Physical Science in the Time of Nero: Naturales Quaestiones

...upon the subject of physical speculation. Its currency during the Middle Ages rendered it for many centuries the chief authority in science in Western Europe. Its cosmology represented not only popular but also educated opinion, and became the source of many of the accepted ideas concerning the universe that passed into early modern literature in our own and other countries.

Indebtedness to editors of Seneca and to others, which has been very great, is acknowledged as fully as possible in the Introduction and elsewhere where help has been availed of. The interest taken in the book by various friends is also gratefully acknowledged. Professor Sir Joseph Larmor and Professor J. Arthur Thomson have made several useful suggestions. Professor Herbert J. C. Grierson has very kindly read the proofs and given valuable assistance in other respects. But my chief acknowledgments are due to Sir Archibald Geikie. To him the translation owed its inception: his constant aid and encouragement have enabled me to complete a task from which I should probably have otherwise shrunk. I am indebted to him also for the Commentary appended to the translation, in which the questions treated by Seneca are considered from the point of view of modern Science. It has been to him a labour of love: may our readers enjoy something of the same satisfaction!

OLD ABERDEEN,

September 27, 1909.