I shall humour you and explain what you wish as best I can, not however as if I were the Pythian Apollo making statements to be regarded as certain and unalterable, but following out a train of probabilities as one poor mortal out of many. For further than likelihood as I see it I cannot get. Certainty will be for those who say such things can be known and who claim wisdom for themselves.See Roger Miller Jones, "Posidonius and Cicero's Tusculan Disputations i.17-81," Classical Philology 18.3 (July, 1923) 202-228.
geram tibi morem et ea, quae vis, ut potero, explicabo, nec tamen quasi Pythius Apollo, certa ut sint et fixa quae dixero, sed ut homunculus unus e multis, probabilla coniectura sequens. ultra enim quo progrediar quam ut verisimilla videam non habeo. certa dicent ii, qui et percipi ea posse dicunt et se sapientes esse profitentur.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Saturday, November 08, 2025
Probabilities, Not Certainties
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.9.17 (tr. J.E. King):