Philosophical Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Vol. 1

In particular, the acumen and learning of Seneca are to be admired, as is his modesty, both in many other places of the Questions and especially in Book VII, which is about Comets, where his excellence of judgment will prove itself to everyone. Therefore, it is no wonder that the Natural Questions of Seneca are found to have been read and transcribed with such zeal throughout almost all the centuries of our era.

In which, however, in the ardor of celebrating them, a not insignificant source of the errors with which both the manuscript codices and the older editions of the Natural Questions abound is to be sought: forasmuch as interpolations of various kinds, dittographies, glosses, etc., first written in the margin and then inserted into the text by scribes, have defiled the Natural Questions more than can be said. Nor would we have the opportunity to treat them so corrected now, if excellent men of earlier times, most outstanding in both genius and critical virtue, and in learning, diligence, and assiduity, had not repeatedly directed all their efforts so that, by collating codices and judging readings, they might detect the interpolations of scribes and others, and free the text, as we call it, from errors. Among these, Matthæus Fortunatus the Pannonian (entirely omitted by Jöcher) stands out, who best assisted Aldus in correcting these books of Natural Questions at Venice in the year 1522, in quarto, as do Ferdinand Pincianus, M. Ant. Muretus, Janus Gruterus, and Joh. Fred. Gronovius: for Justus Lipsius, with age and illness weighing upon him, having completed the first chapter of the first book, was forced to desist from his work, which up to that point he had dedicated with the greatest honor to the promotion of good letters. Nevertheless, his begun edition of the Questions was continued and brought to an end by Libertus Fromondus, professor of philosophy at the University of Louvain (d. 1653), an excellent man who properly joined the study and knowledge of antiquity with philosophy and mathematics, and dared more than once to depart from the teachers of physics of the Peripatetics of his time, and indeed in the first place. Now, indeed, the merits of these men, greater than my praise, regarding Seneca’s Natural Questions are outstanding, whether you look at the critical part or the exegetical. But that they cultivated the former more than the latter, if you except Lib. Fromondus...