Book 1

Not long ago, when our friend Atticus was with me at my place near Cumae, word came to us from Marcus Varro that he had arrived from Rome the evening before, and that, had he not been worn out by the journey, he would have come on to us at once. On hearing this we thought no delay should be allowed to keep us from seeing a man bound to us both by shared studies and by a long-standing friendship; and so we set out for him without delay. We were only a little way from his country house when we caught sight of him coming toward us; and embracing him, as is the custom among friends (for it had been a long enough interval …), we brought him back to his own house.

Here at first only a few words passed, while we asked whether there was perhaps any news from Rome. Then Atticus said: "Let those matters be, which we can neither inquire about nor hear of without distress, I beg you, and ask rather whether there is any news from the man himself. For the Muses of Varro have fallen silent longer than they used to, though I take it he is not idle but only concealing what he writes." "Not at all," Varro replied; "for I judge it the mark of a man without self-restraint to write what he wishes to keep hidden. But I have a great work in hand, which I began long ago; for it is to this very man here (and he meant me) that I have addressed certain things, works which are indeed substantial and are being polished by me with some care."

And I said: "These works of yours, Varro, I have long been waiting for, yet I do not venture to press you for them; for I have heard from our friend Libo, whose keenness you know (nor can we keep anything of this kind concealed), that you are not setting them aside but treating them with greater care and never letting them out of your hands. But this other matter it had never before now come into my mind to ask of you. Yet now, since I have set about committing to written record those subjects which I learned together with you, and illustrating in Latin letters that old philosophy which sprang from Socrates, I ask what the reason is that, while you write so much, you pass this kind of writing by, especially since you yourself excel in it, and since this study and the whole subject far surpasses all other studies and arts."

Then he said: "You ask of me a matter that I have often weighed and turned over at length. And so I will answer without hesitation, but will say what is ready to hand, since, as I said, I have thought about this very matter much and long. For when I saw that philosophy had been set forth with the greatest care in Greek letters, I judged that any of our countrymen who were gripped by a love of it would, if they were schooled in Greek learning, read the Greek works rather than ours, whereas, if they shrank from the arts and disciplines of the Greeks, they would not care even for these things, which cannot be understood without Greek education. And so I did not wish to write what the unlearned could not understand nor the learned care to read.

You yourself see the same things; for you have learned that we cannot be like Amafinius or Rabirius, who, with no art brought to bear, dispute about matters set before the eyes in everyday speech, define nothing, divide nothing, draw no conclusions by fitting question and answer, and in the end think there is no art either of speaking or of reasoning. We, on the other hand, obeying the precepts of the logicians and of the orators too—since our school holds each faculty to be a virtue—are compelled, as if by laws, to use even new words; and these the learned, as I said, will prefer to seek from the Greeks, while the unlearned will not accept them even from us, so that all the labour is undertaken in vain.

As for natural philosophy, if I approved of Epicurus, that is, of Democritus, I could write as plainly as Amafinius does. For what is great in it, once you have done away with the efficient causes of things, to speak of the chance collision of little bodies (for so he calls atoms)? Our natural philosophy you know; and since it is composed of an active force and of the matter which that force shapes and forms, geometry too must be brought in; and in what words could anyone set this forth, or whom could he lead to understand it? These very questions of life and conduct, and of what is to be sought and what avoided, those men treat simply, for they reckon that the good is the same for a beast and for a man; but among our school, you are not unaware how great and of what kind the subtlety is.

For whether you follow Zeno, it is a great task to bring anyone to understand what that true and simple good is which cannot be sundered from the honourable (a good of what kind it is Epicurus altogether denies he can so much as conceive without pleasures that stir the senses); or if we pursue the Old Academy, which, as you know, I approve, how acutely it will have to be expounded by us, how subtly, how darkly even we must dispute against the Stoics! That whole study of philosophy, then, I take to myself, both for steadfastness in life so far as I can and for the delight of the mind; nor do I think any gift was given by the gods to man greater or better than this, as is said in Plato.

But my friends in whom there is a zeal for it I send to Greece—that is, I bid them go to the Greeks—so that they may draw rather from the springs than chase after the little streams. Yet those things which no one had so far taught, and from which the eager could not learn, these, so far as I could (for I do not greatly admire anything of my own), I have brought about that they should be known to our countrymen; for they could not be sought from the Greeks, and after the death of our friend Lucius Aelius not even from the Latins. And yet in those old writings of mine, which, imitating Menippus and not translating him, I sprinkled with a certain gaiety, much is mixed in from the inmost part of philosophy, much is said in the manner of logic, and so that the less learned might more easily grasp it, they were invited to read by a certain pleasantness; and in the eulogies, and in those very prefaces to my Antiquities, it was in the manner of philosophy that I wished to write, if only I have succeeded."

