Head Historian of Romula. Forty scrolls. One stamp. Zero doubts.
Three days before the IdesVol. MMXXVI · ProfilePrice: two copper coins
Docket No. H-001 · Filed with footnotes
The man who knows everything, loudly.
Plinius the Nosy became Head Historian after the previous historian fell asleep during his own lecture and never woke up for the questions. (He was fine. It was a nap. Maximus Snorus certified it.)
"History is just gossip that survived. I survived. Ergo, I am history."
He is wrong about nearly everything and confident about all of it, which in Romula counts as scholarship. The city gave him the only official VERIFIED stamp in the republic. He uses it constantly, including on his lunch order.
Method · How the history gets made
His Method
The archives. Plinius has read all forty scrolls. He wrote thirty-nine of them.
The forty scrolls. One for each topic under the sun. Scroll 17 is devoted entirely to lunch reviews. Scroll 23 is a single sentence ("The ducks did it.") repeated four hundred times.
The footnotes. Plinius footnotes his own speech out loud, in real time, including this sentence¹. ¹Like so.
The source. Every claim is attributed to "a reliable source at the baths." The source is always Flavius Fullbelly. Flavius is not always reliable. Plinius has chosen not to let this slow him down.
The stamp. The republic's only official VERIFIED stamp lives on a cord around his neck. Documents stamped: 4,112. Documents read by anyone else: 3.
Fact-check desk · The complete file
Selected Fact-Checks
From the Digest's fact-check desk. Footnotes as always.
Verified
1Flavius was "stationed" at the baths since morning. True, but misleading. Everyone is stationed at the baths in the morning. It is a bathhouse.
2On the third lunch: I consulted the official records. There are no official records. I ate them. (The records. Though now that you mention it, the lunches were also excellent.)
3Maximus Snorus did not invent his title "during a nap," but during a highly productive meeting about naps, which he then slept through. He was the minutes. The minutes were never taken.
4The Pantheon is still standing. Confirmed. I verify this personally every day, loudly, to anyone within earshot. Five stars.
5Livius the Boring calls the baths "merely adequate." False. Livius has never enjoyed a single soup in his life. Source: everyone.
6Lunch recipes "by pigeon": Denied. The pigeons have unionized. All correspondence now by tortoise.
7The aqueducts were built by ducks. Confirmed. Large, highly organized ducks. The evidence is overwhelming. (The evidence is forty scrolls. I wrote them.)
8Romula fell because lunch was too small. Inconclusive. The evidence is inconclusive. The evidence is also delicious.
9I have never been wrong. Verified. This fact-check has been verified. By me. Stamp applied.
Rivalry · Filed from the forum steps
The Feud with Livius the Boring
Livius the Boring writes the official history of Romula. It is twelve volumes long. Nobody has read past page four, including Livius, who fell asleep writing page five and considers the rest "implied."
He calls Plinius "a gossip with a stamp." Plinius calls him "a footnote with legs." Their public debates at the forum draw enormous crowds. Last month's drew three thousand people and ended when both debaters fell asleep mid-sentence. Maximus Snorus, who had also fallen asleep, woke briefly to declare it "the finest debate in Romulan history" and went back under.
The rematch is scheduled for next month. Both historians are currently napping in preparation.
Correspondence · Readers write in
Ask Plinius
Is it true you footnote your own speech?
Yes. It is also true[1] that I am the only historian in Romula with an official stamp. [1] Source: me.
What is the most important date in Romulan history?
Lunch.
Livius the Boring says your scrolls are unverified gossip.
Livius the Boring says many things. No one has ever stayed awake through all of them.
