Cotta, with his usual courtesy, then began.

Velleius, says he, were it not for something which you have advanced, I should have remained silent; for I have often observed, as I did just now upon hearing you, that I cannot so easily conceive why a proposition is true as why it is false.

Should you ask me what I take the nature of the Gods to be, I should perhaps make no answer.

But if you should ask whether I think it to be of that nature which you have described, I should answer that I was as far as possible from agreeing with you.
However, before I enter on the subject of your discourse and what you have advanced upon it, I will give you my opinion of yourself.

Your intimate friend, L.Crassus, has been often heard by me to say that you were beyond all question superior to all our learned Romans; and that few Epicureans in Greece were to be compared to you.