Latin Literature

Gareth Williams’ engaging new study of Seneca's Natural Questions is called The Cosmic Viewpoint, a pleasing title that evokes his central thesis: Seneca's study of meteorological phenomena is a work where science and ethics are combined, designed to raise the reader up towards a cosmic perspective far beyond mortal woes, the better to combat adversity in Stoic style. Chapter 1, ‘Interiority and Cosmic Consciousness in the Natural Questions’, introduces the idea of Seneca's worldview, contrasting it in particular with the approaches of Cicero and of Pliny. In contrast to Cicero, Seneca's emphasis is on interiorization, and his ‘cosmic consciousness’ takes his perspective far above the Imperial consciousness of Pliny's Encyclopaedia, which for all its all-encompassing scope still takes a terrestrial Roman perspective. In Chapter 2, Williams addresses the question of how Seneca's moralizing interludes are to be understood in relation to the technical discussion of meteorology; this is a key issue for Williams, since his overall thesis is that Seneca's work has an integrated ‘physico-ethical agenda’ (73). From now on the chapters reflect this integration between the moral and the scientific. Chapter 3 focuses on Seneca's discussion of the flooding of the Nile in Book 4a and its integration with the theme of the vice of flattery. In a nice discussion of ‘The Rhetoric of Science’, Chapter 4 argues that Seneca's presentation in Book 4b of his investigation into the question of how hail and snow are produced is such as to invite critical reflection on the scientific procedures involved (these procedures are: reliance on influential authority, argument by analogy, argument by bold inference, competing arguments, and superstition in contention with reason), but that the aim is not to reject the possibility of attaining scientific truth, but rather to suggest that to attain it one must rise above these petty arguments to find the cosmic perspective, and that to do this is in itself morally improving regardless of any knowledge gained. Chapter 5 discusses Seneca's treatment of the winds in Book 5 and his implicit contrast of the natural phenomena with the transgressive actions of human beings who plunder the earth's resources and wage war on one another. Chapter 6 examines the ‘therapeutic program’ (256) of Seneca's treatment of earthquakes in Book 6. Chapter 7 explores how Seneca's treatment of ancient theories about comets reflects the ascension of the mind to the celestial plane that is the ultimate aim of his scientific enquiry. In Chapter 8, Williams discusses the significance of Seneca's excursus on divination within his treatment of thunder and lightning. Finally, a brief epilogue explains the way that the progression of ideas across traditional book order (where the final books are Books 1 and 2) can be understood to serve Seneca's moral programme. This is a rich and compelling study of Seneca's Natural Questions that establishes it as a work of considerable literary and philosophical qualities. Williams’ final, gentle suggestion is that we moderns, too, might find some peace and liberation in Seneca's cosmic viewpoint, far above the troubles of our everyday lives.