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 Academics of CifiSM?,,/ 
 
 3 1924 026 475 206 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026475206 
 
THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
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 630* 
 
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THE 
 
 ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 JAMES S. REID, 
 
 FELLOW AND ASSISTANT TUTOR OF GONVILLE AND CAIUS COLLEGE, 
 CAMBRIDGE J 
 EXAMINER IN CLASSICS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON ; 
 EDITOR OF CICERO'S ACADEMICA, LAELIUS ETC. 
 
 HottffOtt : 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 v "'^ 
 
 1880 V 
 
 [The Right of Reproduction is reserved.] 
 
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PA 
 G30S 
 
 Cam&tttrge : 
 
 PRINTED BY C. J. -CLAY, M.A. 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
 X 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 This translation of Cicero's Academics is intended to form 
 an adjunct to a revised issue of my edition of the Latin text, 
 with explanatory notes, now in the Press. The translation will 
 ultimately appear together with the edition, in the same volume. 
 This volume I originally intended to publish in time to be of 
 use to the candidates for the ensuing Classical Tripos in Cam- 
 bridge, who are required to prepare the 'Academica' as one of 
 their ' set subjects.' Circumstances having rendered this impos- 
 sible I decided to issue some copies of the translation separately 
 for their use. It also occurred to me that a trustworthy render- 
 ing of this important book might at the same time prove to have 
 some interest and value for another class of students — those 
 whose special study is philosophy rather than Classics, and who, 
 while wishing to learn something of the early history of their 
 subject, have neither the leisure nor the particular acquirements 
 necessary to enable them to read with profit the ancient philo- 
 sophical writings in the original languages. I am aware that for 
 such students the history of ancient thought has hitherto practi- 
 cally closed with the name of Aristotle. But it is, I think, 
 beginning to be felt, in Germany at least, that the vast historical 
 importance of the post-Aristotelian systems entitles them to 
 more attention than they have hitherto received. In any case, 
 whatever may be thought of the later Greek speculation as a 
 whole, the controversy presented to us in Cicero's ' Academics ' 
 is one which ought to possess an enduring interest for the 
 R. C. A. b 
 
6 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 modern student of philosophy. Though the struggle between 
 philosophic scepticism and philosophic dogmatism covered a 
 much smaller field in ancient than it has occupied in modern 
 times, it yet opened up to the ancients problems which are being 
 discussed today as vigorously as they were discussed then. 
 There is no ancient work (if we exclude the writings of Sextus 
 Empiricus) which presents to a greater extent than the 'Aca- 
 demics', points of resemblance to the modern literature of 
 philosophy. 
 
 The Introduction and Notes are intended to smooth the 
 chief difficulties likely to stand in the way of a modern reader. 
 Where fuller information is wanted it must be sought in the 
 more detailed elucidations attached to my completed edition of 
 the original text. Much of the help that is needed may be 
 gained from any good history of philosophy — that of Zeller, or 
 Schwegler, or Ueberweg — all of which are easily accessible to 
 students. 
 
 In the translation accuracy has been studied rather than 
 finish of style, though harshness has been avoided so far as was 
 possible without resort to paraphrase. I hope it will be found 
 that this rendering is more trustworthy than any others which 
 have yet appeared. The question how to represent in English 
 the ancient philosophical terms is always full of difficulty. I 
 have explained in my notes the reasons for my modes of render- 
 ing the leading phrases. 
 
 The text from which the translation is made is that of my 
 own edition, which differs considerably from the German texts 
 most in use. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 § i. It is of the utmost importance clearly to understand that 
 Cicero, in his philosophical works, never professed to perform any- 
 other function but that of an interpreter to Roman readers of the Greek 
 systems with which he deals. He did not even leave himself free 
 to expound the systems in his own manner, but usually took certain 
 Greek writings and translated pretty closely from them. So the 
 ' Academics ' consists in substance of certain passages rendered from 
 leading Greek books which had been called forth by the Sceptical 
 controversy. All that Cicero supplies is the framework in which the 
 whole is set, with sundry illustrations drawn from Roman history, 
 which are scattered here and there throughout the discussion. 
 
 § 2. A somewhat low estimate has hitherto prevailed of Cicero's 
 trustworthiness as an expositor of Greek doctrine. I do not hesitate 
 to say that he has had great injustice done to him in this matter. 
 When modern scholars have found in Cicero a philosophical statement 
 hard to understand or patently absurd, they have usually assumed, 
 without more ado, that he has failed to catch the meaning of the 
 author from whom he copied. It is far safer to suppose in such cases 
 that the difficulty existed in the original source from which he drew 
 his information. In the majority of instances this can be distinctly 
 proved by a comparison of Cicero's statements with those of the other 
 ancient authorities from whom our knowledge of the Greek thinkers is 
 derived. Cicero's very want of originality has led him to preserve all 
 
8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the defects of the writers whom he translated ; and the post-Aristotelian 
 philosophers abounded in illogicalities and inconsistencies which to a 
 modern reader seem very superficial indeed. 
 
 § 3. The form in which the discussions are cast by Cicero is 
 generally that of the dialogue. But the style of dialogue best known 
 to us — that of Plato — had found no imitators among the later Greeks. 
 The vivid dramatic interchange of question and answer was abandoned - 
 in favour of those ' long speeches ' which Plato often condemned as 
 unsuited for the discovery of truth. Accordingly we find the 'Aca- 
 demics ' to consist of several long disquisitions delivered by the different 
 interlocutors. Each is allowed to carry the exposition of his own views 
 to completion without interruptions from the listeners, excepting those 
 caused by expressions of polite admiration and encouragement. 
 
 § 4. It has been well said that no ancient work illustrates so 
 strikingly ' as the 'Academics' the saying 'habent sua fata libelli'. 
 Cicero first wrote the work in two books, entitled ' Catulus ' and 
 ' Lucullus ' respectively. He then recast- it and divided it into four 
 books, addressed to Varro. By some accident these two editions, 
 generally called the ' Prior Academics ' and the ' Posterior Academics,' 
 remained in circulation together. Time has, however, preserved neither 
 edition to us entire. Of the ' Prior Academics,' only the latter half, 
 i.e. the book entitled 'Lucullus', has come down to us; while of the 
 ' Posterior Academics ' we possess only a portion (though the larger 
 portion) of the first book, along with some fragments of the remaining 
 three, preserved by Augustine, Nonius, and others. Rather more than 
 a quarter of the matter contained in the whole work has therefore 
 perished. 
 
 §5. In the first edition the interlocutors were all leading members 
 of the 'Optimate' or Senatorial party, who were already dead when 
 Cicero wrote. The feigned date of the discussion was about 62 B.C. 
 In the second edition the feigned date was almost the actual date of 
 composition, that is 45 b.c. Both Varro and Atticus, who in the 
 'Posterior Academics' carry on the debate with Cicero, outlived him. 
 
 § 6. Cicero's object in writing the 'Academics' was to justify the 
 sceptical criticism of the New Academy. The inquiry is into the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 grounds of belief, and the possibility of arriving at any knowledge which 
 may be affirmed with dogmatic certitude. For a right understanding of 
 the 'Academics' it is necessary to state in a summary manner how these 
 questions were handled by the Greek thinkers. 
 
 § 7. By all or nearly all the philosophers who preceded Aristotle a 
 sharp line was drawn between sense-knowledge and knowledge due to 
 the operations of the reason. The former was considered dark and 
 untrustworthy, but it was always more or less assumed that the reason 
 was capable of purging away the imperfections of the senses and of 
 arriving at something which might be held as certain and indubitable 
 truth. Negative criticism was indeed to a considerable extent applied 
 to intellectual knowledge by the Eleatic Megarian and Cynic schools, 
 as well as by the Sophists, but the first philosopher who roundly pro- 
 claimed the doctrine that neither by the aid of the senses nor of the 
 reason can any sure ground be won, was Pyrrho of Elis (about 360 — 
 270 B.C.). His aim in propounding this view was mainly ethical. He 
 wished to promote virtue by shewing that no positive knowledge is 
 attainable concerning those external objects which lead men away 
 from the pursuit of righteousness. Pyrrho left no writings behind him 
 and found but few professed followers in the centuries immediately 
 succeeding his death. 
 
 § 8. Scepticism entered on a new career in the hands of Arcesilas, 
 president of the Academic School (lived about 315 — 240 B.C.) His 
 scepticism was as undiluted as that of Pyrrho, and was summed up in 
 the assertion that inquiry would always bring to light arguments of equal 
 strength in favour of and against any statement that it was possible to 
 make. In taking up this position Arcesilas professed to be merely 
 repeating the doctrine of his predecessors in the Academic School. In 
 theory, all men were bound to 'suspension of assent', so as to refrain 
 from pronouncing on the truth or falsehood of phenomena. In action, 
 phenomena were to be taken and acted on as they came, but in the full 
 consciousness that certainty was beyond human reach. 
 
 § 9. The Academy started afresh under Carneades (about 213 — 
 129 B.C.). He modified considerably the teaching of Arcesilas, by 
 abandoning the assumption that equal weights of argument could be 
 
io INTRODUCTION. 
 
 urged on both sides of every question. His view was that if the argu- 
 ments were balanced the scale would always incline in the direction of 
 a conclusion which might be accepted as probable, and he further 
 distinguished various degrees of probability. 
 
 § io. The last brilliant exponent of the principles of Carneades 
 was Philo of Larissa, the teacher of Cicero (died about 87 b.c). But 
 towards the end of his life he displayed a reaction towards dogmatism, 
 about which the information preserved is not precise enough to enable 
 us to apprehend clearly its nature. His successor in the headship of the 
 Academic School, Antiochus of Ascalon, whose lectures also Cicero had 
 attended, went over wholly to the dogmatic camp. He introduced 
 much confusion into philosophy by adopting the main tenets of 
 Stoicism, and declaring them to be in reality true Academic teaching. 
 The defence of dogmatism given in the ' Academics ' is almost entirely 
 drawn from writings of Antiochus, while the sceptical attack is princi- 
 pally taken from Clitomachus, the immediate pupil and successor of 
 Carneades. 
 
 § 11. The great difference between ancient and modern philosophic 
 scepticism lies in the fact that the ancients never went the length of 
 denying the permanence and reality of the external world. All the 
 disputants were convinced that ' things in themselves ' do exist ; the 
 only question at issue was whether the human faculties are capable of 
 conveying accurate knowledge of the external objects. Since the notion 
 ' nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu ' fully prevailed, 
 the controversy was entirely concerned with a consideration of sense 
 impressions. The Epicureans asserted that all sensations were in them- 
 selves true and trustworthy, though it is possible for the mind to make 
 wrong inferences from sensation. Though this contention was much 
 ridiculed by all the other Schools, it had been advanced by Aristotle 
 almost in the same words. The Stoics divided sensations into two 
 classes, the infallible and the fallible; those which truly represent a real 
 object, and those which either proceed from no real object whatever or 
 if they do, fail to represent it truly. Infallible sensations were known 
 merely and solely by the conviction of their infallibility which they 
 produced in the mind of the person who was conscious of them. The 
 
JNTR 01) UCTION. 1 1 
 
 Sceptics tried to shew that this conviction was worthless] it was always 
 possible for a sensation to appear trustworthy without being so. 
 
 § 1 2. The principles of Pyrrho received an elaborate development 
 in the hands of Aenesidemus and the later Sceptics whose arguments 
 are embodied in the works of Sextus Empiricus. But this portion of the 
 history of Greek philosophy lies beyond the range of our subject. 
 
THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 POSTERIOR ACADEMICS. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 I. While my friend Atticus was staying with me lately at my house 1 
 near Cumae, news was brought to us from M. Varro that he had arrived 
 from Rome on the evening of the day before, and would have come to 
 visit us forthwith, had he not been tired after his journey. On hearing 
 this we considered that no obstacle should prevent us from seeing one 
 so intimately connected with us both by the identity of our literary 
 tastes and by the long duration of our friendship. So with all speed we 
 hastened to visit him, and, being at a short distance from his house, we 
 saw our friend himself coming to meet us ; then we embraced him, as is 
 the custom of friends, and after a considerable delay escorted him back to 
 his own mansion. Here we had first a little talk, merely such as sprang 2 
 out of my question whether he had brought any news from Rome ; then 
 Atticus said : "A truce, pray, to the subject, for we cannot help feeling 
 pain when we put questions about it and hear the answers : rather ask 
 him for news of himself. Indeed Varro's Muses have now been voiceless 
 longer than was their wont ; yet my belief is, not that your friend is 
 idle, but rather that he is reticent about the work of his pen." "Far from 
 it," said he, " I think that only a heedless man writes what he wishes to 
 remain concealed ; but I have on hand an important task, begun indeed 
 long since, for I have planned a work dedicated to no other than my 
 friend here " (meaning me), " one of decided importance, which I am 
 also polishing to a high degree of finish." Then said I, " This is the 3 
 work, Varro, for which I have long been looking, though I did not 
 venture to importune you about it; indeed I heard from our friend 
 Libo, whose literary zeal you know^he and I can keep no secrets of 
 R. C. A. I 
 
1 4 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 that kind from each other — that you never interrupted the work, but 
 were elaborating it very carefully, and never had it out of your hands. 
 There is, however, one question which it never occurred to me to put to 
 you before : but now when I have begun to commit to writing the 
 doctrines which I learned in common with you, and to elucidate in a 
 Latin work the old philosophy which sprang from Socrates, I do ask you 
 how it is that, numerous as are your literary labours, you neglect this de- 
 partment, and that too though you are eminent for your acquaintance 
 with it, while the subject and all its circumstances greatly excel all 
 other subjects and all other pursuits." 
 
 4 II. Thereupon he replied : " The course you call upon me to 
 take is one I have often debated and much pondered. So without 
 delay I will give you an answer, merely using the words which I find at 
 hand, since, as I have told you, I have deliberated greatly and for a 
 length of time on this very matter. Well, as I perceived that philosophy 
 had been most minutely expounded in the writings of the Greeks, I 
 
 .'"judged that those of our countrymen who were possessed by ah interest 
 in it would prefer to read books in Greek rather than in our own lan- 
 guage, supposing them to be instructed in the learning of the Greeks ; 
 while if they were repelled by Greek systems and schools, neither would 
 they give heed to books in Latin, for these cannot be understood 
 without instruction in Greek: thus I declined to write works which' 
 the unlearned on the one hand were unable to understand, and on the 
 other the learned refused to read. 
 
 5 Again, you see — for you have studied in the same school with 
 myself — that it is not possible for us to be like Amafinius and Rabirius, 
 who, employing no rules of art, discuss matters which are plain to view, 
 in the language of the people, make no definitions, no subdivisions, prove 
 no doctrine by any appropriate argument, assume in short that the arts 
 of rhetoric and logic have no existence. We, however, obeying as our 
 laws the maxims of logicians and orators to boot, since our school holds 
 either faculty to be of the nature of a virtue, are obliged, among other 
 things, to introduce novel terms, which the learned, as I said before, 
 will prefer to get from the Greeks, while the unlearned will not receive 
 them either from us or from them, so that all our toil is undertaken to 
 no purpose. Now in truth on Natural Science I could write as lucidly as 
 Amafinius, were I a disciple of Epicurus— that is to say, of Democritus. 
 
 6 When once you have abolished the Causes depending upon Efficient 
 Forces, pray, what is there of serious difficulty in prating about the 
 casual collision of diminutive bodies — as he calls the atoms ? You know 
 the physical system of our school — as it is founded on the idea of Force 
 
TRANSLATION. 1 5 
 
 and of the Substance which Force moulds and shapes, we must needs 
 employ Mathematics ; and in what kind of language will any one be 
 able to expound that subject, and what is the kind of reader whom he 
 will be able to bring to a comprehension of it ? Take, again, this most 
 important branch which deals with life and conduct, with the objects 
 of desire and the objects of aversion. They indeed frankly declare that 
 Good is the same to a sheep and to a man, while you know well the 
 kind and degree of refinement found in our school. If on the one 7 
 hand you follow Zeno, it is a serious task to bring a man to comprehend 
 the nature of that real and uniform Good, which can never be disso- 
 ciated from Morality — Good whose nature Epicurus declares he cannot 
 so much as conjecture in the absence of pleasures which affect sense. 
 If again we are devoted to the Old Academy — a school, as you know, 
 which I regard with favour — what subtlety must we use to expound its 
 system ! How acutely, how profoundly too, must we argue against the 
 Stoics ! The whole pursuit of philosophy then, I, for one, make my own 
 as far as I can, with a view both to consistency of life and to intellectual 
 enjoyment, and I think, as Plato has it, that no greater or more excellent 
 boon was ever bestowed by the gods on man. But those of my friends, 8 
 who make the pursuit a part of their lives, I despatch to Greece, that is 
 to say, I bid them seek the Greeks, that they may rather draw their 
 draughts from the springs, than painfully track out the little runlets. 
 Subjects, however, which no one before my time had taught, and which 
 students could learn from no other source, these, as far as I could — I am 
 no great admirer of my own productions — I have brought to the 
 knowledge of my countrymen. Such knowledge could not be got from 
 the Greeks nor from the Latins either since the demise of our country- 
 man L. Aelius. Still in those early writings of mine, which I imbued 
 with a kind of mirthfulness, taking Menippus for my model — without 
 translating him — I inserted much that was drawn from the inmost re- 
 cesses of philosophy, and many statements put in logical form ; thus 
 while on the one hand the unlearned more readily comprehended these 
 passages, because they were enticed to read them by a certain pleasantry, 
 so on the other I have tried, in this recent introduction to the study of 
 antiquities, to write for philosophers, if only I have succeeded." 
 
 III. Then said I, " What you say is true, Varro. Indeed, when 9 
 we were sojourning and wandering like foreigners in our own city, your 
 books, I may say, escorted us home, and enabled us at length to per- 
 ceive who we were and where we lived. You have revealed to us the 
 age of our fatherland, its chronology, the laws of its religion and 
 priesthoods, the plan of our home and foreign administration, the 
 
 I — 2 
 
1 6 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 position of our territories and districts, the titles and descriptions of 
 all things divine and human, with the duties and principles attaching 
 to them, and you have shed a vast amount of light on our poets, and 
 on Latin literature in general, and on the Latin vocabulary, while you 
 have yourself composed picturesque and choice poems in almost every 
 metre, and in many passages have touched upon philosophy, so far as 
 
 10 to arouse interest, but not sufficiently for full treatment. Yet the plea 
 you allege is plausible : whether we look to the learned, they will prefer 
 to read Greek, or to those who do not know Greek, they will not read 
 Latin either. But I now ask you, do you sufficiently make good your 
 plea ? I rather assert both that those who cannot read Greek will read 
 Latin, and that those who can will not neglect their native literature, 
 Pray what reason is there why men acquainted with Greek literature 
 should read Latin poets and not Latin philosophers ? Is it because 
 
 " they take pleasure in Ennius, Pacuvius, Attius and many others who have 
 reproduced not the language but the substance of Greek poetry ? How 
 much greater delight will they feel, if the philosophers imitate Plato, 
 Aristotle, Theophrastus as the poets imitate Aeschylus, Sophocles, 
 Euripides ! I find that Latin orators at all events are applauded who 
 
 11 have imitated Hypereides or Demosthenes. For my part — I will state 
 the facts as they are — so long as political life, office, forensic labours, and 
 not merely an interest in the commonwealth, but also the duty to some 
 extent of representing it, kept me entangled and fettered by a variety 
 of business, I locked up my philosophy in my own mind, and by study, 
 when I found opportunity, refreshed my recollection, to keep it from 
 fading away. But now, when not only has fortune stricken me with a 
 most grievous wound, but I have been freed from my share in the con- 
 duct of the government, I seek in philosophy a balm for my sorrow, and 
 deem it too the worthiest amusement for my leisure. For either it is the 
 occupation best suited to my years, or that which best accords with those 
 achievements of mine which have earned for me applause, or again none 
 conduces more to the education of my fellow-countrymen, or if these 
 
 12 statements are not exact, I perceive nothing else for me to do. My 
 friend Brutus, who has won fame in every quarter, deals so exhaustively 
 with philosophy in Latin writings that no one feels the need of Greek 
 books going over the same ground, and he holds the same opinions as 
 yourself; for he studied some time under Aristus, whose brother Antio- 
 chus you attended. For all the reasons I have given, devote yourself, I 
 entreat you, to this department of literature also." 
 
 13 Thereupon he answered: " That is a point I will think over, and not 
 without taking counsel of you. But," said he, "what is this that I 
 
TRANSLATION. 17 
 
 hear concerning yourself?" " What about?" said I. "That you have 
 deserted the Old System, and are writing about the New." " Well," said 
 I, " is our friend Antiochus, then, to have more freedom to return to the 
 Old School from the New, than I to pass from the Old into the New ? 
 Surely the newest doctrines are the most reformed and improved. Yet 
 Philo, the master of Antiochus, a great man, as you yourself deem him, 
 refuses in his books (and we often heard the same statement from himself 
 in conversation) to allow that there are two Academies, and exposes the 
 misconception of those who have held that view." " The fact is," said 
 he, "as you state it, though I do not suppose you to be unacquainted with 
 the answer which Antiochus wrote to that contention of Philo." "Say 14 
 rather," said I, " that I should be delighted if you would refresh my 
 recollection of that matter, and of the whole teaching of the Old Academy, 
 unless it troubles you." At the same time I said " let us seat ourselves, 
 if you please." " That at least I am glad to do, for I am very weak. 
 But let us find out whether Atticus desires that I should carry out what I 
 perceive to be your wish." " I do desire it," said he: "what could I like 
 better than to con again the lessons I learned from Antiochus so long 
 ago, and at the same time to see whether they can be pretty easily stated 
 in good Latin?" This said, we sat down in view of one another. 
 
 Then Varro thus began: " I hold that Socrates, as 'all are agreed, was 15 
 the first whose voice charmed away philosophy from the mysterious 
 phenomena over which nature herself has cast a veil, and with which all 
 philosophers before his time busied themselves, and brought it face to 
 face with social life, so as to investigate virtue and vice and the general 
 distinction between Good and Evil, and led it to pronounce its sentence 
 that the heavenly bodies were either far removed from the sphere of our . 
 knowledge, or contributed nothing to right living, however much the 
 knowledge of them might be attained. This philosopher, in almost all 16 
 the conversations which have been written out in picturesque and rich 
 language by his disciples, so discourses that he lays down no dogma 
 himself, and rebuts others who do, while he declares that he possesses 
 no knowledge himself but this (and this it is which gives him his supe- 
 riority over the rest), that men imagine themselves to know what they 
 know not, while he merely knows one thing, viz. that he knows nothing, 
 and it is on this account that he supposes himself to have been named 
 the wisest of mankind by Apollo, that not to presume oneself to know 
 what one does not know is the whole of wisdom. Making this statement 
 consistently, and clinging to this opinion to the last, he yet devoted all 
 his conversation to eulogizing virtue, and to urging men on to pursue 
 it, as we may learn from the writings of the Socratic School, and parti- 
 
1 8 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 17 cularly of Plato. Through the influence of Plato, who was versatile and 
 many-sided and fluent, there was founded a scheme of philosophy single 
 and harmonious, though under the two titles of the Academic and the 
 Peripatetic Schools, which differed in their nomenclature while they 
 agreed in substance ; for after Plato had left behind him his sister's son 
 Speusippus as a kind of heir to his philosophy, and two other pupils 
 whose zeal and learning were preeminent, Xenocrates of Calchedon, and 
 Aristotle of Stagira; those who associated with Aristotle received the 
 name of Peripatetics, because they used to discuss as they walked about 
 in the Lyceum, while the rest, who, following Plato's custom, were wont 
 to hold their meetings and conversations in the Academia, which is 
 another exercise-ground, took their title from the name of that spot. 
 But both companies, endowed out of Plato's abundance, drew up a 
 certain definite code of doctrine, a code moreover enriched with matter 
 to overflowing, while they abandoned the old Socratic indecision about 
 all subjects and the practice of employing Dialectic without making any 
 positive assertion. Thus was brought to perfection a certain artistic 
 form of philosophy, with a regular succession of topics and a scheme of 
 
 18 doctrine, a result Socrates was far from desiring. This scheme was at 
 first, as I have told you, one and the same for both schools, since 
 there was no distinction between the Peripatetics and the original Old 
 Academy. In my opinion Aristotle was preeminent through a certain 
 copiousness of genius, but both schools had the same source, and drew 
 the same line between objects of desire and objects of aversion. 
 
 V. But what am I about ?" cried he, " or rather am I in my 
 right mind, when I school you in these matters? For though it is not a 
 case of the sow schooling Minerva, as the proverb has it, yet whoever 
 schools Minerva acts senselessly." Then said Atticus : " Pray, pray, 
 Varro, proceed : for I am deeply in love with the literature and authors 
 of my own people, and your views give me pleasure, when they are put in 
 Latin, and in that style of yours." " What do you suppose me to think," 
 said I, " seeing that I have already promised that I will hold up phi- 
 losophy to the view of our nation ?" " Let us proceed, then," said he, 
 
 19 "since you wish it." "Well then, there had been already inherited from 
 Plato a three-fold plan for the pursuit of philosophy : the first branch 
 dealt with Life and Conduct, the second with Nature and mysterious phe- 
 nomena, the third with Dialectic and the decision between true and false 
 statements, between correctness and incorrectness in language, between 
 things consistent and things contradictory. Now first of all, they went 
 to Nature for that portion which relates to right living and declared that 
 Nature must be obeyed, and that nowhere else but in Nature must be 
 
TRANSLATION. ■ 1 9 
 
 sought that Supreme Good by the standard of which all other things 
 were judged, and they established the doctrine that the highest of all the 
 objects of desire and the summit of things Good was found in the acqui- 
 sition of all mental bodily and external advantages which are in accord 
 with Nature. Some bodily advantages they held to reside in the whole 
 body, others in the members, health strength and beauty in the whole, 
 but in the members soundness of the senses, and a certain excellence 
 pertaining to each part, for instance in the feet swiftness, strength in the 
 hands, clearness in the voice, in the tongue moreover a lucid intonation 
 of individual utterances. Mental advantages again they reckoned to be 20 
 such as were calculated to enable the minds of men to lay hold of 
 virtue, and these they classed under two heads, that of Nature and that 
 of Conduct. To Nature they assigned quickness to learn and memory : 
 both of which they said were characteristics of intellect and mind. To 
 Conduct belonged the production of inclinations, and habituation, if I 
 may so call it ; to this habituation they gave a bent, partly by incessant 
 practice, partly by the aid of theory, and in these methods philosophy 
 herself was included. Now in philosophy that which exists merely '; 
 in outline and has not been perfected is called an 'advance,' so to 
 speak, towards virtue : that which has been perfected is virtue, which is, 
 I may say, the. consummation of Nature and the one supreme advantage 
 of all those to which they assign a place in the minds of men. External 21 
 advantages — for this was the third branch — they asserted to consist of 
 such things as conduced to the exercise of virtue. For virtue is ex- 
 hibited in dealing with advantages of mind and body and certain other 
 advantages which are conditions required not so much by Nature, as by 
 happiness. The individual man they declared to form in some sense a 
 certain part of a community comprising the whole human race, and t5 
 be connected with other individuals by the link of a common humanity, 
 as they called it. Now this is the manner in which they treat of the 
 Supreme Good which is founded on Nature : they think the function of 
 all other good things is either to magnify that or to maintain it, wealth 
 for example, influence, fame, private connexion. This is their mode of '; 
 introducing a tripartite scheme of things Good ; (VI.) and these are the 22 
 three classes which the Peripatetics are commonly thought to lay down. 
 And the common opinion is right, for the classification does belong to 
 them : but it is careless if it implies that the Peripatetics who then bore 
 the title were different from the Academics. This scheme was held by 
 the two schools in common, and both considered this to be the crown 
 of things Good, viz. to win either all or the most important of those 
 possessions which were highest in the order of Nature, and which were in 
 
20 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 themselves worthy objects of desire. The most important are those which 
 have to do with the mind itself and with virtue herself. Thus all the 
 old Philosophy pronounced that upon virtue alone depends happiness, 
 which was not however the greatest possible unless bodily endowments 
 were added, and the rest, of which we spoke above as conducing to the 
 
 23 exercise of virtue. As a result of this system, a starting point for action 
 in life was discovered, and for duty itself; this starting point lay 
 in the maintenance of those possessions which were marked out by 
 Nature. Hence sprang the avoidance of indolence and the neglect of 
 pleasures : from these resulted the acceptance of toils and pains many 
 and great for the sake of honesty and Morality, and the adoption of 
 
 - such objects as were in harmony with the ground-plan of nature, whence 
 arose both friendship and justice with equity; and these were placed 
 higher than pleasures, higher than the attainment of attendant advan- 
 tages of life in large number. Such then was in their minds the outline 
 of the theory of Conduct, and the shape and system they assigned to 
 that branch of philosophy, which I have placed first. 
 
 24 As to Nature again — for that subject came next — they made these 
 statements : they divided it into two spheres, the sphere of Force and 
 the sphere of that which — so they say — yielded itself to the action of 
 Force, and out of which formed existences were constructed. In the 
 sphere of Force they thought Quality was comprised ; in the sphere of 
 that which was subjected to Force, the Material, if I may use the term ; 
 into both spheres however both entered; since the Material never could 
 have bad any organisation had it not been bound in by some Energy, 
 nor could Energy have existed without some Material, seeing that 
 nothing exists which does not of necessity exist in space. Now that 
 which was compounded of the two they then entitled a body, and a 
 ' substance endowed with Quality ' so to speak : for you will certainly 
 allow me, in dealing with unfamiliar subjects, to use occasionally novel 
 terms, as the Greeks themselves do, who have for a long time been 
 treating these themes." 
 
