1. Hesiod, Shield, 320 (8th cent. BCE - 7th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •atom/atomism/atomistic explanation of the world Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 73 | 320. and fitted it with his hands. This shield the valiant son of Zeus wielded masterly, and leaped upon his horse-chariot like the lightning of his father Zeus who holds the aegis, moving lithely. And his charioteer, strong Iolaus, standing upon the car, guided the curved chariot. |
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| 2. Homer, Odyssey, 14.23 (8th cent. BCE - 7th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •atom/atomism/atomistic explanation of the world Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 73 |
3. Homer, Iliad, 16.212 (8th cent. BCE - 7th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •atom/atomism/atomistic explanation of the world Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 73 | 16.212. / So saying, he aroused the strength and spirit of every man, and yet closer were their ranks serried when they heard their king. And as when a man buildeth the wall of a high house with close-set stones, to avoid the might of the winds, even so close were arrayed their helms and bossed shields; |
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4. Hesiod, Theogony, 362-367, 369-370, 368 (8th cent. BCE - 7th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 11 | 368. To adulthood the deadly Sphinx who slew |
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| 5. Parmenides, Fragments, None (6th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •atom/atomism/atomistic explanation of the world Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 78 |
| 6. Empedocles, Fragments, None (5th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 77 |
7. Aratus Solensis, Phaenomena, 475, 474 (4th cent. BCE - 3rd cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 94| 474. σκεψαμένῳ πάντη κεκεασμένον εὐρέϊ κύκλῳ | |
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| 8. Aristotle, Interpretation, 9 (4th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •atom / atomism Found in books: Maso (2022) 84 |
| 9. Aristotle, Poetics, None (4th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •atom/atomism/atomistic explanation of the world Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 1 |
10. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 2.44, 3.41, 3.44, 3.49, 5.11, 5.50, 5.73-5.82, 5.84-5.85, 5.119 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •atom / atomism Found in books: Maso (2022) 35, 100, 103| 2.44. venit Epicurus, homo minime minime mini in r. V c malus vel potius vir optimus; tantum monet, monet et G quantum intellegit. venit... 8 intellegit Char. GL. 120, 19 Epic. fr. 446 neglege negglege G (corr. 2 ) inquit inquid G 1 (10 V 1 ) dolorem. quis hoc dicit? idem, qui dolorem summum malum? vix vix V satis constanter. constanter V audiamus. si summus dolor est inquit, inquid G 1 (10 V 1 ) brevem necesse est esse. nec. est brevem e. KR iteradum iteradum ac. 2,88. iterandum X (-d um R c ) eadem ista mihi! Iteradum ... 12 mihi Pacuv. Iliona 202 non enim satis intellego, quid quod V 1 summum dicas esse, quid breve. brevi GR 1 V summum, si ante summum add. V 2 quo nihil sit superius, breve, quo quod G 1 nihil brevius. contemno magnitudinem doloris, a qua me brevitas temporis vindicabit ante paene quam venerit. sed si est tantus dolor, quantus Philoctetae? bene plane magnus mihi quidem videtur, sed tamen non summus; summis G 1 nihil enim dolet nisi pes: possunt oculi, potest caput latera pulmones, possunt omnia; longe igitur abest a summo dolore. ergo inquit inquid G 1 (10 V 1 ) dolor diuturnus habet laetitiae plus quam molestiae. 3.41. Quid tergiversamur, Epicure, nec fatemur eam nos dicere voluptatem, quam tu idem, cum os perfricuisti, soles dicere? sunt haec tua verba necne? in eo quidem libro, qui continet Epic. p. te/lous fr. 67 p. 119, 16 omnem disciplinam tuam,—fungar enim iam interpretis munere, ne quis me putet fingere—dicis haec: nec equidem habeo, quod intellegam bonum illud, detrahens eas voluptates quae sapore percipiuntur, detrahens eas quae rebus percipiuntur veneriis, detrahens eas quae rebus percipiuntur venereis detrahens add. in mg. V c om. rell. cf. praef. et locos ab Usenero ad fr. 67 congestos eas quae auditu e e Sor. et ( cf. 23 ex formis) cantibus, detrahens eas etiam quae ex formis percipiuntur oculis detrahens eas supra oculis add. K 2 suavis motiones, sive quae aliae voluptates in toto homine gignuntur quolibet quelibet V 1 quodlibet K 1 sensu. nec vero ita dici potest, mentis laetitiam solam esse in bonis. laetantem enim mentem ita novi: spe eorum omnium, quae supra dixi, fore forte G 1 K 1 ut natura is natura is naturalis X natura iis s potiens dolore careat. 3.44. haec Epicuro confitenda sunt aut ea, quae modo expressa ad verbum dixi, tollenda de libro vel totus liber potius abiciundus; est enim confertus voluptatibus. Quaerendum igitur, quem ad modum aegritudine privemus privemur X corr. K 2 R 2 V 3 eum qui ita dicat: Pol mi/hi fortuna ma/gis nunc defit qua/m quam quod G 1 genus. Enn. Thyest. sc. 354 Na/mque namque neque K regnum su/ppetebat mi, mihi X corr. Grotius u/t scias, quanto e/ loco, Qua/ntis opibus, qui/bus de rebus la/psa fortuna a/ccidat. occidat Ribb. sed cf. Th. l. l. I p. 290 quid? huic calix mulsi impingendus est, ut plorare desinat, quid? plorare se desinat Non. 545, 20 aut aliquid eius modi? ecce tibi ex altera parte ab eodem poëta; ex opibus summis opis egens, Hector, haector X tuae —huic subvenire debemus; quaerit enim auxilium: Qui/d petam prae/sidi praesidii X aut e/xequar quo/ve nunc Ennius Andr. sc. 85. 6 Au/xilio e/xili exilii X (exillii K 1 ) de hiatu cf. Plaut. Aul. 142 al. ( Jacobsohn, Quaest. Plaut. Gött. 1904 p. 21 ) au/t fugae fugae s Bentl. fuga fre/ta sim? A/rce et urbe o/rba sum. quo a/ccidam? accedam X (accedam' K) corr. s quo a/pplicem? Cui/ nec arae pa/triae domi stant, fra/ctae et disiectae/ iacent, Fa/na flamma de/flagrata, to/sti alti alii X corr. M 2 s stant pa/rietes De/formati atque a/biete crispa— scitis quae sequantur, et illa in primis: ilium primis X corr. Tr. illud in primis V c s cf. p. 260, 26 O pa/ter, o patria, o Pri/ami domus, Saeptum a/ltisono cardi/ne templum! Vidi e/go te adstante dstantem X ( def. Va. ) sed m eras. in V astante p. 260, 22 ope ba/rbarica Tecti/s caelatis la/queatis, Auro e/bore instructam re/gifice. regificem X sed m exp. K 1 B 3.49. negat Epicurus sqq. Epic. fr. 506. 584. 459 iucunde posse vivi, nisi cum virtute vivatur, negat ullam in sapientem vim esse fortunae, tenuem victum antefert copioso, negat ullum esse tempus, quo sapiens non beatus sit. omnia philosopho digna, sed cum voluptate pugtia. non istam dicit voluptatem . dicat quamlibet; nempe eam dicit, in qua virtutis nulla pars insit. age, si voluptatem non intellegimus, ne dolorem quidem? nego igitur eius eius om. R 1 esse, qui quid X d del. in RV dolore dolorem X corr. s autem illi summum malum metiatur, mentionem facere virtutis. 5.11. cuius multiplex ratio disputandi rerumque varietas et ingenii magnitudo Platonis memoria et litteris consecrata plura genera effecit effecit s efficit X dissentientium philosophorum, e quibus nos id potissimum consecuti consecuti con del. V 2 sumus, quo Socratem usum arbitrabamur, arbitramur V 2 s ut nostram ipsi sententiam tegeremus, errore alios levaremus et in omni disputatione, quid esset simillimum veri, quaereremus. quaeremus G 1 K quem morem moyerem G 2 cum Carneades acutissime copiosissimeque tenuisset, fecimus et alias saepe et nuper in Tusculano, ut ad eam eam ( del. c ) R consuetudinem disputaremus. et quadridui quidem sermonem superioribus ad ad a R missimus G 1 K te perscriptum libris misimus, quinto autem die cum eodem in loco consedissemus, sic est propositum, de quo disputaremus: 5.50. quod si est, add. Lb. beata vita glorianda et praedicanda et prae se ferenda est; nihil est enim aliud quod praedicandum et prae se ferendum praeferendum V ( cf. ad 426, 20 ) sit. quibus positis intellegis quid sequatur. Et quidem, nisi ea vita beata est, quae est eadem honesta, sit aliud necesse est melius vita beata; quod erit enim enim add. G 2 honestum, certe fatebuntur esse melius. ita erit beata vita melius aliquid; quo quid potest dici perversius? dicimus itaque sapientem...9 pacem et 14 beata... 427,7 perversius H Quid? cum fatentur satis magnam vim esse in vitiis ad invitusad V miseram vitam, nonne fatendum est eandem vim in virtute virtute B 1 virtutem X virtutum s esse ad beatam vitam? contrariorum enim contraria sunt consequentia. 5.73. An Epic.fr.604 tu me in viola putabas aut in rosa dicere? an Epicuro, qui qui G 1 quia G 2 KRV cf.438,19 tantum modo induit personam philosophi et sibi ipse hoc nomen inscripsit, dicere licebit, licebit alt. i in r. V quod quidem, ut habet se res, me tamen plaudente dicit, nullum sapienti esse tempus, etiamsi uratur torqueatur secetur, quin possit exclamare: quam pro nihilo puto! cum praesertim omne malum dolore definiat defirmat ( vel defirniat) V 1 bonum voluptate, haec nostra honesta turpia inrideat dicatque nos in vocibus Epic.fr.511 occupatos iis sonos fundere, neque quicquam ad nos pertinere nisi quod aut leve aut asperum in corpore sentiatur: huic ergo, ut dixi, non multum differenti a iudicio ferarum oblivisci licebit sui et tum fortunam contemnere, cum sit omne et bonum eius et malum in potestate fortunae, tum dicere se se add. G 2 beatum in summo cruciatu atque tormentis, cum constituerit non modo summum malum esse dolorem, sed etiam solum? 5.74. nec vero illa sibi remedia comparavit ad tolerandum tollerandum X (toll endum G 1 ) dolorem, firmitatem animi, turpitudinis verecundiam, exercitationem consuetudinemque patiendi, praecepta fortitudinis, praecepta fortitudinis del.Sey.sed Cic.l.2,34—41 exercitationem consuetudinemque,postea (cf. maxime 51. 53) praecepta fortitudinis animo proposita (p.313,15sqq.) valere ad tolerandum dolorem exponit (cf.p.285.6 295, 24sqq.fin.2,94.95; 4, 31). cf.etiam Plasberg, Festschrift f. Vahlen p.234 (obloq. Se.,Jb.d.ph.V.29 p.97) duritiam virilem, sed una se dicit recordatione adquiescere praeteritarum voluptatium, voluptatum Bai.cf.Neue 1, 410 ut si quis aestuans, cum vim caloris non non postea add. R 1 facile patiatur, patiatur putatur V 1 recordari velit sese sese s esse X (se V 3 ) aliquando in Arpinati nostro gelidis fluminibus circumfusum fuisse. non enim video, quo modo sedare possint 5.75. mala praesentia praeteritae voluptates—sed cum is is his G 1 KV 1 dicat semper beatum esse sapientem, cui dicere hoc, si si add. G 2 sibi constare vellet, non liceret, quidnam faciendum est is qui nihil expetendum, nihil in bonis ducendum, quod honestate careat, existumant? existumant -a- e corr. R 1 Me quidem auctore auctore ex auctoritate R c etiam Peripatetici veteresque Academici balbuttire balbuttire GR Non. balbut ire V 1 balbutire K aliquando desit me...24 desit Non. 80, 13 aperteque et clara voce audeant dicere beatam vitam in Phalaridis taurum descensuram. decen suram X ( corr. V 3 ) 5.76. sint enim tria genera bonorum, ut ut aut V iam a laqueis Stoicorum, quibus usum me pluribus quam soleo intellego, recedamus, sint sane illa genera bonorum, dum corporis et et s om. X externa iaceant humi et tantum modo, quia sumenda sint, appellentur bona, animi animi Jeep (cf.427,14 443,3 458,6;divini ani- mi bona divina sunt caelumque contingunt) autem illa alii K alia GRV illa add. G 2 divina longe lateque se pandant caelumque contingant; ut, ut del.Lb.sed cf.p.242,25 ea qui adeptus sit, cur eum beatum modo et non beatissimum etiam dixerim? Dolorem vero sapiens extimescet? is enim huic maxime maxime huic G 1 sententiae repugnat. nam nam non V contra mortem nostram atque nostrorum contraque aegritudinem et reliquas animi perturbationes satis esse videmur videmus K superiorum dierum disputationibus armati et parati; dolor esse videtur acerrumus virtutis virtutis We. virtuti istis ard. G adversarius; is ardentis faces intentat, is fortitudinem, magnitudinem animi, patientiam se debilitaturum minatur. 5.77. huic igitur succumbet virtus, huic beata sapientis et constantis viri vita cedet? caedet RV quam turpe, o dii boni! pueri Spartiatae non ingemescunt ingemiscunt K 1 R c B verberum verberum ex verborum V 1 G 2 dolore laniati. adulescentium greges reges V 1 Lacedaemone vidimus ipsi incredibili contentione contione X (conditione G 1 ) corr. B 1 s certantis pugnis calcibus unguibus morsu denique, cum exanimarentur prius quam victos se faterentur. quae barbaria India vastior aut agrestior? quae...agrestior? Non.415,11 in ea tamen aut... tamen add. V c gente primum sqq. cf.Val.Max.3,3,6 ext.2,6,14 ei, qui sapientes habentur, nudi aetatem agunt et Caucasi nives hiemalemque vim perferunt sine sqq. cf.Val.Max.3,3,6 ext.2,6,14 dolore, cumque ad flammam se adplicaverunt, applicaverunt KRV sine gemitu aduruntur. 5.78. mulieres vero in India, cum est cuius cuiuis V 3 communis Geel ( sed tum plures...nuptae post mortuus legeretur; cf.etiam Se., Jb.d.ph.V.26 p.301 ) earum vir mortuus, in certamen iudiciumque veniunt, quam plurumum ille dilexerit— plures enim singulis solent esse nuptae—; quae est victrix, ea laeta prosequentibus suis una unam V 1 cum viro in rogum imponitur, ponitur G 1 illa ilia cf.Quint.inst.1,3,2 victa quae Se. non male,cf.Claud.de nupt.Hon.64 (superatae cum...maerore in vita remanent Val.M. ) maesta discedit. numquam naturam mos vinceret; vinceret vincit H est enim ea semper invicta; sed nos umbris deliciis delitiis X (deliciis V, sed ci in r scr.,alt. i ss. V 2 ) otio languore langore G desidia animum infecimus, opinionibus maloque more delenitum delinitum V 1 H mollivimus. mollium KR 1 ( corr. 1 aut c )H Aegyptiorum morem quis ignorat? ignoret K quorum inbutae mentes pravitatis erroribus quamvis carnificinam carnifici. nam X prius subierint quam ibim aut aspidem aut faelem felem GV cf.nat.deor.1, 82 aut canem aut corcodillum corcodillum GRV corcodrillum KH cf.Th.l.l. violent, volent V 1 quorum etiamsi inprudentes quippiam fecerint, poenam nullam recusent. 5.79. de hominibus loquor; quid? bestiae non frigus, non famem, non montivagos atque silvestris cursus lustrationesque patiuntur? non pro suo sua G 1 partu ita propugt, ut ut K vulnera excipiant, nullos impetus nullos ictus reformident? omitto, quae omittoque p.G 1 V 1 perferant quaeque patiantur ambitiosi honoris causa, laudis studiosi gloriae gratia, amore incensi cupiditatis. plena plana GRV 1 ( corr. 3 ) vita exemplorum exemplum G 1 est. 5.80. Sed adhibeat oratio modum et redeat illuc, unde deflexit. dabit, inquam, dabit, dabit, inquam edd. vett. se in tormenta vita beata nec iustitiam temperantiam in primisque fortitudinem, magnitudinem animi, patientiam patientia GRVH prosecuta, cum tortoris os viderit, consistet virtutibusque omnibus sine ullo animi terrore ad cruciatum profectis resistet extra extra ( fuit et) R fores, ut ante ante cf.p. 410,8 dixi, limenque lumenque G 1 carceris. quid enim ea foedius, quid deformius sola relicta, a add. Lb. comitatu pulcherrimo pulcherrumo KR segregata? quod tamen fieri nullo pacto potest; nec enim virtutes sine beata vita cohaerere possunt nec illa sine virtutibus. 5.81. itaque eam tergiversari non sinent sinent s V rec Non. sinenti secumque rapient, itaque...6 rapienti Non.41,26 ad quemcumque ipsae ipse X dolorem cruciatumque ducentur. sapientis est enim proprium nihil quod paenitere possit possit add. G 2 facere, nihil invitum, splendide constanter graviter graviter c nstanter R honeste omnia, nihil ita expectare exspectare GRH ( alt.loco ) quasi certo incerto H (inc. alt.loco futurum, nihil, cum acciderit, admirari, ut inopinatum opinatum R 1 ac novum accidisse videatur, omnia ad suum arbitrium referre, suis stare iudiciis. quo quod G ( exp. 2 ) quid sit beatius, mihi certe in mentem venire non potest. numquam...441, 7 sapientis ( om. 441, 12 omnia...14 potest) H 5.82. Stoicorum quidem facilis conclusio est; qui cum finem bonorum esse esse om. H senserint congruere congruę G 1 naturae cumque ea convenienter vivere, cum id sit in sapientis sapientis Lb. sapiente situm non officio solum, verum etiam etiam om. H potestate, sequatur necesse est, ut, cuius in potestate summum bonum, in eiusdem vita beata ita ista V 1 sit. ita fit semper vita beata sapientis. Habes, quae fortissime de beata vita dici putem et, quo modo nunc est, nisi quid tu melius attuleris, etiam verissime. Melius equidem adferre nihil possum, sed a te impetrarim lubenter, ut, nisi molestum sit, sit est Ha. quoniam te nulla vincula impediunt ullius ullius V 3 B Corr s illius X certae disciplinae libasque ex omnibus, quodcumque te maxime specie veritatis movet,—quod paulo ante paulo ante 438,22 Peripateticos veteremque Academiam hortari videbare, ut sine retractatione libere dicere dicerent G ( corr. 1 ) RV ( corr. rec ) auderent audirent K sapientis esse semper beatissimos, id velim audire, quem ad modum his putes consentaneum esse id dicere. multa multi K 1 enim a te contra istam sententiam dicta sunt et Stoicorum ratione conclusa. 5.84. tum esse sapientem—, sed quaeramus unam quamque reliquorum sententiam, si fieri potest, ut hoc praeclarum quasi decretum beatae vitae possit omnium sententiis et disciplinis convenire. Sunt autem haec de finibus, ut opinor, retentae defensaeque defensaque K 1 sententiae: primum simplices quattuor, nihil bonum nisi honestum, ut Stoici, nihil bonum nisi voluptatem, ut Epicurus, epicur ei H 1 nihil bonum nisi vacuitatem doloris, add. Bentl.cf.fin.2.16 al. ut Hieronymus, hieronimus hic, 444, 8.14; 457, 20 GV itemtque R, nisi quod 444, 14 hieronymus habet,444,8 ipse restituit. iheronimus hic K 1 in r., hyeronimus rell. loc. (ut p.457,20 F) nihil bonum nisi naturae primis bonis bonis cf. prima naturae commoda ac 2, 138 fin. 5, 58 aut omnibus aut maxumis frui, ut frui aut V Carneades contra Stoicos disserebat. 5.85. haec igitur simplicia, illa mixta: tria genera bonorum, maxuma animi, secunda corporis, externa tertia, si...443, 4 tertia ut Peripatetici nec multo veteres Academici achademicis V 1 secus; voluptatem cum honestate Dinomachus et Callipho copulavit, indolentiam autem honestati Peripateticus Diodorus dodorus K 1 adiunxit. haec hae GRV rec H sunt sententiae, quae stabilitatis aliquid habeant; hae sunt...8 habeant nam Aristonis arrystonis G Pyrrhonis Erilli pyrroni ferilli GRV 1 (s ex f V 1 ) pyrroniserilli K ( add. c ) non nullorumque aliorum evanuerunt. hi quid possint optinere, videamus omissis omisis KH Stoicis, quorum satis videor defendisse sententiam. Et Peripateticorum peripateti quorum K quidem explicata causa est omisis...12 est H praeter Theophrastum et si qui illum secuti imbecillius imbecilius X horrent dolorem et reformidant; reliquis quidem licet facere id quod fere faciunt, ut gravitatem dignitatemque virtutis exaggerent. quam cum ad caelum extulerunt, extulerunt Mdv. extulerint ( def.Blase,Arch.f.l.L.10,337 ) quod facere eloquentes homines copiose solent, reliqua reliqui K ex conlatione facile est conterere atque contemnere. nec enim licet is, qui laudem cum dolore petendam esse dicant, negare eos esse beatos, qui illam adepti sunt. dicunt...21 adepti sint Ba.sed cf.Mue. quamquam quamquam ex quantum K c enim sint in quibusdam malis, tamen hoc nomen beati longe et et om. V late patet. 5.119. Quodsi is philosophis, his philosophis XF ii ( vel hi) philosophi corr. s V b vulgo; sed anacoluthon ( C. pergere volebat : semper beatus videtur sapiens cf. p. 418,23 ) tolerari potest, si v. 458,3 si i (et X id ut vid. F ei We. ) scribitur. quorum ea sententia est, ut virtus per se ipsa nihil valeat, omneque, omnesque XF ut v. omneque s quod honestum nos et laudabile esse dicamus, dicimus s id illi cassum cassum ex casus G 1 casum V quiddam et ii iis F vocis sono decoratum esse dicant,— si i si i cf. ad p. 457,21 tamen semper beatum censent esse sapientem, quid tandem a Socrate et Platone profectis perfectis KRH ( in V legi non potest ) philosophis faciendum videtur? uidetur V b (ui solum nunc in V dispicitur ) vides XF iudicas Sey. quorum alii tantam praestantiam in bonis animi esse dicunt, ut ab is is his X iis F corporis et externa obruantur, obruantur F cf. p. 314, 22 fin. 5,91 observant X (observan in V dispicitur observent R 2 ) obscurentur s (observatur pro obruatur Gr. p. 358, 1 ) alii autem haec ne ne nec K bona quidem ducunt, in animo reponunt omnia. haud...458, 8 omnia H | |
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| 11. Cicero, In Pisonem, 37, 59, 20 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Maso (2022) 100 |
