Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 3 -- Roman Encyclopedists
Born in Spain, Annaeus Seneca (4-65 AD) came to Rome as
physician to Nero, who ultimately rewarded his attendant by
execution. Seneca's Quaestiones Naturales was an ill-sorted
compilation of secondhand ideas. To the right is the cover from a
1542 edition, another hint of how lasting would be the Latin
libraries. Seneca, like Vitruvius, would be considered expert in
water issues for 1500 years.
A vast world exists below.
There exist below everything that you see above. There, too,
are vast, immense recesses and vacant space, with mountains
overhanging on either hand.
Seneca attributed groundwater three sources:
1. Moisture continuously expelled within the earth.
The Sea... does not get larger, because it does not assimilate the water that runs into it, but
forthwith restores it to the earth. For the sea water returns by a secret path, and is filtered in
its passage back. Being dashed about as it passes through the endless, winding channels in
the ground, it loses its salinity, and, purged of its bitterness in such a variety of ground as it
passes through, it eventually changes into pure, fresh water.
2. Sluggish air converted into water within the earth by the forces of darkness and cold. Just as
a change in atmospheric density produces rain, a change of density beneath the earth turns
air into water. Locked in perpetual darkness, frigidity and inertness, the subterranean forces
supply the springs above without pause.
We Stoics are satisfied that the earth is interchangeable in its elements. So all this air that
she has exhaled in her interior, since it was not taken up by the free atmosphere, condenses
and is forthwith converted into moisture.
There you have the first cause of the origin of underground water.
The air above ground can not long remain sluggish and heavy for it is subject, from time to
time, to rarefaction by the sun's heat or expansion by the force of the wind.
[A note regarding nomenclature: "Groundwater" and "ground water" are employed with roughlyequal
frequency in both technical and popular literature. For internal consistency, we will use the
former, except for bibliographic references worded otherwise. "Underground water," on the other
hand, is just an adjective and noun, and written accordingly.]
3. Earth converted to water.
All elements arise from all: air comes from water, water from air; fire from air, air from fire. So
why should not earth be formed from water, and conversely, water from earth?
Seneca takes the trouble to refute a standard objection to transmutation. Given the boundless
supply of earth, why would water courses and springs ever dry up? His reply is that the course of
the water, not its source, is often disturbed by shocks in the earth.
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