academica of cicero. - 912 Freedom Library

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7. This passage has the same aim as the last and closely resembles Lucullus 105.
8. The fact that the eye and hand need such guides shows how untrustworthy the senses are. A
similar argument occurs in Luc. 86. Perpendiculum is a plumb line, norma a mason's square, the
word being probably a corruption of the Greek ???µ?? (Curt. Grundz p. 169, ed. 3), regula, a
rule.
9. The different colours which the same persons show in different conditions, when young and
when old, when sick and when healthy, when sober and when drunken, are brought forward to
prove how little of permanence there is even in the least fleeting of the objects of sense.
10. Urinari is to dive; for the derivation see Curt. Grundz p. 326. A diver would be in exactly the
position of the fish noticed in Luc. 81, which are unable to see that which lies immediately above
them and so illustrate the narrow limits of the power of vision.
11. Evidently an attempt to prove the sense of smell untrustworthy. Different people pass
different judgments on one and the same odour. The student will observe that the above extracts
formed part of an argument intended to show the deceptive character of the senses. To these
should probably be added fragm. 32. Fr. 19 shows that the impossibility of distinguishing eggs
one from another, which had been brought forward in the Catulus, was allowed to stand in the
second edition, other difficulties of the kind, such as those connected with the bent oar, the
pigeon's neck, the twins, the impressions of seals (Luc. 19, 54), would also appear in both
editions. The result of these assaults on the senses must have been summed up in the phrase
cuncta dubitanda esse which Augustine quotes from the Academica Posteriora (see fragm. 36).
BOOK III.
12. This forms part of Varro's answer to Cicero, which corresponded in substance to Lucullus'
speech in the Academica Priora The drift of this extract was most likely this: just as there is a
limit beyond which the battle against criminals cannot be maintained, so after a certain point we
must cease to fight against perverse sceptics and let them take their own way. See another view
in Krische, p. 62.
13. Krische believes that this fragment formed part of an attempt to show that the senses were
trustworthy, in the course of which the clearness with which the fishes were seen leaping from
the water was brought up as evidence. (In Luc. 81, on the other hand, Cic. drew an argument
hostile to the senses from the consideration of the fish.) The explanation seems to me very
improbable. The words bear such a striking resemblance to those in Luc. 125 (ut nos nunc simus
ad Baulos Puteolosque videmus, sic innumerabilis paribus in locis esse isdem de rebus
disputantis) that I am inclined to think that the reference in Nonius ought to be to Book IV. and
not Book III., and that Cic., when he changed the scene from Bauli to the Lucrine lake, also
changed Puteolosque into pisciculosque exultantes for the sufficient reason that Puteoli was not
visible from Varro's villa on the Lucrine.
14. The passion for knowledge in the human heart was doubtless used by Varro as an argument
in favour of assuming absolute knowledge to be attainable. The same line is taken in Luc. 31,
D.F. III. 17, and elsewhere.
15. It is so much easier to find parallels to this in Cicero's speech than in that of Lucullus in the
Academica Priora that I think the reference in Nonius must be wrong. The talk about freedom
suits a sceptic better than a dogmatist (see Luc. 105, 120, and Cic.'s words in 8 of the same). If
my conjecture is right this fragment belongs to Book IV. Krische gives a different opinion, but
very hesitatingly, p. 63.
16. This may well have formed part of Varro's explanation of the ?ata?????, temeritas being as
much deprecated by the Antiocheans and Stoics as by the Academics cf. I. 42.
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