Pliny’s Natural History defined the scope and breadth of the field of natural history. Natural history meant the description (or “historia”) of nature, as opposed to explaining its causes (or “natural philosophy”). Pliny died in 79 CE while investigating the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that buried Pompeii. Francisco Hernandez was called “the Pliny of the New World.” Just as Pliny described how Caesar brought a giraffe to Rome, so Lorenzo the Magnificent, a Medici ruler of Florence in the 15th century, proclaimed himself a second Caesar by having his portrait made with the gift of a giraffe.