A wonderfully rich, witty, insightful, and wide-ranging portrait of the two Plinys and their world.Sarah Bakewell, author of How to LiveWhen 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 Elders notebooksfilled with pearls of wisdomand his legacy. At its heart, The Shadow of Vesuvius is a literary biography of the younger man, who would grow up to become a lawyer, senator, poet, collector of villas, and chronicler of the Roman Empire from the dire days of terror under Emperor Domitian to the gentler times of Emperor Trajan. A biography that will appeal to lovers of Mary Beard books, it is also a moving narrative about the profound influence of a father figure on his adopted son. Interweaving the younger Plinys Letters with extracts from the Elders Natural History, Daisy Dunn paints a vivid, compellingly readable portrait of two of antiquitys greatest minds.