Then I said: "These things are so, Varro. For while we were wandering and straying as strangers in our own city, your books, as it were, led us home, so that we could at last recognize who and where we were. You laid open the age of our country, the divisions of its eras; you, the laws of its sacred rites and of its priests; you, our discipline at home and in war; you, the seats of our regions and places; you, the names, kinds, functions, and causes of all things divine and human; and you have brought the greatest light both of letters and of words to our poets and to Latin literature altogether, and you yourself have made a poem varied and elegant in almost every kind; and in many places you have begun upon philosophy—enough to spur a man on, too little to teach him fully.

You bring forward, indeed, a plausible reason: that either the learned will prefer to read Greek, or that those who do not know Greek will not care for these works either. But you do not by any means make it convincing to me; rather, both those who cannot read the Greek works will read these, and those who can read Greek will not despise their own. For what reason is there why men schooled in Greek letters should read the Latin poets, yet not read the philosophers? Or is it because Ennius, Pacuvius, Accius, and many others give delight, men who expressed not the words but the force of the Greek poets—how much more will the philosophers delight us, if, as those poets imitated Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, so these were to imitate Plato, Aristotle, and Theophrastus! As for orators, I see they are praised, any of our men who have imitated Hyperides or Demosthenes.

But I, Varro—for I will speak as the matter stands—while ambition, while public offices, while law-cases, while not only concern for the commonwealth but a certain charge of it held me entangled and bound fast by many duties, kept these studies shut up in my mind and renewed them by reading when I could, lest they should fade away; but now, struck by the gravest wound of fortune and freed from the administration of the commonwealth, I seek from philosophy the cure for my grief, and I judge this the most honourable recreation of my leisure. For either this is most fitted to my time of life, or it is above all in keeping with whatever deeds I have done that are worthy of praise, or there is nothing more useful for the education of our citizens, or, if these things are not so, I see nothing else that I could do.

Our friend Brutus, indeed, outstanding in every kind of distinction, so pursues philosophy in Latin letters that on the same subjects you would miss nothing in Greek; and he follows the very same school as you, for he listened for some time at Athens to Aristus, whose brother Antiochus you heard. Wherefore, I beg you, give yourself to this kind of literature as well."

Then he said: "That I shall indeed consider, and not without you. But about you yourself—what is this that I hear?" "About what matter?" I asked. "That the Old Academy has been abandoned by you," he said, "and the New one is being handled." "Why then," I said, "should it have been more permissible for Antiochus, our intimate friend, to migrate back into the old house from the new, than for us to go into the new from the old? For surely it is always the most recent things that have been corrected and most amended. And yet Antiochus's master Philo—a great man, as you yourself reckon him—denied in his books, as we also used to hear from his own lips in person, that there were two Academies, and refuted the error of those who thought so." "It is as you say," he replied; "but I do not suppose you are unaware of what Antiochus wrote against Philo."

"Indeed I am not," I said, "and I should be glad if both that and the whole Old Academy, from which I have been absent so long, were renewed by you, if it is not troublesome; and at the same time let us sit down," I said, "if you think fit." "By all means," he said, "for I am quite weak. But let us see whether Atticus also is content that what I see you wish should be done by me." "For my part, yes," said he; "for what is there I should rather do than recall things long ago heard from Antiochus, and at the same time see whether they can be expressed fittingly enough in Latin?" When these words had been spoken, we all sat down within view of one another.

Then Varro began thus: "Socrates seems to me—and this is agreed among all—to have been the first to call philosophy away from things hidden and wrapped up by nature herself, with which all the philosophers before him had been occupied, and to have brought it down to common life, so that it should inquire about virtues and vices and about good and bad things in general, while he reckoned that the heavenly bodies either lay far from our knowledge, or, even if they were known to the fullest degree, contributed nothing to living well.

