[72] Some read _scientiam_ and some _inscientiam;_ the latter of which is preferred by some of the best editors and commentators.

[73] For a short account of these ancient Greek philosophers, see the sketch prefixed to the Academics (_Cla.s.sical Library_).

[74] Cicero wrote his philosophical works in the last three years of his life. When he wrote this piece, he was in the sixty-third year of his age, in the year of Rome 709.

[75] The Academic.

[76] Diodorus and Posidonius were Stoics; Philo and Antiochus were Academics; but the latter afterward inclined to the doctrine of the Stoics.

[77] Julius Caesar.

[78] Cicero was one of the College of Augurs.

[79] The Latinae Feriae was originally a festival of the Latins, altered by Tarquinius Superbus into a Roman one. It was held in the Alban Mount, in honor of Jupiter Latiaris. This holiday lasted six days: it was not held at any fixed time; but the consul was never allowed to take the field till he had held them.--_Vide_ Smith, Dict. Gr. and Rom.

Ant., p. 414.

[80] _Exhedra_, the word used by Cicero, means a study, or place where disputes were held.

[81] M. Piso was a Peripatetic. The four great sects were the Stoics, the Peripatetics, the Academics, and the Epicureans.

[82] It was a prevailing tenet of the Academics that there is no certain knowledge.

[83] The five forms of Plato are these: [Greek: ousia, tauton, heteron, stasis, kinesis.]

[84] The four natures here to be understood are the four elements--fire, water, air, and earth; which are mentioned as the four principles of Empedocles by Diogenes Laertius.

[85] These five moving stars are Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, and Venus. Their revolutions are considered in the next book.

[86] Or, Generation of the G.o.ds.

[87] The [Greek: prolepsis] of Epicurus, before mentioned, is what he here means.

[88] [Greek: Steremnia] is the word which Epicurus used to distinguish between those objects which are perceptible to sense, and those which are imperceptible; as the essence of the Divine Being, and the various operations of the divine power.

[89] Zeno here mentioned is not the same that Cotta spoke of before.

This was the founder of the Stoics. The other was an Epicurean philosopher whom he had heard at Athens.

[90] That is, there would be the same uncertainty in heaven as is among the Academics.

[91] Those nations which were neither Greek nor Roman.

[92] _Sigilla numerantes_ is the common reading; but P. Manucius proposes _venerantes_, which I choose as the better of the two, and in which sense I have translated it.

[93] Fundamental doctrines.

[94] That is, the zodiac.

[95] The moon, as well as the sun, is indeed in the zodiac, but she does not measure the same course in a month. She moves in another line of the zodiac nearer the earth.

[96] According to the doctrines of Epicurus, none of these bodies themselves are clearly seen, but _simulacra ex corporibus effluentia_.

[97] Epicurus taught his disciples in a garden.

[98] By the word _Deus_, as often used by our author, we are to understand all the G.o.ds in that theology then treated of, and not a single personal Deity.

[99] The best commentators on this pa.s.sage agree that Cicero does not mean that Aristotle affirmed that there was no such person as Orpheus, but that there was no such poet, and that the verse called Orphic was said to be the invention of another. The pa.s.sage of Aristotle to which Cicero here alludes has, as Dr. Davis observes, been long lost.

[100] A just proportion between the different sorts of beings.

[101] Some give _quos non pudeat earum Epicuri voc.u.m;_ but the best copies have not _non;_ nor would it be consistent with Cotta to say _quos non pudeat_, for he throughout represents Velleius as a perfect Epicurean in every article.

[102] His country was Abdera, the natives of which were remarkable for their stupidity.

[103] This pa.s.sage will not admit of a translation answerable to the sense of the original. Cicero says the word _amicitia_ (friendship) is derived from _amor_ (love or affection).

[104] This manner of speaking of Jupiter frequently occurs in Homer,

----[Greek: pater andron te theon te,]

and has been used by Virgil and other poets since Ennius.

[105] Perses, or Perseus, the last king of Macedonia, was taken by Cnaeus Octavius, the praetor, and brought as prisoner to Paullus aemilius, 167 B.C.

[106] An exemption from serving in the wars, and from paying public taxes.

[107] Mopsus. There were two soothsayers of this name: the first was one of the Lapithae, son of Ampycus and Chloris, called also the son of Apollo and Hienantis; the other a son of Apollo and Manto, who is said to have founded Mallus, in Asia Minor, where his oracle existed as late as the time of Strabo.

[108] Tiresias was the great Theban prophet at the time of the war of the Seven against Thebes.

[109] Amphiaraus was King of Argos (he had been one of the Argonauts also). He was killed after the war of the Seven against Thebes, which he was compelled to join in by the treachery of his wife Eriphyle, by the earth opening and swallowing him up as he was fleeing from Periclymenus.

[110] Calchas was the prophet of the Grecian army at the siege of Troy.

[111] Helenus was a son of Priam and Hecuba. He is represented as a prophet in the Philoctetes of Sophocles. And in the aeneid he is also represented as king of part of Epirus, and as predicting to aeneas the dangers and fortunes which awaited him.

[112] This short pa.s.sage would be very obscure to the reader without an explanation from another of Cicero's treatises. The expression here, _ad investigandum suem regiones vineae terminavit_, which is a metaphor too bold, if it was not a sort of augural language, seems to me to have been the effect of carelessness in our great author; for Navius did not divide the regions, as he calls them, of the vine to find his sow, but to find a grape.

[113] The Peremnia were a sort of auspices performed just before the pa.s.sing a river.

[114] The Ac.u.mina were a military auspices, and were partly performed on the point of a spear, from which they were called Ac.u.mina.

[115] Those were called _testamenta in procinctu_, which were made by soldiers just before an engagement, in the presence of men called as witnesses.

[116] This especially refers to the Decii, one of whom devoted himself for his country in the war with the Latins, 340 B.C., and his son imitated the action in the war with the Samnites, 295 B.C. Cicero (Tusc. i. 37) says that his son did the same thing in the war with Pyrrhus at the battle of Asculum, though in other places (De Off. iii.

4) he speaks of only two Decii as having signalized themselves in this manner.

[117] The Rogator, who collected the votes, and p.r.o.nounced who was the person chosen. There were two sorts of Rogators; one was the officer here mentioned, and the other was the Rogator, or speaker of the whole a.s.sembly.

[118] Which was Sardinia, as appears from one of Cicero's epistles to his brother Quintus.