Poinsinet's Edition of the Naturalis historia (1771-1782) and the Revival of Pliny in the Sciences of the Enlightenment.

This paper analyses the revival of Pliny's Naturalis historia within the scientific culture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, focusing on a French effort to produce an edition with annotations by scientists and scholars. Between the Renaissance and the early eighteenth century, the Naturalis historia had declined in scientific importance. Increasingly, it was relegated to the humanities, as we demonstrate with a review of editions.