Across the Waters of Time

Author, naturalist, cavalry officer, friend of the emperor Vespasian and admiral of the Roman fleet Pliny the Elder remembers his life from childhood to his death in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, a full life lived at the center of seminal times. Struggling to save a medicinal herb from extinction, Pliny finds a guide to the afterlife and a late romance. What he recounts of his life is strikingly relevant to our own times.