INTRODUCTION
SENECA
I. Life
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was the second son of Annaeus Seneca (generally, but apparently without authority, called Marcus Annaeus Seneca) of Corduba (Cordova) in Spain: his mother was a Spanish lady named Helvia. The elder Seneca was himself a man of note. He is known as Seneca the Orator or Rhetorician, in contradistinction to his more famous son, the Philosopher. His works that have come down to us suggest by their titles, Controversiae and Suasoriae, the rhetorical character of the contents.
Seneca had an elder brother, M. Annaeus Novatus, and a younger one, L. Annaeus Mela (or Mella), father of Lucan the poet (M. Annaeus Lucanus).1 The family was thus a distinguished one. The poet Martial, himself a Spaniard, speaks of “the house of learned Seneca thrice to be numbered” (iv. 40. 2): the allusion might with equal appropriateness apply either to the three brothers or to the three generations: Seneca the Elder, Seneca, Lucan—father, son, grandson.
The eldest brother of the Senecan family, Novatus, was adopted by a friend of the family, Junius Gallio, by whose name he is known to history. Seneca on more than one occasion makes reference to him in the Q.N., and always in the most laudatory terms. In iv. Pref. 9 et sqq., he pays a high tribute to his character, and a further proof of his admiration and affection is afforded by his addressing to him his treatise on A Happy Life. Gallio is of interest in another connection. He was proconsul of Achaia during the period of the Apostle Paul’s activity there (Acts xviii.), and his conduct on the occasion of a sectarian uproar at Corinth has attached to his name a certain stigma which, perhaps, he does not altogether deserve.
Seneca was born about the beginning of the Christian era, probably in the year 3. By this time the language and the arts of Rome had spread widely over the conquered provinces, in many of which independent centres of culture and literary activity had sprung up. While Rome as the capital and heart of things continued to draw to herself all that was best, or, at any rate, all that was most enterprising and ambitious, her literary and even her political life was largely recruited and maintained by supplies from external sources, such as Spain, Gaul, and Africa.2
Seneca was brought by his father to Rome at an early age,3 and there he was educated and spent practically his whole life. His lot was cast in perilous times, those of Caligula the madman (37–41), Claudius the imbecile (41–54), Nero the monster (54–68). Seneca’s early studies were devoted to rhetoric. With such assiduity did he prosecute them, and with such brilliant success were his efforts at the bar crowned, that he speedily awakened the jealousy of Caligula. The hint of danger was taken. By his father’s advice he abandoned law in the meantime and devoted himself with equal ardour and enthusiasm to philosophy. Among his philosophic tutors were Attalus, a Stoic, and Sotion, a pupil of the Sextii, the decline of whose school is lamented in the Q.N. (307). He first embraced the Stoic doctrine, but finding the tenets and practices of this sect not sufficiently severe, he adopted those of the Pythagoreans. His father, a man with a good deal of worldly wisdom, saw the dangers of extreme eccentricities of this kind, which implied a covert condemnation of the whole world. He exhorted his son to live more like other people; he might otherwise be mistaken for a Jew (i.e. a Christian)! The young barrister’s difficulties were, however, ended for a time by the death of Caligula (41). Seneca, who was now thirty-eight, resumed his practice at the bar, and opened a school for youths of noble birth, which was largely attended. About this time also he obtained the quaestorship, the duties of which introduced a young man into public service and enabled him to obtain some insight into the financial methods of the Empire.
His re-entry on public life was, however, destined to be the prelude to another disaster. Indeed, all through his subsequent life his interests were so involved with the affairs of the rulers of the State that he must always stand on slippery ground. The fact is, Seneca’s abilities were too great for his position. He was a man of the most brilliant parts, “one of those ardent natures the virgin soil of whose talent shows a luxurious richness unknown to the harassed brains of an old civilisation” (Cruttwell, Hist. of Rom. Liter. p. 378). In an age of absolute and suspicious tyranny all eminence is obnoxious to the ruling powers. It is a standing reproach to them, hence a source of fear and alarm, a menace as they imagine, and an incentive to disloyalty. During the very first year of Claudius’ reign Seneca was banished to Corsica, where the next eight years find him. It was the outcome of a Court intrigue. Messalina, wife of the Emperor, was apparently jealous of the influence of Claudius’ nieces, Julia and Agrippina, whom he had just recalled from banishment. Julia was again banished, and Seneca, on the ground of an alleged improper intimacy with her, was made to share her disgrace. His banishment was really a blessing in disguise. He employed assiduously the period of enforced leisure, devoting himself again to philosophy, and returning to his first love, Stoicism. Here he perfected his study, and probably elaborated most of those doctrines with which his writings abound. In Cruttwell’s words, he “struck out the mild and catholic form” of the Stoic philosophy “which has made his teaching, with all its imperfections, the purest and noblest of antiquity” (op. cit. 379). To this period, too, belong some of what may be called his earlier works, already showing remarkable power.
His exile had been compassed by the notorious Messalina, the third wife of Claudius. On her fall Claudius married, as his fourth wife, his niece, the still more notorious Agrippina,4 daughter of Germanicus Caesar and sister of Caligula and of Julia. One of Agrippina’s first acts was to have Seneca recalled and appointed tutor to the young Nero, her son by a former marriage and now heir-apparent to the throne. This was in 48, when Nero was but eleven years of age, and henceforth to the end of his life Seneca’s fortunes are closely associated with those of Nero, “a name to all succeeding ages curst.” To be tutor to a prince means much if the pupil is docile. If he prove headstrong and at the same time vicious, as Nero speedily did, the choice of the tutor is an unenviable one, either to follow his pupil and palliate his conduct, or else to resist at the risk of position and influence and, it may be eventually, of life. With Seneca at first all went well. The prince was amenable, the tuition seemed to bear good fruit. The teacher was faithful to his charge, and loyal to the prince’s mother, Agrippina, to whom he owed his office and influence. Mother and son were still in accord. To the philosopher there was no conflict of duty, no necessity for the choice of one of two evils.
In 54 the vacillating Claudius was poisoned by Agrippina, and Nero succeeded to the throne. For a time the government was virtually in the hands of Seneca and of Burrus, also an excellent man, commander of the praetorian guards. In these earlier years the young Emperor gained a reputation for justice and moderation which has thrown a halo round that golden quinquennium. His tutor must in fairness receive a portion of the credit. He seems to have been throughout imbued with an honest desire to promote virtue and good government and to check such vicious propensities as a youth with Nero’s antecedents was not unlikely to develop; but whether the means adopted were always unimpeachable seems more open to question. Seneca’s own interests were apparently not neglected. In 50 he had been made praetor; shortly after he was raised to the consulship. Within the short space of four years from his appointment as Nero’s master he had attained a position of commanding influence in the State, and had amassed a colossal fortune (nearly £3,000,000 it is said). The latter he attributed to the unsolicited generosity of his master, but his enemies and detractors had quite a different version of the matter.
