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Seneca
1. Alph
Lowes argues that the following passage shows that Seneca may have
influenced Coleridge's idea of a river disappearing beneath the ground,
flowing under an ocean, and rising in a fountain.
Now some, if not all, of these passages Coleridge without doubt had read.
And just as ocular spectra which 'flashed' from Bartram's fountains and from
the fountains of the Nile had telescoped in the dream, so there seem to have
merged linked reminiscences of the Alpheus and the Nile. 396
Text
In the East as well as the West this happens. The Tigris is absorbed by the
earth and after long absence reappears at a point far removed, but
undoubtedly the same river….Thence (from the behavior of the fountain
Arethusa) comes the belief that the Alpheus makes its way right from Achaia
to Sicily, stealing under sea by secret sluice, and reappearing only when it
reaches the coast of Syracuse. --Clarke translation, p. 142.
Iam vero nimis oculis permittit nec ultra illos
scit producere animum, qui non credit esse in abdito terrae sinus maris
vasti. Nec enim video quid prohibeat aut obstet quo minus habeat aliquod
etiam in abdito litus et per occultos aditus receptum mare, quod illic
quoque tantundem loci teneat aut fortassis hoc amplius quod superiora cum
tot animalibus erant dividenda: abstrusa enim et sine possessore deserta
liberius undis vacant. Seneca, Book VI, section 7, 2. |
 Other sources
William Bartram |