“Ispa autem macie tenuant armenta volentes,
Atque, ubi concubitus primos jam nota voluptas
Sollicitat, frondesque negant, et fontibus arcent.
Sæpe etiam cursu quatiunt et sole fatigunt;
Hoc faciunt nimio ne luxu obtusior usus
Sit genitali arvo, et sulcos oblimet inertes;
Sed rapiat sitiens venerem, interiusque recondat.”
Georg., iii., 136.
[445] On the nature of this affection see the Argument. There is a variety in the reading, most of the MSS. having ἀνανδριείς, but the one usually marked 2146, which is followed in the Aldine edition, reading ἀνδριεῖς. See a long discussion in Coray’s edition on this point. There seems to be no good reason for at all interfering with the text as it now stands.
[446] Our author in this place, as in the treatise on the Sacred Disease, holds the philosophical opinion in opposition to the superstitious, that all diseases have natural causes, and that no one more than another is to be ascribed to the extraordinary interference of supernatural beings. Plato, his contemporary, would appear to have endeavored to steer a sort of middle course between the scientific and the popular belief. Thus he ascribes epilepsy, like all other diseases, to a natural cause, namely, in this instance, to a redundancy of black bile; but he qualifies this opinion by calling the passages of the brain (the ventricles?) most divine, and adds that the disease had been most appropriately denominated sacred. (Timæus, § 66.)