BOOK VII

TREATING OF COMETS

I. Phenomena, however wonderful, are not noted and admired unless they are uncommon. The sun and moon and starry heavens have no observers, but a Comet at once sets the whole world agog. The nature of the stars is a sublime and likewise a profitable study 271

II. The nature of _Comets_ has not been hitherto fully investigated. They are so rare that one wants a record of the movements of all ever observed 273

III. Democritus, Eudoxus, Conon, Epigenes, and Apollonius of Myndus all fail to give any satisfactory account of the matter. Nor had the Egyptians or Chaldaeans investigated them 274

IV. Epigenes explains the Comet as due to a conjunction of Saturn with Mars or the Sun: it is akin to whirlwind and “beam” meteors 275

V. But there are essential differences between whirlwind, which is terrestrial, and beams and torches, which are above the clouds. There is a difference of duration also. Beams and Comets, it is true, have been mistaken for one another. It was a Comet, according to Aristotle, that appeared before the destruction of Buris and Helice. The character of the flame differs in the two forms 276

VI. There are two kinds of Comets, according to Epigenes. They are produced by air driven up and setting on fire suitable material above, which takes place every day at the same hour 277

VII. But Comets are not concomitants of winds; there is no parallelism in the phenomena. The higher ones, which have an orbit, he attributes to the north wind, but the facts do not square here either 278

VIII. The course and altitude of Comets render the whirlwind explanation impossible 279

IX. The force and duration of whirlwinds are similarly inadequate 280

X. The slowness and steadiness of the Comet could not be accounted for on this assumption, nor its general behaviour and shape 281

XI. We must look for some other explanation. Now Comets, it must be premised, appear in all quarters of the sky. Whatever the divisions of them made by the Greeks, they are all of one origin. Some of the ancients thought they were due to the union of two planets 283

XII. Again the facts do not square. Comets and planets appear simultaneously. A conjunction is momentary, a Comet lasts six months sometimes. The planets do not pass much beyond the ecliptic, but Comets appear in every quarter of the sky. And there are other objections 284

XIII. Artemidorus thinks the firmament is solid and has openings for stars. Comets are casual planets, or formed by conjunctions of them. His account is a tissue of barefaced falsehoods 286

XIV. How would a solid firmament be supported? No feasible explanation can be offered. Besides, the number of stars is so great--and they may all be “wanderers” if an indefinite number is--that there must be innumerable conjunctions of them, _i.e._ Comets. But, as a matter of fact, Comets are rare 287

XV. Again the huge Comets of the times of Demetrius and Attalus would require scores of planetary conjunctions to form them 288

XVI. Ephorus, a mere chronicler, who takes this view, has nothing to support him. He tries, like others of his set, to embellish his work by narrating marvels. Why did he not tell us what the two stars were into which the Comet resolved itself, as he alleges it did? 289

XVII. Apollonius of Myndus holds the Comet to be a true star (planet) with an erratic course, visible only when it approaches the lower part of its orbit. Different colours of Comets 290

XVIII. But Comets do not wax and wane as they approach and recede like planets. Nor do their orbits lie within the ecliptic. Besides, we can see through a Comet but not through a true star (planet) 291

XIX. Zeno the Stoic thinks the light of converging stars gives the appearance of a longer star. Others hold modified forms of the same opinion or analogous views 291

XX. Most of the Stoics hold Comets to be evanescent, and attribute them to friction of the air. Various phenomena are analogous 292

XXI. Their methods of accounting for varieties of orbits in Comets 293

XXII. I do not agree with any School. Reasons 295

XXIII. Further arguments showing difference between fires and Comets 295

XXIV. There may be many stars in the universe whose paths have not been traced: Comets are such. No satisfactory explanation has been given of the mind, but its existence is not doubted 297

XXV. Comets are not yet fully understood. Many things are in the same category. A future age will be amazed at our ignorance of such matters 298

XXVI. Reasons of apparent movements of Comets. The transparence and shape accounted for 299

XXVII. Parallels to the differences between Comets and other planets 300

XXVIII. Comets give prognostications, but not of immediate events or weather 302

XXIX. Denial of heaviness and slowness of Comets 303

XXX. Humility is as becoming in investigators of the nature of the heavens as in worshippers. God has revealed but a little of Himself to man 304

XXXI. One cannot be surprised that everything has not yet been discovered. We must leave something to succeeding generations. We are not yet fully proficient in vice, though we have striven so long and hard. We still retain, strange to say, some traces of manhood 305

XXXII. We are all given up to low pleasures and vices, and devote our strength to them. Philosophy is kept for wet days. The old teachers have no successors. In fact, we are letting go what they discovered. We at best play with truth, which, as of old, lies at the bottom of the well, and needs the best efforts of young and old, late and early, to bring it to light 307

NOTES BY SIR A. GEIKIE 309

TRANSLATOR’S NOTES ON “AIR,” QUOTATIONS, AND GERCKE’S READINGS 344

INDEX 351

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.

[1] Lucan, owing to the jealousy of Nero, was induced to join Piso’s conspiracy in 65 and suffered the penalty. His heroic poem, the _Pharsalia_, though in many respects crude, is a wonderful production for a man of twenty-six.

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]

[2] From Spain, besides the Senecas, Lucan and Martial, already mentioned, came Columella, Pomponius Mela, Quintilian, etc.; from Gaul came many rhetoricians; Africa sent so many of the same class that by Juvenal’s time (_circ._ 100) it could with propriety be designated “nursery of lawyers” (see Teuffel, _Hist. of Rom. Lit._ vol. ii. 6).

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.

[3] His maternal aunt acted as nurse on the occasion: see _Consol. ad Helviam_, xvii.

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.

[4] This lady must not be confounded with her mother, who bore the same name.

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.

[5] Dio Cassius is often very caustic in his criticisms, but even he recognises Seneca’s sterling merit and services to the state.

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:--

[6] Mr. Henderson’s _The Life and Principate of the Emperor Nero_ should also be studied.

“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]

[7] One would have expected that Claudius’ fate would be to be enrolled among--the Pumpkins. But the piece as we have it contains no allusion to this.

(_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.

[8] See Mr. Henderson’s _Life and Principate of Nero_, 286–7, and Mr. Glover’s _The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire_, 149.

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, procurator[9] 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.

[9] The procurator was in this case practically governor. In some instances he was the representative of a chief governor (_praeses_) to whom he was subject, _e.g._ Pontius Pilate was procurator of Judaea under the Governor of Syria.

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]

[10] See particularly Pliny’s treatment of Comets (ii. xxii.), Winds (xliv.-l.), Lightning (liii.), Floating Islands (xcvi.). But most striking of all is the reproduction (lxiii.) of Seneca’s remark (208 end of c. xv.), “If any nether gods existed, they would have been dug up long ere this in the mines sunk by our avarice and luxury.” The two authors had hit upon the same thought, and Seneca had happened to use it first. Or it may have been a current witticism in an age of unbelief.

[11] Seneca’s name does occur in the lists attached to Books VI. IX. and XXXVI.; the first is geographical, dealing with Asia and Africa, the second has for subject fishes and aquatic life in general, while the third deals with the natural history of stones.

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]

[12] “The Stoics affected to despise physical studies, or at any rate to postpone them to morals. Seneca shared this edifying but far from scientific persuasion. But after his final withdrawal from court, as the wonders of nature forced themselves on his notice, he reconsidered his old prejudice, and entered with ardour on the contemplation of physical phenomena” (Cruttwell, _op. cit._ 381).

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