INTRODUCTION xxxiii 



edition of the Aetna, to which reference should be made. 

 For other allusions to Lucilius in Seneca see, besides the 

 Q.N., Epistles xix. xxvi. xxxiv. etc. 



The Q.N. was composed probably about the year 63 

 or 64. We might content ourselves with the statement 

 of the fact, did not the circumstances of composition 

 throw light upon difficulties of arrangement and sequence 

 which can scarcely be passed unnoticed. The evidence 

 on which we have to rely is chiefly internal. The exact 

 date of Lucilius procuratorship in Sicily (159) is unknown, 

 but the consulship of Regulus and Virginius, which 

 witnessed the Campanian earthquake (221), fell in 63, 

 that is, some two years before Seneca s death. The 

 allusions in the Preface to Book III. (109) are still 

 more direct and convincing. The writer was drawing 

 near his end, pressed hard on the rear by old age, with 

 every necessity and incentive to hurry on the completion 

 of his task. 



On the other hand, the mission despatched by Nero 

 to the sources of the Nile (235-6) would naturally point 

 to an earlier date during the more promising years of his 

 reign unless indeed, as is by no means improbable, the 

 complimentary reference to the emperor s virtues be a 

 piece of adulation. A similar reference recurs in con 

 nection with the comet in Nero s reign (290), the date of 

 which must (after Tacitus) be assigned to the year 61. 



The Elder Pliny, writing in 77, about a dozen years 

 after Seneca s death, adds to each Book of his Natural 

 History an exhaustive list of the authorities, native and 

 foreign, that he had used. Book II. deals with many of 

 the subjects of the Q.N., of wnich it is in some places an 

 expansion, but in most little more than an epitome. 1 

 And yet no mention of Seneca occurs in the list of 



1 See particularly Pliny s treatment of Comets (ii. xxii.), Winds (xliv.-L), 

 Lightning (liii.), Floating Islands (xcvi.). But most striking of all is the 

 reproduction (Ixiii.) of Seneca s remark (208 end of c. xv.), &quot;If any nether 

 gods existed, they would have been dug up long ere this in the mines sunk 

 by our avarice and luxury.&quot; The two authors had hit upon the same thought, 

 and Seneca had happened to use it first. Or it may have been a current 

 witticism in an age of unbelief. 



