sguisedly
such perverse and false principles, if there had not been such great
richness of ideas and power of eloquence in Arcesilas, and, in a still
greater degree, in Carneades?

XIX. These are nearly the arguments which Antiochus used to urge at
Alexandria, and many years afterwards, with much more positiveness too, in
Syria, when he was there with me, a little before he died. But, as my case
is now established, I will not hesitate to warn you, as you are my dearest
friend, (he was addressing me,) and one a good deal younger than myself.

Will you, then, after having extolled philosophy with such panegyrics, and
provoked our friend Hortensius, who disagrees with us, now follow that
philosophy which confounds what is true with what is false, deprives us of
all judgment, strips us of the power of approval, and robs us of all our
senses? Even the Cimmerians, to whom some god, or nature, or the foulness
of the country that they inhabited, had denied the light of the sun, had
still some fires which they were permitted to avail themselves of as if
they were light. But those men whom you approve of, after having enveloped
us in such darkness, have not left us a single spark to enable us to look
around by. And if we follow them, we become bound with such chains that we
cannot move. For when assent is taken away, they take away at the same
time all motion of our minds, and all our power of action; which not only
cannot be done rightly, but which cannot possibly be done at all. Beware,
also, lest you become the only person who is not allowed to uphold that
opinion. Will you, when you have explained the most secret matters and
brought them to light, and said on your oath that you have discovered
them, (which, indeed, I could swear to also, since I learnt them from
you,)--will you, I say, assert that there is nothing which can be known,
comprehended, or perceived? Beware, I entreat you, lest the authority of
those most beautiful actions be diminished by your own conduct.

And having said this he stopped. But Hortensius, admiring all he said very
greatly, (so much, indeed, that all the time that Lucullus was speaking he
kept lifting up his hands; and it was no wonder, for I do not believe that
an argument had ever been conducted against the Academy with more
acuteness,) began to exhort me, either jestingly or seriously, (for that
was a point that I was not quite sure about,) to abandon my opinions.
Then, said Catulus, if the dis