In nearly all his conversations—which have been written down by those who heard him, variously and copiously—he disputes in such a way that he affirms nothing himself but refutes others, says that he knows nothing except this very fact, and that he surpasses the rest in this, that they think they know what they do not know, while he alone knows this one thing, that he knows nothing; and that for this reason he reckoned he had been called by Apollo the wisest of all, since this was the one wisdom of man, not to think one knows what one does not know. And since he said this consistently and remained in this opinion, his whole discourse was spent only in praising virtue and in exhorting men to the pursuit of virtue, as can be understood from the books of the Socratics and chiefly of Plato.

By the authority of Plato, however, who was varied and many-sided and copious, one consistent form of philosophy was established under two names, that of the Academics and that of the Peripatetics, who, agreeing in substance, differed in their labels. For when Plato had left his sister's son Speusippus as, so to speak, the heir of his philosophy, but had also left two men of the most outstanding zeal and learning, Xenocrates of Chalcedon and Aristotle of Stagira, those who were with Aristotle were called Peripatetics, because they disputed while walking about in the Lyceum, whereas the others, because by Plato's institution they were accustomed to hold their gatherings and conversations in the Academy, which is another gymnasium, took their name from the name of the place. But both groups, filled with Plato's abundance, composed a certain fixed formula of doctrine, and that one full and crammed, while they abandoned the Socratic habit of disputing about all things doubtfully and with no affirmation brought to bear. Thus there arose—what Socrates least of all approved—a kind of art of philosophy, an ordering of subjects, and a systematic description of doctrine.

This, as I said, was at first one thing under two names; for there was no difference between the Peripatetics and that Old Academy. Aristotle excelled, as it seems to me at least, by a certain abundance of genius, but the source was the same for both, and the division of things to be sought and avoided was the same. But what am I doing," he said, "or am I in my right mind, in teaching you these things? For though it is not a sow teaching Minerva, as the saying goes, still whoever teaches Minerva does it ineptly." Then Atticus said: "But do go on, Varro; for I greatly love our own things and our own men, and these matters delight me when they are said in Latin and in that manner." "What of me," I said, "do you think, who have now professed that I will display philosophy to our people?"

"Let us go on, then," he said, "since it is agreed. There was therefore, already received from Plato, a threefold method of philosophizing: one concerning life and conduct, a second concerning nature and hidden things, a third concerning reasoning and judging what is true, what false, what right or wrong in speech, what consistent, what contradictory. And first, that part concerning living well they sought from nature, and they said one must obey her, and that the highest good, to which all things are referred, must be sought in nothing else than in nature; and they laid it down that the limit of things to be sought and the end of goods was to have attained all things in accordance with nature, in mind and body and life. As for the body, they held that some of its goods lay in the whole, others in the parts: health, strength, and beauty in the whole; in the parts, the senses intact and some excellence of the several parts—as swiftness in the feet, force in the hands, clearness in the voice, and in the tongue also a distinct shaping of sounds;

but as for the goods of the mind, those things which were fitted by natural endowments for grasping virtue, these were divided by them into nature and conduct. To nature they assigned swiftness in learning and memory, each of which belonged properly to the mind and to native talent; but of conduct they held the pursuits to be a part, and a kind of habit, which they formed partly by constant exercise, partly by reason; and among these was philosophy itself. In philosophy, that which is begun but not completed is called a certain progress toward virtue, while that which is completed—that is, virtue—is, as it were, the perfecting of nature, and of all the things they place in our minds the one best thing.

So these are the goods of the mind; but to life (for that was the third division) they said were attached the things that availed for the exercise of virtue. Now virtue is discerned in the goods of the mind and of the body, and in certain things that are attached not so much to nature as to the happy life. For they held that man was, as it were, a part of the city and of the whole human race, and that he was joined to other men by a certain human fellowship. And concerning the highest and natural good they argue thus; but the rest they think pertain to it, either for increasing it or for maintaining it—such as riches, resources, glory, and favour. Thus a threefold account of goods is introduced by them,

and these are those three kinds which most people think the Peripatetics speak of. That, indeed, is no falsehood, for this division is theirs; but it is unwise to think, if anyone supposes that those who were then called Academics were one set and the Peripatetics another. This account was common to both, and to both this seemed the end of goods: to attain the things that are first in nature, and those things which are to be sought for their own sake, either all of them or the greatest; and these greatest things are those that are concerned with the mind itself and with virtue itself. And so all that ancient philosophy held that the happy life lay in virtue alone, yet not the happiest unless there were joined to it also the goods of the body and the other things mentioned above as fitted for the exercise of virtue.

