sted six days: it
was not held at any fixed time; but the consul was never allowed to
take the field till he had held them.--_Vide_ Smith, Dict. Gr. and Rom.
Ant., p. 414.

[80] _Exhedra_, the word used by Cicero, means a study, or place where
disputes were held.

[81] M. Piso was a Peripatetic. The four great sects were the Stoics,
the Peripatetics, the Academics, and the Epicureans.

[82] It was a prevailing tenet of the Academics that there is no
certain knowledge.

[83] The five forms of Plato are these: [Greek: ousia, tauton, heteron,
stasis, kinesis.]

[84] The four natures here to be understood are the four
elements--fire, water, air, and earth; which are mentioned as the four
principles of Empedocles by Diogenes Laertius.

[85] These five moving stars are Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, and
Venus. Their revolutions are considered in the next book.

[86] Or, Generation of the Gods.

[87] The [Greek: prolepsis] of Epicurus, before mentioned, is what he
here means.

[88] [Greek: Steremnia] is the word which Epicurus used to distinguish
between those objects which are perceptible to sense, and those which
are imperceptible; as the essence of the Divine Being, and the various
operations of the divine power.

[89] Zeno here mentioned is not the same that Cotta spoke of before.
This was the founder of the Stoics. The other was an Epicurean
philosopher whom he had heard at Athens.

[90] That is, there would be the same uncertainty in heaven as is among
the Academics.

[91] Those nations which were neither Greek nor Roman.

[92] _Sigilla numerantes_ is the common reading; but P. Manucius
proposes _venerantes_, which I choose as the better of the two, and in
which sense I have translated it.

[93] Fundamental doctrines.

[94] That is, the zodiac.

[95] The moon, as well as the sun, is indeed in the zodiac, but she
does not measure the same course in a month. She moves in another line
of the zodiac nearer the earth.

[96] According to the doctrines of Epicurus, none of these bodies
themselves are clearly seen, but _simulacra ex corporibus effluentia_.

[97] Epicurus taught his disciples in a garden.

[98] By the word _Deus_, as often used by our author, we are to
understand all the Gods in that theology then treated of, and not a
single personal Deity.

[99] The best commentators on this passage agree that Cicero does not
mean that Aristotle affirmed that there was no such person as Orpheus,
bu