Cicero - On The Nature of Gods - Rackham

This is H. Rackham’s translation of Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods, from the Loeb Classical Library (1933). The text is taken from the proofread edition at LacusCurtius, which is in the public domain. Rackham’s notes are given at the foot of the page.

Each section number is a link target: for example, section 43 of Book One is at #1-43.

Contents

• Book One: the Epicurean Velleius states his school’s view of the gods (I.18–56), and the Academic Cotta replies to him (I.57–124).
• Book Two: the Stoic Balbus states the Stoic view.
• Book Three: Cotta replies to Balbus.

For the Epicurean sections, see also our side-by-side Velleius on Divinity and the Yonge translation of the whole work.

Book One

Chapter I

[1] There are a number of branches of philosophy that have not as yet been by any means adequately explored; but the inquiry into the nature of the gods, which is both highly interesting in relation to the theory of the soul,¹ and fundamentally important for the regulation of religion, is one of special difficulty and obscurity, as you, Brutus, are well aware. The multiplicity and variety of the opinions held upon this subject by eminent scholars are bound to constitute a strong argument for the view that philosophy has its origin and starting-point in ignorance, and that the Academic School were well-advised in “withholding assent” from beliefs that are uncertain: for what is more unbecoming than ill-considered haste? and what is so ill-considered or so unworthy of the dignity and seriousness proper to a philosopher as to hold an opinion that is not true, or to maintain with unhesitating certainty a proposition not based on adequate examination, comprehension and knowledge? [2] As regards the present subject, for example, most thinkers have affirmed that the gods exist, and this is the most probable view and the one to which we are all led by nature’s guidance; but Protagoras declared himself uncertain, and Diagoras of Melos and Theodorus of Cyrene held that there are no gods at all. Moreover, the upholders of the divine existence differ and disagree so widely, that it would be a troublesome task to recount their opinions. Many views are put forward about the outward form of the gods, their dwelling-places and abodes, and mode of life, and these topics are debated with the widest variety of opinion among philosophers; but as to the question upon which the whole issue of the dispute principally turns, whether the gods are entirely idle and inactive, taking no part at all in the direction and government of the world, or whether on the contrary all things both were created and ordered by them in the beginning and are controlled and kept in motion by them throughout eternity, here there is the greatest disagreement of all. And until this issue is decided, mankind must continue to labour under the profoundest uncertainty, and to be in ignorance about matters of the highest moment.

Chapter II

[3] For there are and have been philosophers who hold that the gods exercise no control over human affairs whatever. But if their opinion is the true one, how can piety, reverence or religion exist? For all these are tributes which it is our duty to render in purity and holiness to the divine powers solely on the assumption that they take notice of them, and that some service has been rendered by the immortal gods to the race of men. But if on the contrary the gods have neither the power nor the will to aid us, if they pay no heed to us at all and take no notice of our actions, if they can exercise no possible influence upon the life of men, what ground have we for rendering any sort of worship, honour or prayer to the immortal gods? Piety however, like the rest of the virtues, cannot exist in mere outward show and pretence; and, with piety, reverence and religion must likewise disappear. And when these are gone, life soon becomes a welter of disorder and confusion; [4] and in all probability the disappearance of piety towards the gods will entail the disappearance of loyalty and social union among men as well, and of justice itself, the queen of all the virtues.

There are however other philosophers, and those of eminence and note, who believe that the whole world is ruled and governed by divine intelligence and reason; and not this only, but also that the gods’ providence watches over the life of men; for they think that the cornº and other fruits of the earth, and also the weather and the seasons and the changes of the atmosphere by which all the products of the soil are ripened and matured, are the gift of the immortal gods to the human race; and they adduce a number of things, which will be recounted in the books that compose the present treatise, that are of such a nature as almost to appear to have been expressly constructed by the immortal gods for the use of man. This view was controverted at great length by Carneades, in such a manner as to arouse in persons of active mind a keen desire to discover the truth. [5] There is in fact no subject upon which so much difference of opinion exists, not only among the unlearned but also among educated men; and the views entertained are so various and so discrepant, that, while it is no doubt a possible alternative that none of them is true, it is certainly impossible that more than one should be so.

Chapter III

Upon this issue we are able both to appease kindly critics and to silence malicious fault-finders, causing the latter to repent of their censure and the former to welcome an accession to their knowledge. Friendly remonstrance must be met by explanation, hostile attack by refutation.

[6] I observe however that a great deal of talk has been current about the large number of books that I have produced within a short space of time, and that such comment has not been all of one kind; some people have been curious as to the cause of this sudden outburst of philosophical interest on my part, while others have been eager to learn what positive opinions I hold on the various questions. Many also, as I have noticed, are surprised at my choosing to espouse a philosophy that in their view robs the world of daylight and floods it with a darkness as of night; and they wonder at my coming forward so unexpectedly as the champion of a derelict system and one that has long been given up.

As a matter of fact however I am no new convert to the study of philosophy. From my earliest youth I have devoted no small amount of time and energy to it, and I pursued it most keenly at the very periods when I least appeared to be doing so, witness the philosophical maxims of which my speeches are full, and my intimacy with the learned men who have always graced my household, as well as those eminent professors, Diodotus, Philo, Antiochus and Posidonius, who were my instructors. [7] Moreover, if it be true that all the doctrines of philosophy have a practical bearing, I may claim that in my public and private conduct alike I have practised the precepts taught by reason and by theory.

Chapter IV

If again anyone asks what motive has induced me so late in the day to commit these precepts to writing, there is nothing that I can explain more easily. I was languishing in idle retirement, and the state of public affairs was such that an autocratic form of government had become inevitable. In these circumstances, in the first place I thought that to expound philosophy to my fellow-countrymen was actually my duty in the interests of the commonwealth, since in my judgement it would greatly contribute to the honour and glory of the state to have thoughts so important and so lofty enshrined in Latin literature also; [8] and I am the less inclined to repent of my undertaking because I can clearly perceive ’)” onMouseOut=“nd();“>that a number of my readers have been stimulated not only to study but to become authors themselves. A great many accomplished students of Greek learning were unable to share their acquisitions with their fellow-citizens, on the ground that they doubted the possibility of conveying in Latin the teachings they had received from the Greeks. In the matter of style however I believe that we have made such progress that even in richness of vocabulary the Greeks do not surpass us. [9] Another thing that urged me to this occupation was the dejection of spirit occasioned by the heavy and crushing blow² that had been dealt me by fortune. Had I been able to find any more effective relief from my sorrow, I should not have had recourse to this particular form of consolidation; but the best way open to me of enjoying even this consolidation to the full extent was to devote myself not only to reading books but also to composing a treatise on the whole of philosophy. Now the readiest mode of imparting a knowledge of the subject in all its departments and branches is to write an exposition of the various methods in their entirety; since it is a striking characteristic of philosophy that its topics all hang together and form a consecutive system; one is seen to be linked to another, and all to be mutually connected and attached.

Chapter V

[10] Those however who seek to learn my personal opinion on the various questions show an unreasonable degree of curiosity. In discussion it is not so much weight of authority as force of argument that should be demanded. Indeed the authority of those who profess to teach is often a positive hindrance to those who desire to learn; they cease to employ their own judgement, and take what they perceive to be the verdict of their chosen master as settling the question. In fact I am not disposed to approve the practice traditionally ascribed to the Pythagoreans, who, when questioned as to the grounds of any assertion that they advanced in debate, are said to have been accustomed to reply ‘He himself said so,’³ ‘he himself’ being Pythagoras. So potent was an opinion already decided, making authority prevail unsupported by reason.

[11] To those again who are surprised at my choice of a system to which to give my allegiance, I think that a sufficient answer has been given in the four books of my Academica. Nor is it the case that I have come forward as the champion of a lost cause and of a position now abandoned. When men die, their doctrines do not perish with them, though perhaps they suffer from the loss of their authoritative exponent. Take for example the philosophical method referred to, that of a purely negative dialectic which refrains from pronouncing any positive judgement. This, after being originated by Socrates, revived by Arcesilas, and reinforced by Carneades, has flourished right down to our own period; though I understand that in Greece itself it is now almost bereft of adherents. But this I ascribe not to the fault of the Academy but to the dullness of mankind. If it is a considerable matter to understand any one of the systems of philosophy singly, how much harder is it to master them all! Yet this is the task that confronts those whose principle is to discover the truth by the method of arguing both for and against all the schools. [12] In an undertaking so extensive and so arduous, I do not profess to have attained success, though I do claim to have attempted it. At the same time it would be impossible for the adherents of this method to dispense altogether with any standard of guidance. This matter it is true I have discussed elsewhere more thoroughly; but some people are so dull and slow of apprehension that they appear to require repeated explanations. Our position is not that we hold that nothing is true, but that we assert that all true sensations are associated with false ones so closely resembling them that they contain no infallible mark to guide our judgement and assent.⁴ From this followed the corollary, that many sensations are probable, that is, though not amounting to a full perception they are yet possessed of a certain distinctness and clearness, and so can serve to direct the conduct of the wise man.

Chapter VI

[13] However, to free myself entirely from ill-disposed criticism, I will now lay before my readers the doctrines of the various schools on the nature of the gods. This is a topic on which it seems proper to summon all the world to sit in judgement and pronounce which of these doctrines is the true one. If it turn out that all the schools agree, or if any one philosopher be found who had discovered the truth, then but not before I will convict the Academy of captiousness. This being so, I feel disposed to cry, in the words of the Young Comrades:⁵

O ye gods and O ye mortals, townsmen, gownsmen, hear my call;
I invoke, implore, adjure ye, bear ye witness one and all —

not about some frivolous trifle such as that of which a character in the play complains —

… here’s a monstrous crime and outrage in the land;
Here’s a lady who declines a guinea from a lover’s hand!

[14] but to attend in court, try the case, and deliver their verdict as to what opinions we are to hold about religion, piety and holiness, about ritual, about honour and loyalty to oaths, about temples, shrines and solemn sacrifices, and about the very auspices over which I myself preside;⁶ for all of these matters ultimately depend upon this question of the nature of the immortal gods. Surely such wide diversity of opinion among men of the greatest learning on a matter of the highest moment must affect even those who think that they possess certain knowledge with a feeling of doubt.

[15] This has often struck me, but it did so with especial force on one occasion, when the topic of the immortal gods was made the subject of a very searching and thorough discussion at the house of my friend Gaius Cotta. It was the Latin Festival, and I had come at Cotta’s express invitation to pay him a visit. I found him sitting in an alcove, engaged in debate with Gaius Velleius, a Member of the Senate, accounted by the Epicureans as their chief Roman adherent at the time. With them was Quintus Lucilius Balbus, who was so accomplished a student of Stoicism as to rank with the leading Greek exponents of that system.

When Cotta saw me, he greeted me with the words: “You come exactly at the right moment, for I am just engaging in a dispute with Velleius on an important topic, in which you with your tastes will be interested to take part.”

Chapter VII

[16] “Well, I too,” I replied, “think I have come at the right moment, as you say. For here are you, three leaders of three schools of philosophy, met in congress. In fact we only want Marcus Piso to have every considerable school represented.”

“Oh,” rejoined Cotta, “if what is said in the book which our master Antiochus lately dedicated to our good Balbus here is true, you have no need to regret the absence of your friend Piso. Antiochus holds the view that the doctrines of the Stoics, though differing in form of expression, agree in substance with those of the Peripatetics. I should like to know your opinion of the book, Balbus.”

“My opinion?” said Balbus, “Why, I am surprised that a man of first-rate intellect like Antiochus should have failed to see what a gulf divides the Stoics, who distinguish expediency and right not in name only but in essential nature, from the Peripatetics, who class the right and the expedient together, and only recognize differences of quantity or degree, not of kind, between them. This is not a slight verbal discrepancy but a fundamental difference of doctrine. [17] However we can discuss this some other time. For the moment we will, if you please, continue the topic which we had begun.”

“Agreed,” cried Cotta; “but to let the newcomer know what is the subject of discussion” — here he glanced at me — “I will explain that we were debating the nature of the gods: a question which seemed to me, as it always does, an extremely obscure one, and upon which I was therefore inquiring of Velleius as to the opinion of Epicurus. So if you do not mind, Velleius,” he continued, “please resume the exposition that you had begun.”

“I will do so,” replied Velleius, “although it is not I but you who have been reinforced by an ally — since both of you,” he said, with a smile in our direction, “are disciples of Philo, and have learned from him to know nothing.”

“What we have learned,” I rejoined, “shall be Cotta’s affair; but pray don’t think I have come to act as his ally, but as a listener, and an impartial and unprejudiced listener too, under no sort of bond or obligation willy nilly to uphold some fixed opinion.”

Chapter VIII

[18] Hereupon Velleius began, in the confident manner (I need not say) that is customary with Epicureans, afraid of nothing so much as lest he should appear to have doubts about anything. One would have supposed he had just come down from the assembly of the gods in the intermundane spaces of Epicurus!⁷ “I am not going to expound to you doctrines that are mere baseless figments of the imagination, such as the artisan deity and world-builder of Plato’s Timaeus, or that old hag of a fortune-teller, the Pronoia (which we may render ‘Providence’) of the Stoics; nor yet a world endowed with a mind and senses of its own, a spherical, rotatory god of burning fire; these are the marvels and monstrosities of philosophers who do not reason but dream. [19] What power of mental vision enabled your master Plato to descry the vast and elaborate architectural process which, as he makes out, the deity adopted in building the structure of the universe? What method of engineering was employed? What tools and levers and derricks? What agents carried out so vast an undertaking? And how were air, fire, water and earth enabled to obey and execute the will of the architect? How did the five regular solids,⁸ which are the basis of all other forms of matter, come into existence so nicely adapted to make impressions on our minds and produce sensations? It would be a lengthy task to advert upon every detail of a system that is such as to seem the result of idle theorizing rather than of real research; [20] but the prize example is that the thinker who represented the world not merely as having had an origin but even as almost made by hand, also declared that it will exist for ever. Can you suppose that a man can have even dipped into natural philosophy if he imagines that anything that has come into being can be eternal? What composite whole is not capable of dissolution? What thing is there that has a beginning but not an end? While as for your Stoic Providence, Lucilius, if it is the same thing as Plato’s creator, I repeat my previous questions, what were its agents and instruments, and how was the entire undertaking planned out and carried though? If on the contrary it is something different, I ask why it made the world mortal, and not everlasting as did Plato’s divine creator?

Chapter IX

[21] Moreover I would put to both of you the question, why did these deities suddenly awake into activity as world-builders after countless ages of slumber? for though the world did not exist, it does not follow that ages did not exist — meaning by ages, not periods made up of a number of days and nights in annual courses, for ages in this sense I admit could not have been produced without the circular motion of the firmament; but from the infinite past there has existed an eternity not measured by limited divisions of time, but of a nature intelligible in terms of extension; since it is inconceivable that there was ever a time when time did not exist. [22] Well then, Balbus, what I ask is, why did your Providence remain idle all through that extent of time of which you speak? Was it in order to avoid fatigue? But god cannot know fatigue; and also there was no fatigue in question, since all the elements, sky, fire, earth and sea, were obedient to the divine will. Also, why should god take a fancy to decorate the firmament with figures and illuminations,⁹ like an aedile? If it was to embellish his own abode, then it seems that he had previously between dwelling for an infinite time in a dark and gloomy hovel! And are we to suppose that thenceforward the varied beauties which we see adorning earth and sky have afforded him pleasure? How can a god take pleasure in things of this sort? And if he did, he could not have dispensed with it so long. [23] Or were these beauties designed for the sake of men, as your school usually maintains? For the sake of wise men? If so, all this vast effort of construction took place on account of a handful of people. For the sake of fools then? But in the first place there was no reason for god to do a service to the wicked and secondly, what good did he do? inasmuch as all fools are beyond question extremely miserable, precisely because they are fools (for what can be mentioned more miserable than folly?), and in the second place because there are so many troubles in life that, though wise men can assuage them by balancing against them life’s advantages, fools can neither avoid their approach nor endure their presence.

Chapter X

Those on the other hand who said that the world is itself endowed with life and with wisdom, failed entirely to discern what shape the nature of an intelligent living being could conceivably possess. I will touch on this a little later; [24] for the present I will confine myself to expressing my surprise at their stupidity in holding that a being who is immortal and also blessed is of a spherical shape, merely on the ground that Plato pronounces a sphere to be the most beautiful of all figures. For my own part, on the score of appearance I prefer either a cylinder or a cube or a cone or a pyramid. Then, what mode of existence is assigned to their spherical deity? Why, he is in a state of rotation, spinning round with a velocity that surpasses all powers of conception. But what room there can be in such an existence for steadfastness of mind and for happiness, I cannot see. Also, why should a condition that is painful in the human body, if even the smallest part of it is affected, be supposed to be painless in the deity? Now clearly the earth, being a part of the world, is also a part of god. Yet we see that vast portions of the earth’s surface are uninhabitable deserts, being either scorched by the sun’s proximity, or frost-bound and covered with snow owing to its extreme remoteness. But if the world is god, these, being parts of the world, must be regarded as limbs of god, undergoing the extremes of heat and cold respectively.

[25] “So much, Lucilius, for the doctrines of your school. To show what <the older systems> are like, I will trace their history from the remotest of your predecessors. Thales of Miletus, who was the first person to investigate these matters, said that water was the first principle of things, but that god was the mind that moulded all things out of water — supposing that gods can exist without sensation; and why did he make mind an adjunct of water, if mind can exist by itself, devoid of body? The view of Anaximander is that the gods are not everlasting but are born and perish at long intervals of time, and that they are worlds, countless in number. But how we conceive of god save as living for ever? [26] Next, Anaximenes held that air is god, and that it has a beginning in time, and is immeasurable and infinite in extent, and is always in motion; just as if formless air could be god, especially seeing that it is proper to god to possess not merely some shape but the most beautiful shape; or as if anything that has had a beginning must not necessarily be mortal.

Chapter XI

Then there is Anaxagoras, the successor of Anaximenes; he was the first thinker to hold that the orderly disposition of the universe is designed and perfected by the rational power of an infinite mind. But in saying this he failed to see that there can be no such thing as sentient and continuous activity in that which is infinite, and that sensation in general can only occur when the subject itself becomes sentient by the impact of a sensation. Further, if he intended his infinite mind to be a definite living creature, it must have some inner principle of life to justify the name. But mind is itself the innermost principle. Mind therefore will have an outer integument of body. [27] But this Anaxagoras will not allow; yet mind naked and simple, without any material adjunct to serve as an organ of sensation, seems to elude the capacity of our understanding. Alcmaeon of Croton, who attributed divinity to the sun, moon and other heavenly bodies, and also to the soul, did not perceive that he was bestowing immortality on things that are mortal. As for Pythagoras, who believed that the entire substance of the universe is penetrated and pervaded by a soul of which our souls are fragments, he failed to notice that this severance of the souls of men from the world-soul means the dismemberment and rending asunder of god; and that when their souls are unhappy, as happens to most men, then a portion of god is unhappy; which is impossible. [28] Again, if the soul of man is divine, why is it not omniscient? Moreover, if the Pythagorean god is pure soul, how is he implanted in, or diffused throughout, the world? Next, Xenophanes endowed the universe with mind, and held that, as being infinite, it was god. His view of mind is as open to objection as that of the rest; but on the subject of infinity he incurs still severer criticism, for the infinite can have no sensation and no contact with anything outside. As for Parmenides, he invents a purely fanci­ful something resembling a crown — stephanè is his name for it —, an unbroken ring of glowing lights, encircling the sky, which he entitles god; but no one can imagine this to possess divine form, or sensation. He also has many other portentous notions; he deifies war, strife, lust and the like, things which can be destroyed by disease or sleep or forget­fulness or lapse of time; and he also deifies the stars, but this has been criticized in another philosopher and need not be dealt with now in the case of Parmenides.

Chapter XII

[29] Empedocles again among many other blunders comes to grief most disgracefully in his theology. He assigns divinity to the four substances which in his system are the constituent elements of the universe, although manifestly these substances both come into and pass out of existence, and are entirely devoid of sensation. Protagoras also, who declares he has no clear views whatever about the gods, whether they exist or do not exist, or what they are like, seems to have no notion at all of the divine nature. Then in what a maze of error is Democritus¹⁰ involved, who at one moment ranks as gods his roving ‘images,’ at another the substance that emits and radiates these images, and at another again the scientific intelligence of man! At the same time his denial of immutability and therefore of eternity, to everything whatsoever surely involves a repudiation of deity so absolute as to leave no conception of a divine be remaining! Diogenes of Apollonia makes air a god; but how can air have sensation, or divinity in any shape? [30] The inconsistencies of Plato are a long story. In the Timaeus¹¹ he says that it is impossible to name the father of this universe; and in the Laws¹² he deprecates all inquiry into the nature of the deity. Again,¹³ he holds that god is entirely incorporeal (in Greek, asomatos); but divine incorporeity is inconceivable, for an incorporeal deity would necessarily be incapable of sensation, and also of practical wisdom, and of pleasure, all of which are attributes essential to our conception of deity. Yet both in the Timaeus and the Laws he says that the world, the sky, the stars, the earth and our souls are gods, in addition to those in whom we have been taught to believe; but it is obvious that these propositions are both inherently false and mutually destructive. [31] Xenophon also commits almost the same errors, though in fewer words; for in his memoir¹⁴ of the sayings of Socrates he represents Socrates as arguing that it is wrong to inquire about the form of god, but also as saying that both the sun and the soul are god, and as speaking at one moment of a single god and at another of several: utterances that involve almost the same mistakes as do those which we quoted from Plato.

