Chris Trinacty
Abstract
Seneca concludes the third Book of his Quaestiones Naturales with an account of the catastrophic flood that will destroy the human race in the near future. Seneca utilizes quotations from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and intertexts with Vergil’s Eclogues 4 to stress cyclical time and eternal recurrence. My chapter considers this Stoic conception of time within Seneca’s Quaestiones Naturales and the ramifications of such a theory on myths, such as the flood of Deucalion and Pyrrha as well as Vergil’s Golden Age. Roman military and political successes are shown to be fleeting and miniscule in comparison with the workings of natura. Seneca’s scientific viewpoint not only rethinks formative myths of early human history, but also makes them speak to the ambitions of Rome and the particulars of ethical behavior under Nero.
Nihil est tam violentum, tam incontinens sui, tam contumax infestumque retinentibus quam magna vis undae …
QNat. 3.30.6
Seneca concludes the third book of his Quaestiones Naturales with a tour de force description of a catastrophic flood that will destroy the human race in the near future. Through quotations of Ovid and intertexts with Vergil’s Eclogues 4, Seneca makes his flood emblematic of the idea of eternal recurrence – a Stoic conception of the cosmos in which events are destined to repeat in a fixed manner ad infinitum.1 This chapter considers how Seneca represents the Stoic conception of time within his Quaestiones Naturales and how myths such as the flood of Deucalion and Vergil’s Golden Age are used for Stoic ends. Both history (‘ἱστορέω’) and natural science (quaestiones naturales) stress the role of inquiry for writer and reader, and Seneca shows how his scientific viewpoint not only questions formative myths of early human history, but also how the answers speak to the political ambitions of Rome, to the differences between writing history and writing philosophy, and to the particulars of ethical behavior under Nero. Seneca asks a lot of his reader, but the two primary goals of this chapter are to analyze (1) the way in which literary material, especially intertexts and quotations, is made to serve Stoic ends and (2) the way that the Stoic conception of cyclical time with its world-ends by flood and cosmic dissolutions by fire (ekpyrosis) influences Seneca’s presentation of history and myth and, ultimately, educates the reader about the importance of ethical and purposeful decision-making in his or her life.
The Naturales Quaestiones is a doxographical work of Stoic physics that is enlivened by various literary, cultural and political flourishes. Book 3 – the original beginning of the treatise as a whole2 – opens with a preface that champions doing this sort of philosophical work as opposed to the political work that Seneca had been pursuing (he was Nero’s advisor until his retirement in 62 CE).3 Seneca also draws a firm distinction between historians and philosophers – historians may give information about great men like Alexander and Hannibal, but they do not tell you how to live your life,4 and the ethical reflection that philosophy inspires is more important than historical verisimilitude. Seneca writes (QNat. 3.pr.5):
Quanto satius est sua mala extinguere quam aliena posteris tradere! Quanto potius deorum opera celebrare quam Philippi aut Alexandri latrocinia, ceterorumque qui exitio gentium clari non minores fuere pestes mortalium quam inundatio qua planum omne perfusum est, quam conflagratio qua magna pars animantium exarsit!
How much better it is to eliminate one’s own vices than to hand down those of others to posterity! How preferable it is to celebrate the works of the gods than the robberies of Philip or Alexander or the rest who are famous for genocide and are as harmful for mankind as a flood which covers the whole plain or a fire which flashes up and destroys a large amount of life on earth!5
The works of rulers are seen as evils (mala) that should not be recorded; their ‘great’ deeds are merely forms of destruction in terms of loss of life and suffering inflicted on others.6 This not only indicts historians (a typical genre of writing for retired Romans of Seneca’s age and standing), but also puts the subject of their works in perspective, especially compared to the works of the gods (deorum opera).7 These are what Seneca will celebrate in his Quaestiones Naturales, as he traverses the natural world and investigates phenomena from comets to rainbows, from mountain springs to the cataracts of the Nile. Seneca is purposeful in his writing and knows what he is doing. His mention of inundatio/conflagratio here in the preface foreshadows later developments in this book when Seneca describes the flood that will destroy humankind and muses on the various beginnings and ends of cyclical time.8
The preface in which Seneca encourages ethical reflection and development and the conclusion about the flood bookend a fascinating treatise about rivers, lakes, springs, the ancient Stoic idea of the water cycle, springs and even ancient ‘foodie’ trends like the fad for red mullet. The ubiquity and necessity of water leads to Seneca’s holistic vision that stresses the transformation of elements (air to water, water to earth, earth to water, etc.) and envisions the earth with veins of water and arteries of air, much like the human body (this earth/body analogy is strong throughout the Quaestiones Naturales).9 Although much of this material is beyond the scope of this chapter, it is important to realize how often literary and rhetorical elements are foregrounded in his critical doxography.10 For example, when Seneca writes about the nature of certain rivers that disappear and reappear (tapping into those underground channels or veins), he quotes a passage of Ovid’s Metamorphoses 15 from the speech of the philosopher Pythagoras who is interested in change and mirabilia such as these rivers (QNat. 3.26.3–4 ~ Met. 15.273–276):
illo itaque recepta flumina cursus egere secreto, sed, cum primum aliquid solidi quod obstaret occurrit, perrupta parte quae minus ad exitum repugnavit, repetiere cursus suum: ‘Sic, ubi terreno Lycus est potatus hiatu, / existit procul hinc alioque renascitur ore. / sic modo combibitur, tacito modo gurgite lapsus / redditur Argolicis ingens Erasinus in undis’.
