Philosophical Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Vol. 1

might help promote the study of doctrine. The fruit of this study and assiduous diligence was a sufficiently mature book on Comets, as he himself reported, which he later revised and published as the seventh book of the Questions, when, as an old man, he had withdrawn from the calumnies and anxieties of the court. For there are many indications in the volume that the book was composed by an old man—for example, at the beginning of Book VI—which it is not necessary to pile up and accumulate here. Nor shall I add anything concerning Lucilius, to whom these Natural Questions are dedicated, since I have dealt with him elsewhere (in the preface to Vol. III of our edition, page 8).

Furthermore, he himself often clearly indicates the reasons that moved him to embrace this study and to undertake these inquiries. He says that by the investigation and knowledge of nature, we are given a fuller opportunity and capacity for knowing, admiring, loving, and venerating God, both in spirit and in life; and therefore, for fulfilling each one’s own duties and knowing each one’s own lot and condition in the most sincere manner of adoration and religion. Thus, physics is worthy of the highest study. Wherefore, we see him directing all the powers of his mind toward this virtue of physics in particular, which is undoubtedly the most serious; his digressions also look toward this, which are contained in commending and restoring the simplicity of the customs of the ancients, and in vehemently accusing and chastising corruption. Nevertheless, it can be gathered from some passages of the Questions that the other part of physics, which is seen in assisting the comforts of human life and society—and which is undoubtedly of the greatest moment—likewise occupied Seneca’s mind. However, I believe he did not wish to give it the primary consideration here, since he had proposed for himself the task of seeking what we placed in the first rank, having yielded the latter part to students of mechanics and geometry, to craftsmen, and to physicians for treatment, and to what is usually expounded in the doctrine of the sage and the inventions of the arts—a thing which, to mention one example, Posidonius had done clearly, as our author shows plainly in Letter xc.

That this is therefore not to be blamed on our author any more than the fact that, omitting the general part of physics—which we indeed see placed before every compendium of this doctrine—he proceeds immediately to explaining the individual subjects themselves; and he is so far from using the mathematical parts and aids—as salutary as they are necessary to physics—in their proper places, that he expressly separates the use of that doctrine from his work. Indeed, one must not think he did this because he held mathematics in contempt. For it is clear that in this matter he stood more with Plato than with Socrates. Moreover, he frequently praises and commends that excellent art, and hints that human life cannot sufficiently well do without it. And how could a man who is so eloquent about the importance of inventions and arts for human life fall into the crime of ignorance, or even barbarism, regarding this? But if you examine and explore the entire plan of the author by reading attentively, it is easy to understand that Seneca’s aim was to explain clearly to his fellow citizens about meteors, air, water, wind, earthquakes, comets, etc., without the aid of arguments taken from any art alien to them—or indeed, as is mostly the case, taken from more recondite doctrine—and to explain the gravity and supreme dignity of physics in the prefaces placed before the first and third books, with some digressions interspersed here and there dealing with flattery, contempt of death, etc., as the occasion might demand and as might seem fitting for an old man to chastise and reform his fellow citizens. Nor is he to be thought to have taken upon himself the task of exhausting the whole of physical doctrine, but only of solving the most important questions, so that he might benefit as many as possible and provide the means to use his precepts with little effort. He would not have achieved this, however, had he not set aside more recondite doctrine, although this plan of his may have been less pleasing to us.

It is clear that in the strenuous execution of this, he imitated not a few authors of his own sect, whom he wisely chose to follow in this matter rather than Aristotle, who in his physical commentaries, and in the Meteorologica books themselves, did not disdain mathematical arguments. For what would it have profited his fellow citizens—for whom he primarily composed these questions and who were for the most part not sufficiently instructed in the method of more rigorous disciplines—if, by taking proofs from them and thus neglecting the popularity by which he might win readers for his book, he had shown himself a more learned but not a more useful teacher? For the Romans, if you except a few, had given little effort to mathematical studies, and, as is now manifest from the education and instruction of most, who we have learned looked primarily to agriculture and military service, they rarely handled the scholarly dust and the rod. Cicero himself, to omit other things as being well known, has left a sufficiently clear testimony regarding this matter.