[121] This, in the original, is a fragment of an old Latin verse,
——Terram fumare calentem.
[122] The Latin word is principatus, which exactly corresponds with the Greek word here used by Cicero; by which is to be understood the superior, the most prevailing excellence in every kind and species of things through the universe.
[123] The passage of Aristotle to which Cicero here refers is lost.
[124] He means the Epicureans.
[125] Here the Stoic speaks too plain to be misunderstood. His world, his mundus, is the universe, and that universe is his great Deity, in quo sit totius naturæ principatus, in which the superior excellence of universal nature consists.
[126] Athens, the seat of learning and politeness, of which Balbus will not allow Epicurus to be worthy.
[127] This is Pythagoras’s doctrine, as appears in Diogenes Laertius.
[128] He here alludes to mathematical and geometrical instruments.
[129] Balbus here speaks of the fixed stars, and of the motions of the orbs of the planets. He here alludes, says M. Bonhier, to the different and diurnal motions of these stars; one sort from east to west, the other from one tropic to the other: and this is the construction which our learned and great geometrician and astronomer, Dr. Halley, made of this passage.