CRITICAL NOTES. 507 



adipiscendamque sapientiam." Tlie difficulty liere lies in the words 

 " ohtinendam adipiscendamqite." Cicero says, that a man who has 

 complied with the divine precept, yvwdi azaorov, will understand how 

 well nature has equipped him for the battle of life, and how great a 

 store of materials he has for " holding on to," (or " preseiwing ") and 

 " acquiring " wisdom. Madvig. calls this a " durissima hysterologia,^' 

 because it is necessary to " acquire " a thiag before one can " keep " 

 it. It seems to me, however, that Cicero himself explains his mean- 

 ing further on, where he says that, " nature has implanted in us cer- 

 tain rudimentary 'notions' of things, which are afterwards perfected," 

 and I think that obtinendam properly refers to these original 

 "notions," adipiscendam to the more perfect knowledge, which is 

 subsequently acquired. 



Ibid : I. xxiii, 60. " Societatemque caritatis eiecerif cum suis." 

 This is said to be the reading of all the best MSS. ; but, as ejecerit is 

 plainly unintelligible, it has been variously altered into conjecerit or 

 coierit, &c. A statement which Munro, in his notes on Lucretius 

 (Bk. I. 34), has made, concerning the orthography of compounds of 

 jacio (viz., that the best MSS. have always conicit, not conjicit; reicit, 

 not rejicit, and so forth), led me to think that eicerii, which, in any 

 case, should be read here, was not from ejicio, but from the verb icere 

 " to strike," and that " societatem eicerit" is used like "foedus-icere." 

 Instances of ei being substituted for the long i, are sufficiently com- 

 mon in MSS. I produce two from this treatise itself. In Bk. I, 

 xxiii, 61, some editors retain the reading eidem for idem, and we 

 have utei for uti in Bk. II. x, 24. In Lucretius, Bk. VI. 1217, 

 Munro, with Lachmann, retains the MS. readuig exeiret, and in 

 verse 1221 of the same book, exeibant in preference to the modern 

 spelling exirent and exibant. (See also Munro's note on Lucretius, 

 Bk. IIL 97). 



Ibid : II. iv, 9. " Sed vero intelligi sic oportet, et hoc et alia jussa 

 ac vetita populorum vim (non) habere ad recte facta vocandi et a 

 peccatis avocandi, quae vis non modo senior est quam setas populorum 

 0fc civitatum, sed et sequalis illius cselum atque terras tuentis et 

 regentis dei." Editors before Bake were unanimously of opinion 

 that the negative no7i was absolutely necessary to the sense of this 

 passage ; and, in most cases, they admitted it into the text, at the 

 same time acknowledging that it was not to be found in the MSS. 

 Bake however has, I think, satisfactorily shown that non is unneces- 



