Cicero's Tusculan Disputations

270

He is called Ὦπις in some old Greek fragments, and Οὖπις by Callimachus in his hymn on Diana.

271

Σαβάζίος, Sabazius, is one of the names used for Bacchus.

272

Here is a wide chasm in the original. What is lost probably may have contained great part of Cotta’s arguments against the providence of the Stoics.

273

Here is one expression in the quotation from Cæcilius that is not commonly met with, which is præstigias præstrinxit; Lambinus gives præstinxit, for the sake, I suppose, of playing on words, because it might then be translated, “He has deluded my delusions, or stratagems;” but præstrinxit is certainly the right reading.

274

The ancient Romans had a judicial as well as a military prætor; and he sat, with inferior judges attending him, like one of our chief-justices. Sessum it prætor, which I doubt not is the right reading, Lambinus restored from an old copy. The common reading was sessum ite precor.

275

Picenum was a region of Italy.

276

The sex primi were general receivers of all taxes and tributes; and they were obliged to make good, out of their own fortunes, whatever deficiencies were in the public treasury.

277

The Lætorian Law was a security for those under age against extortioners, etc. By this law all debts contracted under twenty-five years of age were void.

278

This is from Ennius—

Utinam ne in nemore Pelio securibusCæsa cecidisset abiegna ad terram trabes.

Translated from the beginning of the Medea of Euripides—

Μήδ’ ἐν νάπαισι Πηλίον πεσεῖν ποτετμηθεῖσα πεύκη.

279

Q. Fabius Maximus, surnamed Cunctator.

280

Diogenes Laertius says he was pounded to death in a stone mortar by command of Nicocreon, tyrant of Cyprus.

281

Elea, a city of Lucania, in Italy. The manner in which Zeno was put to death is, according to Diogenes Laertius, uncertain.

282

This great and good man was accused of destroying the divinity of the Gods of his country. He was condemned, and died by drinking a glass of poison.

283

Tyrant of Sicily.

284

The common reading is, in tympanidis rogum inlatus est. This passage has been the occasion of as many different opinions concerning both the reading and the sense as any passage in the whole treatise. Tympanum is used for a timbrel or drum, tympanidia a diminutive of it. Lambinus says tympana “were sticks with which the tyrant used to beat the condemned.” P. Victorius substitutes tyrannidis for tympanidis.

285

The original is de amissa salute; which means the sentence of banishment among the Romans, in which was contained the loss of goods and estate, and the privileges of a Roman; and in this sense L’Abbé d’Olivet translates it.

286

The forty-seventh proposition of the first book of Euclid is unanimously ascribed to him by the ancients. Dr. Wotton, in his Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning, says, “It is indeed a very noble proposition, the foundation of trigonometry, of universal and various use in those curious speculations about incommensurable numbers.”

287

These votive tables, or pictures, were hung up in the temples.

288

This passage is a fragment from a tragedy of Attius.

289

Hipponax was a poet at Ephesus, and so deformed that Bupalus drew a picture of him to provoke laughter; for which Hipponax is said to have written such keen iambics on the painter that he hanged himself.

Lycambes had promised Archilochus the poet to marry his daughter to him, but afterward retracted his promise, and refused her; upon which Archilochus is said to have published a satire in iambic verse that provoked him to hang himself.

290

Cicero refers here to an oracle approving of his laws, and promising Sparta prosperity as long as they were obeyed, which Lycurgus procured from Delphi.

291

Pro aris et focis is a proverbial expression. The Romans, when they would say their all was at stake, could not express it stronger than by saying they contended pro aris et focis, for religion and their firesides, or, as we express it, for religion and property.

292

Cicero, who was an Academic, gives his opinion according to the manner of the Academics, who looked upon probability, and a resemblance of truth, as the utmost they could arrive at.

293

I.e., Regulus.

294

I.e., Fabius.

295

It is unnecessary to give an account of the other names here mentioned; but that of Lænas is probably less known. He was Publius Popillius Lænas, consul 132 b.c., the year after the death of Tiberius Gracchus, and it became his duty to prosecute the accomplices of Gracchus, for which he was afterward attacked by Caius Gracchus with such animosity that he withdrew into voluntary exile. Cicero pays a tribute to the energy of Opimius in the first Oration against Catiline, c. iii.