 25 VII. " We will indeed," said Atticus, " nay more, you shall be free 
 to adopt Greek terms whenever you please, should you find none in 
 Latin." " I am grateful to you : but I will strive to talk Latin, unless 
 when I use words of this kind, I mean when I speak of philosophia, 
 or rhetorica, or physica, or dialectica, which words custom now adopts as 
 Latin, and such is the case with many others. I have spoken then of 
 substances endowed with Quality, meaning what the Greeks call irotoVip-as, 
 a term which is itself not in common use among the Greeks, but belongs 
 to philosophers, and the same thing happens in many instances. The 
 
TRANSLATION. 21 
 
 terms of logicians are none of them in vogue : they use terms of their 
 own, and the circumstance prevails in almost all arts, since either new 
 words must be constructed to suit new matters, or words must be 
 borrowed from other matters. And if this is what the Greeks do, who 
 have been familiar with these subjects for so many ages, how much more 
 readily should the licence be allowed to us, who are attempting to deal 
 with them now for the first time?" "Indeed, Varro," I said, " I think 26 
 you will be actually doing a service to your fellow-countrymen if you not 
 only enrich them with an abundance of new matters as you have done, 
 but also of new terms." " We will venture then," said he, " to make 
 use of new terms, with your permission, if it proves needful. These 
 'substances endowed with Quality' then are some of them primary, 
 while others are derivative. The primary exist only in one form and 
 are homogeneous : the derivative are changeable, and so to speak, hete- 
 rogeneous. So air — we treat the word aer as Latin — and fire and water 
 and earth are primary : the species of living creatures and of things 
 which spring from the earth are derivative. Therefore the first are 
 called 'first-beginnings,' and, to translate the Greek term, 'elements': of 
 these air and fire have the function of originating motion and produc- 
 tion, while the remaining classes have the function of receptivity and 
 passivity, so to say. Aristotle fancied there was a certain fifth branch, 
 which gave origin to the stars and to the intellectual faculties, being 
 unique and unlike those four elements I have enumerated above. 
 However, they suppose that underlying all things there is a certain 27 
 Material, formless and entirely destitute of that ' Quality ' — for we must 
 render the word more familiar and better worn by handling it — out of 
 which Material all things have been formed and moulded : which Ma- 
 terial can become receptive of all changes throughout its whole extent, 
 and can be transformed after every fashion and in every direction, and 
 moreover is dissolved not into nothingness, but into its own constituent 
 parts, which are capable of being cut up and sub-divided without limit, 
 while all things that move do so by the conditions of space, which again 
 can be subdivided without limit. And because that Force to which 28 
 we have given the name of ' Quality ' is ever in motion and changes 
 its position hither and thither in the way described, they suppose 
 that the Material itself through its whole extent is profoundly changed, 
 and that those objects are produced which they call 'qualified sub- 
 stances,' and out of these objects, spread over the whole realm of Nature, 
 which forms an organic whole and constitutes with all its parts an un- 
 broken chain, the universe has been framed, beyond the limits of which 
 universe no portion of Material exists, and no body, the parts of the 
 
2 2 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 universe being all things therein contained which are held together by 
 a constitution invested with sensibility, wherein is implanted Perfect 
 Reason, which again is everlasting, seeing that there is nothing more 
 
 29 potent than itself which may cause its dissolution : this power they say 
 is the soul of the universe, and is also perfect intellect and perfect 
 wisdom : to it they give the name of God, a kind of Providence as they 
 call it, exalted above all .things which are under its sway, administering 
 the heavenly operations chiefly, and next in order those operations 
 on earth which concern mankind. This power moreover they now and 
 again entitle Fate, since events cannot happen otherwise than by it 
 ordained, being linked in what they call the destined and changeless 
 chain of the everlasting order : sometimes too they also entitle this 
 power Fortune, because it brings to pass many events which are un- 
 foreseen and unsuspected by us, in consequence of their mysteriousness 
 and our blindness as to causes. 
 
 30 VIII. Next, the third branch of philosophy which was concerned 
 with reasoning and Dialectic was handled as follows by both schools. 
 Though the criterion of truth was, they said, dependent on our sense- 
 impressions, it was not contained within those impressions. The intel- 
 lect they determined ' to be the judge of facts : they pronounced it the 
 only faculty worthy of belief, because it alone discerned those forms of 
 existence which were homogeneous and simple and ever unchanged. 
 These they termed tSetu, already so named by Plato, while we may pro-- 
 
 31 perly denote them as ' forms.' All the senses they believed to be dull 
 and slow, and to be by no means capable of grasping those objects which 
 appeared to fall within the domain of the senses, inasmuch as these were 
 in some cases too small to come under the observation of sense, and in 
 others were so fleeting and in such rapid motion that no single point 
 of them appeared ever at' a standstill, or even to retain its identity, 
 since all objects were subject to a perpetual ebb and flow. So they 
 
 32 denominated all this division of existences ' matter for opinion.' Know- 
 ledge they considered to reside nowhere but in the conceptions and 
 reasonings of the mind : on this account they looked with favour on 
 definitions of things and applied them to all matters about which they 
 disputed. The elucidation of words also met with approval, that is to 
 say the elucidation of the reason why each object bears its peculiar 
 name : this they called irv/xoXoyia. After this, they made use of these 
 reasons as so-called proofs and 'signs of things' for the inculcation 
 and demonstration of any statement which they wished to have clearly 
 shewn : in this way the tradition was established of an entire scheme of 
 Logic, by which I mean language put into reasonable form. To this 
 
TRANSLATION. 23 
 
 was added as a correlative, so to speak, the faculty of Rhetoric as used 
 by orators, which enables us to unfold an uninterrupted discourse 
 adapted to produce conviction. Such was the system they inherited 33 
 from Plato. I will now, if you wish it, set forth those changes in their 
 system with which I have become acquainted." " Indeed we wish i{," 
 said I j "I answer for Atticus as well as myself." IX. "You are right in 
 answering for me," said he, "for we are listening to a striking exposition 
 of the doctrines of the Peripatetics and the Old Academy." 
 
 "Aristotle was the first who overthrew the 'forms' which I men- 
 tioned a little while ago : of which Plato was so marvellously enamoured 
 that he declared them to contain a divine element. Theophrastus again, 
 a man whose style is sweet and whose character is such that he bears 
 on his front the marks of a certain uprightness and frankness, shattered 
 in some sense by still more powerful blows the doctrines contained in 
 the old system ; for he stripped Virtue of her comeliness and enfeebled 
 her, inasmuch as he denied that happiness depends on her alone. His 34 
 pupil Strato, to be sure, though he was a man of penetrating genius, 
 must still be entirely dissociated from that school, seeing that after he 
 had abandoned the most indispensable portion of philosophy, that 
 which covers the ground of Virtue and Conduct, and had thrown him- 
 self entirely into the investigation of Nature, in that very department he 
 dissented widely from his own friends. Speusippus, however, and Xeno- 
 crates, who had been the first to take on their shoulders the system 
 and doctrines of Plato, and after their time Polemo and Crates, with 
 whom was Crantor, all these, gathered together in the Academic fold, 
 carefully cherished the principles which they had received from their 
 predecessors. Well then, Zeno and Arcesilas had both been zealous 35 
 pupils of Polemo ; but Zeno, being older than Arcesilas, and a refined 
 logician, and a man of keen mental activity, tried to reform the School. 
 This reform too, if you like, I will expound, after the manner of Antio- 
 chus." " I should certainly like it," said I, " and you see Pomponius 
 expresses the same wish." 
 
 X. " Zeno then was by no means the man to cut the sinews of Virtue, 
 as Theophrastus had done, but on the contrary, he was led to assign to 
 Virtue alone all attainments which had any bearing on happiness, and to 
 count no other thing besides as belonging to the class of things Good, 
 and to explain Morality as constituting the sole and only Good, possessed 
 of homogeneity, so to speak. Now although all other things were 36 
 neither good nor bad, still he declared them to be partly in harmony 
 with and partly hostile to Nature. Interposed and midway between these 
 same classes he counted a third class. Those things which were in 
 
24 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 harmony with Nature he taught were worthy of our choice, and were to 
 have a certain value assigned to them, the contrary being the case with 
 the contrary class ; those things which belonged to neither class he left in 
 the category of things indifferent, to which he attached no importance 
 
 37 whatever. But such things as were choiceworthy [along with their op- 
 posites] were divided into those which had positive and those which had 
 negative value. Those which had positive value he called ' preferable,' 
 those which had negative value 'repellent.' And just as he had intro- 
 duced in these respects rather verbal than substantial alterations, so be- 
 tween moral deeds and immoral he placed a kind of intermediate class, 
 comprising 'appropriate action' and 'inappropriate action,' making good 
 actions to consist of moral deeds alone, and wrong actions of wayward 
 or immoral deeds alone, while ' appropriate actions,' whether carried out 
 
 38 or omitted, he considered to constitute a middle class as I have stated. 
 , And whereas his predecessors had maintained that the reason does not 
 
 contain all that is implied by the term virtue, but merely embraces cer- 
 tain virtues which owe their perfection either to Nature or to habit, this 
 philosopher made reason embrace all virtues ; and whereas the old phi- 
 losophers believed that distinctions could be drawn between those de- 
 scriptions of virtues which I have mentioned above, Zeno argued that no 
 such distinctions could by any means be laid down, and that not the 
 practice of virtue was glorious, but the mere virtuous state, in itself, and 
 yet that no one could have virtue without putting it constantly into 
 practice. And whereas the Old School did not eradicate emotion from 
 the heart of a man, declaring it natural to feel pain and desire and fear, 
 and to be excited by pleasure, but merely restricted these feelings and 
 brought them within narrow bounds, this philosopher decided that the 
 
 39 man of wisdom is free from all these diseases, as he calls them. And 
 whereas the ancients maintained these emotions to be due to Nature, 
 reason having no share in. them, and placed feeling in one portion of the 
 mind, reason in another, he further refused assent to these doctrines. 
 For he not only supposed that emotions were dependent on the will, and 
 were embraced owing to a judgment based on fancied knowledge, but he 
 also believed that a kind of uncontrolled incontinence was the parent of 
 all emotions. Such or nearly such were his doctrines concerning morals. 
 
 XI. Touching natural substances he gave' the following opinion; 
 first he did not admit along with the four commonly received elements 
 that fifth substance from which his predecessors imagined the senses and 
 the intellect to be produced. He laid down the doctrine that fire was 
 very substance, which generated all individual things, among them the 
 intellect with the senses. He moreover herein diverged from the same 
 
TRANSLATION. 25 
 
 old philosophers, that he believed it to be impossible for any result to be 
 produced by an incorporeal substance, (for to that category Xenocrates 
 and the elder generation had declared mind to belong), and indeed that 
 it was impossible either for anything which exerted force or for any- 
 thing which was acted on, to be non-corporeal. 
 
 Again, he made many changes in that third branch of philosophy. 40 
 In this field he first of all made certain novel statements about sense- 
 impressions themselves, which he pronounced to be compounds pro- 
 duced by a kind of blow aimed from without — this he called fyavraxrla. 
 and we may name it ' appearance,' and pray let us adhere to this word, 
 since we shall have to make use of it repeatedly in the remainder 
 of our discourse — well then, to these 'appearances,' adopted, so to 
 speak,' by the senses, he links the 'assent' of the mind, which he 
 says depends on ourselves and is due to our wills. He did not attach 41 
 credibility to all ' appearances,' but only to such as brought bound up 
 with them ' evidence ' touching the objects from which they (the ' ap- 
 pearances ') came, and such an ' appearance,' being discerned by virtue 
 of its own ' evidence ' he called ' perceptible ' — will you tolerate the 
 term?" "Certainly we will," said Atticus : "how else were you to trans- 
 late KaraKij-n-Tov?" "Well then, when once the 'appearance' had been 
 adopted and assented to, he designated it a 'perception,' [or 'apprehen- 
 sion'} from its resemblance to things grasped by the hand; from which 
 act of grasping he had taken the name, no one having formerly used 
 the term in such circumstances, and he used very many other new 
 terms, for new were the doctrines he stated. That which had been 
 ' apprehended ' by sense he called a sense-impression, and if it had been 
 so ' apprehended ' as to be incapable of being uprooted by criticism, he 
 entitled it knowledge; if otherwise, ignorance : which was the parent of 
 fancied knowledge, and this he said was unstable and indistinguishable 
 from the unreal and the Unknown. But between knowledge and ignor- 42 
 ance he placed that ' perception ' of which I have spoken, and counted 
 it neither among things moral nor among things immoral, but declared 
 it to be alone deserving of credence. It was in consequence of this that 
 he went so far as to place reliance on the senses, because, as I have 
 mentioned above, he believed a 'perception' arrived at through the 
 senses to be both, true and trustworthy, not as supposing that the 'percep- 
 tion' seized on all the qualities of the object, but because it (the 'percep- 
 tion ') did not fail to include every quality which could come within its 
 province, and because Nature had assigned this as the canon, so to speak, 
 of knowledge, and the first step to an acquaintance with herself, which 
 should lead afterwards to ' conceptions ' being imprinted on the mind, 
 
26 THE ACADEMICS OF CJCERO. 
 
 which 'conceptions' enable us to find out not merely the first steps, 
 but certain broader avenues leading to the discovery of reasoned truth. 
 Confusion, however, and rash assertion, and ignorance, and false know- 
 ledge and conjecture, and, in a word, all that is inconsistent with a 
 well-grounded and staunch 'assent', he dissociated from virtue and 
 wisdom. And these or nearly these are the points which constituted 
 the whole of Zeno's disagreement with his predecessors." 
 
 43 XII. When he had said this, I remarked: "You have given a 
 terse and far from abstruse account, Varro, of the Old Academic and 
 Stoic theories: it is true, I believe, as Antiochus maintained, that the 
 latter should be regarded rather as a reform of the Old Academy than as 
 in any sense a new system." Then Varro said : " It is now your duty, 
 yours, who are a deserter from the theory of the ancients, and who accept 
 the innovations of Arcesilas, to show the nature and cause of the 
 disruption which has been brought about, that we may see whether your 
 
 44 revolt proceeds upon any adequate grounds." Then said I, " From 
 what I have heard, Arcesilas directed his attack entirely against Zeno, in 
 no spirit of obstinacy or contentiousness, as I at least believe, but 
 influenced by the mysteriousness of these matters which had led 
 Socrates and even before the time of Socrates, had led Democritus, 
 Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and almost all the men of old to admit 
 their nescience: these declared cognition, perception, knowledge to 
 be utterly impossible; the senses they maintained were restricted, 
 the mind was weak, the course of life was short, and, in the words of 
 Democritus, truth was plunged in an abyss, everything was encircled 
 by fancies and conventions, there was no room left for truth, all 
 things one after another were found to be overwhelmed by dark- 
 
 45 ness. So Arcesilas refused to admit that knowledge of anything what- 
 ever could be attained, not even of that one fact which Socrates had 
 permitted himself to retain : to such an extent did he pronounce all 
 things to be hid in secrecy : there was no single thing which could be 
 discerned or comprehended : for these reasons it was not right that any 
 man should either proclaim his knowledge, or make a positive asser- 
 tion, or signify approval by ' assent,' but he should perpetually rein in 
 and check his rashness from making any slip, for rashness then became 
 egregious when approval was given to a fact either untrue, or unknown, 
 nor was there anything more disgraceful than this, that 'assent' and 
 approval should outrun knowledge and perception. He acted in 
 accordance with this theory, and strove by speaking against the opinions 
 of all men, to bring round the majority to this view, that whereas equal 
 weights of argument were always discovered on both sides of the same 
 
TRANSLATION. 27 
 
 question, the more natural course was to withhold 'assent' from both 
 sides. This Academy they style the New, but it appears to me to be the 46 
 Old, if at least we count Plato as belonging to the famous Old School, 
 since in his books no positive statements are made, though many 
 arguments are advanced on both sides, inquiry being made into all 
 things, but no definite conclusion being stated : yet for all that let the 
 School whose tenets you have explained, be called the Old, and this of 
 mine the New: this school being continued to the time of Carneades, 
 who was fourth in succession from Arcesilas, remained faithful to this 
 same theory of Arcesilas. Carneades, however, had acquaintance with 
 every branch of philosophy, and, as I learned from his pupils, and 
 particularly. Zeno the Epicurean, who admired him far beyond all other 
 philosophers, though he disagreed with him vastly, was a man of a 
 marvellous ability. 
 
 POSTERIOR ACADEMICS. 
 
 FRAGMENTS. 
 
 BOOK 1. 
 
 " Why again does Mnesarchus vent his spleen ? Why does 1 
 Antipater cross swords with Carneades in' so many tomes ? " 
 
 - " . . .he thinking himself in thorough agreement owing to the resem- 2 
 blance of the terms he used." 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 "What seems so level as the sea? Hence the poets actually style 3 
 it 'the level plain'." 
 
 " For those who have aspired to office somewhat late in life are with 4 
 difficulty allowed access to office, nor can they ever be thoroughly 
 acceptable to the public." 
 
 " To abolish greed, to get rid of criminal courses, to exhibit one's 5 
 life as a model for the young to imitate." 
 
 "Well, can you state what the outlines of the moon really are? 6 
 When it is waxing and waning its horns appear at one time more 
 obtuse, at another more pointed." 
 
28 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 7 "Well, is not the sea blue? But its waves when cut by the oars 
 are tinged with purple, and (the surface of) the water is to a certain 
 degree coloured and stained." 
 
 8 " But then, if we believed that, we should have no need of plum- 
 mets or squares or rules." 
 
 9 "People who are grown up and those who are growing up have 
 different complexions; so have sick people and healthy, sober people 
 and drunkards." 
 
 10 "Whenever we plunge ourselves beneath the surface, as divers do, 
 we either do not discern the things above us, or discern them very 
 dimly." 
 
 11 "...who even think that an alabaster box full of ointment is foul- 
 smelling." 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 12 " To be perpetually crossing swords, to fight assiduously with crimi- 
 nals and bravoes, who would not pronounce this a course not merely 
 unfortunate, but also foolish in the extreme ? " 
 
 13 " And as we are now sitting by the Lucrine lake and see the tiny 
 fish leaping..." 
 
 14 " To think that amid so great a diversity of living creatures man 
 alone was endowed with a desire for instruction and knowledge ! " 
 
 15 "...let him have some power over himself, let him claim his free- 
 dom." 
 
 16 " Now if those who have strayed from the right path in life were 
 allowed to repent and correct their mistake, as those are who have taken 
 a wrong turning on a journey, then the reform of rashness would be 
 easier than it is." 
 
 17 " When the tool has been fixed in the work." 
 
 18 " We shall say that the clear evidence which we are bound to cling 
 to tenaciously, is missing." 
 
 19 "...who used to rear large numbers of fowls with a view to profit : 
 these on examining an egg, used to state which hen had laid it." 
 
 20 " Both the Stoics and their partisan Antiochus declare it untrue." 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 21 " He also, when he was hot, looked out for the road of the Old 
 Academics, like a road under Maenian eaves." 
 
 22 " For he is not made of stone that has been chiselled, or wood that 
 has been planed." 
 
TRANSLATION. 29 
 
 " Because it appears to us at one time blue and another dun- 23 
 coloured, and the part which now glitters beneath the sun..." 
 
 " And I believe Clitomachus when he writes this, that a task like 24 
 those of Hercules has been achieved." 
 
 "...which appeared to Antiochus himself to be stupid and self- 25 
 contradictory." 
 
 " But he did not convince of this Anaximander his fellow country- 26 
 man and friend, for he laid down the unlimited..." 
 
 " [Why should God] — for this is your belief — have created such a 27 
 quantity of water-snakes and vipers ? " 
 
 " And not as he says who declares that this world is compounded of 28 
 diminutive bodies, rough, hooked, and curved." 
 
 " All those matters, Varro, are clouded and surrounded by mighty 29 
 darkness." 
 
 "Nor do I deny it is so. Your school again asserts that over 30 
 
 against us on the opposite side of the earth there are men who stand 
 with their feet opposite to our feet." • 
 
 " He is clearly, as he was described above, a Stoic who on a few 31 
 points gives an uncertain sound." 
 
 UNCERTAIN BOOKS. 
 
 " I at least think we are blind not only as regards wisdom, but 32 
 maimed and dull as regards those very objects which we think that we 
 partially discern." 
 
 " Of such character seem to me to be all those impressions which I 33 
 have supposed we ought to style 'probable ' or 'resembling the truth ' : if 
 you choose to describe them by a different name, I make no opposition. 
 I am content that you have thoroughly admitted my statement, I mean 
 concerning the objects to which I apply the names ; for the man of wis- 
 dom ought not to be a craftsman of words, but an investigator of facts." 
 
 "...that the wise man of the Academics is assigned the second place 34 
 by all those of the remaining schools who believe themselves to be wise 
 men, each thinking it needful to claim the first place for himself; 
 whence it might with plausibility be concluded that he was justified in 
 adjudging himself the first position as all the rest adjudged him the 
 second." 
 
 "...that they had a practice of concealing their own tenets, and 35 
 were not in the habit of disclosing them to any one, unless one who 
 had associated with them up to the time of old age." 
 
 "[Varro] a man by far the shrewdest of all, and beyond all question 36 
 the most learned." 
 
 R. C. A. 2 
 
PRIOR ACADEMICS. 
 LUCULLUS. 
 
 1 I. The great ability of Lucius Lucullus and his great en- 
 thusiasm for the highest accomplishments, and the learning he had 
 acquired, including all that became a gentleman, or was worthy of 
 a man of noble birth, all this was divorced from the business of the 
 capital, at the season when he might have had a specially brilliant 
 career in the forum. After he had in very early youth joined a brother, 
 his equal in filial devotion and in energy, in avenging his father's 
 quarrel, and had won thus a high reputation, he went out to Asia as 
 quaestor, and there during very many years presided over the province 
 with very extraordinary credit, then, being elected aedile in his absence, 
 he became immediately afterwards praetor — for this was permitted to 
 him unusually early, owing to a privilege conveyed by statute — after 
 that he went to Africa, then returned for the consulship, which he filled 
 in such a manner that all praised his industry and recognised his 
 ability. Afterwards, when despatched by the senate to conduct the 
 war against Mithridates, he surpassed not only the judgment all men 
 had formed about his worth, but also the fame of his predecessors. 
 
 2 This was the more astonishing, because eminence in generalship was 
 hot much expected of one who had passed his youth in the occupations 
 of the forum, and the protracted period of his quaestorship in Asia, then 
 at peace, while Murena carried on the war in Pontus. But the 
 almost inconceivable greatness of his ability did not require that 
 practical training from which he had learned nothing. So after 
 spending all the time of his journey by land and sea partly in ques- 
 tioning men of experience, partly in reading military history, he 
 arrived in Asia an accomplished general, though he had set out from 
 Rome ignorant of the military art. He possessed indeed a very 
 marvellous memory for facts, though Hortensius had a greater memory 
 for words, but in such measure as facts are of more avail in the con- 
 duct of affairs than words, in that measure was his memory more 
 
TRANSLATION. 31 
 
 splendid than the unique memory which, as historians relate, was 
 possessed by Themistocles, whom we maintain to be by far the first 
 of the Greeks : at least they say that he, when a certain man offered 
 to teach him the art of memory, which was then coming for the first 
 time into vogue, answered that he would rather learn the art of forget- 
 ting ; I suppose because all the things he had heard and seen stuck fast 
 in his recollection. To such ability Lucullus had added also that training 
 which Themistocles had rejected. Therefore as we commit to writing 
 those facts which we wish to place on record, so he preserved facts 
 engraven in his mind. Consequently so great a general did he become 3 
 in every department of the art of war, in battles, sieges, naval engage- 
 ments, and the entire equipment of, and preparation for, war, that the 
 greatest prince since Alexander admitted that he had found him to be 
 a greater leader than any one of those whose lives he had read. He 
 also possessed such skill in the organisation and administration of states, 
 and was so just, that at the present day Asia persists in maintaining 
 the ordinances of Lucullus and in almost following out his footprints. 
 But although the advantage to his country was great, still such a high 
 degree of excellence and ability was detained longer than I could 
 wish in foreign parts, far from the gaze of the forum and the 
 senate. Furthermore, after he had returned victorious from the Mithri- 
 datic war, he triumphed three years later than he ought, owing to the 
 trickery of his enemies. For in my consulship I almost escorted the 
 triumphal car of the illustrious hero into the city, and I would declare 
 how much aid I then derived in my important measures from his advice 
 and sanction, only I should have to speak about myself, and that is not 
 needful at the present moment. So I shall choose to withhold from 
 him a merited eulogy, rather than to connect it with praise of myself. 
 
 II. But those achievements which in the case of Lucullus ought to 4 
 have been crowned with fame by his fellow-countrymen, have for the 
 most part been made the theme of writings both in Greek and in Latin. 
 I shared with many the knowledge of those public merits, but learned 
 these more private accomplishments from personal acquaintance, which 
 I enjoyed in company with a few. Lucullus indeed devoted himself with 
 greater enthusiasm to every department of literature and particularly to 
 philosophy than those who knew nothing of him believed, and that 
 not merely at the beginning of his life, but during many years when he 
 was pro-quaestor as well as in time of actual war, where the pressure of 
 military business is usually so great that a general has not much leisure 
 left when he is actually under canvas. Finding that Antiochus the pupil 
 of Philo was considered to be pre-eminent among philosophers for 
 
 2 — 2 
 
32 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 ability and knowledge, he kept him in his suite when quaestor, and for 
 many years afterwards when in command, and seeing that he possessed 
 a memory such as I have before described, he easily learned by repeat- 
 edly hearing them those doctrines which, had he heard them only once, 
 he could have remembered. And he took an extraordinary pleasure 
 in the perusal of books about the doctrines to which he listened. 
 
 5 Now I am sometimes afraid lest in my desire to extend the fame 
 of such remarkable characters, I should even restrict it ; since there 
 are many who have absolutely no love for Greek literature, and very- 
 many who have none for philosophy, while the rest, even if they 
 do not look with disfavour on the subject, think that the discussion 
 t>f such topics is not very becoming in the foremost men in the state. 
 For my part, after reading that M. Cato studied Greek literature in 
 advanced age, while the memoirs of P. Africanus tell me that on the 
 famous embassy which he undertook before his censorship, Panaetius 
 was absolutely his only companion, I look no farther to find authority 
 
 6 for the study either of Greek literature or of philosophy. It remains 
 for me to reply to those who do not like to have personages of such 
 dignity forced into discussions of this kind. As though indeed the meet- 
 ings of eminent men ought to be silent, or their discussions jocular, or 
 their conversations about trivial matters! Moreover, if the eulogies 
 which in a certain book I bestowed on philosophy were just, assuredly 
 the treatment of it is thoroughly worthy of the best and most dis- 
 tinguished men, nor have we, whom the Roman nation has placed 
 in this station, anything else to look to, but that we give not to our 
 private pursuits the time we owe to public business. And if, while 
 
 " I was bound to the discharge of public duties, I not merely never with- 
 held my services from the assemblies of my countrymen, but never even 
 penned a single syllable that was not connected with the forum, who 
 shall blame the occupations of my leisure, if, while I have it, I not 
 only decline to let myself grow dull and idle, but also strive to be 
 useful to a wide circle? I believe that the fame of those is not only 
 not reduced but is even exalted, with whose public and notorious merits 
 we associate these also which are less familiar, and less common. Some 
 are found to assert that those who carry on the controversies in my 
 books had no knowledge of the subject-matter of the discussions : 
 
 . these seem to me to cherish ill feeling not only against the living, 
 but against the dead as well. 
 
 7 III. There is left one class of critics, those who do not favour the 
 Academic system. I should be more troubled at this, if any one did 
 favour any school of philosophy but the one of which he is himself an 
 
TRANSLATION, $$ 
 
 adherent. Wei however, seeing that it is our custom t6 state against 
 all persons our opinions, cannot shew cause why others should not 
 disagree with us : though our case at least is a simple one, for we are 
 the men who wish to discover the truth, apart from all party spirit, and 
 carry on the search with extreme diligence and earnestness. For al- 
 though all knowledge is cumbered about with many hindrances, and such 
 is the cloud that covers the objects of knowledge themselves and such 
 the feebleness of our judgments, that not without reason very ancient 
 and very learned men have mistrusted the possibility of discovering the 
 object of their desires, yet neither did they waver, nor will we through 
 weariness abandon our earnest search, nor have our discussions any 
 other purpose but this, to bring to light and so to say force to the sur- 
 face something which either is true or approaches as closely as possible 
 to the truth. Nor is there any difference between ourselves and those 8 
 who believe themselves to possess knowledge, excepting that they have 
 no doubt about the essential truth of the doctrines they maintain, while 
 we hold many theories to be probable, and can readily act upon them, 
 though we can scarcely state them dogmatically. In this respect 
 again we are more free and unshackled, because we retain intact our 
 power to judge for ourselves, and are not forced by any compulsion to 
 champion every maxim and almost every word of command which 
 certain men have given us. For all beside ourselves are in the first 
 place kept in bondage before they have acquired the power of judging 
 what is best: next, at the weakest period of life, either from defer- 
 ence to a particular friend, or carried away by a single discourse 
 of some person, who is the first they have listened to, they pro- 
 nounce a decision on matters of which nothing is known, and 
 whatever be the system to which the storm, so to speak, has driven 
 them, they cling to it as though to a rock. Now as to their 9 
 plea that they put entire confidence in the philosopher whom they 
 .decide to have been 'the wise man,' I should admit it, if they had been 
 qualified to make that decision when still unskilled and unlearned — 
 since to determine who is the wise man seems to me to be the especial 
 function of the wise man — well then, granting them to have been 
 qualified, they became so after hearing all statements, and after learning 
 the opinions of the rest. But in point of fact they did make the de- 
 cision after a single hearing of the matter, and so submitted themselves 
 to the authority of a single person. But I know not how it is that 
 most men choose to be in the wrong and to do violent battle for the 
 system they have learned to love, rather than, obstinacy apart, to inquire 
 what assertions may most consistently be made. Touching these 
 
34 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 questions we had much inquiry and discussion on many occasions and 
 especially once at the country house of Hortensius, close to Bauli; 
 when Catulus had come there, and Lucullus and I myself, after we had 
 stayed with Catulus the' day before. And we had come there very 
 early, because we had decided to take ship, if there was a fair wind, 
 Lucullus for his house at Naples, I for. mine at Pompeii. So after 
 we had had a short conversation in the colonnade, we took seats in that 
 place of exercise. 
 