Chapter XIII

[32] Antisthenes also, in his book entitled The Natural Philosopher, says that while there are many gods of popular belief, there is one god in nature, so depriving divinity of all meaning or substance. Very similarly Speusippus, following his uncle Plato, and speaking of a certain force that governs all things and is endowed with life, does his best to root out the notion of deity from our minds altogether. [33] And Aristotle in the Third Book of his Philosophy¹⁵ has a great many confused notions, <not>¹⁶ disagreeing with the doctrines of his master Plato; at one moment he assigns divinity exclusively to the intellect, at another he says that the world is itself a god, then again he puts some other being over the world, and assigns to this being the rôle of regulating and sustaining the world-motion by means of a sort of inverse rotation;¹⁷ then he says that the celestial heat¹⁸ is god — not realizing that the heavens are a part of that world which elsewhere he himself has entitled god. But how could the divine consciousness which he assigns to the heavens persist in a state of such rapid motion? Where moreover are all the gods of accepted belief, if we count the heavens also as a god? Again, in maintaining that god is incorporeal, he robs him entirely of sensation, and also of wisdom. Moreover, how is motion possible for an incorporeal being, and how, if he is always in motion, can he enjoy tranquillity and bliss? [34] Nor was his fellow-pupil Xenocrates any wiser on this subject. His volumes On the Nature of the Gods give no intelligible account of the divine form; for he states that there are eight gods: five inhabiting the planets, and in a state of motion; one consisting of all the fixed stars, which are to be regarded as separate members constituting a single deity; seventh he adds the sun, and eighth the moon. But what sensation of bliss these things can enjoy it is impossible to conceive. Another member of the school of Plato, Heracleides of Pontus, filled volume after volume with childish fictions; at one moment he deems the world divine, at another the intellect; he also assigns divinity to the planets, and holds that the deity is devoid of sensation and mutable of form; and again in the same volume he reckons earth and sky as gods. [35] Theophrastus also is intolerably inconsistent; at one moment he assigns divine pre-eminence to mind, at another to the heavens, and then again to the constellations and stars in the heavens. Nor is his pupil, Strato, surnamed the Natural Philosopher, worthy of attention; in his view the sole repository of divine power is nature, which contains in itself the causes of birth, growth and decay, but is entirely devoid of sensation and of form.

Chapter XIV

[36] “Lastly, Balbus, I come to your Stoic school. Zeno’s view is that the law of nature is divine, and that its function is to command what is right and to forbid the opposite. How he makes out this law to be alive passes our comprehension; yet we undoubtedly expect god to be a living being. In another passage however Zeno declares that the aether is god — if there is any meaning in a god without sensation, a form of deity that never presents itself to us when we offer up our prayers and supplications and make our vows. And in other books again he holds the view that a ‘reason’ which pervades all nature¹⁹ is possessed of divine power. He likewise attributes the same powers to the stars, or at another time to the years, the months and the seasons. Again, in his interpretation of Hesiod’s Theogony (or Origin of the Gods) he does away with the customary and received ideas of the gods altogether, for he does not reckon either Jupiter, Juno or Vesta as gods, or any being that bears a personal name, but teaches that these names have been assigned allegorically to dumb and lifeless things. [37] Zeno’s pupil Aristo holds equally mistaken views. He thinks that the form of the deity cannot be comprehended, and he denies the gods sensation, and in fact is uncertain whether god is a living being at all. Cleanthes, who attended Zeno’s lectures at the same time as the last-named, at one moment says that the world itself is god, at another gives this name to the mind and soul of the universe, and at another decides that the most unquestionable deity is that remote all-surrounding fiery atmosphere called the aether, which encircles and embraces the universe on its outer side at an exceedingly lofty altitude; while in the books that he wrote to combat hedonism he babbles like one demented, now imagining gods of some definite shape and form, now assigning full divinity to the stars, now pronouncing that nothing is more divine than reason. The result is that the god whom we apprehend by our intelligence, and desire to make to correspond with a mental concept as a seal tallies with its impression, has utterly and entirely vanished.

Chapter XV

[38] Persaeus, another pupil of Zeno, says that men have deified those persons who have made some discovery of special utility for civilization, and that useful and health-giving things have themselves been called by divine names; he did not even say that they were discoveries of the gods, but speaks of them as actually divine. But what could be more ridiculous than to award divine honours to things mean and ugly, or to give the rank of gods to men now dead and gone, whose worship could only take the form of lamentation? [39] Chrysippus, who is deemed to be the most skilful interpreter of the Stoic dreams, musters an enormous mob of unknown gods — so utterly unknown that even imagination cannot guess at their form and nature, although our mind appears capable of visualizing anything; for he says that divine power resides in reason, and in the soul and mind of the universe; he calls the world itself a god, and also the all-pervading world-soul, and again the guiding principle of that soul, which operates in the intellect and reason, and the common and all-embracing nature of things; beside this, the fire that I previously termed aether; and also the power of Fate, and the Necessity that governs future events; and also all fluid and soluble substances, such as water, earth, air, the sun, moon and stars, and the all-embracing unity of things; and even those human beings who have attained immortality. [40] He also argues that the god whom men call Jupiter is the aether, and that Neptune is the air which permeates the sea, and the goddess called Ceres the earth; and he deals in the same way with the whole series of the names of the other gods. He also identifies Jupiter with the mighty Law, everlasting and eternal, which is our guide of life and instructress in duty, and which he entitles Necessity or Fate, and the Everlasting Truth of future events; none of which conceptions is of such a nature as to be deemed to possess divinity. [41] This is what is contained in his Nature of the Gods, Book I. In Book II he aims at reconciling the myths of Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer with his own theology as enunciated in Book I, and so makes out that even the earliest poets of antiquity, who had no notion of these doctrines, were really Stoics. In this he is followed by Diogenes of Babylon, who in his book entitled Minerva rationalizes the myth of the birth of the virgin goddess from Jove by explaining it as an allegory of the processes of nature.

Chapter XVI

[42] “I have given a rough account of what are more like the dreams of madmen than the considered opinions of philosophers. For they are little less absurd than the outpourings of the poets, harmful as these have been owing to the mere charm of their style. The poets have represented the gods as inflamed by anger and maddened by lust, and have displayed to our gaze their wars and battles, their fights and wounds, their hatreds, enmities and quarrels, their births and deaths, their complaints and lamentations, the utter and unbridled licence of their passions, their adulteries and imprisonments, their unions with human beings and the birth of mortal progeny from an immortal parent. [43] With the errors of the poets may be classed the monstrous doctrines of the magi and the insane mythology of Egypt, and also the popular beliefs, which are a mere mass of inconsistencies sprung from ignorance.

“Anyone pondering on the baseless and irrational character of these doctrines ought to regard Epicurus with reverence, and to rank him as one of the very gods about whom we are inquiring.²⁰ For he alone perceived, first, that the gods exist, because nature herself has imprinted a conception of them on the minds of all mankind. For what nation or what tribe is there but possesses untaught some ‘preconception’ of the gods? Such notions Epicurus designates by the word prolepsis, that is, a sort of preconceived mental picture of a thing, without which nothing can be understood or investigated or discussed. The force and value of this argument we learn in that work of genius, Epicurus’s Rule or Standard of Judgement.²¹

Chapter XVII

[44] You see therefore that the foundation (for such it is) of our inquiry has been well and truly laid. For the belief in the gods has not been established by authority, custom or law, but rests on the unanimous and abiding consensus of mankind; their existence is therefore a necessary inference, since we possess an instinctive or rather an innate concept of them; but a belief which all men by nature share must necessarily be true; therefore it must be admitted that the gods exist. And since this truth is almost universally accepted not only among philosophers but also among the unlearned, we must admit it as also being an accepted truth that we possess a ‘preconception,’ as I called it above, or ‘prior notion,’ of the gods. (For we are bound to employ novel terms to denote novel ideas, just as Epicurus himself employed the word prolepsis in a sense in which no one had ever used it before.) [45] We have then a preconception of such a nature that we believe the gods to be blessed and immortal. For nature, which bestowed upon us an idea of the gods themselves, also engraved on our minds the belief that they are eternal and blessed. If this is so, the famous maxim²² of Epicurus truthfully enunciates that ‘that which is blessed and eternal can neither know trouble itself nor cause trouble to another, and accordingly cannot feel either anger or favour, since all such things belong only to the weak.’

“If we sought to attain nothing else beside piety in worshipping the gods and freedom from superstition, what has been said had sufficed; since the exalted nature of the gods, being both eternal and supremely blessed, would receive man’s pious worship (for what is highest commands the reverence that is its due); and furthermore all fear of the divine power or divine anger would have been banished (since it is understood that anger and favour alike are excluded from the nature of a being at once blessed and immortal, and that these being eliminated we are menaced by no fears in regard to the powers above). But the mind strives to strengthen this belief by trying to discover the form of god, the mode of his activity, and the operation of his intelligence.

Chapter XVIII

[46] “For the divine form we have the hints of nature supplemented by the teachings of reason. From nature all men of all races derive the notion of gods as having human shape and none other; for in what other shape do they ever appear to anyone, awake or asleep? But not to make primary concepts the sole test of all things, reason itself delivers the same pronouncement. [47] For it seems appropriate that the being who is the most exalted, whether by reason of his happiness or his eternity, should also be the most beautiful; but what disposition of the limbs, what cast of features, what shape or outline can be more beautiful than the human form? You Stoics at least, Lucilius, (for my friend Cotta says one thing at one time and another at another) are wont to portray the skill of the divine creator by enlarging on the beauty as well as the utility of design displayed in all parts of the human figure. [48] But if the human figure surpasses the form of all other living beings, and god is a living being, god must possess the shape which is the most beautiful of all; and since it is agreed that the gods are supremely happy, and no one can be happy without virtue, and virtue cannot exist without reason, and reason is only found in the human shape, it follows that the gods possess the form of man. [49] Yet their form is not corporeal, but only resembles bodily substance; it does not contain blood, but the semblance of blood.

Chapter XIX

“These discoveries of Epicurus are so acute in themselves and so subtly expressed that not everyone would be capable of appreciating them. Still I may rely on your intelligence, and make my exposition briefer than the subject demands. Epicurus then, as he not merely discerns abstruse and recondite things with his mind’s eye, but handles them as tangible realities, teaches that the substance and nature of the gods is such that, in the first place, it is perceived not by the senses but by the mind, and not materially or individually, like the solid objects which Epicurus in virtue of their substantiality entitles steremnia; but by our perceiving images owing to their similarity and succession, because an endless train of precisely similar images arises from the innumerable atoms and streams towards the gods,²³ our minds with the keenest feelings of pleasure fixes its gaze on these images, and so attains an understanding of the nature of a being both blessed and eternal. [50] Moreover there is the supremely potent principle of infinity, which claims the closest and most careful study; we must understand that it has the following property, that in the sum of things everything has its exact match and counterpart. This property is termed by Epicurus isonomia, or the principle of uniform distribution. From this principle it follows that if the whole number of mortals be so many, there must exist no less a number of immortals, and if the causes of destruction are beyond count, the causes of conservation also are bound to be infinite.

“You Stoics are also fond of asking us, Balbus, what is the mode of life of the gods and how they pass their days. [51] The answer is, their life is the happiest conceivable, and the one most bountifully furnished with all good things. God is entirely inactive and free from all ties of occupation; he toils not neither does he labour, but he takes delight in his own wisdom and virtue, and knows with absolute certainty that he will always enjoy pleasures at once consummate and everlasting.

Chapter XX

[52] This is the god whom we should call happy in the proper sense of the term; your Stoic god seems to us to be grievously overworked. If the world itself is god, what can be less restful than to revolve at incredible speed round the axis of the heavens without a single moment of respite? but repose is an essential condition of happiness. If on the other hand some god resides within the world as its governor and pilot, maintaining the courses of the stars, the changes of the seasons and all the ordered process of creation, and keeping a watch on land and sea to guard the interests and lives of men, why, what a bondage of irksome and laborious business is his! [53] We for our part deem happiness to consist in tranquillity of mind and entire exemption from all duties. For he who taught us all the rest has also taught us that the world was made by nature, without needing an artificer to construct it, and that the act of creation, which according to you cannot be performed without divine skill, is so easy, that nature will create, is creating and has created worlds without number. You on the contrary cannot see how nature can achieve all this without the aid of some intelligence, and so, like the tragic poets, being unable to bring the plot of your drama to a dénouement, you have recourse to a god;²⁴ [54] whose intervention you assuredly would not require if you would but contemplate the measureless and boundless extent of space that stretches in every direction, into which when the mind projects and propels itself, it journeys onward far and wide without ever sighting any margin or ultimate point where it can stop. Well then, in this immensity of length and breadth and height there flits an infinite quantity of atoms innumerable, which though separated by void yet cohere together, and taking hold each of another form unions wherefrom are created those shapes and forms of things which you think cannot be created without the aid of bellows and anvils, and so have saddled us with an eternal master, whom day and night we are to fear; for who would not fear a prying busybody of a god, who foresees and thinks of and notices all things, and deems that everything is his concern? [55] An outcome of this theology was first of all your doctrine of Necessity or Fate, heimarmenē, as you termed it, the theory that every event is the result of an eternal truth and an unbroken sequence of causation. But what value can be assigned to a philosophy which thinks that everything happens by fate? it is a belief for old women, and ignorant old women at that. And next follows your doctrine of mantikē, or Divination, which would so steep us in superstition, if we consented to listen to you, that we should be the devotees of soothsayers, augurs, oracle-mongers, seers and interpreters of dreams. [56] But Epicurus has set us free from superstitious terrors and delivered us out of captivity, so that we have no fear of beings who, we know, create no trouble for themselves and seek to cause none to others, while we worship with pious reverence the transcendent majesty of nature.

“But I fear that enthusiasm for my subject has made me prolix. It was difficult however to leave so vast and splendid a theme unfinished, although really it was not my business to be a speaker so much as a listener.”

Chapter XXI

[57] Then Cotta took up the discussion. “Well, Velleius,” he rejoined, with his usual suavity, “unless you had stated a case, you certainly would have had no chance of hearing anything from me. I always find it much easier to think of arguments to prove a thing false than to prove it true. This often happens to me, and did so just now while I was listening to you. Ask me what I think that the divine nature is like, and very probably I shall make no reply; but inquire whether I believe that it resembles the description of it which you have just given, and I shall say that nothing seems to me less likely. But before proceeding to examine your arguments, I will give my opinion of yourself. [58] I fancy I have often heard that friend of yours [Lucius Crassus]²⁵ declare that of all the Roman adherents of Epicureanism he placed you unquestionably first, and that few of those from Greece could be ranked beside you; but knowing his extraordinary esteem for you, I imagined that he was speaking with the partiality of a friend. I myself however, though reluctant to praise you to your face, must nevertheless pronounce that your exposition of an obscure and difficult theme has been most illuminating, and not only exhaustive in its treatment of the subject, but also graced with a charm of style not uncommon in your school. [59] When at Athens, I frequently attended the discourses of Zeno, whom our friend Philo used to call the leader of the Epicurean choir; in fact it was Philo who suggested that I should go to him — no doubt in order that I might be better able to judge how completely the Epicurean doctrine may be refuted when I had heard an exposition of it from the head of the school. Now Zeno, unlike most Epicureans, had a style as clear, cogent and elegant as your own. But what often occurred to me in his case happened just now while I was listening to you: I felt annoyed that talents so considerable should have chanced to select (if you will forgive my saying it) so trivial, not to say so stupid, a set of doctrines. [60] Not that I propose at the moment to contribute something better of my own. As I said just now, in almost all subjects, but especially in natural philosophy, I am more ready to say what is not true than what is.

Chapter XXII

Inquire of me as to the being and nature of god, and I shall follow the example of Simonides, who having the same question put to him by the great Hiero, requested a day’s grace for consideration; next day, when Hiero repeated the question, he asked for two days, and so went on several times multiplying the number of days by two; and when Hiero in surprise asked why he did so, he replied, ‘Because the longer I deliberate the more obscure the matter seems to me.’ But Simonides is recorded to have been not only a charming poet but also a man of learning and wisdom in other fields, and I suppose that so many acute and subtle ideas came into his mind that he could not decide which of them was truest, and therefore despaired of truth altogether. [61] But as for your master Epicurus (for I prefer to join issue with him rather than with yourself), which of his utterances is, I do not say worthy of philosophy, but compatible with ordinary common sense?

“In an inquiry as to the nature of the gods, the first question that we ask is, do the gods exist or do they not? ‘It is difficult to deny their existence.’ No doubt it would be if the question were to be asked in a public assembly, but in private conversation and in a company like the present it is perfectly easy. This being so, I, who am a high priest, and who hold it to be a duty most solemnly to maintain the rights and doctrines of the established religion, should be glad to be convinced of this fundamental tenet of the divine existence, not as an article of faith merely but as an ascertained fact. For many disturbing reflections occur to my mind, which sometimes make me think that there are no gods at all. [62] But mark how generously I deal with you. I will not attack those tenets which are shared by your school with all other philosophers — for example the one in question, since almost all men, and I myself no less than any other, believe that the gods exist, and this accordingly I do not challenge. At the same time I doubt the adequacy of the argument which you adduce to prove it.

Chapter XXIII

You said that a sufficient reason for our admitting that the gods exist was the fact that all the nations and races of mankind believe it. But argument is both inconclusive and untrue. In the first place, how do you know what foreign races believe? For my part I think that there are many nations so uncivilized and barbarous as to have no notion of any gods at all. [63] Again, did not Diagoras, called the Atheist, and later Theodorus openly deny the divine existence? Since as for Protagoras of Abdera, the greatest sophist of that age, to whom you just now alluded, for beginning a book with the words ‘About the gods I am unable to affirm either how²⁶ they exist or how they do not exist,’ he was sentenced by a decree of the Athenian assembly to be banished from the city and from the country, and to have his books burnt in the market-place: an example that I can well believe has discouraged many people since from professing atheism, since the mere expression of doubt did not succeed in escaping punishment. What are we to say about the men guilty of sacrilege or impiety or perjury?

Suppose that ever Lucius Tubulus,
Lupus or Carbo, or some son of Neptune,²⁷

as Lucilius has it, had believed in the gods, would he have been such a perjurer and scoundrel? [64] We find then that your argument is not so well-established a proof of the view which you uphold as you imagine it to be. Still, as it is a line of reasoning that is followed by other philosophers as well, I will pass it over for the present, and turn rather to doctrines peculiar to your school.

[65] “I grant the existence of the gods: do you then teach me their origin, their dwelling-place, their bodily and spiritual nature, their mode of life; for these are the things which I want to know. In regard to all of them you make great play with the lawless domination of the atoms; from these you construct and create everything that comes upon the ground,²⁸ as he says. Now in the first place, there are no such things as atoms. For there is nothing …²⁹ incorporeal, but all space is filled with material bodies; hence there can be no such thing as void, and no such thing as an indivisible body.

Chapter XXIV

[66] In all of this I speak for the time being only as the mouthpiece of our oracles of natural philosophy; whether their utterances are true or false I do not know, but at all events they are more probable than those of your school. As for the outrageous doctrines of Democritus, or perhaps of his predecessor Leucippus, that there are certain minute particles, some smooth, others rough, some round, some angular, some curved or hook-shaped, and that heaven and earth were created from these, not by compulsion of any natural law but by a sort of accidental colliding — this is the belief to which you, Gaius Velleius, have clung all your life long, and it would be easier to make you alter all your principles of conduct than abandon the teachings of your master; for you made up your mind that the Epicureanism claimed your allegiance before you learned these doctrines: so that you were faced with the alternative of either accepting these outrageous notions or surrendering the title of the school of your adoption. [67] For what would you take to cease to be an Epicurean? ‘For no consideration,’ you reply, ‘would I forsake the principles of happiness and the truth.’ Then is Epicureanism the truth? For as to happiness I don’t join issue, since in your view even divine happiness involves being bored to death with idleness. But where is the truth to be found? I suppose in an infinite number of worlds, some coming to birth and others hurled into ruin at every minutest moment of time? or in the indivisible particles that produce all the marvels of creation without any controlling nature or reason? But I am forgetting the indulgence which I began to show you just now, and am taking too wide a range. I will grant therefore that everything is made out of indivisible bodies; but this takes us no farther, for we are trying to discover the nature of the gods. [68] Suppose we allow that the gods are made of atoms: then it follows that they are not eternal. For what is made of atoms came into existence at some time; but if the gods came into existence, before they came into existence there were no gods; and if the gods had a beginning, they must also perish, as you were arguing a little time ago about the world as conceived by Plato. Where then do we find that happiness and that eternity which in your system are the two catchwords that denote divinity? When you wish to make this out, you take cover in a thicket of jargon; you gave us the formula just now³⁰ — God has not body but a semblance of body, not blood but a kind of blood.