| 12. Cicero, Letters To Quintus, 2.9.3 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •atom / atomism Found in books: Maso (2022) 102 |
| 13. Cicero, Letters To His Friends, 15.19.2 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •atom / atomism Found in books: Maso (2022) 100 |
| 14. Cicero, On Fate, 18-26, 32-33, 39-48, 31 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Maso (2022) 41 |
15. Cicero, On The Nature of The Gods, 1.10, 1.25-1.124, 2.13, 2.45, 2.75, 3.16 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •atom / atomism Found in books: Maso (2022) 35, 67, 100, 102, 103, 145, 146 | 1.10. Those however who seek to learn my personal opinion on the various questions show an unreasonable degree of curiosity. In discussion it is not so much weight of authority as force of argument that should be demanded. Indeed the authority of those who profess to teach is often a positive hindrance to those who desire to learn; they cease to employ their own judgement, and take what they perceive to be the verdict of their chosen master as settling the question. In fact I am not disposed to approve the practice traditionally ascribed to the Pythagoreans, who, when questioned as to the grounds of any assertion that they advanced in debate, are said to have been accustomed to reply 'He himself said so,' 'he himself' being Pythagoras. So potent was an opinion already decided, making authority prevail unsupported by reason. 1.25. "So much, Lucilius, for the doctrines of your school. To show what the older systems are like, I will trace their history from the remotest of your predecessors. Thales of Miletus, who was the first person to investigate these matters, said that water was the first principle of things, but that god was the mind that moulded all things out of water — supposing that gods can exist without sensation; and why did he make mind an adjunct of water, if mind can exist by itself, devoid of body? The view of Anaximander is that the gods are not everlasting but are born and perish at long intervals of time, and that they are worlds, countless in number. But how we conceive of god save as living for ever? 1.26. Next, Anaximenes held that air is god, and that it has a beginning in time, and is immeasurable and infinite in extent, and is always in motion; just as if formless air could be god, especially seeing that it is proper to god to possess not merely some shape but the most beautiful shape; or as if anything that has had a beginning must not necessarily be mortal. Then there is Anaxagoras, the successor of Anaximenes; he was the first thinker to hold that the orderly disposition of the universe is designed and perfected by the rational power of an infinite mind. But in saying this he failed to see that there can be no such thing as sentient and continuous activity in that which is infinite, and that sensation in general can only occur when the subject itself becomes sentient by the impact of a sensation. Further, if he intended his infinite mind to be a definite living creature, it must have some inner principle of life to justify the name. But mind is itself the innermost principle. Mind therefore will have an outer integument of body. 1.27. But this Anaxagoras will not allow; yet mind naked and simple, without any material adjunct to serve as an organ of sensation, seems to elude the capacity of our understanding. Alcmaeon of Croton, who attributed divinity to the sun, moon and other heavenly bodies, and also to the soul, did not perceive that he was bestowing immortality on things that are mortal. As for Pythagoras, who believed that the entire substance of the universe is penetrated and pervaded by a soul of which our souls are fragments, he failed to notice that this severance of the souls of men from the world-soul means the dismemberment and rending asunder of god; and that when their souls are unhappy, as happens to most men, then a portion of god is unhappy; which is impossible. 1.28. Again, if the soul of man is divine, why is it not omniscient? Moreover, if the Pythagorean god is pure soul, how is he implanted in, or diffused throughout, the world? Next, Xenophanes endowed the universe with mind, and held that, as being infinite, it was god. His view of mind is as open to objection as that of the rest; but on the subject of infinity he incurs still severer criticism, for the infinite can have no sensation and no contact with anything outside. As for Parmenides, he invents a purely fanciful something resembling a crown — stephanè is his name for it —, an unbroken ring of glowing lights, encircling the sky, which he entitles god; but no one can imagine this to possess divine form, or sensation. He also has many other portentous notions; he deifies war, strife, lust and the like, things which can be destroyed by disease or sleep or forgetfulness or lapse of time; and he also deifies the stars, but this has been criticized in another philosopher and need not be dealt with now in the case of Parmenides. 1.29. Empedocles again among many other blunders comes to grief most disgracefully in his theology. He assigns divinity to the four substances which in his system are the constituent elements of the universe, although manifestly these substances both come into and pass out of existence, and are entirely devoid of sensation. Protagoras also, who declares he has no clear views whatever about the gods, whether they exist or do not exist, or what they are like, seems to have no notion at all of the divine nature. Then in what a maze of error is Democritus involved, who at one moment ranks as gods his roving 'images,' at another the substance that emits and radiates these images, and at another again the scientific intelligence of man! At the same time his denial of immutability and therefore of eternity, to everything whatsoever surely involves a repudiation of deity so absolute as to leave no conception of a divine be remaining! Diogenes of Apollonia makes air a god; but how can air have sensation, or divinity in any shape? 1.30. The inconsistencies of Plato are a long story. In the Timaeus he says that it is impossible to name the father of this universe; and in the Laws he deprecates all inquiry into the nature of the deity. Again, he holds that god is entirely incorporeal (in Greek, asomatos); but divine incorporeity is inconceivable, for an incorporeal deity would necessarily be incapable of sensation, and also of practical wisdom, and of pleasure, all of which are attributes essential to our conception of deity. Yet both in the Timaeus and the Laws he says that the world, the sky, the stars, the earth and our souls are gods, in addition to those in whom we have been taught to believe; but it is obvious that these propositions are both inherently false and mutually destructive. 1.31. Xenophon also commits almost the same errors, though in fewer words; for in his memoir of the sayings of Socrates he represents Socrates as arguing that it is wrong to inquire about the form of god, but also as saying that both the sun and the soul are god, and as speaking at one moment of a single god and at another of several: utterances that involve almost the same mistakes as do those which we quoted from Plato. 1.32. Antisthenes also, in his book entitled The Natural Philosopher, says that while there are many gods of popular belief, there is one god in nature, so depriving divinity of all meaning or substance. Very similarly Speusippus, following his uncle Plato, and speaking of a certain force that governs all things and is endowed with life, does his best to root out the notion of deity from our minds altogether. 1.33. And Aristotle in the Third Book of his Philosophy has a great many confused notions, not disagreeing with the doctrines of his master Plato; at one moment he assigns divinity exclusively to the intellect, at another he says that the world is itself a god, then again he puts some other being over the world, and assigns to this being the rôle of regulating and sustaining the world-motion by means of a sort of inverse rotation; then he says that the celestial heat is god — not realizing that the heavens are a part of that world which elsewhere he himself has entitled god. But how could the divine consciousness which he assigns to the heavens persist in a state of such rapid motion? Where moreover are all the gods of accepted belief, if we count the heavens also as a god? Again, in maintaining that god is incorporeal, he robs him entirely of sensation, and also of wisdom. Moreover, how is motion possible for an incorporeal being, and how, if he is always in motion, can he enjoy tranquillity and bliss? 1.34. Nor was his fellow-pupil Xenocrates any wiser on this subject. His volumes On the Nature of the Gods give no intelligible account of the divine form; for he states that there are eight gods: five inhabiting the planets, and in a state of motion; one consisting of all the fixed stars, which are to be regarded as separate members constituting a single deity; seventh he adds the sun, and eighth the moon. But what sensation of bliss these things can enjoy it is impossible to conceive. Another member of the school of Plato, Heracleides of Pontus, filled volume after volume with childish fictions; at one moment he deems the world divine, at another the intellect; he also assigns divinity to the planets, and holds that the deity is devoid of sensation and mutable of form; and again in the same volume he reckons earth and sky as gods. 1.35. Theophrastus also is intolerably inconsistent; at one moment he assigns divine pre‑eminence to mind, at another to the heavens, and then again to the constellations and stars in the heavens. Nor is his pupil, Strato, surnamed the Natural Philosopher, worthy of attention; in his view the sole repository of divine power is nature, which contains in itself the causes of birth, growth and decay, but is entirely devoid of sensation and of form. 1.36. "Lastly, Balbus, I come to your Stoic school. Zeno's view is that the law of nature is divine, and that its function is to command what is right and to forbid the opposite. How he makes out this law to be alive passes our comprehension; yet we undoubtedly expect god to be a living being. In another passage however Zeno declares that the aether is god — if there is any meaning in a god without sensation, a form of deity that never presents itself to us when we offer up our prayers and supplications and make our vows. And in other books again he holds the view that a 'reason' which pervades all nature is possessed of divine power. He likewise attributes the same powers to the stars, or at another time to the years, the months and the seasons. Again, in his interpretation of Hesiod's Theogony (or Origin of the Gods) he does away with the customary and received ideas of the gods altogether, for he does not reckon either Jupiter, Juno or Vesta as gods, or any being that bears a personal name, but teaches that these names have been assigned allegorically to dumb and lifeless things. 1.37. Zeno's pupil Aristo holds equally mistaken views. He thinks that the form of the deity cannot be comprehended, and he denies the gods sensation, and in fact is uncertain whether god is a living being at all. Cleanthes, who attended Zeno's lectures at the same time as the last-named, at one moment says that the world itself is god, at another gives this name to the mind and soul of the universe, and at another decides that the most unquestionable deity is that remote all‑surrounding fiery atmosphere called the aether, which encircles and embraces the universe on its outer side at an exceedingly lofty altitude; while in the books that he wrote to combat hedonism he babbles like one demented, now imagining gods of some definite shape and form, now assigning full divinity to the stars, now pronouncing that nothing is more divine than reason. The result is that the god whom we apprehend by our intelligence, and desire to make to correspond with a mental concept as a seal tallies with its impression, has utterly and entirely vanished. 1.38. Persaeus, another pupil of Zeno, says that men have deified those persons who have made some discovery of special utility for civilization, and that useful and health-giving things have themselves been called by divine names; he did not even say that they were discoveries of the gods, but speaks of them as actually divine. But what could be more ridiculous than to award divine honours to things mean and ugly, or to give the rank of gods to men now dead and gone, whose worship could only take the form of lamentation? 1.39. Chrysippus, who is deemed to be the most skilful interpreter of the Stoic dreams, musters an enormous mob of unknown gods — so utterly unknown that even imagination cannot guess at their form and nature, although our mind appears capable of visualizing anything; for he says that divine power resides in reason, and in the soul and mind of the universe; he calls the world itself a god, and also the all‑pervading world-soul, and again the guiding principle of that soul, which operates in the intellect and reason, and the common and all‑embracing nature of things; beside this, the fire that I previously termed aether; and also the power of Fate, and the Necessity that governs future events; and also all fluid and soluble substances, such as water, earth, air, the sun, moon and stars, and the all‑embracing unity of things; and even those human beings who have attained immortality. 1.40. He also argues that the god whom men call Jupiter is the aether, and that Neptune is the air which permeates the sea, and the goddess called Ceres the earth; and he deals in the same way with the whole series of the names of the other gods. He also identifies Jupiter with the mighty Law, everlasting and eternal, which is our guide of life and instructress in duty, and which he entitles Necessity or Fate, and the Everlasting Truth of future events; none of which conceptions is of such a nature as to be deemed to possess divinity. 1.41. This is what is contained in his Nature of the Gods, Book I. In Book II he aims at reconciling the myths of Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer with his own theology as enunciated in Book I, and so makes out that even the earliest poets of antiquity, who had no notion of these doctrines, were really Stoics. In this he is followed by Diogenes of Babylon, who in his book entitled Minerva rationalizes the myth of the birth of the virgin goddess from Jove by explaining it as an allegory of the processes of nature. 1.42. "I have given a rough account of what are more like the dreams of madmen than the considered opinions of philosophers. For they are little less absurd than the outpourings of the poets, harmful as these have been owing to the mere charm of their style. The poets have represented the gods as inflamed by anger and maddened by lust, and have displayed to our gaze their wars and battles, their fights and wounds, their hatreds, enmities and quarrels, their births and deaths, their complaints and lamentations, the utter and unbridled licence of their passions, their adulteries and imprisonments, their unions with human beings and the birth of mortal progeny from an immortal parent. 1.43. With the errors of the poets may be classed the monstrous doctrines of the magi and the insane mythology of Egypt, and also the popular beliefs, which are a mere mass of inconsistencies sprung from ignorance. "Anyone pondering on the baseless and irrational character of these doctrines ought to regard Epicurus with reverence, and to rank him as one of the very gods about whom we are inquiring. For he alone perceived, first, that the gods exist, because nature herself has imprinted a conception of them on the minds of all mankind. For what nation or what tribe is there but possesses untaught some 'preconception' of the gods? Such notions Epicurus designates by the word prolepsis, that is, a sort of preconceived mental picture of a thing, without which nothing can be understood or investigated or discussed. The force and value of this argument we learn in that work of genius, Epicurus's Rule or Standard of Judgement. 1.44. You see therefore that the foundation (for such it is) of our inquiry has been well and truly laid. For the belief in the gods has not been established by authority, custom or law, but rests on the uimous and abiding consensus of mankind; their existence is therefore a necessary inference, since we possess an instinctive or rather an innate concept of them; but a belief which all men by nature share must necessarily be true; therefore it must be admitted that the gods exist. And since this truth is almost universally accepted not only among philosophers but also among the unlearned, we must admit it as also being an accepted truth that we possess a 'preconception,' as I called it above, or 'prior notion,' of the gods. (For we are bound to employ novel terms to denote novel ideas, just as Epicurus himself employed the word prolepsis in a sense in which no one had ever used it before.) 1.45. We have then a preconception of such a nature that we believe the gods to be blessed and immortal. For nature, which bestowed upon us an idea of the gods themselves, also engraved on our minds the belief that they are eternal and blessed. If this is so, the famous maxim of Epicurus truthfully enunciates that 'that which is blessed and eternal can neither know trouble itself nor cause trouble to another, and accordingly cannot feel either anger or favour, since all such things belong only to the weak.' "If we sought to attain nothing else beside piety in worshipping the gods and freedom from superstition, what has been said had sufficed; since the exalted nature of the gods, being both eternal and supremely blessed, would receive man's pious worship (for what is highest commands the reverence that is its due); and furthermore all fear of the divine power or divine anger would have been banished (since it is understood that anger and favour alike are excluded from the nature of a being at once blessed and immortal, and that these being eliminated we are menaced by no fears in regard to the powers above). But the mind strives to strengthen this belief by trying to discover the form of god, the mode of his activity, and the operation of his intelligence. 1.46. "For the divine form we have the hints of nature supplemented by the teachings of reason. From nature all men of all races derive the notion of gods as having human shape and none other; for in what other shape do they ever appear to anyone, awake or asleep? But not to make primary concepts the sole test of all things, reason itself delivers the same pronouncement. 1.47. For it seems appropriate that the being who is the most exalted, whether by reason of his happiness or his eternity, should also be the most beautiful; but what disposition of the limbs, what cast of features, what shape or outline can be more beautiful than the human form? You Stoics at least, Lucilius, (for my friend Cotta says one thing at one time and another at another) are wont to portray the skill of the divine creator by enlarging on the beauty as well as the utility of design displayed in all parts of the human figure. 1.48. But if the human figure surpasses the form of all other living beings, and god is a living being, god must possess the shape which is the most beautiful of all; and since it is agreed that the gods are supremely happy, and no one can be happy without virtue, and virtue cannot exist without reason, and reason is only found in the human shape, it follows that the gods possess the form of man. 1.49. Yet their form is not corporeal, but only resembles bodily substance; it does not contain blood, but the semblance of blood. "These discoveries of Epicurus are so acute in themselves and so subtly expressed that not everyone would be capable of appreciating them. Still I may rely on your intelligence, and make my exposition briefer than the subject demands. Epicurus then, as he not merely discerns abstruse and recondite things with his mind's eye, but handles them as tangible realities, teaches that the substance and nature of the gods is such that, in the first place, it is perceived not by the senses but by the mind, and not materially or individually, like the solid objects which Epicurus in virtue of their substantiality entitles steremnia; but by our perceiving images owing to their similarity and succession, because an endless train of precisely similar images arises from the innumerable atoms and streams towards the gods, our minds with the keenest feelings of pleasure fixes its gaze on these images, and so attains an understanding of the nature of a being both blessed and eternal. 