For more than a decade after Nero’s succession Seneca’s life is part of the history of the Roman Empire. The philosopher had become, as it appeared, de facto king and a new era seemed to have arisen on mankind. Philosophers, it is true, have neither in ancient nor in modern times shone in the sphere of action. The troubled sea of practical politics is strewn with the wrecks of philosophic reputations. Still, even before the age of the Antonines, Seneca, if any man, might have been the exception to prove the rule. He was a man of versatile genius, he had had a practical training, he was a man of affairs. The facts show that he had a true conception of the necessities as well as of the duties of government. But he was placed in an impossible situation. Agrippina wished to rule her son, and her chosen means was through his tutor. Nero, on the other hand, once he had tasted the sweets of power, determined not to be ruled by his mother, but to make her instrument his tool. The condition of unstable equilibrium could not long continue.
The conflict came to a head through a disgraceful intrigue of Nero’s about the year 59. Seneca had to make his choice, and never was choice more difficult. To Agrippina he owed everything—life, position, fortune, his past belonged to her. But he saw that Nero was to be the winner in the struggle; his safety, his hopes, his future lay with the ruling power. He may have felt that expostulation was vain and resistance fruitless. He does not appear to have attempted either. He decided to cast in his lot with the Emperor. When Nero finally decided to get rid of his mother, Seneca not only adhered to the plan but consented to vilify her memory by composing the letter to the Senate, in which the matricide sought to justify his act. It was the great treason of his life. In a critical situation he had chosen a wrong course, and it cannot have been without a pang, a sense of moral cowardice and tergiversation. He had sacrificed self-respect, he had lost philosophic caste.
After the murder of his mother, Nero abandoned himself to the wildest excesses and extravagances. The philosopher had perforce to follow in his wake, and humiliating enough he must have felt the part he was obliged to play. Still, he and Burrus continued to act as a sort of drag, conspiring with what of conscience was left to Nero in checking his headlong course. The beginning of the end, so far as Seneca was concerned, came with the death in 63 of Burrus, his constant friend and ally. Various indications now showed that the tyrant was anxious to be freed from the last remaining restraint. The philosopher felt his position was insecure. The man who had murdered his mother, not to mention his (step-)brother and his wife—two of his other victims—was not likely to have great compunction in ridding himself of his tutor. Seneca sought to anticipate the storm by abandoning politics, retiring from Court, and surrendering his estates. Nero refused the offer, and expressed profusely his continued regard for his tutor; shortly afterwards he displayed the sincerity of his professions by an insidious attempt to poison him! The philosopher then renounced all his state, adopted a voluntary poverty, and by putting into practice his professed tenets of the simple life endeavoured to avoid a repetition of the risk at least of poison. His diet was herbs, his drink, water from the fountain. But it was only a matter of time now. The occasion for which the Emperor was on the watch came in 65. In that year Piso’s conspiracy was formed against the Emperor’s life, and Seneca was accused, falsely so far as we can judge, of complicity. He was ordered to prepare for death, which, according to the custom of the day, allowed the victim the choice of means, and was usually a voluntary opening of the veins in order to bleed to death. Tacitus has with characteristic power and pathos depicted the scene (Annals, xv. 61–4). No act of his life, it would seem, became Seneca better than the leaving of it. His death was worthy of a philosopher and a Stoic. With the utmost calmness, amid a throng of mourning, sympathising friends, he faced his fate, and yet with the studied pose of a man who had conned the part. The age was one of posturing. Men were always under the eye of the informer and the spy, and learnt to act their part accordingly. The “meditation of death” must often have occupied the philosopher’s latter days. He was a second Socrates consigned to an unjust end; the last scene was enacted with all the dignity, composure, and even cheerfulness of his great prototype. The cock due to Aesculapius has a parallel more worthy of the occasion in the libation to Jupiter the Liberator. The supreme act atoned for many weaknesses and failures.
Though Seneca was not without many detractors,5 his worth as a man is attested by many proofs. His young wife Paulina desired to share his fate, and opened her veins along with her husband. By Nero’s orders she was saved, but she continued to the end of her life to bear in her unnatural pallor the marks of her devotion. Tacitus, writing at a distance of thirty or forty years, describes the character of Seneca in terms of commendation and esteem. No doubt the historian had himself borne the yoke of the savage Domitian, and knew what life under a tyrant meant. But withal he was too acute an observer and too impartial a critic to be blinded by any mere sentimental sympathy. He understood and appreciated Seneca, to whose genuine worth his testimony is the most enduring tribute.
The age of Seneca, whose “life almost coincides with the Julio-Claudian tyranny,” has been made to re-live for us in Professor Dill’s Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, which ought to be studied by those who desire to understand more of Seneca as statesman, philosopher, and man.6 In addition to a short account and criticism of the Quaestiones Naturales (pp. 300 et sqq.), the chapter (Book III. ch. i. pp. 289–333) on “The Philosophic Director” is particularly illuminating. The following tribute from it may fittingly close our brief sketch:—
“The man who approaches Seneca thinking only of scandals gleaned from Tacitus and Dio Cassius, and frozen by a criticism which cannot feel the power of genius, spiritual imagination, and a profound moral experience, behind a rhetoric sometimes forced and extravagant, had better leave him alone. The Christianity of the twentieth century might well hail with delight the advent of such a preacher, and would certainly forget all the accusations of prurient gossip in the accession of an immense and fascinating spiritual force. The man with any historical imagination must be struck with amazement that such spiritual detachment, such lofty moral ideals, so pure an enthusiasm for the salvation of souls, should emerge from a palace reeking with all the crimes of the haunted races of Greek legend” (op. cit. p. 295).
II. Writings
Seneca was a voluminous writer. Most of his works partake more or less of a philosophical character. In a class by themselves may be placed the ten tragedies, together with some verses, attributed to him. The titles, Medea, Hercules Furens, Hippolytus, Agamemnon, etc., suggest the Greek subjects as well as the plays of the same names by Euripides and Aeschylus. The treatment of the themes is all Seneca’s own. Moral maxims abound; the plays are homiletic and were never designed to be acted.
