Sec.18. Ut mihi quidem videtur:  MSS. transpose quidem and videtur, as in 44. Quidem, however nearly always comes closely after the pronoun, see M.D.F. IV. 43, cf. also I. 71, III. 28, Opusc. I. 406. Expetendarum fugiendarumque:  [Greek:  haireton kai pheukton], about which more in n. on 36.  The Platonic and Aristotelian ethics have indeed an external resemblance, but the ultimate bases of the two are quite different.  In rejecting the Idea of the Good, Aristotle did away with what Plato would have considered most valuable in his system.  The ideal theory, however, was practically defunct in the time of Antiochus, so that the similarity between the two schools seemed much greater than it was. Non sus Minervam:  a Greek proverb, cf.  Theocr. Id. V. 23, De Or. II. 233, Ad Fam. IX. 18, 3.  Binder, in his German translation of the Academica, also quotes Plutarch Praec.  Polit. 7. Inepte ... docet:  elliptic for inepte docet, quisquis docet. Nostra atque nostros:  few of the editors have understood this.  Atticus affects everything Athenian, and speaks as though he were one of them; in Cic.’s letters to him the words “tui cives,” meaning the Athenians, often occur. Quid me putas:  i.e. velle. Exhibiturum:  Halm inserts me before this from his one MS. G, evidently emended here by its copyist.  For the omission of me, cf. note on 7.

Sec.Sec.19—­23.  Part II. of Varro’s Exposition:  Antiochus’ Ethics.  Summary.  The threefold division of philosophy into [Greek:  ethike, physike, dialektike].  Goodness means obedience to nature, happiness the acquisition of natural advantages.  These are of three kinds, mental, bodily, and external.  The bodily are described (19); then the mental, which fall into two classes, congenital and acquired, virtue being the chief of the acquired (20), then the external, which form with the bodily advantages a kind of exercise-ground for virtue (21).  The ethical standard is then succinctly stated, in which virtue has chief part, and is capable in itself of producing happiness, though not the greatest happiness possible, which requires the possession of all three classes of advantages (22).  With this ethical standard, it is possible to give an intelligent account of action and duty (23).

Sec.19. Ratio triplex:  Plato has not this division, either consciously or unconsciously, though it was generally attributed to him in Cicero’s time, so by Varro himself (from Antiochus) in Aug. De Civ.  Dei VIII. 4, and by Diog.  Laert.  III. 56 (see R. and P., p. 195).  The division itself cannot be traced farther back than Xenocrates and the post-Aristotelian Peripatetics, to whom it is assigned by Sext.  Emp. Adv.  Math. VII. 16.  It was probably first brought into strong prominence by the Stoics, whom it enabled more sharply and decisively to subordinate to Ethics