M. Terentius Varro, the most learned and most voluminous of Roman writers was born B. C. 116. He took an active part in public affairs and served under Pompeius in the Civil War. After the battle of Pharsalia he submitted to Cæsar, who employed him to superintend the collection and arrangement of books for a public library. He escaped from the proscription under the second triumvirate, and continued his literary labours without interruption till his death in B.C. 28. In philosophy he followed his master, Antiochus, with perhaps even a more decided leaning to Stoicism. Thus he holds that that which distinguishes the different schools is their view as to the Summum Bonum, on which he reckoned up 288 possible theories. He himself makes it consist in virtue combined with the prima naturae, which he identifies with the lower 'goods' (external and corporeal) of the Peripatetics. Probability is not sufficient for the guidance of life: a man cannot act resolutely unless he has full conviction. His religious opinions have been already referred to: the supreme God is the soul of the world, whose varied manifestations constitute the deities of the common worship, some belong to the higher spheres, others, such as the heroes and demigods, to the sublunary sphere: in man the Divine Spirit manifests himself as the genius or soul, which Varro identified with the warm breath which pervades and vivifies the body.

Another contemporary of Cicero is of interest to us as the first sign of a revival which was to be of increasing importance in the following age, I mean Nigidius Figulus, the restorer of the extinct philosophy of Pytha

1

goras'. With him we may connect the short-lived school of the Sextii, in which Seneca received his philosophical training. The founder Q. Sextius was born B. C. 70. He combined certain Pythagorean elements with Stoicism. Thus he held that the soul was incorporeal, and urged on his pupils abstinence from meat, and the practice of daily self-examination. He spoke of man's life as a continuous struggle against folly, and said that constant vigilance is needed if we would contend victoriously against the foes by whom we are surrounded. A saying of his disciple Fabianus may be noted here as prophetic of the new spirit of the coming age: 'Reason is not sufficient to overcome passion: we must take to us the power of a noble enthusiasm2.'

1 So Cicero calls him in the introduction to his translation of the Timaeus, sic judico post illos nobiles Pythagoreos, quorum disciplina extincta est quodammodo, hunc exstitisse qui illam renovaret.

2 See passages cited in R. and P. §§ 469–472, and Zeller P. 680 foll. The last quotation is from Seneca De Brevit. x. contra affectus impetu, non subtilitate pugnandum, nec minutis vulneribus, sed incursu avertendam aciem.

We have thus reached the limit which I proposed for my sketch of Ancient Philosophy. We have watched the growth of philosophy from the small seed, possibly a single Homeric line', dropped in the fruitful soil of Miletus, to the mighty tree overshadowing the earth, whose branches we distinguish by such names as Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and Zeno. We have seen it throwing out offshoots in the shape of the various sciences, arithmetic, geometry, mechanics, astronomy, grammar, rhetoric, logic, and even zoology and botany. We have seen it withdrawing more and more from those vague speculations on the nature and origin of the universe, which first attracted the dawning intelligence of Greece, and concentrating its energies on the nature, the duty and the destiny of man. We have seen how it revolutionized men's thoughts in regard to religion, how, as early as the 6th century B. C., it had risen to the conception of One eternal all-wise and all-righteous God, how it gradually came to see in Him the object, not of fear alone, but of reverence and trust and love; how sternly it denounced the follies and impurities of paganism, and taught men that the only acceptable worship was that

1 ll. XIV. 201.

2 See above on Xenophanes, p. 14.

which was offered in a spirit of purity and truth'. As to men's relations towards each other, we have seen the change from the old narrowing and dividing principle 'thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy,' to the recognition of the brotherhood which unites together all nations and all conditions of men, all alike sharing in one common humanity and being members of that great body of which God Himself is the head and which includes within it all rational existences whatsoever, whether human, angelic or divine". We have seen too how the human consciousness was deepened and elevated as well as widened by philosophy. Instead of the old superficial conception of truth as that which is commonly believed, the investigation of the grounds of belief led many to doubt altogether of the possibility of the attainment of truth, and convinced all of their need of further light to dispel the shadows which obscured the subjects of highest and deepest interest. Happiness was no longer the simple indulgence of the natural impulses. The schools which began with the loudest profession of eudaemonism ended by acknowledging that the misfortune of the wise was better than the prosperity of the fool, that if happiness was to be attained by man, it could only be through imperturbability and self-mastery, which would enable him to conquer pain and force pleasure out of whatever circumstances; while we find

1 Cic. N. D. II. 71 cultus autem deorum est optimus idemque castissimus atque sanctissimus plenissimusque pietatis, ut eos semper pura integra incorrupta et mente et voce veneremur.

2 See above, p. 159 and compare Cic. Fin. III. 64.

* Diog. L. X. 135 κρεῖττον εὐλογίστως ἀτυχεῖν ἢ ἀλογίστως εὐτυχεῖν.

writers of other schools maintaining that happiness is merely the accompaniment of virtuous energy, and can never be regarded as in itself constituting the end of action, or repudiating it altogether as something unworthy of our attention and likely to distract us from the one thing needful, or in fine despairing of its attainment in a world like this. Thus the life beyond the grave, that shadowy realm to which the Homeric Achilles preferred the meanest lot on earth, became to Plato and his followers the only real existence; death was the enfranchisement from the prison of the body', the harbour of rest from the storms of life, the re-union of long-parted friends, 'the admission into the society of the wise and good of former ages, the attainment of that perfect goodness and wisdom and beauty, which had been the yearning of the embodied spirit during the weary years of its mortal pilgrimage. So also in regard to virtue. This was no longer limited to the performing well the duties of a citizen, obeying the laws of the State and fighting its battles. It was the inner righteousness of the soul, the fixed habit of subordinating the individual

1 Cic. Tusc. I. 118 'if we are called to depart from this life,' laeti et agentes gratias pareamus emittique nos e custodia et levari vinclis arbitremur, ut in aeternam et plane in nostram domum remigremus; Somn. Scip. 14, 25.

2 Tusc. I. 118 profecto fuit quaedam vis quae generi consuleret humano, nec id gigneret aut aleret, quod, cum exanclavisset omnes labores, tum incideret in mortis malum sempiternum: portum potius paratum nobis et perfugium putemus.

3 Cic. Cato 84 O praeclarum diem cum in illud divinum animorum concilium proficiscar, foll., Plato Phaedo 63.

4 Plat. Phaed. 67 πολλὴ ἂν ἀλογία εἴη, εἰ μὴ ἀσμένοι ἐκεῖσε ἴοιεν, οἱ ἀφικομένοις ἐλπίς ἐστιν οὗ διὰ βίου ἤρων τυχεῖν.