1.50. Moreover there is the supremely potent principle of infinity, which claims the closest and most careful study; we must understand that it has the following property, that in the sum of things everything has its exact match and counterpart. This property is termed by Epicurus isonomia, or the principle of uniform distribution. From this principle it follows that if the whole number of mortals be so many, there must exist no less a number of immortals, and if the causes of destruction are beyond count, the causes of conservation also are bound to be infinite. "You Stoics are also fond of asking us, Balbus, what is the mode of life of the gods and how they pass their days. 1.51. The answer is, their life is the happiest conceivable, and the one most bountifully furnished with all good things. God is entirely inactive and free from all ties of occupation; he toils not neither does he labour, but he takes delight in his own wisdom and virtue, and knows with absolute certainty that he will always enjoy pleasures at once consummate and everlasting. 1.52. This is the god whom we should call happy in the proper sense of the term; your Stoic god seems to us to be grievously overworked. If the world itself is god, what can be less restful than to revolve at incredible speed round the axis of the heavens without a single moment of respite? but repose is an essential condition of happiness. If on the other hand some god resides within the world as its governor and pilot, maintaining the courses of the stars, the changes of the seasons and all the ordered process of creation, and keeping a watch on land and sea to guard the interests and lives of men, why, what a bondage of irksome and laborious business is his! 1.53. We for our part deem happiness to consist in tranquillity of mind and entire exemption from all duties. For he who taught us all the rest has also taught us that the world was made by nature, without needing an artificer to construct it, and that the act of creation, which according to you cannot be performed without divine skill, is so easy, that nature will create, is creating and has created worlds without number. You on the contrary cannot see how nature can achieve all this without the aid of some intelligence, and so, like the tragic poets, being unable to bring the plot of your drama to a dénouement, you have recourse to a god; 1.54. whose intervention you assuredly would not require if you would but contemplate the measureless and boundless extent of space that stretches in every direction, into which when the mind projects and propels itself, it journeys onward far and wide without ever sighting any margin or ultimate point where it can stop. Well then, in this immensity of length and breadth and height there flits an infinite quantity of atoms innumerable, which though separated by void yet cohere together, and taking hold each of another form unions wherefrom are created those shapes and forms of things which you think cannot be created without the aid of bellows and anvils, and so have saddled us with an eternal master, whom day and night we are to fear; for who would not fear a prying busybody of a god, who foresees and thinks of and notices all things, and deems that everything is his concern? 1.55. An outcome of this theology was first of all your doctrine of Necessity or Fate, heimarmenē, as you termed it, the theory that every event is the result of an eternal truth and an unbroken sequence of causation. But what value can be assigned to a philosophy which thinks that everything happens by fate? it is a belief for old women, and ignorant old women at that. And next follows your doctrine of mantikē, or Divination, which would so steep us in superstition, if we consented to listen to you, that we should be the devotees of soothsayers, augurs, oracle-mongers, seers and interpreters of dreams. 1.56. But Epicurus has set us free from superstitious terrors and delivered us out of captivity, so that we have no fear of beings who, we know, create no trouble for themselves and seek to cause none to others, while we worship with pious reverence the transcendent majesty of nature. "But I fear that enthusiasm for my subject has made me prolix. It was difficult however to leave so vast and splendid a theme unfinished, although really it was not my business to be a speaker so much as a listener." 1.57. Then Cotta took up the discussion. "Well, Velleius," he rejoined, with his usual suavity, "unless you had stated a case, you certainly would have had no chance of hearing anything from me. I always find it much easier to think of arguments to prove a thing false than to prove it true. This often happens to me, and did so just now while I was listening to you. Ask me what I think that the divine nature is like, and very probably I shall make no reply; but inquire whether I believe that it resembles the description of it which you have just given, and I shall say that nothing seems to me less likely. But before proceeding to examine your arguments, I will give my opinion of yourself. 1.58. I fancy I have often heard that friend of yours [Lucius Crassus] declare that of all the Roman adherents of Epicureanism he placed you unquestionably first, and that few of those from Greece could be ranked beside you; but knowing his extraordinary esteem for you, I imagined that he was speaking with the partiality of a friend. I myself however, though reluctant to praise you to your face, must nevertheless pronounce that your exposition of an obscure and difficult theme has been most illuminating, and not only exhaustive in its treatment of the subject, but also graced with a charm of style not uncommon in your school. 1.59. When at Athens, I frequently attended the discourses of Zeno, whom our friend Philo used to call the leader of the Epicurean choir; in fact it was Philo who suggested that I should go to him — no doubt in order that I might be better able to judge how completely the Epicurean doctrine may be refuted when I had heard an exposition of it from the head of the school. Now Zeno, unlike most Epicureans, had a style as clear, cogent and elegant as your own. But what often occurred to me in his case happened just now while I was listening to you: I felt annoyed that talents so considerable should have chanced to select (if you will forgive my saying it) so trivial, not to say so stupid, a set of doctrines. 1.60. Not that I propose at the moment to contribute something better of my own. As I said just now, in almost all subjects, but especially in natural philosophy, I am more ready to say what is not true than what is. Inquire of me as to the being and nature of god, and I shall follow the example of Simonides, who having the same question put to him by the great Hiero, requested a day's grace for consideration; next day, when Hiero repeated the question, he asked for two days, and so went on several times multiplying the number of days by two; and when Hiero in surprise asked why he did so, he replied, 'Because the longer I deliberate the more obscure the matter seems to me.' But Simonides is recorded to have been not only a charming poet but also a man of learning and wisdom in other fields, and I suppose that so many acute and subtle ideas came into his mind that he could not decide which of them was truest, and therefore despaired of truth altogether. 1.61. But as for your master Epicurus (for I prefer to join issue with him rather than with yourself), which of his utterances is, I do not say worthy of philosophy, but compatible with ordinary common sense? "In an inquiry as to the nature of the gods, the first question that we ask is, do the gods exist or do they not? 'It is difficult to deny their existence.' No doubt it would be if the question were to be asked in a public assembly, but in private conversation and in a company like the present it is perfectly easy. This being so, I, who am a high priest, and who hold it to be a duty most solemnly to maintain the rights and doctrines of the established religion, should be glad to be convinced of this fundamental tenet of the divine existence, not as an article of faith merely but as an ascertained fact. For many disturbing reflections occur to my mind, which sometimes make me think that there are no gods at all. 1.62. But mark how generously I deal with you. I will not attack those tenets which are shared by your school with all other philosophers — for example the one in question, since almost all men, and I myself no less than any other, believe that the gods exist, and this accordingly I do not challenge. At the same time I doubt the adequacy of the argument which you adduce to prove it. You said that a sufficient reason for our admitting that the gods exist was the fact that all the nations and races of mankind believe it. But argument is both inconclusive and untrue. In the first place, how do you know what foreign races believe? For my part I think that there are many nations so uncivilized and barbarous as to have no notion of any gods at all. 1.63. Again, did not Diagoras, called the Atheist, and later Theodorus openly deny the divine existence? Since as for Protagoras of Abdera, the greatest sophist of that age, to whom you just now alluded, for beginning a book with the words 'About the gods I am unable to affirm either how they exist or how they do not exist,' he was sentenced by a decree of the Athenian assembly to be banished from the city and from the country, and to have his books burnt in the market-place: an example that I can well believe has discouraged many people since from professing atheism, since the mere expression of doubt did not succeed in escaping punishment. What are we to say about the men guilty of sacrilege or impiety or perjury? Suppose that ever Lucius Tubulus, Lupus or Carbo, or some son of Neptune, as Lucilius has it, had believed in the gods, would he have been such a perjurer and scoundrel? 1.64. We find then that your argument is not so well-established a proof of the view which you uphold as you imagine it to be. Still, as it is a line of reasoning that is followed by other philosophers as well, I will pass it over for the present, and turn rather to doctrines peculiar to your school. 1.65. "I grant the existence of the gods: do you then teach me their origin, their dwelling-place, their bodily and spiritual nature, their mode of life; for these are the things which I want to know. In regard to all of them you make great play with the lawless domination of the atoms; from these you construct and create everything that comes upon the ground, as he says. Now in the first place, there are no such things as atoms. For there is nothing . . . incorporeal, but all space is filled with material bodies; hence there can be no such thing as void, and no such thing as an indivisible body. 1.66. In all of this I speak for the time being only as the mouthpiece of our oracles of natural philosophy; whether their utterances are true or false I do not know, but at all events they are more probable than those of your school. As for the outrageous doctrines of Democritus, or perhaps of his predecessor Leucippus, that there are certain minute particles, some smooth, others rough, some round, some angular, some curved or hook-shaped, and that heaven and earth were created from these, not by compulsion of any natural law but by a sort of accidental colliding — this is the belief to which you, Gaius Velleius, have clung all your life long, and it would be easier to make you alter all your principles of conduct than abandon the teachings of your master; for you made up your mind that the Epicureanism claimed your allegiance before you learned these doctrines: so that you were faced with the alternative of either accepting these outrageous notions or surrendering the title of the school of your adoption. 1.67. For what would you take to cease to be an Epicurean? 'For no consideration,' you reply, 'would I forsake the principles of happiness and the truth.' Then is Epicureanism the truth? For as to happiness I don't join issue, since in your view even divine happiness involves being bored to death with idleness. But where is the truth to be found? I suppose in an infinite number of worlds, some coming to birth and others hurled into ruin at every minutest moment of time? or in the indivisible particles that produce all the marvels of creation without any controlling nature or reason? But I am forgetting the indulgence which I began to show you just now, and am taking too wide a range. I will grant therefore that everything is made out of indivisible bodies; but this takes us no farther, for we are trying to discover the nature of the gods. 1.68. Suppose we allow that the gods are made of atoms: then it follows that they are not eternal. For what is made of atoms came into existence at some time; but if the gods came into existence, before they came into existence there were no gods; and if the gods had a beginning, they must also perish, as you were arguing a little time ago about the world as conceived by Plato. Where then do we find that happiness and that eternity which in your system are the two catchwords that denote divinity? When you wish to make this out, you take cover in a thicket of jargon; you gave us the formula just now — God has not body but a semblance of body, not blood but a kind of blood. 1.69. "This is a very common practice with your school. You advance a paradox, and then, when you want to escape censure, you adduce in support of it some absolute impossibility; so that you would have done better to abandon the point in dispute rather than to offer so shameless a defence. For instance, Epicurus saw that if the atoms travelled downwards by their own weight, we should have no freedom of the will, since the motion of the atoms would be determined by necessity. He therefore invented a device to escape from determinism (the point had apparently escaped the notice of Democritus): he said that the atom while travelling vertically downward by the force of gravity makes a very slight swerve to the side. 1.70. This defence discredits him more than if he had had to abandon his original position. He does the same in his battle with the logicians. Their accepted doctrine is that in every disjunctive proposition of the form 'so‑and‑so either is or is not,' one of the two alternatives must be true. Epicurus took alarm; if such a proposition as 'Epicurus either will or will not be alive to‑morrow' were granted, one or other alternative would be necessary. Accordingly he denied the necessity of a disjunctive proposition altogether. Now what could be stupider than that? Arcesilas used to attack Zeno because, whereas he himself said that all sense-presentations are false, Zeno said that some were false, but not all. Epicurus feared that if a single sensation were admitted to be false, none would be true: he therefore said that all the senses give a true report. In none of these cases did he behave very cleverly, for to parry a lighter blow he laid himself open to one that was more severe. 1.71. "He does the same as regards the nature of the gods. In his desire to avoid the assumption of a dense cluster of atoms, which would involve the possibility of destruction and dissipation, he says that the gods have not a body but a semblance of body, and not blood but a semblance of blood. It is thought surprising that an augur can see an augur without smiling; but it is more surprising that you Epicureans keep a grave face when by yourselves. 'It is not body but a semblance of body.' I could understand what this supposition meant if it related to waxen images or figures of earthenware, but what 'a semblance of body' or 'a semblance of blood' may mean in the case of god, I cannot understand; nor can you either, Velleius, only you won't admit it. 1.72. "The fact is that you people merely repeat by rote the idle vapourings that Epicurus uttered when half asleep; for, as we read in his writings, he boasted that he had never had a teacher. This I for my part could well believe, even if he did not proclaim it, just as I believe the owner of an ill‑built house when he boasts that he did not employ an architect! He shows not the faintest trace of the Academy or the Lyceum, or even of the ordinary schoolboy studies. He might have heard Xenocrates — by heaven, what a master! — and some people think that he did, but he himself denies it, and he ought to know! He states that he heard a certain Pamphilus, a pupil of Plato, at Samos (where he resided in his youth with his father and brother — his father Neocles had gone there to take up land, but failing to make a living out of his farm, I believe kept a school). 1.73. However Epicurus pours endless scorn on this Platonist, so afraid is he of appearing ever to have learnt anything from a teacher. He stands convicted in the case of Nausiphanes, a follower of Democritus, whom he does not deny he heard lecture, but whom nevertheless he assails with every sort of abuse. Yet if he had not heard from him these doctrines of Democritus, what had he heard? for what is there in Epicurus's natural philosophy that does not come from Democritus? Since even if he introduced some alterations, for instance the swerve of the atoms, of which I spoke just now, yet most of his system is the same, the atoms, the void, the images, the infinity of space, and the countless number of worlds, their births and their destructions, in fact almost everything that is comprised in natural science. 1.74. "As to your formula 'a semblance of body' and 'a semblance of blood,' what meaning do you attach to it? That you have a better knowledge of the matter than I have I freely admit, and what is more, am quite content that this should be so; but once it is expressed in words, why should one of us be able to understand it and not the other? Well then, I do understand what body is and what blood is, but what 'a semblance of body' and 'a semblance of blood' are I don't understand in the very least. You are not trying to hide the truth from me, as Pythagoras used to hide it from strangers, nor yet are you speaking obscurely on purpose like Heraclitus, but (to speak candidly between ourselves) you don't understand it yourself any more than I do. 1.75. I am aware that what you maintain is that the gods possess a certain outward appearance, which has no firmness or solidity, no definite shape or outline, and which is free from gross admixture, volatile, transparent. Therefore we shall use the same language as we should of the Venus of Cos: her's is not real flesh but the likeness of flesh, and the mantling blush that dyes her fair cheek is not real blood but something that counterfeits blood; similarly in the god of Epicurus we shall say that there is no real substance but something that counterfeits substance. But assume that I accept as true a dogma that I cannot even understand: exhibit to me, pray, the forms and features of your shadow-deities. 1.76. On this topic you are at no loss for arguments designed to prove that the gods have the form of men: first because our minds possess a preconceived notion of such a character that, when a man thinks of god, it is the human form that presents itself to him; secondly, because inasmuch as the divine nature surpasses all other things, the divine form also must needs be the most beautiful, and no form is more beautiful than that of man. The third reason you advance is that no other shape is capable of being the abode of intelligence. 