 10 IV. Hereupon Catulus said : " Although yesterday the subject for 
 discussion was almost completely elucidated, so that we seem to have 
 dealt with nearly the whole of the inquiry, yet, Lucullus, I am anxious 
 to get those statements you promised to make to us, which you learned 
 from the lips of Antiochus." "For my part," said Hortensius, " I have 
 done more than I could wish, for the whole subject ought to have been 
 kept intact for Lucullus. And yet possibly it has been kept virtually in- 
 tact, for I merely stated arguments I had ready at hand, while I expect 
 from Lucullus others more abstruse." Then he replied : " I assure you, 
 Hortensius, that I do not feel nervous because of your expectancy, though 
 there is nothing so unfavourable to those who wish to produce a good 
 impression, but I am the less excited because I am not anxious about 
 the degree of approval I shall secure for my views. I shall indeed state 
 opinions which are neither original, nor such that, in defending them, 
 I should not prefer to be defeated rather than to win the victory, sup- 
 posing them to prove unfounded. But in very fact, as our case now 
 stands at least, though it has been shaken by yesterday's discussion, yet 
 I believe it to be thoroughly sound. I will plead it therefore as Antio- 
 chus used to plead it, since I am well acquainted with the subject; for I 
 listened to him with thoughts unoccupied, and with great interest, and 
 he spoke repeatedly on the same subject — so I shall, excite greater 
 hopes concerning myself than Hortensius did just now." When he had 
 
 11 thus begun, we aroused our attention to listen to him. But he said : 
 " When I was at Alexandria as pro-quaestor, Antiochus accompanied 
 me, and there was already at Alexandria Heraclitus of Tyre, a friend of 
 Antiochus, who had attended the lectures of Clitomachus for many 
 years and also those of Philo, being a man, as you must admit, held 
 in esteem and of high repute in that school of philosophy, which after 
 being nearly abandoned is now being called again into existence : I 
 often listened to Antiochus when he discussed with this man, but both 
 shewed good temper. And, I must mention, those two books of Philo, 
 of which Catulus gave us an account yesterday, were at that time brought 
 to Alexandria, and had then for the first time come into the hands of 
 
TRANSLATION. 35 
 
 Antiochus: whereupon though a man naturally good tempered in the 
 extreme — indeed it was not possible for gentleness to exceed his — yet 
 began to get into a passion. I was astonished : nor indeed had I ever 
 seen him so before. But he, appealing to the recollection of Herac- 
 litus, asked him whether the doctrines appeared to him to be those of 
 Philo, or whether he had heard them uttered by Philo or any Academic 
 philosopher at any time ? He said he had not : yet he recognised the 
 written style of Philo; nor in fact could there be any doubt on the 
 matter ; for there were present friends of mine, the brothers P. and C. 
 Selius with Tetrilius Rogus, and these declared that they had heard the 
 same doctrines from Philo's lips at Rome, and had copied those two 
 volumes from Philo's own manuscript. Then Antiochus said not only 12 
 all that Catulus yesterday asserted his own father to have declared to 
 Philo's face, but more besides, nor did he refrain from actually publishing 
 against his own preceptor a book, which bears the name of Sosus. So 
 at that period, though I listened with interest both to Heraclitus when 
 he argued against Antiochus and. to Antiochus also when he disputed 
 against the Academics, yet I gave especially careful attention to Antio- 
 chus, wishing to learn from him his case in its entirety. Thus we 
 invited Heraclitus to attend during a good number of days, and with 
 him many men of learning, among whom was Aristus the brother of 
 Antiochus and moreover Aristo and Dio, whom Antiochus held in the 
 highest esteem next to his brother, and we spent a great deal of time 
 in debating that single topic. But the polemic against Philo I must 
 pass by, because a man who declares that the theories, which were 
 yesterday supported, are not maintained by Academics at all, is a far 
 from spirited opponent: since though he tells an untruth, for all that his 
 opposition is of a very mild character. Let us turn to Arcesilas and 
 Carneades." 
 
 V. After he had said this, he thus once more began : " In the 13 
 first place it always seems to me that you" — here he addressed me 
 by name — "in quoting the old natural philosophers, take the course 
 usually pursued by turbulent politicians, when they put forward certain 
 famous men of old times, intending to prove them to have been demo-, 
 crats that they themselves may appear like them. Such persons begin 
 with P. Valerius who was consul in the first year after the expulsion of 
 the kings, then they tell the story of the others who while consuls 
 carried democratic enactments concerning the right of appeal; then 
 they come to these better known characters, C. Flaminius who when 
 tribune of the plebs passed an agrarian law in the teeth of the senate, 
 some years before the second Punic war, and was afterwards twice' elected 
 
36 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 consul; then L. Cassius and Q. Pompeius; and indeed these gentle- 
 men usually place P. Africanus on the same list. They say further that 
 two brothers of great wisdom and renown, P, Crassus and P. Scaevola, 
 encouraged T. Gracchus in his legislation, one indeed, as history tells 
 us, publicly, the other, as these men conjecture, more covertly. They 
 add too C. Marius, and so far as he is concerned they tell no falsehood. 
 When they have made an exhibition of the names of these many illus- 
 trious men, they declare that these are the men whose principles they 
 
 14 themselves follow. In like fashion you, desiring, just as they desired to 
 convulse the fabric of the state, so yourselves to convulse the fabric of 
 philosophy, equally well established aforetime, thrust forward Empedo- 
 
 ; cles, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Parmenides, Xenophanes, Plato too and 
 Socrates. But neither did Saturninus (to name the enemy of my family 
 rather than the rest) bear any resemblance to those old statesmen, nor 
 is the chicanery of Arcesilas to be compared with the humility of Demo- 
 critus. And, for all you say, those physical philosophers very seldom, 
 when they are stopped by some difficulty, roar out like men labouring 
 under mental excitement (though Empedocles does so to such an 
 extent that I sometimes think him mad) that everything is mysterious, 
 that we feel nothing, discern nothing, can find out the true nature of no- 
 thing whatever ; on the contrary, nearly all of the philosophers you name 
 seem to me to state certain points even too strongly, and to claim that 
 
 15 they know more than they do know. Now even if they at that time, set 
 in the midst of novelties, faltered like new-born babes, so to speak, do 
 we suppose that nothing has been made plain by the lapse of so many 
 generations, by ability of the highest order and by intense enthusiasm ? 
 Is it not true that, after the most imposing philosophical systems had 
 been founded, then just as Ti. Gracchus sprang up bent on the destruc- 
 tion of order, so arose Arcesilas determined to overthrow the established 
 philosophy and to shelter himself behind the authority of those who, 
 he said, had denied the possibility of knowledge or perception? From 
 the number of these you must except both Plato and Socrates, the 
 former because he left behind him a thoroughly organised school, com- 
 prising Peripatetics and Academics, who under different names agreed 
 in doctrine, and with whom the Stoics disagreed more in the use of 
 terms than in opinions ; Socrates again, habitually disparaging himself 
 in debate, ever assigned too much importance to those whom he desired 
 to refute. So, his expressed opinion and his real opinion being at va- 
 riance, he made free use of that self-depreciation which the Greeks call 
 tlpuiveia, and this Fannius says was a trait of Africanus, and one. moreover 
 not to lie looked on as a defect, because Socrates possessed it also. 
 
TRANSLATION. 37 
 
 "VI. But let us suppose, if you will have it so, that the ancients 16 
 had no sure knowledge touching these matters. Has no result then 
 been achieved owing to the fact that inquiries into the subject have 
 been made since the time when Arcesilas, out of opposition to Zeno, 
 as is commonly thought, because that philosopher, without making 
 any new discoveries, merely corrected his predecessors by the al- 
 teration of their terminology, attempted to involve in obscurity the 
 most conspicuous facts, through his desire to undermine the defi- 
 nitions of his opponent ? His theory at first found not much favour, 
 though he had a brilliant reputation as well for keen ability, as for 
 a certain marvellous fascination of style, and it was supported in the 
 time immediately succeeding by Lacydes only : afterwards, however, it 
 received its completion from Carneades, who is fourth in succession 
 from Arcesilas, since he was a pupil of Hegesinus, who had been a pupil 
 of Evander, a follower of Lacydes, Lacydes having been a disciple of 
 Arcesilas. Well, Carneades himself long held sway, for he lived ninety 
 years, and his pupils were of exceedingly brilliant fame: of these 
 Glitomachus possessed most application; evidence whereof is the 
 quantity of his writings ; but Aeschines was not his inferior in ability, 
 nor Charmadas in eloquence, nor Melanthius the Rhodian in sweet 
 quaintness. Metrodorus of Stratonice was supposed to be well ac- 
 quainted with the mind of Carneades. Well, your Academic Philo 17 
 devoted his attention during many years to Clitomachus. While Philo 
 lived the Academy never lacked support. However, there were certain 
 philosophers and those of no mean standing who thought it altogether 
 wrong to take the course on which I am now entering, that of arguing 
 against the Academics ; they said there was indeed no sense in debating ' 
 with people who professed no opinions, and they blamed Antipater the 
 Stoic who had busied himself with that occupation, and they further said 
 it was not needful that a definition should be given of what constituted 
 knowledge or perception, or if you like a literal translation, that act of 
 'apprehension', which those persons call KaTaXrjfis, and they declared that 
 all who wished to produce a conviction that there is something of such a 
 nature as to be capable of being 'apprehended' and perceived were acting 
 ignorantly, because nothing could be more luminous than that evdpyeia 
 as the Greeks term it — let us, if you please, entitle it ' conspicuousness ' 
 or ' evidence,' and let us manufacture words if we find it needful, so 
 that our friend here — it was me he jocularly addressed — may not think 
 that this liberty belongs to him alone : but however that may be, they 
 thought no discourse could be discovered more perspicuous than that . 
 very quality of ' evidence ' nor did they think that definitions should 
 
38 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 be given of facts which were so palpable. Others again said that they 
 would not have been the first to advance anything in defence of this 
 ' evidence,' but they thought it right that statements should be made 
 to refute those of the opposite side, in order to prevent people from 
 being deluded. 
 
 18 Still most philosophers do not -discountenance definitions even of 
 facts which are 'evident,' and look on the subject as proper for inquiry, 
 and the persons as worthy of being admitted to a discussion. Philo, 
 however, while agitating certain new doctrines, because he found it 
 hard to withstand the speeches directed against the obstinacy of the 
 Academics, not only tells a patent lie, for which he was reproached by 
 Catulus the elder, but, as Antiochus proved, he runs his head into the 
 very noose of which he was afraid. This being his assertion, that there 
 is no one thing capable of being 'apprehended' — herein we point to a«a- 
 taktprrov — supposing its nature to be that defined by Zeno as such an 
 'appearance' (for we have made this rendering of ^avraaia tolerably 
 familiar by our conversation of yesterday) — an ' appearance ' then giving 
 the form and outline of the object from which it proceeds, in such a 
 way as would not be possible if it proceeded from any object other than 
 that from which it actually does proceed — this definition of Zeno we 
 maintain to be thoroughly exact : how indeed can any impression be 
 so ' apprehended ' as to give you full assurance that it has resulted in 
 perception and knowledge, if it presents just such features as even an 
 incorrect impression may possibly present? When Philo weakens and 
 sweeps away this definition, he sweeps away the criterion of the un- 
 known and the known: whence it results that it is not possible to 
 ' apprehend ' anything whatever. So without knowing it, he is hurled 
 back on the position he least desires to occupy. Therefore all our 
 discourse against the Academy is directed by us towards the main- 
 tenance of that definition which Philo wished to overthrow. And unless 
 we establish this definition, we admit that perception is altogether 
 impossible. 
 
 19 VII. Let us begin then with the senses, whose decisions are so un- 
 3m 4flnA*4 clouded and so emphatic that were human nature allowed a choice, and 
 ^l ij- \,jfwere some god to ask of it whether it is satisfied with its senses if unim- 
 
 y * paired and undecayed, or whether it calls for some better gift, I do not 
 see what more it is to demand. You really must not at this part of 
 my speech look for me to answer you concerning the bent oar or the 
 pigeon's neck : for I am not the man to maintain that whatever object 
 is presented to our senses possesses just such qualities as it appears 
 to us to possess. Epicurus must see to this matter J and to many 
 
TRANSLATION. 39 
 
 others of the kind. In my judgment, however, a high degree of truth 
 attaches to our senses in this way, viz. if on the one hand they are 
 sound and strong, and on the other, all the impediments are taken v . a 
 away which oppose and obstruct their action. Thus not only do we fu-fM-C, 
 often desire a change in the light and in the positions of those ob- /^i q 
 jects which we contemplate, but we also either increase or diminish the 
 distances, and we continue to make many experiments, until our 
 survey itself gives us confidence in our own judgment. The same 
 is the case with sounds, with smell and with taste, so that there is 
 no one amongst us who in dealing with sensations of each separate 
 class, calls for any more accurate means of judgment. If again we 20 
 call in the aid of practice and method, so that the eyes dwell on a 
 painting or the ears on musical notes, who can avoid seeing what great i^J^ jUtXt 
 power the senses have? How many points are there which painters 
 see in background and foreground, which we do not see ? How many 
 things which escape us in a piece of music, do the ears of those catch 
 who are practised in that study ? Such men tell us at the first note of 
 the flute-player that it is the Antiopa or the Andromacha, though we 
 have not even a glimmering of the fact. It is not at all needful to talk 
 of the senses of taste and smell, which show power of comprehension 
 to a certain extent, though the power is defective. What of touch, 
 and of that touch too, which philosophers call the inner touch, either 
 of pleasure or of pain ? It is in this alone that the Cyrenaics believe 
 the criterion of truth to reside, because truth is matter of feeling: — 
 well, can any one say that there is no difference between a man who 
 feels pain and one who is in a state of pleasure? Or rather would 
 not any one likely to pronounce such an opinion be most unques- 
 tionably mad ? But then whatever be the character of those per- 21 
 ceptions which we say are made by the senses, such nature have the « 
 
 inferences from them, which are not said to be directly perceived by the WjL «d. 
 senses, but only in a certain degree by the senses : statements like these '$/&***> .. uua 
 for example: 'that object is white, this sweet, that melodious, this clijL^'v^CJ 
 fragrant, this rough.' We now hold these judgments as ' apprehended ' 1 rfcr^ 
 by the mind, not merely by the senses. Next in order come these state- < 
 ments : ' that object is a horse, that a dog.' Next follow the remaining / 
 links in the chain of judgments, which bind up with the others some of/ 
 higher importance, these for example, which embrace what we may call] 
 a fully completed perception of their subject-matter : 'if an object is a 
 man, it is a creature subject to death, endowed with reason.' This is 
 the class of judgments whereby conceptions of things are impressed 
 upon our minds, and without these no one can either comprehend or 
 
4-0 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 \r~.vLt*X 22 inquire or debate. Now if conceptions were untrue — you I believe, 
 \tvJL i»MSjii«**»J e P resente< i &>vouu by ' conceptions ' — well, if these were untrue or 
 impressed upon us by 'appearances' of such a nature as to be in- 
 distinguishable from untrue ' appearances,' in what way could we act 
 upon conceptions? How should we see what assertions are con- 
 sistent in each case and what are inconsistent? Assuredly no room 
 is left for memory, which is more than anything else the support not 
 only of philosophy, but of all practical pursuits in life and all arts. 
 \a iwj-fcurw- What memory indeed can there be of falsities ? Or what does any 
 man remember that he has not ' apprehended ' and does not hold in 
 ViW OuJC his mind ? Moreover, what art can there be which does not arise, 
 not from one or two, but from many mental perceptions ? And if you 
 steal from us perception, how will you mark off the man who knows an 
 art from him who does not know it? Surely we shall not declare 
 one man an artist and another not just at random, but shall do so when 
 we see that one man has a hold upon certain facts which he has per- 
 ceived and ' apprehended,' while the other has none. And inasmuch as 
 one class of arts is such that it discerns its subject-matter by the exercise 
 of the mind alone, while another sets something in motion and produces 
 some result, how can a mathematician on the one hand discern things 
 which either have no existence or are indistinguishable from falsities, 
 and on the other a musician complete his rhythms and wed them to 
 poetry? The same remarks will apply to other similar arts also, 
 whose whole function consists in production and activity. What result 
 can possibly be produced by the aid of art, unless he who is to 
 practise the art has perceived a number of facts ? 
 23 VIII. The theory of the virtues, again, especially establishes the 
 Wt majCji, possibility of perception and ' apprehension ' in many instances. In 
 these perceptions alone we declare science to reside, and we pronounce 
 science to be not the bare ' apprehension ' of facts, but that ' appre- 
 hension ' when rendered certain and unchangeable, and we so speak of 
 Wisdom again, the art of conduct, which endows itself with stability. 
 Now were this firmness not accompanied by any perception or know- 
 ledge,- I ask to be told the source or manner of its birth. I ask, 
 too, why the typical good man, who has determined to undergo every 
 form of torture and to be torn to shreds by insufferable pain rather 
 than prove a traitor to duty or troth, should have forced himself to 
 submit to such oppressive conditions, if he possessed no fact which 
 was ' apprehended,' perceived, known and determined ? It can there- 
 fore in no way happen that any man should put so high a value on 
 his sense of equity and good faith, as to shrink from no suffering 
 
TRANSLATION. 41 
 
 for the sate of maintaining it, if he has not given his assent to facts 
 which cannot possibly be untrue. Further, how first of all is Wisdom, 24 
 if she is not to know whether she is really Wisdom or not, to retain her >jc* ""^ <^ rvw 
 name of Wisdom ? Next, how will she venture to enter on any plan 
 or execute it with confidence, when no certainty will exist on which 
 she can act ? Further, when she comes to doubt what is the crown and 
 summit of things good, how can she be Wisdom, knowing no standard Vw5v fp-*J^S 
 whereby all things may be judged? And, again, this is clear, that some ^e»-*tev, 
 fundamental principle must be determined, upon which Wisdom, when " 
 she undertakes a course Of action, may proceed, and that fundamental 
 principle must be in agreement with Nature. For otherwise ' desire ' — 
 by this word we mean op/tij — whereby we are urged to action and desire 
 an object which has appeared before our faculties, cannot be aroused. 
 And the object which arouses 'desire' ought first to become apparent 25 
 to us so as to secure our belief: and this is impossible, if the object ^^ y^tx,^ 
 which appears to us cannot possibly be distinguished from an unreality. 
 In what manner can the mind be aroused to feel desire, if the percep- 
 tion of the object which becomes apparent does not shew us whether 
 the object is agreeable to Nature or hostile ? Also, if it has not dawned 
 upon the mind what course of action is appropriate, it will never act 
 at all, will never be urged to any undertaking, will never be aroused. 
 But if the mind is ever to act in any case, that impression which has 
 struck upon it must needs appear to it as a truth. 
 
 What of this objection, that, if your theories are true, reason is en- 26 
 tirely demolished, though it is in some sense the lamp and the luminary . y q 
 
 of life? Will you for all that persist in your perversity? Why, reason ?*"* ■\*^ f \r 
 brought with it the beginnings of inquiry, and carried virtue to comple- iw^-^y* 1 * 
 tion, reason herself having first been strengthened by inquiry. Now in- 
 quiry is a striving after knowledge and the goal of inquiry is discovery. 
 But no man ever discovered unrealities, nor can things which remain 
 doubtful to the end possibly get to be discovered, but when matters 
 which were veiled, so to speak, are laid bare, they are said to have 
 been discovered. In this way we grasp both the ; starting point for 
 inquiry and the ultimate result of the process of perception and ' appre- 
 hension.' And so a proof properly drawn up, in Greek diro'Seifis, is thus 
 defined: 'a reasoning which leads up from things perceived to that which 
 was not included in the perceptions.' 
 
 IX. But if all ' appearances ' had the nature assigned to them by 27 
 your school, that is to say were possibly untrue so that no conception 
 of the mind could mark off the true from the false, how could we say 
 that any one had either given a proof of anything or discovered 
 

 42 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 anything, or what faith could we put in a formal demonstration? 
 What will be the issue of philosophy, which is obliged to advance by 
 the aid of reasonings? What will be the fate of Wisdom? She is 
 bound not to mistrust herself or her own edicts, which philoso- 
 phers call Soyixara, not one of which will it ever be possible to betray 
 without crime. For when an edict is betrayed, the law of truth and 
 virtue is betrayed, and from this fault often spring betrayals of friend- 
 ships and commonwealths. There can be no doubt then that no edict 
 can be untrue, and that it is not enough for the man of wisdom that 
 an edict should not be untrue; it must also be well grounded, firm, 
 thoroughly ascertained and such as no reasoning can shake. Nothing 
 having such a character can either exist or appear to exist in ac- 
 cordance with the principles of men who assert that those ' appear- 
 ances ' on which all edicts are founded are in no respect distinguishable 
 
 28 from other ' appearances ' that are untrue. Hence sprang the demand 
 which Hortensius made, that you should declare the wise man to 
 have arrived at perception of this very doctrine that perception is 
 
 yjrk t**w. impossible. But when Antipater made the same demand, main- 
 
 taoL$c*\»#-* taining that the person who declared perception to be impossible 
 
 'tMJ-M should consistently declare that for all that perception of this one 
 
 \ doctrine of his is possible, although perception of other matters is not, 
 
 Carneades confronted him with great shrewdness. For he maintained 
 
 that so far from such a course being consistent it was actually self-con- 
 
 ' tradictory in the highest degree. The man, said he, who denied that 
 
 anything exists of a nature to be perceived, allowed no exception : thus 
 
 it inevitably followed that the doctrine itself, no exception having been 
 
 made in its favour, could by no means be 'apprehended' and perceived. 
 
 29 Antiochus was reputed to make a more trenchant attack on that posi- 
 tion. Since, he said, the Academics held this doctrine — you understand 
 by this time that I represent Soy/ia in this way — that perception is 
 impossible, they were bound not to waver in regard to their doctrine, as 
 they did about all other matters, particularly as their all depended 
 on the doctrine: for the guiding aim of all philosophy was the 
 determination of true and false, of known and unknown : and since 
 they adopted this purpose as their own and desired to shew which 
 ' appearances ' ought to be received and which rejected, assuredly they 
 must needs have already ' perceived ' that very doctrine from which resulted 
 their whole criterion of true and false : furthermore the two most impor- 
 tant topics in philosophy were the criterion of truth and the moral 
 standard, and no person can be a man of wisdom who knows nothing 
 either of a beginning for knowledge, or a goal for desire, so as to be 
 
TRANSLATION. 43 
 
 ignorant either of the point from which he means to set out or of the / 
 point which he has to reach : while to suppose that these are matters of 
 uncertainty and not to be so sure about them as to prevent them from 
 being shaken was, he said, vastly at variance with Wisdom. This then, 
 he said, was a better way of demanding from them that they should at 
 least declare that they possessed a perception of this one doctrine that 
 perception is impossible. But as regards the inconsistency of their 
 whole opinion, if a person who yields assent to nothing can have an 
 opinion, let us grant, as I think we ought, that enough has been said 
 
 X. There follows a discussion rich in matter indeed, but somewhat 30 
 more recondite — for it borrows a good deal from natural science — so Q 
 
 that I fear I am bestowing on my friend who is to answer me very ^""j 
 considerable opportunity for free and even unrestrained speech. Indeed *^\j" 
 what am I to suppose he will do in treating of hidden and mysterious iA i< rr»A*,^ 
 subjects, when he tries to filch from us the light of day? But I 
 might have argued with much refinement, how great is the art with 
 which nature has manufactured, first every living creature, then man 
 in particular, what power is possessed by the senses, in what way 
 ' appearances ' first strike upon us, how thereupon as a result of their 
 impact ' desire ' follows, next how we apply our senses to the per- 
 ception of objects. The mind itself indeed, which is the receptacle 
 of sensations and is moreover itself sensation, has a natural power 
 which it applies to objects by which it is affected. And so it seizes 
 on some 'appearances' so as to use them immediately, while others 
 it stores up, as it were, and from these memory springs. Other con- 
 clusions it builds up by making comparisons, from which are produced 
 general conceptions of things, called by the Greeks sometimes hrvoiai, ,. 
 sometimes ■n-poXifi/rcis. To these when reasoning has been added, and 
 formal demonstration, and a countless crowd of observed facts, then not 
 only does perception of all these things come into view, but reasoning 
 again, receiving its completion, arrives by these gradations at the goal of 
 Wisdom. Seeing then that the mind of man is well suited to the attain- 31 
 ment of a knowledge of things, and also stability of life, it is especially 
 enamoured of intellectual acquisition and that KwraXrifis — which, as I 
 have said, we shall term by a literal translation, 'apprehension' — it loves 
 not only for its intrinsic value — since nothing is sweeter to the human 
 mind than the daylight of truth — but also on account of its utility. 
 Hence the mind applies the senses and produces the arts, which are, 
 as it were, a second series of senses, and the mind again so invigorates 
 philosophy itself that it produces virtue, on which possession more than 
 all others hangs life in its entirety. Therefore those who declare 
 
44 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 it impossible to 'apprehend' anything strip us of all this furniture or 
 equipment of life, or rather they actually overthrow the whole of life 
 from its foundations, and rob the animal of the mind that animates it, 
 so that it is not easy to speak of their rashness in terms such as the 
 circumstances demand. 
 
 32 Nor indeed can I altogether determine the nature of their design or 
 what it is they desire. For sometimes when we ply them with a remark 
 to this effect, that if all the theories they put forward in discussion are 
 true, then everything will be indeterminate, they answer : ' What then is 
 that to us ? Is the fault ours ? Lay your indictment against Nature for 
 having, as Democritus says, utterly hidden away truth in an abyss.' 
 Others, however, display better taste, and actually protest because we 
 charge them with declaring all things to be indeterminate, and try to 
 shew how great is the difference between what is indeterminate and 
 what cannot be perceived, and also to define the distinction between 
 the two. Let us deal then with those who do draw such distinctions ; 
 the others who maintain that all matters as just as indeterminate as the 
 question whether the number of the stars is even or odd, let us pass by, 
 
 iLs\j.<}r+ '^as hopeless beings, so to call them. Now our opponents are persuaded 
 ■—and this is the point by which I observed you were particularly 
 struck — that there is a sort of 'probability' which is, as it were, a 
 likeness of the truth, and this they say they use as their canon both in 
 active life and in inquiry and argument. 
 
