Seven Books of Arguments Against the Pagans, Vol. II

ministering hands] Thus Seneca to Marcia, Ch. XXV. Compare Bünemann on Lactantius, On the Workmanship of God, Ch. XVI, page 1201. O.

might forge with artistic novelty] Fulvius Ursinus conjectures reading with activity original: "navitate". But there is no need for this correction. Artistic novelty is said exquisitely and elegantly, meaning an art that always thinks up new and unvisited things. For forge original: "excuderent", Stewechius prefers exclude, alleging a place in Apuleius, Florida I: "Alexander declared to his whole world, that no one should rashly imitate the image of the king in bronze, color, or engraving, except that Polycletus alone should mold it in bronze, Apelles alone delineate it with colors, Pyrgoteles alone exclude it with engraving," where, however, the Elmenhorst edition, page 344, has forge original: "excuderet". The same Stewechius prefers: artistic novelties, that is, new things, never before seen by anyone. O.

However] Fulvius Ursinus: and however, which is more pleasing, and could very easily have been absorbed by the preceding novelty. O.

Cap. XVIII. — These are not the gifts of knowledge, but the inventions of the poorest necessity] Theocritus, Idyll XXI, 1:

Poverty, Diophantus, alone awakens the arts,
It is the teacher of labor.

Virgil, Georgics I, vs. 145:

Then various arts came; stubborn labor conquered all things,
And poverty, pressing in hard circumstances. O.

or not prepared by experience of things] Thus the first Roman edition. Most excellently, a prepared age is an age abounding in all things. Thus a province is prepared ἡτοιμασμένη prepared/ready. Others brought forth, with no sense. Fulvius Ursinus: skilled. O.

prepared and put together the little arts] I published this from the very happy emendation of Oudendorp on Apuleius, Book VII, p. 466. Others read: small and put together little arts. O.

purchased] Thus the Leiden editor from the manuscript, so that it refers to the preceding certain fortuitous things. But it is better to read purchased original: "coemendatas", that is, the little arts. The manuscript code reads commended. Stewechius: borrowed, Fulvius Ursinus: commented upon, which Meursius defends and explains with a passive meaning, as with many deponent verbs in our author, e.g., above imminent and not yet suffered, where, however, as we have seen, the reading is doubtful. Later in the same book it says: For what removes the repentance of predecessors from things entered. To measure is similar: The sun is larger in the circle and is measured by the width of one foot. But Meursius himself retracts this conjecture in the Appendix and prefers purchased, which the manuscript code has. Moreover, Arnobius greatly loves such compound words. Thus writers in Book I, congruous in the preceding chapter, to learn together in Book VI, C. 4, to be made together in Book V, C. 39, to honor together several times; which it may suffice to have noted once. O.