BOOK III

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12. This forms part of Varro's answer to Cicero, which corresponded in substance to Lucullus' speech in the _Academica Priora_ The drift of this extract was most likely this: just as there is a limit beyond which the battle against criminals cannot be maintained, so after a certain point we must cease to fight against perverse sceptics and let them take their own way. See another view in Krische, p. 62.

13. Krische believes that this fragment formed part of an attempt to show that the senses were trustworthy, in the course of which the clearness with which the fishes were seen leaping from the water was brought up as evidence. (In _Luc._ 81, on the other hand, Cic. drew an argument hostile to the senses from the consideration of the fish.) The explanation seems to me very improbable. The words bear such a striking resemblance to those in _Luc._ 125 (_ut nos nunc simus ad Baulos Puteolosque videmus, sic innumerabilis paribus in locis esse isdem de rebus disputantis_) that I am inclined to think that the reference in Nonius ought to be to Book IV . and not