 33 XI. What kind of canon of true and false is theirs, if we have no 
 conception of true and false for the reason that these cannot be 
 known one from the other ? For if we have any such conception at 
 all, the difference between true and false ought to be as patent as 
 that between right and wrong. If there is no difference there is no 
 canon, nor can one in whose judgment the modes of appearance pre- 
 sented by truth and falsehood are indistinguishable, possess any criterion 
 or any sign of truth whatever. Now when they say that the only thing 
 they abolish is the possibility that there should be any 'appearance' 
 such that no false 'appearance ' can wear the same aspect, while they 
 yield every other point, they act in a childish fashion. For after sweeping 
 away the means of judging about everything, they say they grant us what 
 remains; just as if a man were to declare that though he had taken away 
 another's eyesight, he had not deprived him of those objects which were 
 capable of being seen. Now just as such objects are recognised solely by 
 the eyes, so the matters of which we speak are recognised through their ' ap- 
 pearances,' but by the aid of a sign which is peculiar to true 'appearance' 
 and is not a common property of true and untrue. Therefore whether 
 
TRANSLATION. 45 
 
 you, personally, mean to put forward, as that which you act upon, 'appear- 
 ance' accompanied by probability or 'appearance' accompanied by pro- 
 bability and unobstructed, as Carneades would have it, or something else 
 still, yet you will have to recur to that kind of 'appearance' with which we 
 are now dealing. Now in that 'appearance' there will be found no criterion, 34 
 if the ' appearance ' is to possess any marks common to it and the 
 untrue ' appearance,' since no peculiar property can be indicated where 
 the mark is common to the two. But if the two are to have nothing in 
 common, I have carried my point, as I am looking for something which 
 shall appear to me so true, that it cannot again by any possibility 
 appear untrue. They make a like mistake when repressed by the 
 reproaches cast upon them by the truth they choose to draw a distinc- 
 tion between ' conspicuous sensations ' and perceptions and try to show 
 that there is something 'conspicuous,' stamped indeed as true on the 
 mind and intellect, and yet that it cannot be perceived and 'appre- 
 hended.' How indeed are you ever to state that a thing is ' conspicu- 
 ously' white, when it may happen that an object really black appears to 
 be white? Or how shall we say that such things are either 'con- 
 spicuous' or accurately stamped upon our minds, when it is indeter- 
 minable whether our senses are affected by a reality or by empty 
 nothingness? In this way they. leave us neither colour nor substance 
 nor reality nor proof nor senses nor any ' conspicuous sensation.' In 35 
 consequence of this it commonly happens to them that whatever state- 
 ment they may have made, the question is put to them, ' So you have 
 perception of this statement at all events?' But they ridicule those 
 who put this question ; since they themselves are not eager to prove 
 that no one can dispute on any matter or- make a strong assertion 
 about it without having some sure and distinctive sign to justify the 
 view which each person declares himself to adopt. What then is the 
 nature of that 'probability' accepted by your school? For if each man 
 states in positive language an opinion that has presented itself to him 
 and almost at the first glance appears probable, what can be more 
 worthless? But if they intend to say that after a certain survey and 36 
 careful reflection they act upon the appearances presented to them, 
 still they will find no way of escape: first because all 'appearances' 
 which present no distinctive features are thereby indiscriminately de- 
 prived of credit ; next, seeing that they declare it possible for the man 
 of wisdom, after taking every precaution and making a most careful 
 survey, to arrive at some result which appears like the truth and at the 
 same time is very distant from the truth, they will never be able to put 
 faith in themselves even if, as they are fond of saying, they in most 
 
 R. C. A. 3 
 
46 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 instances get at the truth itself or approximate to it very closely. For 
 in order to have faith, it will be necessary for them to know some token 
 of truth, and when they have darkened and destroyed the token what 
 kind of truth will they suppose themselves to reach? Again, what 
 assertion can be so ridiculous as theirs when they talk in this way? 
 ' Here is indeed a mark or proof touching the matter in question and so 
 I accept it on that ground, but there is a possibility that the matter 
 indicated may be a deception or a nonentity altogether.' But enough 
 as concerning perception. If any person shall desire to undermine the 
 arguments advanced, truth will easily act as her own advocate though 
 we desert her cause. 
 
 37 XII. Now that we understand pretty well the principles which 
 have just been expounded, we shall next, as regards ' assent ' and ap- 
 proval, which the Greeks call o-vyKaTafleo-is, make a statement in few 
 words, not that the subject is not an extensive one, but our foundation 
 was already laid a little while since. For when we were unfolding the 
 powers that the senses possess, we at the same time revealed the fact 
 that many things are ' apprehended ' and perceived by the senses, which 
 cannot take place without 'assent.' Next, inasmuch as the chief differ- 
 ence between an inanimate thing and an animated being is this, that 
 the animated being acts, since we cannot imagine an" animated being 
 without activity, we must either deprive such a being of sensation or 
 allow to it that power of giving ' assent ' which the freedom of our wills 
 
 38 permits to us. But indeed the soul that animates is in some sense 
 wrenched away from those to whom these philosophers are determined 
 not to allow either sensation or assent. Now just as a scale in a 
 balance dips of necessity when the weights are placed on it, so the 
 mind yields to things 'conspicuous.' For as no animated being can 
 help desiring an object which clearly seems agreeable to Nature — the 
 Greeks call such an object ourciov — so it cannot avoid giving its ' assent ' 
 to a ' conspicuous ' phenomenon which has been offered to its view. 
 Yet if the doctrines we have put forward in discussion are true, it is 
 out of place to say a single word about ' assent,' since he who per- 
 ceives anything 'assents' at once. But these consequences again 
 follow, that without 'assent' neither memory nor conceptions of 
 things nor arts can exist, and what is most important, the freedom of 
 the will, cannot exist in. him who means to give his ' assent ' to nothing. 
 
 39 What then becomes of virtue if nothing depends on our own wills ? 
 It is particularly ridiculous that while faults are within men's control, 
 and no one commits sins without assenting to them, yet the same 
 should not hold good in the case of virtue, whose whole stability and 
 
TRANSLATION. * 47 
 
 strength is derived from those impressions to which she has given 
 assent and sanction, and speaking generally it is inevitable that before 
 we act some appearance should present itself to us and that our assent 
 should be given to the appearance which has so presented itself. 
 Therefore he who sweeps away either 'appearance' or 'assent,' sweeps 
 away all activity out of life. 
 
 XIII. Now let us look to the arguments usually advanced in 40 
 opposition, by these philosophers. But first you have an opportunity 
 of understanding the basis, so to speak, of their entire theory. They 
 put together, then, first of all, a certain system relating to what we call 
 ' appearances,' and determine their nature and classes, and when dealing 
 with these classes they define at as great length as do the Stoics the 
 properties of that class which can be perceived and 'apprehended.' 
 Next they set forth those two propositions which almost, they say, 
 comprise within them the whole problem now before us : when cer- 
 tain ' appearances ' present such an aspect that other appearances also 
 may possibly present the same aspect, without any difference between 
 them, then it is not possible for one division of these appearances to 
 be perceived while another division is not perceived: now appearances 
 are indifferent, not only when they are in all respects essentially alike, 
 but also when they cannot be in practice distinguished. After laying 
 down these propositions, they put their whole case in the compass 
 of a single formal demonstration. This demonstration is thus drawn 
 up : 'Of appearances some are true, some deceptive, and what is decep- 
 tive is not capable of being perceived : any true appearance however 
 which has presented itself is in every case such that a deceptive ap- 
 pearance may present itself having the same aspect.' Again : ' As regards 
 appearances which wear such an aspect as to be indifferent, it cannot 
 possibly happen that some of them are capable of being perceived, while 
 others are not. There is therefore no appearance which is capable of 
 being perceived.' Of the assumptions which they make in order to arrive 41 
 at the conclusion which they desire, they suppose that two are granted 
 them, nor indeed does any one oppose them. These are as follows : 
 'deceptive appearances cannot be perceived,' and the second 'indifferent 
 appearances cannot be partly capable of being perceived, partly not so 
 capable ' : the rest of their assumptions however they support by ex- 
 tensive and varied discourse, and these are also two, one 'of appear- 
 ances some are true, some deceptive,' the second 'every appearance 
 which truly represents its source has the same form that another may 
 have which does not truly represent its source.' These two conten- 42 
 tions they do not skim lightly over but so enlarge upon as to display 
 
 3—2 
 
48 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 no mean degree of accuracy and carefulness ; for they divide their sub- 
 ject into sections of considerable importance : first the senses, then the 
 inferences drawn from the senses and from general experience, which 
 they desire to have enveloped in darkness. Then they come to the 
 chapter, in which they shew how it is impossible to gain perception of 
 anything by reasoning or by hypotheses either. These general topics 
 they cut up into still smaller parts. For just as you saw them deal 
 yesterday with the senses so they deal with the other topics, and in 
 the case of each of the subjects which they distribute into very small 
 fragments, they attempt to prove that side by side with all true 'ap- 
 pearances ' there are deceptive ' appearances ' which are interchangeable 
 with the true, and that since this is the nature of ' appearances ', they 
 cannot be ' apprehended.' 
 
 43 XIV. This minute accuracy I pronounce to be thoroughly worthy 
 of philosophy but most alien to the principles of those who thus 
 argue. Definitions and subdivisions and discourse which avails itself 
 of the light which these processes throw, points of resemblance again 
 and points of contrast, a'nd the fine and subtle distinctions drawn 
 between them, all these are for men who are confident that the opinions 
 they champion are true and stable and sure, and-not for men who cry 
 aloud that their opinions are not a whit more true than false. Now 
 what would they do, if after they have given a definition of something 
 some one were to ask them whether their definition may be applied 
 to another thing, any you please? If they say it can, what reason 
 could they bring to shew it to be a true definition? If they say it 
 cannot, they would have to admit that inasmuch as this true definition 
 of theirs cannot be applied to the wrong object, the object which 
 is explained by the definition is capable of being perceived : which 
 is a conclusion they by no means desire. The same remarks may 
 
 44 be made upon every division of their argument. For if they mean to say 
 that they have a clear view of the matters about which they are going 
 to argue, and are not obstructed by any interchangeability of 'ap- 
 pearances,' they will admit that they do apprehend these matters. But 
 if they intend to deny that the true 'appearances' can be separated 
 from the deceptive, how will they be able to advance a step farther ? 
 They will be met again as they have been met already. Why, no proof 
 can be drawn up without the assumptions which are made in order 
 to frame it being so accepted that no untrue assumptions could possibly 
 be identical with them. So if reasoning which is based upon and 
 proceeds upon facts ' apprehended ' and perceived is to prove this con- 
 clusion, that it is not possible to 'apprehend' anything, what more 
 
TRANSLATION. 49 
 
 self-contradictory process could be found? And whereas the very 
 essence of careful discourse is to promise that it will reveal something 
 which is not plain, and the more readily to attain that end will avail 
 itself of the senses and of ' conspicuous appearances ', what must we 
 think of the discourse of men who are decided in their minds that all 
 these matters do not so much exist as seem to exist ? They are very 
 well caught in their own net when they adopt as consistent these two 
 propositions which so violently contradict one another : first that there 
 are certain deceptive ' appearances ', in deciding upon which fact they 
 make it clear that there are certain true 'appearances'; then in the 
 same breath that deceptive 'appearances' and true are indifferent. 
 But you had framed your first assumption on the supposition that 
 they were different : so your later assumption is not in harmony with 
 your earlier nor your earlier with your later. 
 
 But let us go a step farther and so plead our case as not to 45 
 appear to have flattered our own side, and let us so exhaust all the 
 statements of our opponents, as to leave nothing overlooked. First 
 then, that ' conspicuousness ' of which we have spoken is sufficiently 
 powerful to shew us things which exist, exactly in their own nature, as 
 they are. But yet to help us to keep a stronger and more secure hold 
 on ' conspicuous appearances ' we need a considerable degree either of 
 skill or watchfulness, to prevent us from being driven by a certain 
 sleight of hand, so to speak, and by certain sophistries to relax our 
 hold upon things which are in their own nature full of light. Now 
 Epicurus, who was anxious to obviate those fallacies which we believe 
 to throw into confusion the knowledge of the truth, and declared 
 that it was for the man of wisdom to disconnect conjecture from 
 'conspicuousness', did no service, since he in no way abolished the 
 fallacy due to conjecture. 
 
 XV. On this account, seeing that two causes are at work against 46 
 ' conspicuous ' and ' evident appearances ', we must provide the same 
 number of resources to meet them. The first cause at work is that men 
 do not chain down and apply their minds to the observation of those 
 'appearances' which are 'conspicuous', so as to recognise the intensity of 
 the light which plays around them ; the second is that, overreached and 
 tricked by deceptive and sophistical questionings, some, finding them- 
 selves unable to unravel them, revolt from the truth. We ought, then, 
 to have ready prepared the answer which may be made in defence of 
 ' conspicuousness ', concerning which we have already spoken, and to be 
 fore-armed, so that we may go out to meet these men's questionings 
 and expose their sophistries : and this next in order I have determined 
 
50 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 47 to do. I will explain then each class of the proofs they bring, for even 
 these persons usually talk in an orderly manner. First they try to shew 
 that it is possible for much to seem to exist, which has absolutely no 
 existence, since our minds are falsely affected by things which have no 
 existence just in the same way as they are by things which have exist- 
 ence. Now, say they, seeing that you declare certain 'appearances' 
 to be sent to us by a god — for example those which are presented to us 
 in sleep and those which are made known to us by -oracles, auspices and 
 entrails — for they say that all these matters are believed in by the Stoics 
 against whom they argue — they ask then how a god can give probability 
 to false ' appearances ' and cannot give it to ' appearances ' which very 
 closely resemble others that are true ? Or if he can give it to these, 
 why not to ' appearances ' which though with great difficulty can yet be 
 distinguished from the true ? And if to these why not to those which 
 
 48 are indistinguishable ? Next, seeing that the mind is affected of its 
 • own motion, as is made plain by the things we picture to ourselves in 
 
 imagination and the visions which appear either to sleepers or to mad- 
 men, it is likely that the mind is so affected as not merely to fail to 
 distinguish whether those ' appearances ' are true or untrue, but so as 
 to find absolutely no difference between true and untrue : so that were 
 any persons to shake or grow pale either spontaneously through some 
 internal movement of the mind or on meeting with some alarming thing 
 obtruded upon them from without, there would be no possibility of 
 distinguishing between the trembling and the paleness in the two cases, 
 nor of finding a difference between the spontaneous and the induced 
 affection. Finally if there are no deceptive 'appearances' which are 
 attended by probability, another method applies. But if there are, 
 why should they not be such as to be not readily distinguished from 
 the true? Why not to such a degree that no difference can be 
 traced ? The more so as you yourselves state that the man of wisdom 
 during madness refrains entirely from rendering his assent, because the 
 ' appearances ' presented to him shew no distinctive stamp. 
 
 49 XVI. In reference to all these kinds of false 'appearances' 
 Antiochus advanced many arguments and the discussion on this one 
 head lasted a whole day. I suppose I must not imitate him but 
 must give merely a summary. And in the first place I must find fault 
 with this, that our opponents make use of a most sophistical kind of 
 argument, a kind which commonly meets with very little approval in 
 philosophy, I mean when very small and gradual additions or diminu- 
 tions take place. The class bears the name ' sorites,' because they prove 
 by it that a heap results from the addition of a single grain. Truly a 
 
TRANSLATION. 5 1 
 
 faulty and sophistical style ! This is the way you take your successive 
 steps : if an 'appearance' has been brought before a sleeper by a god, 
 of such a sort that it is probable, why not of such a sort as to be ex- 
 tremely like a true ' appearance ' ? Then why not such as to be not 
 easily distinguished from the true ? Next why not such as not to be 
 distinguished at all from the true? Finally, such that there is no 
 difference traceable between the one and the other ? If you get so far 
 as this because I yield to you each point as you go along, the error will 
 be mine, but if you advance thither unaided, yours. Why, who will ever 50 
 allow you that a god either has unlimited power or would use it in that 
 way if he had it ? How is it that you take it for granted that if one 
 thing can be like another it follows that the two can with difficulty be 
 distinguished? then that they are not distinguished? finally that they 
 are the same? For instance, if wolves are like dogs you will say at last 
 that the two classes are identical. And further some things not moral 1 
 are like things moral, and things not good are like things good, and 
 things far from artistic are like things artistic : why do we hesitate then; 
 to declare that there is no difference between these classes of things ?• 
 Do we not see how irreconcilable they are ? There is indeed nothing, 
 which can possibly be removed from its own class into another class. 
 But if the result were demonstrated, that there is no difference between 
 ' appearances ' of various classes, we should find some which belonged 
 both to their own proper class and to a class not their own. How can 51 
 that happen ? There is one method of keeping off false ' appearances ', 
 whether they are shadowed forth by imagination, which we admit to be 
 a common occurrence, or in sleep, or through the influence of wine or 
 of madness. For we shall declare that all such 'appearances' lack 'con- 
 spicuousness ' which we are bound to cling to tenaciously. Who is 
 there that, when he pictures something to himself and has sketched it 
 in his imagination, does not, when once he has collected himself and 
 recalled his thoughts, understand the difference between ' conspicuous ' 
 and unsubstantial phenomena ? The same principles apply to dreams. 
 Surely you do not think that Ennius after he had taken a walk with his 
 neighbour Servius Galba said : ' I appeared to myself to be walking 
 with Galba ' ? But when he dreamed, this is how he told of it : ' the 
 poet Homer appeared at my side.' And again in his Epicharmus : ' for 
 I appeared to dream that I was dead.' So whenever we have awakened 
 we make light of such ' appearances ' nor do we place them on the 
 same level as the business we have transacted in the forum. 
 
 XVII. But, say they, so long as the appearances last, the forms 52 
 of things in dreams are the same as those of the things we see 
 
52 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. - 
 
 when awake. To begin with, there is a difference between them : 
 but let us waive that point. Now what we say is that sleepers and 
 wakers have not equal degrees of power or soundness either as regards 
 intellect or as regards sensation. Nor do drunken men carry out 
 their actions with the same decision as sober men: they hesitate, 
 they waver, they check themselves sometimes and very feebly ac- 
 quiesce in the appearances that present themselves, and when they 
 have slept off their drunkenness they comprehend how worthless the 
 appearances were. The same trait is natural to men of unsound mind 
 also— when they are at the beginning of their madness they think 
 and say that something appears to them which has no real exis- 
 tence, and again when the severity of their disease lessens, their thoughts 
 and utterances are such as those of Alcmaeon : ' But I find my mind 
 
 53 accords not with the visions my eyes see.' But, say our opponents, 
 the man of wisdom restrains himself in madness, lest he should accept 
 falsities for truths. So he will at many other seasons, if perchance 
 some oppression or dulness weighs on his senses or the ' appearances ' 
 are unusually dim, or he is prevented by the shortness of the time 
 from thoroughly examining them. Yet the doctrine that the man 
 of wisdom sometimes refuses his ' assent ' is entirely detrimental to 
 your theories, since if there were no difference between ' appearances ' 
 he would either withhold it constantly or would never do so at alL 
 But this whole class of arguments clearly exhibits the frivolity of speech 
 characteristic of those who are eager to bring about general disorder. 
 We ask for the verdict given by character, consistency, solidity and 
 wisdom : we have to put up with instances of dreamers, lunatics and 
 drunkards. Are we aware how inconsistent is our talk concerning this 
 entire class of arguments? If we were, we should not quote men 
 overpowered by wine or sleep or bereft of their intellect, in such a 
 ridiculous manner as to say at one moment that there is a difference 
 between 'appearances' as presented to men awake and sober and of 
 sound mind and to men in a different condition, and again at ano- 
 
 54 ther moment that there is no such difference. Nor are they aware 
 of this either, that they are making all things indeterminable, a result 
 they do not desire — by things indeterminable I mean what the Greeks 
 call aSijXa. Now if things were so constituted that it made no 
 difference whether ' appearances ' present themselves to any one as they 
 do to a madman or as they do to a man of sound mind, who could 
 possibly feel certain about his own soundness of mind ? Now to wish 
 to arrive at this conclusion shows no slight madness. Further, they 
 hunt out with childish delight resemblances either between twins or 
 
TRANSLATION. 53 
 
 between the impressions made by signet rings. Now who among us 
 does not admit that there are resemblances between things, seeing 
 that they are manifest in very many quarters? But if the fact that 
 many things are like many others suffices for the destruction of know- 
 ledge, why are you not satisfied with it, particularly as we make you a 
 present of it? And why do you prefer to maintain a proposition 
 which the natural order of the world does not admit — I mean that 
 each thing should not preserve its identity in its own class, and that 
 there should be any confusion, based on the absence of all differences, 
 between two or more phenomena? For example be it granted that 
 eggs are extremely like eggs and bees like bees : why then do you carry 
 on the fight : or what do you want with the twins ? It is admitted 
 that they resemble one another, and you might have remained satis- 
 fied with the admission : you however want them to be identical 
 and not merely alike : and that cannot by any possibility happen. 
 Then you flee to the natural philosophers, who are especial marks 55 
 for ridicule in the Academy, yet you like the rest will no longer 
 keep your hands off them and you say Democritus declares that 
 there are countless worlds and some of them not merely so like one 
 another, but so thoroughly and completely copies of one another in 
 all respects, that they absolutely do not differ in the least, and that 
 the same is true of men. Then you ask us to grant you that, if one 
 world is so similar to another as to preclude the least distinction 
 being drawn between them, so in this world of ours too one thing 
 is so much a copy of another that all distinctions and differences are 
 absent. Why indeed, you will say, should it be that in this world of ours, 
 great as it is, a second Catulus cannot be produced, though out of all 
 those atoms whence Democritus declares the universe to be constructed 
 countless copies of Q. Lutatius Catulus not only may be formed but 
 are in existence in the other worlds, which are countless in number ? 
 
 XVIII. In the first place then you summon me before the bar of 56 
 Democritus, with whom I do not agree or rather whom I set at nought 
 because of the doctrine which is stated in clear language by more culti- 
 vated natural philosophers, that each individual thing has its own peculiar 
 marks. Now assume that those Servilii of old, who were twins, were as 
 much alike as they are said to have been ; you surely do not pronounce 
 them to have been identical ? They were not recognised out of doors, 
 but they were at home : not by those of other households, but by those 
 of their own. Do we not commonly see it come about that after we 
 supposed we could never know certain persons one from the other, when 
 once we have the advantage of experience we find it so easy to know 
 
54 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 them one from the other that they do not appear to us to be in the 
 
 57 least degree alike ? At this point you may carry on the contest if you 
 like, I will not strike back : nay, I will go so far as to admit that the 
 very man of wisdom himself, with whom our whole conversation is 
 concerned, so often as things that are alike come across him, which he 
 has not got marked off from one another, will refrain from ' assent ' and 
 will never acquiesce in any 'appearance', unless it possess such a nature 
 as a deceptive 'appearance' cannot possibly possess. But just as he has 
 certain rules applicable to all other matters, which enable him to draw 
 the line between the true and the deceptive, so he must bring expe- 
 rience to bear on those instances of similarity. Even as the mother 
 knows her twins one from another by practising her eyesight, so you 
 will know them if you once grow accustomed to them. Do you not 
 observe, how proverbial is the resemblance which eggs bear one to 
 another? Yet we have understood that at Delos when its prosperity 
 was at its height many persons were in the habit of rearing fowls for 
 profit : when these people had glanced at an egg they commonly de- 
 
 58 clared which hen had laid it. Nor is this fact (the resemblance of 
 eggs) detrimental to us, since we are content not to be able to tell the 
 eggs one from another : yet none the more for that is it right for us to 
 assent to the statement that one egg is identical with another, implying 
 that there is absolutely no difference between the two, for I have a 
 guiding principle which leads me to adjudge certain ' appearances ' to 
 be true which present such features as cannot belong to ' appearances ' 
 that are deceptive : from this principle I am not free to depart a 
 finger's breadth, as the saying is, lest 1 should produce general dis- 
 order. Not merely the theory of truth and untruth, but their natural 
 features as well will be destroyed, if there is to be no difference 
 traceable between them : thus the statement becomes ridiculous which 
 you are sometimes fond of making, that when ' appearances ' are 
 imprinted in our minds you do not mean to deny a distinction be- 
 tween the imprints themselves, but only between certain kinds and 
 classes of them. As though we do not decide about appearances with 
 
 59 reference to their class ! And these will be deprived of credit when 
 once the mark which distinguishes truth from falsehood has been 
 swept away. Another contention of your school is extremely ridi- 
 culous, that you act upon probable ' appearances ' if you find your- 
 selves unobstructed by any circumstance. To begin with, how can you 
 help being obstructed, seeing that the deceptive 'appearances' are not 
 separable from the true ? Next, what test of truth have we, seeing that 
 your test is linked with falsehood ? Hence arose inevitably eiroyfc or 
 
TRANSLATION. 55 
 
 ' suspension of assent ', in the practice of which Arcesilas, if the judg- 
 ments of some concerning Carneades are true, was the more consistent 
 of the two. For if perception is impossible, as both held it to be, there 
 must be an end of 'assent'. What indeed is so nugatory as to acqui- 
 esce in something which is not known? Now we heard just yesterday 
 that Carneades used sometimes to drift away so far as to say that the 
 man of wisdom will give a groundless judgment, which means that he 
 will commit a sin. Moreover, I am not so sure of the possibility of 
 perception as I am that the man of wisdom has no fancied knowledge 
 (a point I have already discussed at too great length), I mean never 
 yields 'assent' to any matter which is either fallacious or unknown. 
 There remains the assertion of our opponents that arguments ought 60 
 to be urged against and in defence of all views, for the purpose of 
 discovering the truth. I want then to see what truth they have dis- 
 covered. It is not our custom, says one, to shew it. Pray what are 
 these mysteries of yours ? Or why do you conceal the opinion of your 
 school, as though it were something that disgraced you ? In order, 
 says one, that our pupils may be guided by reason rather than by 
 authority. How would it be if they were guided by both? Surely 
 that is not a worse plan ? There is one doctrine, however, which they 
 do not conceal, namely, that perception is impossible. Now has 
 authority no baneful influence in the case of this doctrine ? I believe 
 its influence is baneful in the extreme. Pray who would have attached 
 himself to theories so plainly and 'conspicuously' preposterous and un- 
 true, but that Arcesilas had such rich acquirements and such a power of 
 eloquence, which Carneades possessed in a much higher degree still ? 
 
 XIX. These are, approximately, the doctrines Antiochus urged not 61 
 only on that occasion at Alexandria, but with much greater emphasis 
 many years later when he was in Syria with me a short time before his 
 death. But now I have established my case, I will not refrain from 
 rebuking you — as you are my dear friend and are my junior by a good 
 many years. Do you now after pronouncing so high an encomium on 
 philosophy and after driving our friend Hortensius from his opposing 
 opinion, intend to enrol yourself as a disciple of that philosophy which 
 commingles truth with untruth, strips us of our means of judging, robs 
 us of our power of approval, and deprives us of all our senses ? Even 
 the Cimmerians, though some divinity, or Nature perhaps, or the posi- 
 tion of the spot they inhabited, had cut off from them all view of the 
 sun, still had fires at hand, of whose light they might avail themselves, 
 but the school of philosophers which you follow, after they have spread 
 around us such thick darkness, have not left us even so much as a 
 
5$ THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 single spark whereby we might spy out anything: and were we to 
 become their pupils we should be bound with such shackles as to be 
 
 62 unable to turn ourselves about. If they have destroyed ' assent ' they 
 have destroyed all mental activity and all exertion in practical affairs : 
 now I say that this destruction is not only not right but not possible. 
 Take care that you do not find yourself to be just the man of all 
 others who is least free to support such a theory. Do you, after dis- 
 covering and dragging to light a most secret conspiracy and declaring on 
 oath that you had 'learned all about it', as I too might have done, for 
 you had acquainted me with it, do you I say mean to affirm that there is 
 nothing which admits of being known, ' apprehended ' and perceived ? 
 Take precautions I pray you, again and again, that you may not by your 
 own action also disparage the prestige of your most splendid achieve- 
 
 63 ments." When he had said this, he stopped. Now Hortensius in great 
 wonderment, which he had betrayed constantly while Lucullus was speak- 
 ing, to such an extent that he actually often lifted up his hands, which 
 is not surprising, for never, I believe, was a more careful speech directed 
 against the Academy — Hortensius then whether in jest or in earnest— 
 for I could not entirely make him out — began to urge me to abandon 
 my opinions. Then Catulus said to me : " If you have been shaken by 
 the discourse of Lucullus, which was delivered so as to shew great re- 
 sources of memory, great carefulness, and great fluency, I hold my 
 tongue and do not think that it is for me to prevent you from changing 
 your opinions if it seems good to you so to do. But there is one thing 
 I should not be inclined to advise, that you should be influenced by his 
 authority. For", said he with a smile, "he almost went so far just now 
 as to warn you to be on your guard lest some unprincipled tribune of 
 the plebs, and you understand how great the number of these will 
 always be, should catch you and put the question to you at a public 
 meeting, in what way you were consistent with yourself, since you main- 
 tained on the one hand a denial that any certainty can be arrived at, 
 and on the other hand declared that you had 'learned all about it.' 
 See to it, I entreat you, that this threat does not alarm you. As to 
 the principles themselves, I should prefer you to hold different views 
 from those of our friend. But should you yield your ground, I shall 
 not be greatly surprised, since I recal the fact that Antiochus himself, 
 though he had believed one set of doctrines for a number of years, 
 abandoned his opinions as soon as it seemed good to him to do so." 
 When Catulus had thus spoken, all eyes were turned on me. 
 
 81 XX. Then, not less excited than I usually am when I have a Very 
 important case, I began a speech somewhat after this fashion. " In regard 
 
TRANSLA TION. 5 7 
 
 to the matter at issue, Catulus, the discourse of Lucullus has impressed 
 me, as a discourse well might coming from a man of learning and rich 
 acquirements and great readiness, one too who neglects no argument 
 which can be urged in favour of his case, yet he has not made me 
 distrust my power of replying to him. Authority so great as his was 
 certainly likely to impress me had you not balanced it by your own, 
 no whit inferior to his. I will approach my task then, after first saying 
 a few words touching my own reputation. If it was in any spirit of 65 
 vain glory or contentiousness that I became an adherent of this philo- 
 sophy rather than the others, then I think that not only my folly, but 
 my character and disposition deserve reproof. Indeed, if in trivial 
 matters obstinacy is censured and trickery is actually repressed, am 
 I likely to desire either to contend, for the mere love of fighting, about 
 the general conditions and the purpose of life in its entirety, or to 
 delude not only others but myself as well? Therefore, did I not 
 think it out of place in a debate of this kind to do what is sometimes 
 done in political discussions, I would swear by Jove and by my family 
 gods that I burn with a passion for the discovery of truth and do believe 
 the doctrine I state. Pray, how can I help having an ardent desire to 66 
 discover truth, seeing that I am delighted with the discovery of anything 
 that resembles the truth? But as I judge it to be the noblest occupa- 
 tion to gaze on the truth, so it is the greatest dishonour to accept 
 falsities for truths. Nor am I the man never to accept a falsity, never 
 to yield my ' assent ', never to fancy I know, but our inquiries relate to 
 the man of wisdom. For my part, I am myself a great holder of fancied 
 knowledge — for I am by no means a man of wisdom, and I guide my 
 reflections not by the tiny cynosure 'wherein the Phoenicians trust as 
 their guide by night over the deep,' as Aratus says, and so steer a 
 straighter course because they keep in view the star ' which revolves in 
 an inner orbit, or a small circle,' but I guide myself by Helice and the 
 very brilliant stars of the Bear, I mean by reasonings which present a 
 broader aspect, and are not polished to extreme refinement. So I 
 wander about and fetch a wider compass. But the inquiry concerns 
 not myself, as I have said, but the man of wisdom. Now when- 
 ever those 'appearances' have made a vigorous attack on my mind 
 or my senses, I admit them and sometimes even yield them my 
 assent, though I have no perception of them, for perception I believe 
 to be an impossibility. I am not a man of wisdom so I give way to 
 'appearances' and cannot stand my ground. Arcesilas, however, in 
 agreement with Zeno, thinks this the highest function of the wise man, 
 to watch lest he should be taken captive, to see that he is not deceived. 
 
