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458 opinions of the early Stoics. He softened their severity and harshness; he abjured their "insensibility and apathy" (Aulus Gellius, 12, 5), and skilfully incorporated with their doctrines many of the opinions of Plato, Aristotle, Xenocrates, and Theophrastus. In opposition to the credulity of most of his sect, he scouted the predictions of astrologers, and exercised in everything a sound judgment, no less than an eloquence, which fitted him to recommend the doctrines he professed to so practical a people as the Romans. This philosophy was, in itself, peculiarly adapted to their genius, whether in their greatness or in their decline. In the palmy days of the Republic, it animated them with the fortitude of power; in the tragic gloom and sinking fortunes of the Empire, it upheld them with the fortitude of despair. It is with the spring-time of Roman Stoicism that the name of Panætius is associated. None of his writings have come down to us; but how highly they were esteemed in their day is proved by the fact that so great a writer as Cicero thought it not beneath him to copy his own treatise, 'De Officiis,' from one of the works of Panætius. Panætius died at Athens about 112 B.C.

3. Cicero, as indicated in the last sentence, was an admirer and expounder of the doctrines of the Stoics. He was, at the same time, an adherent of the Academical philosophy, a philosophy which inculcated the necessity of great caution, not to say scepticism,