Un ritorno ad Aristotele? Per un’analisi dell’anatomo fisiologia di Plin. nat. XI

The work focuses on the philosophical models used by Pliny the Elder in the anatomo-physiological section of Naturalis historia, Book XI. Usually seen as a chaotic cauldron of half-understood quotations, this section is now presented, from a visual culture perspective, as a folk taxonomic tool used to arrange biological data. More speci!cally, the !rst section of the paper shows how the shift from the species-oriented exposition (VIII-XI 120) to the moriological ordering of XI 121 ff. reveals Pliny’s will to get back to the very roots of Aristotle’s biology, leaving aside the approach adopted by Aristophanes of Byzantium in his Epitome de animalibus. The second section of the paper then goes on to show how this apparent ‘return to Aristotle’ seems to be strongly in/uenced by an amateurish ‘quasi-Stoic’ perspective.