One of the plays is of special interest as dealing with current topics. This is the Octavia, whose chief character is Nero’s wife of that name, exiled by him in order to make room for the licentious Poppaea Sabina. Seneca himself is introduced as one of the characters, deploring the vices of the age and the unhappiness of those set in high position. If the play is genuine, which has been doubted on the ground of references in it that seem to apply to Nero’s death, it goes to prove that Seneca used very plain language toward his master and pupil. In any case, it shows what the relation of Seneca to Nero was generally supposed to be. Tacitus (xv. 61) represents Seneca as telling Nero by messenger that the latter has had more frequent experience of his independence than of his servility, and the Octavia is fair comment upon his statement.
Here is a specimen of the dialogue:—
Nero. Fortune has put everything in my power.
Seneca. Distrust her favours: she is a fickle goddess.
N. To fail to see all that one may do, betrays the coward.
S. The credit lies in doing not what one may, but what one ought.
N. The crowd tramples on a feeble prince.
S. They will crush a hated one:
and so forth. Seneca’s last remark may be a prophecy—some would say after the event. The play contains other allusions which suggest some of the actual details of Nero’s end.
The prose works include:
(a) Philosophical Essays such as Anger, Clemency, Benefits, Calmness of Mind, A Happy Life, The Shortness of Life, Providence, or Why Providence allows troubles to afflict the Just, The Constancy of the Sage, The Leisure of the Sage.
(b) Letters, or rather Treatises, of Condolence, the so-called Consolations, addressed respectively to his Mother Helvia; to Marcia, the daughter of Cordus, on the death of her son; to Polybius, the powerful freedman of Claudius, on the loss of his brother.
(c) Letters to Lucilius, a hundred and twenty-four in number.
(d) Apocolocyntosis—a lampoon on the deceased Emperor Claudius. On such occasions deification (apotheosis) was accorded to the late ruler, and he was received into the number of the gods. This skit describes the reception of Claudius in heaven and his expulsion thence to the lower regions, with his trial and sentence there. Pumpkinification is the nearest English translation of the title.7
(e) Quaestiones Naturales.
(f) Works no longer extant, the only one of them that concerns us being that on Earthquakes, referred to as a work of his youth in Q.N. 230.
(g) A spurious work, as is now on all hands conceded, is the correspondence between Seneca and St. Paul. In his opposition to popular beliefs and superstitions, and in the purity of his moral tenets, Seneca approached some of the Christian doctrines, and it was no improbable supposition that at the Court of Nero he might have became acquainted with the Apostle of the Gentiles.8 But the assumption of a correspondence of this kind is another affair. Its genuineness was believed from the time of Jerome (400) till the sixteenth century.
Seneca is generally considered to appear at his best in the Consolation to his Mother Helvia and in the Epistles to Lucilius, which are therefore usually ranked as amongst his finest works. The latter work, which from the outset was designed for publication, is not an ordinary correspondence on the current affairs and interests of everyday life like Cicero’s Letters, but is philosophic in character; it covers a wide range of moral discussion and reflection, and is full of admirable maxims. Many of its sentiments have become commonplaces; their almost hackneyed character detracts perhaps somewhat from our appreciation of their intrinsic merit. On the other hand, the spitefulness of the Apocolocyntosis, the servility of the Consolation to Polybius, and the flattery of the Clemency, which was addressed to Nero, show the reverse of Seneca’s character. Of the characteristics of his style, however, and of his position in Roman literature—one of commanding importance—this is not the place to speak. His works reflect truly enough both the iron and the miry clay which entered into his mental and moral composition.
III. “Quaestiones Naturales”
This work stands in a category by itself. It raises a number of difficult problems, in which every reader of it, whether classical scholar or not, is interested.
The historical title, Natural Questions, is convenient, though, without explanation, a little misleading. The nearest rendering of the Latin form Quaestiones Naturales is Physical Inquiries, or Investigations in the Domain of Physics, or, as in the title, what we should now call Physical Science. The terms Physics and Science had a very different connotation in that age and in ours. Plutarch, almost a younger contemporary of Seneca, gravely discusses in a work with a similar title such questions as Why shepherds give their sheep salt, Why horses’ hair is superior to mares’ for casting-lines, and even, Why a dog runs after a stone rather than after the person who threw it! The extent of such a title is determined pretty much by the range of topics an author decides to include. In Seneca’s case, as it happens, the branches chiefly dealt with are Astronomy and Meteorology, together with certain portions of what may be designated as Physical Geography including Seismology.
Science was in that day synonymous with Philosophy, or at any rate Philosophy embraced all that could claim to be Science. Learning was homogeneous; its subdivisions had not yet been separated or differentiated.
The treatise was addressed in a quasi-epistolary form to Lucilius Junior, procurator9 of Sicily. Most of our knowledge of him is derived from Seneca, who, besides the Q.N., addressed to him his Epistles and his tract on Providence. Lucilius seems to have been a protégé of Seneca, and rising from the ranks under his fostering care and guidance, not only to have attained a position of influence, but also to have achieved literary distinction. His philosophical predilections were toward Epicureanism, but he was a man of high principle and character, though not exempt from dangerous temptations at various points in his career. His public labours had associated him with Sicily, and the themes of his writings, chiefly poems as it would appear, had been drawn from the same quarter. He is, not without probability, supposed to have been the author of the anonymous didactic poem Aetna, for long attributed to Virgil, a work which presents many interesting parallelisms to the Q.N. both in its science and its philosophy. Seneca’s Epistle lxxix. contains a special charge to Lucilius, who was at the time making a circuit of his province, to report the facts concerning Charybdis—Seneca knew all there was to know about Scylla—and to investigate in detail the present condition of Aetna. The letter goes on to banter Lucilius upon the inclusion of Aetna in the poem on which he was engaged—no doubt the work referred to in Q.N. 114, 142; cf. 167. The whole question is discussed with full knowledge by Professor Robinson Ellis in the Introduction (xxxvi-xlviii) to his edition of the Aetna, to which reference should be made. For other allusions to Lucilius in Seneca see, besides the Q.N., Epistles xix. xxvi. xxxiv. etc.
The Q.N. was composed probably about the year 63 or 64. We might content ourselves with the statement of the fact, did not the circumstances of composition throw light upon difficulties of arrangement and sequence which can scarcely be passed unnoticed. The evidence on which we have to rely is chiefly internal. The exact date of Lucilius’ procuratorship in Sicily (159) is unknown, but the consulship of Regulus and Virginius, which witnessed the Campanian earthquake (221), fell in 63, that is, some two years before Seneca’s death. The allusions in the Preface to Book III. (109) are still more direct and convincing. The writer was drawing near his end, pressed hard on the rear by old age, with every necessity and incentive to hurry on the completion of his task.
