187–94 (=Opuscula VIII, Genoa, 1985, pp. 63–70), and ‘Un poeta alla corte d’Isabella’, Columbeis II, 1987, 231–41 (=Opuscula XI, 1998, pp. 247–57); Ponte, ‘Pietro Martire scrittore’ (n. 10 above), pp. 153–4. For contemporary appreciations of his verse, see R. Wagner, ‘Peter Martyr and his Works’, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 56, 1946, pp. 239–88 (268–9).

  17. Asúa and French, Animals (n. 8 above), p. 70.

  18. S. Merrim, ‘The Apprehension of the New in Nature and Culture: Fernández de Oviedo’s Sumario’, in 1492–1992: Re/Discovering Colonial Writing, Hispanic Issues 4, ed. R. Jara and N. Spadaccini, Minneapolis, 1989, pp. 165–99.

  19. See below, Totius naturae capax, para 2.

  20. The distinction is relative. K. A. Myers, ‘Imitation, Authority and Revision in Fernández de Oviedo’s Historia general y natural de las Indias’, Romance Language Annual, 3, 1991, pp. 523–30, and her Oviedo’s Chronicle (n. 7 above), pp. 57–60 and 82–97, stresses that Oviedo viewed his History as a work in progress, constantly subject to revision in the light of new discoveries. However, the epistolary format of Martyr’s libelli was exceptionally versatile: see Eatough, Selections (n. 2 above), pp. 28–30.

  21. Asúa and French, Animals (n. 8 above), p. 62.

  22. See above, Plinian Rivalries, para 3.

  23. E.g., the story of the tame manatee (ON 3.8.29-40) is specifically referenced to the stories of dolphins at Baiae or the tale of Arion; no mention is made of Pliny. Yet, despite the appearance of the Arion story in many sources (e.g., Herodotus, Histories 1.23-4, Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 16.19, Plutarch, Moralia 160f-162b, Lucian, Dialogi Mortuorum 8), it is likely that Pliny (HN 9.24-33) is the prime impetus for the comparison, since he is the first extant narrator of the Baiae tale well as adding many others and mentioning Arion.

  24. See, e.g., HN 20.1, where Pliny outlines the ancient theory of sympathy and antipathy between both animate and inanimate entities, ‘nature at peace or at war with herself’, as the underlying principle of herbal remedies, ‘all for the sake of humanity’. For the same reason, the dangerous crocodile has more than one natural enemy, HN 8.91, as have snakes (e.g., 8.87, 118); though sometimes P. seems to doubt whether nature is that benign to humanity (8.87; cf. 7.1): some pests have no natural predators (scorpions, 11.86-91) and some natural antipathies seem to have little point beyond demonstrating a rather cruel streak to nature’s playfulness (8.34). Overall, however, he opts for the providential view of nature: see M. Beagon, Roman Nature: The Thought of Pliny the Elder, Oxford, 1992, pp. 36–42, 151–2, and n. 25 below.

  25. For similar phrases in Pliny, see, e.g., HN 9.20; 15.7; 16.64; 18.228; 22.16; 31.1.

  26. Eatough, ‘Story Telling’, (n. 8 above), p. 70: ‘Text and object became the same and both were important’.

  27. Despite her tendency to immeasurable variety and even caprice, Pliny’s Stoic-inspired nature also operated in accordance with certain principles, though these were not necessarily clearly comprehensible to humanity. They were difficult (HN 18.210) and hidden (secreta): elucidation was a matter of continued study and observation (HN 2.77), as Martyr himself implies. In one passage (HN 11.8), Pliny suggests that it is overambitious to delve too deeply into nature’s mysteries. Perhaps significantly, Oviedo quotes this passage (Hist. xv. 1, II, 77), while the overtly intellectual Martyr extracts a more positive attitude from Pliny.

  28. Another running them in the HN is ‘utilitas vitae’ (‘usefulness to life’), linked to nature’s beneficence to humanity: cf. HN 19.2, 23.2, 25.4, 28.2, 34.132, 37.54. There are countless examples of the ‘usefulness’ of individual components of nature: see P. Rosumek and D. Najock, Concordantia in Plinii Secundi Naturalem Historiam, 6 vols, Hildesheim, 1996, VI, pp. 4765–71 and 4806–12.

