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 speak3.

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 node of expressing a common truth. Thus in red to the theory of knowledge, all hold that sensation is the first elemont in knowledge, but that it is only by the exorcise of reason that it is changed into knowledge. So in Physics, all are ogrood 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, 2 Acad. I. 23.

1 Acad. 11. 113.

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

disputes of the schools; and thus the natural instinct of self-preservation impelled them to strengthen themselves by the re-union of philosophy, just as in our own days the same motive may be seen in aspirations after the re-union of Christendom.

Before speaking in detail of the Romans, we must say a word as to the signs of eclecticism in the two remaining schools. It has been mentioned that the activity of the later Peripatetics was mainly of the commentatorial kind, but, in the spurious treatise De Mundo, which is included in the works of Aristotle, but was probably written in the middle of the 1st century B. C., we find a decided admixture of Stoic elements, especially where it treats of the action of the Deity on the world. Again, even among the Epicureans, in spite of their hostility to the other schools and their own proverbial conservatism, we have already noticed a departure from the teaching of their founder, in the writings of Philodemus and others, Ist as regards the greater importance attributed to art and science and literature', 2ndly in the recognition, to a greater or less extent, of a Divine government of the world, 3rdly in the abandonment of the old cynical repudiation of higher motives. Cicero tells us that this was especially the case in regard to the relation between bodily and mental pleasure, and to the selfish theory of friendship3.

1 See above, p. 184, n. 3.

2 See above, p. 199, n. 2.

3 Cic. Fin. 1. 55 'there are many Epicureans who think erroneously that mental pleasure need not be dependent on bodily pleasure;' § 69 'there are some weak brethren among the Epicureans who are ashamed to confess that our own pleasure is the sole ground of friendship;' compare Hirzel 7. c. p. 168 foll. and my note on N. D. I. III.

The four last mentioned schools, i.e. the Academy, the Lyceum, the Porch and the Garden were, and had long been, the only recognized schools at the time when Cicero was growing up to manhood. Cicero was personally acquainted with the most distinguished living representatives of each. In his 19th year, B. C. 88, he had studied under Phaedrus the Epicurean and Philo the Academic at Rome; in his 28th year, B. C. 79, he attended the lectures of the Epicureans Phaedrus and Zeno, as well as of Antiochus, the eclectic Academic, at Athens, and in the following year those of Posidonius, the eclectic Stoic, at Rhodes. Diodotus the Stoic was for many years the honoured inmate of his house. He had also a high esteem for the Peripatetic Cratippus, whom he selected. as the tutor for his son at, what we may call, the University of Athens. Nor did he only attend lectures: his letters show that he was a great reader of philosophical books, and he left behind him translations or adaptations of various dialogues and treatises of Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Crantor, Carneades, Panaetius, Anticchus, Posidonius and others'. In a word he was

1 He translated the Occonomicus of Xenophon and the Protagoras and Timaeus of Plato, whom he also imitates in the Leges and Respublica. The last is in part borrowed from Aristotle's Politics. Other treatises in which he follows Aristotle are the Hortensius, probably written on the model of Aristotle's πротреπTIKós, and the Topica, professedly a reminiscence of Aristotle's treatice bearing the same name. The Laelius is said to be founded on the rap pas of Theophrastus; the Consolatio was mainly taken from Crantor's rep wiCovs; but the materials for the great majority of his books are derived from Panactius, Pocidonius, Clitomachus and Antiochus, when he is treating of the orthodox schools, and probably from Zeno, Phacdrus or Philodemus, where he gives the Epicurean doctrines.