Chapter XXV

[69] “This is a very common practice with your school. You advance a paradox, and then, when you want to escape censure, you adduce in support of it some absolute impossibility; so that you would have done better to abandon the point in dispute rather than to offer so shameless a defence. For instance, Epicurus saw that if the atoms travelled downwards by their own weight, we should have no freedom of the will, since the motion of the atoms would be determined by necessity. He therefore invented a device to escape from determinism (the point had apparently escaped the notice of Democritus): he said that the atom while travelling vertically downward by the force of gravity makes a very slight swerve to the side. [70] This defence discredits him more than if he had had to abandon his original position. He does the same in his battle with the logicians. Their accepted doctrine is that in every disjunctive proposition of the form ‘so-and-so either is or is not,’ one of the two alternatives must be true. Epicurus took alarm; if such a proposition as ‘Epicurus either will or will not be alive to-morrow’ were granted, one or other alternative would be necessary. Accordingly he denied the necessity of a disjunctive proposition altogether. Now what could be stupider than that? Arcesilas used to attack Zeno because, whereas he himself said that all sense-presentations are false, Zeno said that some were false, but not all. Epicurus feared that if a single sensation were admitted to be false, none would be true: he therefore said that all the senses give a true report. In none of these cases did he behave very cleverly, for to parry a lighter blow he laid himself open to one that was more severe.

[71] “He does the same as regards the nature of the gods. In his desire to avoid the assumption of a dense cluster of atoms, which would involve the possibility of destruction and dissipation, he says that the gods have not a body but a semblance of body, and not blood but a semblance of blood.

Chapter XXVI

It is thought surprising that an augur can see an augur without smiling; but it is more surprising that you Epicureans keep a grave face when by yourselves. ‘It is not body but a semblance of body.’ I could understand what this supposition meant if it related to waxen images or figures of earthenware, but what ‘a semblance of body’ or ‘a semblance of blood’ may mean in the case of god, I cannot understand; nor can you either, Velleius, only you won’t admit it.

[72] “The fact is that you people merely repeat by rote the idle vapourings that Epicurus uttered when half asleep; for, as we read in his writings, he boasted that he had never had a teacher. This I for my part could well believe, even if he did not proclaim it, just as I believe the owner of an ill-built house when he boasts that he did not employ an architect! He shows not the faintest trace of the Academy or the Lyceum, or even of the ordinary schoolboy studies. He might have heard Xenocrates — by heaven, what a master! — and some people think that he did, but he himself denies it, and he ought to know! He states that he heard a certain Pamphilus, a pupil of Plato, at Samos (where he resided in his youth with his father and brother — his father Neocles had gone there to take up land, but failing to make a living out of his farm, I believe kept a school). [73] However Epicurus pours endless scorn on this Platonist, so afraid is he of appearing ever to have learnt anything from a teacher. He stands convicted in the case of Nausiphanes, a follower of Democritus, whom he does not deny he heard lecture, but whom nevertheless he assails with every sort of abuse. Yet if he had not heard from him these doctrines of Democritus, what had he heard? for what is there in Epicurus’s natural philosophy that does not come from Democritus? Since even if he introduced some alterations, for instance the swerve of the atoms, of which I spoke just now, yet most of his system is the same, the atoms, the void, the images, the infinity of space, and the countless number of worlds, their births and their destructions, in fact almost everything that is comprised in natural science.

[74] “As to your formula ‘a semblance of body’ and ‘a semblance of blood,’ what meaning do you attach to it? That you have a better knowledge of the matter than I have I freely admit, and what is more, am quite content that this should be so; but once it is expressed in words, why should one of us be able to understand it and not the other? Well then, I do understand what body is and what blood is, but what ‘a semblance of body’ and ‘a semblance of blood’ are I don’t understand in the very least. You are not trying to hide the truth from me, as Pythagoras used to hide it from strangers, nor yet are you speaking obscurely on purpose like Heraclitus, but (to speak candidly between ourselves) you don’t understand it yourself any more than I do.

Chapter XXVII

[75] I am aware that what you maintain is that the gods possess a certain outward appearance, which has no firmness or solidity, no definite shape or outline, and which is free from gross admixture, volatile, transparent. Therefore we shall use the same language as we should of the Venus of Cos: her’s is not real flesh but the likeness of flesh, and the mantling blush that dyes her fair cheek is not real blood but something that counterfeits blood; similarly in the god of Epicurus we shall say that there is no real substance but something that counterfeits substance. But assume that I accept as true a dogma that I cannot even understand: exhibit to me, pray, the forms and features of your shadow-deities. [76] On this topic you are at no loss for arguments designed to prove that the gods have the form of men: first because our minds possess a preconceived notion of such a character that, when a man thinks of god, it is the human form that presents itself to him; secondly, because inasmuch as the divine nature surpasses all other things, the divine form also must needs be the most beautiful, and no form is more beautiful than that of man. The third reason you advance is that no other shape is capable of being the abode of intelligence. [77] Well then, take these arguments one by one and consider what they amount to; for in my view they based on an arbitrary and quite inadmissible assumption on your part. First of all, was there ever any student so blind as not to see that human shape has been thus assigned to the gods either by the deliberate contrivance of philosophers, the better to enable them to turn the hearts of the ignorant from vicious practices to the observance of religion, or by superstition, to supply images for men to worship in the belief that in so doing they had direct access to the divine presence? These notions moreover have been fostered by poets, painters and artificers, who found it difficult to represent living and active deities in the likeness of any other shape than that of man. Perhaps also man’s belief in his own superior beauty, to which you referred, may have contributed to the result. But surely you as a natural philosopher are aware what an insinuating go-between and pander of her own charms nature is! Do you suppose that there is a single creature on land or in the sea which does not prefer an animal of its own specie to any other? If this were not so, why should not a bull desire to couple with a mare, or a horse with a cow? Do you imagine that an eagle or lion or dolphin thinks any shape more beautiful than its own? Is it then surprising if nature has likewise taught man to think his own species the most beautiful …³¹ that this was a reason why we should think the gods resemble man?

[78] “Suppose animals possessed reason,³² do you not think that they would each assign pre-eminence to their own species?

Chapter XXVIII

For my part I protest (if I am to say what I think) that although I am not lacking in self-esteem yet I don’t presume to call myself more beautiful than the famous bull on which Europa rode; for the question is not here of our intellectual and oratorical³³ powers but of our outward form and aspect. Indeed if we choose to make imaginary combinations of shapes, would you not like to resemble the merman Triton who is depicted riding upon swimming monsters attached to his man’s body? I am on ticklish ground here, for natural instinct is so strong that every man wishes to be like a man and nothing else. [79] Yes, and every ant like an ant! Still, the question is, like what man? How small a percentage of handsome people there are! When I was at Athens, there was scarcely one to be found in each platoon of the training-corps — I see why you smile, but the fact is all the same. Another point: we, who with the sanction of the philosophers of old are fond of the society of young men, often find even their defects agreeable. Alcaeus ‘admires a mole upon his favourite’s wrist’;³⁴ of course a mole is a blemish, but Alcaeus thought it a beauty. Quintus Catulus, the father of our colleague and friend to-day, was warmly attached to your fellow-townsman Roscius, and actually wrote the following verses in his honour:

By chance abroad at dawn, I stood to pray
To the uprising deity of day;
When lo! upon my left — propitious sight —
Suddenly Roscius dawned in radiance bright.
Forgive me, heavenly pow’rs, if I declare,
Meseem’d the mortal than the god more fair.

To Catulus, Roscius was fairer than a god. As a matter of fact he had, as he has to-day, a pronounced squint; but no matter — in the eyes of Catulus this in itself gave him piquancy and charm.

[80] “I return to the gods.

Chapter XXIX

Can we imagine any gods, I do not say as cross-eyed as Roscius, but with a slight cast? Can we picture any of them with a mole, a snub nose, protruding ears, prominent brows and too large a head — defects not unknown among us men —, or are they entirely free from personal blemishes? Suppose we grant you that, are we also to say that they are all exactly alike? If not, there will be degrees of beauty among them, and therefore a god can fall short of supreme beauty. If on the other hand they are all alike, then the Academic school must have a large following in heaven, since if there is no difference between one god and another, among the gods knowledge and perception must be impossible.

[81] “Furthermore, Velleius, what if your assumption, that when we think of god the only form that presents itself to us is that of a man, be entirely untrue? will you nevertheless continue to maintain your absurdities? Very likely we Romans do imagine god as you say, because from our childhood Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Neptune, Vulcan and Apollo have been known to us with the aspect with which painters and sculptors have chosen to represent them, and not with that aspect only, but having that equipment, age and dress. But they are not so known to the Egyptians or Syrians, or any almost of the uncivilized races. Among these you will find a belief in certain animals more firmly established than is reverence for the holiest sanctuaries and images of the gods with us. [82] For we have often seen temples robbed and images of gods carried off from the holiest shrines by our fellow-countrymen, but no one ever even heard of an Egyptian laying profane hands on a crocodile or ibis or cat. What therefore do you infer? that the Egyptians do not believe their sacred bull Apis to be a god? Precisely as much as you believe the Saviour Juno of your native place to be a goddess. You never see her even in your dreams unless equipped with goat-skin, spear, buckler and slippers turned up at the toe. Yet that is not the aspect of the Argive Juno, nor of the Roman. It follows that Juno has one form for the Argives, another for the people of Lanuvium, and another for us. And indeed our Jupiter of the Capitol is not the same as the Africans’ Juppiter Ammon.

Chapter XXX

[83] Should not the physical philosopher therefore, that is, the explorer and tracker-out of nature, be ashamed to go to minds besotted with habit for evidence of truth? On your principle it will be legitimate to assert that Jupiter always wears a beard and Apollo never, and that Minerva has grey eyes and Neptune blue. Yes, and at Athens there is a much-praised statue of Vulcan made by Alcamenes, a standing figure, draped, which displays a slight lameness, though not enough to be unsightly. We shall therefore deem god to be lame, since tradition represents Vulcan so. Tell me now, do we also make out the gods to have the same names as those by which they are known to us? [84] But in the first place the gods have as many names as mankind has languages. You are Velleius wherever you travel, but Vulcan has a different name in Italy, in Africa and in Spain. Again, the total number of names even in our pontifical books is not great, but there are gods innumerable. Are they without names? You Epicureans at all events are forced to say so, since what is the point of more names when they are all exactly alike? How delight­ful it would be, Velleius, if when you did not know a thing you would admit your ignorance, instead of uttering this drivel, which must make even your own gorge rise with disgust? Do you really believe that god resembles me, or yourself? Of course you do not.

“What then? Am I to say that the sun is a god, or the moon, or the sky? If so, we must also say that it is happy; but what forms of enjoyment constitute its happiness? and wise; but how can wisdom reside in a senseless bulk like that? These are arguments employed by your own school. [85] Well then, if the gods do not possess the appearance of men, as I have proved, nor some such form as that of the heavenly bodies, as you are convinced, why do you hesitate to deny their existence? You do not dare to. Well, that is no doubt wise — although in this matter it is not the public that you fear, but the gods themselves: I personally am acquainted with Epicureans who worship every paltry image, albeit I am aware that according to some people’s view Epicurus really abolished the gods, but nominally retained them in order not to offend the people of Athens. Thus the first of his selected aphorisms or maxims, which you call the Kyriai Doxai,³⁵ runs, I believe, thus: That which is blessed and immortal neither experiences trouble nor causes it to anyone.

Chapter XXXI

Now there are people who think that the wording of this maxim was intentional, though really it was due to the author’s inability to express himself clearly; their suspicion does an injustice to the most guileless of mankind. [86] It is in fact doubtful whether he means that there is a blessed and immortal being, or that, if there is, that being is such as he describes. They fail to notice that although his language is ambiguous here, yet in many other places both he and Metrodorus speak as plainly as you yourself did just now. Epicurus however does actually think that the gods exist, nor have I ever met anybody more afraid than he was of those things which he says are not terrible at all, I mean death and the gods. Terrors that do not very seriously alarm ordinary people, according to Epicurus haunt the minds of all mortal men: so many thousands commit brigandage, for which the penalty is death, and other men rob temples whenever they have the chance; I suppose the former are haunted by the fear of death and the latter by the terrors of religion!

[87] “But as you have not the courage (for I will now address myself to Epicurus in person) to deny that the gods exist, what should hinder you from reckoning as divine the sun, or the world, or some form of ever-living intelligence? ‘I have never seen a mind endowed with reason and with purpose,’ he replies, ‘that was embodied in any but a human form.’ Well, but have you ever seen anything like the sun or the moon or the five planets? The sun, limiting his motion by the two extreme points of one orbit, completes his courses yearly. The moon, lit by the sun’s rays, achieves this solar path in the space of a month. The five planets, holding the same orbit, but some nearer to and others farther from the earth, from the same starting-points complete the same distances in different periods of time. [88] Now, Epicurus, have you ever seen anything like this?³⁶ Well, then, let us deny the existence of the sun, moon and planets, inasmuch as nothing can exist save that which we have touched or seen. And what of god himself? You have never seen him, have you? Why then do you believe in his existence? On this principle we must sweep aside everything unusual of which history or science informs us. The next thing would be for inland races to refuse to believe in the existence of the sea. How can such narrowness of mind be possible? It follows that, if you had been born in Seriphus and had never left the island, where you had been used to seeing nothing larger than hares and foxes, when lions and panthers were described to you, you would refuse to believe in their existence; and if somebody told you about an elephant, you would actually think that he was making fun of you!

[89] “For your part, Velleius, you forsook the practice of your school for that of the logicians — a science of which your clan is entirely ignorant — and expressed the doctrine in the form of a syllogism. You assumed that the gods are happy: we grant it. But no one, you said, can be happy without virtue.

Chapter XXXII

This also we give you, and willingly. But virtue cannot exist without reason. To this also we must agree. You add, neither can reason exist save embodied in human form. Who do you suppose will grant you this? for if it were true, what need had you to arrive at it by successive steps? you might have taken it for granted. But what about your successive steps? I see how you proceeded step by step from happiness to virtue, from virtue to reason; but how from reason do you arrive at human form? That is not a step, it is a headlong plunge.

[90] “Nor indeed do I understand why Epicurus preferred to say that gods are like men rather than that men are like gods. ‘What is the difference?’ you will ask me, ‘for if A is like B, B is like A.’ I am aware of it; but what I mean is, that the gods did not derive the pattern of their form from men; since the gods have always existed, and were never born — that is, if they are to be eternal; whereas men were born; therefore the human form existed before mankind, and it was the form of the immortal gods. We ought not to say that the gods have human form, but that our form is divine.

“However, as to that, you may take your choice. What I want to know is, how did such a piece of good luck happen (for according to your school nothing in the universe was caused by design) — but be that as it may, [91] what accident was so potent, how did such a fortunate concourse of atoms come about, that suddenly men were born in the form of gods? Are we to think that divine seed fell from heaven to earth, and that thus men came into being resembling their sires? I wish that this were your story, for I should be glad to acknowledge my divine relations! But you do not say anything of the sort — you say that our likeness to the gods was caused by chance.

“And now is there any need to search for arguments to refute this? I only wish I could discover the truth as easily as I can expose falsehood.

Chapter XXXIII

For you gave a full and accurate review, which caused me for one to wonder at so much learning in a Roman, of the theological doctrines of the philosophers from Thales of Miletus downward. [92] Did you think they were all out of their minds because they pronounced that god can exist without hands or feet? Does not even a consideration of the adaptation of man’s limbs to their functions convince you that the gods do not require human limbs? What need is there for feet without walking, or for hands if nothing has to be grasped, or for the rest of the list of the various parts of the body, in which nothing is useless, nothing without a reason, nothing superfluous, so that no art can imitate the cunning of nature’s handiwork? It seems then that god will have a tongue, and will not speak; teeth, a palate, a throat, for no use; the organs that nature has attached to the body for the purpose of procreation — these god will possess, but to no purpose; and not only the external but also the internal organs, the heart, lungs, liver and the rest, which if they are not useful are assuredly not beautiful — since your school holds that god possesses bodily parts because of their beauty.

[93] “Was it dreams like these that not only encouraged Epicurus and Metrodorus and Hermarchus to contradict Pythagoras, Plato and Empedocles, but actually emboldened a loose woman like Leontium to write a book refuting Theophrastus? Her style no doubt is the neatest of Attic, but all the same! — such was the licence that prevailed in the Garden of Epicurus. And yet you are touchy yourselves, indeed Zeno actually used to invoke the law. I need not mention Albucius. As for Phaedrus, though he was the most refined and courteous of old gentlemen, he used to lose his temper if I spoke too harshly; although Epicurus attacked Aristotle in the most insulting manner, abused Socrates’ pupil Phaedo quite outrageously, devoted whole volumes to an onslaught on Timocrates, the brother of his own associate Metrodorus, for differing from him on some point or other of philosophy, showed no gratitude toward Democritus himself, whose system he adopted, and treated so badly his own master Nausiphanes, from whom he had learnt a considerable amount.

Chapter XXXIV

As for Zeno, he aimed the shafts of his abuse not only at his contemporaries, Apollodorus, Silus and the rest, but Socrates himself, the father of philosophy, he declared to have been the Attic equivalent of our Roman buffoons; and he always alluded to Chrysippus in the feminine gender. [94] You yourself just now, when reeling off the list of philosophers like the censor calling the roll of the Senate, said that all those eminent men were fools, idiots and madmen. But if none of these discerned the truth about the divine nature, it is to be feared that the divine nature is entirely non-existent.

“For as for your school’s account of the matter, it is the merest fairy-story, hardly worthy of old wives at work by lamplight. You don’t perceive what a number of things you are let in for, if we consent to admit that men and gods have the same form. You will have to assign to god exactly the same physical exercises and care of the person as are proper to men: he will walk, run, recline, bend, sit, hold things in the hand, and lastly even converse and make speeches. [95] As for your saying that the gods are male and female, well, you must see what the consequence of that will be. For my part, I am at a loss to imagine how your great founder arrived at such notions. All the same you never cease vociferating that we must on no account relinquish the divine happiness and immortality. But what prevents god from being happy without having two legs? and why cannot your ‘beatitude’ or ‘beatity,’ whichever form we are to use — and either is certainly a hard mouthful, but words have to be softened by use — but whatever it is, why can it not apply to the sun yonder, or to this world of ours, or to some eternal intelligence devoid of bodily shape and members? [96] Your only answer is: ‘I have never seen a happy sun or world.’ Well, but have you ever seen any other world but this one? No, you will reply. Then why did you venture to assert the existence of, not thousands and thousands, but a countless number of worlds? ‘That is what reason teaches.’ Then will not reason teach you that when we seek to find a being who shall be supremely excellent, and happy and eternal as well — and nothing else constitutes divinity —, even as that being will surpass us in immortality, so also will it surpass us in mental excellence, and even as in mental excellence, so also in bodily. Why then, if we are inferior to god in all else, are we his equals in form? for man came nearer to the divine image in virtue than in outward aspect.

Chapter XXXV

[97] [Can you mention anything so childish (to press the same point still further) as to deny the existence of the various species of huge animals that grow in the Red Sea or in India? Yet not even the most diligent investigators could possibly collect information about all the vast multitude of creatures that exist on land and in the sea, the marshes and the rivers: the existence of which we are to deny, because we have never seen them!]

“Then take your favourite argument from resemblance: how utterly pointless it really is! Why, does not a dog resemble a wolf? — and, to quote Ennius,

How like us is that ugly brute, the ape! —

but the two differ in habits. The elephant is the wisest of beasts, but the most ungainly in shape. [98] I speak of animals, but is it not the case even with men that when very much alike in appearance they differ widely in character, and when very much alike in character they are unlike in appearance? In fact, Velleius, if once we embark on this line of argument, see how far it takes us. You claimed it as axiomatic that reason can only exist in human form; but someone else will claim that it can only exist in a terrestrial creature, in one that has been born, has grown up, has been educated, consists of a soul and a body liable to decay and disease — in fine, that it can only exist in a mortal man. If you stand out against each of these assumptions, why be troubled about shape only? Rational intelligence exists in man, as you saw, only in conjunction with all the attributes that I have set out; yet you say that you can recognize god even with all these attributes stripped off, provided that the outward form remains. This is not to weigh the question, it is to toss up for what you are to say. [99] Unless indeed you happen never to have observed this either, that not only in a man but even in a tree whatever is superfluous or without a use is harmful. What a nuisance it is to have a single finger too many! Why is this? Because, given five fingers, there is no need of another either for appearance or for use. But your god has got not merely one finger more than he wants, but a head, neck, spine, sides, belly, back, flanks, hands, feet, thighs, legs. If this is to secure him immortality, what have these members to do with life? What has even the face? It depends more on the brain, heart, lungs and liver, for they are the abode of life: a man’s countenance and features have nothing to do with his vitality.

