Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 October 2016
(1) deinde ibidem homo acutus, cum illud occurreret, si omnia deorsus e regione ferrentur et, ut dixi, ad lineam, numquam fore ut atomus altera alteram posset attingere †itaque† attulit rem commenticiam: declinare dixit atomum perpaulum …
(Fin. 1.19)1 Vahlen, I., Opuscula academica (Leipzig, 1907–8), 2.344-7Google Scholar.
2 Cf. Hofmann, J.B. and Szantyr, A., Lateinische Syntax und Stilistik (Munich, 1965), 730Google Scholar, noting that Cicero sometimes allows anacolutha to stand in his philosophica to give prominence to a key idea; this would, however, not apply to our passage.
3 Essler, H., Glückselig und unsterblich. Epikureische Theologie bei Cicero und Philodem (Basle, 2011), 67–108 Google Scholar.
4 Accepted by Essler (n. 3), 93–7.
5 Essler (n. 3), 76–7.
6 Essler (n. 3), 76. The tradition of the ‘Leiden corpus’, to which Nat. D. belongs, has been studied in detail by Schmidt, P.L., Die Überlieferung von Ciceros Schrift ‘De legibus’ im Mittelalter und Renaissance (Munich, 1974)Google Scholar; cf. also Powell, J.G.F. (ed.), Ciceronis De re publica, De legibus, Cato maior de senectute, Laelius de amicitia (Oxford, 2006), xxxii–xlviii Google Scholar. Beer's reading is not cited in Ax's apparatus; one will have to await details of her discovery (a humanist conjecture?).
7 Essler (n. 3), 76 n. 41, citing Dom. 8, Fin. 4.72, Att. 12.18a.2, QFr. 1.2.2.
8 This possibility is rejected by Essler (n. 3), 104 on grounds that a temporal sequence is not wanted since the images flow continuously. But cum … tum can be read as setting the points in parallel (‘not only … but also’); cf. R. Kühner and C. Stegmann, Ausführliche Grammatik der lateinischen Sprache. 2. Teil: Satzlehre (Hannover, 1966 [reprint of 19624]), 2.350-2.
9 This treatment replaces text and interpretation at Dyck, A.R. (ed.), Cicero, De Natura Deorum Book I (Cambridge, 2003), 35Google Scholar (where cumque is to be replaced by tum in §49) and 125. I would like to thank the journal's anonymous reader for a helpful suggestion.