On the other hand, the mission despatched by Nero to the sources of the Nile (235–6) would naturally point to an earlier date during the more promising years of his reign—unless indeed, as is by no means improbable, the complimentary reference to the emperor’s virtues be a piece of adulation. A similar reference recurs in connection with the comet in Nero’s reign (290), the date of which must (after Tacitus) be assigned to the year 61.
The Elder Pliny, writing in 77, about a dozen years after Seneca’s death, adds to each Book of his Natural History an exhaustive list of the authorities, native and foreign, that he had used. Book II. deals with many of the subjects of the Q.N., of which it is in some places an expansion, but in most little more than an epitome.10 And yet no mention of Seneca occurs in the list of authorities attached, which seems strange if the work had then been given to the world.11
We read in the Sixth Book of the Q.N. (230) that the author had previously, when a young man, composed a work upon Earthquakes. This, taken in connection with what precedes, and with what we know of the author’s character and interests, affords some ground for the conjecture that he may have worked intermittently at the subject at various periods of life. But no doubt the arrangement of the materials and the completion of the work belong to his latter years. He had by this time lost his hold upon Nero, and had practically retired from political activity. His trust in princes had been found misplaced. He was disappointed if not embittered. The discussion of public affairs was precluded. It was dangerous even to let one’s thoughts rest upon them. But there were consolations for political disappointment and inactivity. Recourse might be made to the contemplation of those great works and workings of Nature which are exempt from the caprices of human passion. The study of Nature was equally fitted to humble and to console; to it Seneca betook himself for refuge.12
The Q.N. may, thus, have been composed at different dates, materials for it being gathered at various times as opportunity offered. But the final arrangement and systematisation belong to the last years of the author’s life, about the years 63 or 64. The publication may not have taken place until some time subsequently, and may have been carried out by Lucilius, who was Seneca’s literary executor. So much is certain, that the work as we have it is not the work as it left the author’s hand.
Much time and ingenuity have been bestowed on attempts to restore the Q.N. to what may be supposed to have been its original form. The most casual reading of it as it stands, shows that it is full of inequalities. If the clue could only be recovered, much of its difficulty and obscurity would disappear. As it is, it abounds in abrupt transitions, interruptions of the logical sequence, repetitions, excrescences, and even irrelevancies and inconsistencies, which it can hardly be supposed that an author would have allowed to remain in a treatise prepared for publication.
One or two considerations derived from the present arrangement will serve to throw light upon this point. In the first place, Book IV., as we have it, is evidently composite. Between Chaps. II. and III. there is a deep hiatus. In the former chapter the discussion of the Nile is cut short, and the author’s own view is not even indicated, much less established; while the latter opens so abruptly as at least to suggest that it may have originally been preceded by something with which it stood in organic sequence.
Again, the several Books do not conform to the author’s division of the subject as set forth in the opening of Book II. (51), but follow—or precede—one another anyhow.
Then, three of the Books (I. III. IV.) have a formal Preface, while the others have not, though in them, too, with the exception of the Sixth, the opening chapter is introductory in character.
Any attempt to restore a more intelligible order must depend for its success on the extent to which we may assume Seneca to have been a methodiser. In Book II. i, he certainly states very distinctly the divisions of his subject—(a) things in the heavens, (b) things between heaven and earth, (c) things on the earth. But it by no means follows that he himself maintained this order of treatment, or that he always exhausted one subject before passing on to the next. The division evidently enumerates the subjects in order of dignity or worth, and may have little, if any, relation to the order of their discussion; in fact, in Book II. he goes on immediately to deal with meteorology, his second and not his first topic.
Bernhardt (Die Anschauung des Seneca vom Universum, p. 7) frankly accepts the traditional order of the Books, and finds its explanation in the distinction between phenomena and elements. The first three Books deal with the phenomena of heaven, air, earth, respectively; the last four respectively with the elements—water, air, earth, fire. This is ingenious, if not altogether convincing.
The most recent editor, Professor Gercke, divides Book IV. into its two constituents, IV. (a) = IV. Pref.-ii., IV. (b) = IV. iii.-xiii., and arranges the Books in ascending scale thus: Earth III. IV. (a); Air IV. (b), II. V. VI; Heaven VII. I. There seems great probability, almost amounting to certainty, that there were originally eight Books, as he supposes. But a consistent and fairly natural order might perhaps be restored with less violence to the accepted form than his scheme involves. Books III. and IV. (a) seem to have been misplaced or transposed, being placed after Book II. instead of after Book VI., where they originally stood; Book IV. (a) had somehow got mutilated, which the more easily led to the confusion. Book IV. (b) also suffered somewhat in the process. Thus the original order may have been I. II. IV. (b), V. VI.; III. IV. (a); VII.; the first five Books deal with Meteorology, including Seismology (air), the next two with Physical Geography (earth), the last Book with Astronomy (heaven). A single change of the order is thus all that is required; but, of course, the regrettable gap after IV. (a) remains.
Even with this rearrangement the sequence leaves something to be desired. But it must be borne in mind that the author makes a claim to philosophic liberty (178), and that in no case can the rules of modern requirement be applied to him.
Of course, if the assumption of methodical arrangement be unfounded, and the author composed just as the humour took him, the existing order may be all right: it is as good as any other fortuitous collocation. Some have supposed that the work was left unfinished at the author’s death, but of this we have no proof.
The language of the Preface to Book III. has been taken by some to imply that this was the opening of the whole work. Whether this is so must remain to some extent matter of opinion. It may, however, be pointed out (a) that the claim of the Preface to Book I. seems at least equally strong, (b) that the language of § 4 of the Preface to Book III. (110), “how much is unaccomplished of my plan, though not of my life,” seems inapplicable to a work that was not begun or merely beginning. There was a remnant of the work and a remnant of life, but they were disproportionate, the one large, the other small. This was a reminder to hurry on to completion a work with which, ex hypothesi, some progress had already been made.
