Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Part 39

[119] Their sacred books of ceremonies.

[120] The war between Octavius and Cinna, the consuls.

[121] This, in the original, is a fragment of an old Latin verse,

_----Terram fumare calentem._

[122] The Latin word is _princ.i.p.atus_, which exactly corresponds with the Greek word here used by Cicero; by which is to be understood the superior, the most prevailing excellence in every kind and species of things through the universe.

[123] The pa.s.sage of Aristotle to which Cicero here refers is lost.

[124] He means the Epicureans.

[125] Here the Stoic speaks too plain to be misunderstood. His world, his _mundus_, is the universe, and that universe is his great Deity, _in quo sit totius naturae princ.i.p.atus_, in which the superior excellence of universal nature consists.

[126] Athens, the seat of learning and politeness, of which Balbus will not allow Epicurus to be worthy.

[127] This is Pythagoras's doctrine, as appears in Diogenes Laertius.

[128] He here alludes to mathematical and geometrical instruments.

[129] Balbus here speaks of the fixed stars, and of the motions of the orbs of the planets. He here alludes, says M. Bonhier, to the different and diurnal motions of these stars; one sort from east to west, the other from one tropic to the other: and this is the construction which our learned and great geometrician and astronomer, Dr. Halley, made of this pa.s.sage.

[130] This mensuration of the year into three hundred and sixty-five days and near six hours (by the odd hours and minutes of which, in every fifth year, the _dies intercalaris_, or leap-year, is made) could not but be known, Dr. Halley states, by Hipparchus, as appears from the remains of that great astronomer of the ancients. We are inclined to think that Julius Caesar had divided the year, according to what we call the Julian year, before Cicero wrote this book; for we see, in the beginning of it, how pathetically he speaks of Caesar's usurpation.

[131] The words of Censorinus, on this occasion, are to the same effect. The opinions of philosophers concerning this great year are very different; but the inst.i.tution of it is ascribed to Democritus.

[132] The zodiac.

[133] Though Mars is said to hold his...o...b..t in the zodiac with the rest, and to finish his revolution through the same orbit (that is, the zodiac) with the other two, yet Balbus means in a different line of the zodiac.

[134] According to late observations, it never goes but a sign and a half from the sun.

[135] These, Dr. Davis says, are "aerial fires;" concerning which he refers to the second book of Pliny.

[136] In the Eunuch of Terence.

[137] Bacchus.

[138] The son of Ceres.

[139] The books of Ceremonies.

[140] This Libera is taken for Proserpine, who, with her brother Liber, was consecrated by the Romans; all which are parts of nature in prosopopoeias. Cicero, therefore, makes Balbus distinguish between the person Liber, or Bacchus, and the Liber which is a part of nature in prosopopoeia.

[141] These allegorical fables are largely related by Hesiod in his Theogony.

Horace says exactly the same thing:

Hac arte Pollux et vagus Hercules Enisus arces attigit igneas: Quos inter Augustus rec.u.mbens Purpureo bibit ore nectar.

Hac te merentem, Bacche pater, tuae Vexere tigres indocili jugum Collo ferentes: hac Quirinus Martis equis Acheronta fugit.--Hor. iii. 3. 9.

[142] Cicero means by _conversis casibus_, varying the cases from the common rule of declension; that is, by departing from the true grammatical rules of speech; for if we would keep to it, we should decline the word _Jupiter_, _Jupiteris_ in the second case, etc.

[143] _Pater divmque hominumque._

[144] The common reading is, _planiusque alio loco idem;_ which, as Dr.

Davis observes, is absurd; therefore, in his note, he prefers _planius quam alia loco idem_, from two copies, in which sense I have translated it.

[145] From the verb _gero_, to bear.

[146] That is, "mother earth."

[147] Ja.n.u.s is said to be the first who erected temples in Italy, and inst.i.tuted religious rites, and from whom the first month in the Roman calendar is derived.

[148] _Stellae vagantes._

[149] _Noctu quasi diem efficeret._ Ben Jonson says the same thing:

Thou that mak'st a day of night, G.o.ddess excellently bright.--_Ode to the Moon._

[150] Olympias was the mother of Alexander.

[151] Venus is here said to be one of the names of Diana, because _ad res omnes veniret;_ but she is not supposed to be the same as the mother of Cupid.

[152] Here is a mistake, as Fulvius Ursinus observes; for the discourse seems to be continued in one day, as appears from the beginning of this book. This may be an inadvertency of Cicero.

[153] The senate of Athens was so called from the words [Greek: Areios Pagos], the Village, some say the Hill, of Mars.

[154] Epicurus.

[155] The Stoics.

[156] By _nulla cohaerendi natura_--if it is the right, as it is the common reading--Cicero must mean the same as by _nulla crescendi natura_, or _coalescendi_, either of which Lambinus proposes; for, as the same learned critic well observes, is there not a cohesion of parts in a clod, or in a piece of stone? Our learned Walker proposes _sola cohaerendi natura_, which mends the sense very much; and I wish he had the authority of any copy for it.

[157] Nasica Scipio, the censor, is said to have been the first who made a water-clock in Rome.

[158] The Epicureans.

[159] An old Latin poet, commended by Quintilian for the gravity of his sense and his loftiness of style.

[160] The shepherd is here supposed to take the stem or beak of the ship for the mouth, from which the roaring voices of the sailors came.

_Rostrum_ is here a lucky word to put in the mouth of one who never saw a ship before, as it is used for the beak of a bird, the snout of a beast or fish, and for the stem of a ship.

[161] The Epicureans.

[162] Greek, [Greek: aer]; Latin, _aer_.