Chapter XXXVI

[100] “Then you censured those who argued from the splendour and the beauty of creation, and who, observing the world itself, and the parts of the world, the sky and earth and sea, and the sun, moon and stars that adorn them, and discovering the laws of the seasons and their periodic successions, conjectured that there must exist some supreme and transcendent being who had created these things, and who imparted motion to them and guided and governed them. Though this guess may be wide of the mark, I can see what they are after; but as for you, what mighty masterpiece pray do you adduce as apparently the creation of divine intelligence, leading you to conjecture that gods exist? ‘We have an idea of god implanted in our minds,’ you say. Yes, and an idea of Jupiter with a beard, and Minerva in a helmet; but do you therefore believe that those deities are really like that? [101] The unlearned multitude are surely wiser here — they assign to god not only a man’s limbs, but the use of those limbs. For they give him bow, arrows, spear, shield, trident, thunderbolt; and if they cannot see what actions the gods perform, yet they cannot conceive of god as entirely inactive. Even the Egyptians, whom we laugh at, deified animals solely on the score of some utility which they derived from them; for instance, the ibis, being a tall bird with stiff legs and a long horny beak, destroys a great quantity of snakes: it protects Egypt from plague, by killing and eating the flying serpents that are brought from the Libyan desert by the south-west wind, and so preventing them from harming the natives by their bite while alive and their stench when dead. I might describe the utility of the ichneumon, the crocodile and the cat, but I do not wish to be tedious. I will make my point thus: these animals are at all events deified by the barbarians for the benefits which they confer, but your gods not only do no service you can point to, but they don’t do anything at all. [102] ‘God,’ he says, ‘is free from trouble.’ Obviously Epicurus thinks, as spoilt children do, that idleness is the best thing there is.

Chapter XXXVII

Yet these very children even when idle amuse themselves with some active game: are we to suppose that god enjoys so complete a holiday, and is so sunk in sloth, that we must fear lest the least movement may jeopardize his happiness? This language not merely robs the gods of the movements and activities suitable to the divine nature, but also tends to make men slothful, if even god cannot be happy when actively employed.

[103] “However, granting your view that god is the image and the likeness of man, what is his dwelling-place and local habitation? in what activities does he spend his life? what constitutes that happiness which you attribute to him? For a person who is to be happy must actively enjoy his blessings. As for locality, even the inanimate elements each have their own particular region: earth occupies the lowest place, water covers the earth, to air is assigned the upper realm, and the ethereal fires occupy the highest confines of all. Animals again are divided into those that live on land and those that live in the water, while a third class are amphibious and dwell in both regions, and there are also some that are believed to be born from fire, and are occasionally seen fluttering about in glowing furnaces.³⁷ [104] About your deity therefore I want to know, first, where he dwells; secondly, what motive he has for moving in space, that is, if he ever does so move; thirdly, it being a special characteristic of animate beings to desire some end that is appropriate their nature, what is the thing that god desires; fourthly, upon what subject does he employ his mental activity and reason; and lastly, how is he happy, and how eternal? For whichever of these questions you raise, you touch a tender spot. An argument based on such insecure premisses can come to no valid conclusion. [105] Your assertion was that the form of god is perceived by thought and not by the senses, that it has no solidity nor numerical persistence,³⁸ and that our perception of it is such that it is seen owing to similarity and succession, a never-ceasing stream of similar forms arriving continually from the infinite number of atoms, and that thus it results that our mind, when its attention is fixed on these forms, conceives the divine nature to be happy and eternal.

Chapter XXXVIII

Now in the name of the very gods about whom we are talking, what can possibly be the meaning of this? If the gods only appeal to the faculty of thought, and have no solidity or definite outline, what difference does it make whether we think of a god or of a hippocentaur? Such mental pictures are called by all other philosophers mere empty imaginations, but you say they are the arrival and entrance into our minds of certain images.³⁹ [106] Well then, when I seem to see Tiberius Gracchus in the middle of his speech in the Capitol produ­cing the ballot-box for the vote on Marcus Octavius, I explain this as an empty imagination of the mind, but your explanation is that the images of Gracchus and Octavius have actually remained on the spot, so that when I come to the Capitol these images are borne to my mind; the same thing happens, you say, in the case of god, whose appearance repeatedly impinges on men’s minds, and so gives rise to the belief in happy and eternal deities. [107] Suppose that there are such images constantly impinging on our minds: but that is only the presentation of a certain form — surely not also of a reason for supposing that this form is happy and eternal?

“But what is the nature of these images of yours, and whence do they arise? This extravagance, it is true, is borrowed from Democritus; but he has been widely criticized, nor can you find a satisfactory explanation, and the whole affair is a lame and impotent business. For how can be more improbable than that images of Homer, Archilochus, Romulus, Numa, Pythagoras and Plato should impinge on me at all — much less that they should do so in the actual shape that those men really bore? How then do these images arise? and of whom are they the images? Aristotle⁴⁰ tells us that the poet Orpheus never existed, and the Pythagoreans say that the Orphic poem which we possess was the work of a certain Cecrops; yet Orpheus, that is, according to you, the image of him, often comes into my mind. [108] What of the fact that different images of the same person enter my mind and yours? or that images come to us of things that never existed at all and never can have existed — for instance, Scylla, and the Chimaera? or of people, places and cities which we have never seen? What of the fact that I can call up an image instantaneously, the very moment that I choose to do so? or that they come to me unbidden, even when I am asleep? Velleius, the whole affair is humbug. Yet you stamp these images not only on our eyes but also on our minds — so irresponsibly do you babble.

Chapter XXXIX

[109] And how extravagantly! There is a constant passage or stream of visual presentations which collectively produce a single visual impression. I should be ashamed to say that I do not understand the doctrine, if you who maintain it understood it yourselves! How can you prove that the stream of images is continuous, or if it is, how are the images eternal? You say that there is an innumerable supply of atoms. Are you going to argue then that everything is eternal, for the same reason? You take refuge in the principle of ‘equilibrium’ (for so with your consent we will translate isonomia), and you say that because there is mortal substance there must also be immortal substance. On that showing, because there are mortal men, there are also some that are immortal, and because there are men born on land, there are men born in the water. ‘And because there are forces of destruction, there are also forces of preservation.’ Suppose there were, they would only preserve things that already exist; but I am not aware that your gods do exist. [110] But be that as it may, how do all your pictures of objects⁴¹ arise out of the atoms? even if the atoms existed, which they do not, they might conceivably be capable of pushing and jostling one another about by their collisions, but they could not create form, shape, colour, life. You fail entirely therefore to prove divine immortality.

Chapter XL

“Now let us consider divine happiness. Happiness is admittedly impossible without virtue. But virtue is in its nature active, and your god is entirely inactive. Therefore he is devoid of virtue. Therefore he is not happy either. [111] In what then does his life consist? ‘In a constant succession of things good,’ you reply, ‘without any admixture of evils.’ Things good — what things? Pleasures, I suppose — that is, of course, pleasures of the body, for your school recognizes no pleasures of the mind that do not arise from and come back to the body. I don’t suppose that you, Velleius, are like the rest of the Epicureans, who are ashamed of certain utterances of Epicurus, in which he protests that he cannot conceive any good that is unconnected with the pleasures of the voluptuary and the sensualist, pleasures which in fact he proceeds without a blush to enumerate by name. [112] Well then, what viands and beverages, what harmonies of music and flowers of various hue, what delights of touch and smell will you assign to the gods, so as to keep them steeped in pleasure? The poets array banquets of nectar and ambrosia, with Hebe or Ganymede in attendance as cup-bearer; but what will you do, Epicurean? I don’t see either where your god is to procure these delights or how he is to enjoy them. It appears then that mankind is more bountifully equipped for happiness than is the deity, since man can experience a wider range of pleasures. [113] You tell me that you consider these pleasures inferior, which merely ‘tickle’ the senses (the expression is that of Epicurus).⁴² When will you cease jesting? Why, even our friend Philo was impatient with the Epicureans for affecting to despise the pleasures of senseless indulgence; for he had an excellent memory and could quote verbatim a number of maxims from the actual writings of Epicurus. As for Metrodorus, Epicurus’s co-partner in philosophy, he supplied him with many still more outspoken quotations; in fact Metrodorus takes his brother Timocrates to task for hesitating to measure every element of happiness by the standard of the belly, nor is this an isolated utterance, but he repeats it several times. I see you nod your assent, as you are acquainted with the passages; and did you deny it, I would produce the volumes. Not that I am at the moment criticizing your making pleasure the sole standard of value — that belongs to another inquiry. What I am trying to prove is that your gods are incapable of pleasure, and therefore by your verdict can have no happiness either.

Chapter XLI

[114] ‘But they are free from pain.’ Does that satisfy the ideal of perfect bliss, overflowing with good things? ‘God is engaged (they say) in ceaseless contemplation of his own happiness, for he has no other object for his thoughts.’ I beg of you to realize in your imagination a vivid picture of a deity solely occupied for all eternity in reflecting ‘What a good time I am having! How happy I am!’ And yet I can’t see how this happy god of yours is not to fear destruction, since he is subjected without a moment’s respite to the buffeting and jostling of a horde of atoms that eternally assail him, while from his own person a ceaseless stream of images is given off. Your god is therefore neither happy nor eternal.

[115] ” ‘Yes, but Epicurus actually wrote books about holiness⁴³ and piety.’ But what is the language of these books? Such that you think you are listening to a Coruncanius or a Scaevola, high priests, not to the man who destroyed the very foundations of religion, and overthrew — not by main force like Xerxes, but by argument — the temples and the altars of the immortal gods. Why, what reason have you for maintaining that men owe worship to the gods, if the gods not only pay no respect to men,⁴⁴ but care for nothing and do nothing at all? [116] ‘But deity possesses an excellence and pre-eminence which must of its own nature attract the worship of the wise.’ Now how can there be any excellence in a being so engrossed in the delights of his own pleasure that he always has been, is, and will continue to be entirely idle and inactive? Furthermore how can you owe piety to a person who has bestowed nothing upon you? or how can you owe anything at all to one who has done you no service? Piety is justice towards the gods; but how can any claims of justice exist between us and them, if god and man have nothing in common? Holiness is the science of divine worship; but I fail to see why the gods should be worshipped if we neither have received nor hope to receive benefit from them.

Chapter XLII

[117] On the other hand what reason is there for adoring the gods on the ground of our admiration for the divine nature, if we cannot see that that nature possesses any special excellence?

“As for freedom from superstition, which is the favourite boast of your school, that is easy to attain when you have deprived the gods of all power; unless perchance you think that it was possible for Diagoras or Theodorus to be superstitious, who denied the existence of the gods altogether. For my part, I don’t see how it was possible even for Protagoras, who was not certain either that the gods exist or that they do not. For the doctrines of all these thinkers abolish not only superstition, which implies a groundless fear of the gods, but also religion, which consists in piously worshipping them. [118] Take again those who have asserted that the entire notion of the immortal gods is a fiction invented by wise men in the interest of the state, to the end that those whom reason was powerless to control might be led in the path of duty by religion; surely this view was absolutely and entirely destructive of religion. Or Prodicus of Ceos, who said that the gods were personifications of things beneficial to the life of man — pray what religion was left by his theory? [119] Or those who teach that brave or famous or power­ful men have been deified after death, and that it is these who are the real objects of the worship, prayers and adoration which we are accustomed to offer — are not they entirely devoid of all sense of religion? This theory was chiefly developed by Euhemerus, who was translated and imitated especially by our poet Ennius. Yet Euhemerus describes the death and burial of certain gods; are we then to think of him as upholding religion, or rather as utterly and entirely destroying it? I say nothing of the holy and awe-inspiring sanctuary of Eleusis,

Where tribes from earth’s remotest confines seek
Initiation,⁴⁵

and I pass over Samothrace and those

occult mysteries
Which throngs of worshippers at dead of night
In forest coverts deep do celebrate⁴⁶

at Lemnos, since such mysteries when interpreted and rationalized prove to have more to do with natural science than with theology.

Chapter XLIII

[120] “For my own part I believe that even that very eminent man Democritus, the fountain-head from which Epicurus derived the streams that watered his little garden, has no fixed opinion about the nature of the gods. At one moment he holds the view that the universe includes images endowed with divinity; at another he says that there exist in this same universe the elements from which the mind is compounded, and that these are gods; at another, that they are animate images, which are wont to exercise a beneficent or harmful influence over us; and again that they are certain vast images of such a size as to envelop and enfold the entire world.⁴⁷ All these fancies are more worthy of Democritus’s native city⁴⁸ than of himself; [121] for who could form a mental picture of such images? who could adore them and deem them worthy of worship or reverence?

“Epicurus however, in abolishing divine beneficence and divine benevolence, uprooted and exterminated all religion from the human heart. For while asserting the supreme goodness and excellence of the divine nature, he yet denies to god the attribute of benevolence — that is to say, he does away with that which is the most essential element of supreme goodness and excellence. For what can be better or more excellent than kindness and beneficence? Make out god to be devoid of either, and you make him devoid of all love, affection or esteem for any other being, human or divine. It follows not merely that the gods do not care for mankind, but that they have no care for one another.

Chapter XLIV

How much more truth there is in the Stoics, whom you censure! They hold that all wise men are friends, even when strangers to each other, since nothing is more lovable than virtue, and he that attains to it will have our esteem in whatever country he dwells. [122] But as for you, what mischief you cause when you reckon kindness and benevolence as weaknesses! Apart altogether from the nature and attributes of deity, do you think that even human beneficence and benignity are solely due to human infirmity? Is there no natural affection between the good? There is something attractive in the very sound of the word ‘love,’ from which the Latin term for friendship is derived. If we base our friendship on its profit to ourselves, and not on its advantage to those whom we love, it will not be friendship at all, but a mere bartering of selfish interests. That is our standard of value for meadows and fields and herds of cattle: we esteem them for the profits that we derive from them; but affection and friendship between men is disinterested; how much more so therefore is that of the gods, who, although in need of nothing, yet both love each other and care for the interests of men. If this be not so, why do we worship and pray to them? why have pontiffs and augurs to preside over our sacrifices and auspices? why make petitions and vow offerings to heaven? ‘Why, but Epicurus (you tell me) actually wrote a treatise on holiness.’ [123] Epicurus is making fun of us, though he is not so much a humorist as a loose and careless writer. For how can holiness exist if the gods pay no heed to man’s affairs? Yet what is the meaning of an animate being that pays no heed to anything?

“It is doubtless therefore truer to say, as the good friend of us all, Posidonius, argued in the fifth book of his On the Nature of the Gods, that Epicurus does not really believe in the gods at all, and that he said what he did about the immortal gods only for the sake of deprecating popular odium. Indeed he could not have been so senseless as really to imagine god to be like a feeble human being, but resembling him only in outline and surface, not in solid substance, and possessing all man’s limbs but entirely incapable of using them, an emaciated and transparent being, showing no kindness or beneficence to anybody, caring for nothing and doing nothing at all. In the first place, a being of this nature is an absolute impossibility, and Epicurus was aware of this, and so actually abolishes the gods, although professedly retaining them. [124] Secondly, even if god exists, yet is of such a nature that he feels no benevolence or affection towards men, good-bye to him, say I — not ‘God be gracious to me,’⁴⁹ why should I say that? for he cannot be gracious to anybody, since, as you tell us, all benevolence and affection is a mark of weakness.”

Book Two

Chapter I

[1] Cotta having thus spoken, Velleius replied. “I am indeed a rash person,” he said, “to attempt to join issue with a pupil of the Academy⁵⁰ who is also a trained orator. An Academic unversed in rhetoric I should not have been much afraid of, nor yet an orator however eloquent who was not reinforced by that system of philosophy; for I am not disconcerted by a mere stream of empty verbiage, nor yet by subtlety of thought if expressed in a jejune style. You however, Cotta, were strong in both points; you only lacked a public audience and a jury to listen to you. But my answer to your arguments may wait until another time; let us now hear Lucilius, if he himself is agreeable.”

[2] “For my part,” rejoined Balbus, “I had rather listen to Cotta again, using the same eloquence that he employed in abolishing false gods to present a picture of the true ones. A philosopher, a pontiff and a Cotta should possess not a shifting and unsettled conception of the immortal gods, like the Academics, but a firm and definite one like our school. As for refuting Epicurus, that has been accomplished and more than achieved already. But I am eager to hear what you think yourself, Cotta.”

“Have you forgotten,” said Cotta, “what I said at the outset, that I find it more easy, especially on such subjects as these, to say what I don’t think than what I do? [3] Even if I had any clear view, I should still prefer to hear you speak in your turn, now that I have said so much myself.”

“Well,” replied Balbus, “I will yield to your wish; and I shall be as brief as I can, for indeed when the errors of Epicurus have been refuted, my argument is robbed of all occasion for prolixity. To take a general view, the topic of the immortal gods which you raise is divided by our school into four parts: first they prove that the gods exist; next they explain their nature; then they show that the world is governed by them; and lastly that they care for the fortunes of mankind. In our present discourse however let us take the first two of these heads; the third and fourth, being questions of greater magnitude, had better I think be put off to another time.”

“No, no,” cried Cotta, “we are at leisure now, and moreover the subjects which we are discussing might fitly claim precedence even of matters of business.”

Chapter II

[4] “The first point,” resumed Lucilius, “seems not even to require arguing. For when we gaze upward to the sky and contemplate the heavenly bodies, what can be so obvious and so manifest as that there must exist some power possessing transcendent intelligence by whom these things are ruled? Were it not so, how comes it that the words of Ennius carry conviction to all readers —

Behold this dazzling vault of heaven, which all mankind as Jove invoke,

ay, and not only as Jove but as sovereign of the world, ruling all things with his nod, and as Ennius likewise says —

father of gods and men,

a deity omnipresent and omnipotent? If a man doubts this, I really cannot see why he should not also be capable of doubting the existence of the sun; [5] how is the latter fact more evident than the former? Nothing but the presence in our minds of a firmly grasped concept of the deity could account for the stability and permanence of our belief in him, a belief which is only strengthened by the passage of the ages and grows more deeply rooted with each successive generation of mankind. In every other case we see that fictitious and unfounded opinions have dwindled away with lapse of time. Who believes that the Hippocentaur or the Chimaera ever existed? Where can you find an old wife senseless enough to be afraid of the monsters of the lower world that were once believed in? The years obliterate the inventions of the imagination, but confirm the judgements of nature.

“Hence both in our own nation and among all others reverence for the gods and respect for religion grow continually stronger and more profound. [6] Nor is this unaccountable or accidental; it is the result, firstly, of the fact that the gods often manifest their power in bodily presence. For instance in the Latin War, at the critical battle of Lake Regillus between the dictator Aulus Postumius and Octavius Mamilius of Tusculum, Castor and Pollux were seen fighting on horseback in our ranks. And in more modern history likewise these sons of Tyndareus brought the news of the defeat of Perses. What happened was that Publius Vatinius, the grandfather of our young contemporary, was returning to Rome by night from Reate, of which he was governor, when he was informed by two young warriors on white horses that King Perses had that very day been taken prisoner. When Vatinius carried the news to the Senate, at first he was flung into gaol on the charge of spreading an unfounded report on a matter of national concern; but afterwards a dispatch arrived from Paulus, and the date was found to tally, so the Senate bestowed upon Vatinius both a grant of land and exemption from military service. It is also recorded in history that when the Locrians won their great victory over the people of Crotona at the important battle of the River Sagra, news of the engagement was reported at the Olympic Games on the very same day. Often has the sound of the voices of the Fauns, often has the apparition of a divine form compelled anyone that is not either feeble-minded or impious to admit the real presence of the gods.

