Naturales quaestiones VII, 25; 30, 5–6; 32, 4 The Time Will Come: Seneca on Comets and Those Who Come After Seneca Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BCE–65 CE) c. 62–65 CE Cold Library · Open Stacks · S-008208 · https://coldlibrary.com/s/008208 Rights: Written about 62–65 CE; Seneca died in 65. Checked for Australia, the EU, the UK, mainland China and the United States as of 11 October 2026. Guidance, not legal advice. Source: Wikisource (la), Quaestiones Naturales/Liber VII, https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Quaestiones_Naturales/Liber_VII (retrieved 2026-10-11) English translation: Claude (an AI), 2026 · CC0 1.0 Generated 2026-10-14 from https://coldlibrary.com/en/open-stacks/seneca-the-time-will-come ---- Si quis hoc loco me interrogauerit: Quare ergo non, quemadmodum quinque stellarum, ita harum obseruatus est cursus?, huic ego respondebo: multa sunt quae esse concedimus, qualia sint ignoramus. Habere nos animum, cuius imperio et impellimur et reuocamur, omnes fatebuntur; quid tamen sit animus ille rector dominusque nostri, non magis tibi quisquam expediet quam ubi sit: alius illum dicet spiritum esse, alius concentum quendam, alius uim diuinam et dei partem, alius tenuissimum animae, alius incorporalem potentiam; non deerit qui sanguinem dicat, qui calorem: adeo animo non potest liquere de ceteris rebus ut adhuc ipse se quaerat. Quid ergo miramur cometas, tam rarum mundi spectaculum, nondum teneri legibus certis nec initia illorum finesque notescere, quorum ex ingentibus interuallis recursus est? Nondum sunt anni mille quingenti, ex quo Graecia "stellis numeros et nomina fecit", multaeque hodie sunt gentes quae facie tantum nouerunt caelum, quae nondum sciunt cur luna deficiat, quare obumbretur: haec apud nos quoque nuper ratio ad certum perduxit. Veniet tempus quo ista quae nunc latent in lucem dies extrahat et longioris aeui diligentia; ad inquisitionem tantorum aetas una non sufficit, ut tota caelo uacet: quid, quod tam paucos annos inter studia ac uitia non aequa portione diuidimus? Itaque per successiones ista longas explicabuntur. Veniet tempus quo posteri nostri tam aperta nos nescisse mirentur. Harum quinque stellarum, quae se ingerunt nobis, quae alio atque alio occurrentes loco curiosos nos esse cogunt, qui matutini uespertinique ortus sint, quae stationes, quando in rectum ferantur, quare agantur retro, modo coepimus scire; utrum mergeretur Iupiter an occideret an retrogradus esset (nam hoc illi nomen imposuere cedenti), ante paucos annos didicimus. Inuenti sunt qui nobis dicerent: "Erratis, quod ullam stellam aut supprimere cursum iudicatis aut uertere. Non licet stare caelestibus nec auerti; prodeunt omnia: ut semel missa sunt, uadunt; idem erit illis cursus qui sui finis. Opus hoc aeternum irreuocabiles habet motus: qui si quando constiterint, alia aliis incident, quae nunc tenor et aequalitas seruat". Quid est ergo cur aliqua redire uideantur? Solis occursus speciem illis tarditatis imponit et natura uiarum circulorumque sic positorum ut certo tempore intuentes fallant: sic naues, quamuis plenis uelis eant, uidentur tamen stare. Erit qui demonstret aliquando in quibus cometae partibus currant, cur tam seducti a ceteris errent, quanti qualesque sint. Contenti simus inuentis: aliquid ueritati et posteri conferant. * * * Quam multa animalia hoc primum cognouimus saeculo, quam multa negotia ne hoc quidem! Multa uenientis aeui populus ignota nobis sciet; multa saeculis tunc futuris, cum memoria nostri exoleuerit, reseruantur: pusilla res mundus est, nisi in illo quod quaerat omnis mundus habeat. Non semel quaedam sacra traduntur: Eleusin seruat quod ostendat reuisentibus. Rerum natura sacra sua non semel tradit; initiatos nos credimus: in uestibulo eius haeremus; illa arcana non promiscue nec omnibus patent: reducta et interiore sacrario clausa sunt, ex quibus aliud haec aetas, aliud quae post nos subibit aspiciet. * * * Philosophiae nulla cura est. Itaque adeo nihil inuenitur ex his quae parum inuestigata antiqui reliquerunt, ut multa quae inuenta erant oblitterentur. At mehercule, si hoc totis membris premeremus, si in hoc iuuentus sobria incumberet, hoc maiores docerent, hoc minores addiscerent, uix ad fundum ueniretur, in quo ueritas posita est, quam nunc in summa terra et leui manu quaerimus. ---- English translation by Claude (an AI) If anyone