Lucius Seneca - Yale Required Reading - Collected Works (Vol. 2)

Through cities to and fro: they fear the roofs

Above the head; and underfoot they dread

The caverns, lest the nature of the earth

Suddenly rend them open, and she gape,

Herself asunder, with tremendous maw,

And, all confounded, seek to chock it full

With her own ruins. Let men, then, go on

Feigning at will that heaven and earth shall be

Inviolable, entrusted evermore

To an eternal weal: and yet at times

The very force of danger here at hand

Prods them on some side with this goad of fear—

This among others—that the earth, withdrawn

Abruptly from under their feet, be hurried down,

Down into the abyss, and the Sum-of-Things

Be following after, utterly fordone,

Till be but wrack and wreckage of a world.

EXTRAORDINARY AND PARADOXICAL TELLURIC

PHENOMENA

In chief, men marvel nature renders not

Bigger and bigger the bulk of ocean, since

So vast the down-rush of the waters be,

And every river out of every realm

Cometh thereto; and add the random rains

And flying tempests, which spatter every sea

And every land bedew; add their own springs:

Yet all of these unto the ocean's sum

Shall be but as the increase of a drop.

Wherefore 'tis less a marvel that the sea,

The mighty ocean, increaseth not. Besides,

Sun with his heat draws off a mighty part:

Yea, we behold that sun with burning beams

To dry our garments dripping all with wet;

And many a sea, and far out-spread beneath,

Do we behold. Therefore, however slight

The portion of wet that sun on any spot

Culls from the level main, he still will take

From off the waves in such a wide expanse

Abundantly. Then, further, also winds,

Sweeping the level waters, can bear off

A mighty part of wet, since we behold

Oft in a single night the highways dried

By winds, and soft mud crusted o'er at dawn.

Again, I've taught thee that the clouds bear off

Much moisture too, up-taken from the reaches

Of the mighty main, and sprinkle it about

O'er all the zones, when rain is on the lands

And winds convey the aery racks of vapour.

Lastly, since earth is porous through her frame,

And neighbours on the seas, girdling their shores,

The water's wet must seep into the lands

From briny ocean, as from lands it comes

Into the seas. For brine is filtered off,

And then the liquid stuff seeps back again

And all re-poureth at the river-heads,

Whence in fresh-water currents it returns

Over the lands, adown the channels which

Were cleft erstwhile and erstwhile bore along

The liquid-footed floods.

And now the cause

Whereby athrough the throat of Aetna's Mount

Such vast tornado-fires out-breathe at times,

I will unfold: for with no middling might

Of devastation the flamy tempest rose

And held dominion in Sicilian fields:

Drawing upon itself the upturned faces

Of neighbouring clans, what time they saw afar

The skiey vaults a-fume and sparkling all,

And filled their bosoms with dread anxiety

Of what new thing nature were travailing at.

In these affairs it much behooveth thee

To look both wide and deep, and far abroad

To peer to every quarter, that thou mayst

Remember how boundless is the Sum-of-Things,

And mark how infinitely small a part

Of the whole Sum is this one sky of ours—

O not so large a part as is one man

Of the whole earth. And plainly if thou viewest

This cosmic fact, placing it square in front,

And plainly understandest, thou wilt leave

Wondering at many things. For who of us

Wondereth if some one gets into his joints

A fever, gathering head with fiery heat,

Or any other dolorous disease

Along his members? For anon the foot

Grows blue and bulbous; often the sharp twinge

Seizes the teeth, attacks the very eyes;

Out-breaks the sacred fire, and, crawling on

Over the body, burneth every part

It seizeth on, and works its hideous way

Along the frame. No marvel this, since, lo,

Of things innumerable be seeds enough,

And this our earth and sky do bring to us

Enough of bane from whence can grow the strength

Of maladies uncounted. Thuswise, then,

We must suppose to all the sky and earth

Are ever supplied from out the infinite

All things, O all in stores enough whereby

The shaken earth can of a sudden move,

And fierce typhoons can over sea and lands

Go tearing on, and Aetna's fires o'erflow,

And heaven become a flame-burst. For that, too,

Happens at times, and the celestial vaults

Glow into fire, and rainy tempests rise

In heavier congregation, when, percase,

The seeds of water have foregathered thus

From out the infinite. "Aye, but passing huge

The fiery turmoil of that conflagration!"

So sayst thou; well, huge many a river seems

To him that erstwhile ne'er a larger saw;

Thus, huge seems tree or man; and everything

Which mortal sees the biggest of each class,

That he imagines to be "huge"; though yet

All these, with sky and land and sea to boot,

Are all as nothing to the sum entire

Of the all-Sum.

But now I will unfold

At last how yonder suddenly angered flame

Out-blows abroad from vasty furnaces

Aetnaean. First, the mountain's nature is

All under-hollow, propped about, about

With caverns of basaltic piers. And, lo,

In all its grottos be there wind and air—

For wind is made when air hath been uproused

By violent agitation. When this air

Is heated through and through, and, raging round,

Hath made the earth and all the rocks it touches

Horribly hot, and hath struck off from them

Fierce fire of swiftest flame, it lifts itself

And hurtles thus straight upwards through its throat

Into high heav'n, and thus bears on afar

Its burning blasts and scattereth afar

Its ashes, and rolls a smoke of pitchy murk

And heaveth the while boulders of wondrous weight—

Leaving no doubt in thee that 'tis the air's

Tumultuous power. Besides, in mighty part,

The sea there at the roots of that same mount

Breaks its old billows and sucks back its surf.

And grottos from the sea pass in below

Even to the bottom of the mountain's throat.

Herethrough thou must admit there go...

And the conditions force [the water and air]

Deeply to penetrate from the open sea,

And to out-blow abroad, and to up-bear

Thereby the flame, and to up-cast from deeps

The boulders, and to rear the clouds of sand.

For at the top be "bowls," as people there

Are wont to name what we at Rome do call

The throats and mouths.

There be, besides, some thing

Of which 'tis not enough one only cause

To state—but rather several, whereof one

Will be the true: lo, if thou shouldst espy

Lying afar some fellow's lifeless corse,

'Twere meet to name all causes of a death,

That cause of his death might thereby be named:

For prove thou mayst he perished not by steel,

By cold, nor even by poison nor disease,

Yet somewhat of this sort hath come to him

We know—And thus we have to say the same

In divers cases.

Toward the summer, Nile

Waxeth and overfloweth the champaign,

Unique in all the landscape, river sole

Of the Aegyptians. In mid-season heats

Often and oft he waters Aegypt o'er,

Either because in summer against his mouths

Come those northwinds which at that time of year

Men name the Etesian blasts, and, blowing thus

Upstream, retard, and, forcing back his waves,