Note 1048 — Chapter I · THE ELDER PLINY: FLAVIAN SCIENCE AND HISTORY
Reading edition
Montigny, Quaestiones in Plin. nat. historiae de animalibus libros, Bonn, 1848, p. 7: “uana eruditionis ostentatio.” Rabenhorst, Die Indices auctorum u. die wirklichen Quellen der N.H., in Philol., 65 (1906), sees in Pliny’s desire to acknowledge literary obligations merely a rhetorical trick.