The Scientific Sublime in Imperial Rome charts the role of the sublime in first-century debates about how and why we investigate the natural world. It shows how the sublimity of the study of nature--the scientific sublime--animates Manilius' Astronomica, Seneca's Natural Questions, Lucan's Civil War, and the anonymous Aetna, and explores how these authors inflect and deploy the scientific sublime in their respective historical and socio-political contexts. Imbued with the triumphal optimism of the Augustan moment, Manilius takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride through the expanses of the heavens, reveling in the infinite dimensions of the cosmos and the astounding ability of his mathematical calculations to uncover the mind of god; this is the ultimate intellectual pursuit. The instability and paranoia of the Neronian period fundamentally compromise this posture. In Natural Questions, Seneca rejects Manilius' celestial adventure and redirects the reader's gaze to atmospheric
