SENECA AND THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 223
distance from Spain westward to India, as an absolutely unknown quantity, would be out of place in the comparison. Seneca would naturally use a great but known distance. The use of the superlative ultimis indicates that he is thinking of a place not only far from Rome {cf, Hispania Ulterior), but as far as possible from India. Had he been thinking of a westward voyage, the more emphasis laid upon ultimis the weaker his comparison. Again, in that case why should he not have used proximis if, as some have thought, he believed the distance to be short ? The journey from Spain to India in Seneca's time would have been all by water save the few miles at Suez. Is it likely, then, that any ancient reader of Seneca would have thought of any other distance from Spain to India than that of the known route ? Roger Bacon found it natural, if not necessary, in loosely paraphrasing Aristotle {De Coelo^ II, 14) to be extremely explicit; e, g., "Dicit Aristoteles quod mare parvum est inter finem Hispaniae a parte occidentis et inter principium Indiae a parte orientis." Had Seneca been thinking of a westward voyage, something then unthought of save by the most eminent geographers, would he not have been as explicit as Bacon? In fine, this traditional modern interpretation, examples of which may be seen in Humboldt (TJntersuchungen^ I, 148-50) and Payne {History of the New Worlds 42), has come from reading this passage in Seneca apart from its context, in the light of mod- ern geographical knowledge, and with a strong bias toward finding anticipations of modern discoveries in the pages of ancient writers. In this case Seneca's famous prophecy —
" Venient annis saecula seris Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus, Tethysque novos detegat orbes, Nee sit terris Ultima Thule,"
may have set the current of interpretation.^
1 A writer in The Nation of March 9, 1893, reviewed with approval this in- terpretation of Seneca's meaning, and added the following apt comments : — " The truth is, that Seneca was using here a well-recognized phrase signifying
