Academica Priora
- Language:
- Latin
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~23,800 words · 113 passages
Cite this work
- APACicero. (n.d.). Academica Priora. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/cicero/academica-priora
- MLACicero. Academica Priora. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/cicero/academica-priora.
- ChicagoCicero. Academica Priora. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/cicero/academica-priora.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The Latin original of the first edition: the book of it that survives, the 'Lucullus'.
Context and history
Written in 45 BC, this is Cicero's book on whether anything can be known: the defence of the scepticism of the New Academy, the school in which he had been formed. The quarrel is with the Stoics, who held that there are perceptions so clear they cannot deceive, and that the wise man may assent to them with certainty; against this Cicero deploys the arguments of Carneades — dreams, illusions, indistinguishable twins — to conclude that certainty is not to be had, and that what remains is not silence but the probable: one can live and decide by what is plausible without affirming it as certain. Cicero rewrote the whole work within a few weeks, which is why there are two editions, neither preserved complete. It is the principal source for the whole Hellenistic debate on knowledge, and when Augustine set out to fight scepticism, it was against this book that he wrote.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Similiter uos, cum perturbare, ut illi rem publicam, sic uos philosophiam bene iam constitutam uelitis, Empedoclen, Anaxagoran, Democritum, Parmeniden, Xenophanen, Platonem etiam et Socraten profertis. Sed neque Saturninus, ut nostrum inimicum potissimum nominem, simile quicquam habuit ueterum illorum nec Arcesilae calumnia conferenda est cum Democriti uerecundia. Et tamen isti physici raro admodum, cum haerent aliquo loco, exclamant quasi mente incitati, Empedocles quidem, ut interdum mihi furere uideatur, abstrusa esse omnia, nihil nos sentire, nihil cernere, nihil omnino quale sit posse reperire; maiorem autem partem, mihi quidem omnes, isti uidentur nimis etiam quaedam adfirmare plusque profiteri se scire quam sciant. Quod si illi tum in nouis rebus quasi modo nascentes haesitauerunt, nihilne tot saeculis, summis ingeniis, maximis studiis explicatum putamus? Nonne, cum iam philosophorum disciplinae grauissimae constitissent, tum exortus est ut in optima re publica Ti. Gracchus qui otium perturbaret, sic Arcesilas qui constitutam philosophiam euerteret et in eorum auctoritate delitisceret, qui negauissent quicquam sciri aut percipi posse? Quorum e numero tollendus est et Plato et Socrates, alter, quia reliquit perfectissimam disciplinam, Peripateticos et Academicos, nominibus differentis, re congruentis, a quibus Stoici ipsi uerbis magis quam sententiis dissenserunt; Socrates autem de se ipse detrahens in disutatione plus tribuebat eis, quos uolebat refellere. Ita, cum aliud diceret atque sentiret, libenter uti solitus est ea dissimulatione, quam Graeci @ei)rwnei/an uocant; quam ait etiam in Africano fuisse Fannius, idque propterea uitiosum in illo non putandum, quod idem fuierit in Socrate. ---- VI.