When all has been said, we must, for practical purposes, accept the book as it has been handed down to us and make what we can of it. The difficulties are not exhausted even when the pristine order is restored. What is true of the work as a whole is true of it also in detail. The text is full of uncertainties and corruptions. The work was popular and was frequently copied, and this naturally gave rise to variations, which, being improved upon by succeeding generations of copyists, in course of time rendered the text in many places very obscure if not unmeaning. The nature of the subject matter, frequently little understood, no doubt facilitated and hastened the process of corruption. Hence the translator has at every turn to decide first what, and then how, he shall translate.13
An added difficulty is the form of address to Lucilius. The adoption of the epistolary style, whatever its other advantages, has not, it must be admitted, conduced to the lucidity of the argument. Science does not readily lend itself to exposition by dialogue, and the trouble is aggravated when, in addition to the correspondent, an imaginary opponent is from time to time introduced and indifferently addressed in the second person, or referred to in the third. To make matters still worse, the author frequently conceals himself behind the mask of one or other of the disputants, irrespective of pronouns. Finally, he employs “we” sometimes of himself and his correspondent, sometimes of his philosophic sect, the Stoics, sometimes of his nation, the Romans, sometimes of his kind, man in general!
IV. Seneca’s Method of Treatment of Subject
In order to appreciate Seneca’s treatment of his subject we must understand something of his philosophical tenets. He was in the main a Stoic, but with such a strong tendency toward independence that he may be considered an Eclectic. The Stoics, whether or not they originated, at any rate recognised and adopted the threefold division of philosophy—Physics, Ethics, Logic14—which was originated among the Greeks and handed down by them to the Romans, who were in this department their pupils. Seneca is typical of the Stoics in regarding Ethics as of supreme importance. On Logic he did not apparently set any great store, though he must have been a diligent student of the cognate branch, Rhetoric. Physics, as we have seen, did not claim much attention from him in early life; only as he approached the mature age of threescore did his study of it become more detailed and systematic. No clear line of demarcation existed in his mind, or for the matter of that in his age, between philosophy and science. Yet there is considerable internal evidence in the Q.N. that his pursuit of such studies was in part an outcome of the true scientific spirit, and that he possessed in no ordinary degree the scientific imagination. Still, when all due allowance is made for this, it remains true that Seneca was moralist first and physicist or scientist afterwards. Physics led to theology,15 and had thus a direct bearing on man’s destiny and fate. Had there been no Ethics, whose interests were involved in a knowledge of the universe, its parts, its function, and its author, the impelling motive for the study of Physics would have been removed. Possibly when his political career was closed by the death of Burrus in 63, Seneca might in any case have devoted some of his leisure to a subject which offered such opportunities of exalted contemplation. But it was his ethical aims that added the chief zest to the pursuit.16 As the various departments of knowledge had not assumed definite divergent forms, there was nothing incongruous to his mind in the mixture, or as he might have regarded it, the union, of what to us seem so different from one another as Physics and Ethics. The facts of nature had, in his view, to be brought into connection with the lessons that may be derived from them. In so many words he tells us (102) that every study must have a moral attached to it, or to put it otherwise, that physical phenomena must be made the occasion for driving home some general truth, establishing some ethical position, clinching an argument, reprobating a vice. The conclusion of each Book of the Q.N. contains the practical application of the lessons to be derived from its subject: there are not infrequent digressions, too, for the same or a cognate purpose. The author’s moral zeal sometimes ran off with him, and he felt constrained to break off for the time his discussion of scientific truths and to assume the rôle of the moralist and reformer.17
The reader of the Q.N. need not, therefore, regard as matter of surprise this curious medley of science and morality, which is of the very essence of the author’s principles and purpose. Seneca performs this part of his task with evident relish. He is always ready to improve the occasion, and will even go out of his way to find it. His censure of vice, his denunciation of luxury and self-indulgence, his castigation of immorality, seem to afford him a kind of morbid satisfaction. Even a note of insincerity may sometimes be suspected. He is rather too ready to display his own acquaintance with all the refinements of the vices of “good society”: perhaps it was the fault of his age to gloat over unsavoury details that a moralist would now be more anxious to conceal than to reveal.18
With Seneca as moralist, however, we are not here directly concerned. But what attitude are we to assume toward his Science? It need scarcely be said that of Science in the twentieth century sense, the first century of our era knew very little. Its greatest weakness was that it possessed practically no means of interrogating nature save those afforded by the human senses. The sundial was known, but the thermometer, the barometer, the telescope, and even the microscope, had still to be invented. Experiment except in the most rudimentary form was impossible. Observation was the only method available, and it lost much of its value from the necessary looseness and inaccuracy attaching to it. Seneca was fully alive to the necessity of procuring correct data. He records his own observation when digging among his vines (117); he had visited the Sabine country to see a floating island (139); he had evidently watched closely rainbow, lightning, meteors, comets, etc, etc. He laid friends like Lucilius under contribution, and he insists on the necessity for keeping records of observation, especially when the phenomenon is comparatively rare, as a Comet (274). Besides, he draws not only upon the history of his country, but also upon the learning of other nations—Greeks, Babylonians, and Egyptians—records which for the most part are no longer extant. The Q.N. thus embodies many out-of-the-way facts which otherwise would be unknown to us. Accuracy is nearly always a relative term: approximate accuracy is the most we can look for in that age. Seneca’s contribution of data is curious, interesting, and valuable.
Again, in arguing from facts, or supposed facts, Seneca is entitled to credit for his method if not always for his results. A great merit is that he endeavours to account for the phenomena observed, he habitually raises the causal issue, and he is not satisfied until he has passed in review all the considerations involved in the observation or problem. He is scrupulous in always giving the other side a hearing, and in discussing views with which he disagrees, even though only to reject them. On the negative side he is generally fairly convincing, and succeeds in showing the fallacies involved in a proposition. But on the constructive side he is many times ingeniously perverse, curiously blind to the inadequacy of the theories which he himself advances, and which he would readily have confuted in an opponent. Sometimes he adopts an error already current, as old as Aristotle or older; sometimes he advances a fresh one of his own. But even his errors are instructive, and represent a phase of progress. The line of progress is zigzag. Only after errors have been exhausted does the truth emerge and advance become possible.
The amenities of ancient science seem to have been somewhat scanty. A mistake, a false inference, an erroneous view, is met with the lie direct. The moral stigma of falsehood is, at any rate in certain instances, attached to such a deviation from fact. Nor is this all. The whole character must be bad if a man has “lied.” The authors, whom Seneca calls chroniclers, and particularly Epigenes, are in one passage quite fiercely attacked (289). In justice to Seneca it must be said that he is hardly more polite toward himself. The words on p. 154, § 2, rendered, “I can give my own word, etc.,” read literally, “I’m a liar if water does not meet us, etc.” Perhaps, therefore, it is only a manner of speaking. In the early days of public education in Britain a Government report recorded as a proof of moral progress the substitution in some parts of the country of “I beg your pardon” for “You’re a liar!” The child seems to have here re-lived the history of the race.
