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There is a good review of the opinions of the ancients in general, and of Seneca in particular, on this subject in Justus Lipsius' Manuductio ad Stoicam Philosophiam, lib. iii. dissert.

But it was the Empire, not the Church, which was weak in Italy.—See also Natalis Alex, in sec. 8th dissert.

The following is the division of Amman in his work Surdus Loquens, published at Amsterdam in 1629, and enlarged under the title of Dissert. de Loquela, 1700, and is, perhaps, the most natural and intelligible.

Dissert. de vero auctore Consolationis.

He was weakly opposed, in the following year, by M. Sallier, and defended by M. Beaufort, in the Memoirs of the Academy, and at greater length in his Dissert. sur l’Incertitude des cinq premiers siècles de l’Hist.