Seneca’s main ‘scientific’ work, the Naturales Quaestiones, was the undisputed authority on the subjects with which it dealt. Dante, Chaucer and Petrarch were great admirers and quoters of his writings.47 Printing spread his influence, the first printed version of the Epistulae being published in or about 1475 at Rome, Paris and Strasbourg. Erasmus48 was the first person to produce a critical edition (in 1515) and Calvin’s first work was an edition in 1532 of the De Clementia, an essay originally written to encourage clemency in Nero, and incidentally inspiring much of the ‘quality of mercy’
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