So rivers are welcomed [below ground] and follow a hidden course; but as soon as some solid barrier is encountered, they break through at a point where there is less resistance to their escape and resume their original course: “Thus after the Lycus has been swallowed by a chasm in the earth, it emerges far from here and is reborn from another mouth. Thus, the great Erasinus is at one point imbibed, at another, after flowing with silent eddies, it is restored among the Argive waves.”
Seneca uses Ovid as evidence for his argument and posits the rationale that makes sense for such disappearing/reappearing rivers. This recontextualization contrasts with the view of Ovid’s Pythagoras for whom this wonder could not really be explained or was couched in terms such as rebirth (renascitur), which were consistent with Pythagorean ideas of metempsychosis. We can see how Seneca is vying with Ovid in some basic way here – Ovid had concluded his epic with this philosopher figure and his views on the change all around us (a major concern of the Metamorphoses) and now Seneca – in the opening book of his work – concurs that there is change all around us, but it is perfectly regular, providential, and able to be understood through a Stoic conception of natura grounded in Stoic physics.11
Another example comes from Seneca’s exasperated examination of the craze of watching red mullet die before eating them. This is a moment, like the preface and flood section, in which Seneca connects the physical world he has been investigating most directly to the ethics of his contemporary society. These fish were prized by Romans in the first century CE, often populated their fishponds, and actually change color as they die.12 Seneca writes about this spectacle (almost like a gladiatorial show in miniature)13 in which the diners watch these fish die before their eyes before eating them: “There is nothing more beautiful than a dying mullet” (nihil est mullo expirante formosius) is the refrain of the diners. While the observational skills of the diners might be considered a positive trait for the budding natural scientist (they detail the kaleidoscope of colors that the mullet assumes in its death throes), it is not utilized toward further knowledge of nature, nor does it lead to the proper moral actions. Although these diners will come a-running whenever someone is about to serve mullet, Seneca writes (QNat. 3.18.6):
Ex his nemo morienti amico assidet; nemo videre mortem patris sui sustinet, quam optavit. Quotus quisque funus domesticum ad rogum prosequitur! Fratrum propinquorumque extrema hora deseritur; ad mortem mulli concurritur. ‘Nihil est enim illa formosisus’
From these people, not a single one would sit beside a dying friend, none could stand to watch his own father die, although he wished for it. How few follow the funeral of a family member to the pyre! They are not to be found at the final breath of brother or kinsman, but they hurry to the death of a mullet: “For nothing is more beautiful than that.”
He is incensed at their behavior and his mindset is directly embodied in the very words he writes, as he claims (QNat. 3.18.7):
Non tempero mihi quin utar interdum temerarie verbis et proprietatis modum excedam. Non sunt ad popinam dentibus et ventre et ore contenti; oculis quoque gulosi sunt.
I cannot hold myself back from using words too rashly now and then, and exceeding the rules of decorum: those men are not content with food for their teeth, stomach and mouth: even their eyes are gluttons.
This sort of self-conscious reflection on the very sententiae that both dapple and define Seneca’s pointed style is notable and highlights the way Seneca stresses the symbiotic relationship between medium and message. As Shadi Bartsch writes about Stoic dialectic, “there exists a natural link between the rational use of language and the order of the universe, with the former a vehicle for the expression of the latter.”14 Seneca self-consciously chooses his language and, if an event is monstrous or hyperbolic, Seneca implies the language should be as well. This strong connection between medium and message will be true as well during the flood passage.
While many cultures and belief systems feature a flood, it is usually thought of as a catastrophic event in the past: the story of Noah, the Epic of Gilgamesh and, for the Greeks and Romans, Deucalion and Pyrrha.15 The story of Deucalion and Pyrrha was recently told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses (written about 50 years before the Quaestiones Naturales) and Ovid’s epic account is very much on Seneca’s mind. Seneca’s flood, however, is on the horizon and he contextualizes it at the conclusion of the opening book of Quaestiones Naturales in order to achieve a number of tangible results (ethical, political, poetic). It is a striking section of the work because Seneca destroys the world by water multiple times (almost like a child making sandcastles and allowing waves to destroy them, only to build again in the same place). The intertextual and rhetorical play prevalent in this section hints at a larger Stoic idea that this section both evokes and embodies, namely, eternal recurrence. Eternal recurrence is the Stoic idea that the cosmos will end and be reborn and when that happens, because god governs the universe and god is providential and perfect, the same events must happen in the same order – some schools of thought would say it is an exact recurrence whereas others allowed for some leeway and it was a topic of some controversy during Seneca’s time.16 For Seneca, the cosmic perspective that he hopes his reader will acquire is, in part, predicated on the Stoic idea that life on earth is periodically wiped out by flood as well as the idea that the universe itself is destroyed at various points in fire (ekpyrosis).17
After surveying various watery phenomena in the course of Book 3, Seneca writes how the flood will occur when it seems right to god (a.k.a. natura). Seneca asks (QNat. 3.27.1–2):
omnia uno agmine ad exitium humani generis incumbant? ita est. nihil difficile naturae est, utique ubi in finem sui properat.
Does everything attack at once to destroy the human race? That is right: nothing is difficult for nature, especially when she is hurrying towards her own finale.18
The flood will occur when the tides push forward, precipitation falls, rivers rise, and the elemental transformation of earth into water occurs. Although Seneca claims that it will take all of these forces from tides to the elemental change of earth to water working together to destroy the world, his technique is to treat each water source individually and to ‘end’ the world multiple times. The final chapters of this book detail death by precipitation, death by rising tides and death by elemental transformation and, because of the previous chapters discussing the physics undergirding these topics, the reader has gained the scientific knowledge to understand how easily this will transpire.19
When Seneca describes the flood caused by rain, he has recourse to Ovid’s version of the flood found in the Deucalion and Pyrrha episode. Seneca writes how the rising rivers overcome the plains and make their way up the sides of mountains. This is the end and the few humans who have made their way to the summits are frozen in a state of silent paralysis.20 At this point Seneca quotes from Ovid’s flood description (QNat. 3.27.13 ~ Met. 1.292 and Met. 1.304):
Sicut illud pro magnitudine rei dixit: “Omnia pontus erat, deerant quoque litora ponto,” ni tantum impetum ingenii et materiae ad pueriles ineptias reduxisset: “Nat lupus inter oves, fulvos vehit unda leones.” Non est res satis sobria lascivire devorato orbe terrarum …
just as he wrote the following in a manner worthy of the enormity of the event, “Everything was sea, and even the shores of the sea went missing.” If only he had not reduced the force of his great genius and the material itself to childish flourishes like “the wolf swims among the sheep, the tide carries tawny lions.” It is rather flippant to play around when the world has been devoured.
This moment of literary criticism, expectedly, has garnered quite a bit of critical attention.21 For our purposes, what I think is important is the way that Seneca uses Ovid’s own flourishes and bathos as a way to reflect on his own writing in this section.22 Seneca can be clever as well, but he writes in a way that is meant to reinforce his sublime conception of this event. He believes the language that he uses should be connected to his larger doxography and Stoic teachings.23 So one should not care about lions swimming with sheep, but rather, “you will know what is fitting, if you conceive of the whole world swimming” (scies quid deceat, si cogitaveris orbem terrarum natare, QNat. 3.27.15).24 Capping Ovid by using the verb natare in a bold, but fitting, manner, shows the correct language to be employed in such a description.
The language matters, the topic itself and the quotations of Ovid lend themselves to the larger idea of repetition. If Seneca quotes Ovid and takes his reader back to Ovid’s flood (itself positioned after one human civilization has to be wiped out by Jove),25 then Seneca has just rewritten said flood and placed it in his work in an evocative manner. The change that is the leitmotif of Ovid’s work is also present in Seneca’s, but from a more holistic perspective that embraces elemental change as well as the larger cosmic change that Stoicism endorses with this infinite parade of world-orders and conflagrations. As Long and Sedley stress, “Hence the end of the present world will not be a ‘destruction’ in an unqualified sense …; it introduces no discontinuity in the life of the world at its most extended, but only a ‘natural change’.”26 These floods happen on the cosmic scale again and again; flood narratives are now seen to be rewritable and already (re)written as Seneca enters into dialogue with Ovid. If an intertextual allusion can be a flashback for the reader into a previous author’s work, here it is also a flashforward to a future event, thus breaking down chronology in an evocative manner. Ovid’s words about the flood are repeated verbatim just as the flood will happen in exactly the same way in the future according to eternal recurrence.27 Form and function coalesce. The reader may recall how Ovid’s Jupiter is made to resemble Augustus28 and how this catastrophe itself then leads to another race of man formed from stones with Ovid exploiting a similar body/world analogy.29 The quotations give us Ovid’s words, but in Seneca’s world. Are they still Ovid’s? If the quotations from Pythagoras that Seneca used earlier are from the final book of the Metamorphoses, these quotations are from the first book. Not only is Seneca encompassing the whole of the Metamorphoses in only the opening book of his Quaestiones Naturales, but he is also making time run backwards in some way.30 His transformation of the epic Metamorphoses results in repetition of an epic catastrophe, in which Seneca’s flood overwhelms all previous flood accounts. The flood destroys, but mankind reappears; Ovid’s flood is allowed to happen in Seneca’s work,31 but now in the future, not the past. If these floods are the end of a world period,32 Seneca is positing that, as such, they resemble the larger cosmic eternal recurrence and that the events will recur in much the same way. The quotations from Ovid concretely point to the very similarities even as Seneca modifies their context and updates the rhetoric surrounding Ovid’s words. Repetition and change, but yet semper idem.
The next two chapters detail two subsequent waves of destruction by the tides (QNat. 3.28) and then by elemental transformation (QNat. 3.29),33 concluding with the following description of the death of mankind (QNat. 3.29.8–9):
Non muri quemquam, non turres tuebuntur. Non proderunt templa supplicibus nec urbium summa, quippe fugientes unda praeveniet et ex ipsis arcibus deferet. Alia ab occasu, alia ab oriente concurrent. Unus humanum genus condet dies; quicquid tam longa fortunae indulgentia excoluit, quicquid supra ceteros extulit, nobilia pariter atque adornata magnarumque gentium regna pessum dabit.
Neither walls nor towers will protect anyone. Temples will bring no aid to their supplicants, neither will the high points of the city – of course the flood will overcome anyone fleeing and it will overcome even those on the heights. Water from the west will join the water from the east. One day will bury the human race. Whatever the long indulgence of fortune has cultivated, whatever it has raised above the rest, nobility as well as glitterati, the reigns of the great houses, will sink to the bottom and be destroyed.
Yet another purely regular, expected and normal destruction of mankind. Even the kingdoms of great nations – a jab at Rome with its seven ‘citadels’ arces (s.v. OLD 5) – will easily be submerged and forgotten. But what I want to stress is that however often Seneca seeks to end the world, he is doing it for the larger reason of illustrating the Stoic idea of eternal recurrence and giving evidence for the destruction. Although Seneca does have a dark streak, he is not repeating it simply because he feels like it, but that it is by design. This is what eternal recurrence ‘feels’ like and it should be understood in such a way.34 When we get to the final section of this book, we think surely Seneca will end the book with this destruction, and that the book will end just as the world/words of Seneca come to an end.35 Well, not so fast.
All these timelines come together in the concluding chapter (QNat. 3.30). At this point, where you might expect the world to end once and for all (at the end of the book), Seneca gives us the rebirth and regeneration of the earth. This is signaled in part through an intertext with Vergil’s fourth Eclogue. Seneca writes how the ocean will return to its original position (QNat. 3.30.8):
antiquus ordo revocabitur. omne ex integro animal generabitur, dabiturque terris homo inscius scelerum et melioribus ausipiciis natus
and the ancient order will be recalled. Every animal will be created anew, mankind will be returned to earth unknowing of crimes and born to better auspices.
These lines allude to the moment of Vergil’s poem in which he is celebrating the return of the Golden Age to the earth in his own take on the cyclic history and eternal recurrence that Seneca has been discussing (Ecl. 4.4–5): “Now the final age of Cumaean song has come; the great order of the centuries begins anew” – Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas; / magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo. Seneca clearly understands the full context of the Vergilian lines and expects his reader to come upon this repetition and see how it was already figured in the poetry of the Augustan writer par excellence. Vergil himself was writing about eternal recurrence in that poem and signals it in part through the repetition of phrases in his poem (‘Pan etiam, Arcadia’, Ecl. 4.58–4.59; ‘incipe, parve puer’, Ecl. 4.60, 4.62) as well as the intertextual ‘repetition’ of Catullus (Ecl. 4.46–47 and Cat. 64.326) and others.36 Seneca follows Vergil’s lead then and crafts his own passage about this topic, but, ultimately with a less optimistic result. Vergil’s Golden Age will develop and mature during the life of the child whose birth the poem celebrates, while Seneca’s view is one of the decline of morals.37 Seneca has given us another view of fate, similar to that of Vergil with the sense of eternal recurrence, but even more informed by Stoicism and he has used Vergil’s own words to do so. Seneca finds creative ways to endorse the idea of eternal recurrence and the fact that these differ in some ways (intertexts) or show exact correspondence (i.e. the quotations of Ovid), seems to imply that there can be some potential variation in future world cycles.38 By positioning Ovid’s quote (of a past flood) in a description of a future flood we get a weird blending of times almost like a black hole in which time collapses on itself. Vergil’s Golden Age may be the age in which we are living and Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis, written at the beginning of Nero’s reign often made Nero’s impending rule a new Golden Age.39 Are these Golden Ages becoming more and more debased with each successive saeculum? Would Seneca’s readers see themselves now living in this new post-deluge Rome in which things are getting worse and worse? Can the Naturales Quaestiones show them a way out, or, at the very least, a different perspective on their current form of life?
In fact, the reader should become more educated and learn ways to fight vice even as the world descends into its usual awful state (QNat. 3.30.8):40
sed illis quoque innocentia non durabit, nisi dum novi sunt. cito nequitia subrepit; virtus difficilis inventu est, rectorem ducemque desiderat; etiam sine magistro vitia discuntur.
But even their innocence will not last except while they are newly formed. Wickedness soon creeps in. Virtue is difficult to discover, it needs a guide and leader; vice is learned even without a teacher.
The guide and leader clearly should be seen as Seneca himself, with, again, possible political undertones for the time in which he was the rector and dux of Nero, and the reader will have gained some sense of how to discover virtus through the learning and discoveries in this text. In fact that last word discuntur will remind the reader of where it previously appeared in the work – namely the end of the preface where Seneca wrote, “nothing is more obvious than those remedies which are learned (discuntur) in order to counter our wickedness and madness” (QNat. 3.pr.18).41 The reader should have spent the book learning just how the secrets of the natural world and the rationale for terrestrial waters can be applied mutatis mutandis to counter vice. If the reader continues to the next book of the Quaestiones Naturales (and, of course, Seneca encourages this sort of progress), one will find the flood of the Nile, which is a positive example of waters taking over the lands and mankind smiling the higher the water rises (QNat. 4a.2.11).42 This can be seen as a corrective for the more traumatic flood of Book 3.
There is the sense that the reader will have grown and the experiences of ending the world by rain (QNat. 3.27), by tide (QNat. 3.28) and by elemental transformation/time (QNat. 3.29) will create a wiser mindset and perspective not only of the destruction but also of one’s everyday actions. Seneca retells the flood from multiple perspectives to hint at the most important ways to look at one’s own life and the most effective way of expressing this event and its ethical pay-off. From a more philosophical viewpoint, this approaches Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence (which he takes from the Stoics) and Nietzsche’s belief that such a conception will ultimately help the individual become well disposed toward life and his own self-conception. Nietzsche, also playing with the ideas of beginnings and endings by placing this aphorism in the penultimate position of The Gay Science (and thus at the beginning of Thus Spake Zarathustra), writes (GS 341):
What if some day or night a demon were to steal into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it you will have to live once again and innumerable times again; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unspeakably small or great in your life must return to you, all in the same succession and sequence – even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!”
This should not cause despair, but rather reinforce the importance of personal decisions, individual freedom, and, ultimately, one’s actions.43 This will happen again and again innumerable times, so you should make sure your thoughts and actions are deliberate and reflect your core beliefs. This theory lurks behind the lesson of Seneca’s work as well. So, in Seneca’s flood passage we see how Ovid and Vergil loom large, but their inclusion is made to speak to a Stoic conception of time and to contextualize Seneca’s interests in rhetoric, politics and history. Flood and Golden Age are seen to be part of a continuum that will repeat just like the flood of the Nile repeats annually and both are to be seen as part of the providential plan of god.44 When the reader glances at a cool spring or walks along the shore after reading this book, there will be reverie: “Time present and time past are perhaps present in time future: the behavior of waters in the present both anticipates the cataclysm to come and recalls the earliest origins of the world.”45 Seneca gives us the literary expression of a complex philosophical idea that the Stoics themselves were wresting with in a real way at this time.46 Such cyclical rhythms question and critique the Roman ideal of imperium sine fine (Aen. 1.279) and teleological conceptions of historical time. Seneca had opened Quaestiones Naturales 3 with a jeremiad against historians and their view of history, and his work offers an emended perspective of the way the reader should understand historical events and ‘heroes’ like Alexander the Great. Their successes are puny when considered against the works of god (“I will know everything is small, having measured god” – sciam omnia angusta esse mensus deum, QNat. 1.pr.17). Indeed, virtue is difficult to find, but teachers are available (Seneca’s text is one), and if one pays attention not just to what he says, but how he says it, the reader will have the tools (Stoic physics, dialectic, literary know-how) to live a fulfilled life, no matter how many times one will live it.
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Notes
1
See Barnes (1978); Mader (1983); Long (1985); Campion (1994) for more on ekpyrosis and eternal recurrence. Long and Sedley (1987) 1.274–279, 1.308–313 compile primary texts related to eternal recurrence and provide their analysis. In Seneca see Ben. 6.22, Dial. 6.26.6–7, Dial. 11.1.1–4, Ep. 9.16–18, Ep. 71.11–16, Thy. 830–883 and Berno (2019) for interpretation.
2
See G.D. Williams (2012) 12–14 for the original order of the eight books of Quaestiones Naturales. The order that places QNat. 3 as the first book of the treatise has been accepted by a majority of scholars, although a number of my findings do not require reading this book as the first of the Quaestiones Naturales.
3
Seneca claims that his earlier life was ‘misspent’ (aetatis male exemptae) in idle pursuits at QNat. 3.pr.2.
4
In general, he touts philosophy as the better reading material for those interested in self-betterment (QNat. 3.pr.7): “How much better it is to seek what ought to be done rather than what has been done and to teach those who have surrendered themselves to fortune that nothing granted by fortune is stable; indeed, all of fortune’s gifts are more unpredictable than the wind!” – quanto satius est, quid faciendum sit quam quid factum, quaerere ac docere eos, qui sua permisere fortunae, nihil stabile ab illa datum esse, eius omnia aura fluere mobilius? His anti-historian sentiment reaches its apogee when discussing the views of Ephorus (QNat. 7.16.1): “it is easy to demolish the authority of Ephorus: he is a historian” – nec magna molitione detrahenda est auctoritas Ephoro: historicus est.
5
All translations are my own.
6
This is reiterated elsewhere in the preface where kingdoms are destined to fall (3.pr.9), imperial expansion and victories are shown to be less important than moral victories (3.pr.10) and freedom has nothing to do with Roman citizenship (3.pr.16). In addition, such military ‘glory’ is put in perspective with the worldly destruction of the flood, which is pervasively and persuasively couched in military terms; e.g. the waters will “conquer” (vincent) at QNat. 3.30.4, the elemental concordia is being “attacked and disrupted” (temptatur et divellitur) at QNat. 3.30.5.
7
Seneca’s view of historians in Quaestiones Naturales is negative for the most part, but he will utilize their works intertextually (Master [2015]) and he finds some common ground in Callisthenes (QNat. 6.23.2–4).
8
Cf. the repetition of these terms when Seneca explains how the flood can be caused by tides (QNat. 3.28.7) and elemental flux (QNat. 3.29.2–3). The Romans’ direct experience with floods of the Tiber must have led to some of Seneca’s imagery as well as the impression that such floods are both inevitable and, in some sense, divine. See Aldrete (2007) for the frequent flooding and divinity of the Tiber.
9
For elemental transformation, see esp. QNat. 3.10.1–5, 3.12.1–3; for world/body analogy, see QNat. 3.15.1–8 and G.D. Williams (2012) 127–128.
10
The very first words of the doxography proper include quotations from Ovid, Vergil and Lucilius (QNat. 3.1.1) and this book features the largest percentage of quotations of any book of the QNat. (see Mazzoli [1970] 240 and Berno [2012] 62), which indicates Seneca’s interest in evoking the larger literary associations of water (see Trinacty [2018]).
11
The way that Seneca utilizes Ovid’s own ideas about change to emphasize elemental change in QNat. 3 is expertly analyzed by Berno (2012).
12
For exhaustive references and images, see Andrews (1948) and, especially, https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/mullus.html (accessed 29.07.2019).
13
See Ep. 7.2 for the problematic morality of spectaculum: “Nothing is so damaging for good morals than to waste time at some show. For it is then that vices creep in more easily because of the pleasure” – nihil vero tam damnosum bonis moribus quam in aliquo spectaculo desidere. tunc enim per voluptatem facilius vitia surrepunt.
14
Bartsch (2017) 217.
15
For more on the Greek philosophical response to the flood, see Chroust (1973).
16
E.g. the thought of Nemesius: “For again there will be Socrates and Plato and each one of mankind with the same friends and fellow citizens; they will suffer the same things and they will encounter the same things, and put their hand to the same things, and every city and village and piece of land return in the same way” (SVF 2.625, transl. by Long and Sedley [1987]). Adamson (2015) 71–72 offers a nice overview of the idea. This concept would be influential for later thinkers and was made famous by Nietzsche (see below).
17
Hadot (2002) 207 clarifies this sort of self-awareness: “To view things from above is to look at them from the perspective of death. In both cases, it means looking at things with detachment, distance, and objectivity, seeing them as they are in themselves, situating them within the immensity of the universe and the totality of nature, without the false prestige lent to them by our human passions and conventions. The view from above changes our value judgments on things: luxury, power, war, borders, and the worries of everyday life all become ridiculous.”
18
Note that even here Seneca is playing with the idea of the ‘end’ (finis), which is repeated at QNat. 3.27.10, 3.28.7 (verbal form), 3.30.2 and 3.30.3. This word can also mean ‘goal’ (OLD 4b), ‘boundary’ (as at QNat. 3.30.2, OLD 1), ‘death’ (OLD 10), as well as ‘the end of the roll of the book’ (OLD 5b). As the reader makes his way to the end, so Seneca will have him question what is the true ‘end/goal’ (of the world, the book, life, etc.).
19
Seneca repeats the idea that this will be done easily (QNat. 3.28.4: nec id aquis arduum est; QNat. 3.30.1: sunt omnia … facilia naturae) and stresses the waters that surround us on all sides, as well as above and below (“Where has nature not stored water so that she can attack us from all sides whenever she should wish?” – ubi non umorem natura disposuit, ut undique nos, cum voluisset, aggredi posset?, QNat. 3.30.3). The reader has been made well aware throughout the book that water is abundant both on the surface of the earth and underground (“Believe whatever you see above exists below” – crede infra quicquid vides supra, QNat. 3.16.4) and that it is a supremely powerful element (QNat. 3.13.1).
20
The human reaction to such trauma is implicitly contrasted with the reader’s own informed viewpoint, i.e. the knowledge gained in reading this book places the reader above the concerns of the victims of the flood. Seneca makes a similar use of such bibliotherapy in QNat. 6 when portraying the traumatic responses of earthquake victims: see Trinacty (2020).
21
See Degl’Innocenti Pierini (1990) 177–210; Hutchinson (1993) 128–131; Morgan (2003) 69–73; Berno (2012) 64–66; G.D. Williams (2012) 129–132.
22
Ovid is quoted four times in quick succession and Ovidian intertexts abound in the flood section; see the commentary available on www.oberlinclassics.com (accessed 01.08.2019).
23
For a similar example in QNat. 3, note the way Seneca ties his use of naufragium (‘shipwreck’) to describe the flood at QNat. 3.27.7 to other appearances at QNat. 3.26.8 and QNat. 3.28.2. The epistemological question of the correct terminology (he has victims of the flood wonder if they should call the cataclysm ruina or naufragium at QNat. 3.27.7) is contextualized by his scientific observations (QNat. 3.26.8) and his subsequent use of the term naufragium at QNat. 3.28.2 is now shown to be the mot juste and not an example of mere cleverness.
24
His use of quid deceat is a probable recollection of the literary criticism of Horace at Ars Poetica 337. See the extensive note of Brink (1971) ad loc.
25
Jupiter must rid earth of all humans after the actions of Lycaon, only relenting when Deucalion and Pyrrha are the sole survivors (Met. 1.177–329).
26
Long and Sedley (1987) 1.279.
27
The one quotation from Ovid in this section that does not derive from Book 1 is taken from Book 2 and the flight of Phaethon, which Seneca purposely chooses to tie this event into ekpyrosis narratives “as a subtle means of signaling that the cataclysm and conflagration are parallel agents of destruction” (G.D. Williams [2012] 129).
28
The political ramifications of the flood (in its depiction as ‘revolution’ res novae at QNat. 3.28.7) are hinted at throughout this passage: see Berno (2019) for Nero as the Apocalypse and Star (2021).
29
Ovid remarks how the veins in stones are made into those of men (quae modo vena fuit, sub eodem nomine mansit, Met. 1.410) and how we are now a “hard race, inured to work” (genus durum sumus experiensque laborum, Met. 1.414). See Wheeler (1999) 200–201 for the way Ovid “connects the traditional Greek myth with Vergil’s own vision of the present, in which labor is a metaphor for man’s struggle with nature, the precariousness of civil and social order, and the threat of anarchic forces” (201).
30
It is notable that time does not seem to work correctly in this section: Seneca utilizes the present tense in a novel manner (see Corcoran [1971/1972] 1.271 n. 2 and G.D. Williams [2012] 114–115), he writes how the flood will occur in simply one day (QNat. 3.29.9) or one moment (momento, QNat. 3.30.6) but, in other passages he implies a longer period of time with famine striking the survivors (QNat. 3.27.5), and winter holding foreign months (tenebit alienos menses hiems, aestas prohibebitur) with the stars refusing to shine (QNat. 3.29.8).
31
He points to the image he wants his reader to take of Ovid’s flood, namely Met. 1.285–290 – dixit ingentia et tantae confusionis imaginem cepit cum dixit … (QNat. 3.27.14).
32
The view of Long (1985), which G.D. Williams (2012) and I support.
33
QNat. 3.29 also provides further evidence about the earth’s future downfall in astrological theories (QNat. 3.29.1) and the conception of the earth as a living being (QNat. 3.29.2–3).
34
There is the sense that Seneca may be ‘testing’ his reader to see if he has truly understood the lesson of this book (à la Lucretius’ plague description, cf. Morrison [2013]) – these descriptions could be traumatic to the reader, but Seneca would hope the reader has attained a heightened and learned viewpoint of the workings of natura. As Hadot (2001) 177 comments, “When human affairs are viewed from above, we are able to imagine the past as well as the future and this view reveals that even if individuals disappear, the same scenes are repeated throughout the centuries.”
35
One might think this would be the sort of wit he would endorse; for Seneca’s interest in a fitting ending and final word in his Epistulae see Edwards (2019) 9: “The issue of how and when an individual letter should draw to a close is often raised, e.g. 11.8, 22.13, 26.8. These playful questions echo on a formal level one of the collection’s most profound concerns, what might be an appropriate clausula for the individual human life.”
36
For Vergil’s understanding of cyclical history, see the note of Coleman (1977) ad 4.5. Vergil himself mentions Pyrrha in Ecl. 6 and is interested in the connections between science and myth there; see Paschalis (2001).
37
As Conington (2007) ad Ecl. 4.18 explains: “The coming of the golden age will be gradual, its stages corresponding to those in the life of the child.” It must be noted that even Vergil’s vision leads to future wars and strife (Ecl. 4.35–36). For Seneca the world/body analogy prevalent in the Quaestiones Naturales ensures that the earth will ‘die’ like a human (QNat. 3.27.2) and even leads to some rather graphic details (it will liquify like someone suffering from diarrhea at QNat. 3.30.4).
38
See Long and Sedley (1987) 1.312–313 for the way small ‘morally indifferent’ changes (such as a mole on the body) could exist in future cycles, but I believe Seneca is hinting that one’s learning (embodied in this book) would lead to a more enlightened perspective on issues such as natura, fortuna, death, etc.
39
“The sisters marvel at their work: the cheap thread is transformed into valuable metal, a golden age descends from the beautiful filament” – Mirantur pensa sorores: / Mutatur vilis pretioso lana metallo, / Aurea formoso descendunt saecula filo (Apo. 4). The promise of Nero’s rule had been tarnished to such a degree that “the twilight of the world, it seemed to Seneca, was coinciding with the twilight of his own life” (Romm [2014] 158). For more on the concept of the Golden Age in the age of Nero see Star (2021).
40
See Ep. 90 for Seneca’s view of early man; for the larger Stoic tradition, see Boys-Stones (2001) 18–59.
41
And this is also a return of sorts to the beginning of the investigation. Cyclic history indeed, if one has to roll the scroll back to the start of the work! For the importance of reading Seneca holistically and his own strictures to do so, see Wilson (2001) 185, on Ep. 33 and the role of the implied reader “To apprehend the intended effect of the Epistles, it seems obvious that we should aim to duplicate Lucilius’ experience by reading them in the same sequence; not just as a collection but as a series.”
42
See G.D. Williams (2012) 93–135 for a reading of QNat. 3 and 4a in tandem and Merrills (2017) 171–174, “we can read Seneca’s Nile as both a fragment of the larger whole (both terrestrial and cosmic) and a functional microcosm of it. The floods of the river may be couched as a reminder of the benevolence of providence, after the shock of this cataclysm, but they remain a firm reminder that the cataclysm is coming” Waiblinger (1977) 55–58 stresses how the beneficent view of nature in QNat. 4a contrasts with that in QNat. 3.
43
As R.R. Williams (2012) 276 writes, “As an imperative, Eternal Recurrence means to live in such a way that you would wish to live it again – eternally repeated.” Marcus Aurelius often contemplates eternal recurrence with a similar perspective (e.g. Med. 2.14, 9.35, 10.7, 11.1) and I believe Seneca would endorse this viewpoint.
44
See Long (1985) 25: “These physical processes, moreover, are not laws of an undesigning, uncaring, or lifeless nature. On the contrary, they are quite literally acts of god, who works with a rational and beneficent plan for the good of the whole … Therefore, to ensure the continuity of cosmic goodness, the present world is everlastingly recreated.”
45
Merrills (2017) 174.
46
For some of the problems inherent in the theory and the ways in which it was modified by later Stoics, see Long and Sedley (1987) 1.311–313.