PHILOSOPHY & SCIENCE: SENECA & PLINY THE ELDER
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC - AD 65) was the tutor, and victim, of Nero and the first patron of Martial. The second son of Seneca “the Elder”, he was born in Corduba in Spain, of a brilliant family. He was brought to Rome at an early age and was influenced by the Stoics, whose philosophy ran counter to that of the Epicureans in that its keynote was “duty” rather than “pleasure”, and it allowed for the existence of an overall spiritual intelligence.
Stoa (roofed colonnade) in Athens, late third century BC, a place of meeting. To the right a philosopher addresses his disciples. The Stoics, founded by Zeno (c. 333 - 262 BC), were so called because members met in a stoa. (From Helen and Richard Leacroft, The Buildings of Ancient Greece, Brockhampton Press 1966)
In his philosophical writings, of which twelve dialogues and 124 Epistles to his friend Lucilius survive, Seneca comes across as a moral philosopher whose aim was to live correctly through exercise of reason. Naturales Quaestiones(Scientific Investigations) is an examination of natural phenomena from the point of view of a Stoic philosopher.
Statue of Melpomene, muse of tragedy, with tragic mask. (VRoma: Vatican Museum, Rome: Lisanne Marshall)
We also have ten of Seneca’s verse tragedies: solid, lyrical, and bleak in their tragic vision which allows no escape from evil or defence against the brutality of fate. From his example, Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists took the five-act structure and also the cast of secondary characters who serve to keep the action moving, to report on events off stage, and to elicit private thoughts (especially those of the heroine through a female confidante). The violent and gruesome Thyestes is the archetypal revenge tragedy.
The universe according to Ptolemy, second-century AD astronomer and geographer, perpetuating the theory of Aristotle (384 - 324 BC) that the earth was at the centre of the universe. Pliny’s writings reflect the sphericist view of the earth propounded by Eratosthenes (c. 276 - c. 196 BC). (From Picture Reference Ancient Greeks, Brockhampton Press 1974)
It was natural phenomena with which Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23 - 79), Pliny the Elder, was concerned throughout his life. He was born at Como of a wealthy family, practised law in Rome, and saw military service through several postings. Between the accession of Vespasian in AD 70 and his untimely death nine years later he held several senior government posts, and also wrote thirty books of Roman history and the thirty-seven books of his Natural History.
Pliny’s capacity for research was phenomenal. In book 20 of his Natural History, on “medicines derived from plants”, he lists 1606 drugs and cites the works of 52 writers as sources. Environmental garden murals from a Primaporte courtyard of 30-20 BC. (VRoma: Fiesole Museum: Barbara McManus)
Natural History, his only surviving work, covers many subjects, including physics, geography, ethnology, physiology, zoology, botany, medicine, and metallurgy, with frequent digressions into anything else which interested him at the time. He drew his material from many written sources - when he was not actually reading something himself or writing, he had someone read aloud to him - as well as from his own observations.
He always carried a notebook, as he did on the expedition from the naval station at Misenum, of which he was then in command, to investigate from closer at hand the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. He went ashore on the beach, taking notes all the time, and was either asphyxiated by the fumes or buried under falling rocks.
THE SITE OF ROME
The hills of Rome. (After Enea nel Lazio, from R. Ross Holloway, The Archaeology of Early Rome and Latium, Routledge 1994)
The summit of the Palatine hill itself was roughly trapezoidal in shape. On three sides, the rock sloped steeply down into valleys which were often full of flood water. On the other, north-eastern, side, a narrow saddle of rock led to the adjoining hill. The cluster of hills, each between 60 and 100 metres high, stood on a plateau above the surrounding plain, the soil of which was continually enriched by deposits of volcanic silt from the Tiber and its tributaries. We may imagine, then, the summit of the Palatine Hill covered with clusters of small thatched huts of wood and clay, and somewhere a flat, open meeting space, the forerunner of the Roman forum. The burial place was in the marshy ground at the foot of the hill, where years later would stand the great forum of republican and imperial Rome.
The site was an inspired one for other reasons, too. The sea, with its potential for foreign trade, was only a few miles downstream. The hill overlooked the shallows which constituted the most convenient point for crossing the river as it neared the sea, and thus commanded the main route along western Italy. The city lay mid-way between the north and south of Italy, that natural formation of land enclosed by the Alps to the north, and by the sea everywhere else. Furthermore, Italy itself lay centrally in the Mediterranean, with ready access to the rest of Europe, to Africa, and to the east.
At much the same time as the first settlement on the Palatine Hill, the Greeks were establishing sea-ports round the south and west coasts, and in Sicily. The port farthest north, and one of the first to be built, was Cumae on the bay of Naples, within comparatively easy reach of Rome. Through these ports Rome had access to the Greek world; from the Greeks at Cumae, the Latins learned the Greek alphabet, which they adapted for their own use and language.
Southern Italy and Sicily (Ancient World Mapping Center)
Overview of this page [Ref 1.2]
The historical alternative to the myth.
The Palatine Hill - site of Rome. The forum and the Tiber.
The strategic position of Rome in Italy and the Mediterranean.
Notes
Seven hills
The canonical "seven hills" of Rome were the Palatine, Capitoline, Aventine, Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline and the Caelian mount.
Believe it or not:
The 14th-century proverb, “All roads lead to Rome”, meaning all paths or activities lead to the centre of things, was literally true of Rome from its foundation.
Not only have traces of huts of the eighth century BC been found on the Palatine Hill, but in 2005 it was announced that the remains of a 345-square-metre palace of the same period had been discovered at the foot of the hill, in the forum of Rome.
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