BOOK I CH. XxxI § 86. 191

Oapros ayabdy tapovtay, pyre twa Svotvxotaw drootpopyy mpos Td Oeiov arodeirer Oa.
fana compilant: for the robbing of temples cf. 11 83 and above §§ 63 and 82.
credo: ironical.
religionis: it seems better to take this as an objective Gen. like mortis; the sacrilegious do not fear the religionem templi any more than robbers fear death, cf. Fin. 1 64 quoted above. eligiones, the reading of most Mss defended by Klotz (Adn. Crit. u 11), would be rather awkward after the Sing.
§ 87. cum ipso Epicuro loquar: see § 67 n.
in deorum numero ponere: for const. see §29n. Numero is Walker's corr. for natura of mss [written n@ in U and therefore easily confounded with né. J.S. R.].
numquam vidi—figura: see § 48 and § 76.
quid ? solis—vidisti? C. has made a mess of his argument. Ep. says ‘I do not believe in the existence of reason apart from human shape, for I have no experience of it’. The answer is ‘You have never seen any thing like the sun and stars moving in regular order, therefore you must disbelieve their existence’. Of course the cases are entirely unlike: in the latter case the senses, which (acc. to Ep.) always tell truth, assert the existence of the sun; in the former they assert nothing, and we have to proceed by general reasoning from analogy. What C. was really aiming at may be gathered from the remarkable treatise of Philodemus, mepi onpei@y nal onperooewr, where we find it stated (p. 37 Gomp.) that ‘the opponents of Epic., in arguing that there may be unique existences in the unseen world, are employing the Epicurean argument from analogy’, and (in p. 19) that ‘Epicureans allow that 7Auos eis éorw ev TO Koop Kal oeAjvyn Kal wAHOos aXov vrdpxov idiornrey (e.g. the magnet as contrasted with other stones), but they hold that when certain properties have been found constantly united, where one exists the other will exist, undévos dvOédxovtos’. The anti-Epicurean argument therefore must evidently have been of this nature, ‘there may be rational beings without human shape, though our experience presents no parallel, for many things in our experience are un- paralleled, and, on this principle, would have been incredible prior to experience’.
quinque errantium: so Milton speaks of ‘five other wandering fires’, viz. Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, see V. D. 1 § 52 foll.
sol duabus—conficit : ‘the sun completes his annual revolutions, con- fining his motion within the limits of the ecliptic at either solstice’ (lit. ‘by the two extreme points of one circle’), cf. 11 49, 50, 101 foll.
hanc: ‘under similar limitations’; see 11 50 an dunae quoque cursu est et brumae quaedam et solstitit similitudo.
lustrationem : cf. the use of Justro in 11 53, 106.
192 BOOK I CH. XXxI § 87.
a terris: the plural is unusual in this sense, though in Agr. 1 62 we find zn terris, meaning ‘the whole world’.
ab isdem principiis: ‘starting from the same point they finish their course in longer or shorter time’. For the Pl. ef. Orat. 1121 exalbescam in principits dicendi.
numne: found also in Lael. 36, where see Seyffert.
§ 88. ergo: ‘on this principle of experience we must disbelieve every- thing unusual in history or science’.
ita fit: ‘it follows from this’, cf. §§ 37, 121.
mediterranei: Verr. v 70 homines mediterranei are opposed to homines maritimt just before.
quae sunt tantae animi angustiae: ‘what an excess of narrow- mindedness is this’! cf. § 90 quis iste tantus casus? and Virg. Geo. IV 495 quis tantus furor? Heind. following Davies and Walker took quae as the relative and joined these words to the following sentence, but the exclamation is more Ciceronian here, and the connexion tantae ut putares would be very harsh, especiaily coming after the comparison as to the mediterranet,
ut—non crederes: ‘in like manner (/7t. just as), supposing you had been born in Seriphus and had never seen any animal larger than a fox, you would never have believed in the existence of lions’. Sch. compares II 86 ut, si gui dentes natura dicet existere, Div. I 86 ut, si magnetem lapidem esse dicam, and refers to Madv. Fin. Iv 30 wt...st vita gucunda addatur, where other exx. are given.
Seriphi: one of the Cyclades, used as a place of banishment under the Empire, proverbial for its insignificance and the borné tone of its inhabi- tants, cf. Mayor on Juv. x 170, Ael. H. A. ut 37, Plato ep. I 329 (the famous story of Themistocles and the Seriphian, which is also given by C. Senect. § 8).
($ 97) an quicquam—vidimus. I have followed Bake (Mnemos. 1 4 p- 414) in transposing this passage, which comes in very inappropriately where it is placed in the Mss, separating two sentences which clearly belong to each other, and having itself no proper connexion with what precedes ; while here, on the contrary, it serves to round off what was previously abrupt, and makes an easier transition to the new topic introduced in et tu quidem Vellei. Connecting it thus I understand an to refer to quae sunt angustiae ? ‘(is it not narrow-mindedness) or (still to press the same point) can we imagine anything more childish than to deny the existence of the animals which inhabit the Red Sea’? an implying ‘the needlessness of the preceding remark’, Roby § 2255.
quae gignantur: there is no occasion for reading the Ind. with Sch., or for any elaborate explanation, such as Miiller gives Adn. Crit. p. vi: the Subj. is that which naturally belongs to a subordinate relative clause in Orat. Obl. For nulla esse cf. § 61.