Let us press on all the more, and let hard work repair the losses of a misspent life. 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. (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. Backed up by an extensive critical introduction, this volume makes an auspicious beginning to the series.-Cedric Littlewood, University of Victoria, CanadaĪn excerpt from Natural Questions Lucius Annaeus Seneca Translated by Harry M. One of the many virtues of Harry Hine’s lively new translation of the Natural Questions is the variation in its registers, encompassing satire, scientific argument, moral dialogue, and epic grandeur. Most of all, by conveying both its intellectual urgency and its artfulness, this edition reveals the Natural Questions to be among Seneca’s most powerful writings and in the league of such masterworks as Lucretius’s De rerum natura and Virgil’s Georgics-James Ker, University of Pennsylvania, author of The Deaths of Senecaįrom the rainbow in the heavens to the iridescent scales of a mullet dying at the gourmet’s table, Seneca examines the face of God and its distorted human images to find, at the last, himself. Hine’s translation is clear, elegant, and energetic, and the introduction and notes allow us to read the work within the contexts of ancient science, philosophy, culture, and literature.

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