Contact with [menstrual blood] turns new wine sour, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, seed in gardens are dried up, the fruit of trees fall off, the edge of steel and the gleam of ivory are dulled, hives of bees die, even bronze and iron are at once seized by rust, and a horrible smell fills the air; to taste it drives dogs mad and infects their bites with an incurable poison.

Life and times


Background

Pliny's dates are pinned to the eruption of Vesuvius in August 79 and a statement of his nephew that he died in his 56th year which would make his birth in AD 23. Literary interlude

At the earliest time Pliny could have left the service Nero the last of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty had been emperor for two years.

Pliny is referring to the fact that Tacitus relied on his uncle's now missing work on the History of the German Wars. His companions attributed his collapse and death to toxic fumes but they were unaffected by the fumes suggesting natural causes. In the latter number will be my uncle by virtue of his own and of your compositions.