Note 36 — Chapter II · ARISTOTELIAN CANON.

Cicero, De Finibus, v. 5, 12. “De summo autem bono, quia duo genera librorum sunt, unum populariter scriptum, quod ἐξωτερικὸν appellabant, alterum limatius, quod in commentariis reliquerunt, non semper idem dicere videntur: nec in summâ tamen ipsâ aut varietas est ulla, apud hos quidem quos nominavi, aut inter ipsos dissensio.”

The word limatius here cannot allude to high polish and ornament of style (nitor orationis), but must be equivalent to ἀκριβέστερον, doctius, subtilius, &c. (as Buhle and others have already remarked, Buhle, De Libris Aristot. Exoter. et Acroam. p. 115; Madvig, ad Cicero de Finib. v. 12; Heitz, p. 134), applied to profound reasoning, with distinctions of unusual precision, which it required a careful preparatory training to apprehend. This employment of the word limatius appears to me singular, but it cannot mean anything else here. The commentarii are the general heads — plain unadorned statements of facts or reasoning — which the orator or historian is to employ his genius in setting forth and decorating, so that it may be heard or read with pleasure and admiration by a general audience. Cicero, in that remarkable letter wherein he entreats Lucceius to narrate his (Cicero’s) consulship in an historical work, undertakes to compose “commentarios rerum omnium” as materials for the use of Lucceius (Ep. ad Famil. v. 12. 10). His expression, “in commentariis reliquerunt,” shows that he considered the exoteric books to have been prepared by working up some naked preliminary materials into an ornate and interesting form.