2. The word concinere occurs D.F.
IV. 60, N.D. I. 16, in both which places it
is used of the Stoics, who are said re concinere,
verbis discrepare with the other schools.
This opinion of Antiochus Cic. had already mentioned
43, and probably repeated in this fragment. Krische
remarks that Augustine, Cont. Acad. II.
14, 15, seems to have imitated that part of Cicero’s
exposition to which this fragment belongs. If
so Cic. must have condemned the unwarrantable verbal
innovations of Zeno in order to excuse the extreme
scepticism of Arcesilas (Krische, p. 58).
3. This fragm. clearly forms part of those anticipatory
sceptical arguments which Cic. in the first edition
had included in his answer to Hortensius, see Introd.
p. 55. The argument probably ran thus: What
seems so level as the sea? Yet it is easy to
prove that it is really not level.
4. On this I have nothing to remark.
5. There is nothing distinctive about this which
might enable us to determine its connection with the
dialogue. Probably Zeno is the person who serius
adamavit honores.
6. The changing aspects of the same thing are
pointed to here as invalidating the evidence of the
senses.
7. This passage has the same aim as the last
and closely resembles Lucullus 105.
8. The fact that the eye and hand need such guides
shows how untrustworthy the senses are. A similar
argument occurs in Luc. 86. Perpendiculum
is a plumb line, norma a mason’s square,
the word being probably a corruption of the Greek
[Greek: gnomon] (Curt. Grundz p. 169, ed.
3), regula, a rule.
9. The different colours which the same persons
show in different conditions, when young and when
old, when sick and when healthy, when sober and when
drunken, are brought forward to prove how little of
permanence there is even in the least fleeting of
the objects of sense.
10. Urinari is to dive; for the derivation
see Curt. Grundz p. 326. A diver would
be in exactly the position of the fish noticed in Luc.
81, which are unable to see that which lies immediately
above them and so illustrate the narrow limits of
the power of vision.
11. Evidently an attempt to prove the sense of
smell untrustworthy. Different people pass different
judgments on one and the same odour. The student
will observe that the above extracts formed part of
an argument intended to show the deceptive character
of the senses. To these should probably be added
fragm. 32. Fr. 19 shows that the impossibility
of distinguishing eggs one from another, which had
been brought forward in the Catulus, was allowed
to stand in the second edition, other difficulties
of the kind, such as those connected with the bent
oar, the pigeon’s neck, the twins, the impressions
of seals (Luc. 19, 54), would also appear in
both editions. The result of these assaults on
the senses must have been summed up in the phrase
cuncta dubitanda esse which Augustine quotes
from the Academica Posteriora (see fragm. 36).
