Footnotes
The following are the most important of the passages referred to:—“Since I entered upon these philosophical inquiries, Varro has given me notice of a valuable and honourable dedication of a work of his to me.... In the mean time I have been preparing myself as he desired to make him a return.
αὐτῷ τῷ μέτρῳ καὶ λῶιον αἴκε δύνωμαι.
“I may as well, therefore, remove from my Academical Disputations the present speakers, who are distinguished characters indeed, but by no means philosophical, and who discourse with too much subtlety, and substitute Varro in their place. For these are the opinions of Antiochus, to which he is much attached. I can find a place for Catulus and Lucullus elsewhere.”—Ep. 12.
“The Catulus and Lucullus I imagine you have had before; but I have made new introductions to these books which I wish you to have, containing an eulogium upon each of these persons, and there are some other additions.”—Ep. 32.
“In consequence of the letter which you wrote to me about Varro, I have taken the Academy entirely out of the hands of those distinguished persons, and transferred it to our friend. And from two books I have made it into four. These are longer than the others were, though there are several parts left out.... In truth, if my self-love does not deceive me, these books have come out in such a manner that there is nothing of the same kind like them even in Greek.”—Ep. 13.
“I have transferred the whole of that Academical Treatise to Varro. It had at first been divided among Catulus, Lucullus, and Hortensius. Afterwards, as this appeared unsuitable, owing to those persons being, not indeed unlearned, but notoriously unversed in such subjects, as soon as I got home I transferred those dialogues to Cato and Brutus. Your letter about Varro has just reached me, and there is no one by whom the opinions of Antiochus could be more fitly supported.”—Ep. 16.
“I had determined to include no living persons in my dialogues; but since you inform me that Varro is desirous of it, and sets a great value upon it, I have composed this work, and completed the whole Academical Discussion in four books; I know not how well, but with such care that nothing can exceed it. In these, what had been excellently collected by Antiochus against the doctrine of incomprehensibility, I have attributed to Varro; to this I reply in my own person, and you are the third in our conversation. If I had made Cotta and Varro disputing with one another, as you suggest in your last letter, my own would have been a mute character....
“The Academics, as you know, I had discussed in the persons of Catulus, Lucullus, and Hortensius; but in truth the subject did not suit their characters, being more logical than what they could be supposed ever to have dreamt of. Therefore, when I read your letter to Varro, I seized on it as a sort of inspiration. Nothing could be more adapted to that species of philosophy in which he seems to take particular delight; or to the support of such a part that I could manage to avoid making my own sentiments predominant. For the opinions of Antiochus are extremely persuasive, and are so carefully expressed as to retain the acuteness of Antiochus with my own brilliancy of language, if indeed I possess any.”—Ep. 19.
The Antiochus mentioned above was a native of Ascalon, and the founder of the fifth Academy; he had been the teacher of Cicero while he studied at Athens; and he had also a school in Syria and another in Alexandria. Cicero constantly speaks of him with great regard and esteem. The leaders of the Academy since the time of Plato, (and Cicero ranks even him among those philosophers who denied the certainty of any kind of knowledge,) had gradually fallen into a degree of scepticism that seemed to strike at the root of all truth, theoretical and practical. But Antiochus professed to revive the doctrines of the old Academy, maintaining, in opposition to Carneades and Philo, that the intellect had in itself a test by which it could distinguish between what was real and what existed only in the imagination. He himself appears to have held doctrines very nearly coinciding with those of Aristotle; agreeing however so far with the Stoics as to insist that all emotions ought to be suppressed. So that Cicero almost inclines to class him among the Stoics; though it appears that he considered himself as an Eclectic philosopher, uniting the doctrines of the Stoics and Academics so as to revive the old Academy.
Marcus Terentius Varro was ten years older than Cicero, and a man of the most extensive and profound learning. He had held a naval command against the pirates, and against Mithridates, and served as lieutenant to Pompey in Spain, at the beginning of the civil war, adhering to his party till after the battle of Pharsalia, when he was pardoned, and taken into favour by Cæsar. He was proscribed by the second triumvirate, but escaped, and died b.c. 28. He was a very voluminous author, and according to his own account composed four hundred and ninety books; but only one, the three books De Re Rusticâ, have come down to us, and a portion of a large treatise De Linguâ Latinâ.
