entirely uneducated and ignorant?

_Scipio._ He did, and with great * * * for his opinion was no result of
insolent ostentation, nor was his language unbecoming the dignity of so
wise a man: indeed, he performed a very noble action in thus freeing
his countrymen from the terrors of an idle superstition.

XVI. And they relate that in a similar way, in the great war in which
the Athenians and Lacedaemonians contended with such violent resentment,
the famous Pericles, the first man of his country in credit, eloquence,
and political genius, observing the Athenians overwhelmed with an
excessive alarm during an eclipse of the sun which caused a sudden
darkness, told them, what he had learned in the school of Anaxagoras,
that these phenomena necessarily happened at precise and regular
periods when the body of the moon was interposed between the sun and
the earth, and that if they happened not before every new moon, still
they could not possibly happen except at the exact time of the new
moon. And when he had proved this truth by his reasonings, he freed the
people from their alarms; for at that period the doctrine was new and
unfamiliar that the sun was accustomed to be eclipsed by the
interposition of the moon, which fact they say that Thales of Miletus
was the first to discover. Afterward my friend Ennius appears to have
been acquainted with the same theory, who, writing about 350[300] years
after the foundation of Rome, says, "In the nones of June the sun was
covered by the moon and night." The calculations in the astronomical
art have attained such perfection that from that day, thus described to
us by Ennius and recorded in the pontifical registers, the anterior
eclipses of the sun have been computed as far back as the nones of July
in the reign of Romulus, when that eclipse took place, in the obscurity
of which it was affirmed that Virtue bore Romulus to heaven, in spite
of the perishable nature which carried him off by the common fate of
humanity.

XVII. Then said Tubero: Do not you think, Scipio, that this
astronomical science, which every day proves so useful, just now
appeared in a different light to you,[301] * * * which the rest may
see. Moreover, who can think anything in human affairs of brilliant
importance who has penetrated this starry empire of the gods? Or who
can think anything connected with mankind long who has learned to
estimate the nature of eternity? or glorious who is aware of the
insignificance