Book 16
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WHEN I wished to be introduced to the science of logic and instructed in it, it was necessary to take up and learn what the dialecticians call ei)sagwgai/ or introductory exercises. II. 194, Arn. Then because at first I had to learn about axioms, which Marcus Varro calls, Fr. 29, G. and S. now proposita, or propositions, and now proloquia, or preliminary statements, I sought diligently for the Commentary on Proloquia of Lucius Aelius, a learned man, who was the teacher of Varro; and finding it in the library of Peace, Vespasian's Temple of Peace in the Forum Pacis. I read it. But I found in it nothing that was written to instruct or to make the matter clear, but Aelius p. 54. 19. Fun. seems to have made that book rather as suggestions for his own use than for the purpose of teaching others.
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I therefore of necessity returned to my Greek books. From these I obtained this definition of an axiom: lekto\n au)totele\s a)po/fanton o(/son a)f' au(tw=|. An absolute and self-evident proposition. This I forbore to turn into Latin, since it would have been necessary to use new and as yet uncoined words, such as, from their strangeness, the ear could hardly endure. But Marcus Varro in the twenty-fourth book of his Latin Language, dedicated to Cicero, thus defines the word very briefly: Fr. 29, G. and S. A proloquium is a statement in which nothing is lacking.