1.77. Well then, take these arguments one by one and consider what they amount to; for in my view they based on an arbitrary and quite inadmissible assumption on your part. First of all, was there ever any student so blind as not to see that human shape has been thus assigned to the gods either by the deliberate contrivance of philosophers, the better to enable them to turn the hearts of the ignorant from vicious practices to the observance of religion, or by superstition, to supply images for men to worship in the belief that in so doing they had direct access to the divine presence? These notions moreover have been fostered by poets, painters and artificers, who found it difficult to represent living and active deities in the likeness of any other shape than that of man. Perhaps also man's belief in his own superior beauty, to which you referred, may have contributed to the result. But surely you as a natural philosopher are aware what an insinuating go‑between and pander of her own charms nature is! Do you suppose that there is a single creature on land or in the sea which does not prefer an animal of its own specie to any other? If this were not so, why should not a bull desire to couple with a mare, or a horse with a cow? Do you imagine that an eagle or lion or dolphin thinks any shape more beautiful than its own? Is it then surprising if nature has likewise taught man to think his own species the most beautiful . . . that this was a reason why we should think the gods resemble man? 1.78. "Suppose animals possessed reason, do you not think that they would each assign pre‑eminence to their own species? For my part I protest (if I am to say what I think) that although I am not lacking in self-esteem yet I don't presume to call myself more beautiful than the famous bull on which Europa rode; for the question is not here of our intellectual and oratorical powers but of our outward form and aspect. Indeed if we choose to make imaginary combinations of shapes, would you not like to resemble the merman Triton who is depicted riding upon swimming monsters attached to his man's body? I am on ticklish ground here, for natural instinct is so strong that every man wishes to be like a man and nothing else. 1.79. Yes, and every ant like an ant! Still, the question is, like what man? How small a percentage of handsome people there are! When I was at Athens, there was scarcely one to be found in each platoon of the training-corps — I see why you smile, but the fact is all the same. Another point: we, who with the sanction of the philosophers of old are fond of the society of young men, often find even their defects agreeable. Alcaeus 'admires a mole upon his favourite's wrist'; of course a mole is a blemish, but Alcaeus thought it a beauty. Quintus Catulus, the father of our colleague and friend to‑day, was warmly attached to your fellow-townsman Roscius, and actually wrote the following verses in his honour: By chance abroad at dawn, I stood to pray To the uprising deity of day; When lo! upon my left — propitious sight — Suddenly Roscius dawned in radiance bright. Forgive me, heavenly pow'rs, if I declare, Meseem'd the mortal than the god more fair. To Catulus, Roscius was fairer than a god. As a matter of fact he had, as he has to‑day, a pronounced squint; but no matter — in the eyes of Catulus this in itself gave him piquancy and charm. 1.80. "I return to the gods. Can we imagine any gods, I do not say as cross-eyed as Roscius, but with a slight cast? Can we picture any of them with a mole, a snub nose, protruding ears, prominent brows and too large a head — defects not unknown among us men —, or are they entirely free from personal blemishes? Suppose we grant you that, are we also to say that they are all exactly alike? If not, there will be degrees of beauty among them, and therefore a god can fall short of supreme beauty. If on the other hand they are all alike, then the Academic school must have a large following in heaven, since if there is no difference between one god and another, among the gods knowledge and perception must be impossible. 1.81. "Furthermore, Velleius, what if your assumption, that when we think of god the only form that presents itself to us is that of a man, be entirely untrue? will you nevertheless continue to maintain your absurdities? Very likely we Romans do imagine god as you say, because from our childhood Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Neptune, Vulcan and Apollo have been known to us with the aspect with which painters and sculptors have chosen to represent them, and not with that aspect only, but having that equipment, age and dress. But they are not so known to the Egyptians or Syrians, or any almost of the uncivilized races. Among these you will find a belief in certain animals more firmly established than is reverence for the holiest sanctuaries and images of the gods with us. 1.82. For we have often seen temples robbed and images of gods carried off from the holiest shrines by our fellow-countrymen, but no one ever even heard of an Egyptian laying profane hands on a crocodile or ibis or cat. What therefore do you infer? that the Egyptians do not believe their sacred bull Apis to be a god? Precisely as much as you believe the Saviour Juno of your native place to be a goddess. You never see her even in your dreams unless equipped with goat-skin, spear, buckler and slippers turned up at the toe. Yet that is not the aspect of the Argive Juno, nor of the Roman. It follows that Juno has one form for the Argives, another for the people of Lanuvium, and another for us. And indeed our Jupiter of the Capitol is not the same as the Africans' Juppiter Ammon. 1.83. Should not the physical philosopher therefore, that is, the explorer and tracker-out of nature, be ashamed to go to minds besotted with habit for evidence of truth? On your principle it will be legitimate to assert that Jupiter always wears a beard and Apollo never, and that Minerva has grey eyes and Neptune blue. Yes, and at Athens there is a much-praised statue of Vulcan made by Alcamenes, a standing figure, draped, which displays a slight lameness, though not enough to be unsightly. We shall therefore deem god to be lame, since tradition represents Vulcan so. Tell me now, do we also make out the gods to have the same names as those by which they are known to us? 1.84. But in the first place the gods have as many names as mankind has languages. You are Velleius wherever you travel, but Vulcan has a different name in Italy, in Africa and in Spain. Again, the total number of names even in our pontifical books is not great, but there are gods innumerable. Are they without names? You Epicureans at all events are forced to say so, since what is the point of more names when they are all exactly alike? How delightful it would be, Velleius, if when you did not know a thing you would admit your ignorance, instead of uttering this drivel, which must make even your own gorge rise with disgust? Do you really believe that god resembles me, or yourself? of course you do not. "What then? Am I to say that the sun is a god, or the moon, or the sky? If so, we must also say that it is happy; but what forms of enjoyment constitute its happiness? and wise; but how can wisdom reside in a senseless bulk like that? These are arguments employed by your own school. 1.85. Well then, if the gods do not possess the appearance of men, as I have proved, nor some such form as that of the heavenly bodies, as you are convinced, why do you hesitate to deny their existence? You do not dare to. Well, that is no doubt wise — although in this matter it is not the public that you fear, but the gods themselves: I personally am acquainted with Epicureans who worship every paltry image, albeit I am aware that according to some people's view Epicurus really abolished the gods, but nominally retained them in order not to offend the people of Athens. Thus the first of his selected aphorisms or maxims, which you call the Kyriai Doxai, runs, I believe, thus: That which is blessed and immortal neither experiences trouble nor causes it to anyone. Now there are people who think that the wording of this maxim was intentional, though really it was due to the author's inability to express himself clearly; their suspicion does an injustice to the most guileless of mankind. 1.86. It is in fact doubtful whether he means that there is a blessed and immortal being, or that, if there is, that being is such as he describes. They fail to notice that although his language is ambiguous here, yet in many other places both he and Metrodorus speak as plainly as you yourself did just now. Epicurus however does actually think that the gods exist, nor have I ever met anybody more afraid than he was of those things which he says are not terrible at all, I mean death and the gods. Terrors that do not very seriously alarm ordinary people, according to Epicurus haunt the minds of all mortal men: so many thousands commit brigandage, for which the penalty is death, and other men rob temples whenever they have the chance; I suppose the former are haunted by the fear of death and the latter by the terrors of religion! 1.87. "But as you have not the courage (for I will now address myself to Epicurus in person) to deny that the gods exist, what should hinder you from reckoning as divine the sun, or the world, or some form of ever-living intelligence? 'I have never seen a mind endowed with reason and with purpose,' he replies, 'that was embodied in any but a human form.' Well, but have you ever seen anything like the sun or the moon or the five planets? The sun, limiting his motion by the two extreme points of one orbit, completes his courses yearly. The moon, lit by the sun's rays, achieves this solar path in the space of a month. The five planets, holding the same orbit, but some nearer to and others farther from the earth, from the same starting-points complete the same distances in different periods of time. 1.88. Now, Epicurus, have you ever seen anything like this? Well, then, let us deny the existence of the sun, moon and planets, inasmuch as nothing can exist save that which we have touched or seen. And what of god himself? You have never seen him, have you? Why then do you believe in his existence? On this principle we must sweep aside everything unusual of which history or science informs us. The next thing would be for inland races to refuse to believe in the existence of the sea. How can such narrowness of mind be possible? It follows that, if you had been born in Seriphus and had never left the island, where you had been used to seeing nothing larger than hares and foxes, when lions and panthers were described to you, you would refuse to believe in their existence; and if somebody told you about an elephant, you would actually think that he was making fun of you! 1.89. "For your part, Velleius, you forsook the practice of your school for that of the logicians — a science of which your clan is entirely ignorant — and expressed the doctrine in the form of a syllogism. You assumed that the gods are happy: we grant it. But no one, you said, can be happy without virtue. This also we give you, and willingly. But virtue cannot exist without reason. To this also we must agree. You add, neither can reason exist save embodied in human form. Who do you suppose will grant you this? for if it were true, what need had you to arrive at it by successive steps? you might have taken it for granted. But what about your successive steps? I see how you proceeded step by step from happiness to virtue, from virtue to reason; but how from reason do you arrive at human form? That is not a step, it is a headlong plunge. 1.90. "Nor indeed do I understand why Epicurus preferred to say that gods are like men rather than that men are like gods. 'What is the difference?' you will ask me, 'for if A is like B, B is like A.' I am aware of it; but what I mean is, that the gods did not derive the pattern of their form from men; since the gods have always existed, and were never born — that is, if they are to be eternal; whereas men were born; therefore the human form existed before mankind, and it was the form of the immortal gods. We ought not to say that the gods have human form, but that our form is divine. "However, as to that, you may take your choice. What I want to know is, how did such a piece of good luck happen (for according to your school nothing in the universe was caused by design) — but be that as it may, 1.91. what accident was so potent, how did such a fortunate concourse of atoms come about, that suddenly men were born in the form of gods? Are we to think that divine seed fell from heaven to earth, and that thus men came into being resembling their sires? I wish that this were your story, for I should be glad to acknowledge my divine relations! But you do not say anything of the sort — you say that our likeness to the gods was caused by chance. "And now is there any need to search for arguments to refute this? I only wish I could discover the truth as easily as I can expose falsehood. For you gave a full and accurate review, which caused me for one to wonder at so much learning in a Roman, of the theological doctrines of the philosophers from Thales of Miletus downward. 1.92. Did you think they were all out of their minds because they pronounced that god can exist without hands or feet? Does not even a consideration of the adaptation of man's limbs to their functions convince you that the gods do not require human limbs? What need is there for feet without walking, or for hands if nothing has to be grasped, or for the rest of the list of the various parts of the body, in which nothing is useless, nothing without a reason, nothing superfluous, so that no art can imitate the cunning of nature's handiwork? It seems then that god will have a tongue, and will not speak; teeth, a palate, a throat, for no use; the organs that nature has attached to the body for the purpose of procreation — these god will possess, but to no purpose; and not only the external but also the internal organs, the heart, lungs, liver and the rest, which if they are not useful are assuredly not beautiful — since your school holds that god possesses bodily parts because of their beauty. 1.93. "Was it dreams like these that not only encouraged Epicurus and Metrodorus and Hermarchus to contradict Pythagoras, Plato and Empedocles, but actually emboldened a loose woman like Leontium to write a book refuting Theophrastus? Her style no doubt is the neatest of Attic, but all the same! — such was the licence that prevailed in the Garden of Epicurus. And yet you are touchy yourselves, indeed Zeno actually used to invoke the law. I need not mention Albucius. As for Phaedrus, though he was the most refined and courteous of old gentlemen, he used to lose his temper if I spoke too harshly; although Epicurus attacked Aristotle in the most insulting manner, abused Socrates' pupil Phaedo quite outrageously, devoted whole volumes to an onslaught on Timocrates, the brother of his own associate Metrodorus, for differing from him on some point or other of philosophy, showed no gratitude toward Democritus himself, whose system he adopted, and treated so badly his own master Nausiphanes, from whom he had learnt a considerable amount. As for Zeno, he aimed the shafts of his abuse not only at his contemporaries, Apollodorus, Silus and the rest, but Socrates himself, the father of philosophy, he declared to have been the Attic equivalent of our Roman buffoons; and he always alluded to Chrysippus in the feminine gender. 1.94. You yourself just now, when reeling off the list of philosophers like the censor calling the roll of the Senate, said that all those eminent men were fools, idiots and madmen. But if none of these discerned the truth about the divine nature, it is to be feared that the divine nature is entirely non‑existent. "For as for your school's account of the matter, it is the merest fairy-story, hardly worthy of old wives at work by lamplight. You don't perceive what a number of things you are let in for, if we consent to admit that men and gods have the same form. You will have to assign to god exactly the same physical exercises and care of the person as are proper to men: he will walk, run, recline, bend, sit, hold things in the hand, and lastly even converse and make speeches. 1.95. As for your saying that the gods are male and female, well, you must see what the consequence of that will be. For my part, I am at a loss to imagine how your great founder arrived at such notions. All the same you never cease vociferating that we must on no account relinquish the divine happiness and immortality. But what prevents god from being happy without having two legs? and why cannot your 'beatitude' or 'beatity,' whichever form we are to use — and either is certainly a hard mouthful, but words have to be softened by use — but whatever it is, why can it not apply to the sun yonder, or to this world of ours, or to some eternal intelligence devoid of bodily shape and members? 1.96. Your only answer is: 'I have never seen a happy sun or world.' Well, but have you ever seen any other world but this one? No, you will reply. Then why did you venture to assert the existence of, not thousands and thousands, but a countless number of worlds? 'That is what reason teaches.' Then will not reason teach you that when we seek to find a being who shall be supremely excellent, and happy and eternal as well — and nothing else constitutes divinity —, even as that being will surpass us in immortality, so also will it surpass us in mental excellence, and even as in mental excellence, so also in bodily. Why then, if we are inferior to god in all else, are we his equals in form? for man came nearer to the divine image in virtue than in outward aspect. 1.97. [Can you mention anything so childish (to press the same point still further) as to deny the existence of the various species of huge animals that grow in the Red Sea or in India? Yet not even the most diligent investigators could possibly collect information about all the vast multitude of creatures that exist on land and in the sea, the marshes and the rivers: the existence of which we are to deny, because we have never seen them!] "Then take your favourite argument from resemblance: how utterly pointless it really is! Why, does not a dog resemble a wolf? — and, to quote Ennius, How like us is that ugly brute, the ape! — but the two differ in habits. The elephant is the wisest of beasts, but the most ungainly in shape. 1.98. I speak of animals, but is it not the case even with men that when very much alike in appearance they differ widely in character, and when very much alike in character they are unlike in appearance? In fact, Velleius, if once we embark on this line of argument, see how far it takes us. You claimed it as axiomatic that reason can only exist in human form; but someone else will claim that it can only exist in a terrestrial creature, in one that has been born, has grown up, has been educated, consists of a soul and a body liable to decay and disease — in fine, that it can only exist in a mortal man. If you stand out against each of these assumptions, why be troubled about shape only? Rational intelligence exists in man, as you saw, only in conjunction with all the attributes that I have set out; yet you say that you can recognize god even with all these attributes stripped off, provided that the outward form remains. This is not to weigh the question, it is to toss up for what you are to say. 1.99. Unless indeed you happen never to have observed this either, that not only in a man but even in a tree whatever is superfluous or without a use is harmful. What a nuisance it is to have a single finger too many! Why is this? Because, given five fingers, there is no need of another either for appearance or for use. But your god has got not merely one finger more than he wants, but a head, neck, spine, sides, belly, back, flanks, hands, feet, thighs, legs. If this is to secure him immortality, what have these members to do with life? What has even the face? It depends more on the brain, heart, lungs and liver, for they are the abode of life: a man's countece and features have nothing to do with his vitality. 1.100. "Then you censured those who argued from the splendour and the beauty of creation, and who, observing the world itself, and the parts of the world, the sky and earth and sea, and the sun, moon and stars that adorn them, and discovering the laws of the seasons and their periodic successions, conjectured that there must exist some supreme and transcendent being who had created these things, and who imparted motion to them and guided and governed them. Though this guess may be wide of the mark, I can see what they are after; but as for you, what mighty masterpiece pray do you adduce as apparently the creation of divine intelligence, leading you to conjecture that gods exist? 