ul. Nowy Świat 72, 00-330 Warszawa
Poland
Maria Jóźwicka
Quarterly Journal of the History of Science and Technology, Volume 65, Issue 4, 2020, pp. 147 - 161
https://doi.org/10.4467/0023589XKHNT.20.033.12866Gajusz Pliniusz Sekundus, Historia naturalna. T. I: Kosmologia i geografia, księgi II–VI, tekst, wstęp, tłum. i komentarz I. Mikołajczyk, N. Rataj, E. Twarowska-Antczak, K. Antczak, red. I. Mikołajczyk, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UMK, Toruń 2017, ss. 759.
Gajusz Pliniusz Sekundus, Historia naturalna. T. II: Antropologia i zoologia, księgi VII–XI, tekst, wstęp, tłum. i komentarz I. Mikołajczyk, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UMK, Toruń 2019, ss. 674.
The article presents selected problems related to the Latin-Polish critical edition of the first two volumes of the Natural History by Pliny the Elder. With regard to several passages from this ancient encyclopedia, which are important for the history of astronomy, the text pinpoints the insufficiency and some inaccuracies in the scientific commentary to the second book on cosmology, both in terms of content and sources. On the selected examples from the second volume, pertaining to anthropology and zoology, the article criticizes – in comparison to previous Polish translations – the text of the new one, which is sometimes significantly inconsistent with the Latin original.