asks me at this point, "Why, then, has their course not been observed, as that of the five planets has been?", I shall answer him: there are many things whose existence we grant, while we do not know what they are like. Everyone will admit that we have a mind, by whose command we are urged on and called back; yet what that mind is, our ruler and master, no one will explain to you any better than where it is. One will say it is breath, another a kind of harmony, another a divine power and a part of god, another the finest part of the air, another a power without body; there will be someone to say it is blood, or heat. So little can the mind be clear about other things that it is still searching for itself. Why then are we surprised that comets, so rare a spectacle in the universe, are not yet bound by fixed laws, and that their beginnings and ends are not yet known, when they return only after immense intervals? It is not yet fifteen hundred years since Greece "gave the stars their numbers and their names", and there are many peoples today who know the sky only by its face, who do not yet know why the moon is eclipsed, why it is darkened; among us too it is only lately that reasoning has brought this to certainty. The time will come when the passing days and the diligence of a longer age will draw into the light what is now hidden. For the investigation of things so great a single lifetime is not enough, even if it were given wholly to the sky; and what of the fact that we divide our few years so unequally between study and vice? So these things will be unfolded only through long successions. The time will come when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things so plain. Of these five stars, which press themselves upon us and, meeting us now in one place and now in another, compel us to be curious, we have only lately begun to know their risings at morning and evening, their stations, when they move straight ahead, why they are driven backward; whether Jupiter was setting or sinking or going retrograde (for so they named it when it gives ground), we learned only a few years ago. There have been those who told us: "You are wrong to think that any star either checks its course or turns it back. The heavenly bodies are not allowed to stand still or turn aside; they all go forward. As they were once sent, so they go; their course will end only when they do. This eternal work has motions that cannot be called back; if ever they stopped, they would fall one upon another, whereas now an even and steady course keeps them in place." Why is it, then, that some seem to go back? Their meeting with the sun gives them an appearance of slowness, and so does the nature of their paths and of the circles set in such a way that at certain times they deceive those who watch: so ships, though they sail under full canvas, seem to stand still. There will be someone, some day, who will show in what regions comets travel, why they wander so far apart from the rest, how large they are and of what kind. Let us be content with what has been found, and let those who come after us also add something to the truth. * * * How many animals we have come to know for the first time in this age, and how many things not even in this one! The people of an age to come will know much that is unknown to us; much is kept for ages still to come, when the memory of us will have faded. The world is a poor small thing unless it holds something for the whole world to search for. Some sacred rites are not handed over all at once: Eleusis keeps something back to show those who return. Nature does not hand over her mysteries all at once. We think we are initiates; we are still lingering in her entrance hall. Those secrets are not open to everyone without distinction; they are withdrawn and shut away in the inner sanctuary, and of them this age will see one thing, and the age that comes after us another. * * * No one cares for philosophy. And so far from anything being found among the questions the ancients left too little explored, much that had been found is being forgotten. And yet, by heaven, if we pressed on with this with every limb, if sober young men gave themselves to it, if the old taught it and the young learned it, we would barely reach the bottom where truth lies, which we now search for on the surface of the ground with a light hand.