Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Part 42

[259] She was first called Geres, from _gero_, to bear.

[260] The word is _precatione_, which means the books or forms of prayers used by the augurs.

[261] Cotta's intent here, as well as in other places, is to show how unphilosophical their civil theology was, and with what confusions it was embarra.s.sed; which design of the Academic the reader should carefully keep in view, or he will lose the chain of argument.

[262] Anactes, [Greek: Anaktes], was a general name for all kings, as we find in the oldest Greek writers, and particularly in Homer.

[263] The common reading is Aleo; but we follow Lambinus and Davis, who had the authority of the best ma.n.u.script copies.

[264] Some prefer Phthas to Opas (see Dr. Davis's edition); but Opas is the generally received reading.

[265] The Lipari Isles.

[266] A town in Arcadia.

[267] In Arcadia.

[268] A northern people.

[269] So called from the Greek word [Greek: nomos], _lex_, a law.

[270] He is called [Greek: opis] in some old Greek fragments, and [Greek: Oupis] by Callimachus in his hymn on Diana.

[271] [Greek: Sabazios], Sabazius, is one of the names used for Bacchus.

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

[273] Here is one expression in the quotation from Caecilius that is not commonly met with, which is _praestigias praestrinxit;_ Lambinus gives _praestinxit_, for the sake, I suppose, of playing on words, because it might then be translated, "He has deluded my delusions, or stratagems;"

but _praestrinxit_ is certainly the right reading.

[274] The ancient Romans had a judicial as well as a military praetor; and he sat, with inferior judges attending him, like one of our chief-justices. _Sessum it praetor_, which I doubt not is the right reading, Lambinus restored from an old copy. The common reading was _sessum ite precor_.

[275] Picenum was a region of Italy.

[276] The _s.e.x primi_ were general receivers of all taxes and tributes; and they were obliged to make good, out of their own fortunes, whatever deficiencies were in the public treasury.

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

[278] This is from Ennius--

Utinam ne in nemore Pelio securibus Caesa cecidisset abiegna ad terram trabes.

Translated from the beginning of the Medea of Euripides--

[Greek: Med' en napaisi Pelion pesein pote tmetheisa peuke.]

[279] Q. Fabius Maximus, surnamed Cunctator.

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

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

[282] This great and good man was accused of destroying the divinity of the G.o.ds of his country. He was condemned, and died by drinking a gla.s.s of poison.

[283] Tyrant of Sicily.

[284] The common reading is, _in tympanidis rogum inlatus est_. This pa.s.sage has been the occasion of as many different opinions concerning both the reading and the sense as any pa.s.sage in the whole treatise.

_Tympanum_ is used for a timbrel or drum, _tympanidia_ a diminutive of it. Lambinus says _tympana_ "were sticks with which the tyrant used to beat the condemned." P. Victorius subst.i.tutes _tyrannidis_ for _tympanidis_.

[285] The original is _de amissa salute;_ which means the sentence of banishment among the Romans, in which was contained the loss of goods and estate, and the privileges of a Roman; and in this sense L'Abbe d'Olivet translates it.

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

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

[288] This pa.s.sage is a fragment from a tragedy of Attius.

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

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

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

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

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

[293] _I.e._, Regulus.

[294] _I.e._, Fabius.

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

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

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

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

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

[300] There is evidently some error in the text here, for Ennius was born 515 A.U.C., was a personal friend of the elder Africa.n.u.s, and died about 575 A.U.C., so that it is plain that we ought to read in the text 550, not 350.

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

[302] Two pages are lost here.

[303] Both Ennius and Naevius wrote tragedies called "Iphigenia." Mai thinks the text here corrupt, and expresses some doubt whether there is a quotation here at all.