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Lactantius
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Introductory Notice To Lactantius.
[471] Tusc., ii. 1.
[472] A long beard and cloak were the badges of the philosophers. [See vol. ii. p. 321, note 9.]
[473] [Platonic philosophy being addressed to the mind, and the Epicurean to lusts and passions.]
[474] Themiste is said to have been the wife of Leontius; Epicurus is reported to have written to her. Themistoclea, the sister of Pythagoras, is mentioned as a student of philosophy; besides many other women in different ages.
[475] Plato dedicated to Phædo his treatise on the immortality of the soul: according to other accounts, Phædo was ransomed by Crito or Alcibiades at the suggestion of Socrates.
[476] Terence, Adelphi, iv. 1.
[477] Perillus invented the brazen bull, which the tyrant Phalaris used as an instrument of torture. It was so constructed that the groans of the victims appeared to resemble the bellowing of the bull.
[478] The baptismal font. [i.e., as signifying Zech. xiii. 1.]
[480] A shadow; outline, or resemblance.
[481] Lucretius, i. 65.
[482] Thus St. Paul, Col. iii. 2, exhorts us to set our affections on things above, not on things of the earth.
Chap. XXVIII.—Of True Religion and of Nature. Whether Fortune is a Goddess, and of Philosophy.
[483] [Quod si Deum naturam vocant quæ perversitas est naturam potius quam Deum nominare. Observe this terse maxim of our author. It rebukes the teachers and scientists of our day, who seem afraid to “look through nature up to nature’s God,” in their barren instruction. They go back to Lucretius, and call it progress!]
[484] To raise or stretch out the hand was an acknowledgment of defeat.
[485] [See p. 91, note 3, supra, and sparsim in this work.]
[486] Literally, “their accounts did not square.”
[487] Afficit, “presses and harasses.” Another reading is affligit, “casts to the ground.”
Chap. XXIX.—Of Fortune Again, and Virtue.
[488] Cicero, De Offic., ii. 6. The expressions are borrowed from the figure of a ship at sea.
[489] Æn., viii. 33.
[490] Sallust, Cat., viii.
[491] Chapter xvi.
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