and that the plainer his teaching was, and the less he deviated from common sense and common morality, the more likely he was to recommend himself to the pupils, from he had most to gain in the shape of honours and emoluments. We have seen that the Stoic Panaetius was the first teacher who obtained any influence over the Romans: can we find in him any trace of the re-action of which we have spoken? If the Romans had made their acquaintance with Stoicism through Cleanthes, who was so genuinely Roman in character, they might have been satisfied to accept his doctrine in its integrity; but since then the system had undergone the manipulation of that subtle doctor of the Schools, the learned and ingenious Chrysippus, inventor of those thorny syllogisms of which Cicero so often complains. Comparing him with Panaetius, we find the latter softening down the severity of the Stoics in many particulars. Thus he adopted a more easy and natural style of writing, and spoke with warm admiration of philosophers belonging to other schools, especially of Plato, whom he called the Homer of philosophers'. He abandoned the Stoic belief in a cyclical conflagration, for the Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity of the world, and mitigated the austerity of the old view on the addφορα and the necessity of ἀπάθεια. In his treatise on Duty, which formed the model of Cicero's De officiis, 1 Cic. Tusc. I. 79, cf. Fin. IV. 79 (Stoicorum) tristitiam atque asperitatem fugiens Panaetius nec acerbitatem sententiarum nec disserendi spinas probavit, fuitque in altero genere mitior, in altero illustrior, semperque habuit in ore Platonem, Aristotelem, Xenocratem, Theophrastum, Dicaearchum, ut ipsius scripta declarant; also Off. 11. 35 and Acad. II. 135. he addressed himself not to the wise, but to those who were seeking wisdom; and spoke not of perfect duties (κατορθώματα) but of the officia media (καθήκοντα) which ordinary people need not despair of fulfilling. Lastly in respect to Divination he forsook the tradition of his school, which had always been disposed to regard this as an important evidence of divine agency, and followed the sceptical line of the Academy. The eclectic character imprinted on the Porch by Panaetius was never obliterated, but rather became more marked in later writers such as Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. Our limits however do not permit us to speak of more than his immediate pupil Posidonius the Syrian, a man of great and varied learning, much esteemed by the Romans, many of whom attended his lectures at Rhodes. Among the number were Pompeius and Cicero, who calls him the greatest of the Stoics'. In regard to divination and the eternity of the world Posidonius went back to the old Stoic view, but in his unsectarian tone he is a faithful follower of Panaetius. He endeavoured to show that the opposition between the different systems of philosophy, far from justifying the sceptical conclusion, was not inconsistent with a real harmony upon the most important points. In regard to psychology his views were more in accordance with Plato and Aristotle than with Chrysippus. Finding it impossible to explain the passions as morbid conditions of the reason, he fell back on the old division into the rational and irrational parts of the soul, and was followed in this by the later Stoics. 1 Hortens. Frag. 36 (Orelli); so Seneca Ep. XC. 20 Posidonius, ut mea fert opinio, ex his qui plurimum philosophiae contulerunt. Among the Roman contemporaries of Cicero we need only mention Cato, as typical both of the weakness and the strength of the school, which in after years beheld in him the truest pattern of the sage, standing on the same level with Hercules or Ulysses'. Yet for him, as for all these later Stoics, it was Plato rather than Zeno, or at any rate not less than Zeno, who was the deus philosophorum, the fountain of inspiration to the Porch as much as to the Academy, of which we have next to speak. Philo of Larissa, the disciple and successor of Clitomachus, took refuge in Rome during the Mithridatic war (B. C. 88) and lectured there with great applause. While maintaining the position of Carneades against the Stoics, he declared that it was a mistake to suppose that the Academy denied the possibility of arriving at truth. Concealed underneath their negative polemic, the teaching of Plato had always survived as an esoteric doctrine ; there was no ground therefore for the distinction between the New and Old Academy; they were really the same, though the exigencies of controversy had for a while tended to obscure the positive side of their teaching, and thus led to a change of name. It was true, as against the Stoics, that irresistible evidence could not be derived from sensible perception, but the soul itself contains clear ideas on which we may safely act3. The most important representative of Eclecticism is Antiochus of Ascalon, who studied under Mnesarchus, a scholar of Panaetius, as well as under Philo, whom he 1 Seneca De Const. II. I. 2 Cic. N. D. II. 32, Ad Att. IV. 16. 3 This account of Philo is taken from Zeller III. 1, pp. 588-5963. succeeded as head of the Academy. Cicero who attended his lectures at Athens 79 B. C. calls him the most polished and acute of the philosophers of his time, and professes that he had ever loved him'. Antiochus was not satisfied with reverting to Plato, as Philo had done; he declared that the so-called New Academy of Arcesilaus and Carneades had not simply allowed the Platonic doctrines to fall into the background, but had altogether departed from them; and the object which he set before himself was to show that scepticism was self-contradictory and impossible. If it is impossible to know what is true, it must be impossible to know what is like the truth: thus the natural instinct of curiosity is stultified, and action becomes irrational. How can the Sceptics themselves learn the certainty of their first principle nil percipi? how assert the falsehood of this or that proposition, while they maintain that it is impossible to distinguish between truth and falsehood? how pretend to arrive at truth by argument, while they deny the principle on which all argument is based? Like Posidonius, Antiochus affirmed the real agreement of the orthodox schools: the difference between Plato, Aristotle and Zeno was in the main a difference in the mode of expressing a common truth. Thus in regard to the theory of knowledge, all hold that sensation is the first element in knowledge, but that it is only by the exercise of reason that it is changed into knowledge. So in Physics, all are agreed that there are two natures, active and passive, force and matter, which are always found in combination. Not to dwell on the vague and confused statements ascribed by Cicero to Antiochus under this head, I pass on to his ethical doctrines. Starting with the Stoic prima naturae, 1 Acad. II. 113. 2 Acad. I. 23. but enlarging their scope so as to take in not only all that belongs to self-preservation, but the rudiments of virtue and knowledge also, and defining the Summum Bonum as a life in accordance with the perfect nature of man, Antiochus includes under this, not only the perfection of reason, but all bodily and external good. Virtue in itself suffices for happiness, as the Stoics said, but not for the highest happiness: here we must borrow a little from the Peripatetics; though they err in allowing too much weight to external good, as the Stoics err in the opposite direction. The Stoics are right in their high estimate of the Sage as being alone free and rich and beautiful, all others being slaves and fools: they are right in esteeming apathy, the absolute suppression of emotion, as essential to virtue; but they have gone wrong in affirming the equality of sins. It is difficult to form any clear systematic conception of Antiochus' teaching from the existing evidence; if it was really as loose and inconsistent as it would seem from Zeller's account, it only adds greater significance to the fact that from that time forward the Academy entirely loses its old sceptical character. The spirit of the age must evidently have been working strongly in favour of eclecticism, when Antiochus became the most influential of teachers, and the Fifth Academy could count among its members such names as those of Varro and Brutus and to a certain extent even Cicero himself. We shall be able to understand this better, if we realize to ourselves the position of the small band of philosophical enthusiasts in Rome. They were conscious that their own lives had gained in largeness of view, in dignity and in strength, from the study of philosophy; but all around them were the rude mass, the hircosa gens centurionum with their quod sapio satis est mihi, jeering at the endless |