Physical science in the time of Nero being a translation of the Quaestiones natu
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~130,000 words · 610 passages
Cite this work
- APALucius Annaeus Seneca. (n.d.). Physical science in the time of Nero being a translation of the Quaestiones natu. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/seneca/physical-science-in-the-time-of-nero-being-a-translation-of-the-quaestiones-natu
- MLALucius Annaeus Seneca. "Physical science in the time of Nero being a translation of the Quaestiones natu." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/seneca/physical-science-in-the-time-of-nero-being-a-translation-of-the-quaestiones-natu.
- ChicagoLucius Annaeus Seneca. Physical science in the time of Nero being a translation of the Quaestiones natu. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/seneca/physical-science-in-the-time-of-nero-being-a-translation-of-the-quaestiones-natu.
What it is about
Seneca's 'Natural Questions', written around AD 63: his attempt to explain the phenomena of sky and earth without recourse to the gods.
Context and history
It deals with meteors, lightning, rivers, springs, hail, floods, earthquakes and comets. The value lies not in the results — many are wrong — but in the purpose and the manner: Seneca holds that a frightening phenomenon stops frightening once its cause is known, and that studying nature is part of the Stoic therapy against fear. Hence the moral digressions that interrupt the exposition and are in fact its point. The book on comets is the most remarkable: against all antiquity, Seneca maintains that they are heavenly bodies with orbits of their own and that one day their law will be known. The title of this English edition, by Clarke and Geikie, is the translator's, not Seneca's.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
This book is intended primarily for English readers, to most of whom it will probably be at least new. Thomas Lodge, the well-known dramatist, published in 1614 a translation of the whole of Seneca’s prose works (except the _Apocolocyntosis_), but no English editor or commentator seems to have turned his attention to the _Quaestiones Naturales_, either before or since. Lodge’s translation, a folio volume of nearly a thousand pages, was probably very good for its day, but is now out of date. The Introduction is designed to give a setting to the translation, and to answer a few of the questions that would naturally occur to the mind of an intelligent reader who was not a classical scholar. In the