Philosophical Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Vol. 2

OF THE NEW EDITOR

Having followed the precept of the poet almost to the letter, after having committed the first volume to the press in the year 1797, he brought forth the following volumes in the years 1800, 1805, 1808, 1811. Indeed, the sixth and final volume has not yet appeared after sixteen or more years; we greatly wished to have this volume in our hands, since many new readings, excerpted from new manuscripts, will be presented therein.

We have kept the text, notes, and arguments of the German editor almost everywhere, changing nothing in them, unless they appeared expressed in language so obscure and so German rather than Latin that we deemed them scarcely intelligible to a French reader; to these have been added the notes of J. Lipsius, Gronovius, B. Rhenanus, Fromondus, and other ancient commentators, many of which had been wrongly neglected by Ruhkopf; as well as the lucid interpretations of our countryman Lagrange, whenever some assistance could be obtained from them. In the Letters and the Natural Questions, the editions produced by Jo. Schweighäuser (Strasbourg, 1809) for the former, and Kœler (Göttingen, 1817) for the latter, were of no small help to us. Finally, if anything remained to be done after the learned lucubrations of so many and such great men, we have attempted it, at least to the best of our ability, by inserting a few brief notes, whether concerning philosophical opinions or the names of men and places, about which we had an abundance of material to collect, as we were writing the recently published Dictionary to illustrate ancient times, both sacred and profane¹.

Since all the notes, culled from here and there, were to be gathered into a single bundle, as it were, so that one might be formed from many, it seemed of little use to append the name of the author to each note, except when different interpretations or readings conflicted with one another and we were proposing something new.

¹ Dictionnaire classique de l'Antiquité, sacrée et profane, etc., avec des Tables d'évaluation des poids, monnaies, mesures, etc., 2 vols. in-8°, 1826.