[85] This line is from the Inachus of Sophocles (one of his lost plays).
[86] Homer, Iliad II. 484.
[87] This line is from the Citharista of Menander.
[88] It would appear that there is a considerable hiatus here; for the instance following is a sorites, and not a specimen of the veiled argument. And there is no instance given of the concealed, or of the horned one. Still, the mere fact of the text being unintelligible, is far from proving that we have not got it as Diogenes wrote it; as though in the language of the writer in Smith’s Biographical Dictionary, vol. i. pp. 1022, 1023, “the work contains a rich store of living features, which serve to illustrate the private life of the Greeks,” it is equally clear that the author “was unequal to writing a history of Greek philosophy. His work in reality is nothing but a compilation of the most heterogeneous and often contradictory accounts.… The traces of carelessness and mistakes are very numerous; much in the work is confused, and there is also much that is quite absurd. And as far as philosophy itself is concerned, Diogenes very frequently did not know what he was talking about when he abridged the theories of the philosophers.”
[89] The third point of view is wanting; and those that are given appear to be ill selected. The French translator, following the hint of Huebner, gives the following passage from Sextus Empiricus (a physician of the Sceptic school, about B.C. 250), in his work against the Philosophers, which he says may serve to rectify and complete the statement of Diogenes Laërtius. “Good is said in one sense of that which produces the useful, or from which the useful results; that is, the good par excellence, virtue. For virtue is as it were the source from which all utility naturally flows. In another sense it is said of that which is accidentally the cause of utility; under this point of view we call good not only virtue, but also those actions which are conformable to virtue, for they are accidentally useful. In the third and last place, we call good everything that possibly can be useful, comprehending under this definition virtue, virtuous actions, friends, good men, the Gods, &c., &c.”
[90] Hom. Il. I. 81. Pope’s Version, l. 105.
[91] It is hardly necessary to remark that Ἀθηνᾶ is the name of Minerva, not of Jupiter; Ἥρα, of Juno; Ἥφαιστος, of Vulcan; Ποσειδῶν, of Neptune, and Δημήτηρ, of Ceres. Ἥφαιστος is properly derived from φαίνω, to shine; Ποσειδῶν has some affinity with πόω, to drink. Δημήτηρ is only a dialectic variation of Τῆ μητὴρ.
[92] There is a hiatus in the text here. Casaubon supplies the meaning by a reference to Plutarch’s Treatise on the opinions of the Philosophers, iii. 7, “that the winds are a flowing of the air, and that they have various names with reference to the countries from which they flow.”
[93] Something is evidently wanting here; probably some mention of an earthquake.
[94] This is similar to Virgil’s description.