ei were disliked by the Roman government. The individual is not
satisfied with legitimate Roman means of divination; he is employing
illegitimate ways when he entrusts himself to these Orientals, who, most
of them doubtless, well deserved the scathing contempt which Tacitus has
contrived to put into six words: "Genus hominum potentibus infidum,
sperantibus fallax," adding, with no less contempt for the Roman
authorities who had to deal with them, that they will always be
forbidden, and always will be found at Rome.[868]

NOTES TO LECTURE XVII

[804] For the Pythagoreanism of the Neo-platonic
movement in the third century A.D. consult Bussell,
_Marcus Aurelius and the Later Stoics_ (Edin. 1910), p.
30 foll., who explains the reaction from Stoicism to
Neo-Platonism. See also Caird, _Gifford Lectures_, ii.
162 foll.

[805] Schmekel, _Die mittlere Stoa_, p. 403, says that
it had ceased to exist for centuries as a philosophy,
but cautiously adds in a note that the knowledge of it
was not extinct. The famous Orphic tablets from South
Italy are taken as dating from the third and fourth
centuries B.C., and if not actually Pythagorean, they
are next door to being so. See Miss Harrison,
_Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_, p. 660.

[806] _Tusc. Disp._ i. 38.

[807] See, _e.g._, Prof. Taylor's little book on Plato
(Constable), p. 11.

[808] See above, p. 349.

[809] Sextus Empiricus, _adv. Physicos_, ii. 281 foll.

[810] For the devotion of the believers to the founder
and his _ipse dixit_, see Cicero, _Nat. Deor._ i. 5. 10.

[811] The relation of Posidonius to Roman literature has
been much discussed of late. See, _e.g._, Norden,
Virgil, _Aen._ vi., index, _s.v._ "Stoa"; Schmekel, _Die
mittlere Stoa_, 85 foll., 238 foll.

[812] For Panaetius' enthusiasm for Plato and his
teaching, see Cic. _Tusc. Disp._ i. 32. 79; the whole
passage indicates, though it does not exactly prove, an
approach to the Platonic psychology.

[813] Caird, _Gifford Lectures_, vol. ii. p. 85.

[814] See above, p. 75. The idea that the practice of
cremation influenced the ideas of the Roman about the
soul was first, I think, suggested by Boissier,
_Religion romaine_, i. 310. Cicero himself hints at this
conclusion in _Tusc. Disp._ i. 16. 36: "In terram enim
cadentibus corporibus, hisq