'We have an idea of god implanted in our minds,' you say. Yes, and an idea of Jupiter with a beard, and Minerva in a helmet; but do you therefore believe that those deities are really like that? 1.101. The unlearned multitude are surely wiser here — they assign to god not only a man's limbs, but the use of those limbs. For they give him bow, arrows, spear, shield, trident, thunderbolt; and if they cannot see what actions the gods perform, yet they cannot conceive of god as entirely inactive. Even the Egyptians, whom we laugh at, deified animals solely on the score of some utility which they derived from them; for instance, the ibis, being a tall bird with stiff legs and a long horny beak, destroys a great quantity of snakes: it protects Egypt from plague, by killing and eating the flying serpents that are brought from the Libyan desert by the south-west wind, and so preventing them from harming the natives by their bite while alive and their stench when dead. I might describe the utility of the ichneumon, the crocodile and the cat, but I do not wish to be tedious. I will make my point thus: these animals are at all events deified by the barbarians for the benefits which they confer, but your gods not only do no service you can point to, but they don't do anything at all. 1.102. 'God,' he says, 'is free from trouble.' Obviously Epicurus thinks, as spoilt children do, that idleness is the best thing there is. Yet these very children even when idle amuse themselves with some active game: are we to suppose that god enjoys so complete a holiday, and is so sunk in sloth, that we must fear lest the least movement may jeopardize his happiness? This language not merely robs the gods of the movements and activities suitable to the divine nature, but also tends to make men slothful, if even god cannot be happy when actively employed. 1.103. "However, granting your view that god is the image and the likeness of man, what is his dwelling-place and local habitation? in what activities does he spend his life? what constitutes that happiness which you attribute to him? For a person who is to be happy must actively enjoy his blessings. As for locality, even the iimate elements each have their own particular region: earth occupies the lowest place, water covers the earth, to air is assigned the upper realm, and the ethereal fires occupy the highest confines of all. Animals again are divided into those that live on land and those that live in the water, while a third class are amphibious and dwell in both regions, and there are also some that are believed to be born from fire, and are occasionally seen fluttering about in glowing furnaces. 1.104. About your deity therefore I want to know, first, where he dwells; secondly, what motive he has for moving in space, that is, if he ever does so move; thirdly, it being a special characteristic of animate beings to desire some end that is appropriate their nature, what is the thing that god desires; fourthly, upon what subject does he employ his mental activity and reason; and lastly, how is he happy, and how eternal? For whichever of these questions you raise, you touch a tender spot. An argument based on such insecure premisses can come to no valid conclusion. 1.105. Your assertion was that the form of god is perceived by thought and not by the senses, that it has no solidity nor numerical persistence, and that our perception of it is such that it is seen owing to similarity and succession, a never-ceasing stream of similar forms arriving continually from the infinite number of atoms, and that thus it results that our mind, when its attention is fixed on these forms, conceives the divine nature to be happy and eternal. Now in the name of the very gods about whom we are talking, what can possibly be the meaning of this? If the gods only appeal to the faculty of thought, and have no solidity or definite outline, what difference does it make whether we think of a god or of a hippocentaur? Such mental pictures are called by all other philosophers mere empty imaginations, but you say they are the arrival and entrance into our minds of certain images. 1.106. Well then, when I seem to see Tiberius Gracchus in the middle of his speech in the Capitol producing the ballot‑box for the vote on Marcus Octavius, I explain this as an empty imagination of the mind, but your explanation is that the images of Gracchus and Octavius have actually remained on the spot, so that when I come to the Capitol these images are borne to my mind; the same thing happens, you say, in the case of god, whose appearance repeatedly impinges on men's minds, and so gives rise to the belief in happy and eternal deities. 1.107. Suppose that there are such images constantly impinging on our minds: but that is only the presentation of a certain form — surely not also of a reason for supposing that this form is happy and eternal? "But what is the nature of these images of yours, and whence do they arise? This extravagance, it is true, is borrowed from Democritus; but he has been widely criticized, nor can you find a satisfactory explanation, and the whole affair is a lame and impotent business. For how can be more improbable than that images of Homer, Archilochus, Romulus, Numa, Pythagoras and Plato should impinge on me at all — much less that they should do so in the actual shape that those men really bore? How then do these images arise? and of whom are they the images? Aristotle tells us that the poet Orpheus never existed, and the Pythagoreans say that the Orphic poem which we possess was the work of a certain Cecrops; yet Orpheus, that is, according to you, the image of him, often comes into my mind. 1.108. What of the fact that different images of the same person enter my mind and yours? or that images come to us of things that never existed at all and never can have existed — for instance, Scylla, and the Chimaera? or of people, places and cities which we have never seen? What of the fact that I can call up an image instantaneously, the very moment that I choose to do so? or that they come to me unbidden, even when I am asleep? Velleius, the whole affair is humbug. Yet you stamp these images not only on our eyes but also on our minds — so irresponsibly do you babble. 1.109. And how extravagantly! There is a constant passage or stream of visual presentations which collectively produce a single visual impression. I should be ashamed to say that I do not understand the doctrine, if you who maintain it understood it yourselves! How can you prove that the stream of images is continuous, or if it is, how are the images eternal? You say that there is an innumerable supply of atoms. Are you going to argue then that everything is eternal, for the same reason? You take refuge in the principle of 'equilibrium' (for so with your consent we will translate isonomia), and you say that because there is mortal substance there must also be immortal substance. On that showing, because there are mortal men, there are also some that are immortal, and because there are men born on land, there are men born in the water. 'And because there are forces of destruction, there are also forces of preservation.' Suppose there were, they would only preserve things that already exist; but I am not aware that your gods do exist. 1.110. But be that as it may, how do all your pictures of objects arise out of the atoms? even if the atoms existed, which they do not, they might conceivably be capable of pushing and jostling one another about by their collisions, but they could not create form, shape, colour, life. You fail entirely therefore to prove divine immortality. "Now let us consider divine happiness. Happiness is admittedly impossible without virtue. But virtue is in its nature active, and your god is entirely inactive. Therefore he is devoid of virtue. Therefore he is not happy either. 1.111. In what then does his life consist? 'In a constant succession of things good,' you reply, 'without any admixture of evils.' Things good — what things? Pleasures, I suppose — that is, of course, pleasures of the body, for your school recognizes no pleasures of the mind that do not arise from and come back to the body. I don't suppose that you, Velleius, are like the rest of the Epicureans, who are ashamed of certain utterances of Epicurus, in which he protests that he cannot conceive any good that is unconnected with the pleasures of the voluptuary and the sensualist, pleasures which in fact he proceeds without a blush to enumerate by name. 1.112. Well then, what viands and beverages, what harmonies of music and flowers of various hue, what delights of touch and smell will you assign to the gods, so as to keep them steeped in pleasure? The poets array banquets of nectar and ambrosia, with Hebe or Ganymede in attendance as cup‑bearer; but what will you do, Epicurean? I don't see either where your god is to procure these delights or how he is to enjoy them. It appears then that mankind is more bountifully equipped for happiness than is the deity, since man can experience a wider range of pleasures. 1.113. You tell me that you consider these pleasures inferior, which merely 'tickle' the senses (the expression is that of Epicurus). When will you cease jesting? Why, even our friend Philo was impatient with the Epicureans for affecting to despise the pleasures of senseless indulgence; for he had an excellent memory and could quote verbatim a number of maxims from the actual writings of Epicurus. As for Metrodorus, Epicurus's co‑partner in philosophy, he supplied him with many still more outspoken quotations; in fact Metrodorus takes his brother Timocrates to task for hesitating to measure every element of happiness by the standard of the belly, nor is this an isolated utterance, but he repeats it several times. I see you nod your assent, as you are acquainted with the passages; and did you deny it, I would produce the volumes. Not that I am at the moment criticizing your making pleasure the sole standard of value — that belongs to another inquiry. What I am trying to prove is that your gods are incapable of pleasure, and therefore by your verdict can have no happiness either. 1.114. 'But they are free from pain.' Does that satisfy the ideal of perfect bliss, overflowing with good things? 'God is engaged (they say) in ceaseless contemplation of his own happiness, for he has no other object for his thoughts.' I beg of you to realize in your imagination a vivid picture of a deity solely occupied for all eternity in reflecting 'What a good time I am having! How happy I am!' And yet I can't see how this happy god of yours is not to fear destruction, since he is subjected without a moment's respite to the buffeting and jostling of a horde of atoms that eternally assail him, while from his own person a ceaseless stream of images is given off. Your god is therefore neither happy nor eternal. 1.115. " 'Yes, but Epicurus actually wrote books about holiness and piety.' But what is the language of these books? Such that you think you are listening to a Coruncanius or a Scaevola, high priests, not to the man who destroyed the very foundations of religion, and overthrew — not by main force like Xerxes, but by argument — the temples and the altars of the immortal gods. Why, what reason have you for maintaining that men owe worship to the gods, if the gods not only pay no respect to men, but care for nothing and do nothing at all? 1.116. 'But deity possesses an excellence and pre‑eminence which must of its own nature attract the worship of the wise.' Now how can there be any excellence in a being so engrossed in the delights of his own pleasure that he always has been, is, and will continue to be entirely idle and inactive? Furthermore how can you owe piety to a person who has bestowed nothing upon you? or how can you owe anything at all to one who has done you no service? Piety is justice towards the gods; but how can any claims of justice exist between us and them, if god and man have nothing in common? Holiness is the science of divine worship; but I fail to see why the gods should be worshipped if we neither have received nor hope to receive benefit from them. 1.117. On the other hand what reason is there for adoring the gods on the ground of our admiration for the divine nature, if we cannot see that that nature possesses any special excellence? "As for freedom from superstition, which is the favourite boast of your school, that is easy to attain when you have deprived the gods of all power; unless perchance you think that it was possible for Diagoras or Theodorus to be superstitious, who denied the existence of the gods altogether. For my part, I don't see how it was possible even for Protagoras, who was not certain either that the gods exist or that they do not. For the doctrines of all these thinkers abolish not only superstition, which implies a groundless fear of the gods, but also religion, which consists in piously worshipping them. 1.118. Take again those who have asserted that the entire notion of the immortal gods is a fiction invented by wise men in the interest of the state, to the end that those whom reason was powerless to control might be led in the path of duty by religion; surely this view was absolutely and entirely destructive of religion. Or Prodicus of Ceos,',WIDTH,)" onmouseout="nd();" º who said that the gods were personifications of things beneficial to the life of man — pray what religion was left by his theory? 1.119. Or those who teach that brave or famous or powerful men have been deified after death, and that it is these who are the real objects of the worship, prayers and adoration which we are accustomed to offer — are not they entirely devoid of all sense of religion? This theory was chiefly developed by Euhemerus, who was translated and imitated especially by our poet Ennius. Yet Euhemerus describes the death and burial of certain gods; are we then to think of him as upholding religion, or rather as utterly and entirely destroying it? I say nothing of the holy and awe‑inspiring sanctuary of Eleusis, Where tribes from earth's remotest confines seek Initiation, and I pass over Samothrace and those occult mysteries Which throngs of worshippers at dead of night In forest coverts deep do celebrate at Lemnos, since such mysteries when interpreted and rationalized prove to have more to do with natural science than with theology. 1.120. "For my own part I believe that even that very eminent man Democritus, the fountain-head from which Epicurus derived the streams that watered his little garden, has no fixed opinion about the nature of the gods. At one moment he holds the view that the universe includes images endowed with divinity; at another he says that there exist in this same universe the elements from which the mind is compounded, and that these are gods; at another, that they are animate images, which are wont to exercise a beneficent or harmful influence over us; and again that they are certain vast images of such a size as to envelop and enfold the entire world. All these fancies are more worthy of Democritus's native city than of himself; 1.121. for who could form a mental picture of such images? who could adore them and deem them worthy of worship or reverence? "Epicurus however, in abolishing divine beneficence and divine benevolence, uprooted and exterminated all religion from the human heart. For while asserting the supreme goodness and excellence of the divine nature, he yet denies to god the attribute of benevolence — that is to say, he does away with that which is the most essential element of supreme goodness and excellence. For what can be better or more excellent than kindness and beneficence? Make out god to be devoid of either, and you make him devoid of all love, affection or esteem for any other being, human or divine. It follows not merely that the gods do not care for mankind, but that they have no care for one another. How much more truth there is in the Stoics, whom you censure! They hold that all wise men are friends, even when strangers to each other, since nothing is more lovable than virtue, and he that attains to it will have our esteem in whatever country he dwells. 1.122. But as for you, what mischief you cause when you reckon kindness and benevolence as weaknesses! Apart altogether from the nature and attributes of deity, do you think that even human beneficence and benignity are solely due to human infirmity? Is there no natural affection between the good? There is something attractive in the very sound of the word 'love,' from which the Latin term for friendship is derived. If we base our friendship on its profit to ourselves, and not on its advantage to those whom we love, it will not be friendship at all, but a mere bartering of selfish interests. That is our standard of value for meadows and fields and herds of cattle: we esteem them for the profits that we derive from them; but affection and friendship between men is disinterested; how much more so therefore is that of the gods, who, although in need of nothing, yet both love each other and care for the interests of men. If this be not so, why do we worship and pray to them? why have pontiffs and augurs to preside over our sacrifices and auspices? why make petitions and vow offerings to heaven? 'Why, but Epicurus (you tell me) actually wrote a treatise on holiness.' 1.123. Epicurus is making fun of us, though he is not so much a humorist as a loose and careless writer. For how can holiness exist if the gods pay no heed to man's affairs? Yet what is the meaning of an animate being that pays no heed to anything? "It is doubtless therefore truer to say, as the good friend of us all, Posidonius, argued in the fifth book of his On the Nature of the Gods, that Epicurus does not really believe in the gods at all, and that he said what he did about the immortal gods only for the sake of deprecating popular odium. Indeed he could not have been so senseless as really to imagine god to be like a feeble human being, but resembling him only in outline and surface, not in solid substance, and possessing all man's limbs but entirely incapable of using them, an emaciated and transparent being, showing no kindness or beneficence to anybody, caring for nothing and doing nothing at all. In the first place, a being of this nature is an absolute impossibility, and Epicurus was aware of this, and so actually abolishes the gods, although professedly retaining them. 1.124. Secondly, even if god exists, yet is of such a nature that he feels no benevolence or affection towards men, good‑bye to him, say I — not 'God be gracious to me,' why should I say that? for he cannot be gracious to anybody, since, as you tell us, all benevolence and affection is a mark of weakness." 2.13. As to their nature there are various opinions, but their existence nobody denies. Indeed our master Cleanthes gave four reasons to account for the formation in men's minds of their ideas of the gods. He put first the argument of which I spoke just now, the one arising from our foreknowledge of future events; second, the one drawn from the magnitude of the benefits which we derive from our temperate climate, from the earth's fertility, and from a vast abundance of other blessings; 2.45. "It remains for us to consider the qualities of the divine nature; and on this subject nothing is more difficult than to divert the eye of the mind from following the practice of bodily sight. This difficulty has caused both uneducated people generally and those philosophers who resemble the uneducated to be unable to conceive of the immortal gods without setting before themselves the form of men: a shallow mode of thought which Cotta has exposed and which therefore calls for no discussion from me. But assuming that we have a definite and preconceived idea of a deity as, first, a living being, and secondly, a being unsurpassed in excellence by anything else in the whole of nature, I can see nothing that satisfies this preconception or idea of ours more fully than, first, the judgement that this world, which must necessarily be the most excellent of all things, is itself a living being and a god. 2.75. I therefore declare that the world and all its parts were set in order at the beginning and have been governed for all time by converse providence: a thesis which our school usually divides into three sections. The first is based on the argument proving that the gods exist; if this be granted, it must be admitted that the world is governed by their wisdom. The second proves that all things are under the sway of sentient nature, and that by it the universe is carried on in the most beautiful manner; and this proved, it follows that the universe was generated from living first causes. The third topic is the argument from the wonder that we feel at the marvel of creation, celestial and terrestrial. 3.16. "As for Cleanthes, his view is, as you were telling us, that ideas of the gods are formed in men's minds in four ways. One of these ways I have sufficiently discussed, the one derived from our foreknowledge of future events; the second is based on meteorological disturbances and the other changes of the weather; the third on the utility and abundance of the commodities which are at our disposal; and the fourth on the orderly movements of the stars and the regularity of the heavens. About foreknowledge we have spoken. As meteorological disturbances by land and sea, we cannot deny that there are many people who are afraid of these occurrences and think them to be caused by the immortal gods; |
