Book II

., and is a jocular application of the Carneadean _probabile_, as may be seen from the words _probabiliter posse confici_.

35. Krische assigns this to the end of Varro's speech in the third Book. With this opinion I find it quite impossible to agree. A passage in the _Lucullus_ (60) proves to demonstration that in the first edition this allusion to the esoteric teaching of the Academy could only have occurred either in the speech of Catulus or in that of Cicero. As no reason whatever appears to account for its transference to Varro I prefer to regard it as belonging to Cic.'s exposition of the positive side of Academic doctrine in the second book. Cic. repeatedly insists that the Academic school must not be supposed to have no truths to maintain, see _Luc._ 119, also 66 and _N.D._ I. 12. Also Aug. _Contra. Ac._ II. 29.

36. It is difficult to see where this passage could have been included if not in that prooemium to the third book which is mentioned _Ad. Att._ XVI. 6, 4. I may here add that Krische seems to me wrong in holding that the whole four books formed one discussion, finished within the limits of a single day. Why interrupt the discussion by the insertion of a prologue of so general a nature as to be taken from a stock which Cic. kept on hand ready made? (Cf. _Ad Att._ as above.)

* * * * *

Besides the actual fragments of the second edition, many indications of its contents are preserved in the work of Augustine entitled _Contra Academicos_, which, though written in support of dogmatic opinions, imitated throughout the second edition of the _Academica_ of Cic. No writings of the Classical period had so great an influence on the culture and opinions of Augustine as the _Academica_ and the lost _Hortensius_. I give, partly from Krische, the scattered indications of the contents of the former which are to be gathered from the bishop's works. In Aug. _Contr. Ac._ II. 14, 15, we have what appears to be a summary of the lost part of

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