III “Quaestiones Naturales”
This work stands in a category by itself. It raises a number of difficult problems, in which every reader of it, whether classical scholar or not, is interested.
The historical title, Natural Questions, is convenient, though, without explanation, a little misleading. The nearest rendering of the Latin form Quaestiones Naturales is Physical Inquiries, or Investigations in the Domain of Physics, or, as in the title, what we should now call Physical Science. The terms Physics and Science had a very different connotation in that age and in ours. Plutarch, almost a younger contemporary of Seneca, gravely discusses in a work with a similar title such questions as Why shepherds give their sheep salt, Why horses’ hair is superior to mares’ for casting-lines, and even, Why a dog runs after a stone rather than after the person who threw it! The extent of such a title is determined pretty much by the range of topics an author decides to include. In Seneca’s case, as it happens, the branches chiefly dealt with are Astronomy and Meteorology, together with certain portions of what may be designated as Physical Geography including Seismology.
Science was in that day synonymous with Philosophy, or at any rate Philosophy embraced all that could claim to be Science. Learning was homogeneous; its subdivisions had not yet been separated or differentiated.
The treatise was addressed in a quasi-epistolary form to Lucilius Junior, procurator9 of Sicily. Most of our knowledge of him is derived from Seneca, who, besides the Q.N., addressed to him his Epistles and his tract on Providence. Lucilius seems to have been a protégé of Seneca, and rising from the ranks under his fostering care and guidance, not only to have attained a position of influence, but also to have achieved literary distinction. His philosophical predilections were toward Epicureanism, but he was a man of high principle and character, though not exempt from dangerous temptations at various points in his career. His public labours had associated him with Sicily, and the themes of his writings, chiefly poems as it would appear, had been drawn from the same quarter. He is, not without probability, supposed to have been the author of the anonymous didactic poem Aetna, for long attributed to Virgil, a work which presents many interesting parallelisms to the Q.N. both in its science and its philosophy. Seneca’s Epistle lxxix. contains a special charge to Lucilius, who was at the time making a circuit of his province, to report the facts concerning Charybdis—Seneca knew all there was to know about Scylla—and to investigate in detail the present condition of Aetna. The letter goes on to banter Lucilius upon the inclusion of Aetna in the poem on which he was engaged—no doubt the work referred to in Q.N. 114, 142; cf. 167. The whole question is discussed with full knowledge by Professor Robinson Ellis in the Introduction (xxxvi-xlviii) to his edition of the Aetna, to which reference should be made. For other allusions to Lucilius in Seneca see, besides the Q.N., Epistles xix. xxvi. xxxiv. etc.
The Q.N. was composed probably about the year 63 or 64. We might content ourselves with the statement of the fact, did not the circumstances of composition throw light upon difficulties of arrangement and sequence which can scarcely be passed unnoticed. The evidence on which we have to rely is chiefly internal. The exact date of Lucilius’ procuratorship in Sicily (159) is unknown, but the consulship of Regulus and Virginius, which witnessed the Campanian earthquake (221), fell in 63, that is, some two years before Seneca’s death. The allusions in the Preface to Book III. (109) are still more direct and convincing. The writer was drawing near his end, pressed hard on the rear by old age, with every necessity and incentive to hurry on the completion of his task.
On the other hand, the mission despatched by Nero to the sources of the Nile (235–6) would naturally point to an earlier date during the more promising years of his reign—unless indeed, as is by no means improbable, the complimentary reference to the emperor’s virtues be a piece of adulation. A similar reference recurs in connection with the comet in Nero’s reign (290), the date of which must (after Tacitus) be assigned to the year 61.
The Elder Pliny, writing in 77, about a dozen years after Seneca’s death, adds to each Book of his Natural History an exhaustive list of the authorities, native and foreign, that he had used. Book II. deals with many of the subjects of the Q.N., of which it is in some places an expansion, but in most little more than an epitome.10 And yet no mention of Seneca occurs in the list of authorities attached, which seems strange if the work had then been given to the world.11
We read in the Sixth Book of the Q.N. (230) that the author had previously, when a young man, composed a work upon Earthquakes. This, taken in connection with what precedes, and with what we know of the author’s character and interests, affords some ground for the conjecture that he may have worked intermittently at the subject at various periods of life. But no doubt the arrangement of the materials and the completion of the work belong to his latter years. He had by this time lost his hold upon Nero, and had practically retired from political activity. His trust in princes had been found misplaced. He was disappointed if not embittered. The discussion of public affairs was precluded. It was dangerous even to let one’s thoughts rest upon them. But there were consolations for political disappointment and inactivity. Recourse might be made to the contemplation of those great works and workings of Nature which are exempt from the caprices of human passion. The study of Nature was equally fitted to humble and to console; to it Seneca betook himself for refuge.12
The Q.N. may, thus, have been composed at different dates, materials for it being gathered at various times as opportunity offered. But the final arrangement and systematisation belong to the last years of the author’s life, about the years 63 or 64. The publication may not have taken place until some time subsequently, and may have been carried out by Lucilius, who was Seneca’s literary executor. So much is certain, that the work as we have it is not the work as it left the author’s hand.