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16. Cicero, On The Ends of Good And Evil, 1.16, 2.18, 2.20, 2.34-2.35, 2.81, 2.84, 2.99, 2.103 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •atom / atomism Found in books: Maso (2022) 100, 103| 1.16. Nisi mihi Phaedrum, inquam, inquam tu NV inquā A (ā in ras.; quid antea fuerit, non liquet), inquam RBE tu mentitum mentitu BE aut Zenonem putas, quorum utrumque audivi, cum mihi nihil sane praeter sedulitatem sedulitatem RN 2 V sed utilitatem probarent, omnes mihi Epicuri sententiae satis notae sunt. atque eos, quos nominavi, cum Attico nostro frequenter audivi, cum miraretur ille quidem utrumque, Phaedrum autem etiam amaret, cotidieque inter nos ea, quae audiebamus, conferebamus, neque erat umquam controversia, quid ego intellegerem, sed quid probarem. 2.18. sed dum dialecticam, Torquate, contemnit Epicurus, quae una continet omnem et perspiciendi quid in quaque re sit scientiam et iudicandi quale quidque sit quidque sit sit quidque A et ratione ac via disputandi, ruit in dicendo, ut mihi quidem videtur, nec ea, quae docere doceri R dicere V vult, ulla arte distinguit, ut haec ipsa, quae modo loquebamur. summum a vobis bonum voluptas dicitur. aperiendum est igitur, quid sit voluptas; aliter enim explicari, quod quaeritur, non potest. quam si explicavisset, non tam haesitaret. aut enim eam voluptatem tueretur, quam Aristippus, id est, qua sensus dulciter ac iucunde movetur, quam etiam pecudes, si loqui possent, appellarent voluptatem, aut, si magis placeret suo more loqui, quam ut Omnés Danai atque Mycénenses. atque Lamb. aut (a E) Attica pubes reliquique Graeci, qui hoc anapaesto citantur, hoc non dolere solum voluptatis nomine appellaret, illud Aristippeum contemneret, aut, si utrumque probaret, ut ut edd. aut (in V ut probat excid.) probat, coniungeret doloris vacuitatem cum voluptate et duobus ultimis uteretur. 2.20. duae sunt enim res quoque, ne tu verba solum putes. unum est sine dolore esse, alterum cum voluptate. vos ex his tam dissimilibus rebus non modo nomen unum —nam id facilius paterer—, sed etiam rem unam ex duabus facere conamini, quod fieri nullo modo nullo modo fieri BE potest. hic, qui utrumque probat, ambobus debuit uti, sicut facit re, neque re neque neque ( om. re) BE remque R tamen dividit verbis. cum enim eam ipsam voluptatem, quam eodem nomine omnes appellamus, appellant A 1 laudat locis plurimis, audet dicere ne suspicari quidem se ullum bonum seiunctum ab illo Aristippeo genere voluptatis, atque ibi hoc dicit, ubi omnis eius est oratio oratio eius est BE de summo bono. in alio vero libro, in quo breviter comprehensis gravissimis sententiis quasi oracula edidisse sapientiae dicitur, scribit his verbis, quae nota tibi profecto, Torquate, sunt—quis enim vestrum non edidicit Epicuri kuri/as do/cas, id est quasi maxime ratas, quia gravissimae sint ad beate vivendum breviter enuntiatae sententiae?—animadverte igitur rectene hanc sententiam interpreter: 2.34. in his primis naturalibus voluptas insit necne, magna quaestio est. nihil vero putare esse praeter voluptatem, non membra, non sensus, non ingenii motum, non integritatem corporis, non valitudinem corporis, non valitudinem corporis om. E non valetudinem ( om. cor- poris) edd. summae mihi videtur inscitiae. Atque ab isto capite fluere necesse est omnem rationem bonorum et malorum. Polemoni et iam et iam NV etiam ante Aristoteli ea prima visa sunt, quae paulo ante paulo ante § 33 omne enim animal ... asperneturque contraria dixi. ergo nata est sententia veterum Academicorum et Peripateticorum, ut finem bonorum dicerent secundum naturam vivere, id est virtute adhibita frui primis a natura datis. Callipho ad virtutem nihil adiunxit nisi voluptatem, Diodorus vacuitatem doloris. * * Mdv. : ' nonnulla exciderunt, quibus Cicero simili forma atque supra (Polemoni et Aristoteli ea prima visa sunt cet. ) dixerit, quae alii prima posuissent; tum rectissime (quemadmodum ante: ergo nata est cet.) subiciebatur de finibus : his omnibus, quos dixi, consequentes (consentanei iis, quae posita sunt prima) sunt fines bonorum. Et fortasse etiam Carneadem et Hieronymum no- minarat, sed hic exempli causa solos Aristippum et Stoicos ponit. ' his omnibus, quos dixi, consequentes fines sunt fines sunt etiam A bonorum, Aristippo simplex voluptas, Stoicis Stoicis N 2 stoici consentire naturae, quod esse volunt e virtute, id est honeste, vivere, quod ita interpretantur: vivere cum intellegentia rerum earum, quae natura evenirent, eligentem ea, quae essent secundum naturam, reicientemque reficientemque A 1 BERN contraria. 2.35. ita tres sunt fines expertes honestatis, unus Aristippi vel Epicuri, alter Hieronymi, Carneadi carneadis A 2 V tertius, tres, in quibus honestas cum aliqua accessione, Polemonis, Calliphontis, Diodori, una simplex, cuius Zeno auctor, posita in decore tota, id est in honestate; id est in honestate dett. id est honestate BERNV idē honestate A nam Pyrrho, Aristo, Erillus iam diu abiecti. reliqui sibi constiterunt, ut extrema cum initiis convenirent, ut Aristippo voluptas, Hieronymo doloris vacuitas, Carneadi frui principiis naturalibus esset extremum. Epicurus autem cum in prima commendatione voluptatem dixisset, si eam, quam Aristippus, idem tenere debuit ultimum bonorum, quod ille; sin eam, quam Hieronymus, ne add. Se. cf. § 32: Epicurus semper hoc utitur... inest nihil dolere) fecisset idem, ut voluptatem illam Aristippi Aristippi secl. cum allis Mdv. aristippo BE in prima commendatione poneret. 2.81. Et quidem iure fortasse, sed tamen non gravissimum est testimonium multitudinis. in omni enim arte vel studio vel quavis scientia vel in ipsa virtute optimum quidque rarissimum est. ac mihi quidem, quod et ipse bonus vir fuit et multi Epicurei et Epicurei et Lamb. et epicurei A et epicurij N 1 epicurei (epicuri E) sunt BE epicurei RV epicurij N 2 fuerunt et hodie sunt et in amicitiis fideles et in omni vita constantes et graves nec voluptate, sed sed se A 1 BER officio consilia moderantes, hoc videtur maior vis honestatis et minor voluptatis. ita enim vivunt quidam, ut eorum vita refellatur oratio. atque ut ceteri dicere existimantur melius quam facere, sic hi mihi videntur facere melius quam dicere. 2.84. Licet hic rursus ea commemores, ea commemores p. 28,19 sqq. quae optimis verbis ab Epicuro de laude amicitiae dicta sunt. non quaero, quid dicat, sed quid convenienter possit rationi rationi possit R et sententiae suae dicere. Utilitatis causa amicitia est quaesita. est quaesita (quesita) ARN 2 V est quaesita est N 1 quesita est BE Num igitur utiliorem tibi hunc Triarium putas esse posse, quam si tua sint Puteolis granaria? gramana ABERN 1 gramina V, N 2 ( ubi a man. poster. adscr. est grana- ria puto) collige omnia, quae soletis: Praesidium praesidium p. 30, 3 amicorum. Satis est tibi in te, satis in legibus, satis in mediocribus amicitiis praesidii. praesidii marg. ed. Cratandr.; praesidium iam contemni non poteris. odium autem et invidiam facile vitabis. ad eas enim res res enim BE ab Epicuro praecepta dantur. et tamen tantis vectigalibus ad liberalitatem liberalitatem ed. Colon. 1467 libertatem utens etiam etiam P. Man. eam (eam N 2 ) sine hac Pyladea amicitia multorum te benivolentia praeclare tuebere et munies. tuebere et munies Mdv. tuebare munies BE et tuebere et munies ARNV At quicum ioca seria, ut dicitur, quicum arcana, quicum occulta omnia? 2.99. Huc et illuc, Torquate, vos versetis licet, nihil in hac praeclara epistula scriptum scriptum epistula (e pl a B) BE ab Epicuro congruens et conveniens decretis eius reperietis. ita redarguitur redarguitur edd. redarguetur ipse a sese, sese se A convincunturque convincunturque Dav. vincunturque ABEN vincuntur V veneantur que R scripta eius probitate ipsius ac moribus. nam ista commendatio puerorum, memoria et caritas amicitiae, summorum officiorum in extremo spiritu conservatio indicat innatam esse homini probitatem gratuitam, non invitatam voluptatibus nec praemiorum mercedibus evocatam. quod enim testimonium maius quaerimus, quae honesta et recta sint, ipsa esse optabilia per sese, cum videamus tanta officia morientis? 2.103. quodsi dies notandus fuit, eumne potius, quo natus, an eum, quo sapiens factus est? Non potuit, inquies, fieri sapiens, nisi natus esset. et sustul. P. Man. et Lamb. Isto modo, ne si avia quidem eius nata non esset. res tota, Torquate, non doctorum hominum, velle post mortem epulis celebrari memoriam sui nominis. quos quidem dies quem ad modum agatis et in quantam hominum facetorum urbanitatem incurratis, non dico— nihil opus est litibus—; tantum dico, magis fuisse vestrum agere Epicuri diem natalem, quam illius testamento cavere ut ageretur. | 2.18. Epicurus however, Torquatus, in his contempt for dialectic, which comprises at once the entire science of discerning the essence of things, of judging their qualities, and of conducting a systematic and logical argument, â Epicurus, I say, makes havoc of his exposition. He entirely fails, in my opinion at all events, to impart scientific precision to the doctrines he desires to convey. Take for example the particular tenet that we have just been discussing. The Chief Good is pleasure, say you Epicureans. Well then, you must explain what pleasure is; otherwise it is impossible to make clear the subject under discussion. Had Epicurus cleared up the meaning of pleasure, he would not have fallen into such confusion. Either he would have upheld pleasure in the same sense as Aristippus, that is, an agreeable and delightful excitation of the sense, which is what even dumb cattle, if they could speak, would call pleasure; or, if he preferred to use an idiom of his own, instead of speaking the language of the Danaans one and all, men of Mycenae, Scions of Athens, and the rest of the Greeks invoked in these anapaests, he might have confined the name of pleasure to this state of freedom from pain, and despised pleasure as Aristippus understands it; or else, if he approved of both sorts of pleasure, as in fact he does, then he ought to combine together pleasure and absence of pain, and profess two ultimate Goods. 2.20. "For you must not suppose it is merely a verbal distinction: the things themselves are different. To be without pain is one thing, to feel pleasure another; yet you Epicureans try to combine these quite dissimilar feelings â not merely under a single name (for that I could more easily tolerate), but as actually being a single thing, instead of really two; which is absolutely impossible. Epicurus, approving both sorts of pleasure, ought to have recognized both sorts; as he really does in fact, though he does not distinguish them in words. In a number of passages where he is commending that real pleasure which all of us call by the same name, he goes so far as to say that he cannot even imagine any Good that is not connected with pleasure of the kind intended by Aristippus. This is the language that he holds it discourse dealing solely with the topic of the Chief Good. Then there is another treatise containing his most important doctrines in a compendious form, in which we are told he uttered the very oracles of Wisdom. Here he writes the following words, with which you, Torquatus, are of course familiar (for every good Epicurean has got by heart the master's Kuriai Doxai or Authoritative Doctrines, since these brief aphorisms or maxims are held to be of sovereign efficacy for happiness). So I will ask you kindly to notice whether I translate this maxim correctly: 2.34. Whether the list of these primary natural objects of desire includes pleasure or not is a much debated question; but to hold that it includes nothing else but pleasure, neither the limbs, nor the senses, nor mental activity, nor bodily integrity nor health, seems to me to be the height of stupidity. And this is the fountain-head from which one's whole theory of Goods and Evils must necessarily flow. Polemo, and also before him Aristotle, held that the primary objects were the ones I have just mentioned. Thus arose the doctrine of the Old Academy and of the Peripatetics, maintaining that the End of Goods is to live in accordance with Nature, that is, to enjoy the primary gifts of Nature's bestowal with the accompaniment of virtue. Callipho coupled with virtue pleasure alone; Diodorus freedom from pain. . . . In the case of all the philosophers mentioned, their End of Goods logically follows: with Aristippus it is pleasure pure and simple; with the Stoics, harmony with Nature, which they interpret as meaning virtuous or morally good life, and further explain this as meaning to live with an understanding of the natural course of events, selecting things that are in accordance with Nature and rejecting the opposite. 2.35. Thus there are three Ends that do not include moral worth, one that of Aristippus or Epicurus, the second that of Hieronymus, and the third that of Carneades; three that comprise moral goodness together with some additional element, those of Polemo, Callipho and Diodorus; and one theory that is simple, of which Zeno was the author, and which is based entirely on propriety, that is, on moral worth. (As for Pyrrho, Aristo and Erillus, they have long ago been exploded.) All of these but Epicurus were consistent, and made their final ends agree with their first principles, â Aristippus holding the End to be Pleasure, Hieronymus freedom from pain, Carneades the enjoyment of the primary natural objects. Whereas Epicurus, if in saying that pleasure was the primary object of attraction, he meant pleasure in the sense of Aristippus, ought to have maintained the same ultimate Good as Aristippus; or if he made pleasure in the sense of Hieronymus his Chief Good, should he at the same time have allowed himself to make the former kind of pleasure, that of Aristippus, the primary attraction? 2.81. 'But he won many disciples.' Yes, and perhaps he deserved to do so; but still the witness of the crowd does not carry much weight; for as in every art or study, or science of any kind, so in right conduct itself, supreme excellence is extremely rare. And to my mind the fact that Epicurus himself was a good man and that many Epicureans both have been and toâday are loyal to their friends, consistent and high-principled throughout their lives, ruling their conduct by duty and not by pleasure, â all this does but enforce the value of moral goodness and diminish that of pleasure. The fact is that some persons' lives and behaviour refute the principles they profess. Most men's words are thought to be better than their deeds; these people's deeds on the contrary seem to me better than their words. 2.84. It is no good your once again repeating Epicurus's admirable remarks in praise of friendship. I am not asking what Epicurus actually says, but what he can say consistently while holding the theory he professes. 'Friendship is originally sought after from motives of utility.' Well, but surely you don't reckon Triarius here a more valuable asset than the granaries at Puteoli would be if they belonged to you? Cite all the stock Epicurean maxims. 'Friends are a protection.' You can protect yourself; the laws will protect you; ordinary friendships offer protection enough; you will be too powerful to despise as it is, while hatred and envy it will be easy to avoid, â Epicurus gives rules for doing so! And in any case, with so large an income to give away, you can dispense with the romantic sort of friendship that we have in mind; you will have plenty of well-wishers to defend you quite effectively. 2.99. "Yes, Torquatus, you people may turn and twist as you like, but you will not find a line in this famous letter of Epicurus that is not inconsistent and incompatible with his teachings. Hence he is his own refutation; his writings are disproved by the uprightness of his character. That provision for the care of the children, that loyalty to friendship and affection, that observance of these solemn duties with his latest breath, prove that there was innate in the man a disinterested uprightness, not evoked by pleasure nor elicited by prizes and rewards. Seeing so strong a sense of duty in a dying man, what clearer evidence do we want that morality and rectitude are desirable for their own sakes? 2.103. And if a special day was to be kept, did he do well to take the day on which he was born, and not rather that on which he became a Wise Man? You will object that he could not have become a Wise Man if he had not first of all been born. You might equally well say, if his grandmother had not been born either. The entire notion of wishing one's name and memory to be celebrated by a banquet after one's death is alien to a man of learning. I won't refer to your mode of keeping these anniversaries, or the shafts of wit you bring upon you from persons with a sense of humour. We do not want to quarrel. I only remark that it was more your business to keep Epicurus's birthday than his business to provide by will for its celebration. |
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17. Cicero, On Divination, 1.1, 1.5, 1.105, 2.14-2.17, 2.31-2.32, 2.59 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •atom / atomism Found in books: Maso (2022) 100, 145, 146| 1.1. Vetus opinio est iam usque ab heroicis ducta temporibus, eaque et populi Romani et omnium gentium firmata consensu, versari quandam inter homines divinationem, quam Graeci mantikh/n appellant, id est praesensionem et scientiam rerum futurarum. Magnifica quaedam res et salutaris, si modo est ulla, quaque proxime ad deorum vim natura mortalis possit accedere. Itaque ut alia nos melius multa quam Graeci, sic huic praestantissimae rei nomen nostri a divis, Graeci, ut Plato interpretatur, a furore duxerunt. 1.5. Atque haec, ut ego arbitror, veteres rerum magis eventis moniti quam ratione docti probaverunt. Philosophorum vero exquisita quaedam argumenta, cur esset vera divinatio, collecta sunt; e quibus, ut de antiquissumis loquar, Colophonius Xenophanes unus, qui deos esse diceret, divinationem funditus sustulit; reliqui vero omnes praeter Epicurum balbutientem de natura deorum divinationem probaverunt, sed non uno modo. Nam cum Socrates omnesque Socratici Zenoque et ii, qui ab eo essent profecti, manerent in antiquorum philosophorum sententia vetere Academia et Peripateticis consentientibus, cumque huic rei magnam auctoritatem Pythagoras iam ante tribuisset, qui etiam ipse augur vellet esse, plurumisque locis gravis auctor Democritus praesensionem rerum futurarum conprobaret, Dicaearchus Peripateticus cetera divinationis genera sustulit, somniorum et furoris reliquit, Cratippusque, familiaris noster, quem ego parem summis Peripateticis iudico, isdem rebus fidem tribuit, reliqua divinationis genera reiecit. 1.105. Quid de auguribus loquar? Tuae partes sunt, tuum inquam, auspiciorum patrocinium debet esse. Tibi App. Claudius augur consuli nuntiavit addubitato Salutis augurio bellum domesticum triste ac turbulentum fore; quod paucis post mensibus exortum paucioribus a te est diebus oppressum. Cui quidem auguri vehementer adsentior; solus enim multorum annorum memoria non decantandi augurii, sed dividi tenuit disciplinam. Quem inridebant collegae tui eumque tum Pisidam, tum Soranum augurem esse dicebant; quibus nulla videbatur in auguriis aut praesensio aut scientia veritatis futurae; sapienter aiebant ad opinionem imperitorum esse fictas religiones. Quod longe secus est; neque enim in pastoribus illis, quibus Romulus praefuit, nec in ipso Romulo haec calliditas esse potuit, ut ad errorem multitudinis religionis simulacra fingerent. Sed difficultas laborque discendi disertam neglegentiam reddidit; malunt enim disserere nihil esse in auspiciis quam, quid sit, ediscere. 