Chapter III

[7] “Again, prophecies and premonitions of future events cannot but be taken as proofs that the future may appear or be foretold as a warning or portended or predicted to mankind — hence the very words ‘apparition,’ ‘warning,’ ‘portent,’ ‘prodigy.’ Even if we think that the stories of Mopsus, Tiresias, Amphiaraus, Calchas and Helenus are mere baseless fictions of romance (though their powers of divination would not even have been incorporated in the legends had they been entirely repugnant to fact), shall not even the instances from our own native history teach us to acknowledge the divine power? shall we be unmoved by the story of the recklessness of Publius Claudius in the first Punic War? Claudius merely in jest mocked at the gods: when the chickens on being released from their cage refused to feed, he ordered them to be thrown into the water, so that as they would not eat they might drink; but the joke cost the jester himself many tears and the Roman people a great disaster, for the fleet was severely defeated. Moreover did not his colleague Junius during the same war lose his fleet in a storm after failing to comply with the auspices? In consequence of these disasters Claudius was tried and condemned for high treason and Junius committed suicide. [8] Caelius writes that Gaius Flaminius after ignoring the claims of religion fell at the battle of Trasimene, when a serious blow was inflicted on the state. The fate of these men may serve to indicate that our empire was won by those commanders who obeyed the dictates of religion. Moreover if we care to compare our national characteristics with those of foreign peoples, we shall find that, while in all other respects we are only the equals or even the inferiors of others, yet in the sense of religion, that is, in reverence for the gods, we are far superior. [9] Or are we to make light of the famous augural staff of Attus Navius, wherewith he marked out the vineyard into sections for the purpose of discovering the pig?⁵¹ I would agree that we might do so, had not King Hostilius fought great and glorious wars under the guidance of Attus’s augury. But owing to the carelessness of our nobility the augural lore has been forgotten, and the reality of the auspices has fallen into contempt, only the outward show being retained; and in consequence highly important departments of public administration, and in particular the conduct of wars upon which the safety of the state depends, are carried on without any auspices at all; no taking of omens when crossing rivers, none when lights flash from the points of the javelins, none when men are called to arms (owing to which wills made on active service have gone out of existence, since our generals only enter on their military command when they have laid down their augural powers). [10] But among our ancestors religion was so power­ful that some commanders actually offered themselves as victims to the immortal gods on behalf of the state, veiling their heads and formally vowing themselves to death. I could quote numerous passages from the Sibylline prophecies and from the oracles of soothsayers in confirmation of facts that no one really ought to question.

Chapter IV

Why, in the consul­ship of Publius Scipio and Gaius Figulus both our Roman augural lore and that of the Etruscan soothsayers were confirmed by the evidence of actual fact. Tiberius Gracchus, then consul for the second time, was holding the election of his successors. The first returning officer in the very act of reporting the persons named as elected suddenly fell dead. Gracchus nevertheless proceeded with the election. Perceiving that the scruples of the public had been aroused by the occurrence, he referred the matter to the Senate. The Senate voted that it be referred ‘to the customary officials.’ Soothsayers were sent for, and pronounced that the returning officer for the elections had not been in order. [11] Thereupon Gracchus, so my father used to tell me, burst into a rage. ‘How now?’ he cried, ‘was I not in order? I put the names to the vote as consul, as augur, and with auspices taken. Who are you, Tuscan barbarians,⁵² to know the Roman constitution, and to be able to lay down the law as to our elections?’ And accordingly he then sent them about their business. Afterwards however he sent a dispatch from his province to the College of Augurs to say that while reading the sacred books it had come to his mind that there had been an irregularity when he took Scipio’s park as the site for his augural tent, for he had subsequently entered the city bounds to hold a meeting of the Senate and when crossing the bounds again on his return had forgotten to take the auspices;⁵³ and that therefore the consuls had not been duly elected. The College of Augurs referred the matter to the senate; the Senate decided that the consuls must resign; they did so. What more striking instances can we demand? A man of the greatest wisdom and I may say unrivalled distinction of character preferred to make public confession of an offence that he might have concealed rather than that the stain of impiety should cling to the commonwealth; the consuls preferred to retire on the spot from the highest office of the state rather than hold it for one moment of time in violation of religion. [12] The augur’s office is one of high dignity; surely the soothsayer’s art also is divinely inspired. Is not one who considers these and countless similar facts compelled to admit that the gods exist? If there be persons who interpret the will of certain beings, it follows that those beings must themselves exist; but there are persons who interpret the will of the gods; therefore we must admit that the gods exist. But perhaps it may be argued that not all prophecies come true. Nor do all sick persons get well, but that does not prove that there is no art of medicine. Signs of future events are manifested by the gods; men may have mistaken these signs, but the fault lay with man’s powers of inference, not with the divine nature.

“Hence the main issue is agreed among all men of all nations, inasmuch as all have engraved in their minds an innate belief that the gods exist.

Chapter V

[13] As to their nature there are various opinions, but their existence nobody denies. Indeed our master Cleanthes gave four reasons to account for the formation in men’s minds of their ideas of the gods. He put first the argument of which I spoke just now, the one arising from our foreknowledge of future events; second, the one drawn from the magnitude of the benefits which we derive from our temperate climate, from the earth’s fertility, and from a vast abundance of other blessings; [14] third, the awe inspired by lightning, storms, rain, snow, hail, floods, pestilences, earthquakes and occasionally subterranean rumblings, showers of stones and raindrops the colour of blood, also landslips and chasms suddenly opening in the ground, also unnatural monstrosities human and animal, and also the appearance of meteoric lights and what are called by the Greeks ‘comets,’ and in our language ‘long-haired stars,’ such as recently during the Octavian War⁵⁴ appeared as harbingers of dire disasters,⁵⁵ and the doubling of the sun, which my father told me had happened in the consul­ship of Tuditanus and Aquilius, the year⁵⁶ in which the light was quenched of Publius Africanus, that second sun of Rome: all of which alarming portents have suggested to mankind the idea of the existence of some celestial and divine power. [15] And the fourth and most potent cause of the belief he said was the uniform motion and revolution of the heavens, and the varied groupings and ordered beauty of the sun, moon and stars, the very sight of which was in itself enough to prove that these things are not the mere effect of chance. When a man goes into a house, a wrestling-school or a public assembly and observes in all that goes on arrangement, regularity and system, he cannot possibly suppose that these things come about without a cause: he realizes that there is someone who presides and controls. Far more therefore with the vast movements and phases of the heavenly bodies, and these ordered processes of a multitude of enormous masses of matter, which throughout the countless ages of the infinite past have never in the smallest degree played false, is he compelled to infer that these mighty world-motions are regulated by some Mind.

Chapter VI

[16] “Extremely acute of intellect as is Chrysippus, nevertheless his utterance here might well appear to have been learnt from the very lips of Nature, and not discovered by himself. ‘If (he says) there be something in the world that man’s mind and human reason, strength and power are incapable of produ­cing, that which produces it must necessarily be superior to man; now the heavenly bodies and all those things that display a never-ending regularity cannot be created by man; therefore that which creates them is superior to man; yet what better name is there for this than “god”? Indeed, if gods do not exist, what can there be in the universe superior to man? for he alone possesses reason, which is the most excellent thing that can exist; but for any human being in existence to think that there is nothing in the whole world superior to himself would be an insane piece of arrogance; therefore there is something superior to man; therefore God does exist.’ [17] Again, if you see a spacious and beautiful house, you could not be induced to believe, even though you could not see its master, that it was built by mice and weasels; if then you were to imagine that this elaborate universe, with all the variety and beauty of the heavenly bodies and the vast quantity and extent of sea and land, were your abode and not that of the gods, would you not be thought absolutely insane? Again, do we not understand that everything in a higher position is of greater value, and that the lowest thing, and is enveloped by a layer of the densest kind of air? Hence for the same reason what we observe to be the case with certain districts and cities, I mean that their inhabitants are duller-witted than the average owing to the more compressed quality of the atmosphere, has also befallen the human race as a whole owing to its being located on the earth, that is, in the densest region of the world. [18] Yet even man’s intelligence must lead us to infer the existence of a mind in the universe, and that a mind of surpassing ability, and in fact divine. Otherwise, whence did man ‘pick up’⁵⁷ (as Socrates says in Xenophon) the intelligence that he possesses? If anyone asks the question, whence do we get the moisture and the heat diffused throughout the body, and the actual earthy substance of the flesh, and lastly the breath of life within us, it is manifest that we have derived the one from earth, the other from water, and the other from the air which we inhale in breathing.

Chapter VII

But where did we find, whence did we abstract, that other part of us which surpasses all of these, I mean our reason, or, if you like to employ several terms to denote it, our intelligence, deliberation, thought, wisdom? Is the world to contain each of the other elements but not this one, the most precious of them all? Yet beyond question nothing exists among all things that is superior to the world, nothing that is more excellent or more beautiful; and not merely does nothing superior to it exist, but nothing superior can even be conceived. And if there be nothing superior to reason and wisdom, these faculties must necessarily be possessed by that being which we admit to be superior to all others. [19] Again, consider the sympathetic agreement, interconnexion and affinity of things: whom will this not compel to approve the truth of what I say? Would it be possible for the earth at one definite time to be gay with flowers and then in turn all bare and stark, or for the spontaneous transformation of so many things about us to signal the approach and the retirement of the sun at the summer and the winter solstices, or for the tides to flow and ebb in the seas and straits with the rising and setting of the moon, or for the different courses of the stars to be maintained by the one revolution of the entire sky? These processes and this musical harmony of all the parts of the world assuredly would not go on were they not maintained in unison by a single divine and all-pervading spirit.

[20] “When one expounds these doctrines in a fuller and more flowing style, as I propose to do, it is easier for them to evade the captious objections of the Academy; but when they are reduced to brief syllogistic form, as was the practice of Zeno, they lie more open to criticism. A running river can almost or quite entirely escape pollution, whereas an enclosed pool is easily sullied; similarly a flowing stream of eloquence sweeps aside the censures of the critic, but a closely reasoned argument defends itself with difficult. The thoughts that we expound at length Zeno used to compress into this form:

Chapter VIII

[21] ‘That which has the faculty of reason is superior to that which has not the faculty of reason; but nothing is superior to the world; therefore the world has the faculty of reason.’ A similar argument can be used to prove that the world is wise, and happy, and eternal; for things possessed of each of these attributes are superior to things devoid of them, and nothing is superior to the world. From this it will follow that the world is god. Zeno also argued thus: [22] ‘Nothing devoid of sensation can have a part of itself that is sentient; but the world has parts that are sentient; therefore the world has parts that are sentient; therefore the world is not devoid of sensation.’ He also proceeds to press the argument more closely: ‘Nothing,’ he says, ‘that is inanimate and irrational can give birth to an animate and rational being; but the world gives birth to animate and rational beings; therefore the world is animate and rational.’ Furthermore he proved his argument by means of one of his favourite comparisons, as follows: ‘If flutes playing musical tunes grew on an olive-tree, surely you would not question that the olive-tree possessed some knowledge of the art of flute-playing; or if plane-trees bore well-tuned lutes, doubtless you would likewise infer that the plane-trees possessed the art of music; why then should we not judge the world to be animate and endowed with wisdom, when it produces animate and wise offspring?

Chapter IX

[23] “However, having begun to treat the subject in a different way from that which I proposed at the beginning (for I said that this part required no discussion, since the existence of god was manifest to everybody), in spite of this I should like to prove even this point by means of arguments drawn from Physics or Natural Philosophy. It is a law of Nature that all things capable of nurture and growth contain within them a supply of heat, without which their nurture and growth would not be possible; for everything of a hot, fiery nature supplies its own source of motion and activity; but that which is nourished and grows possesses a definite and uniform motion; and as long as this motion remains within us, so long sensation and life remain, whereas so soon as our heat is cooled and quenched we ourselves perish and are extinguished. [24] This doctrine Cleanthes enforces by these further arguments, to show how great is the supply of heat in every living body: he states that there is no food so heavy that it is not digested in twenty-four hours; and even the residue of our food which nature rejects contains heat. Again, the veins and arteries never cease throbbing with a flame-like pulse, and frequent cases have been observed when the heart of an animal on being torn out of its body has continued to beat with a rapid motion resembling the flickering of fire. Every living thing therefore, whether animal or vegetable, owes its vitality to the heat contained within it. From this it must be inferred that this element of heat possesses in itself a vital force that pervades the whole world.

[25] “We shall discern the truth of this more readily from a more detailed account of this all-permeating fiery element as a whole. All the parts of the world (I will however only specify the most important) are supported and sustained by heat. This can be perceived first of all in the element of earth. We see fire produced by striking or rubbing stones together; and when newly dug, ‘the earth doth steam with warmth’;⁵⁸ and also warm water is drawn from running springs, and this occurs most of all in the winter-time, because a great store of heat is confined in the caverns of the earth, which in winter is denser and therefore confines more closely the heat stored in the soil.

Chapter X

[26] It would require a long discourse and a great many arguments to enable me to show that all the seeds that earth receives in her womb, and all the plants which she spontaneously generates and holds fixed by their roots in the ground, owe both their origin and growth to this warm temperature of the soil. That water also contains an admixture of heat is shown first of all by its liquid nature; water would neither be frozen into ice by cold nor congealed into snow and hoar-frost unless it could also become fluid when liquefied and thawed by the admixture of heat; this is why moisture both hardens when exposed to a north wind or a frost from some other quarter, and also in turn softens when warmed, and evaporates with heat. Also the sea when violently stirred by the wind becomes warm, so that it can readily be realized that this great body of fluid contains heat; for we must not suppose the warmth in question to be derived from some external source, but stirred up from the lowest depths of the sea by violent motion, just as happens to our bodies when they are restored to warmth by movement and exercise. Indeed the air itself, though by nature the coldest of the elements, is by no means entirely devoid of heat; [27] indeed it contains even a considerable admixture of heat, for it is itself generated by exhalation from water, since air must be deemed to be a sort of vaporized water, and this vaporization is caused by the motion of the heat contained in the water. We may see an example of the same process when water is made to boil by pla­cing fire beneath it. — There remains the fourth element: this is itself by nature glowing hot throughout and also imparts the warmth of health and life to all other substances. [28] Hence from the fact that all the parts of the world are sustained by heat the inference follows that the world itself also owes its continued preservation for so long a time to the same or a similar substance, and all the more so because it must be understood that this hot and fiery principle is interfused with the whole of nature in such a way as to constitute the male and female generative principles, and so to be the necessary cause of both the birth and the growth of all living creatures, whether animals or those whose roots are planted in the earth.

Chapter XI

[29] “There is therefore an element that holds⁵⁹ the whole world together and preserves it, and this an element possessed of sensation and reason; since every natural object that is not a homogeneous and simple substance but a complex and composite one must contain within it some ruling principle, for example in man the intelligence, in the lower animals something resembling intelligence that is the source of appetition. With trees and plants the ruling principle is believed to be located in the roots. I use the term ‘ruling principle’ as the equivalent of the Greek hēgemonikon, meaning that part of anything which must and ought to have supremacy in a thing of that sort. Thus it follows that the element which contains the ruling principle of the whole of nature must also be the most excellent of all things and the most deserving of authority and sovereignty over all things. [30] Now we observe that the parts of the world (and nothing exists in all the world which is not a part of the whole world) possess sensation and reason. Therefore it follows that that part which contains the ruling principle of the world must necessarily possess sensation and reason, and these in a more intense and higher form. Hence it follows that the world possesses wisdom, and that the element which holds all things in its embrace is pre-eminently and perfectly rational, and therefore that the world is god, and all the forces of the world are held together by the divine nature.

“Moreover that glowing heat of the world is far purer and more brilliant and far more mobile, and therefore more stimulating to the senses, than this warmth of ours by which the things that we know are preserved and vitalized. [31] As therefore man and the animals are possessed by this warmth and owe to this their motion and sensation, it is absurd to say that the world is devoid of sensation, considering that it is possessed by an intense heat that is stainless, free and purpose, and also penetrating and mobile in the extreme; especially as this intense world-heat does not derive its motion from the operation of some other force from outside, but is self-moved and spontaneous in its activity: for how can there be anything more power­ful than the world, to impart motion and activity in the warmth by which the world is held together?

Chapter XII

[32] For let us hear Plato,⁶⁰ that divine philosopher, for so almost he is to be deemed. He holds that motion is of two sorts, one spontaneous, the other derived from without; and that that which moves of itself spontaneously is more divine than that which has motion imparted to it by some force not its own. The former kind of motion he deems to reside only in the soul, which he considers to be the only source and origin of motion. Hence, since all motion springs from the world-heat, and since that heat moves spontaneously and not by any impulse from something else, it follows that that heat is soul; which proves that the world is an animate being.

“Another proof that the world possesses intelligence is supplied by the fact that the world is unquestionably better than any of its elements; for even as there is no part of our body that is not of less value than we are ourselves, so the whole universe must needs be of higher worth than any portion of the universe; and if this be so, it follows that the world must be endowed with wisdom, for, if it were not, man, although a part of the world, being possessed of reason would necessarily be of higher worth than the world as a whole.

[33] “Again, if we wish to proceed from the first rudimentary orders of being to the last and most perfect, we shall necessarily arrive in the end at deity. We notice the sustaining power of nature first in the members of the vegetable kingdom, towards which her bounty was limited to providing for their preservation by means of the faculties of nurture and growth. [34] Upon the animals she bestowed sensation and motion, and an appetite or impulse to approach things wholesome and retire from things harmful. For man she amplified her gift by the addition of reason, whereby the appetites might be controlled, and alternately indulged and held in check.

Chapter XIII

But the fourth and highest grade is that of beings born by nature good and wise, and endowed from the outset with the innate attributes of right reason and consistency; this must be held to be above the level of man: it is the attribute of god, that is, of the world, which must needs possess that perfect and absolute reason of which I spoke. [35] Again, it is undeniable that every organic whole must have an ultimate ideal of perfection. As in vines or cattle we see that, unless obstructed by some force, nature progresses on a certain path of her own to her goal of full development, and as in painting, architecture and the other arts and crafts there is an ideal of perfect workman­ship, even so and far more in the world of nature as a whole there must be a process towards completeness and perfection. The various limited modes of being may encounter many external obstacles to hinder their perfect realization, but there can be nothing that can frustrate nature as a whole, since she embraces and contains within herself all modes of being. Hence it follows that there must exist this fourth and highest grade, unassailable by any external force. [36] Now this is the grade on which universal nature stands; and since she is of such a character as to be superior to all things and incapable of frustration by any, it follows of necessity that the world is an intelligent being, and indeed also a wise being.

“Again, what can be more illogical than to deny that the being which embraces all things must be the best of all things, or, admitting this, to deny that it must be, first, possessed of life, secondly, rational and intelligent, and lastly, endowed with wisdom? How else can it be the best of all things? If it resembles plants or even animals, so far from being highest, it must be reckoned lowest in the scale of being. If again it be capable of reason yet has not been wise from the beginning, the world must be in a worse condition than mankind; for a man can become wise, but if in all the eternity of past time the world has been foolish, obviously it will never attain wisdom; and so it will be inferior to man, which is absurd. Therefore the world must be deemed to have been wise from the beginning, and divine.

[37] “In fact⁶¹ there is nothing else beside the world that has nothing wanting, but is fully equipped and complete and perfect in all its details and parts.

Chapter XIV

For as Chrysippus cleverly puts it,⁶² just as a shield-case is made for the sake of a shield and a sheath for the sake of a sword, so everything else except the world was created for the sake of some other thing; thus the cornº and fruits produced by the earth were created for the sake of animals, and animals for the sake of man: for example the horse for riding, the ox for ploughing, the dog for hunting and keeping guard; man himself however came into existence for the purpose of contemplating and imitating the world; he is by no means perfect, but he is ‘a small fragment of that which is perfect.’ [38] The world on the contrary, since it embraces all things and since nothing exists which is not within it, is entirely perfect; how then can it fail to possess that which is the best? but there is nothing better than intelligence and reason; the world therefore cannot fail to possess them. Chrysippus therefore also well shows by the aid of illustrations that in the perfect and mature specimen of its kind everything is better than in the imperfect, for instance in a horse than in a foal, in a dog than in a puppy, in a man than in a boy; and that similarly a perfect and complete being is bound to possess that which is the best thing in all the world; [39] but no being is more perfect than the world, and nothing is better than virtue; therefore virtue is an essential attribute of the world. Again, man’s nature is not perfect, yet virtue may be realized in man; how much more readily then in the world! therefore the world possesses virtue. Therefore it is wise, and consequently divine.