Much time and ingenuity have been bestowed on attempts to restore the Q.N. to what may be supposed to have been its original form. The most casual reading of it as it stands, shows that it is full of inequalities. If the clue could only be recovered, much of its difficulty and obscurity would disappear. As it is, it abounds in abrupt transitions, interruptions of the logical sequence, repetitions, excrescences, and even irrelevancies and inconsistencies, which it can hardly be supposed that an author would have allowed to remain in a treatise prepared for publication.
One or two considerations derived from the present arrangement will serve to throw light upon this point. In the first place, Book IV., as we have it, is evidently composite. Between Chaps. II. and III. there is a deep hiatus. In the former chapter the discussion of the Nile is cut short, and the author’s own view is not even indicated, much less established; while the latter opens so abruptly as at least to suggest that it may have originally been preceded by something with which it stood in organic sequence.
Again, the several Books do not conform to the author’s division of the subject as set forth in the opening of Book II. (51), but follow—or precede—one another anyhow.
Then, three of the Books (I. III. IV.) have a formal Preface, while the others have not, though in them, too, with the exception of the Sixth, the opening chapter is introductory in character.
Any attempt to restore a more intelligible order must depend for its success on the extent to which we may assume Seneca to have been a methodiser. In Book II. i, he certainly states very distinctly the divisions of his subject—(a) things in the heavens, (b) things between heaven and earth, (c) things on the earth. But it by no means follows that he himself maintained this order of treatment, or that he always exhausted one subject before passing on to the next. The division evidently enumerates the subjects in order of dignity or worth, and may have little, if any, relation to the order of their discussion; in fact, in Book II. he goes on immediately to deal with meteorology, his second and not his first topic.
Bernhardt (Die Anschauung des Seneca vom Universum, p. 7) frankly accepts the traditional order of the Books, and finds its explanation in the distinction between phenomena and elements. The first three Books deal with the phenomena of heaven, air, earth, respectively; the last four respectively with the elements—water, air, earth, fire. This is ingenious, if not altogether convincing.
The most recent editor, Professor Gercke, divides Book IV. into its two constituents, IV. (a) = IV. Pref.-ii., IV. (b) = IV. iii.-xiii., and arranges the Books in ascending scale thus: Earth III. IV. (a); Air IV. (b), II. V. VI; Heaven VII. I. There seems great probability, almost amounting to certainty, that there were originally eight Books, as he supposes. But a consistent and fairly natural order might perhaps be restored with less violence to the accepted form than his scheme involves. Books III. and IV. (a) seem to have been misplaced or transposed, being placed after Book II. instead of after Book VI., where they originally stood; Book IV. (a) had somehow got mutilated, which the more easily led to the confusion. Book IV. (b) also suffered somewhat in the process. Thus the original order may have been I. II. IV. (b), V. VI.; III. IV. (a); VII.; the first five Books deal with Meteorology, including Seismology (air), the next two with Physical Geography (earth), the last Book with Astronomy (heaven). A single change of the order is thus all that is required; but, of course, the regrettable gap after IV. (a) remains.
Even with this rearrangement the sequence leaves something to be desired. But it must be borne in mind that the author makes a claim to philosophic liberty (178), and that in no case can the rules of modern requirement be applied to him.
Of course, if the assumption of methodical arrangement be unfounded, and the author composed just as the humour took him, the existing order may be all right: it is as good as any other fortuitous collocation. Some have supposed that the work was left unfinished at the author’s death, but of this we have no proof.
The language of the Preface to Book III. has been taken by some to imply that this was the opening of the whole work. Whether this is so must remain to some extent matter of opinion. It may, however, be pointed out (a) that the claim of the Preface to Book I. seems at least equally strong, (b) that the language of § 4 of the Preface to Book III. (110), “how much is unaccomplished of my plan, though not of my life,” seems inapplicable to a work that was not begun or merely beginning. There was a remnant of the work and a remnant of life, but they were disproportionate, the one large, the other small. This was a reminder to hurry on to completion a work with which, ex hypothesi, some progress had already been made.
When all has been said, we must, for practical purposes, accept the book as it has been handed down to us and make what we can of it. The difficulties are not exhausted even when the pristine order is restored. What is true of the work as a whole is true of it also in detail. The text is full of uncertainties and corruptions. The work was popular and was frequently copied, and this naturally gave rise to variations, which, being improved upon by succeeding generations of copyists, in course of time rendered the text in many places very obscure if not unmeaning. The nature of the subject matter, frequently little understood, no doubt facilitated and hastened the process of corruption. Hence the translator has at every turn to decide first what, and then how, he shall translate.13
An added difficulty is the form of address to Lucilius. The adoption of the epistolary style, whatever its other advantages, has not, it must be admitted, conduced to the lucidity of the argument. Science does not readily lend itself to exposition by dialogue, and the trouble is aggravated when, in addition to the correspondent, an imaginary opponent is from time to time introduced and indifferently addressed in the second person, or referred to in the third. To make matters still worse, the author frequently conceals himself behind the mask of one or other of the disputants, irrespective of pronouns. Finally, he employs “we” sometimes of himself and his correspondent, sometimes of his philosophic sect, the Stoics, sometimes of his nation, the Romans, sometimes of his kind, man in general!