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Cicero's Tusculan Disputations

Marcus Tullius Cicero

[287] These votive tables, or pictures, were hung up in the temples. [288] This passage is a fragment from a tragedy of Attius. [289] Hipponax was a poet at Ephesus, and so deformed that Bupalus drew a picture of him to provoke laughter; for which Hipponax is said to have written such keen iambics on the painter that he hanged himself. Lycambes had promised Archilochus the poet to marry his daughter to him, but afterward retracted his promise, and refused her; upon which Archilochus is said to have published a satire in iambic verse that provoked him to hang himself. [290] Cicero refers here to an oracle approving of his laws, and promising Sparta prosperity as long as they were obeyed, which Lycurgus procured from Delphi. [291] _Pro aris et focis_ is a proverbial expression. The Romans, when they would say their all was at stake, could not express it stronger than by saying they contended _pro aris et focis_, for religion and their firesides, or, as we express it, for religion and property. [292] Cicero, who was an Academic, gives his opinion according to the manner of the Academics, who looked upon probability, and a resemblance of truth, as the utmost they could arrive at. [293] _I.e._, Regulus. [294] _I.e._, Fabius. [295] It is unnecessary to give an account of the other names here mentioned; but that of 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 circumference, and at the same height. Their colors resemble that of the rainbow; the red and yellow are towards the side of the sun, and the blue and violet on the other. There are, however, 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 Africanus, and died about 575 A.U.C., so that it is plain that we ought to read in the text 550, not 350. [301] Two pages are lost here. Afterward it is again Scipio who is speaking. [302] Two pages are lost here. [303] Both Ennius and Naevius wrote tragedies called "Iphigenia." Mai thinks the text here corrupt, and expresses some doubt whether there is a quotation here at all. [304] He means Scipio himself. [305] There is again a hiatus. What follows is spoken by Laelius. [306] Again two pages are lost. [307] Again two pages are lost. It is evident that Scipio is speaking again in cap. xxxi. [308] Again two pages are lost. [309] Again two pages are lost. [310] Here four pages are lost. [311] Here four pages are lost. [312] Two pages are missing here. [313] A name of Neptune. [314] About seven lines are lost here, and there is a great deal of corruption and imperfection in the next few sentences. [315] Two pages are lost here. [316] The _Lex Curiata de Imperio_, so often mentioned here, was the same as the _Auctoritas Patrum_, and was necessary in order to confer upon the dictator, consuls, and other magistrates the _imperium_, or military command: without this they had only a _potestas_, or civil authority, and could not meddle with military affairs. [317] Two pages are missing here. [318] Here two pages are missing. [319] I have translated this very corrupt passage according to Niebuhr's emendation. [320] Assiduus, ab aere dando. [321] Proletarii, a prole. [322] Here four pages are missing. [323] Two pages are missing here. [324] Two pages are missing here. [325] Here twelve pages are missing. [326] Sixteen pages are missing here. [327] Here eight pages are missing. [328] A great many pages are missing here. [329] Several pages are lost here; the passage in brackets is found in Nonius under the word "exulto." [330] This and other chapters printed in smaller type are generally presumed to be of doubtful authenticity. [331] The beginning of this book is lost. The two first paragraphs come, the one from St. Augustine, the other from Lactantius. [332] Eight or nine pages are lost here. [333] Here six pages are lost. [334] Here twelve pages are missing. [335] We have been obliged to insert two or three of these sentences between brackets, which are not found in the original, for the sake of showing the drift of the arguments of Philus. He himself was fully convinced that justice and morality were of eternal and immutable obligation, and that the best interests of all beings lie in their perpetual development and application. This eternity of Justice is beautifully illustrated by Montesquieu. "Long," says he, "before positive laws were instituted, the moral relations of justice were absolute and universal. To say that there were no justice or injustice but that which depends on the injunctions or prohibitions of positive laws, is to say that the radii which spring from a centre are not equal till we have formed a circle to illustrate the proposition. We must, therefore, acknowledge that the relations of equity were antecedent to the positive laws which corroborated them." But though Philus was fully convinced of this, in order to give his friends Scipio and Laelius an opportunity of proving it, he frankly brings forward every argument for injustice that sophistry had ever cast in the teeth of reason.--_By the original Translator_. [336] Here four pages are missing. The following sentence is preserved in Nonius. [337] Two pages are missing here. [338] Several pages are missing here. [339] He means Alexander the Great. [340] Six or eight pages are lost here. [341] A great many pages are missing here. [342] Six or eight pages are missing here. [343] Several pages are lost here. [344] This and the following chapters are not the actual words of Cicero, but quotations by Lactantius and Augustine of what they affirm that he said. [345] Twelve pages are missing here. [346] Eight pages are missing here. [347] Six or eight pages are missing here. [348] Catadupa, from [Greek: kata] and [Greek: doipos], noise.