Philosophical Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Vol. 3

of Mainz, a man distinguished by the virtues of his mind and intellect¹—strove with exceptional learning and greatest zeal to demonstrate that Lucilius Junior was the author of the poem inscribed Aetna, which is usually attributed to Cornelius Severus.

I have seen the arguments that each used to vindicate that poem for Lucilius Junior, ingeniously devised and elegantly set forth, so that they are not lacking in their power to persuade the reader: but if one examines the matter more carefully, I fear that all such assent may slip away from the mind. I am persuaded that only this much follows from it with certainty: that Cornelius Severus could not have been the author of this poem. But whether Lucilius Junior is its author remains uncertain, although if one must prefer a certain author over an anonymous one, Lucilius is perhaps the one to whom one could attribute it by conjecturing with some degree of probability. In truth, from the arguments which have been set forth more fully by Wernsdorf, this is not yet accomplished.

However, the whole hinge of the argumentation is inverted in Seneca’s Ep. LXXIX, from which we see that Lucilius had for a long time been preparing a description of Aetna. But we would gather more eagerly than is right from this that, therefore, that project had also been completed. And that Seneca was speaking there of a larger poem—such as are Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and the now lost epic of Cornelius Severus, inscribed The Sicilian War (of Octavian with Sextus Pompeius, as I think with Wernsdorf, loc. cit. p. 26)—and not of a single poem about Aetna, the words from the cited Epistle seem to teach, placed in the margin². Now, from these words one can only gather that Seneca had urged Lucilius to insert a description of Aetna in place of an episode into his poem about Sicily, or Memorabilia of Sicily. For if our friend had been thinking of a single poem, he certainly could not have said: touch upon, since that is the word by which episodes and similar things are usually designated. But the whole tenor and composition of this poem will teach every reader, free from any prejudice, that it is not an episode or a fragment like the Shield of Hesiod¹.

1 See Gotting. gel. Anz., year 1785, no. 148, p. 1479.
2 But there is no reason why you should impute that task to me: for you were going to give in to your malady (poetic enthusiasm) even if no one commanded you to, until you describe Aetna in your poem, and touch upon this place solemn to all poets.