Natural Questions

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Harry M. Hine

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780226748542
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Geschichte & Theorie der Philosophie

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist, statesman, and adviser to the emperor Nero, all during the Silver Age of Latin literature. The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca is a fresh and compelling series of new English-language translations of his works in eight accessible volumes. Edited by world-renowned classicists Elizabeth Asmis, Shadi Bartsch, and Martha C. Nussbaum, this engaging collection restores Seneca—whose works have been highly praised by modern authors from Desiderius Erasmus to Ralph Waldo Emerson—to his rightful place among the classical writers most widely studied in the humanities.

Written near the end of Seneca's life, Natural Questions is a work in which Seneca expounds and comments on the natural sciences of his day—rivers and earthquakes, wind and snow, meteors and comets—offering us a valuable look at the ancient scientific mind at work. The modern reader will find fascinating insights into ancient philosophical and scientific approaches to the physical world and also vivid evocations of the grandeur, beauty, and terror of nature.

BOOK 3 [ORIGINALLY BOOK 1]

<On Terrestrial Waters>

(praef.1) I am not unaware, Lucilius, excellent man, of how great is the enterprise whose foundations I am laying in my old age, now that I have decided to traverse the world, to seek out its causes and secrets, and to present them for others to learn about. When shall I investigate things so numerous, gather together things so scattered, examine things so inaccessible? (2) Old age is at my back and accuses me of having used up my years in fruitless pursuits. Let us press on all the more, and let hard work repair the losses of a misspent life. Let night be added to day, let business affairs be cut back, let there be no more anxiety about family estates situated far from their owner, let the mind have time entirely to itself, let it turn to contemplation of itself, at least in its final stages. (3) It will do so, it will drive itself on, and each day it will measure the short time left; whatever has been lost, it will recover by using its present life with care. One can rely on the transition from remorse to honorable action.

So I want to shout out these lines by the eminent poet:¹

We raise our mighty spirits and in a brief time attempt the greatest deeds.

I would say this if I were embarking on the project as a boy or young man (for any length of time would be too limited for such a great enterprise); but as it is we have started a serious, significant, endless project in our afternoon hours. (4) Let us do what is normal on journeys: those who have set out rather late rely on speed to make up the delay. Let us hurry, and let us tackle a task that is perhaps insuperable, certainly great, without using old age as an excuse. My mind grows in stature whenever it sees the size of the undertaking, and it ponders how much of the enterprise, not how much of its own life, still remains.

(5) Some people have worn themselves out writing down the deeds of foreign kings and the sufferings and audacities perpetrated by nations against each other. How much better it is to extinguish one’s own evils than to transmit the evils of others to posterity! How much more important to praise the works of the gods rather than the robberies of Philip or of Alexander, and of others who became famous by destroying nations and were no lesser disasters to mortals than a flood that has swept over all the plains, or a conflagration in which a large proportion of living things has gone up in flames! (6) They write of how Hannibal overcame the Alps; how he unexpectedly brought to Italy a war that had gathered strength from the disasters in Spain; how when his power was broken, even after Carthage,² he stubbornly wandered from one king to the next, offering them a commander against the Romans, asking for an army; and how as an old man he did not stop looking for war in every nook and cranny: he could manage without a homeland, but not without an enemy!

(7) How much better it is to ask what ought to be done³ rather than what has been done, and to teach those who have entrusted everything to fortune that she has granted nothing enduring, that all her gifts blow away more rapidly than a breeze! For she cannot keep still, she delights in replacing joy with sorrow, or at least in blending them. So let no one be confident when things go well, or give up when they go badly: events swing back and forth. (8) Why are you rejoicing? You do not know when the sources of your elation will desert you: they will end when it suits them, not you. Why are you downcast? You have hit the bottom, now there is the opportunity to rise up again. (9) Adverse circumstances change for the better, desirable ones for the worse. So one must grasp the vicissitudes not just of private households, which a slight misfortune can overthrow, but of ruling households too. Kingdoms have risen from the lowest levels and towered over their rulers, ancient empires have collapsed at the peak of their prosperity, and it is impossible to count how many empires have been destroyed by others. At this very moment god is building up some, overthrowing others, and not putting them down gently but hurling them from their pinnacle so that nothing will be left. (10) We believe such things are great because we are small: many things derive their greatness not from their intrinsic nature but from our lowly status.