58 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 Nothing is indeed more irreconcilable with the conception we have 
 formed of the wise man's seriousness, than blundering, carelessness, and 
 rashness. What need then for me to talk about the stability of the wise 
 man ? And you too, Lucullus, admit that he holds no fancied know- 
 ledge. Now since you accept this statement — I am dealing with the 
 last of your statements first, but will soon get back to the proper order — 
 bethink yourself first of all, what weight the following argument possesses. 
 
 67 XXI. If the wise man is ever to yield assent, he will also sometimes 
 yield it improperly : but he never will yield it improperly : therefore he 
 never will yield his assent on any occasion. Arcesilas used to accept 
 this argument, since he strongly maintained the first and the second 
 premiss : Cameades sometimes granted as the second premiss, that the 
 wise man does sometimes yield his assent. So it followed that he also 
 ' opines,' a conclusion which you refuse to accept, and rightly so> as I 
 think. Now the first premiss, that the wise man, were he to assent, 
 would also ' opine,' is declared untrue both by the Stoics and by their 
 partisan Antiochus ; for, say they, he marks off deceptive ' appearances ' 
 
 68 from true, and 'appearances' which can lead to perception from those 
 which cannot. Yet we in the first place, even if there are objects which 
 can be perceived, still think the mere habit of rendering assent dan- 
 gerous and treacherous. Therefore since it is admitted to be so 
 
 " wrong to assent to anything which is either untrue or uncertain, it is 
 better to withhold 'assent' altogether, lest a rash advance should lead to 
 a headlong fall. For falsehoods lie so close to truths, and ' appearances ' 
 which cannot be perceived to those which can — granting for the moment 
 that there are such : we will look to that matter by and by — that the 
 man of wisdom ought not to trust himself on such hazardous ground. 
 Now if I assume on my own account that perception is impossible, and 
 take over from you the admission, which you offer me, that the wise 
 man does not ' opine ', this result will follow, that the wise man will 
 check his ' assent ' in all cases, so that you will have to consider whe- 
 ther you prefer to adopt that conclusion or this, that the wise man will 
 'opine'. Neither of them, you will say. Let us strive then to shew that 
 perception is impossible : in fact the whole dispute turns on that. 
 
 69 XXII. But first a few words with Antiochus, who not only studied 
 these very doctrines I am maintaining in the School of Philo so long 
 that he was allowed to have studied there longer than any other pupil, 
 but also wrote most ably on these themes, and then again attacked 
 them with vigour not greater than he had often before displayed in their- 
 defence. However able he may have been, and he was able, still his 
 authority is diminished by his instability. I ask what the day was that 
 
TRANSLATION. 59 
 
 dawned on him and revealed to him that token of truth and falsehood, 
 whose existence he had persistently and for so many years denied? 
 Did he think out some new theory? His doctrines are those of the 
 Stoics. Was he dissatisfied with his former views? Why did he not 
 betake himself to some other school, and best of all to the Stoics ? 
 He dissented on grounds peculiar to that school. Well, was he not 
 content with Muesarchus, with Dardanus? These were at that time 
 the leaders of the Stoic school at Athens. He never separated him- 
 self from Philo until he began to find pupils of his own. How was it 70 
 that the Old Academy was suddenly resuscitated ? He seems to have 
 wished to preserve the respectability of the title, though he was in revolt 
 against the doctrines, because some declared that he was acting with an 
 eye to his own reputation and was hoping that his followers would be 
 called Antiocheans. My opinion rather is that he found himself power- 
 less to withstand the combined attack of all the philosophers. In fact 
 on all other matters they had some points of agreement : the doctrine 
 in question is the one Academic doctrine which no philosopher of the 
 other schools admits. Thus he retreated and like those, who find the 
 sun intolerable under the New Exchange, so he, finding himself too 
 hot, took refuge under the shadow of the Old Academics, as the others 
 do beneath the Maenian eaves. If we turn to the test he applied at 71 
 the time when he held perception to be impossible, demanding which 
 of the two opinions Dionysius the philosopher of Heraclia had 'ap- 
 prehended ' by the aid of that infallible token which you say ought to 
 accompany 'assent', whether the doctrine to which he had clung for 
 many years and which he had taken on trust from his master Zeno, 
 that Morality was the only Good, or the doctrine he had actively 
 championed afterwards, that Morality was an empty phrase and that 
 Pleasure was the Supreme Good ; we find that in desiring to shew from 
 Dionysius' change of opinion that there is no copy of the truth im- 
 printed in our minds so as to render it impossible that the copy may be 
 untrue, Antiochus was careful to allow the rest an opportunity of 
 deriving from himself the same proof he had obtained from Dionysius. 
 But I shall have more to say to him on another occasion; now I turn to 
 the arguments you advanced, Luculhis, in reply to these. 
 
 XXIII. And in the first place let us see what is the character of 72 
 the assertion you made at the outset ; that we talked of ancient 
 philosophers just as rebels were wont to use the names of certain 
 illustrious men who had still been to some extent democrats. The 
 rebels, in undertaking actions that are far from respectable, are anxious 
 to be thought to resemble respectable statesmen. We however say that 
 
60 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 we hold views which you yourselves allow to have found favour with 
 very famous philosophers. Anaxagoras declared snow to be in reality 
 black. Would you tolerate me if I were to declare it so too? No, 
 nor would you if I even had a doubtabout the matter. But who 
 is Anaxagoras ? Is he a sophist — this is the title, given to the men 
 who used to pursue philosophy for vain glory or for lucre ? He was 
 
 73 a man of the highest reputation for seriousness and ability. What 
 need to speak of Democritus ? Whom can we compare with him 
 not only for greatness of talent but for greatness of soul, inasmuch 
 as he dared to write this preface : ' this I have to say about all things 
 that are. ' His promise has no exception. What can there be beyond 
 'all things that are'? Who does not place this philosopher above 
 Cleanthes, Chrysippus and the others of later times? These appear 
 to me fifth-rate when compared with him. Now he does not say 
 what we do, for we do not deny that something of the nature of 
 truth exists, but we do deny that it can be perceived; he roundly 
 denies that truth exists : the senses, he says, are attended, not by 
 dimness, but by thick darkness; this is the way he speaks of them. 
 He who admired him more than all others, Metrodorus the Chian, 
 at the beginning of his book about Nature says : 'I say we do not 
 know whether we know anything or whether we know nothing, nor 
 do we either know or not know anything about the very statement 
 
 74 just made, nor generally whether anything exists or nothing.' You 
 think Empedocles is mad : but to me he appears to pour forth utter- 
 ances most worthy of the subjects concerning which he speaks. Surely 
 then he does not put out our eyes or rob us of our senses, if he 
 decides that they have very little power of pronouncing judgment 
 on objects which come within their scope. Parmenides and Xeno- 
 phanes, in verses far from good indeed, but still in their verses 
 such as they are chide in almost angry strain the assumption of 
 those who though it is impossible for anything to be known, dare 
 to assert that they do know. You said further that Socrates and 
 Plato must be separated from the rest. Why? Are there any I 
 can speak about more confidently than these? I seem to myself to 
 have lived in their company: so many dialogues have been written 
 at length which place it beyond question that Socrates held know- 
 ledge to be impossible. He made only one exception 'that he 
 knew himself to know nothing,' — no other. What need to speak 
 of Plato ? He surely would not have followed up the consequences 
 of this doctrine in so many volumes, had he not accepted it. There 
 was no reason for him to persist in using the irony of the other philoso- 
 
TRANSLATION. 6 1 
 
 pher, especially as it was continual. XXIV. Do I now appear to 75 
 you, not merely to use the names of famous men, like Saturninus, 
 but to take as my models none but brilliant, none but renowned phi- 
 losophers? But yet I had at hand men you dislike, though insig- 
 nificant men, Stilpo, Diodorus and Alexinus, who use certain com- 
 plicated and l^een-edged cro^io-jKara ; for this is the name borne by 
 deceptive arguments of the minor sort. But what need for me to sum- 
 mon them together, when I find at hand Chrysippus who is supposed 
 to be the pillar of the Stoic porch ? How much did he urge against 
 the senses, how much against everything that is accepted in the 
 course of experience? But, say they, he refuted himself. I think 
 he did not, but let us suppose, if ybu like, that he did. Surely he 
 would not have got together so many examples of phenomena, 
 which he said deceived us by their great probability, did he not see 
 that it is no easy matter to withstand them. What do you think 76 
 of the Cyrenaics, a - school of philosophers by no means without re- 
 pute? These declare that there is nothing coming from without 
 which can lead to perception : that they have perception only of those 
 facts which they feel by an inner contact, pain for example or plea- 
 sure, and that they do not know what colour or sound anything 
 has, but only that their own constitution is affected in a certain 
 way. 
 
 We have said enough about authorities. However, you some 
 time since put the question to me whether I did not suppose that 
 after the time of those old philosophers, through the lapse of so 
 many generations, truth might possibly have been discovered, when 
 so many minds and so much enthusiasm were engaged in the 
 search. What has been discovered I shall examine a little later, and 
 you shall yourself be the judge. But that Arcesilas did not do 
 battle with Zeno from mere love of opposition, but desired to 
 discover the truth, becomes clear from the following considerations. 
 No one, I aver, among his predecessors had, I will not say elaborated, 77 
 but even uttered the theory, that it is possible for a man to avoid 
 'opining', and that this is not only possible but indispensable for 
 the man of wisdom. The principle was in the eyes of Arcesilas 
 both true and right and befitting the character of the wise man. 
 He asked Zeno, it may be, what would happen if it was neither 
 possible for the wise man to have perception nor becoming for 
 him to ' opine.' He, I suppose, answered' that he would not ' opine ', 
 since there was something capable of being perceived. What was 
 that something? An 'appearance', I suppose. What kind of 
 R. C. A. 4 
 
62 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 'appearance' then? He then, I imagine, defined it thus; 'an 
 appearance which is an imprint or stamp or picture caused by a 
 real object, representing that object as it is.' After this the question 
 was put whether this was the case even if a true 'appearance' took 
 the very form which possibly a deceptive one might assume. Here I 
 think Zeno shrewdly saw that there was no ' appearance ' which could 
 be perceived, if an ' appearance ' proceeding from a reality were such 
 that one proceeding from a nonentity might be of just the same 
 form. Arcesilas agreed that the addition had been properly made 
 to the definition, since perception of the untrue was not possible, 
 nor yet of the true if it had the same form that the false might per- 
 chance assume. He then threw his whole strength into discussions 
 intended to enable him to prove that there is no 'appearance' thrown 
 off by a real object with such a form that there may not exist 
 
 78 another ' appearance ' just like it but proceeding from a falsity. This 
 is the only point which has remained in dispute till now. For the 
 other statement that the wise man would assent to nothing, was not es- 
 sential to this discussion, since it was open to him, without perceiving 
 anything, nevertheless to ' opine ', a position which Carneades is said 
 to have sanctioned, though I, putting more faith in Clitomachus than 
 in Philo or Metrodorus, think that he rather supported the position 
 for argument's sake than gave it his sanction. But let us pass that 
 by. Indubitably when 'opining' and perception have both been 
 swept away, the refusal of ' assent ' in every case is the consequence, 
 so that if I demonstrate perception to be impossible, you must admit 
 that the wise man will never yield his ' assent.' 
 
 79 XXV. What then is there that admits of being perceived if 
 even the senses do not give us true information ? You, Lucullus, 
 defend them by resort to a commonplace : though to cut you off from 
 the opportunity of doing so, I had purposely made such a long speech 
 against the" senses, at a stage of my argument where it was not needed. 
 You further say you are not disturbed by the broken oar, or by the 
 pigeon's neck. I first ask why ? For I observe that in the case of the 
 oar there exists nothing of the kind that appears, and that in the case 
 of the pigeon several colours appear, though not more than one exists. 
 In the next place did our statement contain nothing more than this ? 
 All those arguments are intact, your case is overthrown ; yet my friend 
 says his senses are replete with truth. Well then, you always have at 
 hand an authority ready to plead the case at great hazard to himself, 
 for Epicurus stakes the issue on the declaration, that if an act of sense 
 ever once conveyed false information during the whole of life, sense is in 
 
TRANSLATION. 63 
 
 no case to be trusted. This is candour, to rely on your own witnesses 80 
 and obstinately to stand by them ! So Timagoras the Epicurean says 
 that it never happened to him, after applying pressure to his eye, to 
 see two tiny flames proceeding from a lamp : the falsehood was the 
 fault of the inference, and not of the eyes. As though the question 
 were what really is, and not what seems to be ! Yet this philosopher 
 at least is like his elders : but you, who declare that some 'appearances' 
 presented to the senses are true, while others are deceptive, how do 
 you mark them off one from the other ? A truce, I pray, to common- 
 place arguments ; we have a store of those at home. You say to me, 
 ' if some god were to put this question to you : supposing your senses 
 to be healthy and unimpaired, there is nothing else, is there, that you 
 crave ? ' I only wish he would put it. He would hear what a bad 
 subject he had found in us. For granting that our eyes see truly, how 
 far do we see ? From where I stand, I see the villa of Catulus at 
 Cumae, but that at Pompeii I cannot discern, nor is there any obstacle 
 interposed, but the eyesight can be strained no further. What a 
 splendid landscape ! Puteoli we see, but our friend C. Avianius, who 
 is perhaps taking a walk in the colonnade of Neptune, we do not see. 
 But that person, whoever he was, who is often quoted in lectures, used 81 
 to see an object distant eighteen hundred stadia, and some birds see 
 further still. I should therefore boldly answer the god your friends 
 imagine that I am entirely dissatisfied with the eyes I have. He will 
 say that my sight is sharper than that of those fishes perhaps which 
 we cannot see though they are at this moment beneath our eyes, and 
 which cannot see us from below. Therefore just as the water obstructs 
 their vision, so the thick air obstructs ours. But, say our opponents, 
 we crave nothing more. Well, you do suppose that the mole has a 
 craving for the light ? Nor should I so much find fault with the god, 
 because my vision is contracted, as because it is incorrect. Do you 
 see that vessel ? It appears to us to be at anchor : while to those on 
 board the vessel, this house seems to be in motion. Search out the 
 reason why it seems so : yet however completely you may have dis- 
 covered it, and very likely you may not succeed, nevertheless you will 
 not have shewn that you have on your side a true witness, but merely 
 that he gives false evidence not without a reason. XXVI. Why talk of 82 
 the vessel ? Why, I saw that you thought nothing of the oar. Perhaps 
 you want things on a larger scale. What can there be larger than the sun ? 
 Mathematicians maintain it to be more than eighteen times larger than 
 the earth. How tiny it seems to us ! In my eyes about a foot broad. 
 Epicurus thinks that it may be even less than it seems to be, but not 
 
 4—2 
 
64 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 much : nor does he think it is much greater, or it may be just the size 
 it seems to be, so that our e^es belie us either not at all, or not much. 
 What then becomes of that word 'once'? But let us part company 
 with this credulous man, who thinks the senses never belie us : who 
 thinks so even now, when yonder sun, which is whirled along with such 
 mighty impetus that the greatness of its velocity cannot be even 
 
 83 imagined, still appears to us to be at rest. But, to bring the dis- 
 pute into small compass, pray see within what narrow bounds the issue 
 lies. There are four leading propositions which prove that there is 
 nothing which can be known, perceived, and ' apprehended ', and this is 
 the doctrine with which our whole investigation is occupied. Of these 
 propositions the first is that there is a kind of deceptive ' appearance ', 
 the second that such an 'appearance' cannot be perceived, the third 
 that when no difference is traceable between a number of ' appearances ' 
 it cannot happen that some of them should be capable of being per- 
 ceived, while others are not so capable, the fourth that there is no 
 truthful ' appearance ' resulting fi;om an act of sensation, which has not 
 side by side with it another indistinguishable from it, yet which cannot 
 be perceived. Of these four propositions, all allow the second and 
 third. The first Epicurus does not grant; you, with whom we have 
 
 84 to do, allow this too. The whole battle is over the fourth. A man 
 then who was looking at P. Servilius Geminus, if he supposed himself 
 to be looking at Quintus, came across an ' appearance ' of such a nature 
 that it could not be perceived, because there was no sign marking 
 off the true ' appearance ' from the untrue : and when once this test was 
 removed, what infallible sign had he to help him in recognising C. Cotta 
 who was twice consul with a Geminus? You say that in the whole 
 realm of Nature no resemblance so great as this exists. You carry 
 on the fight, it is true, but with a compliant opponent. Suppose that 
 there exists no such resemblance : assuredly it may seem to exist. It 
 will therefore impose upon 'our sense, and if one resemblance imposes 
 on us, everything will be thrown into uncertainty. For when once 
 
 . that criterion is destroyed, by the aid of which the recognition ought 
 to be made, even if the man upon whom your eyes rest proves to be 
 the very man he seems to you to be, still you will not decide on the 
 strength of such a sign as you say ought to be present, a sign such 
 that there cannot possibly exist any false sign wearing the same 
 
 85 aspect. Now therefore that it is possible for P. Geminus to appear 
 as Quintus, what certainty have you such as prevents Cotta from 
 appearing to you a different man, seeing that there is something which 
 appears to you to be what it is not ? You say that all things belong 
 
TRANSLATION. 65 
 
 to their own particular class, and that no one thing has the same charac- 
 teristics as another. It is a Stoic notion and not very easy to believe, 
 that there is not a hair which is in all respects just what another hair 
 is, nor grain either. These statements can be exposed, but I do not 
 care to enter on the battle. Indeed it matters not with regard to the 
 present question whether an impression of a thing is in every respect 
 identical with another, or cannot be in practice distinguished from that 
 other, even though the two be not identical. But if the resemblance be- 
 tween men cannot be so great as we allege, cannot that between statues 
 be so either ? Tell me, could not Lysippus with the same brass, the 
 same tempering, the same graving tool and other implements the same, 
 produce a hundred Alexanders of the same pattern ? By what mental 
 conception then would you distinguish between them ? Again, if I make 86 
 a hundred impressions with this ring, all on wax of the same descrip- 
 tion, will it be possible that there should be any characteristic to help 
 you to recognise each ? Or, will you have to look out for some ring- 
 . maker, since you have succeeded in finding your Delian fowl-breeder, 
 able to acquire knowledge of each egg ? XXVII. But you call in the 
 aid of art to give further support to the senses. A painter sees things 
 we do not see, and as soon as the flute-player has sounded a note, 
 the music is recognised by the expert. Well, do you not think that it 
 is a strong point against you, if without the aid of difficult arts, with 
 which few make acquaintance, and of our nation very few indeed, we 
 cannot have the use either of eyes or ears ? Now for your fine speech 
 about the immense art which nature had shewn in 'manufacturing' 
 our senses and intellect and the whole constitution of man ! What 87 
 reason is there here why I should not recoil from the rashness of 
 ' opining ' ? Can you any longer maintain the notion that there is 
 some power possessed of foresight and wisdom, save the mark ! which 
 has moulded, or to use your own term, which has ' manufactured ' man ? 
 What is the nature of that 'manufacture'? Where was it carried out? 
 When ? Why ? How ? You handle those topics cleverly, and discuss 
 them tastefully too. My last word is this, hold these opinions if you 
 like, only do not state them dogmatically. But I shall speak of 
 natural philosophy presently, and just for this reason, to save you from 
 seeming to have told a falsehood, when you said a little earlier in your 
 speech that I should do so. But to pass to subjects which are more 
 open to the light, I will at once launch forth those arguments whole 
 and entire with which many tomes have been filled, not by our school 
 alone, but by Chrysippus also : and it is a common complaint for the 
 Stoics to make about him, that while he eagerly raked up everything that 
 
66 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 told against the senses and ' conspicuousness ', and against common ex- 
 perience, and reasoning too, he shewed less power when he tried to 
 
 88 reply to himself, and so furnished Carneades with weapons. The matters 
 I mean are of the kind to which you devoted such minute treatment. 
 You said more than once that the impressions of sleepers, drunken 
 men, and lunatics were feebler than those of men awake, sober, and 
 of sound mind. In what respect? Because, you said, Ennius, on 
 awaking, did not say he had seen Homer, but that he had seemed to 
 see, while Alcmaeon cried, 'But my thoughts are far from agreeing.' 
 And you said the same of drunken men. Just as though any one 
 denied that a man on awaking thinks his visions dreams, or that 
 one whose madness has calmed down, supposes the 'appearances' which 
 came before him during his madness not to have been true. But that 
 is not the point: the question is, what aspect the 'appearances' had 
 at the time when they did come before him. Unless indeed we 
 choose to suppose that Ennius, merely because he dreamed it, did not 
 hear that whole speech beginning 'What filial reverence in my soul ' 
 as clearly as he would have heard it had he been awake. When 
 he roused, indeed, he was able to regard those impressions as dreams, 
 as they really were, but while asleep he accepted them as fully as 
 if he were awake. Again, does not Iliona in her slumber so firmly 
 believe her son to have called out ' Mother, I summon thee,' that she 
 believed it still when aroused ? Else, whence those words ' Hither, 
 stay, wait, listen : tell me o'er thy tale again'? Does she seem to put 
 less trust in her impressions than waking people usually do ? 
 
 89 XXVIII. Why talk of madmen ? Pray, Catulus, what was Tudi- 
 tanus, your connexion, like ? Does any one, however sound in mind, 
 feel so sure about what he sees as that man did about his visions? 
 What of him who cried ' I see thee, I see thee ; live, Ulysses, while thou 
 may'st ' ? Did he not actually twice cry aloud that he saw, though he 
 assuredly did not see? Again, when Hercules, in Euripides, pierced 
 with his arrows his own children, thinking them the children of Eurys- 
 theus, and began to kill his wife, and tried to slay his father also, was 
 he not just as strongly affected by false as he would have been by true 
 impressions? Once more, does not your Alcmaeon himself who de- 
 clares that ' his thoughts agree not with his eyes ' shout again when his 
 madness grew intense, 'whence springs this fire?' and in his next 
 speech ' they come, they come ; they're here, they're here ; 'tis me they 
 seek.' Again, when he appeals to the maid for protection : ' Bring me 
 succour, banish from me the plague, this power armed with fire that 
 tortures me. Girt with lurid serpents they stalk onwards, and encircle 
 
TRANSLATION. 67 
 
 me with their flaming torches.' Do you doubt that he believes himself 
 to see this sight? And so with the rest : ' Apollo never-shorn bends his 
 golden bow, as he leans o'er the moon ; Diana launches her brand on 
 the left.' How could he possibly, were these real facts, have a stronger 90 
 belief than he had, merely because they seemed so? Now all these 
 examples are quoted to prove what is as sure as anything can be, that 
 so far as the acquiescence of the mind is concerned, there is no differ- 
 ence between true ' appearances ' and false. You do no good by pitting 
 against those delusions either of madmen or dreamers the deliberate 
 recollection of the men themselves, since the question is not what sort 
 of recollection those people commonly retain who have roused them- 
 selves from sleep, or those who have recovered from madness, but what 
 kind of 'appearances' were present either to madmen or dreamers at the 
 time when they were affected. But now I leave the subject of the 
 senses. 
 
 What is there that is capable of being perceived by the aid of 91 
 reasoning ? You say logic has been discovered and is a sort of arbi- 
 tress and judge of truth and falsehood. What truth and what false- 
 hood? Concerned with what subjects? Will the logician decide what 
 is true or false in mathematics or in literature or in music? But his know- 
 ledge is not of that sort. In philosophy then. What has he to do with 
 the size of the sun ? What acquirement of his enables him to determine 
 the nature of the Supreme Good ? What then will he decide ? What 
 conjunctive proposition, what disjunctive proposition is true, what state- 
 ments are ambiguous, what consequences follow upon each fact, and 
 what are inconsistent with it ? If he decides these and the like ques- 
 tions, he decides about his own affairs. But he promised more. Verily 
 if we look to the other numerous and important matters which philo- 
 sophy embraces, it is not enough merely to decide these questions. 
 But as you set so high a value on that art, see that its whole 92 
 developement be not to your harm : for it at its first setting out gaily 
 instructs us in the first principles of utterance and the interpretation of 
 dubious statements, and the theory of proof, then by slight advances 
 gets to the soritae, which form treacherous and perilous ground, and 
 which you lately declared to constitute a faulty style of argument. 
 XXIX. What of that? Is the blame for their faultiness to be laid 
 on us ? The nature of the universe has permitted us no knowledge 
 of limits such as would enable us to determine in any case how far to 
 go. Nor is it so with the heap of corn alone, whence comes the name, 
 but there is no matter whatever, concerning which, if questions with 
 gradual increase are put to us (e.g. whether a man is rich or poor, 
 
68 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 famous or unknown, whether a number of things are many or few, long 
 or short, broad or narrow), we know how much addition or diminution 
 
 93 must be made before we can give a definite answer. But, say they, the 
 soritae are defective. Destroy them, then, if you can, lest they cause 
 you trouble. They certainly will, unless you take precautions. The 
 precautions have been taken, says one, since Chrysippus thinks it right 
 when graduated questions are put, such as 'are three things few or 
 many ?' that some time before getting to the ' many ' one should keep 
 quiet, or as these people phrase it, TjVuxageiv. For all I care, says Car- 
 neades, you may not merely keep quiet, but may even snore. But 
 what do you gain ? There is some one at your elbow, bent on rousing 
 you from your sleep and putting questions to you as before. ' If to the 
 number at which you refused to answer, I make an addition of one, will 
 that be many ? ' You will go on again as far as you think fit. Why 
 say more ? You indeed confess that you cannot state in your answer 
 what number is the last of the ' few ' or the first of the ' many.' And 
 this kind of confusion is so widespread that I see no limits it may not 
 
 94 reach. That does me no damage, quoth our arguer, for like a crafty 
 driver I will pull up my horses before I come to the limit, and all the 
 more if the spot to which the horses are rushing be a precipice. In 
 this way, says he, I pull myself up in good time, and cease to answer a 
 sophistical questioner. If you are clear about the matter and yet do not 
 answer, you are supercilious ; if you are not clear, you too yourself have 
 no perception. If you refuse because the subject is difficult, I allow 
 your refusal. But you say you do not advance so far as the difficult parts. 
 You stop then while there is plenty of light. If you only do so to avoid 
 speaking, you will achieve nothing. What, pray, does it matter to the man 
 who wants to entrap you, whether he gets you into his net while you 
 are silent or while you are talking ? But if when you get to nine, for 
 instance, you answer without hesitation that nine things are few, and 
 stop at the tenth thing, you actually withhold your assent in a case free 
 from doubt and very clear. This same course you do not permit me to 
 take in a case which is difficult. So your art brings you no aid in 
 contending with the soritae, for it does not shew those who carry on the 
 process of increase or diminution where either the beginning is or the 
 
 95 end. What of the fact that the same art ends by destroying what it had 
 before produced, like Penelope unravelling her web? Is that your 
 fault or ours ? No doubt the first principle of dialectic is, that every pro- 
 position — they call it a£i<i)/ia, which is almost 'deliverance' — is either 
 true or false. Well then, is the following proposition true or false ? If 
 you say you are a liar and therein tell the truth, are you a liar or do you 
 
TRANSLATION, 69 
 
 tell the truth ? These fallacies, of course you say, are insoluble, a state- 
 ment which is more invidious than ours when we allege that things have 
 not been ' apprehended ' and not perceived. XXX. But I pass this by. 
 If, however, these sophisms do not admit of solution, and no test of them 
 is near. being discovered, which will enable you to answer the question 
 whether the statements are true or false, I do ask what becomes of your 
 definition : ' a proposition is such that it is either true or false ' ? I will 
 add, that when once certain assumptions have been made, some state- 
 ments must be allowed as resulting from these assumptions, while others 
 must be rejected as belonging to a class opposed to them. What judg- 96 
 ment do you pronounce on the form of the following argument ? ' If you 
 say it is now daylight and you say the truth, it is daylight; you do say 
 that it is now daylight and you do say the truth, therefore it is daylight.' 
 You and your school undoubtedly think the style valid and allow that 
 the argument has been very properly constructed. So in your teaching 
 you impart it to your pupils as the simplest method of composing an 
 argument. You will therefore either allow the validity of any argument 
 constructed in the same way, or else your art is nought. Consider then 
 whether you will allow the validity of this proof : ' if you say you are a 
 liar and tell the truth, .you are a liar ; now you do say you are a liar and 
 you do tell the truth; a liar therefore you are.' How can you help 
 accepting this, when you have accepted the former proof which belongs 
 to the same class ? These are knots tied by Chrysippus which even he 
 never untied. What indeed was he to do in face of an inference like 
 this : ' if it is daylight, it is daylight : it is daylight however ; daylight 
 therefore it is ' ? Of course he would admit it. In what respect then is 
 it different from this other inference : ' if you are a liar, you are a liar : 
 but you are a liar, therefore you are a liar ' ? This you say you can 
 neither accept nor reject. How can you any more accept or reject the 97 
 former? If art, reasoning, method, and the cogency of the argument 
 are worth anything, there is as much of these in the one as in the other. 
 But this is what these men come to at last : they require us to make ex- 
 ceptions of these insoluble fallacies. I advise them to go before some 
 tribune : they will never get me to allow them their exception. Nay 
 more, inasmuch as Epicurus who flouts and ridicules dialectic altogether 
 cannot be got by them to admit the truth of the proposition we shall put 
 thus : ' either Hermarchus will be alive to-morrow or not alive,' though 
 dialecticians lay down that every disjunctive proposition of the form 
 ' either yea or nay,' is not merely a truth but a necessity, see how sharp 
 that philosopher is whom these reasoners usually regard as dull. ' For,' 
 says he, 'if I allow one of the alternatives to be inevitable, Hermarchus 
 
70 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 will inevitably be either alive or not alive to-morrow; now there is 
 in the constitution of things no such necessity.' With this philosopher 
 then the dialecticians, by whom I mean Antiochus and the Stoics, must 
 fight their battle, since he turns dialectic entirely upside down. Indeed if 
 a disjunctive proposition composed of two contradictory statements may 
 
 98 be deceptive, then there is none which can be true. But what quarrel 
 have they with me, who merely follow their teaching? When he had met 
 with some difficulty like this, Carneades used thus to jest: 'if my infer- 
 ence is sound, I have you in my power; if faulty, Diogenes shall return 
 me the mina.' From that Stoic philosopher he had learned dialectic, 
 and this was the fee paid to dialecticians. I follow the methods Antio- 
 chus taught me, and I cannot discover how I am to pronounce on the 
 one hand that the proposition ' if it is daylight, it is daylight,' is true, on 
 the ground that my instructors declare every proposition, wherein a 
 statement is linked with a repetition of itself, to be true, and yet on the 
 other hand to refrain from pronouncing true the proposition ' if you are 
 a liar, you are a liar,' which is composed in just the same way as the 
 other. 
 
