Land and Sea

Animals in conflict represented for Pliny the idea of a fundamental struggle inherent in Natura. Naturae dimicatio, the conflict of nature, is also to be seen on a much larger scale in the unending conflict between the opposing elements, land and sea. In this struggle, the sea dominates, ’snatching’ and ‘devouring’ land: ‘Ocean ... in its greedy progress (avido meatu), overwhelming all the lands which shrink in terror at its coming, washes also those which resist with a winding and broken coastline’ (3. 5). The sea ‘bursts in’ and •swallows up’ the breadth of the Peloponnesian peninsula at the Isthmus of Corinth (4. 9). Such encroachment may be seen as an instance of a ‘peculiar jealousy (invidia) on the part of Natura, which indulges the sea’s greed without any limit’ (6. 1). The land resists (invitis ... terris), as is proved by the narrowness of the passages thus created (6. 2). The idea is best summed up in HN 2. 170 ff. Herc the inequality of the struggle is suggested, since the seas which ’encircle the globe and divide it in two, depriving us of half the world’ are vast beyond measure: ‘the holding owned by such a mighty mass is bound to be enormous and without limit’. While the sky, by creating uninhabitable zones, has ‘stolen’ three-quarters of the earth, ‘the extent of ocean’s pillage is uncertain’. In contrast, Pliny moralizes on the theme of earth’s insignificance (174, see 1. A. i).

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