This paper analyses the language and the “concise style” (pressus stilus) of Pliny the Elder by means of selected excerpts from the Naturalis Historia. The ultimate goal is to examine the place usually assigned to Pliny the Elder in Latin literature respecting his cultivated genre, especially from the Renaissance and during the different stages of the Ciceronian controversies, as it seemed a perfect antithesis to the “diffuse style” (stilus latus) of Cicero. To provide this thesis with documentary evidence, a series of passages from Cicero, included in the Naturalis Historia (mainly from De orat. 3, 98-99 included in Nat. 13, 21 and Nat 17, 38), is analysed here.