296

This phenomenon of the parhelion, or mock sun, which so puzzled Cicero’s interlocutors, has been very satisfactorily explained by modern science. The parhelia are formed by the reflection of the sunbeams on a cloud properly situated. They usually accompany the coronæ, or luminous circles, and are placed in the same circumference, and at the same height. Their colors resemble that of the rainbow; the red and yellow are towards the side of the sun, and the blue and violet on the other. There are, however, coronæ sometimes seen without parhelia, and vice versâ. Parhelia are double, triple, etc., and in 1629, a parhelion of five suns was seen at Rome, and another of six suns at Arles, 1666.

297

There is a little uncertainty as to what this age was, but it was probably about twenty-five.

298

Cicero here gives a very exact and correct account of the planetarium of Archimedes, which is so often noticed by the ancient astronomers. It no doubt corresponded in a great measure to our modern planetarium, or orrery, invented by the earl of that name. This elaborate machine, whose manufacture requires the most exact and critical science, is of the greatest service to those who study the revolutions of the stars, for astronomic, astrologic, or meteorologic purposes.

299

The end of the fourteenth chapter and the first words of the fifteenth are lost; but it is plain that in the fifteenth it is Scipio who is speaking.

300

There is evidently some error in the text here, for Ennius was born 515 a.u.c., was a personal friend of the elder Africanus, and died about 575 a.u.c., so that it is plain that we ought to read in the text 550, not 350.

301

Two pages are lost here. Afterward it is again Scipio who is speaking.

302

Two pages are lost here.

303

Both Ennius and Nævius wrote tragedies called “Iphigenia.” Mai thinks the text here corrupt, and expresses some doubt whether there is a quotation here at all.

304

He means Scipio himself.

305

There is again a hiatus. What follows is spoken by Lælius.

306

Again two pages are lost.

307

Again two pages are lost. It is evident that Scipio is speaking again in cap. xxxi.

308

Again two pages are lost.

309

Again two pages are lost.

310

Here four pages are lost.

311

Here four pages are lost.

312

Two pages are missing here.

313

A name of Neptune.

314

About seven lines are lost here, and there is a great deal of corruption and imperfection in the next few sentences.

315

Two pages are lost here.

316

The Lex Curiata de Imperio, so often mentioned here, was the same as the Auctoritas Patrum, and was necessary in order to confer upon the dictator, consuls, and other magistrates the imperium, or military command: without this they had only a potestas, or civil authority, and could not meddle with military affairs.

317

Two pages are missing here.

318

Here two pages are missing.

319

I have translated this very corrupt passage according to Niebuhr’s emendation.

320

Assiduus, ab ære dando.

321

Proletarii, a prole.

322

Here four pages are missing.

323

Two pages are missing here.

324

Two pages are missing here.

325

Here twelve pages are missing.

326

Sixteen pages are missing here.

327

Here eight pages are missing.

328

A great many pages are missing here.

329

Several pages are lost here; the passage in brackets is found in Nonius under the word “exulto.”

330

This and other chapters printed in smaller type are generally presumed to be of doubtful authenticity.

331

The beginning of this book is lost. The two first paragraphs come, the one from St. Augustine, the other from Lactantius.

332

Eight or nine pages are lost here.

333

Here six pages are lost.

334

Here twelve pages are missing.

335

We have been obliged to insert two or three of these sentences between brackets, which are not found in the original, for the sake of showing the drift of the arguments of Philus. He himself was fully convinced that justice and morality were of eternal and immutable obligation, and that the best interests of all beings lie in their perpetual development and application. This eternity of Justice is beautifully illustrated by Montesquieu. “Long,” says he, “before positive laws were instituted, the moral relations of justice were absolute and universal. To say that there were no justice or injustice but that which depends on the injunctions or prohibitions of positive laws, is to say that the radii which spring from a centre are not equal till we have formed a circle to illustrate the proposition. We must, therefore, acknowledge that the relations of equity were antecedent to the positive laws which corroborated them.” But though Philus was fully convinced of this, in order to give his friends Scipio and Lælius an opportunity of proving it, he frankly brings forward every argument for injustice that sophistry had ever cast in the teeth of reason.—By the original Translator.

336

Here four pages are missing. The following sentence is preserved in Nonius.

337

Two pages are missing here.

338

Several pages are missing here.

339

He means Alexander the Great.

340

Six or eight pages are lost here.

341

A great many pages are missing here.

342

Six or eight pages are missing here.

343

Several pages are lost here.

344

This and the following chapters are not the actual words of Cicero, but quotations by Lactantius and Augustine of what they affirm that he said.

345

Twelve pages are missing here.

346

Eight pages are missing here.

347

Six or eight pages are missing here.

348

Catadupa, from κατὰ and δοῖπος, noise.