added from an involuntary desire to make up the hexameter rhythm.  Phrases like quae cum essent dicta consedimus often occur in similar places in Cic.’s dialogues cf. De Div. II. 150, and Augustine, the imitator of Cic., Contra Academicos, I. 25, also consedimus at the end of a clause in Brut. 24, and considitur in De Or. III. 18. Mihi vero:  the omission of inquit, which is strange to Goer., is well illustrated in M.D.F. I. 9.  There is an odd ellipse of laudasti in D.F. V. 81.

Sec.Sec.15—­42.  Antiochus’ view of the history of Philosophy.  First part of Varro’s Exposition, 15—­18.  Summary.  Socrates rejected physics and made ethics supreme in philosophy (15).  He had no fixed tenets, his one doctrine being that wisdom consists in a consciousness of ignorance.  Moral exhortation was his task (16).  Plato added to and enriched the teaching of his master, from him sprang two schools which abandoned the negative position of Socrates and adopted definite tenets, yet remained in essential agreement with one another—­the Peripatetic and the Academic (17, 18).

Sec.15. A rebus ... involutis:  physical phenomena are often spoken of in these words by Cic., cf. 19, Timaeus c. 1, D.F. I. 64, IV. 18, V. 10, N.D. I. 49.  Ursinus rejected ab here, but the insertion or omission of ab after the passive verb depends on the degree to which natura is personified, if 28 be compared with Tim. c. 1, this will be clear. Involutis = veiled; cf. involucrum.  Cic. shows his feeling of the metaphor by adding quasi in II. 26, and often. Avocavisse philosophiam:  this, the Xenophontic view of Socrates, was the popular one in Cicero’s time, cf.  II. 123, T.D. V. 10, D.F. V. 87, 88, also Varro in Aug. De Civ.  Dei, VIII. 3.  Objections to it, however occurred to Cic., and were curiously answered in De Rep. I. 16 (cf. also Varro in Aug. De Civ.  Dei, VIII. 4).  The same view is supposed to be found in Aristotle, see the passages quoted by R. and P. 141.  To form an opinion on this difficult question the student should read Schleiermacher’s Essay on the Worth of Socrates as a Philosopher (trans. by Thirlwall), and Zeller’s Socrates and the Socratic Schools, Eng.  Trans., pp. 112—­116 [I dissent from his view of Aristotle’s evidence], also Schwegler’s Handbook, so far as it relates to Socrates and Plato. Nihil tamen ad bene vivendum valere:  valere is absent from MSS., and is inserted by Halm, its use in 21 makes it more probable than conferre, which is in ed.  Rom. (1471).  Gronovius vainly tries to justify the MSS. reading by such passages as D.F. I. 39, T.D. I. 70.  The strangest ellipse with nihil ad elsewhere in Cic. is in De Leg. I. 6.