In this new study of Pliny's Natural History, Thomas Laehn presents a reinterpretation of the structure of the work and argues for its significance as a contribution to political philosophy. L.'s contention is that the Natural History's structure is to be read through the thirty-six books of substantive content, leaving aside the first book of indices. Working from the thirty-seven-book model derived from Pliny the Younger's description of the Natural History is seen as underlying previous and, in L.'s opinion, flawed discussions of the structure and purpose of the work. From this, L. continues to the work's underlying philosophy and purpose, which he sees as a revolutionary construction of an imperialistic view of nature and human aspiration within nature, as opposed to previous Hellenic models bound to the concept of the polis.

L. argues for what he terms an ‘annular’ structure to the thirty-six books, which doubles back half-way through, producing pairs of book groups: thus 1–5 and 32–6 on inanimate matter, 6–10 and 27–31 on animals and sixteen books on plants (11–18 and 19–26). It is not entirely clear what the status of the indices is. L. briefly discusses their possible history in Pliny's overall plan in a note (104), which might more usefully have been incorporated into the main body of the text and enlarged, given the proclaimed centrality to his argument of his structural critique. An omission in this part of the discussion is any reference to the important discussions on Pliny's compositional technique in V. Naas, Le projet encyclopédique de Pline l'ancien (2002) and RPh 70 (1996), 305–32.

This view of the work's structure is connected to what forms the heart of L.'s treatment: an historicizing view of the interrelationship between nature and human culture/history to produce, at its simplest, Pliny's nature/life relationship, with an earlier half on the nature of things and a later half on their integration into human life (16). This is perhaps not as controversial as L. suggests, and indeed the tendency throughout to contrast his approach with all previous treatments can be over-emphatic or even misleading. Past and current scholarship on the Natural History cannot be said to have suffered fundamentally from its proponents' attitudes to Pliny's indices. The boldness of L.'s approach is frequently invigorating, but it can have the disadvantage of producing a reading somewhat lacking in nuance. The book is short: this may explain why, in some cases at least, L.'s treatment seems to lack depth. There is, for example, a telling contrast with Trevor Murphy's (Pliny the Elder's Natural History: The Empire in the Encyclopaedia (2004), 36–48) far more three-dimensional interpretation of Pliny's historicizing structure, which traced the Natural History's principles of multiplicity and variety as developed through detailed excursus and showed how they defined the work's layout whilst appearing to undermine it. Similarly, Roger French's (Ancient Natural History: Histories of Nature (1994), 206–18) references to the uses of historia in Pliny had already introduced some subtle analysis of the chronological aspect of Pliny's outlook which L. considers to be largely missing from modern scholarship. Where L. does pause for detailed analysis, the results are often interesting. Of particular note in this respect is his treatment of the imperialism of language (85 ff.).

Interesting too is the discussion of Pliny's view of empire as an important break-through from what L. terms Hellenic philosophy's polis-bound view of human existence and endeavour. He duly notes that the eclectic nature of Roman philosophizing thought means that the more traditional view of Pliny as essentially Stoicizing need not be displaced, but wishes to add and emphasize other elements, noting, fairly, that not every idea in Pliny stands up to Stoic analysis. It is not always clear to which Hellenic philosophers L. is referring, though Plato is discussed. For L., Pliny's ‘great insight’ is that ‘man is not a political animal … but rather an imperial one, for whom the realization of the highest possibilities of his existence requires the establishment of a form of order capable of absorbing the world as a whole’ (70). This leaves unconsidered any reckoning of the important Stoic (or indeed Epicurean) contribution to the notion of community. L. makes a vigorous case for the importance of the meeting of Pompey and the Stoic Posidonius as symbolic of Pliny's view of imperialistic intellectualism, but this would, surely, be strengthened by a willingness to consider the philosopher in his broader intellectual context. As well as symbolizing the unifying of philosophy and imperialism, Posidonius' rôle as Stoic and polymath are of considerable relevance. It is the polymathic outlook as much as any philosophical approach which is an essential ingredient of Pliny's work. Pliny was not the only writer who could be regarded as a product of a coalescence of empire and intellectual endeavour, yet the field of polymathic, technical and anthologizing literature, the works which collect and organize knowledge, needs more consideration than it receives here, especially given the increased scholarly interest in this area during the last ten years.

In the course of his monograph, L. has produced some interesting ideas, expounded with energy. As mentioned, the scale of the work is small and his readiness to assert the novelty of his approach at the expense of the entire scholarly tradition preceding him does not always seem to be an accurate reflection of what he is actually arguing. Moreover, in pushing Pliny himself as a uniquely original thinker, the intellectual environment in which he operated and developed is sometimes given less treatment than it needs — and Pliny himself deserves. In this, L. unintentionally does his subject's immense achievement in producing a monumental work of imperial culture a disservice.