In philosophy he had been a pupil of Antiochus, and attached himself to the Academy with something of a leaning to the Stoics.
Cicero ranges these poets here in chronological order.
Ennius was born at Rudiæ in Calabria, b.c. 239, of a very noble family. He was brought to Rome by M. Porcius Cato at the end of the second Punic war. His plays were all translations or adaptations from the Greek; but he also wrote a poetical history of Rome called Annales, in eighteen books, and a poem on his friend Scipio Africanus; some Satires, Epigrams, and one or two philosophical poems. Only a few lines of his works remain to us. He died at the age of seventy.
Pacuvius was a native of Brundusium, and a relation, probably a nephew, of Ennius. He was born about b.c. 220, and lived to about the year b.c. 130. His works were nearly entirely tragedies translated from the Greek. Horace, distinguishing between him and Accius, says—
“Aufert
Pacuvius docti famam senis; Accius alti.”—Epist. II. i. 55.
Cæcilius Statius was the predecessor of Terence; by birth an Insubrian Gaul and a native of Milan. He died b.c. 165, two years before the representation of the Andria of Terence. He was considered by the Romans as a great master of the art of exciting the feelings. And Cicero (de Opt. Gen. Dic. 1.) speaks of him as the chief of the Roman Comic writers. Horace says—
Vincere Cæcilius gravitate, Terentius arte.
Lucius Afranius lived about 100 b.c. His comedies were chiefly togatæ, depicting Roman life; he borrowed largely from Menander, to whom the Romans compared him. Horace says—
Dicitur Afranî toga convenisse Menandro.
Cicero praises his language highly (Brut. 45).
Caius Lucilius was the earliest of the Roman satirists, born at Suessa Aurunca, b.c. 148; he died at Naples, b.c. 103. He served under Scipio in the Numantine war. He was a very vehement and bold satirist. Cicero alludes here to a saying of his, which he mentions more expressly (De Orat. ii.), that he did not wish the ignorant to read his works because they could not understand them: nor the learned because they would be able to criticise them.
Persium non curo legere: Lælium Decimum volo.
This Persius being a very learned man; in comparison with whom Lælius was an ignoramus.
The Greek line occurs in the Orestes, 207.
Ὡ πότνια λήθη τῶν κακῶν ὡς εἶ γλυκύ.
Virgil has the same idea—
Vos et Scyllæam rabiem, penitusque sonantes
Accêtis scopulos, vos et Cyclopia saxa
Experti; revocate animos, moestumque timorem
Pellite: forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.—Æn. i. 200.
Which Dryden translates—
With me the rocks of Scylla have you tried,
Th' inhuman Cyclops and his den defied:
What greater ills hereafter can you bear?
Resume your courage and dismiss your care;
An hour will come with pleasure to relate
Your sorrows past as benefits of fate.
This seems to refer to the Greek epigram—
Τὸν γαίης καὶ πόντου ἀμειφθείσαισι κελεύθοις,
Ναύτην ἠπείρου, πεζόπορον πελάγους.
Ἐν τρίσσαις δοράτων ἑκατοντάσιν ἔστεγεν Ἄρης
Σπάρτης αἰσχυνεσθ᾽ οὔρεα καὶ πελάγη.
Which may be translated—
Him who the paths of land and sea disturb'd,
Sail'd o'er the earth, walk'd o'er the humbled waves,
Three hundred spears of dauntless Sparta curb'd.
Shame on you, land and sea, ye willing slaves!
The Latin is ærumnæ: perhaps it is in allusion to this passage that Juvenal says—
Et potiores
Herculis ærumnas credat, sævosque labores
Et Venere et cœnis, et pluma Sardanapali.
Sat. x. 361.
Archilochus was a native of Paros, and flourished about 714-676, b.c. His poems were chiefly Iambics of bitter satire. Horace speaks of him as the inventor of Iambics, and calls himself his pupil.
