§4. _Deliberatam--agitatam_: Cic. as usual exaggerates the knowledge possessed by the _personae_ of the dialogue; cf. Introd. p. 38, _De Or._ II. 1. _In promptu_: so II. 10. _Quod ista ipsa ... cogitavi_: Goer., who half a page back had made merry over the gloss hunters, here himself scented a miserable gloss; Schutz, Goerenz's echo expels the words. Yet they are thoroughly like Cic. (cf. _De Div._ II. 1, _Cat. Mai._ 38), and moreover nothing is more Ciceronian than the repetition of words and clauses in slightly altered forms. The reason here is partly the intense desire to flatter Varro. _Si qui ... si essent_: the first _si_ has really no conditional force, _si qui_ like ειτινες merely means "all who," for a strong instance see _Ad Fam._ I. 9, 13, ed Nobbe, _si accusandi sunt, si qui pertimuerunt_. _Ea nolui scribere_, etc.: very similar expressions occur in the prologue to _D.F._ I., which should be compared with this prologue throughout. §5. _Vides ... didicisti_: MSS. have _vides autem eadem ipse didicisti enim_. My reading is that of Dav. followed by Baiter. Halm, after Christ, has _vides autem ipse--didicisti enim eadem--non posse_, etc. _Similis_: Halm, in deference to MSS., makes Cic. write _i_ and _e_ indiscriminately in the acc. plur. of i stems. I shall write _i_ everywhere, we shall thus, I believe, be far nearer Cicero's real writing. Though I do not presume to say that his usage did not vary, he must in the vast majority of instances have written _i_, see Corss. I. 738--744. _Amafinii aut Rabirii_: cf. Introd. p. 26. _Definiunt ... partiuntur_: n. on 32. _Interrogatione_: Faber saw this to be right, but a number of later scholars alter it, e.g. Bentl. _argumentatione_, Ernesti _ratione_. But the word as it stands has exactly the meaning these alterations are intended to secure. _Interrogatio_ is merely the _conclusio_ or syllogism put as a series of questions. Cf. _Paradoxa_ 2, with _T.D._ II. 42 which will show that _interrogatiuncula_ and _conclusiuncula_ are almost convertible terms. See also _M.D.F._ I. 39. _Nec dicendi nec disserendi_: Cic.'s constant mode of denoting the Greek ‛ρητορικη and διαλεκτικη; note on 32. _Et oratorum etiam_: Man., Lamb. om. _etiam_, needlessly. In _Ad Fam._ IX. 25, 3, the two words even occur without any other word to separate them. For _oratorum_ Pearce conj. _rhetorum_. _Rhetor_, however is not thus used in Cic.'s phil. works. _Utramque vim virtutem_: strange that Baiter (esp. after Halm's note) should take Manutius' far-fetched conj. _unam_ for _virtutem_. Any power or faculty (vis, δυναμις) may be called in Gk. αρετη, in Lat _virtus_. Two passages, _D.F._ III. 72, _De Or._ III. 65, will remove all suspicion from the text. _Verbis quoque novis_: MSS. have _quanquam_ which however is impossible in such a place in Cic. (cf. _M.D.F._ V. 68). _Ne a nobis quidem_: so all the MSS., but Orelli (after Ernesti) thinking the phrase "_arrogantius dictum_" places _quidem_ after _accipient_.