[239] Chrysippus’s meaning is, that the swine is so inactive and slothful a beast that life seems to be of no use to it but to keep it from putrefaction, as salt keeps dead flesh.
[240] Ales, in the general signification, is any large bird; and oscinis is any singing bird. But they here mean those birds which are used in augury: alites are the birds whose flight was observed by the augurs, and oscines the birds from whose voices they augured.
[241] As the Academics doubted everything, it was indifferent to them which side of a question they took.
[242] The keepers and interpreters of the Sibylline oracles were the Quindecimviri.
[243] The popular name of Jupiter in Rome, being looked upon as defender of the Capitol (in which he was placed), and stayer of the State.
[244] Some passages of the original are here wanting. Cotta continues speaking against the doctrine of the Stoics.
[245] The word sortes is often used for the answers of the oracles, or, rather, for the rolls in which the answers were written.
[246] Three of this eminent family sacrificed themselves for their country; the father in the Latin war, the son in the Tuscan war, and the grandson in the war with Pyrrhus.
[247] The Straits of Gibraltar.
[248] The common reading is, ex quo anima dicitur; but Dr. Davis and M. Bouhier prefer animal, though they keep anima in the text, because our author says elsewhere, animum ex anima dictum, Tusc. I. 1. Cicero is not here to be accused of contradictions, for we are to consider that he speaks in the characters of other persons; but there appears to be nothing in these two passages irreconcilable, and probably anima is the right word here.