Minor Latin poets; with introductions and English translations

AETNAconsideration and dismissed it as inaetive (431-432).Similarities to expressions in Seneca's NatnralesQuaestiones of a.d. 65 do not prove the contention thatAetna came after that work ; for both authors maywell have used a common source. A summer visitto the volcano may have turned the poet to studyPosidonian theories" : conirruity of subject must havedirected him to read Lucretius and Manilius, whilein the use of the hexameter he had before him asmodels both \ irgil and Ovid.There is no clear way of deciding the authorship.Seneca's letter to his friend Lucilius Junior {Epist.Ixxix. 4r-7), once widely accepted as proof thatLucilius composed the work, implies nothing beyonda prediction that Lucilius was to insert a passageabout Aetna in a projected poem on Sicily.EDITIONSJ. B. Ascensius. Firgilii Opera. Paris, 1507.Jos. Scaliger. In Firgilii Appendix. Leyden, 1573.J. Le Clerc (Gorallus). Aetna c. notis et interpret.Amsterdam, 1703, 1715.J. C. Wernsdorf. Lncilii Jiuiioris Aetna in PoetaeLatini Minores. Altenburg, 1780-1799.F. Jacob. Lncilii Junioris Aetna (Latin notes ; translationin German hexameters). Leipzig, 1826." e.g. on rrvevfia (= .spiritus) as a volcanic agent : cf. Aetna,2l:i, 344. Poseidonius) r. 1.30-50 B.C.), born at Apamea inSyria, was a traveller of encyclopaedic knowledge, whoseworks are now lost. Apart from eminent services to eclecticStoicism, he devoted much attention to physical science. Agreat authority on earthquakes and volcanoes, he is constantlyquoted by Strabo (r. B.f. (53-25 a.d.) in his (Uography (seeindex to Loeb ed., vol. viii). Seneca in the Nut. Quaest. oftencites him and his pupil Asclepiodotus. For a full account ofhis influence on Aetna see Sudhaus' ed. pp. 59-81.VOL. I.A AZS2>