94 SCIENCE IN GRECO-ROMAN ANTIQUITY 



on The Day of Birth, and the intelligent views of 

 astronomy and physics, which Seneca, inspired by 

 Posidonius, gives in a popular form in his Naturales 

 Quaestiones, must be pointed out as worthy of interest. 

 Amongst other subjects, Seneca devoted a long study 

 to comets, to demonstrate that they must be likened to 

 planets and consequently possess a periodic movement. 

 The work of Vitruvius On Architecture is quite crude ; 

 the extracts from Greek authors on mechanics and 

 technique are expounded so foolishly and in such 

 obscure language that it would seem that the author, 

 in spite of his pretensions, could not really have been 

 an architect to Augustus. 1 The natural sciences are 

 well represented by The Natural History of Pliny the 

 Elder, whose death in 79 a.d. was caused by his 

 desire to observe the eruption of Vesuvius from a near 

 point of view. This vast compilation is a mass of 

 observations collected with astonishing and often 

 uncritical zeal and drawn from the most diverse writers ; 

 it brings before the reader a comprehensive survey of 

 geography, anthropology, zoology, botany, medicine, 

 mineralogy, and art. Perhaps the finest product of 

 Roman scientific literature was the text-book of 

 Cornelius Celsus On Medicine. It formed part of 

 an encyclopaedia which has been lost, and although 

 not written by a specialist, it makes intelligent use of 

 Greek authorities and has preserved many an interesting 

 detail, for instance, of Alexandrian surgery. Apart 

 from the work of Celsus, there were only books of pre- 

 scriptions. However, during the decline of antiquity 

 many excellent translations of Greek authors appeared, 

 such as the translation of the therapeutics of Soranus 

 by Caelius Aurelianus in the fifth century a.d. 

 Works of this kind continued to appear until well into 

 the Middle Ages, and even in the darkest periods the 

 Greeks were acknowledged as the masters of medicine. 

 1 15 Heiberg, Naturwiss., p. 75. 