Parios ego primus Iambos
Ostendi Latio, numeros animosque secutus
Archilochi, non res et agentia verba Lycamben.
Epist. I. xix. 25.
And in another place he says—
Archilochum proprio rabies armavit Iambo.—A. P. 74.
So Horace joins these two classes as inventors of all kinds of improbable fictions—
Pictoribus atque poetis
Quidlibet audendi semper fuit æqua potestas.—A. P. 9.
Which Roscommon translates—
Painters and poets have been still allow'd
Their pencil and their fancies unconfined.
Archytas was a native of Tarentum, and is said to have saved the life of Plato by his influence with the tyrant Dionysius. He was especially great as a mathematician and geometrician, so that Horace calls him
Maris et terræ numeroque carentis arenæ
Mensorem—Od. i. 28. 1.
Plato is supposed to have learnt some of his views from him, and Aristotle to nave borrowed from him every idea of the Categories.
The epigram is—
Εἴπας Ἥλιε χαῖρε, Κλεόμβροτος Ὅμβρακιώτης
ἥλατ᾽ ἀφ᾽ ύψηλοῦ τείχεος εἰς Ἀίδην,
ἄξιον οὐδὲν ἰδὼν θανάτου κακὸν, ἀλλὰ Πλάτωνος
ἔν τὸ περὶ ψύχης γράμμ᾽ ἀναλεξάμενος.
Which may be translated, perhaps—
Farewell, O sun, Cleombrotus exclaim'd,
Then plung'd from off a height beneath the sea;
Stung by pain, of no disgrace ashamed,
But mov'd by Plato's high philosophy.
This is alluded to by Juvenal—
Provida Pompeio dederat Campania febres
Optandas: sed multæ urbes et publica vota
Vicerunt. Igitur Fortuna ipsius et Urbis,
Servatum victo caput abstulit.—Sat. x. 283.
Pompey's second wife was Julia, the daughter of Julius Cæsar; she died the year before the death of Crassus, in Parthia. Virgil speaks of Cæsar and Pompey as relations, using the same expression (socer) as Cicero—
Aggeribus socer Alpinis atque arce Monœci
Descendens, gener adversis instructus Eois.—Æn. vi. 830.
This idea is beautifully expanded by Byron:—
Yet if, as holiest men have deem'd, there be
A land of souls beyond that sable shore
To shame the doctrine of the Sadducee
And sophist, madly vain of dubious lore,
How sweet it were in concert to adore
With those who made our mortal labours light,
To hear each voice we fear'd to hear no more,
Behold each mighty shade reveal'd to sight,
The Bactrian, Samian sage, and all who taught the right.
Childe Harold, ii. 8.
The epitaph in the original is,—
Ὥ ξεῖν᾽ ἀγγεῖλον Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε
κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων πειθόμενοι νομίμοις.
This was expressed in the Greek verses—
Ἀρχὴν μὲν μὴ φῦναι ἐπιχθονίοισιν ἄριστον,
φύντα δ᾽ ὅπως ὤκιστα πύλας Ἀίδαο περῆσαι;
which by some authors are attributed to Homer.
This is the first fragment of the Cresphontes.—Ed. Var. vii. p. 594
Ἔδει γὰρ ἡμᾶς σύλλογον ποιουμένους
Τὸν φύντα θρηνεῖν, εὶς ὅσ᾽ ἔρχεται κακά.
Τὸν δ᾽ αὖ θανόντα καὶ πόνων πεπαυμένον
χαίροντας εὐφημοῖντας ἐκπέμπειν δόμων.
The Greek verses are quoted by Plutarch—
... Ἤπου νήπιε, ἠλίθιοι φρένες ἀνδρᾶν
Εὐθύνοος κεῖται μοιριδίῳ θανάτῳ
Οὐκ ἦν γὰρ ζώειν καλὸν αὐτῷ οὄτε γονεῦσι.
The Greek is,
μήδε μοι ἄκλαυστος θάνατος μόλοι, ἀλλὰ φίλοισι
ποιήσαιμι θανὼν ἄλγεα καὶ στοναχάς.