  29. Pliny’s Hyperboreans, HN 4.89-91. A. O. Lovejoy and G. Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity, Baltimore and London, 1935, pp. 27–8, 32–3, 38–40, and see index under ‘Golden Age’ for ‘soft’ primitivism; J. S. Romm, The Edges of the World in Ancient Thought: Geography, Exploration and Fiction, Princeton, 1992, pp. 60–7; R. Evans, Utopia Antiqua: Readings of the Golden Age and Decline at Rome, London, 2008, pp. 8–93.

  30. HN 33.1-3, especially ‘imus in viscera et in sede manium opes quaerimus’, ‘we penetrate her viscera and seek wealth in the dwelling of the dead’; cf. 33.70-73, especially ‘cuniculis per magna spatia actis cavantur montes’, ‘mountains are pierced with tunnels and excavated for long distances’.

  31. Elsewhere, of course, Martyr is uncompromising in condemning the greed of the Spaniards in places where gold was mined using, and destroying, the native peoples: e.g., ON 4.10.12-15, and especially 7.4.6-16: see S. Cro, ‘Classical Antiquity, America and the Myth of the Noble Savage’, in Haase and Reinhold, eds, The Classical Tradition, (n. 8 above), pp. 379–418.

  32. For knowledge of the mangrove in antiquity, see P. Schneider, ‘The Discovery of Mangroves in Graeco-Roman Antiquity: Science and Wonder’, The Journal of the Hakluyt Society, Feb. 2011 (www.hakluyt.com), pp. 1–16.

  33. Pliny derives this from an equally fleeting reference in Theophrastus (Historia Plantarum 4.7.4). No other ancient sources mention it. But did Martyr also know Diodorus Siculus’ description of the close-standing, sea-washed ‘olives’ which the Ichthyophagi interwove to make themselves tents (3.19.3)? A partial Latin translation, including Book 3, had appeared in 1472. If so, it might have encouraged comparisons with Pliny’s Banyan, which forms a natural enclosure for heat-weary shepherds (HN 12.22).

  34. T. Janson, Latin Prose Prefaces, Göteborg and Uppsala, 1964, p. 102.

  35. E.g., HN 7.7. In the long tradition of highlighting exoticism through the catalogue technique, Pliny HN 7.9-31 is the outstanding example: see M. Beagon, The Elder Pliny on the Human Animal: Natural History Book 7, Oxford, 2005, pp. 120–62, esp. 120–2; J. B. Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought, Cambridge MA, 1981, pp. 5–25; J. Céard, La nature et les prodigies: I’insolite au 16 e siècle en France, Geneva, 1977, pp. 12–21; Romm, The Edges (n. 28 above), pp. 82–120, esp. 105, Pliny’s ‘mad dash through the oriental landscape’; Paradoxogaphy and catalogues: G. Schepens and C. Delcroix, ‘Ancient Paradoxography: Origin, Evolution, Production and Reception’, in La letteratura di consumo nel mondo Greco-Latino, ed. O. Pecere and A. Stramaglia, Cassino, 1996, pp. 373–460 (383–409); later examples: M. B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Travel Writing 400–1200, Ithaca NY, 1988, pp. 16–122, esp. 108–12.

  36. ON 3.9.16: ‘deridebimus…perniciosam sollertiam et eorum torturae pectoris miserebimur colubrisque, invidorum eduliis, eos commendabimus’ (‘I shall scorn… their destructive cleverness, pity their twisted passions and commit them to the snakes on which the envious feed’).

  37. HN 18.4: ‘Are not even men themselves sometimes born poisonous ?’ (‘Non et homines quidem ut venena nascuntur?’, reading in C. Mayhoff’s 1892 Teubner edition). For a discussion of the passage, see M. Beagon, ‘Burning the Brambles: Rhetoric and Ideology in Pliny HN 18 (1–24)’, in Ethics and Rhetoric: Classical Essays for Donald Russell on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday, ed. D. Innes, H. Hine and C. Pelling, Oxford, 1995, pp. 108–17.

  38. A multi-layered use of Pliny’s critic theme compared to Oviedo’s prefatorial quotation of Pliny’s saying of Munatius Plancus (pref. 31) about criticizing the dead which he worked into a self-defence against critics separated by geography rather than the grave.

  39. Oviedo himself had recourse to second-hand reports for parts of his work: Myers, Oviedo’s Chronicle (n. 7 above), 19–20.

