Pliny the Elder
My Dad’s limerick book opens with a quotation from the classical scholar PLINY THE ELDER, who was the first natural historian, being the author of the Naturalis Historia. He had nothing but good things to say about elephants, hence the quote. I looked for visual reference on Pliny, but no contemporary portraits of him survive; those that we have were done years after his death, and they range from depicting a heroic, burly Charlton Heston-ish dude to a wizened old Merlin type, as obviously, nobody really knows what he looked like.
So all I knew for sure was that Pliny was a bearded classical scholar who liked elephants. And I thought “HANG ON! I know where to find a perfect model!” So I based my depiction of Pliny on a certain classicist that I know…
