* List of the stories he appears in : - AR 125 : "The Crocodile Collector", from 1988, by Don Rosa (by name only); - D 90314 : "Return to Xanadu", from 1991, by Don Rosa (by name only).

 

* His biography :
     Gaius Plinius Cecilius Secundus, known as Pliny the Elder, was born in Novum Comum in Gallia Cisalpine (today Como, Italy). He completed his studies in Rome where he received education in literature, oratory, and law, as well as military training. In 46, he began a military career by serving in Germany under Pomponius Secundus, rising the rank of cavalry commander. Twelve years later, he returned to Rome. Legal advocate during the reign of Nero he gained favor under Vespasian and assumed various official positions : he served as a procurator in Gaul, Africa and Spain, where he gained a reputation for integrity. He also served on the imperial council for both Vespasian and Titus.
   Despite his active public life, Pliny the Elder still found time to write enormous amounts of material. He was the author of at least 75 books, not to mention another 160 volumes of unpublished notebooks. His books included volumes on cavalry tactics, biography, a history of Rome, a study of the Roman campaigns in Germany, grammar, rhetoric, contemporary history, and his most famous work, his one surviving book, Historia Naturalis (Natural History), published in 77, which consisted of thirty-seven books including all that the Romans knew about the natural world in the fields of cosmology, astronomy, geography, zoology, botany, mineralogy, medicine, metallurgy, and agriculture. The unifying thread of this work was anthropocentrism. The Natural History became a book for general education in the European Middle Ages and remains a key source on Roman life.
   He died in August 79, overcome by the fumes resulting from the volcanic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.
   Much information about him came from his nephew and adopted son, the writer Pliny the Younger (62-113).
 

* His place in the Barks/Rosa stories universe :
    In "The Crocodile Collector", Scrooge says that Pliny the Elder told that Nero had made the Circus Flaminius filled with water to organize fights between the Tentyrites and a special race of crocodiles.
   In "Return to Xanadu", in the library of Tralla La, Huey, Dewey and Louie find in a manuscript by Pliny the Elder from 73, vol XIII, page MCVI, last paragraph, an anecdote which is NOT told in the Junior Woodchucks Guidebook.
 

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