PREFACE 



THIS book is intended primarily for English readers, 

 to most of whom it will probably be at least new. 

 Thomas Lodge, the well-known dramatist, pub 

 lished in 1614 a translation of the whole of Seneca s 

 prose works (except the Apocolocyntosis), but no 

 English editor or commentator seems to have 

 turned his attention to the Quaestiones Naturales, 

 either before or since. Lodge s translation, a folio 

 volume of nearly a thousand pages, was probably 

 very good for its day, but is now out of date. 



The Introduction is designed to give a setting 

 to the translation, and to answer a few of the 

 questions that would naturally occur to the mind of 

 an intelligent reader who was not a classical scholar. 

 In the Index also some details are included that 

 may be helpful to those who have neither time nor 

 opportunity for hunting up historical and other 

 allusions in books of reference. The object has 

 been to make the volume self-interpreting, though 

 it may be that the course has not always been 

 judiciously steered between too little and too much. 



The Quaestiones Naturales must be regarded as 

 occupying historically an important position. It 

 was the latest deliverance of the classical world 