 XXXI. But, to put away from us all those edged tools, and all those 
 intricate' forms of discussion, and to exhibit our true character, when 
 once I have elucidated the entire doctrine of Carneades your Antiochean 
 theories will topple down, all of them. But I am not going to put any 
 statement in such a way as to lead any one to fancy it my own inven- 
 tion : I shall borrow from Clitomachus, who lived with Carneades till 
 old age, a man not only shrewd, like a Carthaginian, but very enthusi- 
 astic and painstaking. There are four books of his about the suspension 
 of ' assent.' The argument I am about to give is taken from the first. 
 
 99 Carneades holds that there are two classifications of ' appearances ', one 
 involving the distinction that there are some ' appearances ' which can be 
 perceived and others which cannot, while the other involves the notion 
 that some ' appearances ' are probable, some not probable. So all the 
 objections against the senses and against 'conspicuousness' bear upon the 
 former division ; against the latter no objections ought to be brought ; 
 so this is the doctrine of Carneades, that there was no 'appearance' of 
 such a character as to lead to perception, but many such as to lead to 
 acceptance. Moreover, it would be unnatural, were there no such thing 
 as probability, and the consequence is to turn life upside down, as 
 you, Lucullus, warned us. Thus there are many ' appearances ' for the 
 senses to accept, provided we hold fast the fact that among these ' ap- 
 pearances ' there is none of such a character, that there may not be also 
 a deceptive ' appearance ' bearing the same character and in no respect 
 
TRANSLATION. 7 1 
 
 differing from it. Thus, whenever any ' appearance ' befals, whose aspect 
 gives it probability, assuming that nothing presents itself to us which is 
 adverse to the probability, the wise man will avail himself of it and so 
 will keep in a straight course his whole scheme of life. Indeed the wise 
 man you so often introduce acts, as well as others, on many probabilities 
 which he has not ' apprehended ' or perceived or approved, but which 
 resemble the truth : and did he not accept these his whole life would 
 be destroyed. Well then, in going on board a ship does your wise 100 
 man hold in his mind the fact thoroughly ' apprehended ' and perceived 
 that he will have a favourable voyage ? How can he ? But if, we will 
 suppose, he were to set out hence for Puteoli, in a sound vessel, with a 
 good captain, in such a calm sea as this, it would appear to him that he 
 is likely to arrive there in safety. He will therefore base bis plans far 
 action and inaction on 'appearances' of this kind and he will be readier to 
 admit that snow is white than Anaxagoras was, who not only denied that 
 it is so in fact, but also because he knew that water, from which snow was 
 congealed, was black, denied that the snow even appeared to him white. 
 And whatever phenomenon so comes in contact with him, that the 'ap- 101 
 pearance' it presents is probable, and its probability entirely unobstructed, 
 he will be influenced by it. Indeed he is not chiselled out of stone or 
 planed out of wood; he has a body, he has a mind, he is affected through 
 his mind, and through his senses, so that many 'appearances' seem to 
 him to be true, though for all that he does not find anywhere that 
 palpable and characteristic mark which belongs to perception : and he 
 believes the wise man does not render 'assent', just because some 
 deceptive 'appearance' may spring up presenting the same form as 
 any particular true ' appearance.' Nor do we argue against the senses 
 in any other way than the Stoics, who aver that there are many false 
 ' appearances ' which are really far different from what they appear to 
 the senses to be. XXXII. If it be true that only a single false 
 'appearance' comes before the senses, there is some one ready to 
 declare that the senses cannot possibly perceive anything. So without 
 a word from us, a single line of Epicurus and another of your own 
 destroy 'perception' and 'apprehension.' What is the line of Epicurus? 
 ' If any appearance of sense is false, then perception is impossible.' 
 What is yours? 'There are false appearances of sense.' What fol- 
 lows ? Without a word of mine, the inference speaks for itself : ' per- 
 ception is impossible.' I do not give in to Epicurus, says some one. 
 Contend then with him, for he disagrees with you wholly: do not 
 contend with me, for I agree with you at least in this, that some decep- 
 tions attend our senses. Yet nothing astonishes me so much as to hear 102 
 
72 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 such assertions made, and especially by Antiochus, who was thoroughly 
 well acquainted with the principles I eriuntiated a little while ago. For 
 though any man' should, to please himself, blame us because we deny 
 that we can perceive anything, certainly the blame is to us of small 
 account : still because we say that certain probabilities do exist, you do 
 not find the statement sufficient. Be it insufficient : certainly we are 
 bound to seek refuge from the reproaches which you, Lucullus, have 
 especially cast upon us : ' Do you see nothing then ? Do you hear 
 nothing? Is nothing ' conspicuous ' to you ?' A little while ago I made 
 it clear on the authority of Clitomachus how Carneades spoke on these 
 topics. Hear how the same ideas are announced by Clitomachus in the 
 book which he dedicated to C. Lucilius the poet, after he had addressed 
 another treatise on the same subject to L. Censorinus, the same who 
 was consul with M. Manilius, He wrote then almost in these words : 
 I know them well, because the book contains the first principles and 
 almost the simplest lessons in the very subject with which we are 
 
 103 dealing — however, the passage runs thus : ' The Academics believe 
 there are such differences between things that some of them seem 
 probable, while others do not : that however is no reason why you 
 should say that some can be perceived, while others cannot, because 
 many falsities are probable, while nothing false can be perceived and 
 known.' Therefore he says those go grievously astray who allege that 
 the Academy steals from us our senses, since this school has never 
 alleged that either colour or taste or sound has no existence, but has 
 merely maintained this, that these sensations do not comprise within 
 them each its peculiar sign of truth and infallibility which is found 
 
 104 nowhere else. After setting this forth, he adds that there are two 
 modes in which the wise man is stated to withhold his ' assent ' : in one 
 way, when it is intended that he yields ' assent ' to nothing whatever, in 
 the other when he merely refrains from giving an answer such as implies 
 that he absolutely sanctions anything or refuses to sanction it, so that he 
 gives neither an absolute 'yes' nor an absolute 'no.' This being so, he 
 holds one of these modes as a dogma, never giving his absolute ' assent ', 
 while the other form he carries out in practice, so that following the 
 lead of probability, wherever it is present or absent, he can answer 
 (qualified) 'yes' or (qualified) 'no.' So, to leave room for believing 
 that the man who refrains from assenting on all occasions, is never- 
 theless aroused and enters on action, he allows ' appearances ', of such 
 a nature as to impel us to activity : also such as enable us to return 
 either a negative or a positive answer when questioned, merely acting 
 upon the appearance which has presented itself, so long as we do so 
 
TRANSLATION. 73 
 
 without (absolute) ' assent ' ; and yet he says not all such ' appearances ' 
 are accepted, but only those which are attended by no adverse cir- 
 cumstance. If we do not secure your approval for these doctrines let 105 
 them be false if you like, assuredly they are not odious. For we are 
 not filching away the daylight, but merely declare that the 'appear- 
 ances ' you say are perceived and ' apprehended ', are accepted by us 
 if they are only probable. 
 
 XXXIII. So therefore now we have introduced and established 
 probability, and required it to be without hindrances, or restrictions, 
 free and not complicated by any circumstances, you surely see, Lucullus, 
 that your advocacy of ' conspicuousness ' is overcome. Our wise man 
 of whom I am speaking will look out with the same eyes as the wise 
 man of your school upon sky earth and sea, and with the same senses 
 will take cognisance of the other objects which fall within the province 
 of each sense. The sea yonder, which now seems purple beneath 
 the freshening western breeze, will seem so also to the wise man of 
 our school, and yet he will not absolutely accept the ' appearance ', 
 because we ourselves thought the sea blue just now and gray in the 
 dawn, and because at this moment where it shines beneath the sun, 
 it whitens and quivers and is unlike the portion close by, so that even 
 if you were able to give a reason why it should prove so, still you 
 would not be able to maintain that the ' appearance ' presented to 
 the eyes was true. Whence springs memory if we perceive nothing? 106 
 That was a question you put. Well, cannot we remember 'appear- 
 ances ' unless we have completely ' apprehended ' them ? What, did 
 Polyaenus, who is said to have been a great mathematician, the same 
 who afterwards believed, in agreement with Epicurus, that geometry 
 was entirely false, did he really forget the knowledge he once possessed ? 
 But then what is false cannot be perceived, as you yourselves hold. 
 If then memory is of facts perceived and ' apprehended ', what each 
 man remembers he holds after perceiving and ' apprehending ' it. No 
 falsehood can be ' apprehended ', and yet Siron remembers all the 
 dogmas of Epicurus. As things stand, then, all these dogmas are true. 
 This may be so for all I care ; but you must either admit it to be so, 
 which you are far from desiring to do, or you ought to give up memory 
 to me, and allow that there is room for it, even if ' apprehension ' and 
 ' perception ' have no existence. What will become of the arts ? Which 107 
 arts ? Those which themselves admit that they rely on hypothesis more 
 than on knowledge, or those which act merely upon ' appearances ', and 
 do not employ that system of yours to enable them to distinguish truth 
 from falsehood ? 
 
74 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 But there are still two shining lights, which are the especial sup- 
 ports of your case. For, first, you say it is not possible that a man 
 should decline to assent in every case. But this fact which you deny is 
 quite ' conspicuous.' Seeing that Panaetius, in my opinion at least 
 nearly the greatest of the Stoics, declares that he has doubts on a 
 subject which all Stoics excepting himself think to be as clear as 
 possible, namely the truth of augury, auspices, oracles, dreams, and 
 prophecies, and refrains from assenting to them : why should the wise 
 man not be able to do in dealing with other subjects what this philo- 
 sopher is allowed to do even when treating of topics which his 
 teachers have held to be perfectly clear ? Or is there any assertion 
 which when it is maintained he is free either to reject or to accept, but 
 not free to doubt ? Or are you to use such freedom as often as you 
 please, when you come across soritae, and is our wise man not to be 
 free to stop in the same way when he deals with the other matters, 
 and that though he can act upon a close and unobstructed resemblance 
 
 108 to the truth without yielding his ' assent ' ? The second point is that 
 you assert it to be impossible that one who sanctions nothing by ren- 
 dering his ' assent ', should shew activity of any kind. Now, to begin 
 with, it ought to be clearly seen in what ' assent ' actually consists, for 
 the Stoics say that the sensations themselves are forms of ' assent ', and 
 that since desire attends them, activity follows on them; but all this is 
 swept away if the truth of ' appearances ' is abolished. XXXIV. On 
 both sides of this question a great deal has been both spoken and 
 written, but in a short space the whole discussion may be completed. 
 For my part, though I regard it as the highest form of activity to battle 
 against 'appearances', to make a stand against hasty judgments, to 
 check the perils of 'assent', and, though I believe Clitomachus when 
 he writes that an almost Herculean task was achieved by Cameades in 
 that he expelled from our minds ' assent ' or rather hasty judgment and 
 rashness, as it were some savage and cruel monster, yet for all that 
 I still ask (for I wish now to leave that portion of my defence) what will 
 obstruct the activity of one who acts on probabilities, if he finds no 
 
 109 obstacle in the way ? He will be obstructed, some one says, by the 
 very fact that he will decide the impossibility of perceiving even that 
 impression which he accepts. You too will be obstructed by the same 
 hindrance, in making a voyage, in agriculture, in marriage, in rearing 
 children, and on very many occasions, in which you will find nothing 
 but probability for your guide. 
 
 And yet you recur to that well worn and often rejected argument, 
 pleading it not like Antipater, but as you say ' more trenchantly.' In fact 
 
TRANSLA TION. 7 5 
 
 you say Antipater was censured, because he asserted that consistency 
 required a man who asseverated that nothing could be ' apprehended ', 
 to declare at least that his asseveration itself could be ' apprehended ', a 
 position which seemed to Antiochus stupid and inherently contradictory. 
 For it cannot fittingly be said that nothing can be 'apprehended', if 
 it be said that something can be 'apprehended.' He thinks Carneades 
 should rather be pressed in this way, viz. to admit this very dogma, 
 enuntiated by the wise man, that perception is impossible, to constitute 
 an example of perception, inasmuch as no dogma of the wise man can 
 escape being thoroughly 'apprehended', perceived and known. Just 
 as if the wise man had arrived at no other dogma, or cannot conduct 
 his life without dogmas altogether ! Why, just as he holds his other 110 
 opinions, without perceiving them, so he holds this, that perception is 
 impossible. For if he possessed in this case a sign leading to know- 
 ledge, he would use it in all other cases. As he possesses no such sign, 
 he avails himself of probabilities. So he is not afraid of being supposed 
 to produce general disorder and to render everything indeterminable. 
 For if questioned about duty and many other subjects in which he has 
 had experience and practice, he would not declare his ignorance as he 
 would if asked to say whether the number of the stars is even or odd. 
 For in things indeterminable there lies no probability, and where there 
 is probability the wise man will never be at a loss what to do or what 
 to answer. Nor did you, Lucullus, overlook that criticism of Antiochus, 111 
 — and that is not astonishing since it is particularly famous — which 
 Antiochus often asserted to have caused Philo very great trouble. He 
 said that in making one assumption, that there did exist false ' appear- 
 ances ', and again another that these do not differ from the true ' appear- 
 ances', Philo did not observe that he had allowed the former assumption 
 for this very reason, that there did seem to be some difference between 
 'appearances', a difference which was abolished by the second assumption, 
 whereby he denied that true 'appearances' differ from false; whereas 
 nothing could be more inconsistent. That would be correct, if we did 
 abolish truth altogether. We do not do that, for we discern truths as 
 much as falsehoods. But there is an aspect of things leading us to 
 acceptance ; we find no mark leading to perception. 
 
 XXXV. Yet even now I seem to myself to plead my case 112 
 somewhat narrowly. When there is a wide field over which our 
 discourse may range, why do we drive it into such narrow passes, 
 and into the Stoic jungle ? Why, if I had to do with a Peripatetic who 
 alleged that anything could be perceived, which was an ' appearance ' 
 proceeding from a real object, without bringing in that important 
 
76 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 appendix, 'having a form which it could not have if it proceeded 
 from a deceptive object', I should deal directly with so direct a 
 man, and should not greatly dispute the matter, and even if, on my 
 declaring that there is nothing which can be 'apprehended', he were 
 to maintain that the wise man sometimes ' opines ', I should not offer 
 resistance, particularly as Carneades himself maintained no strong oppo- 
 sition to that doctrine ; but now what can I do ? I ask what it is that 
 113 can be 'apprehended.' I get an answer not from an Aristotle nor from 
 a Theophrastus nor yet from a Xenocrates or a Polemo, but from one 
 far inferior to them: 'a true appearance of such a form as a false 
 appearance could not take.' I find nothing corresponding to the 
 definition. So of course' I am to give my sanction to something of 
 which I know nothing, which means that I am to 'opine.' This is 
 a course permitted to me by the Peripatetics and the Old Academy ; 
 you and your friends forbid it, and Antiochus above all, who powerfully 
 influences me, either because I loved the man, as he did me, or 
 because this is my opinion of him, that he was the most cultivated 
 and the shrewdest of all the philosophers contemporary with us. 
 First, I ask him how it is that he belongs to that form of the 
 Academy, of which he declares himself a disciple? To pass by 
 other points, what philosopher either of the old Academy or the 
 Peripatetic school ever maintained the two doctrines we are discus- 
 sing, either that the only thing which could be perceived was a 
 true impression of such a form as a false one could not exhibit, 
 or that the wise man never decides on insufficient grounds? As- 
 suredly no one. Neither of these theories met with much support 
 before Zeno's time. Yet I believe both of them to be true nor do 
 I say so merely to serve the occasion, but that is the view I entirely 
 accept. 
 114 XXXVI. One thing I find intolerable. While you interdict 
 me from giving my sanction to what is unknown, and allege that 
 to do so is most disgraceful and shews excessive recklessness, while 
 you take so much upon yourself as to set forth a scheme of 
 wisdom, unfold the constitution of the universe, mould character, 
 settle the boundaries of good and evil, plan out all duties, deter- 
 mine the course of life on which I am to enter, moreover promise 
 to impart to me a critical test and a method applicable to debate 
 and to processes of thought, are you likely to secure me from slip- 
 ping at any point, from ever judging hastily, while I try to master 
 those countless topics ? What school is that to which you are trying to 
 , transfer me, if you succeed in divorcing me from the .one I now follow? 
 
TRANSLATION. 77 
 
 I am afraid you will show something of conceit, if you say it is your 
 own. But you must needs say so. Nor is that so with you only, 115 
 but every man wants to carry off people to his own school. Well, sup- 
 pose I stand my ground against the Peripatetics, who assert that there 
 is an alliance between them and the orators, and that illustrious 
 men whom they have educated have often governed states, suppose 
 I stave off the Epicureans, so many of whom are my intimate 
 friends, who are such kind men and so affectionate to one another, 
 what am I to do with Diodotus the Stoic, to whose teaching 1 have 
 listened since I was a boy, who has associated with me so many 
 years, who now lives in my house, for whom I feel both admiration 
 and esteem, who sets at nought your Antiochean doctrines? 'Our 
 doctrines', you will say, 'are alone true.' Alone undoubtedly, if 
 true : for there cannot be several systems of truth at variance. Are 
 we then immodest, who are anxious to take no false step, or are 
 they rather conceited in convincing themselves that they alone pos- 
 sess all knowledge? 'It is not myself, says some one, 'but the 
 wise man whom I declare to possess knowledge.' Well, to begin with, 
 what sort of admission is this, that wisdom is being expounded by 
 one who is not a wise man? But let us put ourselves out of sight, 
 and talk of the wise man, with whom, as I have often said already, 
 our whole investigation is concerned. 
 
 Wisdom then has been divided into three parts as well by your- 116 
 selves as by most others. First then, if you like, let us examine the 
 researches that have been made in natural philosophy: but there is 
 one question I must put before we begin. Is there any one who is 
 puffed up by so serious a misconception as to have brought himself to 
 believe that he has firm knowledge of that subject ? My question refers 
 not to those theories which depend on hypothesis, which are tossed 
 in this way and in that in the course of discussions, and which 
 bring with them no convincing cogency. Let the mathematicians 
 give heed, who boast that they do not induce, but compel convic- 
 tion, and who bring you and your friends to accept all their propo- 
 sitions. Of these propositions my question concerns not those fun- 
 damental definitions of the mathematicians without the admission of 
 which they cannot advance one finger's breadth : that a point is that 
 which has no magnitude, a superficies, and so to speak, a collection 
 of external points, is that in which no thickness whatever can be 
 found: that a line is without breadth. When I have once admitted 
 these propositions to be true, if I were to require the wise man to 
 take an oath, and that not until Archimedes, under his very eyes, 
 
 " R. C. A. 5 
 
78 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 goes through all the calculations, which prove that' the sun is many 
 times greater than the earth, do you suppose he would swear it? 
 If he did so he would shew disrespect to the sun himself, whom he 
 
 117 believes to be a god. But if the wise man is not likely to pin his 
 faith to mathematical calculations which, as you yourselves declare, add 
 a cogent force to demonstration, verily he will be very far from 
 trusting the proofs proposed by philosophers, or if he is likely to trust 
 them, I ask what school will he prefer ? We may expound to him all 
 the schemes of natural philosophy; but the task is a long one; how- 
 ever, I demand to know what teacher he is to follow. Imagine now 
 that some man is on the road to become a wise man, but is not so 
 yet, what doctrine and what system will he choose before all the 
 others? Though any system he chooses, he will choose while he is 
 not yet a wise man. But suppose him to be a being of superhuman 
 ability, to what single natural philosopher will he give his approval 
 in preference to all others? Nor can he approve more than one. I 
 am not pressing vague problems ; let us look only at this, what leader 
 he is to follow in treating of the first elements of things, out of which 
 the universe is constructed, since there is extreme disagreement between 
 great men. 
 
 118 XXXVII. Thales first of all, the one man of the seven, to 
 whom the other six are stated to have yielded the palm, declared that 
 the universe was composed of water. But he did not induce Anaxi- 
 mander, his fellow countryman and companion, to believe this, since 
 this thinker said that there was a formless substance out of which all. 
 things sprang, Afterwards his pupil Anaximenes assumed the air to be 
 formless, but the things which were created from it to be endued with 
 form ; its products were earth, water, fire, and then the universe from 
 these. Anaxagoras postulated an indefinite store of material substance, 
 but said minute portions of it with certain resemblances among them 
 were first in chaos, and were then brought into order by the divine 
 intellect. Xenophanes at a still earlier time asserted that the universe 
 was one, and that it was not subject to change, and that it was 
 identical with God, without origin and eternal, of a globular form: 
 Parmenides talked of fire as setting in motion the earth, which receives 
 from it her shape; Leucippus assumed a plenum and a vacuum; 
 Democritus resembled him in this, but shewed greater fertility in other 
 respects; Empedocles adopted the well-known and familiar four ele- 
 ments ; Heraclitus, fire ; Melissus a substance which was formless and 
 unchangeable and existed from all eternity to all eternity. Plato gives 
 his opinion that out of a material substance which admits of all modifi- 
 
TRANSLATION. jg 
 
 cations the universe lias been constructed . to last for ever. The Py- 
 thagoreans have made up their minds that the universe begins with 
 numbers, and with the first principles of mathematics. From among 
 these your wise man will choose some one philosopher, I suppose, as 
 his leader; the rest, numerous and great as they are, will leave his 
 tribunal rejected and convicted. To whatever doctrine again he gives 119 
 his sanction, this he will hold because he has 'apprehended' it as 
 thoroughly by mental effort as the ' appearances ' he ' apprehends ' by 
 means of his senses, nor will he give a stronger ' assent ' to the state- 
 ment that the sun is now shining, than he will render, seeing he is a 
 Stoic, to the theory that this universe is instinct with wisdom and 
 possesses intellect, which has 'manufactured' both its own constitution 
 and that of the universe, and sways impels and governs all things. 
 He will be convinced also that the sun, moon, all stars, the earth, the 
 sea are gods, because a certain living intelligence penetrates and 
 permeates them all, and yet that there will come a time for this uni- 
 versal order to perish amid a conflagration. Suppose all this true — 
 you see surely by this time that I confess there is such a thing as 
 truth — yet I say it is not 'apprehended' and perceived. XXXVIII. As 
 soon as your Stoic wise man has dictated to you those doctrines 
 syllable by syllable, Aristotle will come forward, and while he pours 
 from his lips a golden stream of eloquence will declare that the great 
 man is beside himself, since the universe is without origin, because there 
 was no possibility of a beginning for, so resplendent a work, needing 
 a novel design to be* devised, and that it is on all sides so symmetrical 
 that no force can stir up a movement or a change sufficiently great, 
 no length of years in the long lapse of time can come to pass vast 
 enough to make the present order fall asunder and. pass away. You 
 will be forced to scorn this opinion, and to defend the other as you 
 would your own life and reputation, though you do not even allow me 
 to doubt. To pass over the light-mindedness of those who make rash 120 
 assertions, how precious is the mere freedom which saves me from the 
 compulsion, to which, you are subject ! Why should God— since he 
 constructed everything in the interest of men—so you believe — have 
 created so large a quantity of watersnakes and adders ? Why should 
 he have scattered so many deadly and pestiferous things over land and 
 sea? You say that the world could not have been constructed with 
 such finish and accuracy without some divine activity. You indeed 
 bring the divine majesty down to the perfecting of bees and ants, so 
 that there seems to have been among the gods some Myrmecides, who 
 was a 'manufacturer' of tiny works. You say nothing can happen 121 
 
 S— 2 
 
80 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 apart from God. See then, here is Strato of Lampsacus who cuts across 
 your path to give your God a discharge from a really mighty task ; 
 and indeed seeing that the priests of the gods have a time to cease, how 
 much more just is it that the gods themselves should have a holiday ! 
 This philosopher says he does not require the assistance of the gods 
 for 'manufacturing' the world. He proves that every existing thing 
 has been produced by natural operations, though not after the fashion 
 of one who .should say that this world is compacted of rough and 
 smooth and hooked and bent bodies with void interspersed. All 
 this he pronounces a dream of Democritus, who therein aspires, 
 but does not prove. Strato himself however goes through the parts 
 of the universe one by one, and demonstrates that everything which 
 exists or is coming into existence is being produced or has been 
 produced by the masses and movements of natural objects. Verily 
 he emancipates the god from a mighty task and me from a mighty 
 dread. Who indeed, when he reflects that he is watched over by 
 God, can help trembling day and night before the divine will, and, 
 if any ill fortune befals him — and whom does it not befal ? — fearing 
 that it may have come upon him deservedly? Yet I give no 'assent' 
 either to Strato or to you. Now this opinion, now that appears to me 
 the more plausible. 
 