The Greek is—
Ἀλλά μοι οἰδάνεται κραδίν χόλω ὅπποτ ἐκείνου
Μνήσομαι ὅς μ᾽ ἀσύφηλον ἐν Ἀργείοισιν ἔρεξεν.—Il. ix. 642.
I have given Pope's translation in the text.
This is from the Theseus—
Ἐγὼ δὲ τοῦτο παρὰ σοφοῦ τινος μαθὼν
εἰς φροντίδας νοῦν συμφοράς τ᾽ ἐβαλλόμην
φυγάς τ᾽ ἐμαυτῷ προστιθεὶς πάτρας ἐμῆς.
θανάτους τ᾽ ἀώρους, καὶ κακῶν ἄλλας ὁδοὺς
ὥς, εἴ τι πάσχοιυμ᾽ ὦν ἐδοξαζόν ποτε
Μή μοι νέορτον προσπεσὸν μᾶλλον δάκοι.
This refers to the speech of Agamemnon in Euripides, in the Iphigenia in Aulis—
... Ζηλῶ σε, γέρον,
ζηλῶ δ᾽ ἀνδρῶν ὅς ἀκίνδυνον
βίον ἐξεπέρασ, ἀγνὼς, ἀκλεής.—v. 15.
This is a fragment from the Hypsipyle—
Ἔφυ μὲν οὐδεις ὅστις οὐ πονεῖ βροτῶν;
θάπτει τε τέκνα χάτερ᾽ αὖ κτᾶται νεὰ,
αὐτός τε θνήσκει. καὶ τάδ᾽ ἄχθονται βροτοὶ
εἰς γῆν φέροντες γῆν; ἀναγκαιως δ᾽ ἔχει
βίον θερίζειν ὦστε κάρπιμον στάχυν.
Ητοι ο καππεδιον το Αληιον οιος αλατο
ον θυμον κατεδων, πατον ανθρωπων αλεεινων.—Il. vi. 201.
This is a translation from Euripides—
Ὥσθ᾽ ἵμερος μ᾽ ὑπῆλθε γῇ τε κ᾽ οὐρανῷ
λέξαι μολούσῃ δεῦρο Μηδείας τύχας.—Med. 57.
Λίην γὰρ πολλοὶ καὶ ἐπήτριμοι ἤυατα πάντα
πίπτουσιν, πότε κέν τις ἀναπνεύσειε πόνοιο?
ἀλλὰ χρὴ τὸν μὲν καταθαπτέμεν, ὅς κε θάνησι,
νηλέα θυμὸν ἔχοντας, ἔπ᾽ ἤματι δακρυσάντας.—Hom. Il. xix. 226.
This is one of the fragments of Euripides which we are unable to assign to any play in particular; it occurs Var. Ed. Tr. Inc. 167.
Εἰ μέν τόδ᾽ ἦμαρ πρῶτον ἦν κακουμένω
καὶ μὴ μακρὰν δὴ διὰ πόνων ἐναυστόλουν
εἰκὸς σφαδάζειν ἦν ἄν, ὡς νεόζυγα
πῶλον, χάλινον ἀρτίως δεδεγμένον;
νῦν δ᾽ ἀμβλύς εἰμι, καὶ κατηρτυκὼς κακῶν.
This is only a fragment preserved by Stobæus—
Τοὺς δ᾽ ἄν μεγίστους καὶ σοφωτάτους φρενὶ
τοιούσδ᾽ ἴδοις ἄν, οἷός ἐστι νῦν ὅδε,
καλῶς κακῶς πράσσοντι συμπαραινέσαι;
ὅταν δὲ δαίμων ἀνδρὸς εὐτυχοῦς τὸ πρὶν
μάστιγ᾽ ἐρείση τοῦ βίου παλίντροπον,
τὰ πολλὰ φροῦδα καὶ κακῶς εἰρημένα.
Ωκ. Οὐκοῦν Προμηθεῦ τοῦτο γιγνώσκεις ὅτι
ὀργῆς νοσούσης εἰσὶν ἰατροὶ λόγοι.
