Cicero's Tusculan Disputations
Pyrrhus at the battle of Asculum, though in other places (De Off. iii.
4) he speaks of only two Decii as having signalized themselves in this
manner.
[117] The Rogator, who collected the votes, and pronounced who was the
person chosen. There were two sorts of Rogators; one was the officer
here mentioned, and the other was the Rogator, or speaker of the whole
assembly.
[118] Which was Sardinia, as appears from one of Cicero's epistles to
his brother Quintus.
[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 _principatus_, 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 passage 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 principatus_, 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 passage.
[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 institution of it is ascribed to Democritus.
[132] The zodiac.
[133] Though Mars is said to hold his orbit 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 recumbens
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 divumque 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] Janus is said to be the first who erected temples in Italy, and
instituted 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,
Goddess 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_.
[163] The treatise of Aristotle, from whence this is taken, is lost.
[164] To the universe the Stoics certainly annexed the idea of a
limited space, otherwise they could not have talked of a middle; for
there can be no middle but of a limited space: infinite space can have
no middle, there being infinite extension from every part.
[165] These two contrary reversions are from the tropics of Cancer and
Capricorn. They are the extreme bounds of the sun's course. The reader
must observe that the astronomical parts of this book are introduced by
the Stoic as proofs of design and reason in the universe; and,
notwithstanding the errors in his planetary system, his intent is well
answered, because all he means is that the regular motions of the
heavenly bodies, and their dependencies, are demonstrations of a divine
mind. The inference proposed to be drawn from his astronomical
observations is as just as if his system was in every part
unexceptionably right: the same may be said of his anatomical
observations.
[166] In the zodiac.
[167] Ibid.
[168] These verses of Cicero are a translation from a Greek poem of
Aratus, called the Phaenomena.
[169] The fixed stars.
[170] The arctic and antarctic poles.
[171] The two Arctoi are northern constellations. Cynosura is what we
call the Lesser Bear; Helice, the Greater Bear; in Latin, _Ursa Minor_
and _Ursa Major_.
[172] These stars in the Greater Bear are vulgarly called the "Seven
Stars," or the "Northern Wain;" by the Latins, "Septentriones."
[173] The Lesser Bear.
[174] The Greater Bear.
[175] Exactly agreeable to this and the following description of the
Dragon is the same northern constellation described in the map by
Flamsteed in his Atlas Coelestis; and all the figures here described by
Aratus nearly agree with the maps of the same constellations in the
Atlas Coelestis, though they are not all placed precisely alike.
[176] The tail of the Greater Bear.
[177] That is, in Macedon, where Aratus lived.
[178] The true interpretation of this passage is as follows: Here in
Macedon, says Aratus, the head of the Dragon does not entirely immerge
itself in the ocean, but only touches the superficies of it. By _ortus_
and _obitus_ I doubt not but Cicero meant, agreeable to Aratus, those
parts which arise to view, and those which are removed from sight.
[179] These are two northern constellations. Engonasis, in some
catalogues called Hercules, because he is figured kneeling [Greek: en
gonasin] (on his knees). [Greek: Engonasin kaleous'], as Aratus says,
they call Engonasis.
[180] The crown is placed under the feet of Hercules in the Atlas
Coelestis; but Ophiuchus ([Greek: Ophiouchos]), the Snake-holder, is
placed in the map by Flamsteed as described here by Aratus; and their
heads almost meet.
[181] The Scorpion. Ophiuchus, though a northern constellation, is not
far from that part of the zodiac where the Scorpion is, which is one of
the six southern signs.
[182] The Wain of seven stars.
[183] The Wain-driver. This northern constellation is, in our present
maps, figured with a club in his right hand behind the Greater Bear.
[184] In some modern maps Arcturus, a star of the first magnitude, is
placed in the belt that is round the waist of Booetes. Cicero says
_subter praecordia_, which is about the waist; and Aratus says [Greek:
hypo zone], under the belt.
[185] _Sub caput Arcti_, under the head of the Greater Bear.
[186] The Crab is, by the ancients and moderns, placed in the zodiac,
as here, between the Twins and the Lion; and they are all three
northern signs.
[187] The Twins are placed in the zodiac with the side of one to the
northern hemisphere, and the side of the other to the southern
hemisphere. Auriga, the Charioteer, is placed in the northern
hemisphere near the zodiac, by the Twins; and at the head of the
Charioteer is Helice, the Greater Bear, placed; and the Goat is a
bright star of the first magnitude placed on the left shoulder of this
northern constellation, and called _Capra_, the Goat. _Hoedi_, the
Kids, are two more stars of the same constellation.
[188] A constellation; one of the northern signs in the zodiac, in
which the Hyades are placed.
[189] One of the feet of Cepheus, a northern constellation, is under
the tail of the Lesser Bear.
[190] Grotius, and after him Dr. Davis, and other learned men, read
_Cassiepea_, after the Greek [Greek: Kassiepeia], and reject the common
reading, _Cassiopea_.
[191] These northern constellations here mentioned have been always
placed together as one family with Cepheus and Perseus, as they are in
our modern maps.
[192] This alludes to the fable of Perseus and Andromeda.
[193] Pegasus, who is one of Perseus and Andromeda's family.
[194] That is, with wings.
[195] _Aries_, the Ram, is the first northern sign in the zodiac;
_Pisces_, the Fishes, the last southern sign; therefore they must be
near one another, as they are in a circle or belt. In Flamsteed's Atlas
Coelestis one of the Fishes is near the head of the Ram, and the other
near the Urn of Aquarius.
[196] These are called Virgiliae by Cicero; by Aratus, the Pleiades,
[Greek: Pleiades]; and they are placed at the neck of the Bull; and one
of Perseus's feet touches the Bull in the Atlas Coelestis.