Status Updates From Plini naturalis historiae l...

[[Gaza] was taken from the Philistines by the Jews more than once, but as often retaken. It was also taken by Cyrus the Great and Alexander, and afterwards by Ptolemy Lagus, who destroyed it. It afterwards recovered, and was again destroyed by Alexander Jannæus, BC 96, after which, it was rebuilt by Gabinius and ultimately united to the Roman province of Syria. In AD 65 it was again destroyed, but was rebuilt […]]

Some islands called Oönæ are said to be here, the inhabitants of which live on the eggs of birds and oats; and others again upon which human beings are produced with the feet of horses, thence called Hippopodes. Some other islands are also mentioned as those of the Panotii, the people of which have ears of such extraordinary size as to cover the rest of the body, which is otherwise left naked.

Thebes, surnamed Bœotian, which does not yield the palm to Athens even in celebrity; the native land, according to the common notion, of the two Divinities Liber and Hercules. The birth-place of the Muses[*] too is pointed out in the grove of Helicon.
[*] Leake fixes the Grove of the Muses at the present church of Saint Nicholas, at the foot of Mount Marandali, one of the summits of Helicon.

Theophrastus, the first foreigner who treated of the affairs of Rome with any degree of accuracy (for Theopompus, before whose time no Greek writer had made mention of us, only stated the fact that the city had been taken by the Gauls, and Clitarchus, the next after him, only spoke of the embassy that was sent by the Romans to Alexander)

The breadth of the earth, from south to north, is commonly supposed to be about one-half only of its length […] hence it is evident how much the heat has stolen from it on one side and the cold on the other: for I do not suppose that the land is actually wanting, or that the earth has not the form of a globe; but that, on each side, the uninhabitable parts have not been discovered.

Below the Sun revolves the great star called Venus, wandering with an alternate motion, and, even in its surnames [Lucifer and Vesper] rivalling the Sun and the Moon. Pythagoras, the Samian, was the first who discovered its nature, about the 62nd Olympiad [...] It excels all the other stars in size, and its brilliancy is so considerable, that it is the only star which produces a shadow by its rays.