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Cargando... Seneca: Naturales Quaestiones, Books 1-3 (Loeb Classical Library No. 450)por Seneca
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Pertenece a las series editorialesLoeb Classical Library (450)
Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, born at Corduba (Cordova) ca. 4 BCE, of a prominent and wealthy family, spent an ailing childhood and youth at Rome in an aunt's care. He became famous in rhetoric, philosophy, money-making, and imperial service. After some disgrace during Claudius' reign he became tutor and then, in 54 CE, advising minister to Nero, some of whose worst misdeeds he did not prevent. Involved (innocently?) in a conspiracy, he killed himself by order in 65. Wealthy, he preached indifference to wealth; evader of pain and death, he preached scorn of both; and there were other contrasts between practice and principle. We have Seneca's philosophical or moral essays (ten of them traditionally called Dialogues)--on providence, steadfastness, the happy life, anger, leisure, tranquility, the brevity of life, gift-giving, forgiveness--and treatises on natural phenomena. Also extant are 124 epistles, in which he writes in a relaxed style about moral and ethical questions, relating them to personal experiences; a skit on the official deification of Claudius, Apocolocyntosis (in Loeb number 15); and nine rhetorical tragedies on ancient Greek themes. Many epistles and all his speeches are lost. The 124 epistles are collected in Volumes IV-VI of the Loeb Classical Library's ten-volume edition of Seneca. The treatises on natural phenomena, Naturales Quaestiones, are collected in Volumes VII and X of the Loeb Classical Library's ten-volume edition of Seneca. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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The work was written by Seneca the Younger around 65 AD, and is addressed to Lucilius Junior. It is one of the few Roman works which deals with scientific matters. It is not a systematic work, but a collection of facts of nature from various writers, Greek and Roman, many of which are curiosities. The first book deals with meteors, halos, rainbows, mock suns, etc.; the second of thunder and lightning; the third of water; this book contains, by the way, the description of the roman heat exchangers, which were called "dracones", or "miliaria"; almost at the end, a hair-raising description of the deluge. A very interesting note in this book, is that ancient rivers were not as pristine as we tend to think: for instance, the Alpheus became incredibly filthy when thousands of people congregated on its banks for the olympic games. The fourth book speaks of hail, snow, and ice; the fifth of winds; the sixth of earthquakes and the sources of the Nile; and the seventh of comets. Moral remarks are scattered through the work; and indeed the design of the whole appears to be to find a foundation for ethics in the knowledge of nature.
There are many incidental and interesting comments, such as the reference to water heating apparatus using coiled tubes in a furnace. The same section on water (Chapter III) refers directly to the use of hypocausts at the baths.
Cf. Wikipedia