[285] The very passage (Georg., II., 475-92) which is supposed to refer to Lucretius contains a line (frigidus obstiterit circum praecordia sanguis) embodying the Stoic theory that the soul has its seat in the heart, and is nourished by a warm exhalation from the blood. See Zeller, Ph. d. Gr., III., a, p. 197.
[286] Zeller does indeed call Seneca and Marcus Aurelius ‘Platonising Stoics’ (Ph. d. Gr., III., b, p. 236, 3rd. ed.); but the evidence adduced hardly seems to justify the epithet.
[287] Metamorph., XV., 60.
[288] Zeller, Ph. d. Gr., III., a, p. 681.
[289] Epp., I., i., 18.
[290] M. Gaston Boissier (Religion Romaine, I., p. 206), on the strength of a passage in one of Horace’s Satires (II., iii., 11), where the poet speaks of carrying Plato about with him on his travels, infers that the study of the Dialogues had a good deal to do with his conversion. It is, however, more than probable that the Plato mentioned is not the philosopher, but the comic poet, for we find that his companions in Horace’s trunk were Menander, Eupolis, and Archilochus.
[291] Zeller is inclined to place Aenesidêmus a hundred years earlier than the date here assigned to him (Ph. d. Gr., III., b, p. 9); but two pieces of evidence which he himself quotes seem to militate strongly against this view. One is a statement of Aristocles the Peripatetic, who flourished 160-190 A.D., that Scepticism had been revived not long before his time (ἐχθὲς καὶ πρώην; apud Euseb., Pr. Ev., XIV., xviii., 22; Zeller, op. cit., p. 9); the other is Seneca’s question, Quis est qui tradat praecepta Pyrrhonis? (Nat. Quaest., VII., xxxii. 2; Zeller, p. 11). On the other hand, Epictêtus, lecturing towards the end of the first century, alludes to Scepticism as something then living and active. The natural inference is that Aenesidêmus flourished before his time and after Seneca, that is about the period mentioned in the text; and we cannot make out that there are any satisfactory data pointing to a different conclusion.
[292] Zeller, III., b, p. 18.
[293] Zeller, III., a, pp. 495 and 514; Cic., Acad., I., xii., 45; ibid., II., ix., 28.
[294] With all deference to so great a scholar as Zeller, it seems to us that he has misinterpreted a passage in which Sextus Empiricus observes that a particular argument of his own against the possibility of reaching truth either by sense or by reason, is virtually (δυνάμει) contained in the difficulties raised by Aenesidêmus (Adv. Math., VIII., 40). Zeller (op. cit., III., b, p. 20, note 5) translates δυνάμει, ‘dem Sinne nach,’ ‘in substance,’ a meaning which it will hardly bear. What Sextus says is that the untrustworthiness of reason follows on the untrustworthiness of sense, for the notions supplied by the latter must either be common to all the senses—which is impossible, owing to their specialised character—or limited to some, and therefore equally liable with them to dispute and contradiction. Moreover, he argues, rational notions (τά νοητά) cannot all be true, as they conflict both with each other and with sensation. And the reference to Aenesidêmus means simply that this kind of argument amounts to a further extension of his attack on the credibility of the senses; it does not imply that Aenesidêmus had ever attacked reason himself. The whole passage is quite in the usual style of exhaustive alternation followed by Sextus, and its extreme awkwardness seems to show that he is forcing his arguments into parallelism with those of his predecessor. It is possible also that the different members of the argument have been transposed; for the part connecting reason with sense (44) ought logically to stand last, and that relating to the discrepancy of different notions with one another (45-7), second. Cf. Adv. Math., VII., 350, where Aenesidêmus is said to have identified the understanding with the senses, quite in the style of Protagoras and quite unlike the New Academy.