Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/281

 charging us only with using words incorrectly; but that we do not approve of one single one of your ideas. You are throwing a stone at me as I depart, said I; however, we shall see. And when we had thus spoken we separated.

I. day when I had been hearing Antiochus lecture, as I was in the habit of doing, O Brutus, in company with Marcus Piso, in that gymnasium which is called Ptolemy's, my brother Quintus being with me, and Titus Pomponius, and Lucius Cicero, our cousin on the father's side as to relationship, but our own brother as to affection, we determined to take our afternoon's walk in the Academy, principally because at that time of day that place was free from any crowd. Accordingly, at the appointed time we all met at Piso's house, and from thence we walked half-a-dozen furlongs from the Dipylus to the Academy, beguiling the road with discourse on various subjects; and when we had arrived at the deservedly celebrated space of the Academy, we there found the solitude which we desired. Then said Piso—Shall I say that this is implanted in us by nature, or by some mistake, that when we see those places which we have heard that men who deserve to be had in recollection have much frequented, we are more moved than when we hear even of their actual deeds, or than when we read some one of their writings?—just as I am affected now. For the remembrance of Plato comes into my mind, whom we understand to have been the first person who was accustomed to dispute in this place; and whose neighbouring gardens not only recal him vividly to my recollection, but seem even to place the man himself before my eyes. Here Speusippus, here Xenocrates, here his pupil Polemo used to walk; and the latter used to sit in the very spot which is now before us. There is our senate-house (I mean the Curia