BOOK I CH vill § 18. 87

caeli desertus, sine animali, sine homine, sine re, ruinas mundorum supra se circaque se cadentium evitat, non exaudiens vota, non nostri curiosus. It is to these Lucretius alludes 111 18 apparet divuwm numen sedesque quietae, -V 147 dlud item non est ut possis credere, sedes | esse deum sanctas in mundi partibus ullis.| Tenuis enim natura deum longeque remota | sensibus ab nostris animt viz mente videtur, where see Munro.
futtiles (fundo yéw): ‘baseless’, without solidity or substance; hence effutio ‘to babble’, § 84; 11 94, see Vanitek ELtym. Wort., Roby § 878.
commenticias: ‘imaginary’ from comminiscor (mens) ‘to invent’, cf. JV. D. 11 5, 59, 70,. 111 63.
opifex: a less dignified word than artifex by which C. (Zim. 2) translates the Platonic Syyrovpyos. Ambrose (Hex. 1 1) states plainly the difference between the Christian and Platonic ideas of creation. Plato held dewm non tanguam creatorem materiae sed tanquam artificem ad exemplar fecisse mundum de materia, thus assuming three First Principles, God, Matter, the Ideas, instead of one. [There is the same contemptuous use of opifex Ac. 11 144 and in the well-known description of Zeno as zgnobilis verborum opifex. J.S. R.]
de Timaeo. Heind. following Walker, reads in for de as in Tuse. 1 63. Sch. understands 7%maeo of the Locrian philosopher who is said to have in- structed Plato in the tenets of Pythagoras (Cic. Rep.1 16). But the particular doctrine here referred to is not especially Pythagorean: we find it attributed to Socrates by Xenophon (Mem. 1 47) mavy gouxe tadra codpod twos Snpsovp- you kai pirodov texyjpart. And there is no objection to taking de simply as a reference to the Platonic dialogue, cf. Tuse. 11 53 hi poterant omnes ula de Andromacha deplorare, ‘haec omnia vidi’ (those lines from the Andro- mache), Off. 111 82 in ore semper Graecos versus de Phoenissis habebat, Rep.130 in ore semper erant illa de Iphigenia, Leg. 1 1 de Mario with Dumesnil’s n.
anus fatidica=xpnoporoyos ypais, Plut. de Nob. c. 13 (with an allusion to the Stoic belief in divination, cf. Div. 11 19 anile fati nomen ipsum); else- where sneered at as ¢umovea 7 mown dditnpiwdns Kat tpaytxn, Plut. Mor. 1101 p. Balbus in his reply (11 73) explains that mwpdvoa is not a person but an attribute of the Deity. C. sometimes translates it by prudentia, NV. D. 11 58, Ac. 1 29 Reid.
neque vero: ‘no, nor yet the world itself’, see Madv. Fn. 1 25.
mundum—praeditum : a doctrine common to both Plato and the Stoics, cf. Tim. 30 B, det Néyew rovde Tov Kdopov gov Euyruxov Evvouy Te TH adnOeia Sia THY Tod Oeod yevéoOat mpovoray.
rotundum. See 7%m. 33 B and, for the Stoics, VY. D. 11 46, 47, where reference is made to this passage.
ardentem. This was not Platonic, but pcs from Heraclitus by the Stoics, see II 23 n.
volubilem. According to the general belief of antiquity it was the heaven that revolved, the earth being fixed in the centre. For exceptions to this belief cf. Ac. 11 123 and n. on celeritate § 24.
88 BOOK I CH. Vill § 18,
portenta : ‘chimeras’ ‘monstrosities’ V. D. 1 43, m1 91, Ad. x1v 21, Ae. 11 123. So monstra N. D.128, Att. Iv 7, 1x 11, Plato Hipp. Ma. 283 c, répas héyers kat Oavpaorov. [For miracula cf. Timon in Athenaeus x1 113 os dvérdarre UAdtov renAacpeva Oavpata eidws : for somniantium Ac. 11 121 with myn. J.S. R.]
$19. quibus enim oculis. The reading animi after oculis is doubt- less a gloss intended to be an answer to the question in the text; Sch., who retains it, translates ‘mit was fiir Geistesaugen’, but such a guarded complex phrase would be inconsistent with the form of the question, guibus implying, like the Gr. motos, a palpable absurdity. It could only have been used if an objector in reply to the simple question ‘with what eyes could he have seen it?’ had already answered ‘the eyes of the mind’. Then the latter phrase might have been attacked as itself in- congruous, molows Wuxis dupacw; but Vell. is made far too simple-minded to guard himself beforehand against any such answer. On the correctness of the phrase ocul’s animi instead of oc. mentis, see Sch. and Heidtmann p- 31, Klotz Adn. Cr. 11 3, Wytt. on Plut. Num. Vind. p. 94. In Sep. 156 we read that the Stoics tanguam oculis illa viderunt, quae nos vin audiendo cognoscimus.
vester Plato: addressed not only to the Academics C. and Cotta, but to Balbus the Stoic, who speaks of Plato as deus philosophorum, i 32.
fabricam tanti operis qua construi mundum facit: ‘the construc- tion of so vast a work, I mean the putting together and building up of the world in the ways which he describes’. The relative clause serves rather awkwardly to explain what is meant by tanti operis. The construction fabrica qua construitur, instead of f. construendi, may be illustrated by the sentence in which Vitruvius defines the term (11), /ubrica est continuata et trita usu meditatio, qua manibus perficitur e materia unius cujusque generis opus, et ad propositum deformationis. The word fabrica is used in the WV. D. (a) for the workshop or forge (111 55), Vuleanus Lemni fubricae traditur praefuisse; (b) for the working or art itself, 11 150 the fingers are useful ad omnem fabricam aeris et ferri ‘for every kind of working in iron or brass’, 11 35 ut pictura et fabrica ceteraeque artes habent quendam abso- luti operis effectum ‘as in painting and architecture we look to the general effect’, (so more generally 11 138 dneredibilis fabrica naturae and Div. 1 116 fabrica consectionis ‘the art of cleaving wood’, used much as it is here); (c) for the completed work, 11 121 subtilis discriptio partium, admirabilis fubrica membrorum ‘structure’. In this passage it has a sneering force (like H. Spencer’s ‘carpenter-theory of creation’ First Principles p. 120) as in §53 natura effectum esse mundum, nihil opus fuisse fabrica, and Ac. 87 Qualis ista fabricu? ubi adhibita? quando? cur? quo modo? ef. n. on § 4 fabricati. If the elaborate constructive processes of the 7¢maeus had been meant to be taken literally, the Epicureans would have had some ground for objecting to their anthropomorphic character, but there can be little doubt that they are figurative like the myths in the Gorgias and