From this account a beginning of doing something in life, and of duty itself, was also discovered, which lay in the preservation of oneself and in the seeking of those things which nature prescribes. From this arose the flight from sloth and the contempt of pleasures, and from this the undertaking of many great labours and pains for the sake of the right and the honourable, and of those things which were in keeping with nature's prescription; whence both friendship arose, and justice and fairness, and these were set above both pleasures and many of life's advantages. This, then, was among them the framework of conduct, and the form and description of that part which I set down as the first.

Concerning nature, however (for that came next), they spoke in such a way as to divide it into two things: one was active, the other, as it were, offered itself to this and was acted upon, and something was produced by it. In that which acts they held there was force; in that which was acted upon, merely a certain matter; yet in each there was something of both: for neither could the matter itself have held together if it were not contained by some force, nor the force exist without some matter; for there is nothing that is not compelled to be somewhere. But that which is composed of both they now called body and, as it were, a certain quality—for you will surely grant that, in unfamiliar matters, as the Greeks themselves do, by whom these things have now long been handled, we may at times use words unheard of."

"Indeed we shall," said Atticus; "nay, you may even use Greek when you like, if perhaps the Latin fails you." "You do well; but I will strive to speak Latin, except in words of this sort, such as 'philosophy' or 'rhetoric' or 'physics' or 'dialectic,' which, like many others, custom now uses in place of Latin words. So I have called 'qualities' what the Greeks call poiotetes, which itself among the Greeks is not a word of the common crowd but of the philosophers; and this happens in many cases. As for the words of the logicians, none are public property: they use their own. And this, indeed, is common to nearly all the arts; for either new names must be made for new things, or they must be transferred from others. But if the Greeks do this, who have now for so many ages been engaged in these matters, how much more must it be granted to us, who are now attempting to handle these things for the first time."

"But you, Varro," I said, "seem to me likely to deserve well of your fellow citizens even further, if you enrich them not only with a store of things, as you have done, but also of words." "We shall venture, then," he said, "to use new words on your authority, if it shall be necessary.—Of those qualities, then, some are primary, others derived from these. The primary are of one kind and simple; but those derived from these are various and, as it were, manifold. And so air (this word too we use, for we use it as if it were Latin), and fire, and water, and earth are primary; but from these are derived the forms of living creatures and of the things that grow from the earth. These, therefore, are called the beginnings and—to translate from the Greek—the elements; of which air and fire have the power of moving and producing, while the remaining parts, I mean water and earth, have the power of receiving and, as it were, of being acted upon. A fifth kind, out of which came the stars and the minds, Aristotle reckoned to be something singular and unlike those four I mentioned above.

But underlying all things, they think, there is a certain matter without any form and lacking all that quality (let us make this word more usual and worn by use), out of which all things have been expressed and effected, which is able to receive all things in their wholeness and to be changed in every way, and on that account also to perish, not into nothing but into its own parts, which can be cut and divided without limit, since there is nothing at all in the nature of things so small that it cannot be divided. And whatever things move, move through intervals, and these intervals likewise can be divided without limit.

And since that force, which we have said is quality, is moved in this way, and since it is turned this way and that, they think that the matter itself is wholly and inwardly changed, and that those things are produced which they call qualified things; from which, in a single nature cohering and continuous with all its parts, one world has been produced, outside of which there is no part of matter and no body. And they hold that all things which exist in it are parts of the world, held together by a sentient nature, in which there is perfect reason, and that this is the same and everlasting (for there is nothing more powerful by which it might perish);

and this force they say is the soul of the world, and the same is also the perfect mind and wisdom, which they call God, and a kind of providence, as it were, of all the things that are subject to it, caring above all for the heavenly bodies, and then, on earth, for those things which pertain to men; and this they sometimes call by the same name 'necessity,' because nothing can happen otherwise than has been ordained by it, and sometimes … as it were the fated and unalterable continuity of an everlasting order; and now and then again the same thing 'fortune,' because it brings about many things unforeseen and unexpected by us, on account of the obscurity and our ignorance of causes.

The third part of philosophy, then, which lay in reasoning and in disputation, was treated by both schools thus. Although it arose from the senses, yet the judgement of truth was not in the senses. They held that the mind was the judge of things, and reckoned it alone fit to be trusted, because it alone discerned that which was always simple and of one kind and such as it really was (this they called the idea, so named already by Plato; we can rightly call it the 'form').

