M. C. 10

146 BOOK I CH. XIX § 49.
pare also the very similar language used of perception and images gene- rally, Diog. L. x 48 fevdous dd rév coparay Tod éemimoAns ovvexns TrpBaiver ovK exidndos aiaOnoet Sid THY avravarAnpwow, Lucr. Iv 26 foll. esp. 87 ‘out- lines of shapes flit about so exquisitely fine as each by itself to be invisible’, 104, 256 ‘the things themselves are seen, though the images which strike the eye are invisible ’, 190 ‘the images succeed one another like the rays of light’, suppeditatur enim confestim lumine lumen, 714 (accounting for the movements of shapes seen in dreams) ‘so great is the velocity, so great the supply of things’, tantaque sensibili quovis est tempore in uno | copia parti- cularum ut possit suppeditare; and see the passages quoted from Philodemus under docet eam esse vin. From these it would appear that the phrase must mean ‘when the images have become perceptible through their mutual similarity and their uninterrupted succession’, Any one image would be too fine to attract the attention, but the repetition of similar images ever streaming onwards, produces on the mind the impression of one unchanging object. A familiar illustration would be the rainbow, or the wheel of fire produced by rapidly whirling round a burning stick. I agree with Hirzel in rejecting Sch.’s explanation of simlitudo as referring to the likeness between the images end the mind on which they impinge ; on the other hand transitio, lit. ‘the passing before the eyes’ (as in Ovid Léem. Am. 615 multaque corporibus transitione nocent) appears to me to be a translation of the Gr. dopa, not (as Hirzel takes it) of dvravarAnpwors which is rather suppe- ditatio. There is a slight inaccuracy here in the use of trans., it is applied as though by an ab extra spectator to a stream of images, not passing before, but coming full into the eyes or the mind.
cum infinita—affluat. Hirzel andC. F. Miiller have adopted Brieger’s emendation series, which certainly reads more easily with infinita. On the other hand species is the technical term to denote the mental impression produced by the imagines (cf. § 107 fac imagines esse...species dumtaxat objicitur; Div. 11137 nulla species cogitart potest nist pulsu imaginum; Fat. 43 visum objectum imprimit et quasi signat in animo suam speciem) so that I should have been inclined to keep the old reading, translating ‘ there rises up a never-ending impression of exactly similar images produced from countless atoms’, were it not for the following afluat, which is very suitably used of the series imaginum flowing in upon the mind (cf. Div. l. ¢.), but less suitably of the species which springs up within the mind itself as a result of the inflowing dmagines. Still we have fluentiwm visionum § 109 where see n.
ex individuis: so § 110 effigies ex individuis corporibus oritur. The images were composed either of the surface atoms of the orepéunov (Lucr. Iv 67 praesertim cum sint in summis corpora rebus | multa minuta jact quae possint ordine eodem | quo fuerint et format servare figuram) or of loose atoms floating about in the air (Lucr. 1v 129 foll.). Zeller (Eng. tr. p. 443) strangely translates ‘pictures emanating from innumerable divine indi- viduals’ (géttlichen Individuen in the original).