Seneca had a wide outlook, too, and a splendid scientific faith. With prophetic eye he sees the day when an astronomer will arise to demonstrate the nature and orbit of Comets19 (299); he is content to let posterity have a share of the credit! Nor is his humility less than his confidence. His lessons may still usefully be taken home; we imagine we have pierced to nature’s inmost sanctum, yet we are still loitering round her outer court (306); let us not despise the day of small things, the investigation of nature’s marvels requires generations of workers and ages of work; there will come a day when all will be revealed, when posterity will smile at our feeble and clumsy efforts and wonder how we missed such obvious truths (298). The ancients must be treated leniently; it was a large contribution to discovery to have conceived the hope of its possibility (231). Seneca maintained and promoted this belief in ultimate success. He displays throughout the same alert, buoyant, enthusiastic confidence, together with patient, reverent search for truth in nature and truth about God.
Seneca nowhere gives us a reasoned connected exposition of the views entertained by him regarding the Universe as a whole or the relation of its parts. Only “by parcels” and inference can we glean them from scattered remarks and comments that he makes in the course of his work. In Physics even more than in Ethics he was an Eclectic; he criticises freely, and occasionally rejects entirely, the opinions of his own school, the Stoics, at one point going so far as to call them silly (181, cf. 295). He claims authority, too, for his own research, and asserts the right to hypothesise for himself: he is hopeful, if not certain, of discovery (304). He frequently quotes rival opinions without indicating his own. He is familiar with conflicting theories which he does not attempt, or fails in his attempt, to harmonise. And in the end one is tempted to ask whether he himself had reached any consistent comprehensive cosmical scheme. There is much that is quaint and interesting and ingenious, but it seems doubtful whether an attempt to construct from the Q.N. a complete cosmology would in the end repay the labour. The scheme might prove self-contradictory; it would in any case be full of error, and there would in no case be the assurance that it was all Seneca’s own. This seems sufficient reason for declining the task. If one care to pursue it further, helpful information may be obtained from Bernhardt’s brochure (Die Anschauung, etc.) already referred to, while a discussion of the whole subject will be found in Crouslé’s Thesis, written in Latin, De L. Annaei Senecae Nat. Quaest., which for fulness and fairness leaves nothing to be desired.20 In the Commentary and Notes at the end of the volume Seneca’s scientific opinions and methods are discussed by Sir Archibald Geikie.
V. Some of Seneca’s Predecessors and Contemporaries
The history of ancient Science is a very tangled and abstruse subject, a portion of the history of ancient Philosophy, which lies as much outside the scope of the present work as beyond the powers of the writer. Still, Seneca cannot be altogether detached from what preceded him. In order to throw light upon his work, it may be permissible to pass in rapid review a few of the chief sources from which he drew. Our starting-point may be Aristotle.
Aristotle is with good reason named “the master of those who know” (Dante, H. iv.). He may be said to have summed up the knowledge of the ancient world, at least as far as Greece is concerned, on all subjects. If not the founder of Science any more than of Philosophy, he recapitulated so fully all that went before that he became the fountain-head and source from which all succeeding workers mainly drew. He systematised the existing materials, adding his own criticisms and observations, and illuminating the whole with the strong light of his unrivalled powers. He drew upon many authorities whose works are now lost, the leading names among them being familiar from the Q.N.—Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras, and the rest. The extent and variety of the material may, perhaps, best be understood from a work like Professor Burnet’s Early Greek Philosophy, to which reference should be made. A reasoned consecutive account will there be found of the individual contributions made to philosophy (including science) by the early Greek thinkers. Long before Aristotle’s time numerous physical theories had been propounded, and had been supported by their authors with great acuteness of argument; hardly any question had been left unasked that related to matter, motion, or mind. “We may smile, if we please, at the strange medley of childish fancy and true scientific insight. . . . But we shall do well to remember at the same time that even now it is just such hardy anticipations of experience that make scientific progress possible, and that nearly every one of the early inquirers . . . made some permanent addition to the store of positive knowledge, besides opening up new views of the world in every direction” (op. cit. 29).
Seneca probably possessed fuller details of the investigations and speculations of these early workers than we now do. The existing materials are contained in Professor Diels’ Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, with which his other great work, the Doxographi Graeci, should be compared.21
The chief work of Aristotle upon which Seneca drew was the Meteorologica. The extent to which its subject coincided with that of the Q.N. may be inferred from a glance at its contents. The Meteorologica is divided into four Books, arranged thus:—
I. Scope and relations of Meteorology. The four elementary bodies—earth, water, fire, air—and their relations. Celestial fires. Shooting stars. Comets. The Milky Way. Clouds. Fog. Dew. Hoar-frost. Rain. Snow. Hail. Wind. Formation of rivers. Change in land through action of rivers: effects on movements of races.
II. The sea and its salinity. Theory of the winds, their varieties, positions, etc. Earthquakes and their explanation. Lightning and thunder.
III. Lightning, thunder, and similar phenomena. Halo and rainbow. Mock sun and cognate appearances. Exhalation and its influence.
IV. Theory of the elements (= ingredients or first principles); two active—hot and cold, two passive—dry and moist. Their effect on bodies. Cohesion, Liquefaction, Solidification, Coagulation, Fusion, Solubility, and other properties. Homogeneous and non-homogeneous bodies. Effects of temperature. Place of this work in author’s scheme.
Another work that goes under Aristotle’s name, but is now generally considered spurious, is the De Mundo (the Universe), which in part repeats the subjects of the latter part of the Meteorology. Seneca may also have drawn on the De Coelo (the Heavens), whose subject covers portions of the Q.N. He refers more than a dozen of times to Aristotle by name, but it was not customary to refer to individual works. There are numerous instances in which Aristotle is his authority, though no specific mention of him occurs.
Theophrastus, the pupil of Aristotle, and, his successor as head of the Academy, is also frequently referred to in the Q.N. His master bequeathed to him his library and original manuscripts, and Theophrastus was himself also a voluminous writer.
Among his extant works on Science, we have treatises or tracts dealing with Fire; Winds; Stones; Signs of Rain, Wind, Storm, and Fine Weather; not to mention Colours, Odours, etc., and an extensive work on Plants and their History. His work on Perception and Percepts is said to be a chapter of a larger work on the history of philosophy. At any rate, it records and discusses the opinions of earlier writers on the subjects to which the title refers. For his further views on Physics, and the lost treatise on the subject, see Diels, Dox. Graec. 119 et sqq., and 473 et sqq.
