Abstract: Having “nature” in a broad sense as the subject, Historia Naturalis, written by Pliny the Elder, the most famous naturalist of the early Roman Empire, is the first attempt in Western history to describe and categorize the knowledge of nature and human culture in a single work. Based on textual analysis of reliable critical editions and translations of Historia Naturalis, this paper tries to understand the text from the perspective of cultures of natural history, clarify the characteristics of the knowledge recorded and described in this work and discover its value in terms of cultures of natural history. On the basis of an overview of the entire content of Historia Naturalis, this paper selects specific extracts and makes case studies to explore the knowledge characteristics of the Historia Naturalis as reflected in them. Pliny the Elder describes and related natural objects in a plain way, emphasizing their practical value to man. His idea of enquiring into nature in one work initiated a tradition of Roman-style natural history inquiry that differed from that of the ancient Greek naturalists such as Aristotle. Historia Naturalis has a lasting influence on the Western intellectual tradition and is an important part of the history of Western natural history for two thousand years.