 122 XXXIX. All those matters lie hid in secrecy, Lucullus, being 
 shrouded and encompassed by thick darkness, so that no sharpness of 
 the human mind can suffice to cleave a way to the sky, or descend into 
 the depths of the earth. We know nothing of our own bodies : as to 
 the situation of each organ, and the functions of each part we are quite 
 in the dark. So physicians, whose interest it was to possess this know- 
 ledge, have opened up the body to bring the parts to view. And yet 
 the Empirics say that this does not give them any better knowledge of 
 the organs, because it may be that when disclosed and uncovered they 
 undergo a change. But can we at all dissect, open up, and cut into 
 the component parts of Nature, so as to see whether the earth has 
 deep foundations and is upreared so to speak on roots of its own, or 
 
 123 whether it hangs in mid air ? Xenophanes says that there are inhabi- 
 tants in the moon and that it is another earth containing many cities 
 and mountains. This seems monstrous, yet neither could he who made 
 the statement swear that it is true, nor I that it is false. Your friends 
 again allege that directly opposite to us on the farther side of the earth 
 are people who stand with feet over against our feet, and these men you 
 call aj/TiVoSes: why then are you more angry with me, who am not treat- 
 ing the theory contemptuously, than with those who, when they listen to 
 
TRANSLATION. 8 1 
 
 you, think you out of your mind ? Hicetas the Syracusan, as Theo- 
 phrastus says, believes that sky, sun, moon, stars, and in fine all heavenly 
 bodies are at a standstill, and that no body in the universe except the 
 earth is in motion; and that as this turns and revolves round its axis 
 with vast velocity, all the phenomena come into view which would be 
 produced if the earth were at rest and the heavens in motion. And 
 this is what some persons believe Plato to say in the Timaeus, though 
 in rather difficult language. What opinion have you, Epicurus ? Tell 
 us. Do you think the sun is so big? 'I? No, nor is it twice the 
 size !' He ridicules you and you in turn mock at him. Socrates then 
 is safe from such ridicule, Aristo the Chian too, who thinks that about 
 those subjects nothing can be known. But I return to the mind and 
 the body. Have we any sufficient knowledge of the structure of the 124 
 nerves, or of the veins ? Do we understand what the mind is, or where 
 it is, or in fine whether there is such a thing, or whether, as Dicaearchus 
 believed, it has no existence at all ? If it has, do we know whether it 
 has three divisions as Plato held, the reasonable, the passionate, the 
 appetitive, or is homogeneous and single? If homogeneous, whether 
 it is fire or breath or blood, or, as Xenocrates thought, a number with 
 no substance — a thing whose nature is scarcely conceivable — and, what- 
 ever it is, whether it is a perishable thing or immortal ? Much indeed 
 is alleged on both sides of these questions. Your wise man believes 
 that one view of these problems is established, while ours cannot even 
 decide which view seems to him most probable : the weight of the 
 opposite reasonings strikes him in most cases as being so exactly 
 even. XL. But if you behave to me with more modesty and attack me, 125 
 not because I do not give my sanction to your theses, but because 
 I give it to none, I will do violence to my inclinations and choose out a 
 leader to whom I may render my 'assent.' Whom shall I prefer? Whom? 
 Democritus : for I have always been, as you know, a partisan of the 
 nobility. I shall be overwhelmed at once by the reproaches of every 
 man among you. ' Are you the man to suppose either the existence 
 of void, though all space is so completely filled, that any body which is 
 to be set in motion only yields to pressure, and wherever one body has 
 yielded, another at once fills its place ? Or the existence of atoms, such 
 that whatever is composed of them is exceedingly unlike them? Or 
 the possibility of any splendid result being achieved in the absence 
 of some intellect ? And whereas in our one world this order is found 
 to be so marvellous, would you believe that there exist innumerable 
 worlds above, below, on the right and on the left, in front and behind, 
 some unlike this, some exactly like it, and that just as we are at this 
 
82 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 moment close to Bauli and are looking towards Puteoli, so there are 
 countless persons in exactly similar spots with our names, our honours, 
 our achievements, our minds, our shapes, our ages, discussing the 
 very same subject ? And that if just now or possibly when we sleep 
 something appears to our mental vision, phantoms from without creep 
 into our minds through the body? Pray do not adopt that system, 
 and do not give your sanction to. arbitrary doctrines. To have no 
 
 126 opinion is better than to hold opinions so perverted.' The question 
 therefore is no longer whether I am to sanction some system by as- 
 senting to it: beware lest your demand that I should sanction your sys- 
 tem be not merely conceited but actually immodest, particularly as your 
 opinions do not seem to me so much as plausible. Indeed I believe 
 that the divination which you accept is a deception, and I make 
 light of that Fate, in whose chain you say all things are held. Nor 
 do I reckon that this world of ours was built up by divine wisdom, 
 and yet it may possibly be so. XLI. But why am I held up to 
 odium ? Will you permit me to be ignorant where I am ignorant ? 
 Or are the Stoics to be free to dispute among themselves, and is no 
 one to be free to dispute with them? Zeno and almost all the other 
 Stoics believe the higher air to be the supreme God, endued with that 
 intellect whereby the universe is governed. Cleanthes who is a Stoic, so 
 to say, of the noblest extraction, supposes the sun to be our ruler, and 
 to be at the head of affairs. So we are forced by the disagreement of our 
 wise men to remain in the dark about our ruler, inasmuch as we are 
 ignorant whether we are servants of the sun or of the empyrean. As to 
 the size of the sun now — since crowned with rays he seems to keep his 
 eye upon me, and warns me to make frequent mention of himself — his 
 magnitude then you report as though you had measured him with a rod; 
 I say that I put no confidence in this measurement of yours, but treat 
 you like incompetent surveyors. Is there any doubt therefore which of 
 
 127 us two is, to put the matter mildly, the more modest ? Yet I do not 
 think that those investigations of the natural philosophers ought to be 
 banished. The contemplation of and reflection upon Nature is in some 
 sense the natural food of our hearts and minds. We rise, we seem to 
 be uplifted, we look down on human things, and when we ponder over 
 the exalted and heavenly existences we think this earth of ours puny 
 and insignificant, and hold it in light esteem. The mere exploration of 
 matters at once so vast and so mysterious inspires us with pleasure. 
 Further, if anything has come to view which seems to reflect the truth, 
 
 128 the mind is overwhelmed by a most civilising feeling of delight. The 
 wise man, therefore, whether of your school or of ours, will make 
 
TRANSLATION. 83 
 
 researches, but yours will yield 'assent', will believe, will dogmatise; 
 ours will dread to give a rash judgment, and will think he is fortunate, 
 if in matters of that kind he finds anything that looks like truth. 
 
 Let us pass now to the conceptions of things good and bad: 
 but I have a small statement to make first; These people do not 
 appear to me to reflect, when they state so emphatically their physical 
 theories, that they are loosing their hold on the weighty testimony of 
 such facts as appear to be set in more brilliant light. Indeed they do 
 not grant a stronger ' assent ' or acceptance to the fact that the sun is 
 now shining than to the fancy that when the crow croaks, he is either 
 enjoining or interdicting some action, and they will not assert a whit 
 more strongly that yon statue, if they measure it, is six feet high, than 
 that the sun, which they cannot measure, is more than eighteen times 
 greater than the earth. Hence arises this argument : if the size of 
 the sun cannot be perceived, he who accepts all other facts on the 
 same conditions as the sun's magnitude, has no perception of those 
 facts. But the sun's magnitude cannot be perceived. He then who 
 accepts it, as though he perceived it, perceives no fact whatever. 
 They may answer that it is possible to perceive the size of the sun. 
 I shall not resist them, provided always that they declare all other 
 matters to be perceived and 'apprehended' after the same fashion. Nor 
 indeed can they assert that one thing is ' apprehended ' in a greater or 
 less degree than another, since one and the same definition of 'ap- 
 prehension' applies to all cases. 
 
 XLII. But this is what I began to say : what certitude do we 129 
 possess concerning things good and bad? Of course standards must 
 be established for the determination of the Supreme Good and the 
 Supreme Evil: is there then any subject where the disagreement 
 among the leading men is greater ? I say nothing of theories which 
 appear now to have been abandoned, that of Herillus for instance, 
 who makes the Supreme Good consist in intellectual acquirements and 
 in knowledge. You see how widely he departed from Zeno's system 
 (though he was his pupil) and how little from that of Plato. The 
 Megarian school was famous, and its founder, as I see from writ- 
 ten authorities, was Xenophanes, whom I named a little while ago; 
 after him came Parmenides and Zeno, and so from them the school 
 of philosophers was entitled Eleatic. Later came Euclides of Megara, 
 a pupil of Socrates from whom the same system was called Megarian, 
 I mean those who declared that the only Good was that which was 
 indivisible and ever like itself and the same. He too resembled 
 Plato much. From Menedemus the Eretrian school took its title, 
 
84 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 because he lived at Eretria, and this school made all Good consist 
 of intellect and intellectual' keenness, "whereby the truth was dis- 
 cerned,— doctrines like those of Herillus.s but 1 think, developed 
 
 130 with greater copiousness and brilliance. If we disregard these, and 
 look on them as long since cast aside, there are others on whom 
 we assuredly ought not to look down so loftily, among them Aristo, 
 who after having been a disciple of Zeno, accepted in their spirit 
 doctrines which his master held in the letter, that there is no Good 
 but Virtue and no Evil but Virtue's opposite : he held that the impor- 
 tance which Zeno attached to intermediate objects had no existence. 
 His Supreme Good is, not to be influenced in one direction or the 
 other, when you deal with these intermediate objects, and this he 
 himself calls dSia<t>opia. Pyrrho again said that the wise man is ac- 
 tually insensible to these objects, and this state is entitled airafiaa. 
 To put aside these doctrines then, numerous as they are, let us glance 
 
 131 at those which were for a long time and strongly maintained. Some 
 were minded that Pleasure was the true standard : the founder of 
 this school was Aristippus, who had been a disciple of Socrates, 
 from whom descended the Cyrenaics. Afterwards came Epicurus, 
 whose system is now better known, though he is not in harmony 
 with the Cyrenaics on the question of Pleasure itself. Callipho again 
 pronounced Pleasure combined with Morality to be the standard; 
 Hieronymus freedom from disturbance ; Diodorus this freedom com- 
 bined with Morality : both of these last were Peripatetics. To live 
 a moral life in the enjoyment of those things to which a man is 
 first attracted by Nature, was not only approved by the Old Academy, 
 as is clear from the writings of Polemo, whom Antiochus to a great 
 extent follows, but Aristotle and his followers in our day seem to 
 come very close to that position. Carneades too brought forward 
 the idea, not that he believed in it, but merely to make opposition 
 to the Stoics, that the Supreme Good consisted in the enjoyment of 
 those things which were the earliest that Nature had commended to 
 us. Zeno, the, founder and leader of the Stoics, laid down for his 
 ethical end the life of Morality, having for its starting point this 
 commendation of Nature. • 
 
 132 XLIII. Next it is evident that opposed to all those con- 
 ceptions of the Supreme Good which I have described, there are 
 conceptions of the Supreme Evil. I now leave with you the ques- 
 tion whom I am to take for my leader : only let no one give me 
 such an ignorant and ludicrous answer as this: 'any one you please: 
 only some one.' No more unreflecting advice could be given. 
 
TRANSLATION. 85 
 
 Suppose I am eager to join the Stoics. Shall I be allowed to do 
 so — I will not say by Aristotle, who in my judgment holds almost 
 an unique position in philosophy — but by Antiochus himself? Yet he 
 though called an Academic was indeed a most genuine Stoic, had 
 he made a very few changes. So the matter will still remain un- 
 decided, since we may suppose the wise man to set himself up 
 either for a Stoic or for a member of the Old Academy. He can- 
 not be both, because there is a suit between the two schools, con- 
 cerning not merely their boundary-marks, but their whole territories. 
 In fact the entire scheme of life is bound up with the definition of 
 the Supreme Good, and those who are at discord on this matter are 
 at discord about the whole plan of life. Therefore the wise man 
 cannot belong to both schools but must belong to one of them, seeing 
 that they disagree so widely. If the wise man is a follower of Polemo, 
 the Stoic is in sin, since he sanctions a false system — a thing which 
 you and your friends say is more than anything else at variance 
 with the character of the wise man. If on the other hand the 
 truth is with Zeno, we must bring the same charge against the 
 Old Academics and Peripatetics. Is our friend then to give his 
 sanction to neither school? If he is to render it, I ask, which of 133 
 the two possesses more wisdom? Again, when Antiochus disagrees 
 in certain matters with his beloved Stoics, does he not make it 
 clear that the wise man cannot give his 'assent' to those matters? 
 The Stoics hold that all sins are of equal importance. But An- 
 tiochus thoroughly abhors this doctrine. Leave me time, pray, to 
 reflect which of the two opinions I am to adopt. 'Make an end 
 of the matter,' some one says ; ' come to some decision at last.' How 
 can I do so . in face of the fact that many arguments are urged on 
 both sides of the question which seem to me both clever and of 
 equal weight? Am I not to take precautions against committing a 
 crime ? You said it was a crime, Lucullus, to be a traitor to a dogma. 
 I therefore check myself from assenting to an unknown doctrine: 
 and here we have a dogma which you and I hold equally. See, now 134 
 there comes a still more serious disagreement. Zeno supposes that 
 happiness flows solely from Virtue. What thinks Antiochus? 'Yes,' 
 says he, 'happiness, but not the greatest happiness.' He was a god, 
 who thought that Virtue was complete in itself, . while the other is a 
 frail mortal, who thinks there are many other things which a man 
 finds in part precious and in part necessary. But I am afraid the 
 former gives Virtue too high a place for human nature, and the 
 more so as Theophrastus discourses on this at length with eloquence 
 
86 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 and fluency. Yet I fear that the latter. is scarcely consistent, because 
 though he says there are some evils which affect our persons and 
 our fortunes, he still pronounces that a man who is surrounded by 
 all these evils will be • happy, if he only is a wise man. I am 
 divided ; now this theory seems more plausible, now that, and yet 
 unless one or the other be true, I think Virtue is entirely overthrown. 
 But yet such are their disagreements. 
 
 135 XLIV. Well, can we accept as truths those doctrines con- 
 cerning which they are at one? For instance, that the mind of the 
 wise man is never influenced by desire or elated by pleasure. Come 
 then, let us admit these doctrines to be plausible : can we say the 
 same of the others, that he never feels fear or pain? Is .the wise 
 man not to feel fear, if his country is being effaced? Is he not 
 to feel pain though his country has been effaced ? It is a hard 
 saying, but Zeno cannot avoid it, for he thinks the category of 
 things good contains nothing but what is moral, while you, Anti- 
 ochus, are far from so thinking, for you believe there are many 
 good things besides Virtue, and also many evil things besides Vice, 
 whose approach the wise man dreads, and whose arrival causes him 
 pain. But I ask, when were these dogmas promulgated by the Old 
 Academy, forbidding the mind of the wise man to be disturbed, or 
 ruffled ? Those old philosophers believed in the theory of the mean, 
 and were persuaded that in every excitement there were certain 
 bounds marked out by Nature. We have all of us read the trea- 
 tise of Grantor, of the Old Academy, concerning grief. It is 
 of no great size, but a golden little book, and should be learned 
 off word for word, as Panaetius counselled Tubero. Now the old 
 school declared that those forms of excitement were attributed to 
 our minds by Nature for a purpose : fear with a view to foresight, 
 compassion and grief to generate mercy, anger itself they said was 
 the whetstone of courage, as they put it, whether rightly or other- 
 
 136 wise we shall see on another occasion. How the spirit of severity 
 you display forced itself upon the Old Academy I know not. There 
 are other theories I cannot tolerate, not that I absolutely disbelieve 
 them, for the Stoic marvels, which they call -n-apaSo^a, are most of 
 them Socratic; but I ask, where has Xenocrates or Aristotle touched 
 upon them ? For these two systems you try to make out to be 
 identical. Were they the men ever to say that only wise men are 
 kings, . only wise men are wealthy, only wise men are handsome ? 
 That all property everywhere, belongs to the wise man? That no 
 one is consul or praetor or general, or possibly even commissioner 
 
TRANSLA TION. 8 7 
 
 except the wise man? In short, that none other has the citizen- 
 ship, none other is free? That all non-wise men are aliens, exiles, 
 slaves and madmen? Finally, that the enactments of Lycurgus, Solon 
 and our Twelve Tables are not laws at all ? That there are no 
 cities or commonwealths, but those which consist of wise men? 
 These theses, Lucullus, if you give your sanction to your dear 137 
 friend Antiochus, you must defend, as your bulwarks : I can accept 
 them within fair limits, just so far as pleases me. 
 
 XLV. I have read in Clitomachus that when Carneades and 
 the Stoic Diogenes were waiting on the senate in the Capitol, A. 
 Albinus, who was then praetor, with P. Scipio and M. Marcellus 
 for colleagues, the same man who held the consulship with your 
 grandfather, Lucullus, an admittedly learned man, as is proved by 
 his memoirs, written in Greek, said to Carneades jocularly: 'I, Car- 
 neades, do not appear to you to be a praetor because I am not 
 a wise man, nor do you think this capital a city, nor that it has a 
 body of burgesses.' Then said Carneades : ' It is this Stoic who 
 does not think you a praetor.' Aristotle or Xenocrates, whose teach- 
 ing Antiochus insisted that he followed, would have had no doubt 
 that he was a praetor, and Rome a city and that a body of bur- 
 gesses dwelt in it. But this philosopher of ours is, as I said 
 before, quite a Stoic, though on a very few points he gives an 
 uncertain sound. You again are alarmed about me, for fear I should 138 
 glide into hasty judgment, and adopt and approve something un- 
 known, a result you are far from wishing. What advice do you 
 give? Chrysippus avers that there are only three views which can 
 be maintained concerning the Supreme Good : he cuts down and 
 reduces the number of opinions : either, he says, Morality is the ethical 
 end, or Pleasure, or the two combined : for those who say the 
 Supreme Good is freedom from all disturbance, are simply shun- 
 ning the odious term Pleasure, though they hover about in its neigh- 
 bourhood, and so also do those who combine the same end with 
 Morality, nor do those act very differently who add to Morality 
 the primary advantages of life : so he leaves three opinions which 
 he thinks may plausibly be maintained. Be it so — though I do not 139 
 easily tear myself away from the ethical standards of Polemo, of the 
 Peripatetics, and of Antiochus, nor do I as yet find anything pos- 
 sessed of more probability — however, I see how enticingly Pleasure 
 flatters our senses. I find myself drifting into agreement with Epi- 
 curus or Aristippus. Virtue summons me away or rather plucks me 
 back with her hand: she declares that those inclinations are of the 
 
88 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 beasts that perish, while man she associates with God. I can take 
 up an intermediate position, and since Aristippus regards the body 
 alone, as though we had no mind, and since Zeno embraces the 
 mind alone as though we were destitute of body, I can join Cal- 
 lipho, whose view Carneades used to champion with such earnest- 
 ness, that he was even thought to believe it, though Clitomachus 
 insisted that he never could understand what Carneades did believe. 
 But if I chose to adopt that view of the ethical end, would not Truth 
 herself and Reason, in all their seriousness and uprightness, haunt my 
 visions ? ' Do you, though the business of Morality is to set Pleasure 
 at nought, couple Morality and Pleasure, like one who should join man 
 
 140 and beast?' XLVI. A single pair then is left to fight out the battle, 
 Pleasure matched against Morality. Now Chrysippus, so far as I see, 
 made no long dispute about the question. If you follow the one, 
 many things are ruined, particularly all community of interest with 
 the human race, affection, friendship, justice and the other virtues, 
 no one of which can exist, unless it is disinterested, seeing that 
 Virtue which is driven to the performance of duty as though by a 
 certain reward, is not really Virtue, but a deceptive copy and 
 pretence of Virtue. Hear on the other side those who say they can- 
 not even attach a meaning to the term Morality, unless indeed, we 
 mean to give the title of ' moral ' to anything which dazzles the 
 crowd, that the source of all things good lies in the body, that 
 this is Nature's plummet, her rule, her axiom, and that he who de- 
 
 141 parts from it will never find any aim in life. Do you suppose I am 
 not impressed when I hear this and innumerable other arguments? 
 I am impressed as much as you are, Lucullus, and you must not 
 think me less human than yourself. The only difference is that 
 you, when thoroughly impressed, agree, assent and sanction, and 
 insist that your 'truth' is infallible, thoroughly 'apprehended', perceived, 
 determined, grounded and established, and from it you cannot 
 be driven or made to swerve by any reasoning: while I believe 
 there is no truth of such a nature that, if I gave my assent to it, I 
 should not often find myself assenting to what is untrue, seeing that 
 truths are divided from falsehoods by no line of demarcation, 
 particularly as the decisions pronounced by your art of dialectic are 
 worthless. 
 
 142 I P a ss now to the third part of philosophy. Protagoras has 
 one standard of judgment, thinking that what appears true to each 
 individual is true for him : the Cyrenaics have another, for they 
 think that there is no standard but that supplied by the inner 
 
TRANSLATION. 89 
 
 disturbances : Epicurus has another, for he bases the standard en- 
 tirely on the senses, and on primary conceptions and on Pleasure. 
 Plato again insisted that the whole standard of truth and truth her- 
 self were far removed from fancied knowledge and from the senses, 
 belonging wholly to reflection and the intellect. Does Antiochus 143 
 adopt any of these views? Indeed he follows not even his own in- 
 tellectual ancestors. In what respects does he follow Xenocrates, 
 who has written works on logic which are both numerous and highly 
 esteemed, or the great Aristotle, who assuredly carries both subtlety 
 and refinement to the highest pitch? He never departs a foot's 
 breadth from Chrysippus. XLVII. Why then have we the name of 
 being Academics? Do we use for improper purposes that famous 
 title? Or rather why are we urged to join those who are at 
 variance one with another? What a battle there is about the very 
 question, which dialecticians expound in their elementary lessons, viz. 
 how we are to decide whether a compound proposition of this 
 form : ' if it is day, the sun shines,' is true or false ! Diodorus has 
 one view, Philo another, Chrysippus another. Why, on how many 
 topics is Chrysippus at variance with his own instructor Cleanthes ! 
 Again do not two philosophers, who are actually in the first rank 
 among dialecticians, Antipater and Archidemus, men full of fancies, 
 disagree on very many subjects ? Why then, Lucullus, do you 144 
 summon me before a prejudiced public and almost before a civic 
 assembly, nay, more, direct all places of business to be closed, 
 as turbulent tribunes are wont to do ? What design, pray, have you, 
 in complaining that we destroy all crafts, unless to rouse the crafts- 
 men? Though if they assemble from all quarters it will be easy for 
 us to excite them against your own party. I shall first bring forward 
 all those odious charges, in which you declare all who are present 
 at the assembly to be outlaws slaves and madmen; then I shall pass 
 to the doctrines which concern not the crowd but you personally, 
 who are here before me. Zeno denies, Antiochus denies that you 
 have any knowledge of anything. ' How so?' you will say, ' for we 
 maintain that even he who is no wise man 'apprehends' many things.' 
 Yes, but you declare that no one but the wise man has knowledge 145 
 of any subject. And Zeno illustrated this by the action of his 
 hand. For showing his hand open to view with the fingers stretched 
 out, 'an appearance,' said he, 'is like this.' Then, closing his fingers 
 slightly, 'assent is like this.' Next, entirely pressing together his 
 fingers and doubling his fist, he declared this position to resemble the 
 mental act of 'apprehension.' And from this resemblance he assigned 
 
90 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 to the mental act the name Kcn-oA^is, which had not been so applied 
 before. Again when he had brought up his left hand and had 
 tightly and powerfully closed it over the other fist, he asserted that 
 knowledge resembled that position, and that no one was able to attain 
 to knowledge but the wise man. Still they themselves do not usu- 
 ally tell us who the wise men are. So at this moment, Catulus, 
 you have no knowledge that the sun is shining, nor you, Hortensius, 
 
 146 that we are in your mansion. Are these statements less odious 
 than the others ? Yet they are not so choice : the others show 
 more refinement. But just as you declared that all the crafts were cast 
 down if there was nothing that could be 'apprehended', and refused 
 to grant me that probability was strong enough to support the arts, 
 so now in turn I retort that art without knowledge cannot exist. 
 Now do you think that Zeuxis or Phidias or Polyclitus would en- 
 dure this theory, that they possessed no knowledge though their 
 skill was so immense? Now if any one had demonstrated to them 
 the meaning the word knowledge was intended to convey, they would 
 have ceased to be angry : nor would they be vexed with us, on 
 learning that the thing we destroyed had no existence, while we 
 left untouched something that was all they wanted. This principle 
 too is approved by the carefulness of our forefathers who, to begin 
 with, required every one to swear ' to the best of his belief ', and 
 next to be liable to punishment 'if he knowingly deceived', on the 
 ground that much ignorance was present in life, finally that any one 
 who was giving evidence should declare that he ' believed ' the 
 things of which he had been actually eye-witness, and that the 
 judges should announce the facts they had ascertained according to 
 oath, not as having taken place, but as 'seeming' to them to have 
 taken place. 
 
 147 XLVIII. However, since not only is the skipper beckoning 
 but the western breeze itself is whispering to us that it is time 
 to set sail, and since I have said enough, I must conclude my 
 speech. This I say however, let us hereafter when we investigate 
 such matters, prefer to discourse about the wide disagreements between 
 the foremost men, the mysteries of nature, and the aberrations of 
 so many philosophers, who are so vastly at discord concerning 
 good things and their opposites, that the overthrow of so many and 
 so famous schools is inevitable, since there can be one truth and 
 no more, rather than about the falsehoods told us by our eyes and the 
 other senses, and about the sorites and the pseudomenos, meshes which 
 
 148 the Stoics have woven to their own ruin." Then said Lucullus : 
 
TRANSLATION. 9 1 
 
 " I am not sorry that we have held this conference. Often again 
 when we meet and particularly in our houses at Tusculum, we shall 
 investigate anew such points as we please." "Excellent," said I, 
 "but what thinks Catulus? What thinks Hortensius?" Then said 
 Catulus: "what do I think? I drift once more to my father's 
 view, which he declared was that of Carneades, so as to suppose 
 that nothing can be perceived, while judging that the wise man will 
 give his 'assent' to something he has not perceived, that is to say 
 will ' opine ', but in such manner that he is clearly conscious of 
 'opining', and knows that there is nothing which can be ' apprehended' 
 and perceived : so while I do not accept your oto^i} in all cases, 
 I give strongly my assent to that other doctrine that perception is 
 impossible." " I understand your view," said I, " and do not very 
 greatly object to it. But pray what is your decision, Hortensius ? " 
 Then he answered with a laugh, " to make away " (a weigh). " You 
 are on my side," said I, "for 'making away' is peculiarly the design 
 of the Academy." So our conversation finished and Catulus stayed 
 behind : we went down to our yachts. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 POSTERIOR ACADEMICS. 
 
 § i. " M. Varro." The great 'polymath', who had promised to 
 dedicate to Cicero his important work ' De Lingua Latina.' Through- 
 out this prooemium Cicero labours to convey the impression that 
 he and Varro were very intimate friends, whereas their relations were 
 always cold, distant and polite. Varro was a follower of the Stoicised 
 Academicism of Antiochus. It is often wrongly stated that he was a 
 Stoic. 
 
 § 2. " News from Rome." It will be remembered that these words 
 were written in the year before that of Caesar's death. 
 
 § 3. " Libo." A member of the aristocratic party. His sister 
 Scribonia married Augustus Caesar. 
 
 § 4. The elaborate apology offered (in §§ 4 — 12) for writing in 
 Latin upon philosophy recurs in the introduction to the ' Lucullus,' 
 and is repeated at the outset of nearly every one of Cicero's philosophical 
 works. The frequent recurrence of the apology as well as its elaborate- 
 ness shews how strong was the prejudice which Cicero sought to 
 combat. 
 
 § 5. " Amafinius and Rabirius." These writers (with whom a 
 third named Catius is often classed) had translated some of the 
 Epicurean literature out of Greek into Latin, and their works, although 
 Cicero pronounces them contemptible, had won an extraordinary popu- 
 larity. The disregard of the Epicureans both for style and for all ab- 
 struse argument was notorious. 
 
 §6. "Causes depending on Efficient Forces." It was a stock 
 charge against the Atomists that they neglected one half of Natural 
 Science, considering Matter to the exclusion of Force. 
 
 "What is the kind of reader etc.?" The answer implied is 'not 
 such vulgar persons as those to whom Amafinius appeals.' 
 
 R. C. A. 6 
 
94 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 § 7. " Old Academy." The name by which Antiochus dignified 
 his jumble of Stoic and Academic doctrine. 
 
 § 8. " L. Aelius." This is L. Aelius Stilo or Praeconinus, a Romap 
 knight of Lanuvium, who was the first great Latin grammarian, the 
 teacher of Varro and other distinguished Romans. He was also a great 
 antiquarian. 
 
 "Menippus." A Cynic philosopher of the second century B.C. who 
 wrote satires in Greek, which were imitated by Varro. Of Varro's 
 'Menippean Satires' a considerable number of fragments is still 
 extant. The philosophical utterances to which allusion is made in the 
 text were for the most part merely what we should call moral reflections, 
 or ethical common-places. 
 
 " For philosophers." The reading taken is philosophis. 
 
 § 9. " Its chronology." Varro was the author of the commonly 
 accepted era for the foundation of Rome. 
 
 §11. "A most grievous wound." The death of Cicero's only 
 daughter Tullia in 46 B.C., which drove him to seek consolation in 
 incessant literary activity. 
 
 §12. "Brutus." The murderer of Caesar. 
 
 § 13. "That you have deserted the Old System." The ' Acade- 
 mica ' was the first book in which Cicero distinctly imitated any work 
 written by a follower of the New Academy. Varro was therefore un- 
 aware that his friend accepted the Carneadean dialectic. 
 
 § 18. "There was no distinction between the Peripatetics and the 
 original Old Academy." It was only possible for Antiochus to support . 
 this opinion by a complete perversion of historical facts. His assertion 
 was no doubt mainly based on the resemblances in Ethical doctrine 
 between the two schools, but even then it must have been a hard task 
 for him to gloss over the difficulties that were in the way. In his view, 
 and in the view of nearly all the later Greeks, Ethics were of supreme 
 importance; a small amount of agreement in this field would seem to 
 outweigh a large amount of disagreement in the fields of Dialectic and 
 Physics. 
 
 § 19. "A three-fold plan." The division of philosophy into 
 Ethics, Logic and Physics runs through the whole of the later Greek 
 thought, though Cicero's assertion that it was invented by Plato is 
 a mistake. It was first used by Plato's pupil Xenocrates. 
 
 "Nature." The conception of Nature is not prominent in the 
 Ethical systems of Plato and Aristotle. It was first conspicuously put 
 
NOTES. 95 
 
 forward by the Academic Polemo, and by Zeno was made the ground- 
 work of his doctrine ; after his time the idea was wrought into the 
 texture of every system. The Ethical scheme adopted by Antiochus 
 was the later form of Peripatetic teaching, on which the doctrines of 
 Aristotle had been to a certain extent transformed by the influence 
 of Stoicism. 
 
 § 20. "Is called an 'advance'." The term is the Greek irpoKoirfj, 
 used in the Stoic and Peripatetic systems of those who have their faces 
 set towards righteousness, though they have not yet earned the right to 
 be called virtuous. 
 
 §21. "Conditions required by happiness." That is to say, the 
 greatest happiness possible; see the end of § 22. 
 
 " A common humanity." The idea of a common brotherhood of 
 mankind was first developed by the Stoics; there is hardly any trace of 
 it in Plato or Aristotle. The conception then became part of Peripa- 
 teticism in its later days. 
 
