Commentary on Book II

Summary

STOIC ARGUMENT

Division of the subject: the Divine existence (A); the Divine nature (B) ; Providential government of the world (C); Providential care for man (D). §§ 1—3.

Ch. i § 1. ne ego incautus: cf. i 51 n., and for omission of substantive verb § 20, § 68, § 84, and final Index under ‘ ellipsis’.

et eodem rhetore : idem is added to give prominence to the union of different attributes (often apparently incongruous, as in I 30,) in the same person. Rhetor means properly a teacher of rhetoric as in Plin. Ep. iv 11 (cited by Sch.) eo decidit ut rhetor ex oratore fieret; then, as here and Brutus § 265, one trained in all the rules of speaking. Cicero often speaks of the importance of the study of philosophy, especially the Academic philosophy, to the orator, see below § 168, Orator 12, Fat. 3, and cf. Quintilian XII 2 § 23 M. Tullius non tantum se debere scholis rhetorum quantum Academiae spatiis frequenter ipse testatur. Oratory without philosophy is as defective on the one side, as philosophy without oratory on the other; docto oratori palma danda est, Orat. in 142, Tusa. I 7. We are told elsewhere that Cotta devoted himself to the Academy with a view to oratory, see Orat. in 145 and vol. I pref. p. xl.

rhetorem: Martial (ii 64 1 and 5) uses the Greek forms rhetora rhetorĕs, see Roby § 480 and Varro L. L. x 70.

neque enim flumine—siccitas: ‘I am not disconcerted either by (i.e. at having to answer) a stream of empty verbiage or by exactness of thought accompanied by jejuneness of style’.