“For the Natural Questions . . . a new translation was badly needed. Corcoran’s Loeb translation was outdated when it was published forty years ago, and our understanding of the text has advanced greatly since then. Hine . . . has contributed more than anyone to this progress. . . . The most striking innovation of Hine’s translation is a new sequence of the books. . . . If the corrected order is right, as seems probable, the reader has the advantage of starting with the opening that Seneca gave the work.”

Bryn Mawr Classical Review

“Hine’s translation is clear, elegant, and energetic, and the introduction and notes allow us to read the work within the contexts of ancient science, philosophy, culture, and literature. Most of all, by conveying both its intellectual urgency and its artfulness, this edition reveals the Natural Questions to be among Seneca’s most powerful writings and in the league of such masterworks as Lucretius’s De rerum natura and Virgil’s Georgics.”

James Ker, University of Pennsylvania, author of The Deaths of Seneca

“From the rainbow in the heavens to the iridescent scales of a mullet dying at the gourmet’s table, Seneca examines the face of God and its distorted human images to find, at the last, himself. One of the many virtues of Harry Hine’s lively new translation of the Natural Questions is the variation in its registers, encompassing satire, scientific argument, moral dialogue, and epic grandeur. Backed up by an extensive critical introduction, this volume makes an auspicious beginning to the series.”

C. A. J. Littlewood, University of Victoria, Canada