Philosophical Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Vol. 1

Then, approaching the subject, he treats of fiery meteors, of caprae (goats), haedi (kids), fiery globes, and shooting stars in particular; of electric sparks, and in those chiefly of the Dioscuri, to which he adds something on beams and shields in chapter I; on the nature and prognostic power of halos in II; on the rainbow III-VIII, where he ranges widely and with dialectical method into optical theories. Thence he moves to rods IX, showing how they differ from crowns X, and adding some things about the species of each at the beginning of chapter XI, up to the words "how they are to be transferred there now." The remainder of this chapter, along with the two following, XII and XIII (more correctly with the last words of this chapter: "For what does it return by connecting"), he spends in describing parhelia, in the former of which he illustrates the manner in which a solar eclipse is observed, which he describes in passing. Henceforth, he runs through the remaining fires similar to comets, such as bothyni, pithiae, chasmata XIV, bright flashes, and fires, in which he touches upon comets and compares their substance with the substance of rainbows and crowns, repeating some things about their nature XV. Led by the mention made on this occasion of mirrors, he allows himself to narrate the clever lust of Hostius, a most wicked man XVI. Thus, he gradually arrives at ridiculing those philosophers who, among other vain things, inquire into the reason for the invention of mirrors, which was done not to aid luxury, but so that the eclipsing sun, the moon, and man himself might be better known. And this recalls to his memory the simplicity of the ancients before mirrors were known to men, with whom he compares the more corrupt age of later times.

In the first chapter of the second book, which lacks a preface—unless one considers the first three sections of this chapter to be the preface, where in § 2 and 3 he proposes his division of natural questions, or rather the whole chapter, in the remaining part of which he responds to objections made to him concerning the place of the question of earthquakes, and inquires in passing into some things about the earth 4 and 5, by which he builds, as it were, a path for the subsequent question; and for that reason, I would not wish to hold this chapter as a preface, which the last three books also lack; for it clings more closely to the question itself, nor is it Seneca's habit to seek the arguments of his prefaces from matters or universal questions related to the subject, but from the corrupt morals of his own age.