[159] An old Latin poet, commended by Quintilian for the gravity of his sense and his loftiness of style.
[160] The shepherd is here supposed to take the stem or beak of the ship for the mouth, from which the roaring voices of the sailors came. Rostrum is here a lucky word to put in the mouth of one who never saw a ship before, as it is used for the beak of a bird, the snout of a beast or fish, and for the stem of a ship.
[161] The Epicureans.
[162] Greek, ἀὴρ; Latin, aer.
[163] The treatise of Aristotle, from whence this is taken, is lost.
[164] To the universe the Stoics certainly annexed the idea of a limited space, otherwise they could not have talked of a middle; for there can be no middle but of a limited space: infinite space can have no middle, there being infinite extension from every part.
[165] These two contrary reversions are from the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. They are the extreme bounds of the sun’s course. The reader must observe that the astronomical parts of this book are introduced by the Stoic as proofs of design and reason in the universe; and, notwithstanding the errors in his planetary system, his intent is well answered, because all he means is that the regular motions of the heavenly bodies, and their dependencies, are demonstrations of a divine mind. The inference proposed to be drawn from his astronomical observations is as just as if his system was in every part unexceptionably right: the same may be said of his anatomical observations.
[166] In the zodiac.
[167] Ibid.
[168] These verses of Cicero are a translation from a Greek poem of Aratus, called the Phænomena.