The Scientific Sublime in Imperial Rome - Manilius, Seneca, Lucan, and the Aetna

The Scientific Sublime in Imperial Rome charts the significance of the sublime in first-century debates about how and why we investigate the natural world. By connecting Manilius'' Astronomica, Seneca''s Natural Questions, Lucan''s Civil War, and the anonymous Aetna for the first time, it tells a new story about the study of nature at Rome, locates the sublimity of that study at the center of early imperial Latin literature, and thereby renders the classical sublime more expansive, dynamic, and contested.