2.14. Atqui ne illa quidem divitis esse dicebas, ventos aut imbres inpendentes quibusdam praesentire signis (in quo nostra quaedam Aratea memoriter a te pronuntiata sunt), etsi haec ipsa fortuita sunt; plerumque enim, non semper eveniunt. Quae est igitur aut ubi versatur fortuitarum rerum praesensio, quam divinationem vocas? Quae enim praesentiri aut arte aut ratione aut usu aut coniectura possunt, ea non divinis tribuenda putas, sed peritis. Ita relinquitur, ut ea fortuita divinari possint, quae nulla nec arte nec sapientia provideri possunt; ut, si quis M. Marcellum illum, qui ter consul fuit, multis annis ante dixisset naufragio esse periturum, divinasset profecto; nulla enim arte alia id nec sapientia scire potuisset. Talium ergo rerum, quae in fortuna positae sunt, praesensio divinatio est. 2.15. Potestne igitur earum rerum, quae nihil habent rationis, quare futurae sint, esse ulla praesensio? Quid est enim aliud fors, quid fortuna, quid casus, quid eventus, nisi cum sic aliquid cecidit, sic evenit, ut vel aliter cadere atque evenire potuerit? Quo modo ergo id, quod temere fit caeco casu et volubilitate fortunae, praesentiri et praedici potest? 2.16. Medicus morbum ingravescentem ratione providet, insidias imperator, tempestates gubernator; et tamen ii ipsi saepe falluntur, qui nihil sine certa ratione opitur; ut agricola, cum florem oleae videt, bacam quoque se visurum putat, non sine ratione ille quidem; sed non numquam tamen fallitur. Quodsi falluntur ii, qui nihil sine aliqua probabili coniectura ac ratione dicunt, quid existimandum est de coniectura eorum, qui extis aut avibus aut ostentis aut oraclis aut somniis futura praesentiunt? Nondum dico, quam haec signa nulla sint, fissum iecoris, corvi cantus, volatus aquilae, stellae traiectio, voces furentium, sortes, somnia; de quibus singulis dicam suo loco; nunc de universis. 2.17. Qui potest provideri quicquam futurum esse, quod neque causam habet ullam neque notam, cur futurum sit? Solis defectiones itemque lunae praedicuntur in multos annos ab iis, qui siderum motus numeris persequuntur; ea praedicunt enim, quae naturae necessitas perfectura est. Vident ex constantissimo motu lunae, quando illa e regione solis facta incurrat in umbram terrae, quae est meta noctis, ut eam obscurari necesse sit, quandoque eadem luna subiecta atque opposita soli nostris oculis eius lumen obscuret, quo in signo quaeque errantium stellarum quoque tempore futura sit, qui exortus quoque die signi alicuius aut qui occasus futurus sit. Haec qui ante dicunt, quam rationem sequantur, vides. 2.31. an hoc eiusdem modi est, quale Pherecydeum illud, quod est a te dictum? qui cum aquam ex puteo vidisset haustam, terrae motum dixit futurum. Parum, credo, inpudenter, quod, cum factus est motus, dicere audent, quae vis id effecerit; etiamne futurum esse aquae iugis colore praesentiunt? Multa istius modi dicuntur in scholis, sed credere omnia vide ne non sit necesse. 2.32. Verum sint sane ista Democritea vera; quando ea nos extis exquirimus? aut quando aliquid eius modi ab haruspice inspectis extis audivimus? Ab aqua aut ab igni pericula monent; tum hereditates, tum damna denuntiant; fissum familiare et vitale tractant; caput iecoris ex omni parte diligentissime considerant; si vero id non est inventum, nihil putant accidere potuisse tristius. 2.59. Nos autem ita leves atque inconsiderati sumus, ut, si mures corroserint aliquid, quorum est opus hoc unum, monstrum putemus? Ante vero Marsicum bellum quod clipeos Lanuvii, ut a te dictum est, mures rosissent, maxumum id portentum haruspices esse dixerunt; quasi vero quicquam intersit, mures diem noctem aliquid rodentes scuta an cribra corroserint! Nam si ista sequimur, quod Platonis Politian nuper apud me mures corroserunt, de re publica debui pertimescere, aut, si Epicuri de voluptate liber rosus esset, putarem annonam in macello cariorem fore. | 1.1. Book I[1] There is an ancient belief, handed down to us even from mythical times and firmly established by the general agreement of the Roman people and of all nations, that divination of some kind exists among men; this the Greeks call μαντική — that is, the foresight and knowledge of future events. A really splendid and helpful thing it is — if only such a faculty exists — since by its means men may approach very near to the power of gods. And, just as we Romans have done many other things better than the Greeks, so have we excelled them in giving to this most extraordinary gift a name, which we have derived from divi, a word meaning gods, whereas, according to Platos interpretation, they have derived it from furor, a word meaning frenzy. 1.5. Now my opinion is that, in sanctioning such usages, the ancients were influenced more by actual results than convinced by reason. However certain very subtle arguments to prove the trustworthiness of divination have been gathered by philosophers. of these — to mention the most ancient — Xenophanes of Colophon, while asserting the existence of gods, was the only one who repudiated divination in its entirety; but all the others, with the exception of Epicurus, who babbled about the nature of the gods, approved of divination, though not in the same degree. For example, Socrates and all of the Socratic School, and Zeno and his followers, continued in the faith of the ancient philosophers and in agreement with the Old Academy and with the Peripatetics. Their predecessor, Pythagoras, who even wished to be considered an augur himself, gave the weight of his great name to the same practice; and that eminent author, Democritus, in many passages, strongly affirmed his belief in a presentiment of things to come. Moreover, Dicaearchus, the Peripatetic, though he accepted divination by dreams and frenzy, cast away all other kinds; and my intimate friend, Cratippus, whom I consider the peer of the greatest of the Peripatetics, also gave credence to the same kinds of divination but rejected the rest. 1.105. Why need I speak of augurs? That is your rôle; the duty to defend auspices, I maintain, is yours. For it was to you, while you were consul, that the augur Appius Claudius declared that because the augury of safety was unpropitious a grievous and violent civil war was at hand. That war began few months later, but you brought it to an end in still fewer days. Appius is one augur of whom I heartily approve, for not content merely with the sing-song ritual of augury, he, alone, according to the record of many years, has maintained a real system of divination. I know that your colleagues used to laugh at him and call him the one time a Pisidian and at another a Soran. They did not concede to augury any power of prevision or real knowledge of the future, and used to say that it was a superstitious practice shrewdly invented to gull the ignorant. But the truth is far otherwise, for neither those herdsmen whom Romulus governed, nor Romulus himself, could have had cunning enough to invent miracles with which to mislead the people. It is the trouble and hard work involved in mastering the art that has induced this eloquent contempt; for men prefer to say glibly that there is nothing in auspices rather than to learn what auspices are. 2.14. And you went on to say that even the foreknowledge of impending storms and rains by means of certain signs was not divination, and, in that connexion, you quoted a number of verses from my translation of Aratus. Yet such coincidences happen by chance, for though they happen frequently they do not happen always. What, then, is this thing you call divination — this foreknowledge of things that happen by chance — and where is it employed? You think that whatever can be foreknown by means of science, reason, experience, or conjecture is to be referred, not to diviners, but to experts. It follows, therefore, that divination of things that happen by chance is possible only of things which cannot be foreseen by means of skill or wisdom. Hence, if someone had declared many years in advance that the famous Marcus Marcellus, who was consul three times, would perish in a shipwreck, this, by your definition, undoubtedly would have been a case of divination, since that calamity could not have been foreseen by means of any other skill or by wisdom. That is why you say that divination is the foreknowledge of such things as depend upon chance. [6] 2.15. Can there, then, be any foreknowledge of things for whose happening no reason exists? For we do not apply the words chance, luck, accident, or casualty except to an event which has so occurred or happened that it either might not have occurred at all, or might have occurred in any other way. How, then, is it possible to foresee and to predict an event that happens at random, as the result of blind accident, or of unstable chance? 2.16. By the use of reason the physician foresees the progress of a disease, the general anticipates the enemys plans and the pilot forecasts the approach of bad weather. And yet even those who base their conclusions on accurate reasoning are often mistaken: for example, when the farmer sees his olive-tree in bloom he expects also, and not unreasonably, to see it bear fruit, but occasionally he is disappointed. If then mistakes are made by those who make no forecasts not based upon some reasonable and probable conjecture, what must we think of the conjectures of men who foretell the future by means of entrails, birds, portents, oracles, or dreams? I am not ready yet to take up one by one the various kinds of divination and show that the cleft in the liver, the croak of a raven, the flight of an eagle, the fall of a star, the utterances of persons in a frenzy, lots, and dreams have no prophetic value whatever; I shall discuss each of them in its turn — now I am discussing the subject as a whole. 2.17. How can anything be foreseen that has no cause and no distinguishing mark of its coming? Eclipses of the sun and also of the moon are predicted for many years in advance by men who employ mathematics in studying the courses and movements of the heavenly bodies; and the unvarying laws of nature will bring their predictions to pass. Because of the perfectly regular movements of the moon the astronomers calculate when it will be opposite the sun and in the earths shadow — which is the cone of night — and when, necessarily, it will become invisible. For the same reason they know when the moon will be directly between the earth and the sun and thus will hide the light of the sun from our eyes. They know in what sign each planet will be at any given time and at what time each day any constellation will rise and set. You see the course of reasoning followed in arriving at these predictions. [7] 2.31. Equally amusing is your story about Pherecydes, who, after looking at some water just drawn from a well, foretold an earthquake. It would be presumptuous enough, I think, for natural philosophers to attempt to explain the cause of an earthquake after it had happened; but can they actually tell, from looking at fresh water, that an earthquake is going to happen? Such nonsense is often heard in the schools, but one does not have to believe everything one hears. 2.32. But grant that these absurdities of Democritus are true — when do we ever consult entrails to learn about crops or health, or when have we acquired information on these particulars from a soothsayer after he had made an inspection of entrails? The soothsayers warn us of dangers by fire and flood and sometimes they prophesy the inheritance, sometimes the loss, of money: they discuss the favourable and the unfavourable cleft; they view the head of the liver with the utmost care from every side. If, perchance, the livers head should be wanting they regard it as the most unpropitious sign that could have happened. [14] 2.59. But are we simple and thoughtless enough to think it a portent for mice to gnaw something, when gnawing is their one business in life? But, you say, the fact that just before the Marsian War mice gnawed the shields at Lanuvium was pronounced by the soothsayers to be a very direful portent. As if it mattered a whit whether mice, which are gnawing something day and night, gnawed shields or sieves! Hence, by the same token, the fact that, at my house, mice recently gnawed my Platos Republic should fill me with alarm for the Roman republic; or if they had gnawed my Epicurus On Pleasure I should have expected a rise in the market price of food! [28] |
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18. Cicero, On Duties, 1.16, 2.18, 2.20, 2.34-2.35, 2.81, 2.84, 2.99, 2.103, 3.116 (2nd cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •atom / atomism Found in books: Maso (2022) 100, 103| 1.16. Ut enim quisque maxime perspicit, quid in re quaque verissimum sit. quique acutissime et celerrime potest et videre et explicare rationem, is prudentissimus et sapientissimus rite haberi solet. Quocirca huic quasi materia, quam tractet et in qua versetur, subiecta est veritas. 2.18. Etenim virtus omnis tribus in rebus fere vertitur, quarum una est in perspiciendo, quid in quaque re verum sincerumque sit, quid consentaneum cuique, quid consequens, ex quo quaeque gigtur, quae cuiusque rei causa sit, alterum cohibere motus animi turbatos, quos Graeci pa/qh nomit, appetitionesque, quas illi o(rma/s, oboedientes efficere rationi, tertium iis, quibuscum congregemur, uti moderate et scienter, quorum studiis ea, quae natura desiderat, expleta cumulataque habeamus, per eosdemque, si quid importetur nobis incommodi, propulsemus ulciscamurque eos, qui nocere nobis conati sint, tantaque poena afficiamus, quantam aequitas humanitasque patitur. 2.20. At vero interitus exercituum, ut proxime trium, saepe multorum, clades imperatorum, ut nuper summi et singularis viri, invidiae praeterea multitudinis atque ob eas bene meritorum saepe civium expulsiones, calamitates, fugae, rursusque secundae res, honores, imperia, victoriae, quamquam fortuita sunt, tamen sine hominum opibus et studiis neutram in partem effici possunt. Hoc igitur cognito dicendum est, quonam modo hominum studia ad utilitates nostras allicere atque excitare possimus. Quae si longior fuerit oratio, cum magnitudine utilitatis comparetur; ita fortasse etiam brevior videbitur. 2.34. Harum igitur duarum ad fidem faciendam iustitia plus pollet, quippe cum ea sine prudentia satis habeat auctoritatis, prudentia sine iustitia nihil valet ad faciendam fidem. Quo enim quis versutior et callidior, hoc invisior et suspectior est detracta opinione probitatis. Quam ob rem intellegentiae iustitia coniuncta, quantum volet, habebit ad faciendam fidem virium; iustitia sine prudentia multum poterit, sine iustitia nihil valebit prudentia. 2.35. Sed ne quis sit admiratus, cur, cum inter omnes philosophos constet a meque ipso saepe disputatum sit, qui unam haberet, omnes habere virtutes, nune ita seiungam, quasi possit quisquam, qui non idem prudens sit, iustus esse, alia est illa, cum veritas ipsa limatur in disputatione, subtilitas, alia, cum ad opinionem communem omnis accommodatur oratio. Quam ob rem, ut volgus, ita nos hoc loco loquimur, ut alios fortes, alios viros bonos, alios prudentes esse dicamus; popularibus enim verbis est agendum et usitatis, cum loquimur de opinione populari, idque eodem modo fecit Panaetius. Sed ad propositum revertamur. 2.81. At vero Aratus Sicyonius iure laudatur, qui, cum eius civitas quinquaginta annos a tyrannis teneretur, profectus Argis Sicyonem clandestine introitu urbe est potitus, cumque tyrannum Nicoclem improviso oppressisset, sescentos exsules, qui locupletissimi fuerant eius civitatis, restituit remque publicam adventu suo liberavit. Sed cum magnam animadverteret in bonis et possessionibus difficultatem, quod et eos, quos ipse restituerat, quorum bona alii possederant, egere iniquissimum esse arbitrabatur et quinquaginta annorum possessiones moveri non nimis aequum putabat, propterea quod tam longo spatio multa hereditatibus, multa emptionibus, multa dotibus tenebantur sine iniuria, iudicavit neque illis adimi nec iis non satis fieri, quorum illa fuerant, oportere. 2.84. Tabulae vero novae quid habent argumenti, nisi ut emas mea pecunia fundum, eum tu habeas, ego non habeam pecuniam? Quam ob rem ne sit aes alienum, quod rei publicae noceat, providendum est, quod multis rationibus caveri potest, non, si fuerit, ut locupletes suum perdant, debitores lucrentur alienum; nec enim ulla res vehementius rem publicam continet quam fides, quae esse nulla potest, nisi erit necessaria solutio rerum creditarum. Numquam vehementius actum est quam me consule, ne solveretur; armis et castris temptata res est ab omni genere hominum et ordine; quibus ita restiti, ut hoc totum malum de re publica tolleretur. Numquam nec maius aes alienum fuit nec melius nec facilius dissolutum est; fraudandi enim spe sublata solvendi necessitas consecuta est. At vero hic nunc victor, tum quidem victus, quae cogitarat, ea perfecit, cum eius iam nihil interesset. Tanta in eo peccandi libido fuit, ut hoc ipsum eum delectaret, peccare, etiamsi causa non esset. 3.116. Restat quarta pars, quae decore, moderatione, modestia, continentia, temperantia continetur. Potest igitur quicquam utile esse, quod sit huic talium virtutum choro contrarium? Atqui ab Aristippo Cyrenaici atque Annicerii philosophi nominati omne bonum in voluptate posuerunt virtutemque censuerunt ob eam em esse laudandam, quod efficiens esset voluptatis. Quibus obsoletis floret Epicurus, eiusdem fere adiutor auctorque sententiae. Cum his viris equisque, ut dicitur, si honestatem tueri ac retinere sententia est, decertandum est. | 2.18. And, indeed, virtue in general may be said to consist almost wholly in three properties; the first is [Wisdom,] the ability to perceive what in any given instance is true and real, what its relations are, its consequences, and its causes; the second is [Temperance,] the ability to restrain the passions (which the Greeks call Ïάθη) and make the impulses (á½Ïμαί) obedient to reason; and the third is [Justice,] the skill to treat with consideration and wisdom those with whom we are associated, in order that we may through their cooperation have our natural wants supplied in full and overflowing measure, that we may ward of any impending trouble, avenge ourselves upon those who have attempted to injure us, and visit them with such retribution as justice and humanity will permit. 2.20. But think, on the one side, of the destruction of armies (three lately, and many others at many different times), the loss of generals (of a very able and eminent commander recently), the hatred of the masses, too, and the banishment that as a consequence frequently comes to men of eminent services, their degradation and voluntary exile; think, on the other hand, of the successes, the civil and military honours, and the victories, â though all these contain an element of chance, still they cannot be brought about, whether for good or for ill, without the influence and the cooperation of our fellow-men. With this understanding of the influence of Fortune, I may proceed to explain how we can win the affectionate cooperation of our fellows and enlist it in our service. And if the discussion of this point is unduly prolonged, let the length be compared with the importance of the object in view. It will then, perhaps, seem even too short. 2.34. of these two qualities, then, justice has the greater power to inspire confidence; for even without the aid of wisdom, it has considerable weight; but wisdom without justice is of no avail to inspire confidence; for take from a man his reputation for probity, and the more shrewd and clever he is, the more hated and mistrusted he becomes. Therefore, justice combined with practical wisdom will command all the confidence we can desire; justice without wisdom will be able to do much; wisdom without justice will be of no avail at all. 2.35. But I am afraid someone may wonder why I am now separating the virtues â as if it were possible for anyone to be just who is not at the same time wise; for it is agreed upon among all philosophers, and I myself have often argued, that he who has one virtue has them all. The explanation of my apparent inconsistency is that the precision of speech we employ, when abstract truth is critically investigated in philosophic discussion, is one thing; and that employed, when we are adapting our language entirely to popular thinking, is another. And therefore I am speaking here in the popular sense, when I call some men brave, others good, and still others wise; for in dealing with popular conceptions we must employ familiar words in their common acceptation; and this was the practice of Panaetius likewise. But let us return to the subject. 2.81. Aratus of Sicyon, on the other hand, is justly praised. When his city had been kept for fifty years in the power of its tyrants, he came over from Argos to Sicyon, secretly entered the city and took it by surprise; he fell suddenly upon the tyrant Nicocles, recalled from banishment six hundred exiles who had been the wealthiest men of the city, and by his coming made his country free. But he found great difficulty in the matter of property and its occupancy; for he considered it most unjust, on the one hand, that those men should be left in want whom he had restored and of whose property others had taken possession; and he thought it hardly fair, on the other hand, that tenure of fifty years' standing should be disturbed. For in the course of that long period many of those estates had passed into innocent hands by right of inheritance, many by purchase, many by dower. He therefore decided that it would be wrong either to take the property away from the present incumbents or to let them keep it without compensation to its former possessors. 2.84. And what is the meaning of an abolition of debts, except that you buy a farm with my money; that you have the farm, and I have not my money? We must, therefore, take measures that there shall be no indebtedness of a nature to endanger the public safety. It is a menace that can be averted in many ways; but should a serious debt be incurred, we are not to allow the rich to lose their property, while the debtors profit by what is their neighbour's. For there is nothing that upholds a government more powerfully than its credit; and it can have no credit, unless the payment of debts is enforced by law. Never were measures for the repudiation of debts more strenuously agitated than in my consulship. Men of every sort and rank attempted with arms and armies to force the project through. But I opposed them with such energy that this plague was wholly eradicated from the body politic. Indebtedness was never greater; debts were never liquidated more easily or more fully; for the hope of defrauding the creditor was cut off and payment was enforced by law. But the present victor, though vanquished then, still carried out his old design, when it was no longer of any personal advantage to him. So great was his passion for wrongdoing that the very doing of wrong was a joy to him for its own sake even when there was no motive for it. 3.116. We have still left our fourth division comprising propriety, moderation, temperance, self-restraint, self-control. Can anything be expedient, then, which is contrary to such a chorus of virtues? And yet the Cyrenaics, adherents of the school of Aristippus, and the philosophers who bear the name of Annicerians find all good to consist in pleasure and consider virtue praiseworthy only because it is productive of pleasure. Now that these schools are out of date, Epicurus has come into vogue â an advocate and supporter of practically the same doctrine. Against such a philosophy we must fight it out "with horse and foot," as the saying is, if our purpose is to defend and maintain our standard of moral rectitude. |