Πρ. ἐάν τις ἐν καιρῷ γε μαλθάσση κέαρ
καὶ μὴ σφριγῶντα θυμὸν ἰσχναίνη βίᾳ.
Æsch. Prom. v. 378.
Cicero alludes here to Il. vii. 211, which is thus translated by Pope—
His massy javelin quivering in his hand,
He stood the bulwark of the Grecian band;
Through every Argive heart new transport ran,
All Troy stood trembling at the mighty man:
E'en Hector paused, and with new doubt oppress'd,
Felt his great heart suspended in his breast;
'Twas vain to seek retreat, and vain to fear,
Himself had challenged, and the foe drew near.
But Melmoth (Note on the Familiar Letters of Cicero, book ii. Let. 23) rightly accuses Cicero of having misunderstood Homer, who “by no means represents Hector as being thus totally dismayed at the approach of his adversary; and indeed it would have been inconsistent with the general character of that hero to have described him under such circumstances of terror.”
Τὸν δὲ καὶ Ἀργεῖοι μέγ᾽ ἐγήθεον εἰσορόωντες,
Τρωὰς δὲ τρόμος αἶνος ὑπήλυθε γυῖα ἕκαστον,
Ἕκτορι δ᾽ αὐτῷ θυμὸς ἐνὶ στήθεσσι πάτασσεν.
But there is a great difference, as Dr. Clarke remarks, between θυμὸς ἐνὶ στήθεσσι πάτασσεν and καρδίη ἔξω στηθέων ἔθρωσκεν, or τρόμος αἶνος ὑπήλυθε γυῖα.—The Trojans, says Homer, trembled at the sight of Ajax, and even Hector himself felt some emotion in his breast.
In the original they run thus:—
Οὔκ ἐστιν οὐδὲν δεινὸν ὧδ᾽ εἰπεῖν ἔπος,
Οὐδὲ πάθος, οὐδὲ ξυμφορὰ θεήλατος
Ἦς οὐκ ἄν ἄροιτ᾽ ἄχθος ἀνθρώπου φύσις.
This story is alluded to by Horace—
Districtus ensis cui super impiâ
Cervice pendet non Siculæ dapes
Dulcem elaborabunt saporem,
Non avium citharæve cantus
Somnum reducent.—iii. 1. 17.
The fact of Homer's blindness rests on a passage in the Hymn to Apollo, quoted by Thucydides as a genuine work of Homer, and which is thus spoken of by one of the most accomplished scholars that this country or this age has ever produced:—“They are indeed beautiful verses, and if none worse had ever been attributed to Homer, the Prince of Poets would have had little reason to complain.
“He has been describing the Delian festival in honour of Apollo and Diana, and concludes this part of the poem with an address to the women of that island, to whom it is to be supposed that he had become familiarly known by his frequent recitations:
Χαίρετε δ᾽ υμεῖς πᾶσαι, ἐμεῖο δὲ καὶ μετόπισθε
μνήσασθ᾽, ὅπποτέ κέν τις ἐπιχθονίων ἀνθρώπων
ἐνθάδ᾽ ἀνείρηται ξεῖνος ταλαπείριος ἐλθὼν
ὦ κοῦραι, τίς δ᾽ ὕμμιν ἀνὴρ ἥδιστος ἀοιδῶν
ἐνθάδε πωλεῖται καὶ τέῳ τέρπεσθε μάλιστα?
ὑμεῖς δ᾽ εὖ μάλα πᾶσαι ὑποκρίνασθε ἀφ᾽ ἡμῶν,
Τυφλὸς ἀνὴρ, οἰκεῖ δὲ Χίῳ ἐνὶ παιπαλοέσσῃ,
τοῦ πᾶσαι μετόπισθεν ἀριστεύουσιν ἀοιδαί.
Virgins, farewell,—and oh! remember me
Hereafter, when some stranger from the sea,
A hapless wanderer, may your isle explore,
And ask you, “Maids, of all the bards you boast,
Who sings the sweetest, and delights you most?”
Oh! answer all,—“A blind old man, and poor,
Sweetest he sings, and dwells on Chios' rocky shore.”
—Coleridge's Introduction to the Study of the Greek Classic Poets.