III. The fact, I replied, is just as you say, Varro. For while we were sojourners, as it were, in our own city, and wandering about like strangers, your books have conducted us, as it were, home again, so as to enable us at last to recognise who and where we were. You have discussed the antiquity of our country, and the variety of dates and chronology relating to it. You have explained the laws which regulate sacrifices and priests; you have unfolded the customs of the city both in war and peace; you have described the various quarters and districts; you have omitted mentioning none of the names, or kinds, or functions, or causes of divine or human things; you have thrown a great deal of light on our poets, and altogether on Latin literature and on Latin expressions; you have yourself composed a poem of varied beauties, and elegant in almost every point; and you have in many places touched upon philosophy in a manner sufficient to excite our curiosity, though inadequate to instruct us. You allege, indeed, a very plausible reason for this. For, you say, those who are learned men will prefer reading philosophical treatises in Greek, and those who are ignorant of Greek will not read them even in Latin. However, tell me now, do you really agree with your own argument? I would rather say, those who are unable to read them in the one language will read them in the other; and even those who can read them in Greek will not despise their own language. For what reason can be imagined why men learned in Greek literature should read the Latin poets, and not read the Latin philosophers? Or again, if Ennius,(8) Pacuvius, Accius, and many others who have given us, I will not say the exact expressions, but the meaning of the Greeks, delight their readers; how much more will the philosophers delight them, if, as the poets have imitated Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, they in like manner imitate Plato, Aristotle, and Theophrastus? I see, too, that any orators among us are praised who imitate Hyperides or Demosthenes.