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19. Lucretius Carus, On The Nature of Things, 1.56-1.57, 1.80-1.82, 1.196-1.198, 1.290-1.297, 1.814-1.829, 1.907-1.914, 1.936-1.950, 2.217-2.220, 2.243-2.244, 2.259-2.260, 2.292-2.293, 2.371-2.373, 2.547-2.564, 2.688-2.699, 2.905-2.906, 2.1013-2.1022, 2.1144-2.1145, 2.1164-2.1174, 3.87-3.97, 3.221-3.223, 3.374-3.380, 4.1068-4.1072, 5.64-5.66, 5.249-5.250, 5.273-5.283, 6.43-6.44, 6.917-6.920 (1st cent. BCE - 1st cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •atom/atomism/atomistic explanation of the world •atom / atomism Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 105, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 117, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 172, 173, 174, 176, 180, 181, 201, 202, 215; Maso (2022) 102| 1.56. unde omnis natura creet res, auctet alatque, 1.57. quove eadem rursum natura perempta resolvat, 1.80. Illud in his rebus vereor, ne forte rearis 1.81. impia te rationis inire elementa viamque 1.82. indugredi sceleris. quod contra saepius illa 1.196. ut potius multis communia corpora rebus 1.197. multa putes esse, ut verbis elementa videmus, 1.198. quam sine principiis ullam rem existere posse. 1.290. sic igitur debent venti quoque flamina ferri, 1.291. quae vel uti validum cum flumen procubuere 1.292. quam libet in partem, trudunt res ante ruuntque 1.293. impetibus crebris, inter dum vertice torto 1.294. corripiunt rapidique rotanti turbine portant. 1.295. quare etiam atque etiam sunt venti corpora caeca, 1.296. quandoquidem factis et moribus aemula magnis 1.297. amnibus inveniuntur, aperto corpore qui sunt. 1.814. ni mirum quia multa modis communia multis 1.815. multarum rerum in rebus primordia mixta 1.816. sunt, ideo variis variae res rebus aluntur. 1.817. atque eadem magni refert primordia saepe 1.818. cum quibus et quali positura contineantur 1.819. et quos inter se dent motus accipiantque; 1.820. namque eadem caelum mare terras flumina solem 1.821. constituunt, eadem fruges arbusta animantis, 1.822. verum aliis alioque modo commixta moventur. 1.823. quin etiam passim nostris in versibus ipsis 1.824. multa elementa vides multis communia verbis, 1.825. cum tamen inter se versus ac verba necessest 1.826. confiteare et re et sonitu distare soti. 1.827. tantum elementa queunt permutato ordine solo; 1.828. at rerum quae sunt primordia, plura adhibere 1.829. possunt unde queant variae res quaeque creari. 1.907. iamne vides igitur, paulo quod diximus ante, 1.908. permagni referre eadem primordia saepe 1.909. cum quibus et quali positura contineantur 1.910. et quos inter se dent motus accipiantque, 1.911. atque eadem paulo inter se mutata creare 1.912. ignes et lignum? quo pacto verba quoque ipsa 1.913. inter se paulo mutatis sunt elementis, 1.914. cum ligna atque ignes distincta voce notemus. 1.936. sed vel uti pueris absinthia taetra medentes 1.937. cum dare cotur, prius oras pocula circum 1.938. contingunt mellis dulci flavoque liquore, 1.939. ut puerorum aetas inprovida ludificetur 1.940. labrorum tenus, interea perpotet amarum 1.941. absinthi laticem deceptaque non capiatur, 1.942. sed potius tali facto recreata valescat, 1.943. sic ego nunc, quoniam haec ratio plerumque videtur 1.944. tristior esse quibus non est tractata, retroque 1.945. volgus abhorret ab hac, volui tibi suaviloquenti 1.946. carmine Pierio rationem exponere nostram 1.947. et quasi musaeo dulci contingere melle, 1.948. si tibi forte animum tali ratione tenere 1.949. versibus in nostris possem, dum perspicis omnem 1.950. naturam rerum, qua constet compta figura. 2.217. corpora cum deorsum rectum per ie feruntur 2.218. ponderibus propriis, incerto tempore ferme 2.219. incertisque locis spatio depellere paulum, 2.220. tantum quod momen mutatum dicere possis. 2.243. quare etiam atque etiam paulum inclinare necessest 2.244. corpora; nec plus quam minimum, ne fingere motus 2.259. declinamus item motus nec tempore certo 2.260. nec regione loci certa, sed ubi ipsa tulit mens? 2.292. id facit exiguum clinamen principiorum 2.293. nec regione loci certa nec tempore certo. 2.371. Postremo quodvis frumentum non tamen omne 2.372. quidque suo genere inter se simile esse videbis, 2.373. quin intercurrat quaedam distantia formis. 2.547. quippe etenim sumant alii finita per omne 2.548. corpora iactari unius genitalia rei, 2.549. unde ubi qua vi et quo pacto congressa coibunt 2.550. materiae tanto in pelago turbaque aliena? 2.551. non, ut opinor, habent rationem conciliandi: 2.552. sed quasi naufragiis magnis multisque coortis 2.553. disiactare solet magnum mare transtra cavernas 2.554. antemnas prorem malos tonsasque natantis, 2.555. per terrarum omnis oras fluitantia aplustra 2.556. ut videantur et indicium mortalibus edant, 2.557. infidi maris insidias virisque dolumque 2.558. ut vitare velint, neve ullo tempore credant, 2.559. subdola cum ridet placidi pellacia ponti, 2.560. sic tibi si finita semel primordia quaedam 2.561. constitues, aevom debebunt sparsa per omnem 2.562. disiectare aestus diversi materiai, 2.563. numquam in concilium ut possint compulsa coire 2.564. nec remorari in concilio nec crescere adaucta; 2.688. Quin etiam passim nostris in versibus ipsis 2.689. multa elementa vides multis communia verbis, 2.690. cum tamen inter se versus ac verba necesse est 2.691. confiteare alia ex aliis constare elementis; 2.692. non quo multa parum communis littera currat 2.693. aut nulla inter se duo sint ex omnibus isdem, 2.694. sed quia non volgo paria omnibus omnia constant. 2.695. sic aliis in rebus item communia multa 2.696. multarum rerum cum sint, primordia rerum 2.697. dissimili tamen inter se consistere summa 2.698. possunt; ut merito ex aliis constare feratur 2.699. humanum genus et fruges arbustaque laeta. 2.905. visceribus nervis venis, quae cumque videmus 2.906. mollia mortali consistere corpore creta. 2.1013. quin etiam refert nostris in versibus ipsis 2.1014. cum quibus et quali sint ordine quaeque locata; 2.1015. namque eadem caelum mare terras flumina solem 2.1016. significant, eadem fruges arbusta animantis; 2.1017. si non omnia sunt, at multo maxima pars est 2.1018. consimilis; verum positura discrepitant res. 2.1019. sic ipsis in rebus item iam materiai 2.1020. intervalla vias conexus pondera plagas 2.1021. concursus motus ordo positura figurae 2.1022. cum permutantur, mutari res quoque debent. 2.1144. / l 2.1145. expugnata dabunt labem putrisque ruinas; 2.1164. iamque caput quassans grandis suspirat arator 2.1165. crebrius, in cassum magnos cecidisse labores, 2.1166. et cum tempora temporibus praesentia confert 2.1167. praeteritis, laudat fortunas saepe parentis. 2.1168. tristis item vetulae vitis sator atque vietae 2.1169. temporis incusat momen saeclumque fatigat, 2.1170. et crepat, antiquum genus ut pietate repletum 2.1171. perfacile angustis tolerarit finibus aevom, 2.1172. cum minor esset agri multo modus ante viritim; 2.1173. nec tenet omnia paulatim tabescere et ire 2.1174. ad capulum spatio aetatis defessa vetusto. 3.87. nam vel uti pueri trepidant atque omnia caecis 3.88. in tenebris metuunt, sic nos in luce timemus 3.89. inter dum, nihilo quae sunt metuenda magis quam 3.90. quae pueri in tenebris pavitant finguntque futura. 3.91. hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necessest 3.92. non radii solis neque lucida tela diei 3.93. discutiant, sed naturae species ratioque. 3.94. Primum animum dico, mentem quem saepe vocamus, 3.95. in quo consilium vitae regimenque locatum est, 3.96. esse hominis partem nihilo minus ac manus et pes 3.97. atque oculei partes animantis totius extant. 3.221. quod genus est, Bacchi cum flos evanuit aut cum 3.222. spiritus unguenti suavis diffugit in auras 3.223. aut aliquo cum iam sucus de corpore cessit; 3.374. nam cum multo sunt animae elementa minora 3.375. quam quibus e corpus nobis et viscera constant, 3.376. tum numero quoque concedunt et rara per artus 3.377. dissita sunt, dum taxat ut hoc promittere possis, 3.378. quantula prima queant nobis iniecta ciere 3.379. corpora sensiferos motus in corpore, tanta 3.380. intervalla tenere exordia prima animai. 4.1068. ulcus enim vivescit et inveterascit alendo 4.1069. inque dies gliscit furor atque aerumna gravescit, 4.1070. si non prima novis conturbes volnera plagis 4.1071. volgivagaque vagus Venere ante recentia cures 4.1072. aut alio possis animi traducere motus. 5.64. quod super est, nunc huc rationis detulit ordo, 5.65. ut mihi mortali consistere corpore mundum 5.66. nativomque simul ratio reddunda sit esse; 5.249. esse neque umorem dubitavi aurasque perire 5.250. atque eadem gigni rursusque augescere dixi. 5.273. Aera Aëra nunc igitur dicam, qui corpore toto 5.274. innumerabiliter privas mutatur in horas. 5.275. semper enim, quod cumque fluit de rebus, id omne 5.276. aeris aëris in magnum fertur mare; qui nisi contra 5.277. corpora retribuat rebus recreetque fluentis, 5.278. omnia iam resoluta forent et in aera aëra versa. 5.279. haut igitur cessat gigni de rebus et in res 5.280. reccidere, adsidue quoniam fluere omnia constat. 5.281. Largus item liquidi fons luminis, aetherius sol, 5.282. inrigat adsidue caelum candore recenti 5.283. suppeditatque novo confestim lumine lumen. 6.43. Et quoniam docui mundi mortalia templa 6.44. esse et nativo consistere corpore caelum, 6.917. Hoc genus in rebus firmandumst multa prius quam 6.918. ipsius rei rationem reddere possis, 6.919. et nimium longis ambagibus est adeundum; 6.920. quo magis attentas auris animumque reposco. | |
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20. Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory, 1.6.3-1.6.4, 8.3.71 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •atom/atomism/atomistic explanation of the world Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 1, 179 | 1.6.3. Usage however is the surest pilot in speaking, and we should treat language as currency minted with the public stamp. But in all these cases we have need of a critical judgment, especially as regards analogy (a Greek term for which a Latin equivalent has been found in proportion). 1.6.4. The essence of analogy is the testing of all subjects of doubt by the application of some standard of comparison about which there is no question, the proof that is to say of the uncertain by reference to the certain. This can be done in two different ways: by comparing similar words, paying special attention to their final syllables (hence monosyllables are asserted to lie outside the domain of analogy) and by the study of diminutives. 8.3.71. Though the attainment of such effects is, in my opinion, the highest of all oratorical gifts, it is far from difficult of attainment. Fix your eyes on nature and follow her. All eloquence is concerned with the activities of life, while every man applies to himself what he hears from others, and the mind is always readiest to accept what it recognises to be true to nature. |
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| 21. Plutarch, How The Young Man Should Study Poetry, None (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •atom/atomism/atomistic explanation of the world Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 1 |
| 22. Seneca The Younger, Letters, 117.6 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •atom / atomism Found in books: Maso (2022) 145 |
23. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 1.6.3-1.6.4, 8.3.71 (1st cent. CE - 1st cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •atom/atomism/atomistic explanation of the world Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 1, 179 | 1.6.3. Usage however is the surest pilot in speaking, and we should treat language as currency minted with the public stamp. But in all these cases we have need of a critical judgment, especially as regards analogy (a Greek term for which a Latin equivalent has been found in proportion). 1.6.4. The essence of analogy is the testing of all subjects of doubt by the application of some standard of comparison about which there is no question, the proof that is to say of the uncertain by reference to the certain. This can be done in two different ways: by comparing similar words, paying special attention to their final syllables (hence monosyllables are asserted to lie outside the domain of analogy) and by the study of diminutives. 8.3.71. Though the attainment of such effects is, in my opinion, the highest of all oratorical gifts, it is far from difficult of attainment. Fix your eyes on nature and follow her. All eloquence is concerned with the activities of life, while every man applies to himself what he hears from others, and the mind is always readiest to accept what it recognises to be true to nature. |
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| 24. Galen, On Antidotes, 1.5, 1.15 (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •atom/atomism/atomistic explanation of the world Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 1 |
| 25. Galen, On The Composition of Drugs According To Kind, 7.8 (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •atom/atomism/atomistic explanation of the world Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 1 |
26. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of The Philosophers, 10.31, 10.33-10.34 (3rd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •atom / atomism Found in books: Maso (2022) 145 | 10.31. They reject dialectic as superfluous; holding that in their inquiries the physicists should be content to employ the ordinary terms for things. Now in The Canon Epicurus affirms that our sensations and preconceptions and our feelings are the standards of truth; the Epicureans generally make perceptions of mental presentations to be also standards. His own statements are also to be found in the Summary addressed to Herodotus and in the Sovran Maxims. Every sensation, he says, is devoid of reason and incapable of memory; for neither is it self-caused nor, regarded as having an external cause, can it add anything thereto or take anything therefrom. 10.33. By preconception they mean a sort of apprehension or a right opinion or notion, or universal idea stored in the mind; that is, a recollection of an external object often presented, e.g. Such and such a thing is a man: for no sooner is the word man uttered than we think of his shape by an act of preconception, in which the senses take the lead. Thus the object primarily denoted by every term is then plain and clear. And we should never have started an investigation, unless we had known what it was that we were in search of. For example: The object standing yonder is a horse or a cow. Before making this judgement, we must at some time or other have known by preconception the shape of a horse or a cow. We should not have given anything a name, if we had not first learnt its form by way of preconception. It follows, then, that preconceptions are clear. The object of a judgement is derived from something previously clear, by reference to which we frame the proposition, e.g. How do we know that this is a man? 10.34. Opinion they also call conception or assumption, and declare it to be true and false; for it is true if it is subsequently confirmed or if it is not contradicted by evidence, and false if it is not subsequently confirmed or is contradicted by evidence. Hence the introduction of the phrase, that which awaits confirmation, e.g. to wait and get close to the tower and then learn what it looks like at close quarters.They affirm that there are two states of feeling, pleasure and pain, which arise in every animate being, and that the one is favourable and the other hostile to that being, and by their means choice and avoidance are determined; and that there are two kinds of inquiry, the one concerned with things, the other with nothing but words. So much, then, for his division and criterion in their main outline.But we must return to the letter.Epicurus to Herodotus, greeting. |
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| 27. Aetius, Opinions of The Philosophers, None Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Maso (2022) 101 |
28. Vergil, Aeneis, 10.565-10.570, 12.654 Tagged with subjects: •atom/atomism/atomistic explanation of the world Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 233 | 10.565. foreseeing doom, had hid him in dark groves; 10.566. but when the old man's fading eyes declined 10.567. in death, the hand of Fate reached forth and doomed 10.568. the young life to Evander's sword; him now 10.569. Pallas assailed, first offering this prayer: 10.570. “O Father Tiber, give my poising shaft 12.654. keeps far away. Aeneas too must take |
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| 29. Cicero, Luc., 142, 97 Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Maso (2022) 100 |
| 30. Manilius, Astronomica, 1.718-1.722, 1.735-1.749 Tagged with subjects: •atom/atomism/atomistic explanation of the world Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 94 |
| 31. Dionysius Periegetes, Description of The Known World, 645-650, 644 Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 11 |
| 32. Philostratus The Elder, Imagines, 1.16.4 Tagged with subjects: •atom/atomism/atomistic explanation of the world Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 190, 201, 202, 205, 206, 207, 215, 233 |
| 33. Thucydides, Xenophanes (Diels-Kranz/Laks-Most), None Tagged with subjects: •atom/atomism/atomistic explanation of the world Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 77 |
| 34. Pseudo-Oppian, Cynegetica, 4.10-4.21 Tagged with subjects: •atom/atomism/atomistic explanation of the world Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 11 |
| 35. Oppian of Anazarbus, Halieutica, 1.80-1.92 Tagged with subjects: •atom/atomism/atomistic explanation of the world Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 11 |
| 36. Anon., Suidas, β598 Tagged with subjects: •atom/atomism/atomistic explanation of the world Found in books: Clay and Vergados (2022) 73 |
