Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24–79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( PLIN-ee), was a Roman author, naturalist, natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia (Natural History), a comprehensive thirty-seven-volume work...
In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain.
No man can ever be secure until he has been forsaken by Fortune.