"as Hortensius had for words." This time it is at his villa, near Tusculum, amidst scenery perhaps even now the loveliest of all Italian landscapes, that the philosophic dialogue takes place. Lucullus condemns the scepticism of the New Academy—those reactionists against the dogmatism of past times, who disbelieve their very eyesight. If (he says) we reject the testimony of the senses, there is neither body, nor truth, nor argument, nor anything certain left us. These perpetual doubters destroy every ground of our belief.
Cicero ingeniously defends this scepticism, which was, in fact, the bent of his own mind. After all, what is our eyesight worth? The ship sailing across the bay yonder seems to move, but to the sailors it is the shore that recedes from their view. Even the sun, "which mathematicians affirm to be eighteen times larger than the earth, looks but a foot in diameter." And as it is with these things, so it is with all knowledge. Bold indeed must be the man who can define the point at which belief passes into certainty. Even the "fine frenzy" of the poet, his pictures of gods and heroes, are as lifelike to himself and to his hearers as though he actually saw them;—
Draws in and bends his golden bow,
While on the left fair Dian waves her torch."
No—we are sure of nothing; and we are happy if, like Socrates, we only know this—that we know nothing. Then, as if in irony, or partly influenced perhaps by the advocate's love of arguing the case both ways, Cicero
