I. Not the best: Epicurus, Lucretius, Dicaearchus, Panaetius, and the Stoics deny or dilute immortality
I. I say of the best philosophers, because there are not lacking philosophers of no best sense who have denied, attacked, or at least called into doubt the immortality of the soul. Epicurus, parting company with the better ones, embraced a sentence worthy of himself; Lucretius following him in the third book which he wrote On the Nature of Things attacks the immortality of the soul with good and elegant verses indeed, but with bad and weaker arguments, and tries to prove that minds and light souls are native to living things and mortal. Nay more, as Cicero witnesses in Tusculan Disputations book 1, troops of contradictors come — not only of Epicureans, but Dicaearchus also discoursed against this immortality and wrote three books in which he tries to make souls mortal. So also Panaetius wants them to perish. But the Stoics grant us a loan as to crows: they say minds will remain long, they deny forever.
Latin
I. Optimorum dico philosophorum, quia non desunt haud optimi senius philosophi, qui animae immortalitatem negarunt, oppugnarunt, aut saltem in dubium vocarunt. Epicurus nempe a melioribus divortium faciens sententiam se dignam amplexus est, quem Lucretius secutus libro, quem de natura rerum scripsit, tertio, bonis quidem & elegantibus versibus, sed malis & sublestioribus argumentis animae immortalitatem oppugnat, & probare conatur, nativos animantibus & mortales Esse animos animasque leves. Quin imo, teste Cicerone, 1. Tusc. catervae veniunt contradicentium, non solum Epicureorum, sed & Dicaearchus contra hanc immortalitatem disseruit, & tres libros conscripsit, in quibus efficere conatur animas esse mortales. Ita quoque Panaetius interire vult. Stoici autem usuram nobis largiuntur tanquam cornicibus: diu mansuros ajunt animos, semper negant.