 § 24. The physical system adopted by Antiochus was mainly 
 Stoic, but the Stoic system was largely built upon Aristotle and the 
 ' Timaeus ' of Plato. The notion of a prima materia, a formless mate- 
 rial substance underlying all organised bodies, first definitely appears 
 in the 'Timaeus,' though there Matter is very much identified with 
 Space — a view of which we have a trace below in the words 'seeing that 
 nothing exists which does not of necessity exist in Space.' The general 
 view here given is however Stoic. 
 
 § 27. "A certain fifth branch." This fifth element was first assumed 
 by the Pythagoreans. It is called by Aristotle the 'ethereal' body, and 
 although material just as much as the other four elements, is not, like 
 them, subject to change or decay. The derivation from it of the. 
 intellect has usually been considered a serious blunder on the part of 
 Cicero or his authority Antiochus, but Aristotle's language about the 
 matter is so contradictory and wavering that even in modem times 
 scholars have been found to maintain, from a consideration of passages 
 in his works, that he intended to lay down the doctrine we have in the 
 text. In other passages, however, Aristotle seems to have guarded 
 himself carefully against assuming a material origin for mind. 
 
 "All things that move etc." This is directed against the Epicureans, 
 who held that without the assumption of a vacuum motion would be 
 entirely impossible. 
 
 § 29. "A constitution invested with sensibility." In this section 
 we have almost undisguised Stoicism. To the Stoics the whole Universe 
 
 6—2 
 
96 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 was a sentient being, to which they gave the names God, Reason and 
 the other titles which we have here. 
 
 § 30. "These they termed "Seat." The ideal theory of Plato entirely 
 ceased to be taught in the Academic School after the criticism passed 
 by Aristotle. It was altogether unintelligible to Cicero and his contem- 
 poraries. 
 
 § 31. This section is composed of reminiscences from those dia- 
 logues of Plato which, like the 'Theaetetus' and 'Sophistes,' inculcate 
 the Heraclitean theory of a perpetual flux in things. 
 
 § 32. "The elucidation of words." With the Stoics, from whom 
 this passage ultimately comes, etymology was one branch of the science 
 of proof. The most astounding derivations were by Chrysippus and 
 others advanced with all seriousness as valid arguments. 
 
 § 33. "Aristotle." The criticism of the Platonic 'Ideas' is con- 
 tained in the twelfth book of his 'Metaphysics' (of which an analysis 
 appears in Grote's Aristotle) and the first book of his 'Nicomachean 
 Ethics.' 
 
 It will be observed that Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Strato, the three 
 great lights of the Peripatetic School, are represented as being at vari- 
 ance with the supposed harmonious old Academico-Peripatetic system, 
 and two of them are described as having gone astray in Ethical doctrine. 
 For Strato see n. on 2, § 121. 
 
 § 34. "Cherished the principles they had received." This is far 
 from being true as it stands. Speusippus and Xenocrates largely de- 
 veloped the Pythagorean element in Plato's teaching, while Polemo's 
 Ethical conceptions contained the germs of Stoicism. 
 
 § 37. "Along with their opposites." These words (omitted by 
 Cicero) are necessary to the sense. 
 
 "Appropriate action." If is important to select for rendering the 
 word 'officium' KaOrJKov (as used by the Stoics) some phrase which shall 
 not imply moral obligation. The 'officium' is an action which has 
 nothing to do with the idea of virtue ; the word 'duty,' commonly used 
 to represent it, is therefore wholly unsuitable. 
 
 § 38. The term 'virtue.' It must be remembered that the words 
 apeny, uirtus, have a much wider sense than the corresponding English 
 word; they are used, not merely of moral, but of intellectual and even 
 of bodily excellences. 
 
 § 39. The Stoics considered even abstract notions such as 'virtue' 
 to be actually corporeal substances. 
 
NOTES. 97 
 
 § 40. 'Appearance.' The most recent German translator of the 
 'Academics' (Kirchmann) takes credit for putting in place of 'Erschei- 
 nung' by which his predecessors had rendered 'uisum' the word 'Wahr- 
 nehmung.' But this term which like our 'perception' implies the 
 activity of the mind when it becomes cognisant of the information con- 
 veyed by the senses, is unsuited to the numerous passages in the text 
 where the 'uisum' is spoken of as something which strikes upon the 
 senses from without. Kirchmann himself is led at least once (note 102) 
 into serious error by his translation. I have therefore retained in all 
 cases the word 'appearance.' The same ambiguities attend the word 
 'uisum' which are found in Locke's uses of 'idea' and other similar 
 expressions. Sometimes 'uisum' means a copy or picture supposed to 
 be thrown off by an external object and to penetrate through the senses 
 to the mind; sometimes the state of mind produced by such a copy or 
 picture; sometimes even the object of which the mind supposes itself 
 to be conscious. Another source of confusion is that 'uisum' is some- 
 times used to render Ka.ToXtyirTLK.ri <j>avToxrta, i.e. an 'appearance' of the 
 infallible class, and sometimes to render tpavraa-la merely, i.e. an 'ap- 
 pearance' which may be deceptive. 
 
 § 41. "Being discerned by virtue of its own 'evidence'." The 
 word 'evidence' is thus used by Berkeley, Descartes and others to 
 denote that conviction of their trustworthiness which attends upon 
 certain of our ideas or impressions, while it is absent from others. 
 
 "Apprehension." The Greek word Kai-aA.i?i/ns, translated by 'com- 
 prehensio,' keeps before the mind, more vividly than any English word 
 which can be selected to represent it, the metaphor of an act of seizure 
 or grasping. (Cf. Begriff, begreifen.) 'Perceptio,' which I have trans- 
 lated by the corresponding English word throughout, is simply another 
 rendering of Ka.TaXrplris. % 
 
 "He entitled it knowledge." The Stoics often spoke of a single 
 (infallible) perception as 'a knowledge' meaning thereby that it was 
 one of the elementary units out of which knowledge was constructed. 
 
 § 42. "Not as supposing that the 'perception' seized on all the 
 qualities of the object." That is to say, the object may have quali- 
 ties which our faculties do not enable us to apprehend, and of which 
 we could only become cognisant by having conferred on us some new 
 sense in addition to the senses we already possess. 
 
 " Conceptions." Cf. n. on 2, § 30. 
 
 " He dissociated from virtue and wisdom." In the Stoic system the 
 ideal wise man, who alone possesses any share of virtue and wisdom, is 
 intellectually as well as morally infallible. 
 
93 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 PRIOR ACADEMICS. 
 BOOK II. (Lucullus). 
 
 § 3. "The greatest prince since Alexander." That is to say, Mithri- 
 dates himself. The account of Lucullus' early life here given contains a 
 good many inaccuracies, which have led some commentators (but with- 
 out sufficient warrant) to conclude the whole prooemium to be spurious. 
 
 § 6. "A certain book." This is the lost dialogue entitled 'Horten- 
 sius,' founded on a similar work by Aristotle, and setting forth the 
 advantages to be derived from a study of philosophy. 
 
 " Some are found to assert etc." The assertion was a fact, and was 
 admitted by Cicero himself in his letters to Atticus. He declared that 
 Lucullus, Catulus and Hortensius could never even have dreamed of the 
 doctrines he had put into their mouths, and it was this consideration 
 which led him to agree to Atticus' proposal that he should recast the 
 whole work and dedicate it to Varro. In this prooemium Cicero has 
 made a deliberate attempt to mislead his readers about the amount of 
 culture possessed by Lucullus. 
 
 § 8. " Every maxim and almost every word of command." Reading 
 ' praecepta a quibusdam'et quasi imperata.' 
 
 §12. " The polemic against Philo." In the later form of his teaching 
 Philo seems to have contended that the Academics had been misun- 
 derstood when it was supposed that they declared sure knowledge to be 
 unattainable. At the same time he maintained that the Stoic definition 
 of an infallible perception (KaraX/jimicr) </>ai/Tacria) was a delusion. What 
 he put in the place of it we are not told. 
 
 § 13. L. Cassius Longinus Ravilla, when tribune of the plebs in 
 137 B.C., carried a ballot bill. 
 
 "Q. Pompeius." Consul in 141 B.C.; the senate decided to deliver 
 him up to the Numantines because he had concluded with them a con- 
 vention which it was not to the advantage of the Roman people to 
 ratify. His democratic friends succeeded in securing his safety. 
 
 "P. Crassus." His original name was Scaevola, but he had been 
 adopted into the family of the Crassi. Kirchmann strangely identifies 
 him with the triumvir who perished at Carrhae in 53 B.C. 
 
 § 15. "Socrates again, etc." This was the stock explanation given 
 by the dogmatists of Socrates' prima facie Scepticism. It was, they 
 said, only apparent, and entirely due to his use of irony. 
 
NOTES. 99 
 
 § 1 6. " Clitomachus." A Carthaginian by birth. On the death of 
 Carneades in 129 b.c. he succeeded him in the presidency of the 
 Academic School. As Carneades left no writings behind him, the works 
 of Clitomachus constituted the chief source from which a knowledge of 
 his system could be gained. 
 
 § 19. "The bent oar. ..the pigeon's neck." Cf. n. on 2, § 79. 
 
 § 20. " The inner touch." The Cyrenaics maintained that in sen- 
 sation all that men were conscious of was an internal modification of the 
 mind (ira'0os) ; the sensation could convey no information about the 
 external object which was supposed to cause it, though the existence of 
 an external cause was not denied. 
 
 § 21. This section presents a good deal of difficulty. We seem to 
 have three grades of mental judgment upon the facts supplied by sensa- 
 tion ; (1) when the attention of the mind is directed towards some one 
 quality in an object; (2) when an object as a whole is referred to the 
 class to which it belongs ; (3) when an object is referred to its class and 
 then certain circumstances previously known to pertain to the class are 
 affirmed of it. In the Greek sources preserved to us I can find nothing 
 corresponding to this section. 
 
 § 22. "What memory can there be of falsities?" This argument 
 is based on the assumption (familiar to readers of Plato's ' Sophist ') 
 that falsity is identical with non-existence. A memory stored with 
 falsities is a memory stored with nonentities. Cicero answers the 
 argument in § 106. 
 
 § 23. "The theory of the virtues etc," The moral virtues, it must 
 be remembered, are forms of science in the Stoic system, which An- 
 tiochus followed in the passage here imitated. 
 
 § 24. The argument in this section assumes the Stoic theory — 
 set forth in the third book of the ' De Finibus' — that the earliest 
 impulses of desire in young creatures are aroused by objects which 
 tend to preserve their natural constitution, and the earliest impulses 
 of aversion by those objects which have the opposite character. Start- 
 ing from these impulses men may ultimately arrive at virtue. If the 
 very existence of the objects is matter of doubt, as the Academics 
 assert, then how is action possible? Thus the first steps towards 
 virtue can never be taken. 
 
 §§ 27—29. The question in dispute is evidently begged throughout 
 these sections. There is no essential difference between Antipater's 
 mode of dealing with the Sceptics and that of Antiochus j both of 
 them assume the very point at issue, viz. that it is the function of 
 
IOO THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 philosophy to discover some indestructible truth. Sextus Empiricus 
 indicates a hundred times over that the assertion of uncertainty covers 
 all possible utterances, even those in which the assertion itself is made. 
 
 § 30. When the Stoics use the terms strictly (which is not by 
 any means always the case) irpoXi^as denote such elementary generali- 
 sations from experience as all men must make, Zwouu such generalisa- 
 tions as require the operation of the trained reason. 
 
 § 33. " ' Appearance ' accompanied by probability and unob- 
 structed." According to Carneades it often happened that in making 
 a perception the mind was drawn away from the particular object of 
 which it desired to take cognisance, by the presence of some other 
 object or objects which obtruded themselves on the mind, and pre- 
 vented it from getting a clear view of the particular object it desired to 
 examine. To a perception which was not obstructed in this manner he 
 ascribed a higher degree of probability than to one which was impeded. 
 A third degree of probability is mentioned in § 36, which arises when 
 the mind has had time thoroughly to explore the circumstances which 
 attend upon the appearances presented by the object, and has after 
 that survey declared the appearances to be probably trustworthy. 
 
 § 34. " A distinction between ' conspicuous sensations ' and per- 
 ceptions." It is not known who drew this distinction ; it was possibly 
 one of Philo's devices to cover his return to dogmatism. The term 
 ivapyrjs (translated by the word ' conspicuous ') thus receives a signifi- 
 cation different from that which the Stoics gave it, and implies some- 
 thing less than the absolute infallibility which every evapyijs tjiavraa-la 
 possessed for them. 
 
 §§ 37» 3 8 i 39- These sections practically repeat the argument of 
 §§ 23, 24, 25. In § 38 it at first, sight seems as though 'assent' were 
 declared to be an involuntary act, though in § 37 (and also in I. § 38) 
 the opposite was stated. The doctrine in § 38 is only intended to 
 apply to the entirely healthy reason of the ideally wise man. 
 
 § 40. " They define at as great length as do the Stoics etc." The 
 proceeding was perfectly legitimate. The Sceptics said to the Dog- 
 matists : ' give us the most accurate definition you can of a perception 
 which you say may be accepted as true ; we will then shew that there 
 is nothing in existence which satisfies the requirements of your defi- 
 nitions.' In this section and the sections which follow the terms 
 'perceive,' 'perception' are used in their strict dogmatic sense, im- 
 plying that the result of a 'perception' is something which is irre- 
 fragrably true. ^—Throughout these sections the uisum or ' appearance ' 
 
NOTES. IOI 
 
 is regarded as something which presents itself to the mind from without, 
 and is weighed by the mind and then accepted or rejected according 
 to the clearness or want of clearness which it exhibits. Kirchmann 
 has got into confusion by regarding ' uisum ' as a state or modification 
 of the mind resulting from the external appearance. 
 
 § 42. " Side by side with true appearances there are deceptive 
 appearances." It must be remembered that ' deceptive appearances ' 
 are of two kinds: (1) those which are caused by objects which are 
 actually existent, but are misconceived by the person who becomes 
 cognisant of them, and so are supposed by him to be caused by quite 
 different objects ; (2) those which have no reality behind them whatever, 
 being mere visions created by the mind itself. 
 
 § 44 end. The contention of the Sceptics is misrepresented. They 
 did not deny that the distinction between true and false existed, but 
 that it can become known to us as a certainty. 
 
 § 47. The general drift of the argument is this : if a god can 
 make us believe in what is a mere vision or phantom, can he not cause 
 us to mistake two ' appearances ' both thrown off by real objects, the 
 one for the other ? The argument is a fortiori. 
 
 § 49. The ' sorites ' takes its name from o-topos, a heap. In the 
 earliest form of the fallacy the sophist asked his opponent, ' does one 
 grain make a heap ? ' The latter answered ' no.' He was then asked 
 'do two, three, four...« grains make a heap?' He answered 'no' 
 up to n grains ; then at (n + 1) grains was obliged to answer ' yes.' 
 The difference between (n + 1) and n grains, therefore, that is one grain, 
 does make a heap. As Cicero points out in § 91 the fallacy is capable 
 of being used in connexion with every term which has a relative mean- 
 ing. The fallacious ' sorites ' must be clearly distinguished from the 
 chain-inference which sometimes bears that name ; an argument of the 
 form ' all A is B ; all B is C ; all C is D ; all D is E, therefore all 
 A is E.' , 
 
 § 50. In this section Lucullus chooses to confuse, for his own pur- 
 poses, indistinguishable resemblance with absolute identity, as he also 
 does- in § 54 and again later on. In the argument about all things 
 belonging to a definite class he again obviously begs the question at 
 issue. 
 
 § 53- " Again at another moment that there is no such difference." 
 The Sceptics never denied the difference in vividness between the 
 impressions of the two classes of men ; what they did deny was that 
 
102 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 the difference could be affirmed to lie in the absolute certainty of the 
 one set of impressions and the absolute uncertainty of the other set ; at 
 the utmost, they said, different degrees of probability could be traced. 
 
 §58. "Only between certain kinds and classes of them." The 
 sense of this very difficult passage (to which I can find no parallel in 
 the Greek sources) seems to be that the Sceptics, while not denying 
 that the mind does distinguish between individual impressions, did 
 refuse to allow that they could be divided off into two classes, the true 
 and the untrue, as the Dogmatists contended. 
 
 § 59. "That the man of wisdom will give a groundless judgment." 
 In the context of this passage there is a good deal of playing upon 
 words. To ' opine ' is not in the eyes of the Sceptic essentially different 
 from acting upon probabilities, as may be seen from § 146 where the 
 view of Carneades is again mentioned. In the eyes of a Dogmatist, to 
 ' opine ' would be to assume as certain an uncertain impression. 
 
 § 60. "These mysteries." There is no ground for saying that the 
 Academics had an esoteric form of doctrine based upon Dogmatic 
 principles. It is an assertion which often meets us in the later Greek 
 writers, but is an invention of the Dogmatic teachers, who could not 
 imagine how any thinkers could rest contented with the principles which 
 Arcesilas and Carneades ostensibly professed. 
 
 § 62. " That you had ' learned all about it '." In speaking of the 
 Catilinarian conspiracy in the Senate, Cicero had used the word 
 ' comperisse,' which was picked up by the public and turned into a 
 cant expression of the day. 
 
 § 66. " The man of wisdom." Each one of the later Greek schools 
 had its ideally wise man in whom the principles of the School were 
 embodied, but who was never to be encountered in actual life. 
 
 § 70. " Maenian eaves." These were wooden galleries projecting 
 from the -houses, and named from their inventor Maenius. When fire 
 broke out, they served to carry it from street to street, and so were over 
 and over again placed under the ban of the law. In spite of that they 
 still continued to be constructed till the fourth century (Amm. Marc. 
 27, 9, 10). 
 
 § 7r. "Dionysius." Called the 'pervert'; he was induced to give 
 up Stoicism and to embrace Epicureanism by a severe attack of pain, 
 which proved to him that pain was really an evil. 
 
 §§ 7 2 i 73> 74- A very unfair use is here made of the utterances of 
 the pre-Socratic philosophers concerning the untrustworthiness of the 
 
NOTES. 103 
 
 knowledge derived from the senses. They never doubted that it was 
 possible by the aid of reasoning to rise to some knowledge which could 
 be stated in a dogmatic form. Democritus for example declared that 
 'in very truth' the atoms and the void existed. The position of Socrates 
 is also misrepresented. What Plato in his 'Apology' makes him say is 
 not that he knows himself to know nothing, but that he never supposes 
 himself to know what he does not know. 
 
 § 75. " Stilpo, Diodorus and Alexinus." These were of the Megarian 
 school, and all famous for their logical subtlety. Stilpo lived about 
 380 — 300 b. c, Diodorus and Alexinus about the beginning of the third 
 century b. c. Alexinus was a bitter opponent of Zeno, the founder of 
 the Stoic school. For an account of these philosophers see Zeller, 
 Socrates and the Socratic Schools. 
 
 " Chrysippus." The second founder of Stoicism, who lived about 
 280 — 205 b.c. Cicero in the text alludes to a well-known saying " Had 
 there been no Chrysippus, there had been no Porch." 
 
 § 77. "An imprint or stamp." The Stoics, it should be observed, 
 spoke of the mind being stamped or impressed by an appearance coming 
 from without, much in the same way as Locke, and the metaphor in- 
 volved them in very similar difficulties. 
 
 § 78. " Metrodorus." This is Metrodorus of Stratonice, mentioned 
 in § 16, not Metrodorus of Chios, referred to in § 73. 
 
 § 79. The doctrine of Epicurus (which had been stated before him 
 in almost the same words by Aristotle, and was afterwards insisted on 
 by Kant) did not advance much the case of the Dogmatists. If sensation 
 is an instrument the use of which is admitted to be attended on some 
 occasions by inaccurate results, it matters little whether the blame be 
 laid on the instrument or on the person who uses it. The phenomenon 
 of changing colour in the pigeon's feathers is due to what is now called 
 diffraction. All the examples given here of misleading sensations are, 
 with many others, elaborately discussed and classified by Sextus 
 Empiricus. 
 
 § 82. " Eighteen times greater than the earth." This was evidently 
 a popularly accepted measure of the sun, though I have not been able 
 to trace its source. The measure probably is of diameter against 
 diameter, not circumference against circumference; certainly not of 
 solid contents against solid contents, a mode of comparison which we 
 do not find much used by the ancients. Hipparchus determined the 
 diameter of the earth to be 3| that of the moon, and the diameter of the 
 sun to be <,\ times that of the earth (Montucla, Histoire des sciences 
 
104 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 Mathematiques, Paris, 1758; Vol. 1. p. 272). Aristarchus said that the 
 diameter of the sun when compared with that of the earth was found to 
 bear to it a larger proportion than 19 to 3, and a smaller proportion 
 than 43 to 6. Posidonius the Stoic made the circumference of the earth 
 ; = 240,000 stadia, and the diameter of the sun = 3,000,000 stadia. The 
 absurd assertion of Epicurus that the sun's diameter is probably about 
 a foot's breadth is actually defended by Lucretius. 
 
 § 85. " It is a Stoic notion etc." In many modern books written 
 in defence of the Darwinian hypothesis statements almost exactly 
 similar to this are found. 
 
 § 87. Carneades is said to have thus parodied the saying about 
 Chrysippus quoted in n. on § 75 : " If Chrysippus had not existed, I 
 should have been nothing." 
 
 § 90. "The question is not what sort of recollection etc." The 
 drift of the argument has been misunderstood by Kirchmann and others. 
 When the Dogmatists were pressed to say what ground they had for 
 declaring their senses to be trustworthy in some cases and not in others, 
 they appealed to the conviction felt by them that certain impressions 
 were true and certain others false. The answer here given is that 
 dreamers and madmen have this conviction quite as strongly. The 
 fact therefore that a man has this conviction of the truth of an impression 
 can prove nothing. The arguments in the context here greatly re- 
 semble some used in Plato's ' Theaetetus ', p. 158. 
 
 § 92. The fallacy of the Sorites consists in the determination to 
 treat relative, and therefore necessarily indefinite, expressions as though 
 they ought all to be capable of having a very definite sense forced upon 
 them. The whole of the ancient philosophy shewed great weakness 
 in dealing with relative terms. Much confusion arises from this cause 
 in the works of Plato, and even in those of Aristotle. 
 
 § 95. The ' Pseudomenos ' appears in many forms. One well- 
 known form is as follows : " Epimenides says the Cretans are liars ; 
 Epimenides is a Cretan ; is he therefore a liar or a truth-teller ? " The 
 fallacy rests on a confusion between lying with regard to a particular 
 fact and lying as a permanent characteristic. 
 
 § 97. " I advise them to go before a tribune." The reference 
 is to the system of conducting lawsuits by formulae. The formula 
 was an order issued by the praetor (who determined the law ap- 
 plicable to the case) directing the iudex (who tried the facts) to 
 pronounce for the plaintiff if certain facts were proved, and for the 
 
NOTES. 105 
 
 defendant if they were not proved. But sometimes the order was 
 more complicated : the iudex was to pronounce for the plaintiff if 
 certain facts were proved, unless certain other facts were proved. This 
 limiting clause was called an exceptio. If the praetor wrongfully 
 refused to insert the exceptio in the formula, the plebeian tribunes could 
 in certain circumstances on being appealed to force him to do so. 
 Hence the allusion in the text (which Kirchmann and others altogether 
 misunderstand). 
 
 The proposition denied by Epicurus is nowadays called " the Law of 
 Excluded Middle." His purpose was to save the freedom of the will ; 
 he thought that if he admitted the proposition he would make such 
 a concession to the doctrine of necessity that it would be difficult 
 to set limits to it. 
 
 § 98. The Stoics seem to have declined to have anything to say to 
 any proposition which was even remotely connected with the 'pseudo- 
 menos'; they therefore laid themselves open to the retort in the text 
 that they accepted and refused to accept arguments of exactly the same 
 form. 
 
 " The entire theory of Carneades." It is commonly, but erroneously, 
 stated (e.g. by Zeller) that both Pyrrho and Arcesilas put forward a 
 doctrine of probability and that Carneades did no more than expand it. 
 What the earlier philosophers did say was that we must act on phe- 
 nomena as we find them; the moment we begin to argue about their 
 actual truth or falsehood we find it impossible to decide the question 
 either way. This is something widely different from that careful testing 
 and exploration of phenomena which Carneades enjoined. 
 
 § 100. All the ancients conceived colour as something actually 
 present in an object, whether the object be in light or in darkness, 
 whether it be seen or unseen. Hence Anaxagoras could not imagine 
 that congelation should change the colour of water, and as he saw 
 that the larger the mass of water, the more nearly its colour ap- 
 proached to black, he decided that the real natural colour of water and 
 therefore of snow also must be black. 
 
 § 104. There are two ways in which the answers 'yes' and 'no' 
 may be understood; they may be taken to imply entire certainty, or 
 only probability. In order to make the meaning of Cicero quite clear, I 
 have introduced the words 'absolute' and 'relative.' 
 
 § 107. Panaetius (pupil of the Antipater mentioned in § 109) lived 
 about 185 — 112 b.c. He was the intimate friend of the younger Scipio 
 and of Laelius, in whose company he passed a large portion of his life. 
 
Io6 THE ACADEMICS OF CICERO. 
 
 He toned down the extravagances of Stoicism to a great extent, and 
 enabled it to become a useful creed for the Roman statesmen and 
 lawyers. 
 
 §m. "We discern truths as much as falsehoods." Only they 
 must be probable truths and probable falsehoods, not absolutely certain 
 truths or absolutely certain falsehoods. 
 
 § 119. "There will come a time for this universal order to perish." 
 According to the Stoics, however, matter is eternal; although the existing 
 order will perish it will be created anew by the Universal God out of his 
 own substance. 
 
 "Since the universe is without origin." Aristotle repeatedly claims 
 credit for having been the first to maintain that the universe has existed 
 from all eternity and will continue to exist to all eternity. At first sight 
 this claim seems to contradict the statements we have in § 118 about 
 Xenophanes and Melissus. In a recent pamphlet Zeller maintains that 
 Aristotle was the first to assert that the present order of the universe has 
 always existed and will always continue to exist. 
 
 § 120. Myrmecides was an ivory carver, who made a four-horse 
 chariot which a fly covered with its wings, and a ship which the wings 
 of a bee were large enough to conceal. 
 
 § 121. Strato, a pupil of Theophrastus, presided over the Peripatetic 
 school about 288 — 2 70 b. c. Strato seems not altogether to have banished 
 the term God from his system, but he identified God with the forces of 
 Nature, so that Seneca declared Strato' s God to have a body but^no 
 soul. 
 
 § 122. "The Empirics." At the outset of Celsus' work a very clear 
 account is given of the history of the chief medical sects, the Dogmatics, 
 the Empirics and the Methodics (the last sect probably did not arise 
 till after Cicero's time). The Dogmatics were theorists ; the Empirics 
 were practical observers of the signs of sickness and health. Yet these 
 practical men altogether objected to anatomy, from which they thought 
 nothing was to be learnt. Their objection was probably due in part to 
 a revulsion from the vivisection which the Dogmatics had practised upon 
 human criminals. 
 
 § 125. Hicetas was a Pythagorean, probably contemporary with 
 Socrates and Plato. It is not certain that Cicero understood what 
 Theophrastus said of this theory ; cf. Lewis, Astronomy of the Ancients, 
 p. 127 sq. Aristotle supposed Plato to lay down, not a motion of 
 the earth in an orbit round some centre, but a motion round its own 
 axis. Most modern scholars think the inference not justified. 
 
NOTES. 107 
 
 § 124. Dicaearchus, a Peripatetic, one of the immediate pupils 
 of Aristotle, held that the soul is a mere function of the body and 
 will die with it. 
 
 Xenocrates developed greatly the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers, 
 which Plato is said to have to a great extent adopted and taught 
 at the end of his life. 
 
 § 125. "A partisan of the nobility." These words do not imply 
 that Democritus was of aristocratic birth, but merely that he held a 
 conspicuous position among philosophers and might therefore be re- 
 garded as having a sort of patent of philosophical nobility. Cf. what 
 is said of Cleanthes in § 126. 
 
 § 129. "The Megarian School etc." Cicero, or rather his au- 
 thority, here considers the Eleatic School and the Megarian (founded 
 by Euclides the pupil of Socrates) to form practically one and the 
 same School. The Eleates did not connect their ' One ' with Ethics, 
 as did the Megarians. 
 
 § 130. Aristo the Chian (a pupil of Zeno the founder of Stoicism) 
 maintained that the wise man must remain absolutely and entirely 
 indifferent to all things but virtue and vice. 
 
 § 134. "He was a god." That is, any one who can remain abso- 
 lutely content with virtue alone must be more than human. 
 
 § 137. Cicero has evidently spoiled the story about Carneades. 
 Albinus must have jested with the Academic philosopher on his assert- 
 ing all things to be uncertain : " you do not think that what we fancy 
 we see here is a city," i. e. it may be nothing at all, or something very 
 different from what it appears to be. Carneades then turned the jest 
 by saying "It is the Stoic who thinks this is no city," i.e. because 
 it is not inhabited by wise men. As Cicero tells the story, he makes 
 it appear as though Albinus had made a mere stupid blunder, mis- 
 taking Stoic tenets for Academic. 
 
 § 143. The Philo here mentioned was a Megarian and is not to 
 be confounded with Philo of Larissa, the Academic. 
 
 § 148. " To make away (a weigh):' There is a pun on two mean- 
 ings of toller e (1) to weigh anchor, (2) to sweep away, abolish, destroy, 
 in which latter sense the word has been frequently used throughout the 
 'Academics.' 
 
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