original: "Plurimum ad inveniendum contulit qui speravit posse reperiri."

PREFACE

Duplicate copy exchanged 4-26-50. Added by the University Library.

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 a translation of the whole of Seneca’s prose works (except the Apocolocyntosis—a satire on the deification of the Emperor Claudius) in 1614, but no English editor or commentator seems to have turned his attention to the Quaestiones Naturales (Natural Questions), 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 Lodge’s translation, a folio volume of nearly a thousand pages, was probably very good for its day, but is now out of date.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 Index also, some details are included that may be helpful to those who have neither time nor opportunity for hunting up historical and other allusions in books of reference. The object has been to make the volume self-interpreting, though it may be that the course has not always been judiciously steered between providing too little and too much information.

The Quaestiones Naturales must be regarded as occupying an important position historically. It was the latest work on the subject of physical speculation to emerge from the classical world.