But all the senses they thought dull and slow, and unable in any way to grasp those things which seemed to be subject to the senses, because they were either so small that they could not fall under the sense, or so mobile and agitated that nothing was ever single and constant, not even the same thing, since all things slipped and flowed continually. And so they called this whole part of things the realm of opinion;

but they reckoned that knowledge existed nowhere except in the conceptions and reasonings of the mind. For this reason they approved of definitions of things and applied these to everything that was under discussion; the explanation of words too was approved—that is, for what reason each thing was so named, which they called etymology; and afterwards they used certain arguments and, as it were, marks of things as guides for proving and for concluding what they wished to make plain. In this was handed down the whole discipline of dialectic, that is, of speech drawn to a conclusion by reason; to this, from the other side as it were, was joined the oratorical power of speaking, which unfolds continuous speech adapted to persuasion.

This was their first form, handed down by Plato; and if you wish, I will set out what dispersions of it I have received." "Indeed we wish it," I said, "that I may answer on Atticus's behalf as well." "And rightly do you answer," he said; "for excellently is the authority of the Peripatetics and of the Old Academy unfolded. Aristotle, then, was the first to shake those forms of which I spoke a little before, which Plato had wonderfully embraced, so far as to say that there was something divine in them. Theophrastus, however, a man pleasant in speech and so well-mannered that he bears before him a certain uprightness and nobility, broke yet more vehemently, in a way, the authority of the old discipline; for he stripped virtue of its proper glory and made it weak, in that he denied that living happily was placed in it alone.

For Strato, his pupil, although he was of keen genius, must yet be set entirely apart from that school; for, having abandoned that most necessary part of philosophy which is placed in virtue and in conduct, and having given himself wholly to the investigation of nature, he diverged in this very subject very greatly from his own school. But Speusippus and Xenocrates, who were the first to take up Plato's method and authority, and after them Polemo and Crates, and together with them Crantor, gathered in the Academy, diligently maintained what they had received from their predecessors. Polemo, now, Zeno and Arcesilas had attended assiduously.

But Zeno, since he surpassed Arcesilas in age and disputed very subtly and was moved very acutely, attempted to correct the discipline. This correction too, if you think fit, I will set out, just as Antiochus used to do." "For my part," I said, "I think you should; and I see that Pomponius signifies the same." "Zeno, then, was by no means a man who, like Theophrastus, cut the sinews of virtue, but on the contrary one who placed all the things that pertain to the happy life in virtue alone, and reckoned nothing else among goods, and called that the honourable which was a certain simple and sole and single good.

As for the rest, although they were neither good nor bad, yet he said some were according to nature, others contrary to nature; and among these very things he reckoned others interposed and intermediate. Those which were according to nature he taught were to be taken and to be deemed worthy of a certain valuation, and the contraries the contrary; but the neutral things he left among the intermediate, in which he held there was no weight at all.

But of those that were to be taken, some he held should be valued more, others less. Those that were valued more he called 'preferred,' but those of less value 'rejected.' And as he had changed these things not so much in substance as in their labels, so between the right deed and the wrong, he placed certain intermediate things, duty and contrary to duty, setting right deeds alone among good actions, and wrong, that is, sins, among bad ones; but duties performed or neglected he held, as I said, to be intermediate.

And whereas his predecessors said that not all virtue lay in reason, but that certain virtues were, as it were, perfected by nature or by habit, he placed all of them in reason. And whereas they thought those kinds of virtues of which I spoke above could be separated, he disputed that this could in no way come about, and that not merely the exercise of virtue, as his predecessors held, but the very disposition of it in itself was glorious; and yet that virtue was present to no one without his always using it. And whereas they did not remove disturbance of mind from man, and said that by nature one both grieves and desires and fears and is carried away by joy, but reduced and narrowed these passions, he wished the wise man to be free of all these, as it were of diseases.

And whereas the ancients said that these passions were natural and devoid of reason, and placed desire in one part of the soul, reason in another, not even to these did he assent; for he thought the passions were voluntary and were taken on by the judgement of opinion, and he reckoned the mother of all passions to be a certain immoderate intemperance. So much, roughly, concerning conduct. Concerning the natures of things, he held thus: first, that to those four beginnings of things he did not add this fifth nature, out of which the higher schools reckoned the senses and the mind were produced; for he laid it down that fire was the very nature which begot each thing, and the mind, and the senses. He differed also from the same men in this, that he by no means thought anything could be produced by that which was without body—of which kind Xenocrates and even his predecessors had said the soul was—nor that either what produces something or what is produced could be without body.