Chapter XV

“Having thus perceived the divinity of the world, we must also assign the same divinity to the stars, which are formed from the most mobile and the purest part of the aether, and are not compounded of any other element besides; they are of a fiery heat and translucent throughout. Hence they too have the fullest right to be pronounced to be living beings endowed with sensation and intelligence. [40] That the stars consist entirely of fire Cleanthes holds to be established by the evidence of two of the senses, those of touch and sight. For the radiance of the sun is more brilliant than that of any fire, inasmuch as it casts its light so far and wide over the boundless universe; and the contact of its rays is so power­ful that it not merely warms but often actually burns, neither of which things could it do if it were not made of fire. ‘Therefore,’ Cleanthes proceeds, ‘since the sun is made of fire, and is nourished by the vapours exhaled from the ocean because no fire could continue to exist without sustenance of some sort, it follows that it resembles either that fire which we employ in ordinary life or that which is contained in the bodies of living creatures. [41] Now our ordinary fire that serves the needs of daily life is a destructive agency, consuming everything, and also wherever it spreads it routs and scatters everything. On the other hand the fire of the body is the glow of life and health; it is the universal preservative, giving nourishment, fostering growth, sustaining, bestowing sensation.’ He therefore maintains that there can be no doubt which of the two kinds of fire the sun resembles, for the sun also causes all things to flourish and to bring forth increase each after its kind. Hence since the sun resembles those fires which are contained in the bodies of living creatures, the sun also must be alive; and so too the other heavenly bodies, since they have their origin in the fiery heat of heaven that is entitled the aether or sky. [42] Since therefore some living creatures are born on the earth, others in the water and others in the air, it is absurd, so Aristotle⁶³ holds, to suppose that no living animal is born in that element which is most adapted for the generation of living things. But the stars occupy the region of aether, and as this has a very rarefied substance and is always in lively motion, it follows that the animal born in this region has the keenest senses and the swiftest power of movement; hence since the stars come into existence in the aether, it is reasonable to suppose that they possess sensation and intelligence. And from this it follows that the stars are to be reckoned as gods.

Chapter XVI

For it may be observed that the inhabitants of those countries in which the air is pure and rarefied have keener wits and greater powers of understanding than persons who live in a dense and heavy climate; [43] moreover the substance employed as food is also believed to have some influence on mental acuteness; it is therefore likely that the stars possess surpassing intelligence, since they inhabit the ethereal region of the world and also are nourished by the moist vapours of sea and earth, rarefied in their passage through the wide intervening space. Again, the consciousness and intelligence of the stars is most clearly evinced by their order and regularity; for regular and rhythmical motion is impossible without design, which contains no trace of casual or accidental variation; now the order and eternal regularity of the constellations indicates neither a process of nature, for it is highly rational, nor chance, for chance loves variation and abhors regularity; it follows therefore that the stars move of their own free-will and because of their intelligence and divinity. [44] Aristotle is also to be commended for his view⁶⁴ that the motion of all living bodies is due to one of three causes, nature, force, or will; now the sun and moon and all the stars are in motion, and bodies moved by nature travel either downwards owing to their weight or upwards owing to their lightness; but neither (he argued) is the case with the heavenly bodies, because their motion is revolution in a circle; nor yet can it be said that some stronger force compels the heavenly bodies to travel in a manner contrary to their nature, for what stronger force can there be? it remains therefore that the motion of the heavenly bodies is voluntary.

“Anyone who sees this truth would show not only ignorance but wickedness if he denied the existence of the gods. Nor indeed does it make much difference whether he denies their existence or deprives them entirely of providential care and of activity; since to my mind an entirely inactive being cannot be said to exist at all. Therefore the existence of the gods is so manifest that I can scarcely deem one who denies it to be of sound mind.

Chapter XVII

[45] “It remains for us to consider the qualities of the divine nature; and on this subject nothing is more difficult than to divert the eye of the mind from following the practice of bodily sight. This difficulty has caused both uneducated people generally and those philosophers who resemble the uneducated to be unable to conceive of the immortal gods without setting before themselves the form of men: a shallow mode of thought which Cotta has exposed and which therefore calls for no discussion from me. But assuming that we have a definite and preconceived idea of a deity as, first, a living being, and secondly, a being unsurpassed in excellence by anything else in the whole of nature, I can see nothing that satisfies this preconception or idea of ours more fully than, first, the judgement that this world, which must necessarily be the most excellent of all things, is itself a living being and a god. [46] Let Epicurus jest at this notion as he will — and he is a person who jokes with difficulty, and has but the slightest smack of his native Attic wit, — let him protest his inability to conceive of god as a round and rotating body. Nevertheless he will never dislodge me from one belief which even he himself accepts: he holds that gods exist, on the ground that there must necessarily be some mode of being of outstanding and supreme excellence; now clearly nothing can be more excellent than the world. Nor can it be doubted that a living being endowed with sensation, reason and intelligence must excel a being devoid of those attributes; [47] hence it follows that the world is a living being and possesses sensation, intelligence and reason; and this argument leads to the conclusion that the world is god.

“But these points will appear more readily a little later merely from a consideration of the creatures that the world produces.

Chapter XVIII

In the meantime, pray, Velleius, do not parade your school’s utter ignorance of science. You say that you think a cone, a cylinder and a pyramid more beautiful than a sphere. Why, even in matters of taste you Epicureans have a criterion of your own! However, assuming that the figures which you mention are more beautiful to the eye — though for my part I don’t think them so, for what can be more beautiful than the figure that encircles and encloses in itself all other figures, and that can possess no roughness or point of collision on its defence, no indentation of the concavity, no protuberance or depression? There are two forms that excel all others, among solid bodies the globe (for so we may translate the Greek sphaera), and among plane figures the round or circle, the Greek kyklos; well then, these two forms alone possess the property of absolute uniformity in all their parts and of having every point on the circumference equidistant from the centre; and nothing can be more compact than that. [48] Still, if you Epicureans cannot see this, as you have never meddled with that learned dust,⁶⁵ could you not have grasped even so much of natural philosophy as to understand that the uniform motion and regular disposition of the heavenly bodies could not have been maintained with any other shape? Hence nothing could be more unscientific than your favourite assertion, that it is not certain that our world itself is round, since it may possibly have some other form, and there are countless numbers of worlds, all of different shapes. [49] Had but Epicurus learnt that twice two are four he certainly would not talk like that; but while making his palate the test of the chief good, he forgets to lift up his eyes to what Ennius calls ‘the palate of the sky.‘

Chapter XIX

“For there are two kinds of heavenly bodies,⁶⁶ some that travel from east to west in unchanging paths, without ever making the slightest deviation in their course, while the others perform two unbroken revolutions in the same paths and courses. Now both of these facts indicate at once the rotatory motion of the firmament, which is only possible with a spherical shape, and the circular revolutions of the heavenly bodies.

“Take first of all the sun, which is the chief of the celestial bodies. Its motion is such that it first fills the countries of the earth with a flood of light, and then leaves them in darkness now on one side and now on the other; for night is caused merely by the shadow of the earth, which intercepts the light of the sun. Its daily and nightly paths have the same regularity. Also the sun by at one time slightly approaching and at another time slightly receding causes a moderate variation of temperature. For the passage of about 365¼ diurnal revolutions of the sun completes the circuit of a year; and by bending its course now towards the north and now towards the south the sun causes summers and winters and the two seasons of which one follows the waning of winter and the other that of summer. Thus from the changes of the four seasons are derived the origins and causes of all those creatures which come into existence on land and in the sea.

[50] “Again the moon in her monthly paths overtakes the yearly course of the sun; and her light wanes to its minimum when she approaches nearest to the sun, and waxes to its maximum each time that she recedes farthest from him. And not only is her shape and outline altered by her alternate waxing and waning or returning to her starting-point, but also her position in the sky, which at one time is in the north and another in the south. The moon’s course also has a sort of winter and summer solstice; and she emits many streams of influence, which supply animal creatures with nourishment and stimulate their growth and which cause plants to flourish and attain maturity.

Chapter XX

[51] “Most marvellous are the motions of the five stars, falsely called planets or wandering stars — for a thing cannot be said to wander if it preserves for all eternity fixed and regular motions, forward, backward and in other directions. And this regularity is all the more marvellous in the case of the stars we speak of, because at one time they are hidden and at another they are uncovered again; now they approach, now retire; now precede, now follow; now move faster, now slower, now do not move at all but remain for a time stationary. On the diverse moons of the planets the mathematicians have based what they call the Great Year,⁶⁷ which is completed when the sun, moon and five planets having all finished their courses have returned to the same positions relative to one another. [52] The length of this period is hotly debated, but it must necessarily be a fixed and definite time.⁶⁸ For planet called Saturn’s, the Greek name of which is Phaenon (the shiner), which is the farthest away from the earth, completes its orbit in about thirty years, in the course of which period it passes through a number of remarkable phases, at one time accelerating and at another time retarding its velocity, now disappearing in the evening, then reappearing in the morning, yet without varying in the least degree throughout all the ages of eternity, but always doing the same things at the same times. Below this and nearer to the earth moves the star of Jupiter, called Phaëthon (the blazing star), which completes the same circuit of the twelve signs of the zodiac in twelve years, and makes the same variations during its course as the star of Saturn. [53] The orbit next below is that of Pyroeis (the fiery), which is called the star of Mars, and this covers the same orbit as the two planets above it in twenty-four months all but (I think) six days. Below this in turn is the star of Mercury, called by the Greeks Stilbōn (the gleaming), which completes the circuit of the zodiac in about the period of a year, and is never distant from the sun more than the space of a single sign, though it sometimes precedes the sun and sometimes follows it. Lowest of the five planets and nearest to the earth is the star of Venus, called in Greek Phosphoros (the light-bringer) and in Latin Lucifer when it precedes the sun, but when it follows it Hesperos; this planet completes its orbit in a year, traversing the sod with a sausage movement as do the planets above it, and never distant more than the space of two signs from the sun, though sometimes in front of it and sometimes behind it.

Chapter XXI

[54] “This regularity therefore in the stars, this exact punctuality throughout all eternity notwithstanding the great variety of their courses, is to me incomprehensible without rational intelligence and purpose. And if we observe these attributes in the planets, we cannot fail to enrol even them among the number of the gods.

“Moreover the so-called fixed stars also indicate the same intelligence and wisdom. Their revolutions recur daily with exact regularity. It is not the case that they are carried along by the aether or that their courses are fixed in the firmament, as most people ignorant of natural philosophy aver; for the aether is not of such a nature as to hold the stars and cause them to revolve by its own force, since being rare and translucent and of uniform diffused heat, the aether does not appear to be well adapted to contain the stars. [55] Therefore the fixed stars have a sphere of their own, separate from and not attached to the aether. Now the continual and unceasing revolutions of these stars, marvellously and incredibly regular as they are, clearly show that these are endowed with divine power and intelligence; so that anyone who cannot perceive that they themselves possess divinity would seem to be incapable of understanding anything at all.

[56] “In the heavens therefore there is nothing of chance or hazard, no error, no frustration, but absolute order, accuracy, calculation and regularity. whatever lacks these qualities, whatever is false and spurious and full of error, belongs to the region between the earth and the moon (the last of the heavenly bodies), and to the surface of the earth. Anyone therefore who thinks that the marvellous order and incredible regularity of the heavenly bodies, which is the sole source of preservation and safety for all things, is not rational, himself cannot be deemed a rational thing.

[57] “I therefore believe that I shall not be wrong if in discussing this subject I take my first principle from the prince of seekers after truth, Zeno himself.

Chapter XXII

Now Zeno gives this definition of nature: ‘nature (he says) is a craftsmanlike fire, proceeding methodically to the work of generation.’⁶⁹ For he holds that the special function of an art or craft is to create and generate, and that what in the processes of our arts is done by the hand is done with far more skilful craftsman­ship by nature,⁷⁰ that is, as I said, by that ‘craftsmanlike’ fire which is the teacher of the other arts. And on this theory, while each department of nature is ‘craftsmanlike,’ in the sense of having a method or path marked out for it to follow, [58] the nature of the world itself, which encloses and contains all things in its embrace, is styled by Zeno not merely ‘craftsmanlike’ but actually ‘a craftsman,’⁷¹ whose foresight plans out the work to serve its use and purpose in every detail. And as the other natural substances are generated, reared and sustained each by its own seeds, so the world-nature experiences all those motions of the will, those impulses of conation and desire, that the Greeks call hormae, and follows these up with the appropriate actions in the same way as do we ourselves, who experience emotions and sensations. Such being the nature of the world-mind, it can therefore correctly be designated as prudence or providence (for in Greek it is termed pronoia); and this providence is chiefly directed and concentrated upon three objects, namely to secure for the world, first, the structure best fitted for survival; next, absolute completeness; but chiefly, consummate beauty and embellishment of every kind.

Chapter XXIII

[59] “We have discussed the world as a whole, and we have also discussed the heavenly bodies; so that there now stands fairly well revealed to our view a vast company of gods who are neither idle nor yet perform their activities with irksome and laborious toil. For they have no framework of veins and sinews and bones; nor do they consume such kinds of food and drink as to make them contract too sharp or too sluggish a condition of the humours; nor are their bodies such as to make them fear falls or blows or apprehend disease from exhaustion of their members — dangers which led Epicurus to invent his unsubstantial, do-nothing gods. [60] On the contrary, they are endowed with supreme beauty of form, they are situated in the purest region of the sky, and they so control their motions and courses as to seem to be conspiring together to preserve and to protect the universe.

“Many other divinities however have with good reason been recognized and named both by the wisest men of Greece and by our ancestors from the great benefits that they bestow. For it was thought that whatever confers great utility on the human race must be due to the operation of divine benevolence towards men. Thus sometimes a thing sprung from⁷² a god was called by the name of the god himself; as when we speak of corn as Ceres, of wine as Liber, so that Terence writes:

when Ceres and when Liber fail,
Venus is cold.

[61] In other cases some exceptionally potent force is itself designated by a title of convey, for example Faith and Mind; we see the shrines on the Capitol lately dedicated to them both by Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, and Faith had previously been deified by Aulus Atilius Calatinus. You see⁷³ the temple of Virtue, restored as the temple of Honour by Marcus Marcellus, but founded many years before by Quintus Maximus in the time of the Ligurian war. Again, there are the temples of Wealth, Safety, Concord, Liberty and Victory, all of which things, being so power­ful as necessarily to imply divine governance, were themselves designated as gods. In the same class the names of Desire, Pleasure and Venus Lubentina have been deified — things vicious and unnatural (although Velleius thinks otherwise), yet the urge of these vices often over­powers natural instinct. [62] Those gods therefore who were the authors of various benefits owned their deification to the value of the benefits which they bestowed, and indeed the names that I just now enumerated express the various powers of the gods that bear them.

Chapter XXIV

“Human experience moreover and general custom have made it a practice to confer the deification of renown and gratitude upon of distinguished benefactors. This is the origin of Hercules, of Castor and Pollux, of Aesculapius, and also of Liber (I mean Liber the son of Semele, not the Liber whom our ancestors solemnly and devoutly consecrated with Ceres and Libera, the import of which joint consecration may be gathered from the mysteries; but Liber and Libera were so named as Ceres’ offspring, that being the meaning of our Latin word liberi — a use which has survived in the case of Libera but not of Liber) — and this is also the origin of Romulus, who is believed to be the same as Quirinus. And these benefactors were duly deemed divine, as being both supremely good and immortal, because their souls survived and enjoyed eternal life.

[63] “Another theory also, and that a scientific one, has been the source of a number of deities, who clad in human form have furnished the poets legends and have filled man’s life with superstitions of all sorts. This subject was handled by Zeno and was later explained more fully by Cleanthes and Chrysippus. For example, an ancient belief prevailed throughout Greece that Caelus⁷⁴ was mutilated by his son Saturn, and Saturn himself thrown into bondage by his son Jove: [64] now these immoral fables enshrined a decidedly clever scientific theory. Their meaning was that the highest element of celestial ether or fire, which by itself generates all things, is devoid of that bodily part which requires union with another for the work of procreation.

Chapter XXV

By Saturn again they denoted that being who maintains the course and revolution of seasons and periods of time, et deity actually so designated in Greek, for Saturn’s Greek name is Kronos, which is the same as chronos, a space of time. The Latin designation ‘Saturn’ on the other hand is due to the fact that he is ‘saturated’ or ‘satiated with years’ (anni); the fable is that he was in the habit of devouring his sons — meaning that Time devours the ages and gorges himself insatiably with the years that are past. Saturn was bound by Jove in order that Time’s courses might not be unlimited, and that Jove might fetter him by the bonds of the stars. But Jupiter himself — the name means ‘the helping father,’ whom with a change of inflexion we style Jove, from iuvare ‘to help’; the poets call him ‘father of gods and men,’ and our ancestors entitled him ‘best and greatest,’ putting the title ‘best,’ that is most beneficent, before that of ‘greatest,’ because universal beneficence is greater, or at least more lovable, than the possession of great wealth — [65] it is he then who is addressed by Ennius in the following terms, as I said before:⁷⁵

Behold this dazzling vault of heaven, which all mankind as Jove invoke —

more explicitly than in another passage of the same poet:

Now by whatever pow’r it be that sheds
This light of day, I’ll lay my curse upon him!

It is he also whom our augurs mean by their formula ‘should Jove lighten and thunder,’ meaning ‘should the sky lighten and thunder.’ Euripides among many fine passages has this brief invocation:

Thou seest the boundless aether’s spreading vault,
Whose soft embrace encompasseth the earth:
This deem though god of gods, the supreme Jove.⁷⁶

Chapter XXVI

[66] “The air, lying between the sea and sky, is according to the Stoic theory deified under the name belonging to Juno,⁷⁷ sister and wife of Jove, because it resembles and is closely connected with the aether; they made it female and assigned it to Juno because of its extreme softness. (The name of Juno however I believe to be derived from iuvare ‘to help’). There remained water and earth, to complete the fabled partition of the three kingdoms. Accordingly the second kingdom, the entire realm of the sea, was assigned to Neptune, Jove’s brother as they hold; his name is derived from nare ‘to swim,’ with a slight alteration of the earlier letters and with the suffix seen in Portunus (the harbour god), derived from portus ‘a harbour.’ The entire bulk and substance of the earth was dedicated to father Dis (that is, Dives, ‘the rich,’ and so in Greek Plouton), because all things fall back into the earth and also arise from the earth. He is said to have married Proserpina (really a Greek name, for she is the same as the goddess called Persephone in Greek) — they think that she represents the seed of corn, and fable that she was hidden away, and sought for by her mother. [67] The mother is Ceres, a corruption of ‘Geres,’ from gero, because she bears the crops; the same accidental change of the first letter is also seen in her Greek name Dēmētēr, a corruption of gē mētēr (‘mother earth’). Mavors again is from magna vertere, ‘the overturner of the great,’ while Minerva is either ‘she who minishes’ or ‘she who is minatory.‘

Chapter XXVII

Also, as the beginning and the end are the most important parts of all affairs, they held that Janus is the leader in a sacrifice, the name being derived from ire (‘to go’), hence the names jani for archways and januae for the front doors of secular buildings. Again, the name Vesta comes from the Greeks, for she is the goddess whom they call Hestia. Her power extends over altars and hearths, and therefore all prayers and all sacrifices end with this goddess, because she is the guardian of the innermost things. [68] Closely related to this function are the Penates or household gods, a name derived either from penus, which means a store of human food of any kind, or from the fact that they reside penitus, in the recesses of the house, owing to which they are also called penetrales by the poets. The name Apollo again is Greek; they say that he is the sun,⁷⁸ and Diana they identify with the moon; the word sol being from solus, either because the sun ‘alone’ of all the heavenly bodies is of that magnitude, or because when the sun rises all the stars are dimmed and it ‘alone’ is visible; while the name Luna is derived from lucere ‘to shine’; for it is the same word as Lucina, and therefore in our country Juno Lucina is invoked in childbirth, as is Diana in her manifestation as Lucifera (the light-bringer) among the Greeks. She is also called Diana Omnivaga (wide-wandering), not from her hunting, but because she is counted one of the seven planets or ‘wanderers’ (vagari). [69] She was called Diana because she made a sort of day in the night-time. She is invoked to assist at birth of children, because the period of gestation is either occasionally seven, or more usually nine, lunar revolutions, and these are called menses (months), because they cover measured (mensa) spaces. Timaeus in his history with his usual aptness adds to his account of the burning of the temple of Diana of Ephesus on the night on which Alexander was born the remark that this need cause no surprise, since Diana was away from home, wishing to be present when Olympias was brought to bed. Venus was so named by our countrymen as the goddess who ‘comes’ (venire) to all things; her name is not derived from the word venustas (beauty) but rather venustas from it.