Aratus, who flourished about 280–270 B.C., wrote two poems (in Greek) entitled respectively Phaenomena,22 an introduction to the knowledge of the constellations; and Prognostics, a method of forecasting the weather from astronomical phenomena. Aratus scarcely ranks as a scientific writer, but Seneca refers to his opinions on one occasion in the Q.N. He was apparently held in high esteem by the Romans, for he found a translator (in part) in Cicero, and an imitator in Virgil (Georgics).
Plutarch stands in a somewhat different relation to Seneca. He was a little subsequent in date, but there is a sort of parallelism between the two, both in their scientific and their more general interests. Besides the Physical Causes, already referred to, Plutarch made a compilation in five Books—at least it goes under his name—of the Tenets of the Philosophers (Placita Philosophorum) regarding a vast number of physical, especially astronomical and physiological, subjects. Diels (op. cit. 65) scouts the idea of the genuineness of the “wretched epitome,” and assigns it to the middle of the second century. Whether this be so or not does not much affect its value for us. The existence of the work shows the nature of the material which was available in Seneca’s age. The work is a kind of distant echo of Theophrastus’ lost treatise and preserves many opinions of the older philosophers, of which, to say the least of it, we should otherwise have been less fully informed. The parallelism of the Placita to the Q.N. will appear from a few of the titles. Books II. and III. of the former reproduce a long array of opinions of Thales, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, Anaximenes, Democritus, Xenophanes, Xenocrates, not to mention Plato, Aristotle, the Pythagoreans, the Stoics, etc., etc., regarding such subjects as Eclipses, the Milky Way, Comets, Earthquakes, Clouds, Winds, Thunder and Lightning, etc., etc.
Plutarch also has questions regarding Aratus Prognostics, and a Miscellanea of discussions on allied subjects.
Of Latin writers two have special bearing on Seneca. Lucretius (95–51 B.C.), in his great poem on Nature (De Rerum Natura), has expounded the Epicurean view of the universe. In so far as science is capable of metrical and poetical exposition, he ranks high among scientific writers; while the recent resuscitation of the atomic theory lends special interest to his views. The Romans were always a practical and not a speculative nation, and any deviation from the type, such as Lucretius or Seneca, becomes especially noteworthy and valuable. Numerous parallelisms between them have been brought out in the Commentary and Notes appended to this Translation.
Pliny the Elder stands in respect of date in much the same relation to Seneca as Plutarch does. His great work on Natural History, which was addressed to the reigning Emperor, Vespasian, was published in the year 77, that is, about a dozen years after Seneca’s death. We have already glanced at the bearing of this date upon that of the publication of the Q.N. We are now concerned rather with the relation of the contents of the two works. Gibbon (Decline and Fall, chap. xiii.) speaks of “that immense register where Pliny has deposited the discoveries, the arts, and the errors of mankind.” Nor is the description unjust. The work is of portentous length, extending to thirty-seven Books; it treats of an enormous variety of subjects, physical, geological, geographical, ethnographical, botanical, medical, etc., many of which are now quite dissociated from the title, Natural History. Pliny seems to have read everything that existed in writing on the various subjects included, and his array of authorities attached to the contents of each Book is very imposing.23 But unfortunately his judgment does not appear to have been equal to his industry. Everything is recorded, credible and incredible, whether derived from trustworthy literature or based on mere report: a more uncritical congeries of truth and error it would be difficult to imagine.
Book II. deals with the constitution of the universe, including astronomical and meteorological phenomena, such as Meteors, Halos, Eclipses, Winds, Earthquakes, Rain, etc., etc. Many of these cover the same ground as the Q.N. Among the domestic authors cited for this Book are M. Varro, Livy, Cornelius Nepos, Caecina, “who wrote on the Etruscan cult”; among the foreign authors are Plato, Anaximander, Democritus, Archimedes, Aristotle, etc., etc. The omission of Seneca from the Latin list is balanced by that of Theophrastus from the Greek list. It is, of course, unsafe to build any theory on a merely negative basis. Obviously Pliny had read at any rate portions of these authors, to whom he elsewhere refers, and may, through mere oversight or negligence, have omitted specific mention of them here: he usually refers to authors and not to their individual works. If, at the time of the composition of Book II., which may have been considerably earlier than the date of publication of the whole work, he did not know of Seneca’s Q.N., then the inference seems inevitable that there were current a collection or collections of the opinions (δόξαι) of the older philosophers which were common property to any one interested in such matters. The Placita attributed to Plutarch, though its present form may be much later than Pliny’s time, may have been derived from sources of this kind. We shall not be far wrong in supposing that, in addition to the works still extant, there was a mass of material available to Seneca and Pliny alike which represented the traditional views on physical and allied subjects handed down from the old Greek philosophy. Most of the Latin authors, seventeen in number in all, cited by Pliny on Book II. are now known to us only by name; of those whose works remain, Varro is the only one whom we should consider likely to furnish much material for the topic in hand.
Of Pliny’s lists in general it may be said that they indicate that a good many writers even among the Romans had been attracted by subjects of a scientific or quasi-scientific character, if we may not venture to say that their works can rank as science even in the modified sense in which the term is applicable to Seneca or Pliny. It is in keeping with the character of the people that practical sciences like agriculture (Varro, Columella) and architecture (Vitruvius), not to mention cookery, should have received special attention. These authors, with others like Manilius (Astronomica) and Pomponius Mela (geography), however interesting in themselves, have only an indirect and sometimes only a remote bearing on the Physical Science of their day.
VI. The “Quaestiones Naturales” in the Middle Ages
The Q.N. is a landmark in the progress of Physical Science. From Aristotle and Theophrastus there is a great gap until we reach Seneca: the gap is still greater between Seneca and the Renascence, from which the era of true science is to be dated. The Q.N. is the last word spoken on the subject by the classical world, and practically the only work of its kind that survives to us in Latin. Various commentators on Aristotle and Seneca have, probably unconsciously, appeared as champions of either author’s claim to be considered as the authority in Science during the Middle Ages. All the materials for forming an unbiassed judgment are to be found in Dr. Sandys’ History of Classical Scholarship (vol. i.).
Seneca possessed one or two initial advantages. In the first place, Latin, in which he wrote, was understood and spoken throughout the world, whereas for many centuries Greek was over large tracts of it, particularly in the West, an unknown tongue. Again, Seneca was for long supposed to be a Christian, claimed by the early fathers as “one of us,” and ranked by Jerome among the Ecclesiastical Writers. There was not therefore the same prejudice against his works as is known to have existed in the early Christian centuries against pagan authors, especially against the poets.