But in that third part of philosophy he changed very many things. In it, first, he said certain new things about the senses themselves, which he held were joined together out of a certain impulse, as it were, offered from without, which he called phantasia—we may call it 'presentation,' and let us wear this word smooth, for it will have to be used rather often in the rest of our talk—but to these things that have been presented and, as it were, received by the senses, he joins the assent of our minds, which he holds to be placed within us and voluntary.

He attached belief not to all presentations, but only to those which had a certain proper declaration of the things that were presented; and that presentation, when it was discerned in and by itself, was 'graspable'—will you bear with these terms?" Atticus said: "Indeed we will; for in what other way could you say katalepton?—"but when it had now been received and approved, he called it a 'grasp,' similar to those things that are seized by the hand; from which indeed he had drawn this name, since no one before had used that word in such a matter; and he used very many new words in the same way (for he called them new). But what was grasped by the sense he called by that very name 'the sensed thing'; and if it was so grasped that it could not be wrenched away by reason, he called it 'knowledge,' but if otherwise, 'ignorance'; and from this arose also opinion, which was weak and shared a kinship with what was false and not grasped.

But between knowledge and ignorance he placed that 'grasp' of which I spoke, and reckoned it neither among right things nor among wrong, but said it alone was to be trusted. From this he also granted belief to the senses, because, as I said above, the grasp made by the senses seemed to him both true and trustworthy—not because it grasped all the things that were in the object, but because it left out nothing that could fall under it; and because nature had given, as it were, a standard of knowledge and a starting-point of itself, from which afterwards conceptions of things might be impressed upon our minds; and from these are found not only first principles but certain broader paths to the discovery of reason. But error and rashness and ignorance and mere opining and suspicion, and in one word all the things that were foreign to firm and constant assent, he removed from virtue and wisdom. And in these things, roughly, consisted the whole change and disagreement of Zeno from his predecessors."

When he had said this, I said: "Briefly indeed and by no means obscurely have you set out, Varro, both the method of the Old Academy and that of the Stoics. But I think it must be reckoned, as our intimate Antiochus held, a correction of the Old Academy rather than any new school." Then Varro said: "Now it is your part, you who fall away from the method of the ancients and approve the things that were introduced anew by Arcesilas, to show what divorce was made, and for what cause, so that we may see whether your secession is sufficiently just."

Then I said: "It was with Zeno, as we have received it, that Arcesilas set up his whole contest—not from obstinacy or zeal for victory, as it seems to me at least, but because of the obscurity of those matters which had brought Socrates, and, even before Socrates, Democritus, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and almost all the ancients, to the confession of ignorance. They said that nothing could be known, nothing grasped, nothing understood: that the senses were narrow, the minds weak, the courses of life short, and—as Democritus said—that truth was sunk in the deep, that all things were held by opinions and conventions, that nothing was left to truth; and they said, in short, that all things were wrapped about in darkness.

And so Arcesilas denied that there was anything that could be known—not even that very thing which Socrates had left to himself, namely, that he knew that he knew nothing; thus he held that all things lay hidden in obscurity, and that there was nothing that could be discerned or understood; and that for these reasons no one ought either to profess or to affirm anything or to approve it by assent, but should always restrain himself and hold back rashness from every fall—rashness being then conspicuous when something either false or not grasped was approved; and that nothing was more shameful than for assent and approval to run ahead of cognition and perception. And he did what was consistent with this method, so that, by disputing against the opinions of all, he drew most men away from their own; so that, when in the same matter equal weights of reasons were found on opposite sides, assent might more easily be withheld from each side.

This they call the New Academy, which to me seems old, if indeed we count Plato as belonging to that old one, in whose books nothing is affirmed and many things are disputed on both sides, inquiry is made about all things and nothing certain is said—but still, let that which you have set out be called the old, this the new. This New Academy, carried down as far as Carneades, who was fourth from Arcesilas, remained in the same method of Arcesilas. But Carneades, ignorant of no part of philosophy, and, as I learned from those who had heard him and especially from the Epicurean Zeno, who, though he dissented from him very greatly, yet admired him beyond all others, was of an incredible faculty and … " But why does Mnesarchus fret, why does Antipater fight it out with Carneades in so many volumes? …