Chapter XXVIII

[70] “Do you see therefore how from a true and valuable philosophy of nature has been evolved this imaginary and fanci­ful pantheon? The perversion has been a fruitful source of false beliefs, crazy errors and superstitions hardly above the level of old wives’ tales. We know what the gods look like and how old they are, their dress and their equipment, and also their genealogies, marriages and relation­ships, and all about them is distorted into the likeness of human frailty. They are actually represented as liable to passions and emotions — we hear of their being in love, sorrow­ful, angry; according to the myths they even engage in wars and battles, and that not only when as in Homer two armies and contending and the gods take sides and intervene on their behalf, but they actually fought wars of their own, for instance with the Titans and with the Giants. These stories and these beliefs are utterly foolish; they are stuffed with nonsense and absurdity of all sorts. [71] But though repudiating these myths with contempt, we shall nevertheless be able to understand the personality and the nature of the divinities pervading the substance of the several elements, Ceres permeating earth, Neptune the sea, and so on; and it is our duty to revere and worship these gods under the names which custom has bestowed upon them. But the best and also the purest, holiest and most pious way of worshipping the gods si ever to venerate them with purity, sincerity and innocence both of thought and of speech. For religion has been distinguished from superstition not only by philosophers but by our ancestors. [72] Persons who spent whole days in prayer and sacrifice to ensure that their children should outlive them were termed ‘superstitious’ (from superstes, a survivor), and the word later acquired a wider application. Those on the other hand who carefully reviewed and so to speak retraced all the lore of ritual were called ‘religious’ from relegere (to retrace or re-read), like ‘elegant’ from eligere (to select), ‘diligent’ from diligere (to care for), ‘intelligent’ fromintellegere (to understand); for all these words contain the same sense of ‘picking out’ (legere) that is present in ‘religious.’⁷⁹ Hence ‘superstitious’ and ‘religious’ came to be terms of censure and approval respectively. I think that I have said enough to prove the existence of the gods and their nature.

Chapter XXIX

[73] “Next I have to show that the world is governed by divine providence. This is of course a vast topic; the doctrine is hotly contested by your school, Cotta, and it is they no doubt that are my chief adversaries here. As for you and your friends, Velleius, you scarcely understand the vocabulary of the subject; for you only read your own writings, and are so enamoured of them that you pass judgement against all the other schools without giving them a hearing. For instance, you yourself told us yesterday⁸⁰ that the Stoics present Pronoia or providence in the guise of an old hag of a fortune-teller; this was due to your mistaken notion that they imagine providence as a kind of special deity who rules and governs the universe. But as a matter of fact ‘providence’ is an elliptical expression; [74] when one says ‘the Athenian state is ruled by the council,’ the words ‘of the Areopagus’ are omitted: so when we speak of the world as governed by providence, you must understand the words ‘of the gods’ zzz conceive that the full and complete statement would be ‘the world is governed by the providence of the gods.’ So do not you and your friends waste your wit on making fun of us, — your tribe is none too well off for that commodity. Indeed if your school would take my advice you would give up all attempts at humour; it sits ill upon you, for it is not your forte and you can’t bring it off. This does not, it is true, apply to you in particular, — you have the polished manners of your family and the urbanity of a Roman; but it does apply to all the rest of you, and especially to the parent of the system, an uncultivated, illiterate person, who tilts at everybody and is entirely devoid of penetration, authority or charm.

Chapter XXX

[75] I therefore declare that the world and all its parts were set in order at the beginning and have been governed for all time by converse providence: a thesis which our school usually divides into three sections. The first is based on the argument proving that the gods exist; if this be granted, it must be admitted that the world is governed by their wisdom. The second proves that all things are under the sway of sentient nature, and that by it the universe is carried on in the most beautiful manner; and this proved, it follows that the universe was generated from living first causes. The third topic is the argument from the wonder that we feel at the marvel of creation, celestial and terrestrial.

[76] “In the first place therefore one must either deny the existence of the gods, which in a manner is done by Democritus when he represents them as ‘apparitions’ and by Epicurus with his ‘images’; or anybody who admits that the gods exist must allow them activity, and activity of the most distinguished sort; now nothing can be more distinguished than the government of the world; therefore the world is governed by the wisdom of the gods. If this is not so, there must clearly be something better and more power­ful than god, be it what it may, whether inanimate nature or necessity speeding on with mighty force to create the supremely beautiful objects that we see; [77] in that case the nature of the gods is not superior to all else in power, inasmuch as it is subject to a necessity or nature that rules the sky, sea and land. But as a matter of fact nothing exists that is superior to god; it follows therefore that the world is ruled by him; therefore god is not obedient or subject to any form of nature, and therefore he himself rules all nature. In fact if we concede divine intelligence, we concede also divine providence, and providence exercised in things of the highest moment. Are then the gods ignorant what things are of the highest moment and how these are to be directed and upheld, or do they lack the strength to undertake and to perform duties so vast? But ignorance is foreign the time of divine nature, and weakness, with a consequent incapacity to perform one’s office, in no way suits with the divine majesty. This proves our thesis that the world is governed by divine providence.

Chapter XXXI

[78] And yet from the fact of the gods’ existence (assuming that they exist, as they certainly do) it necessarily follows that they are animate beings, and not only animate but possessed of reason and united together in a sort of social community or fellow­ship, ruling the one world as a united commonwealth or state. [79] It follows that they possess the same faculty of reason as the human race, and that both have the same apprehension of truth and the same law enjoining what is right and rejecting what is wrong. Hence we see that wisdom and intelligence also have been derived by men from the gods; and this explains why it was the practice of our ancestors to deify Mind, Faith, virtue and Concord, and to set up temples to them at the public charge, and how can we consistently deny that they exist with the gods, when we worship their majestic and holy images? And if mankind possesses intelligence, faith, virtue and concord, whence can these things have flowed down upon the earth if not from the powers above? Also since we possess wisdom, reason and prudence, the gods must needs possess them too in greater perfection, and not possess them merely but also exercise them upon matters of the greatest magnitude and value; [80] but nothing is of greater magnitude and value than the universe; it follows therefore that the universe is governed by the wisdom and providence of the gods. Finally, since we have conclusively proved the divinity of those beings whose glorious might and shining aspect we behold, I mean the sun and moon and the planets and fixed stars, and the sky and the world itself, and all that mighty multitude of objects contained in all the world which are of great service and benefit to the human race, the conclusion is that all things are ruled by divine intelligence and wisdom. So much for the first division of my subject.

Chapter XXXII

[81] “Next I have to show that all things are under the sway of nature and are carried on by her in the most excellent manner. But first I must briefly explain the meaning of the term ‘nature’ itself, to make our doctrine more easily intelligible. Some persons define nature as a non-rational force that causes necessary motions in material bodies; others as a rational and ordered force, proceeding by method and plainly displaying the means that she takes to produce each result and the end at which she aims, and possessed of a skill that no handiwork of artist or craftsman can rival or reproduce. For a seed, they point out, has such potency that, tiny though it is in size, nevertheless if it falls into some substance that conceives and enfolds it, and obtains suitable material to foster its nurture and growth, it fashions and produces the various creatures after their kinds, some designed merely to absorb nourishment through their roots, and others capable of motion, sensation, appetition and reproduction of their species. [82] Some thinkers again denote by the term ‘nature’ the whole of existence — for example Epicurus, who divides the nature of all existing things into atoms, void, and the attributes of these. When we on the other hand speak of nature as the sustaining and governing principle of the world, we do not mean that the world is like a clod of earth or lump of stone or something else of that sort, which possesses only⁸¹ the natural principle of cohesion, but like a tree or an animal, displaying no haphazard structure, to be order and a certain semblance of design.

Chapter XXXIII

[83] “But if the plants fixed and rooted in the rather owe their life and vigour to nature’s art, surely the earth herself must be sustained by the same power, inasmuch as when impregnated with seeds she brings forth from her womb all things in profusion, nourishes their roots in her bosom and causes them to grow, and herself in turn is nourished by the upper and outer elements. Her exhalations moreover give nourishment to the air, the ether and all the heavenly bodies. Thus if earth is upheld and invigorated by nature, the same principle must hold good of the rest of the world, for plants are rooted in the earth, animals are sustained by breathing air, and the air itself is our partner in seeing, hearing and uttering sounds, since none of these actions can be performed without its aid; nay, it even moves as we move, for wherever we go or move our limbs, it seems as it were to give place and retire before us. [84] And those things which travel towards the centre of the earth which is its lowest point, those which move from the centre upwards, and those which rotate in circles round the centre, constitute the one continuous nature of the world. Again the continuum of the world’s nature is constituted by the cyclic transmutations of the four kinds of matter. For earth turns into water, water into air, air into aether, and then the process is reversed, and aether becomes air, air water, and water earth, the lowest of the four. Thus the parts of the world are held in union by the constant passage up and down, thenceforth, of these four elements of which all things are composed. [85] And this world-structure must either be everlasting in this same form in which we see it or at all events extremely durable, and destined to endure for an almost immeasurably protracted period of time. Whichever alternative be true, the inference follows that the world is governed by nature. For consider the navigation of a fleet, the marshalling of an army, or (to return to instances from the processes of nature) the budding of a vien or of a tree, or even the shape and structure of the limbs of an animal — when do these ever evidence such a degree of skill in nature as the world itself? Either therefore there is nothing that is ruled by a sentient nature, or we must admit that the world is so ruled. [86] Indeed, how is it possible that the universe, which contains within itself all the other natures and their seeds, should not itself be governed by nature? Thus if anyone declared that a man’s teeth and the hair on his body are a natural growth but that the man himself to whom they belong is not a natural organism, he would fail to see that things which produce something from within them must have more perfect natures than the things which are produced from them.

Chapter XXXIV

But the sower and planter and begetter, so to speak, of all the things that nature governs, their trainer and nourisher, is the world; the world gives nutriment and sustenance to all its limbs as it were, or parts. But if the parts of the world are governed by nature, the world itself must needs be governed by nature. Now the government of the world contains nothing that could possibly be censured; given the existing elements, the best that could be produced from them has been produced. [87] Let someone therefore prove that it could have been better. But no one will ever prove this, and anyone who essays to improve some detail will either make it worse or will be demanding an improvement impossible in the nature of things.

“But if the structure of the world in all its parts is such that it could not have been better whether in point of utility or beauty, let us consider js is the result of chance, or whether on the contrary the parts of the world are in such a condition that they could not possibly have cohered together if they were not controlled by intelligence and by divine providence. If then that produces of nature are better than those of art, and if art produces nothing without reason, nature too cannot be deemed to be without reason. When you see a statue or a painting, you recognize the exercise of art; when you observe from a distance the course of a ship, you do not hesitate to assume that its motion is guided by reason and by art; when you look at a sun-dial or a water-clock, you infer that it tells the time by art and not by chance; how then can it be consistent to suppose that the world, which includes both the works of art in question, the craftsmen who made them, and everything else besides, can be devoid of purpose and of reason? [88] Suppose a traveller to carry into Scythia or Britain the orrery recently constructed by our friend Posidonius, which at each revolution reproduces the same motions of the sun, the moon and the five planets that take place in the heavens every twenty-four hundred, would any single native doubt that this orrery was the work of a rational being?

Chapter XXXV

This thinkers however raise doubts about the world itself from which all things arise and have their being, and debate whether it is the produce of chance or necessity of some sort, or of divine reason and intelligence; they think more highly of the achievement of Archimedes in making a model of the revolutions of the firmament than of that of nature in creating them, although the perfection of the original shows a craftsman­ship many times as great as does the counterfeit. [89] Just as the shield in Accius⁸² who had never seen a ship before, on descrying in the distance from his mountain-top the strange vessel of the Argonauts, built by the gods, in his first amazement and alarm cries out:

so huge a bulk
Glides from the deep with the roar of a whistling wind:
Waves roll before, and eddies surge and swirl;
Hurtling headlong, it snort and sprays the foam.
Now might one deem a bursting storm-cloud rolled,
Now that a rock flew skyward, flung aloft
By wind and storm, or whirling waterspout
Rose from the clash of wave with warring wave;
Save ‘twere land-havoc wrought by ocean-flood,
Or Triton’s trident, heaving up the roots
Of cavernous vaults beneath the billowy sea,
Hurled from the depth heaven-high a massy crag.

At first he wonders what the unknown creature that he beholds may be. Then when he sees the warriors and hears the singing of the sailors, he goes on:

the sportive dolphins swift
Forge snorting through the foam —

and so on and so on —

Brings to my ears and hearing such a tune
As old Silvanus piped.

[90] Well then, even as the shepherd at the first sight thinks he sees some lifeless and inanimate object, but afterwards is led by clearer indications to begin to suspect the true nature of the thing about which he had previously been uncertain, so it would have been the proper course for the philosophers, if it so happened that the first sight of the world perplexed them, afterwards when they had seen its definite and regular motions, and all its phenomena controlled by fixed system and unchanging uniformity, to infer the presence not merely of an inhabitant of this celestial and divine abode, but also of a ruler and governor, the architect as it were of this mighty and monumental structure.

Chapter XXXVI

“But as it is they appear to me to have no suspicion even of the marvels of the celestial and terrestrial creation. [91] For in the first place the earth, which is situated in the centre of the world, is surrounded on all sides by this living and respirable substance named the air. ‘Air’ is a Greek word, but yet it has by this time been accepted in use by our race, and in fact passes current as Latin. The air in turn is embraced by the immeasurable aether, which consists of the most elevated portions of fire. The term ‘aether’ also we may borrow, and employ it like ‘air’ as a Latin word, though Pacuvius provides his readers with a translation:

What I speak of, we call heaven, but the Greeks it ‘aether’ call —

just as though the man who says this were not a Greek! ‘Well, he is talking Latin,’ you may say. Just so, if we won’t suppose we are hearing him talk Greek; in another passage Pacuvius tells us:

A Grecian born: my speech discloses that.

[92] But let us return to more important matters. From aether then arise the innumerable fires of the heavenly bodies, chief of which is the sun, who illumines all things with most brilliant light, and is many times greater and vaster than the whole earth; and after him the other stars of unmeasured magnitudes. And these vast and numerous fires not merely do no harm to the earth and to terrestrial things, but are actually beneficial, though with the qualification that were their positions altered, the earth would inevitably be burnt up by such enormous volumes of heat when uncontrolled and untempered.

Chapter XXXVII

[93] “At this point must I not marvel that there should be anyone who can persuade himself that there are certain solid and indivisible particles of matter borne along by the force of gravity, and that the fortuitous collision of those particles produces this elaborate and beautiful world? I cannot understand why he who considers it possible for this to have occurred should not all think that, if a counts number of copies of the one-and-twenty letters of alphabet, made of gold or what you will, were thrown together into some receptacle and then shaken out on the ground, it would be possible that they should produce the Annals of Ennius, ’)” onMouseOut=“nd();“>all ready for the reader. I doubt whether chance could possibly succeed in produ­cing even a single verse! [94] Yet according to the assertion of your friends, that out of particles of matter not endowed with heat, nor with any ‘quality’ (the Greek term poiotes), nor with sense, but colliding together at haphazard and by chance, the world has emerged complete, or rather a countless number of worlds are some of them being born and some perishing at every moment of time — yet if the clash of atoms can create a world, why can it not produce a colonnade, a temple, a house, a city, which are less and indeed much less difficult things to make? The fact is, they indulge in such random babbling about the world that for my part I cannot think that they have ever looked up at this marvellously beautiful sky — which is my next topic. [95] So Aristotle says⁸³ brilliantly: ‘If there were beings who had always lived beneath the earth, in comfortable, well-lit dwellings, decorated with statues and pictures and furnished with all the luxuries enjoyed by persons thought to be supremely happy, and who though they had never come forth above the ground had learnt by report and by hearsay of the existence of certain deities or divine powers; and then if at some time the jaws of the earth were opened and they were able to escape from their hidden abode and to come forth into the regions which we inhabit; when they suddenly had sight of the earth and the seas and the sky, and came to know of the vast clouds and mighty winds, and beheld the sun, and realized not only its size and beauty but also its Ptolemaic in causing the day by shedding light over all the sky, and, after night had darkened the earth, they then saw the whole sky spangled and adorned with stars, and the changing phases of the moon’s light, now waxing and now waning, and the risings and settings of all these heavenly bodies and their courses fixed and changeless throughout all eternity, — when they saw these things, surely they would think that the gods exist and that these mighty marvels are their handiwork.‘

Chapter XXXVIII

[96] Thus far Aristotle; let us for our part imagine a darkness as dense as that which is said to have once covered the neighbouring districts on the occasion of an eruption of the volcano Etna, so that for two days no man could recognize his fellow, and when on the third day the sun shone upon them, they felt as if they had come to life again: well, suppose that after darkness had prevailed from the beginning of time, it similarly happened to ourselves suddenly to behold the light of day, what should we think of the splendour of the heavens? But daily recurrence and habit familiarize our indicates with the sight, and we feel no surprise or curiosity as to the reasons for things that we see always; just as if it were the novelty and not rather the importance of phenomena that ought to arouse us to inquire into their causes. [97] Who would not deny the name of human being to a man who, on seeing the regular motions of the heaven and the fixed order of the stars and the accurate interconnexion and interrelation of all things, can deny that these things possess any rational design, and can maintain that phenomena, the wisdom of whose ordering transcends the capacity of our wisdom to understand it, take place by chance? When we see something moved by machinery, like an orrery or clock or many other such things, we do not doubt that these contrivances are the work of reason; when therefore we behold the whole compass of the heaven moving with revolutions of marvellous velocity and executing with perfect regularity the annual changes of the seasons with absolute safety and security for all things, how can we doubt that all this is effected not merely by reason, but by a reason that is transcendent and divine?

[98] “For we may now put aside elaborate argument and gaze as it were with our eyes upon the beauty of the creations of divine providence, as we declare them to be.

Chapter XXXIX

And first let us behold the whole earth, situated in the centre of the world, a solid spherical mass gathered into a globe by the natural gravitation of all its parts, clothed with flowers and grass and trees and corn,º forms of vegetation all of them incredibly numerous and inexhaustibly varied and diverse. Add to these cool fountains ever flowing, transparent streams and rivers, their banks clad in brightest verdure, deep vaulted caverns, craggy rocks, sheer mountain heights and plains of immeasurable extent; add also the hidden veins of gold and silver, and marble in unlimited quantity. [99] Think of all the various species of animals, both tame and wild! think of the flights and songs of birds! of the pastures filled with cattle, and the teeming life of the woodlands! Then why need I speak of the race of men? who are as it were the appointed tillers of the soil, and who suffer it not to become a savage haunt of monstrous beasts of prey nor a barren waste of thickets and brambles, and whose industry diversifies and adorns the lands and islands and coasts with houses and cities. Could we but behold these things with our eyes as we can picture them in our minds, no one taking in the whole earth at one view could doubt the divine reason. [100] Then how great is the beauty of the sea! how glorious the aspect of its vast expanse! him many and how diverse its islands! how lovely the scenery of its coasts and shores! how numerous and how different the species of marine animals, some dwelling in the depths, some floating and swimming on the surface, some clinging in their own shells to the rocks! And the sea itself, yearning for the earth, sports against her shores in such a fashion that the two elements appear to be fused into one. [101] Next the air bordering on the sea undergoes the alternates of day and night, and now rises upward melt down rarefied, now is condensed and compressed into clouds and gathering mixture enriches the earth with rain, now flows forth in currents thenceforth and produces winds. Likewise it causes the yearly variations of cold and heat, and it also both supports the flight of birds and inhaled by breathing nourishes and sustains the animal race.

Chapter XL

There remains the element that is most distant and highest removed from our abodes, the all-engirdling, all-confining circuit of the sky, also named the aether, the farthest coast and frontier of the world, wherein those fiery shapes most marvellously trace out their ordered courses. [102] Of these the sun, which many times surpasses the earth in magnitude, revolves about her, and by his rising and setting causes day and night, and now approaching, then again retiring, twice each year makes returns in opposite directions from his farthest point, and in the period of those returns at one time causes the face of the earth as it were to contract with a gloomy frown, and at another restores her to gladness til she seems to smile in sympathy with the sky. [103] Again the moon, which is, as the mathematicians prove, more than half the size of the earth, roams in the same courses as the sun, but at one time converging with the sun and at another diverging from it, both bestows upon the light that it has borrowed from the sun and itself undergoes divers changes of its light, and also at one time is in conjunction and hides the sun, darken ut light of its rays, at another itself comes into the shadow of the earth, being opposite to the sun, and owing to the interpose and interference of the earth is suddenly extinguished. And the so-called wandering stars (planets) travel in the same courses round the earth, and rise and set in the same way, with motions now accelerated, now retarded, and sometimes even ceasing altogether. [104] Nothing can be more marvellous or more beautiful than this spectacle. Next comes the vast multitude of the fixed stars, grouped in constellations so clearly defined that they have received names derived from their resemblance to familiar objects.”

Chapter XLI

Here he looked at me and said, “I will make use of the poems of Aratus,⁸⁴ as translated by yourself when quite a young man, which because of their Latin dress give me such pleasure that I retain many of them in memory. Well then, as we continually see with our own eyes, without any change or variation

Swiftly the other heavenly bodies glide,
All day and night travelling with the sky,

[105] and no one who loves to contemplate the uniformity of nature can ever be tired of gazing at them.

The furthest tip of either axle-end
Is called the pole.

