Pliny the Elder
Prolific Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher Gaius Plinius Secundus, a.k.a. Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79), produced at least twenty-five books and 160 volumes of unpublished notebooks over his lifetime, though only the 37-volume Historia Naturalis, his universal encyclopedia which provided the template for encyclopedias, has survived.
Other known works include a book on hurling the lance, writings on grammar, a biography of Pomponius Secundus, a history of Rome, and the twenty-volume Bella Germaniae (The History of the German Wars), which was used as a source by other Roman historians, including Plutarch, Tacitus, and Suetonius.
Although his second-hand accounts may make him an unreliable source, he supplies information on an immense variety of subjects about which little information has survived. He died in 79 CE while attempting to rescue a friend and his family in the wake of the eruption that destroyed Pompeii.
:
