Seneca on Comets and Ancient Cometary Theory in Natural Questions 7

Abstract

Seneca's focus on comets inNatural Questions7 concentrates our attention on a phenomenon that is in a sense familiar but so distant, known but so unknown; they are obscurities that ‘both fill and escape our eyes’ (7.30.4), and which challenge us to project the mind's eye beyond the limits of our ordinary vision as we seek insight into nature's mysteries. The broad aim of this paper is to argue that Seneca's treatment of comets shapes, and actively applies in inventive ways within the text, a mindset that moves restlessly from narrow, more ‘terrestrial’ ways of reflecting upon the universe towards an unfettered mode of investigation that looks daringly beyond the limits of the visible and known to speculate on what lies beyond. This mindset proceeds by conjecture and ‘neither with any assurance of finding [the truth] nor without hope’ (7.29.3), but it nevertheless follows the ‘right’ (Senecan) path even in possible error: it reaches dynamically beyond conventional confines—in this case, the zodiac—to engage with the universal immensity in ways that aspire to that main Senecan goal in theNatural Questionsas whole, ‘to see the all with the mind’ (cf.animo omne uidisse, 3 pref. 10).

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