you will listen to me, you will not
try to do so; it does not become you; it is not given to you; you have
not the power. I do not say this to you," he says, addressing Velleius,
"for your manners have been polished, and you possess the courtesy of
our people; but I am thinking of you all as a body, and chiefly of him
who is the father of your rules--a man without science, without
letters--one who insults all, without critical ability, without weight,
without wit."[296] Cicero, I think, must have felt some genuine dislike
for Epicurus when he spoke of him in such terms as these.

Then, alas! there is commenced a passage in which are inserted many
translated verses of the Greek poet Aratus. Cicero when a lad had taken
in hand the Phaenomena of Aratus, and here he finds a place in which can
be introduced some of his lines. Aratus had devoted himself to the
singing of the stars, and has produced for us many of the names with
which we are still familiar: "The Twins;" "The Bull;" "The Great Bear;"
"Cassiopeia;" "The Waterman;" "The Scorpion;" these and many others are
made to come forward in hexameters--and by Cicero in Latin, as by Aratus
in their Greek guise. We may suppose that the poem as translated had
fallen dead--but here it is brought to life and is introduced into what
is intended as at least a rationalistic account of the gods and their
nature. Nothing less effective can be imagined than the repetition of
uninteresting verses in such a place; for the reader, who has had
Epicurus just handled for him, is driven to remember that their images
are at any rate as false as the scheme of Epicurus, and is made to
conclude that Balbus does not believe in his own argument. It has been
sometimes said of Cicero that he is too long. The lines have probably
been placed here as a joke, though they are inserted at such a length as
to carry the reader away altogether into another world.

Farther on he devotes himself to anatomical research, which, for that
age, shows an accurate knowledge. But what has it to do with the nature
of the gods? "When the belly which is placed under the stomach becomes
the receptacle of meat and drink, the lungs and the heart draw in the
air for the stomach. The stomach, which is wonderfully arranged,
consists chiefly of nerves. * * * The lungs are light and porous, and
like a sponge--just fit for drawing in the breath. They blow themselves
out and draw themselves in, so that thus may be easily received