As a matter of fact, the knowledge of Aristotle’s works, at any rate in the West, seems to have been derived in the first instance from Arabic translations made in the ninth century and brought to Spain about the twelfth century, while from 1204 onwards he was known in Latin translations made direct from the Greek MSS., which were now accessible. “In Roger Bacon’s day, not-withstanding his eagerness for promoting the study of Aristotle in the original Greek, it was the Latin Aristotle alone that was studied in the schools” (Sandys, op. cit. 575). That was about the year 1267. Seneca seems to have been well known, chiefly as a moralist, through the Middle Ages. He “was famous as the author of the Naturales Quaestiones” (ib. 62724) also. Saint-Hilaire’s claim, therefore (Arist. Meteor. Pref. ii. iii.), “that Aristotle laid down the law on Meteorology, as in everything else, from the age of Alexander right up to the Renascence,” must be accepted with some qualification. There seems room for Ruhkopf’s explanation (Q.N. Pref.) that Seneca’s work was, and continued to be, the sole fountain whence Natural Philosophy derived its source and drew its supplies during many centuries, “until Aristotle’s books were transmitted for public use into Western Europe.”
By the thirteenth century Aristotle had come fully into vogue, and the references to his teaching in Dante (1265–1321), said to number upwards of 300, show what a hold he had obtained upon the greatest man of the age. The “moral Seneca” is also known to Dante, and placed by him in the same region of the unseen world (H. iv.), but the references to his teaching are insignificant by comparison (less than ten). Dr. Sandys states (op. cit. 591 n.) that the references to Aristotle are mainly to the Ethics, Physics, Metaphysics, and De Anima.
But we are now on the eve of the Renascence, whose “morning-star . . . arose in the person of Petrarch” (op. cit. 650), early in the fourteenth century (1304–1374). Greek scholarship was reviving in the West, and Petrarch studied the language in his later days. But his inspiration was derived in the first instance from Latin, “the philosophical works of Cicero and the moral letters of Seneca” (op. cit. ii. 4). The latter he cites as many as sixty times (ib. 7), and he was also familiar with the Senecan tragedies (ib. 6).
From this and from the general course of history we seem justified in believing that during the Middle Ages, in default of any general knowledge of Aristotle, Seneca was the chief authority on Physical Science. The views transmitted by him, for they were comparatively seldom altogether his own, having obtained currency, found their way into literature, and probably went far to colour the conceptions entertained on the subject in all the earlier literature of Modern Europe. Later, when Aristotle’s works became more widely known, his authority became supreme alike in philosophy and in science. Nor does the temporary ascendancy of Seneca, though historically very important, carry with it any presumption of rivalry, not to say superiority, to Aristotle. Seneca may best be regarded as pupil and interpreter of Aristotle, in so far as the two come into competition. His date, the language employed as his medium, his position, his reputation as a Christian, and his activity in other fields, all conspired to give him a position in the Middle Ages which is not necessarily the measure of his intrinsic merit as compared with Aristotle.
VII. The Present Translation
From what has preceded, it will appear that the path of the translator of the Quaestiones Naturales is beset with snares. At best he has a choice of difficulties, It may perhaps, therefore, be well to say a word or two upon the method in which these have been dealt with on the present occasion.
A translator’s prime duty is to follow his author, for which purpose he must first understand him, a requirement not very easily here fulfilled. The texts of the Q.N. vary greatly, as already indicated, and it is no easy matter to select any one that might be consistently followed. The most recent and best text, the Teubner, edited by Gercke, has strong claims, and had it been my good fortune to have it by me when the translation was made, I should have been tempted to adopt it simpliciter, even though in many details it departs somewhat violently from the accepted arrangement. As it was, it did not come to hand until the translation was finished and paged for publication, so that full use could not be made of it. In a few cases its corrections had been anticipated; in some its readings have been adopted; some that could not be incorporated are referred to in a note on the subject.
The text being settled, the translator must, if possible, put himself in the author’s position and obtain his point of view.
In science, particularly, the milieu of the author must be caught if his thoughts are to be accurately reproduced. The danger of attributing to Seneca ideas that were unknown to him and that are due to modern analysis and discovery has to be constantly present to one’s mind. For example, “homogeneity,” “elasticity,” “electricity,” “gas,” “explosion,” etc., are a few of the terms that his language suggests, but that would probably convey a wrong impression of his conception of the phenomena to which they relate. They have been thus ruled out. Nor is Seneca consistent in the use of the terms he employs; he has no scientific vocabulary. In a separate note attention is called to his words for “air” and “atmosphere”; but there are many other terms that belong to the same category. These are, for instance, three words for “thick” or “dense,” crassus, densus, spissus, which he seems to use almost indifferently, at any rate without any precise discrimination. So with terms like “impetus” (impulse, onset) “impulsus” (shove, impulse), “ictus” (stroke, blow), “vis” (force, quantity, amount), “curro” (to run (river), to revolve (heavenly body)), and its compounds, eo (to go), and its compounds, etc., etc.
Apart from any peculiarity of Seneca, Latin allows the use of adjectives and pronouns, whose distinctive gender points their reference, where English requires substantives or their equivalent. Latin, too, often conveys by mere suggestion where English requires explicit expression. This is particularly so with connectives, where a separate clause may be required to develop the nuance of a subtle collocation. In general, assuming—and it is no great stretch—that the author meant to express something, whether right or wrong, I have endeavoured to ascertain what that something was and to convey it to the English reader. In doing so I have had no scruple in using more words than Latin, or in making explicit what I conceived to be implicit, or in varying the rendering of the same term to suit the context and idiom. Ambiguity has, as far as possible, been avoided and even removed. At the same time the author has been followed as closely and faithfully as may be. Where he repeats a term purposely, as he frequently does, the repetition is retained, though a variant might have sounded more euphonious. Probably, in some cases—it may be in a good many—the meaning has been misconceived; certainly, there will be difference of opinion in regard to readings adopted for translation, where one had to be taken and two or more almost equally good had to be left out. Ruhkopf was the text chiefly used; in addition Koeler and the Variorum Edition of Bouillet were constantly at hand, and I have been much indebted to all three in questions of interpretation. Nisard’s French Translation has also been of some service, indirectly by suggestion perhaps rather than directly; in a few passages the translation is from a different text from that printed on the same page. The old Tauchnitz text has been habitually consulted, while Gercke’s text has been carefully collated throughout. The latter does not mention Ruhkopf at all in his Bibliography—surely an involuntary omission. There is a useful Bibliography also in Bouillet, but the date of his Edition is as far back as 1830. To my regret I have not been able to procure Lagrange’s famous French Translation, and the same remark applies to several German works of repute. Lodge’s Translation (1614) was not of any service for my purpose.