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.