What is most important in human life? Not filling the seas with fleets, nor setting up standards on the shore of the Red Sea, nor, when the earth runs out of sources of harm, wandering the ocean to seek the unknown; rather it is seeing everything with one’s mind, and conquering one’s faults, which is the greatest victory possible. There are countless people who have been in control of nations and cities, very few who have been in control of themselves. (11) What is most important? Raising your mind above the threats and promises of fortune, thinking that nothing is worth hoping for. For what have you to desire? Whenever you sink back from engagement with the divine to the human level, your sight will go dim, just like the eyes of those who return from bright sunlight to dense shadow. (12) What is most important? Being able to endure adversity with a glad mind, to experience whatever happens as though you wanted it to happen to you. For you ought to have wanted it to, if you had known that everything happens according to god’s decree. Crying, complaining, and moaning are rebellion. (13) What is most important? A mind that is brave and defiant in the face of calamity, not just opposed but hostile to luxury, neither courting nor fleeing danger; one that knows not to wait for fortune but to create it, to go to face both forms⁴ unafraid and undismayed, unshaken either by the turmoil of the one or the glitter of the other. (14) What is most important? Refusing to let bad intentions enter your mind; raising pure hands to heaven; not seeking any good thing if someone else must give it or must lose it so that it may pass to you; wishing for a sound mind (something that can be wished for without competition); regarding the other things rated highly by mortals, even if some chance brings them into your home, as likely to exit by the door they entered. (15) What is most important? Raising your spirits high above chance events; remembering your human status, so that if you are fortunate, you know that will not last long, and if you are unfortunate, you know you are not so if you do not think so. (16) What is most important? Having your soul on your lips.⁵ This makes you free not according to the law of the Quirites, but according to the law of nature.⁶ A free person is one who escapes enslavement to himself, which is constant, unavoidable, oppressing by day and by night equally, without break, without respite.⁷ (17) Enslavement to oneself is the most severe enslavement, but it is easy to shake it off if you stop expecting a lot from yourself, if you stop making money for yourself, if you set before your eyes both your nature and your age, even if it is very young, and say to yourself, “Why am I going crazy? Why am I panting? Why am I sweating? Why am I working the land, or the forum? ⁸ I don’t need much, and not for long.”

(18) For these reasons⁹ it will be useful for us to investigate nature: first, we shall leave behind what is sordid; next, we shall keep our mind, which needs to be elevated and great, separated from the body; next, when our critical faculty has been exercised on hidden matters, it will be no worse at dealing with visible ones. And nothing is more visible than these remedies which are learned in order to counter our wickedness and madness, things we condemn but do not forsake.

(1.1) So let us inquire about terrestrial waters,¹⁰ and let us investigate how they occur—whether, as Ovid says, “There was a spring free from mud, silvery, with bright waves,” ¹¹ or, as Virgil says,

from where through nine mouths, with a huge roar coming from the mountain,

the sea bursts forth, and covers the fields with the sounding waves,¹²

or, as I find in your poetry, my dearest Lucilius,¹³ “The Elean river leaps out from Sicilian springs,” ¹⁴ or some <other> cause supplies the water—how so many huge rivers flow day and night, why some swell with winter waters, others rise when the other rivers are subsiding. (2) For the present we shall separate the Nile from the crowd, since it has its own unique character, and we shall assign a special date to it.¹⁵ Now let us look at ordinary waters, cold as well as hot (in their case we shall need to inquire whether they are created hot or become so). We shall also discuss others distinguished either by flavor or by some useful property: for some benefit the eyes, some the muscles, some cure chronic ailments where the doctors have given up hope, some heal ulcers, some, when taken as a drink, give relief internally and alleviate complaints of the lungs or internal organs, some staunch bleeding.

(2.1) The tastes of individual waters are as varied as their uses. Some are sweet, others are pungent to various degrees: for there are salt and bitter ones, or medicinal ones, some of which we describe as flavored with sulphur, iron, or alum. The taste indicates the effect. (2) There are many other distinctions, first of touch (there are cold and hot), then of weight (there are light and heavy), then of color (there are pure, muddy, blue, bright), then of healthiness (there are beneficial ones and deadly ones). There are waters that become solidified into stone, some thin, some dense. Some provide nourishment, some pass through without any benefit to the drinker, some when drunk promote fertility.

