oligarchy, he does not conceal the licentiousness which society harboured beneath the sway of the later Optimates, and he turns mostly to Cato as the type which he would fain accept as representative of the true Roman patrician:—
"Nam cui crediderim Superos arcana daturos
Dicturosque magis quam sancto vera Catoni?"[1]
The noble lines in which Cato refuses to consult the Libyan oracle—Non exploratum populis Ammona relinquens—are well known, and express a highly ethical view of the divine administration of the world:—
"Hæremus cuncti superis, temploque tacente
Nil facimus non sponte Dei: nec vocibus ullis
Numen agit: dixitque semel nascentibus auctor
Quicquid scire licet: steriles nec legit arenas
Ut caneret paucis, mersitque hoc pulvere verum.
Estne Dei sedes nisi terra et pontus et aer
Et cælum et virtus? Superos quid quærimus ultra?
Juppiter est quodcunque vides quocunque moveris."[2]
His biting sarcasms on those who exercise the art of Magic are conceived in the same spirit of lofty reverence for the Divine Nature,[3] and he would fain believe
- ↑ Pharsalia, ix. 554-555.
- ↑ Pharsalia, ix. 570. We have not been able to refrain from quoting
these—as other—well-known verses in the text. They are the
highest expression of the Stoic Pantheism. "Virtus" has the
appearance of a rhetorical climax; but has it been noticed that the
great modern poet of Pantheism—for what else was Wordsworth?—also
makes humanity the highest embodiment of that "presence . . . Whose
dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and
the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man?" - ↑ Quis labor hic superis, &c., vi. 490, et passim.
