Abstract

With this publication, Harvard University Press completes its ten-volume Loeb Classical Library edition of Seneca. Professor Corcoran has provided a complete text of the Naturales Quaestiones, Seneca’s last work; he has supplied detailed annotation of most of the classical authorities whom Seneca usually cites only by name; he has given many of the major mss variants, and made a lucid and readable translation. The first volume contains a brief introductory summary. There is a subject-index but, unfortunately, there is no bibliography. He has put the fragmentary Nile-book as fourth, although both Diels and Gercke call it liber secundus and Oltramare assigns it eighth place. The five books in this volume concern: the Nile and its sources, flora and fauna, and the periodicity of its flooding; Hail and Snow; Winds; Earthquakes; and Comets. The form of these treatises is that of a series of letters or addresses to Lucilius, Rome’s procurator in Sicily about 62 A.D., and the same Lucilius to whom the more famous Epistulae are addressed.