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CDLXIV (F IX, 4)

TO M. TERENTIUS VARRO (?AT CUMAE)
TUSCULUM (JUNE)
About things "possible," let me tell you my opinion agrees with Diodorus. Wherefore, if you are to come, be assured that your coming is "necessary," but if you are not, then it is "impossible" that you should come. Now see which opinion pleases you the more, that of Chrysippus or the one which our teacher Diodotus could not stomach. But on these points also we will talk when we are at leisure: that too is "possible," according to Chrysippus. 1 I am much obliged to you about Coctius: for that is just what I had commissioned Atticus to do. Yes, if you don't come to me, I shall take a run to you. If you have a garden in your library, 2 everything will be complete.


1 Cicero playfully alludes to the necessitudinarian doctrines of Diodorus of Caria (the Megaric philosopher, ob. B.C. 307) and Chrysippus of Soli, the Stoic (born B.C. 280). Diodorus maintained that "only what is or what will be is possible." Chrysippus, on the other hand, defined "the possible" as what is "capable of being true if circumstances do not prevent." Diodotus was a Stoic who lived many years in Cicero's house, and died there B.C. 59. See vol. i., p.115.

2 Probably means (though it is a strange way of expressing it) a garden to sit and converse in, like philosophers in the Academy: the library being like Cicero's Tusculan gymnasium, round a court containing shrubs, etc. There is a similar reference to Cicero's villa at Cumae, Vol. i., p.253 (Q. Fr. 2.8).

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