PREFACE
Undertaken with a view to one of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Columbia University, this study of Seneca's Satire has grown somewhat unexpectedly. Its brief material, from the curiosity of its subject and the natural search for parallel which it suggests, proved capable of leading to a quite indefinite expansion; so that any scheme of exhaustive treatment, such as the primary object of the work made appropriate, had to yield for the most part to the pursuit of more individual threads of interest.
For the text, I have followed in general that of Bücheler's editio minor. The few changes which I have ventured to make are of course particularly explained in the notes, in which attention is called also where any of the present readings differ from others of importance. Of the translation which follows the text, there is only to say that the metrical parts were so rendered for the sake of reproducing, at least in its effect upon the page, the original form of the Menippean satire. The metres of the Latin verses have been copied as nearly as possible, even to the dactyls, whose
