Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/40

 30 Journal of Philology. argument I will not say, but what he means is not doubtful. In visible things there is a last extreme vanishing point, beyond which perception cannot go, and which you cannot conceive existing separate from the thing; so analogically you may reason that atoms have such, and that as they are not formed by a coming together of their parts, but have existed as they are from eternity, they may be supposed to consist of minima, ia- X"rra, existing in eternal juxta-position, because incapable of existing alone, as will be shewn in 599 G34. In Epicurus' letter to Herodotus (Diog. Laert. x. 58) there is a very difficult and corrupt passage, which however will throw light on the rea- soning of Lucretius. There Epicurus speaks first of the t6 ed- Xkttov to ev rfj alaBqaei, "the least thing which can be perceived by sense," the "extremum cuj usque cacumen" of Lucretius (i. 749) ; and afterwards goes on to say in the same sense as Lucre- tius, ravrji rJ7 avakoyia vopnaTtov na t6 iv rfj dro'/KU cXax lOTOW Kexpfjcrdai. fiiKp6rT)Ti yap eVceifo &f}ov as duxptpci rov Kara, rrjv ala-Orjaiv Oeapovptvov, avakoyia tie rfj avrjj kcxP 7 } ' fVewrcp Kat OTt piyedos x f * V arop.os Kara TTjv cvravda avakoyiav Ka-nryoprjo-aficv. The whole passage is, however, too long and corrupt for me to attempt to elucidate at present ; I will therefore now turn to Lucretius 599 634. Lachmann has played sad havoc with these verses by introducing at least five violent and unwarrantable alterations, and other editors have equally sinned. What meaning they have attached to the pas- sage, I do not know, for in every two verses they appear to con- tradict themselves. It is beyond all question that Lucretius is here speaking of the minima, the parts of an atom, parts, per- haps, as the acute marginal annotator of Flor. xxxv. 32 says, potentia rather than actu. It would be worth while to refer to two other passages, where Lucretius discourses of the parts of atoms ; the one u. 483 499, of which 1 shall presently have to say more ; the other, v. 351 355,^where he refers to our present passage, on which I am dwelling at greater length on account of the strange blundering of editors : Turn porro quoniam est extre- mum quodque cacumen Corporis illius, quod, &c. : " Once again, since there is in every case an extreme point to that body which our senses cannot see," i.e. to the adparos arofios; for here, and just below, 606, and n. 484 and 490, corpus is used in the singular for an atom ; compare also I. 483 : Corpora sunt porro partim primordia rerum ; " id, that cacumen is without parts,. and consists