eared unsuitable, owing to those
persons being, not indeed unlearned, but notoriously unversed in
such subjects, as soon as I got home I transferred those dialogues
to Cato and Brutus. Your letter about Varro has just reached me, and
there is no one by whom the opinions of Antiochus could be more
fitly supported."--Ep. 16.

"I had determined to include no living persons in my dialogues; but
since you inform me that Varro is desirous of it, and sets a great
value upon it, I have composed this work, and completed the whole
Academical Discussion in four books; I know not how well, but with
such care that nothing can exceed it. In these, what had been
excellently collected by Antiochus against the doctrine of
incomprehensibility, I have attributed to Varro; to this I reply in
my own person, and you are the third in our conversation. If I had
made Cotta and Varro disputing with one another, as you suggest in
your last letter, my own would have been a mute character....

"The Academics, as you know, I had discussed in the persons of
Catulus, Lucullus, and Hortensius; but in truth the subject did not
suit their characters, being more logical than what they could be
supposed ever to have dreamt of. Therefore, when I read your letter
to Varro, I seized on it as a sort of inspiration. Nothing could be
more adapted to that species of philosophy in which he seems to take
particular delight; or to the support of such a part that I could
manage to avoid making my own sentiments predominant. For the
opinions of Antiochus are extremely persuasive, and are so carefully
expressed as to retain the acuteness of Antiochus with my own
brilliancy of language, if indeed I possess any."--Ep. 19.

The Antiochus mentioned above was a native of Ascalon, and the
founder of the fifth Academy; he had been the teacher of Cicero
while he studied at Athens; and he had also a school in Syria and
another in Alexandria. Cicero constantly speaks of him with great
regard and esteem. The leaders of the Academy since the time of
Plato, (and Cicero ranks even him among those philosophers who
denied the certainty of any kind of knowledge,) had gradually fallen
into a degree of scepticism that seemed to strike at the root of all
truth, theoretical and prac