Pliny

Proper noun

Pliny (plural Plinys or Plinies)

1. An ancient Roman praenomen.
   • The two Plinys, Lucan, (though again under the disadvantage of verse) Petronius Arbiter, and Quintilian, but above all, the Senecas, (for a Spanish cross appears to improve the quality of the rhetorician) have left a body of rhetorical composition such as no modern nation has rivalled.1828, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, volume 24, number 147
   • Of Q. Curtius, the Demosthenes (both), Eutropius, Horace (first with a date), Homer, Justin, Livy, the two Plinies, Quintilian, Martial, Tacitus, and Virgil, the first editions; but my friend must not be allowed to have a succession of nights of undisturbed repose till he possesses the first...1836, Thomas Frognall Dibdin, Reminiscences of a Literary Life
   1. Pliny the Elder, Gaius Plinius Secundus (23–79 AD): an ancient Roman nobleman, scientist and historian, author of Naturalis Historia, "Pliny's Natural History".
      • I will leave off all my childish fooleries and diversions, and set about studying with such a rage, that when you come back next year, you may find the tongue I have now in my mouth more forky than that of some serpents mentioned by Pliny the naturalist.a. 1776, Joseph Baretti, “Dialogue the Fortieth”, in Easy Phraseology for the Use of Those Persons Who Intend to Learn the Colloquial Part of the Italian Language, 1835 edition, Turin: Joseph Bocca...
   2. Pliny the Younger, Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (63–c. 113): an ancient Roman statesman, orator, and writer, a great-nephew of Pliny the Elder.