Seven Books of Arguments Against the Pagans, Vol. II

p. 129. (58. Vol. V. ed. Bip.) This passage is read: "SOCRATES: What then is man? ALCIBIADES: I cannot say." Elmenhorst The manuscript contains this in the Phaedrus, whence Nourry suspects that Arnobius explained the passage from Plato's Phaedrus (ed. H. Steph. Vol. III. p. 230; Bipont. Vol. X. p. 285) paraphrastically, where Socrates himself says: "Wherefore, letting these things go and believing in the custom concerning them, which I just mentioned, I examine not these things, but myself, whether I happen to be a beast more complicated and more puffed up than Typhon, or a milder and simpler creature, naturally partaking of some divine and unpretentious lot." This is much more probable. O.

pellax deceitful/seductive] Papias: Pellax — a deceiver, wily, fallacious. Arnobius below in Book V: "What shall we put forward for the golden showers, into which the same pellax deceiver disguised himself with treacherous fraud?" Elmenhorst Cf. Servius on Virgil, Aeneid II, line 90. O.

Utrumne illum tellus uliginis alicujus conversa putore Whether the earth, turned by the rot of some moisture, [produced] him] Plato (in the Timaeus): "When heat and cold take on a certain decay, as some have said, then animals are nurtured." Heraldus A dogma drawn from the Egyptians. See Diodorus Siculus, Book I, Chapters 7 and 10, and the interpreters there. O.

atque oris acceperint formam and have received the form of a mouth] A correct reading. For this is an enallage grammatical substitution of number, most common among ancient Greek and Latin writers. See Priscian, Book XVII. Terence (Andria IV, Scene I, line 2):

Is this credible or memorable,
That such stubbornness is inborn in anyone,
So that they rejoice in evils, and from the troubles
Of another they compare their own advantages?

But the same enallages were frequent in the age of Arnobius. Julius Firmicus, Book III, Chapter 15: "He will make him, who has the Moon in such a position, remain sordidly in temples; and to announce to men, as if spoken by the Gods, those things which they might wish," and quite often. Heraldus Salmasius, in the Leiden edition, reads acceperit has received. O.

quod ambigit in Theaeteto Plato which Plato doubts in the Theaetetus] The passage of Plato to which Arnobius refers is read in the Theaetetus, page 158, Vol. I (ed. Henr. Steph.; p. 82, vol. II, ed. Bip.). O.

Radiorum et luminis intentione videamus etc. Let us see by the exertion of rays and light, etc.] The opinions of the philosophers varied indeed on this matter, which Aulus Gellius (Noctes Atticae, Book V, Chapter XVI) explains clearly in these words: "The Stoics say the causes of seeing are the emission of rays from the eyes into those things which can be seen, and the simultaneous exertion of the air. Epicurus, however, thinks that images of the bodies themselves always flow from all bodies, and that these insert themselves into the eyes, and thus sensation occurs." Plato thinks that a certain kind of fire and light goes out from the eyes