  40. Suetonius’s ‘distinguished series of procuratorships’ (De Viris Illustribus, ed. L. Roth, Leipzig, 1858, p. 300) leaves exact details conjectural but is aided by possible examples of autopsy in the provinces (e.g., HN 18.188; 33.70-73): see R. Syme, ‘Pliny the Procurator’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 73, 1969, pp. 201–36 (=Roman Papers, II, ed. E. Badian, Oxford, 1987, pp. 223–31); ‘Consular Friends of the Elder Pliny’, Roman Papers, VII, 1991, pp. 496–511. J. F. Healy, Pliny the Elder on Science and Technology, Oxford, 1999, pp. 5–23, for a modified reconstruction.

  41. See above, Plinian Rivalries, para 4.

  42. Terence, Andria 1. 2.23, i.e., they are dull, not clever.

  43. Martyr thus in effect has his cake and eats it. In fact, an initial ‘sifting’ had already been done by the explorers and officials themselves; see Eatough, Selections (n. 2 above), p. 243.

  44. Gerbi, Nature (n. 4 above), p. 237, suggests that Oviedo may have felt slighted by Martyr’s conclusion (‘enough and more than enough on these ocean currents’) to his report of the debate. But Martyr uses similar phrases to conclude episodes elsewhere in the Decades, and it seems little more than a transitional device to another topic. If Oviedo did take offence, it is more likely that he would resent Martyr’s self-elected position of arbitrator. Earlier references to Oviedo in Martyr may not have the ironic tone Gerbi imputes to them (ibid., pp. 235–8).

  45. For the phrase, see Asúa and French, Animals (n. 8 above), pp. 13–14; 58; M. Beagon, ‘Wondrous Animals in Classical Antiquity’, in The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Life and Thought, Oxford, ed. G. Campbell, forthcoming, 2014.

  46. Eatough, Selections (n. 2 above), p. 238. See Pliny HN 10.117; Seneca, Natural Questions 1. pref. 13; Aristotle, De Caelo 2.14.

  47. For a similar, though less literal transformation, see above, Plinian Reflections, para 3. For successive readings of the remarkable opossum into the early nineteenth century, see S. Scott Parrish, ‘The Female Opossum and the Nature of the New World’, The William and Mary Quarterly, 54, 1997, pp. 475–514 (485–6), on Martyr’s reaction.

  48. J. H. Elliott, The Old World and the New, 1492–1650, Cambridge, 1970, pp. 20–3; K. A. Myers, ‘The Representation of New World Phenomena: Visual Epistemology and Fernández de Oviedo’s Illustrations’, in Early Images of the Americas: Transfer and Invention, ed. J. Williams and R. Lewis, Tucson, 1993, pp. 183–213. Pliny knew of problems with regard to the reliability of copyists but also with the actual data: plants could undergo seasonal variations in appearance: HN 25.8.

  49. For the artistic complexities of longer narrative sequences, see Eatough, ‘Story Telling’ (n. 8 above), pp. 69–78.

  50. Eatough, Selections (n. 2 above), p. 13.

  51. Cf. ON 5.2.45, on the description of Montezuma’s gifts.

  52. ON 3.5.1: ‘homines ingenio pollentes et magnarum rerum novarum praecipue studiosi prae manibus habere unde pascere animum queant’.

  53. E.g., Strabo 1.3.16; Beagon, ‘Wondrous Animals’ (n. 45 above); and above, Plinian Reflections, para 7.

  54. See also OE 223 above, Through the Lens of Pliny, para 5.

  55. ON 2.10.4-20; ON 3.7.34; ON 5.7.94.

  56. See D. Outram, Georges Cuvier: Vocation, Science and Authority in post-revolutionary France, Manchester, 1984, pp. 62–3, and ‘New Spaces in Natural History’, in Cultures of Natural History, ed. N. Jardine, J. A. Secord and E. C. Spary, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 249–65 (259–63); N. Leask, Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel Writing, 1770–1840, Oxford, 2002, 284–7; M. Beagon, ‘The Book-Bound Scholar’, Studia Humaniora Tartuensia, (http://sht.ut.ee/index.php/sht), 13 (A.2), 2012, pp. 1–28 (23–4).

  57. Pietro Martire d'Anghiera, De orbe novo decades octo, ed. R. Hakluyt, Paris, 1587, introductory letter, p. 2.

  58. Ibid., pp. 2–3.

  59. Ibid. p. 3; Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, 1.66-74.

  60. This description of Greeks who ‘vanquished gods and men’, abolishing fear of eclipses by their discovery is itself clearly influenced by Lucretius’s ‘Greek’, ‘Graius homo’ (DRN 1.66), who vanquished religion by abolishing fear of death.

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Beagon, M. Peter Martyr’s Use of Pliny. Int class trad 21, 223–244 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-014-0350-2

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