Such, in brief, is Piso's (or rather Cicero's) vindication of the old masters of philosophy. Before they leave the place, Cicero fires a parting shot at the Stoic paradox that the 'wise man' is always happy. How. he pertinently asks, can one in sickness and poverty, blind, or childless, in exile or in torture, be possibly called happy, except by a monstrous perversion of language?[1] [Footnote 1: In a little treatise called "Paradoxes", Cicero discusses six of these scholastic quibbles of the Stoics.] Here, somewhat abruptly, the dialogue closes; and Cicero pronounces no judgment of his own, but leaves the great question almost as perplexed as when he started the discussion. But, of the two antagonistic theories, he leans rather to the Stoic than to the Epicurean. Self-sacrifice and honour seem, to his view, to present a higher ideal than pleasure or expediency. II. 'ACADEMIC QUESTIONS'. Fragments of two editions of this work have come down to us; for almost before the first copy had reached the hands of his friend Atticus, to whom it was sent, Cicero had rewritten the whole on an enlarged scale. The first book (as we have it now) is dedicated to Varro, a noble patron of art and literature. In his villa at Cumae were spacious porticoes and gardens, and a library with galleries and cabinets open to all comers. Here, on a terrace looking seawards, Cicero, Atticus, and Varro himself pass a long afternoon in discussing the relative merits of the old and new Academies; and hence we get the title of the work. Varro takes the lion's share of the first dialogue, and shows how from the "vast and varied genius of Plato" both Academics and Peripatetics drew all their philosophy, whether it related to morals, to nature, or to logic. Stoicism receives a passing notice, as also does what Varro considers the heresy of Theophrastus, who strips virtue of all its beauty, by denying that happiness depends upon it. The second book is dedicated to another illustrious name, the elder Lucullus, not long deceased--half-statesman, half-dilettante, "with almost as divine a memory for facts", says Cicero, with something of envy, "as Hortensius had for words". This time it is at his villa, near Tusculum, amidst scenery perhaps even now the loveliest of all Italian landscapes, that the philosophic dialogue takes place. Lucullus condemns the scepticism of the New Academy--those reactionists against the dogmatism of past times, who disbelieve their very eyesight. If (he says) we reject the testimony of the senses, there is neither body, nor truth, nor argument, nor anything certain left us. These perpetual doubters destroy every ground of our belief.