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82 Heautontim., v. 2, 18. This advice is given to a young man, who, not knowing the value of life, is prepared rashly to throw it away in consequence of some check to his plans.
83 Pythagoras taught the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and affirmed that he had lived already as Euphorbus, one of the heroes of Troy, who was slain by Menelaus in the Trojan war. Lactantius again refers to this subject, book vii. ch. 23, infra.
84 This passage is not contained in Cicero's treatise on the Laws, but the substance of it is in the Tusculan Questions.
85 See Dan. xii.; Matt. iii., xiii., xxv.; John xii.
86 [See vol. iii. p. 231, and same treatise sparsim.]
87 Silenus was the constant companion of Dionysus. He was regarded as an inspired prophet, who knew all the past and the most distant future, and as a sage who despised all the gifts of fortune.
88 The Greeks included all nations, except themselves, under the general name of barbarians.
89 In transversum, "crosswise or transversely."
90 Lactantius here uses cor, "the heart," for wisdom, regarding the heart as the seat of wisdom.
91 The allusion is to the upright figure of man, as opposed to the other animals, which look down upon the earth, whereas man looks upward. [Our author is partial to this idea. See p. 41, supra.]
92 This oath is mentioned by Athenaeus. Tertullian makes an excuse for it, as though it were done in mockery of the gods. Socrates was called the Athenian buffoon, because he taught many things in a jesting manner.
93 To be distinguished from Zeno of Citium, the Stoic, and also from Zeno of Elea.
94 The Stoics not only regarded accidental things, but also our bodies themselves, as being without us.
95 Justice comprises within herself all the virtues. And thus Aristotle calls her the mother of the other virtues, because she cherishes as it were in her bosom all the rest.
96 [This caustic review of Plato is painfully just. Alas! that such opprobria should be incapable of reply.]
97 That is, philosophers of less repute and fame.
98 Cicero speaks of Tuditanus as scattering money from the rostrum among the people.
99 [Anacreon, Ode 2. toi=j a!dra/sin fro/nhma.]
100 Animals of a solitary nature, as opposed to those of gregarious habits.
101 [He was nearer truth than he imagined, if the planet Mars may be called below us.]
103 He alludes to the hanging gardens of Semiramis at Babylon.
104 [World here means universe. See vol. ii. p. 136, note 2.]
106 A long beard and cloak were the badges of the philosophers. [See vol. ii. p. 321, note 9.]
107 [Platonic philosophy being addressed to the mind, and the Epicurean to lusts and passions.]
108 Themiste is said to have been the wife of Leontius; Epicurus is reported to have written to her. Themistoclea, the sister of Pythagoras, is mentioned as a student of philosophy; besides many other women in different ages.
109 Plato dedicated to Phaedo his treatise on the immortality of the soul: according to other accounts, Phaedo was ransomed by Crito or Alcibiades at the suggestion of Socrates.
111 Perillus invented the brazen bull, which the tyrant Phalaris used as an instrument of torture. It was so constructed that the groans of the victims appeared to resemble the bellowing of the bull.
112 The baptismal font. [i.e., as signifying Zech. xiii. 1.]
114 A shadow; outline, or resemblance.
116 Thus St. Paul, Col. iii. 2, exhorts us to set our affections on things above, not on things of the earth.
117 [Quod si Deum naturam vocant quae perversitas est naturam potius quam Deum nominare. Observe this terse maxim of our author. It rebukes the teachers and scientists of our day, who seem afraid to "look through nature up to nature's God," in their barren instruction. They go back to Lucretius, and call it progress!]
118 To raise or stretch out the hand was an acknowledgment of defeat.
119 [See p. 91, note 3, supra, and sparsim in this work.]
120 Literally, "their accounts did not square."
121 Afficit, "presses and harasses." Another reading is affligit, "casts to the ground."
122 Cicero, De Offic., ii. 6. The expressions are borrowed from the figure of a ship at sea.