[8]
3. After my brother Quintus had delivered his
views on divination, as set out in the preceding
volume, and we had walked as much as we wished,
we took our seats in the library in my “Lyceum,”
and I remarked:
"Really, my dear Quintus, you have defended
[p. 379]
the Stoic doctrine with accuracy and like a Stoic.
But the thing that delights me most is the fact
that you illustrated your argument with many
incidents taken from Roman sources-incidents, too,
of a distinguished and noble type. I must now
reply to what you said, but I must do so with great
diffidence and with many misgivings, and in such
a way as to affirm nothing and question everything.1
For if I should assume anything that I said to be
certain I should myself be playing the diviner while
saying that no such thing as divination exists!
1 This was the characteristic mental attitude in which the disciples of the New Academy approached every question.
Cicero: De Senectute De Amicitia De Divinatione. With An English Translation. William Armistead Falconer. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1923.
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