(3)<All waters are either stationary or moving; either they are collected or they have various veins.>¹⁶ The lie of the land determines that water either stands still or flows: on a slope it flows; on level or low-lying land it is retained and forms pools. Sometimes it is pushed uphill by breath:¹⁷ but then it is being forced, not flowing. It is collected from rainfall; from its own spring it emerges naturally. But there is nothing to prevent water from both being collected and emerging naturally in the same spot, as we see in the Fucine lake: the surrounding mountains channel into it any rain water that pours down, but there are large, hidden veins in the lake itself. So even after the winter torrents have flowed down, it preserves its appearance.

(4) So first let us investigate how the earth has the resources to maintain the flow of the rivers, and where all that water comes from. We are surprised that the seas do not register the arrival of water from the rivers: we should be equally surprised that the earth does not register the loss as they flow away. What is it that either has filled the earth up so that it can provide all this from some hidden reservoir, or else continuously replenishes it? Whatever explanation we give for rivers will also apply to streams and springs.

(5) Some people think that the earth immediately receives back all the water it has discharged; so the seas do not get bigger because they do not absorb what has flowed into them, but at once give it back. The water passes below the earth in hidden channels, and what arrived openly returns secretly. The sea is filtered along its course, because it is pounded as it goes through the numerous twists and turns within the earth, and loses its bitterness and disagreeableness; thanks to all the variety of soils, it sheds its flavor and turns into pure water.

(6.1) Some people think that the earth discharges again everything that it receives from rainfall, and they offer this argument: that there are very few rivers in those regions where rainfall is rare. (2) They say that the deserts of Ethiopia are dry and that few springs are found in the interior of Africa because the climate is boiling hot and virtually always like summer. So the sands lie barren, without trees, without cultivation, since they are moistened by only infrequent rain, which they at once swallow up. On the other hand, it is well known that Germany, Gaul, and, where it borders on them, Italy, are awash with streams and awash with rivers because they have a damp climate, and not even the summer is free from rain.

(7.1) You see that many objections can be brought against this view. First, I, who am devoted to digging my vineyards, assure you that no rainfall is heavy enough to wet the soil to a depth of more than ten feet. All the moisture is absorbed in the outer crust, and does not descend lower down. (2) So how can rain support powerful rivers, when it moistens only the surface of the earth? “But most of the rain is carried off in river channels to the sea. The earth absorbs only a little, and does not retain even that: for either it is dry and soaks up whatever pours down onto it, or it has had its fill, and repels anything that falls surplus to its desires. Therefore rivers are not swollen by the first rainfalls, because the thirsty earth sucks them all into itself.” (3) But just think of how some rivers burst out from rocks and mountains. What will rain contribute to them, since it runs down over bare crags and has no soil to soak into? Add that in the driest locations wells are sunk to a depth of two or three hundred feet or more, and discover rich veins of water at a depth to which rainwater does not penetrate; you will realize that down there it is not celestial water, nor collected water, but so-called living water. (4) This view is refuted by the following argument too: some springs well up on the very highest summits of mountains. It is clear that they are driven upward, or are created there, since all rainwater runs downward.

(8) Some people think that, just as on the outer surface of the earth there are huge marshes and great, navigable lakes, and just as seas stretch out across huge areas and flow into fjords, so the interior of the earth abounds in fresh water, which forms lakes just as broad as the ocean and its gulfs in our world, or rather all the broader, because deep down the earth spreads out further. So those rivers are discharged from that deep-seated supply. Why are you surprised that the earth does not register their removal, since the seas do not register their arrival?

(9.1) Some people support the following explanation: they say the earth has hollow cavities inside itself, and a lot of breath, which, being buried in deep darkness, is inevitably cold. Being sluggish and immobile, once it is unable to sustain itself, it turns to water. (2) Just as above us transformation of the atmosphere produces rain, so beneath the earth it produces a river or a stream. Above us it cannot remain sluggish and oppressive for long (for sometimes it is rarefied by the sun, sometimes it is expanded by winds, and so there are long intervals between rain showers); but below the earth whatever converts it to water is always the same—endless darkness, everlasting cold, inert denseness; so it will constantly be generating springs or rivers. (3) We believe that earth is subject to change; and any exhalations it gives off, since they are not dispersed in the open air, at once grow dense and ...