d so deformed that Bupalus drew
a picture of him to provoke laughter; for which Hipponax is said to
have written such keen iambics on the painter that he hanged himself.

Lycambes had promised Archilochus the poet to marry his daughter to
him, but afterward retracted his promise, and refused her; upon which
Archilochus is said to have published a satire in iambic verse that
provoked him to hang himself.

[290] Cicero refers here to an oracle approving of his laws, and
promising Sparta prosperity as long as they were obeyed, which Lycurgus
procured from Delphi.

[291] _Pro aris et focis_ is a proverbial expression. The Romans, when
they would say their all was at stake, could not express it stronger
than by saying they contended _pro aris et focis_, for religion and
their firesides, or, as we express it, for religion and property.

[292] Cicero, who was an Academic, gives his opinion according to the
manner of the Academics, who looked upon probability, and a resemblance
of truth, as the utmost they could arrive at.

[293] _I.e._, Regulus.

[294] _I.e._, Fabius.

[295] It is unnecessary to give an account of the other names here
mentioned; but that of Laenas is probably less known. He was Publius
Popillius Laenas, consul 132 B.C., the year after the death of Tiberius
Gracchus, and it became his duty to prosecute the accomplices of
Gracchus, for which he was afterward attacked by Caius Gracchus with
such animosity that he withdrew into voluntary exile. Cicero pays a
tribute to the energy of Opimius in the first Oration against Catiline,
c. iii.

[296] This phenomenon of the parhelion, or mock sun, which so puzzled
Cicero's interlocutors, has been very satisfactorily explained by
modern science. The parhelia are formed by the reflection of the
sunbeams on a cloud properly situated. They usually accompany the
coronae, or luminous circles, and are placed in the same circumference,
and at the same height. Their colors resemble that of the rainbow; the
red and yellow are towards the side of the sun, and the blue and violet
on the other. There are, however, coronae sometimes seen without
parhelia, and _vice versa_. Parhelia are double, triple, etc., and in
1629, a parhelion of five suns was seen at Rome, and another of six
suns at Arles, 1666.

[297] There is a little uncertainty as to what this age was, but it was
probably about twenty-five.

[298] Cicero here gives a very exact and correct account of the
planeta