Round the poel circle the two Bears, which never set;

One of these twain the Greeks call Cynosure,⁸⁵
The other Helicē⁸⁶ is named;

and the latter’s extremely bright stars, visible to us all night long,

Our countrymen the Seven Triones⁸⁷ call;

[106] and the little Cynosure consists of an equal number of stars similarly grouped, and revolves round the same pole:

Phoenician sailors place in this their trust
To guide their course by night; albeit the other
Shines out before and with more radiant stars
At earliest night-fall far and wide is seen,
Yet small though this one is, the mariner
On this relies, since it revolves upon
An inner circle and a shorter path.

Chapter XLII

Also the further to enhance the beauty of those constellations,

Between them, like a river flowing swift,
The fierce-eyed Serpent winds; in sinuous coils
Over and under twines his snaky frame.

[107] His whole appearance is very remarkable, but the most striking part of him is the shape of his head and the brilliance of his eyes:

No single hindering star his head adorns,
His brows are by a double radiance marked,
And from his cruel eyes two lights flash out,
The while his chin gleams with one flashing star;
His graceful neck is bent, his head reclined,
As if at gaze upon the Great Bear’s tail.

[108] And while the rest of the Serpent’s body is visible all night long,

This head a moment sinks beneath the sea,
Where meet its setting and its rise in one.

Next to its head however

The weary figure of a man in sorrow
Revolts,

which the Greeks

Engónasin call, as travelling “on his knees.”
Here is the Crown, of radiance supreme.

This is in the rear of the Serpent, while at its head is the Serpent-holder,

[109] By Greeks called Ophiúchus, famous name!
Firm between both his hands he “holds the Snake,”
Himself in bondage by its body held,
For serpent round the waist engirdles men,
Yet treads he firm and presses all his weight,
Trampling upon the Scorpion’s eyes and breast.

After the Septentriones comes

The Bear-ward, commonly Boötes called,
Because he drives the Bear yoked to a pole.

[110] And then the following lines: for with this Boötes

beneath his bosom fixed appears
A glittering star, Arcturus, famous name,

and below his feet moves

The Virgin bright, holding her ear of corn⁸⁸
Resplendent.

Chapter XLIII

And the constellations are so accurately spaced out that their vast and ordered array clearly displays the skill of a divine creator:

By the Bear’s head you will descry the Twins,
Beneath its belly the Crab, and in its claws
The Lion’s bulk emits a twinkling ray.

The Charioteer

Hidden beneath the Twins’ left flank will glide;
Him Helicē confronts with aspect fierce;
At his left shoulder the bright She-goat stands.

[And then the following:]

A constellation vast and brilliant she,
Whereas the Kids emit a scanty light
Upon mankind.

Beneath her feet

Crouches the hornéd Bull, a mighty frame.

[111] His head is bespangled with a multitude of stars:

The Greeks were wont to call them Hyades,

from their bringing rain, the Greek for which is hyein, while our nation stupidly names them the Sucking-pigs, as though the name Hyades were derived from the word for ‘pig’ and not from ‘rain.’ Behind the Lesser Septentrio follows Cepheus, with open hands outstretched;

For close behind the Bear, the Cynosure,⁸⁹
He wheels.

Before him comes

Cassiepia with her darkling stars,
And next to her roams a bright shape, the sad
Andromeda, shunning her mother’s sight.
The belly of the Horse touches her head,
Proudly he tosses high his glittering mane;
One common star holds their twin shapes conjoint
And constellations linked indissolubly.
Close by them stands the Ram with wreathéd horns:

and next to him

The Fishes gliding, one some space in front
And nearer to the North Wind’s shuddering breath.

Chapter XLIV

[112] At the feet of Andromeda Perseus is outlined,

Assailed by all the zenith’s northern blasts;

and by him

at his left knee placed on every side
The tiny Pleiads dim you will descry.
And, slightly sloping, next the Lyre is seen,
Next the winged Bird ‘neath heaven’s wide canopy.

Close to the Horse’s head is the right hand Aquarius, and then his whole figure.

Next in the mighty zone comes capricorn,
Half-brute, half-man; his mighty bosom breathes
An icy chill; and when the Titans sun
Arrayeth him with never-ceasing light,
He turns his car to climb the wintry sky.

[113] Here we behold

How there appears the Scorpion rising high,
His mighty tail trailing the bended Bow;
Near which on soaring pinions wheels the Bird
And near to this the burning Eagle flies.

Then the Dolphin,

And then Orion slopes his stooping frame.

[114] Following him

The glowing Dog-star radiantly shines.

After this follows the Hare,

What never resteth weary from her race;
At the Dog’s tail meandering Argo glides.
Her the Ram covers, and the scaly Fishes,
And her bright breast touches the River’s⁹⁰ banks.

Its long winding current you will observe,

And in the zenith you will see the Chains
That bind the Fishes, hanging at their tails… .
Then you’ll descry, near the bright Scorpion’s sting,
The Altar, fanned by Auster’s gentle breath.

And by it the Centaur

Proceeds, in haste to join the Horse’s parts
Unto the Claws; extending his right hand,
That grasps the mighty beast, he marches on
And grimly strides towards the Altar bright.
Here Hydra rises from the nether realms,

her body widely outstretched;

And in her midmost coil the Wine-bowl gleams,
While pressing at her tail the feathered Crow
Pecks with his beak; and here, hard by the Twins,
The Hound’s Forerunner, in Greek named Prokyon.

[115] Can any sane person believe that all this array of stars and this vast celestial adornment could have been created out of atoms rushing thenceforth fortuitously and at random? or could any other being devoid of intelligence and reason have created them? Not merely did their creation postulate intelligence, but it is impossible to understand their nature without intelligence of a high order.

Chapter XLV

“but not only are these things marvellous, but nothing is more remarkable than the stability and coherence of the world, which is such that it is impossible even to imagine anything better adapted to endure. For all its parts in every direction gravitate with a uniform pressure towards the centre. Moreover busy conjoined maintain their union most permanently when they have some bond encompassing them to bind them together; and this function is fulfilled by that rational and intelligent substance which pervades the whole world as the efficient cause of all things and which draws and collects the outermost particles towards the centre. [116] Hence if the world is round and therefore all its parts are held together by and with each other in universal equilibrium, the same must be the case with the earth, so that all its parts must converge towards the centre (which in a sphere is the lowest point) without anything to break the continuity and so threaten its Bast complex of gravitational forces and masses with dissolution. And on the same principle the sea, although above the earth, nevertheless seeks the earth’s centre and so is massed into a sphere uniform on all sides, and never floods its bounds and overflows. [117] Its neighbour the air travels upward it is true in virtue of its lightness, but at the same time spreads horizontally in all directions; and thus while contiguous and conjoined with the sea it has a natural tendency to rise to the sky, and by receiving an admixture of the sky’s tenuity and heat furnishes to living creatures the breath of life and health. The air is enfolded by the highest part of the sky, termed the ethereal part; this both retains its own tenuous warmth uncongealed by any admixture and unites with the outer surface of the air.

Chapter XLVI

In the aether the stars revolve in their courses; these maintain their spherical form by their own install gravitation, and also sustain their motions by virtue of their very shape and conformation; for they are round, and this is the shape, as I believe I remarked before,⁹¹ that is least capable of receiving injury. [118] But the stars are of a fiery substance, and for this reason they are nourished by the vapours of the earth, the sea and the waters, which are raised up by the sun out of the fields which it warms and out of the waters; and when nourished and renewed by these vapours the stars and the whole aether shed them back again, and then once more draw them up from the same source, with the loss of none of their matter, or only of an extremely small part which is consumed by the fire of the stars and the flame of the aether. As a consequence of this, so our school believe, though it used to be said that Panaetius questioned the doctrine, there will ultimately occur a conflagration of the whole while, because when the moisture has been used up neither can the earth be nourished nor will the air continue to flow, being unable to rise upward after it has drunk up all the water; thus nothing will remain but fire, by which, as a living being and a god, once again a new world may be created and the ordered universe be restored as before. [119] I would not have you think that I with too long upon astronomy, and particularly upon the system of the stars called planets; these with the most diverse movements work in such mutual harmony that the uppermost, that of Saturn, has a cooling influence, the middle planet, that of Mars, imparts heat, the one between them, that of Jove, gives light and a moderate warmth, while two beneath Mars obey the sun, and the sun itself fills all the world with light, and also illuminates the moon, which is the source of conception and birth and of growth and maturity. If any man is not impressed by this co-ordination of things and this harmonious combination of nature to secure the preservation of the world, I know for certain that he has never given any consideration to these matters.

Chapter XLVII

[120] “To come now from things celestial to things terrestrial, which is there among these latter which does not clearly display the rational design of an intelligent being? In the first place, with the vegetation that springs from the earth, the stocks both give stability to the parts which they sustain and draw from the ground the sap to nourish the parts upheld by the roots; and the trunks are covered with bark or rind, the better to protect them against cold and heat. Again the vines cling to their props with their tendrils as with hands, and thus raise themselves erect like animals. Nay more, it is said that if planted near cabbages they shun them like pestle and noxious things, and will not touch them at any point. [121] Again what a variety tio animals, and what capacity they possess of persisting true to their various kinds! Some of them are protected by hides, others are clothed with fleeces, others bristle with spines; some we see covered with feathers, some with scales, some armed with horns, some equipped with wings to escape their foes. Nature, however, has provided with bounteous plenty for each species of animal that food which is suited to it. I might show in detail what provision has been made in the forms of the animals for appropriating and assimilating this food, how skilful and exact is the disposition of the various parts, how marvellous the structure of the limbs. For all the organs, at least those contained within the body, are so formed and so placed that none of them is superfluous or not necessary for the preservation of life. [122] But nature has also bestowed upon the beasts both sensation and desire, the one to arouse in them the impulse to appropriate their natural foods, the other to enable them to distinguish things harmful from things wholesome. Again, some animals approach their food by walking, some by crawling, some by flying, some by swimming; and some seize their nutriment with their gaping mouth and with the teeth themselves, others snatch it in the grasp of their claws, others with their curved beaks, some suck, others graze, some swallow it whole, others chew it. Also some are of such lately stature that they easily reach their food upon the ground with their jaws; [123] whereas the taller species, such as geese, swans, cranes and camels, are aided by the length of their necks; the elephant is even provided with a hand, because his body is so large that it was difficult for him to reach his food.

Chapter XLVIII

Those beasts on the other hand whose mode of sustenance was to feed on animals of another species received from nature the gift either of strength or swiftness. Upon certain creatures there was bestowed even a sort of craft or cunning: for instance, one species of the spider tribe weaves a kind of net, in order to dispatch anything that is caught in it; another in order to … steadily corps watch, and, snatching anything that falls into it, devours it. The mussel, or pina as it is called in Greek, is a large bivalve which enters into a sort of Penelope with the tiny shrimp to procure food, and so, when little fishes swim into the gaping shell, the shrimp draws the attention of the mussel and the mussel shuts up its shells with a snap;⁹² thus two very dissimilar creatures obtain their food in common. [124] In this case we are curious to know whether their association is due to a sort of mutual compact, or whether it was brought about by nature herself and goes back to the moment of their birth. Our wonder is also considerably excited by those aquatic animals which are born on land — crocodiles, for instance, and water-tortoises and certain snakes, which are born on dry land but as soon as they can first crawl make for the water. Again we often place ducks’ eggs beneath hens, and the chicks that spring from the eggs are at first fed and mothered by the hens that hatched and reared them, but later on they leave their foster-mothers, and run away when they put up them, as soon as they have had the opportunity of seeing the water, their natural home. So power­ful an instinct of self-preservation has nature implanted in living creatures.

Chapter XLIX

I have even read in a book⁹³ that there is a bird called the spoonbill, which provides its food by flying after those birds which dive in the sea, and upon their coming to the surface with a fish that they have caught, pressing their heads down with its beak until they drop their prey, which it pounces on for itself. It is also recorded of this bird that it is in the habit of gorging itself with shell-fish, which it digests by means of the heat of its stomach and then brings up again, and so picks out from them the parts that are good to eat. [125] Sea-frogs again are said to be in the habit of covering themselves with sand and creeping along at the water’s edge, and then when fishes approach them thinking they are something to eat, these are killed and devoured by the frogs. The kite and the crow live in a state of natural war as it were with one another, and therefore each destroys the other’s eggs wherever it finds them. Another fact (observed by Aristotle, from whom most of these cases are cited) cannot but awaken our supper, namely that cranes when crossing the seas on the way to warmer climates fly in a triangular formation. With the apex of the triangle they force aside the air in front of them, and then gradually on either side⁹⁴ by means of their wings acting as oars the birds’ on which flight is sustained, with the base of the triangle formed by the cranes gets the assistance of the wind when it is so to speak astern. The birds rest their necks and heads on the backs of those flying in front of them; and the leader, being himself unable to do this as he has no one to lean on, flies to the rear that he himself also may have a rest, while one of those already rested takes his place, and so they keep turns throughout the journey. [126] I could adduce a number of similar instances, but you see the general idea. Another even better known classes of story illustrates the precautions taken by animals for their security, the watch they keep while feeding, their skill in hiding in their lairs.

Chapter L

Other remarkable facts are that dogs cure themselves by vomiting and ibises in Egypt by purging — modes of treatment only recently, that is, a few generations ago, discovered by the talent of the medical profession. It has been reported that panthers, which in foreign countries are caught by means of poisoned meat, have a remedy which they employ to save themselves from dying; and that wild goats in Crete, when pierced with poisoned arrows, seek a herb called dittany, and on their swallowing this the arrows, it is said, drop out of their busy. [127] Does, shortly before giving birth to their young, thoroughly purge themselves with a herb called hartwort. Again we observe how various species defend themselves against violence and danger with their own weapons, bulls with their horns, boars with their tusks, lions with their bite; some species protect themselves by flight, some by hiding, the cuttle-fish by emitting an inky fluid, the sting-ray by causing cramp, and also a number of creatures drive away their pursuers by their insufferably disgusting odour.

Chapter LI

“In order to secure the everlasting duration of the world-order, divine providence has made most careful provision to ensure the perpetuation of the families of animals and of trees and all the vegetable species. The latter all contain within them seed possessing the proprietor of multiplying the species; this seed is enclosed in the innermost part of the fruits that grow from each plant; and the same seeds supply mankind with an abundance of food, besides replenishing the earth with a fresh stock of plants of the same kind. [128] Why should I speak of the amount of rational design displayed in animals to secure the perpetual preservation of their kind? To begin with some are male and some female, a device of nature to perpetuate the species. Then parts of their busy are most skilfully contrived to serve the purposes of procreation and of conception, and both male and female possess marvellous desires for copulation. And when the seed has settled in its place, it draws almost all the nutriment to itself and hedged within it fashions a living creature;⁹⁵ when this has been dropped from the womb and has emerged, in the mammalian species almost all the nourishment received by the mother turns to milk, and the young just born, untaught and by nature’s guidance, seek for the teats and satisfy their cravings with their bounty. And to show to us that none of these things merely happens by chance and that all are the work of nature’s providence and skill, species that produce large litters of offspring, such as swine and dogs, have bestowed upon them a large number of teats, while those animals which bear only a few young have only a few teats. [129] Why should I describe the affection shown by animals in rearing and protecting the offspring to which they have given birth, up to the point when they are able to defend themselves? although fishes, it is said, abandon their eggs when they have laid them, since these easily float and hatch out in the water.

Chapter LII

Turtles and crocodiles are said to lay their eggs on land and bury them and then go away, leaving their young to hatch and rear themselves. Hens and other birds find a quiet place in which to lay, and build themselves nests to sit on, covering these with the softest possible bedding in order to preserve the eggs most easily; and when they have hatched out their chicks they protect them by cherishing them with their wings so that they may not be injured by cold, and by shading them against the heat of the sun. When the young birds are able to use their sprouting wings, their mothers escort them in their flights, but are released from any further tendance upon them. [130] Moreover the skill and industry of man also contribute to the preservation and security of certain animals and plants. For there are many species of both which could not survive without man’s care.

“Also a plenti­ful variety of conveniences is found in different regions for the productive cultivation of the soil by man. Egypt is watered by the Nile, which corps the land completely flooded all the summer and afterwards retires leaving the soil soft and covered with mud, in readiness for sowing. Mesopotamia is fertilized by the Euphrates, which as it were imports into it new fields every year. The Indus, the largest river in the world, not only manures and softens the soil but actually sows it with seed, for it is said to bring down with it a great quantity of seeds resembling corn. [131] And I could produce a number of other remarkable examples in a variety of places, and instance a variety of lands each prolific in a different kind of produce.

Chapter LIII

But how great is the benevolence of nature, in giving birth to such an abundance and variety of delicious articles of food, and that not at one season only of the year, so that we have continually the delights of both novelty and plenty! How seasonable moreover and how some not for the human race alone but also for the animal and the various vegetable species is her gift of the Etesian winds!⁹⁶ their breath moderates the excessive heat of summer, entirely also guide our ships across the sea upon a swift and steady course. Many instances must be passed over [and yet many are given].⁹⁷ [132] For it is impossible to recount the conveniences afforded by rivers, the ebb and flow⁹⁸ … of the tides of the sea, the mountains clothed with forests, the salt-beds lying far inland from the sea-coast, the copious stores of health-giving medicines that the earth contains, and all the countless arts necessary for livelihood and for life. Again the alternation of day and night contributes to the preservation of living creatures by affording one time for activity and another for repose. Thus every line of reasoning goes to prove that all things in this world of ours are marvellously governed by divine intelligence and wisdom for the safety and preservation of all.

[133] “Here somebody will ask, for whose sake was all this vast system contrived? For the sake of the trees and plants, for these, though without sensation, have their sustenance from nature? But this at any rate is absurd. Then for the sake of the animals? It is no more likely that the gods took all this trouble for the sake of dumb, irrational creatures/ For whose sake then shall one pronounce the world to have been created? Doubtless for the sake of those living beings which have the use of reason; these are the gods and mankind, who assuredly surpass all other things in excellence, since the most excellent of all things is reason. Thus we are led to believe that the world and all the things that it contains were made for the sake of gods and men.

Chapter LIV

“And that man has been cared for by divine providence will be more readily understood if we survey the whole structure of man and all the conformation and perfection of human nature. [134] There are three things requisite for the maintenance of animal life, food, drink and breath; and for the reception of all of these the mouth is most consummately adapted, receiving as it does an abundant supply of breath through the nostrils which communicate with it. The structure of the teeth within the mouth serves to chew the food, and it is divided up and softened by them.⁹⁹ The front teeth are sharp, and bite our viands into pieces; the back teeth, called molars, masticate them, the process of mastication apparently being assisted also by the tongue. [135] Next to the tongue comes the gullet, which is attached to its roots, and into which in the first place pass that substances that have been received in the mouth. The gullet is adjacent to the tonsils on either side of it, and reaches as far as the back or innermost part of the palate. The action and movements of the tongue drive and thrust the food down into the gullet, which receives it and drives it further down, the parts of the gullet below the food that is being swallowed dilating and the parts above it contracting. [136] The windpipe, or trachea¹⁰⁰ as it is termed by physicians, has an orifice attached to the roots of the tongue a little above the point where the tongue is joined to the gullet; it reaches to the lungs, and receives the air inhaled by breathing, and also exhales it and passes it out from the lungs; it is covered by a sort of lid, provided for the purpose of preventing a morsel of food from accidentally falling into it and impeding the breath. Below the gullet lies the stomach, which is constructed as the receptacle of food and drink, whereas breath is inhaled by the lungs and heart. The stomach performs a number of remarkable operations; its structure consists principally of muscular fibres, and it is manifold and twisted; it compresses and contains the dry or moist nutriment that it receives, enabling it to be assimilated and digested; at one moment is astricted and at another relaxed, thus pressing and mixing together all that is passed into it, so that by means of the abundant heat which it possesses, and by its crushing the food, and also by the op of the breath, everything is digested and worked up so as to be easily distributed throughout the rest of the body.

Chapter LV

The lungs on the contrary are soft and of a loose and spongy consistency, well adapted to absorb the breath; which they inhale and exhale by alternately contracting and expanding, to provide frequent draughts of that aerial nutriment which is the chief support of animal life. [137] The alimentary juice secreted from the rest of the food by the stomach flows from the bowels to the liver through certain ducts or channels reaching to the liver, to which they are attached, and connecting up what are called the doorways of the liver with the middle intestine. From the liver different channels pass in different directions, and through these falls the food passed down from the liver. From this food is secreted bile, and the liquids excreted by the kidneys; the residue turns into blood be flows to the aforesaid doorways of the liver, to which all its channels lead. Flowing through these doorways the food at this very point pours into the so-called vena cava or hollow vein,¹⁰¹ and through this, being now completely worked up and digested, flows to the heart, and from the heart is distributed all over the body through a rather large number of veins that reach to every part of the frame. [138] It would not be difficult to indicate the way in which the residue of the food is excreted by the alternate astriction and relaxation of the bowels; however this topic must be passed over lest my discourse should be somewhat offensive. Rather let me unfold the following instance of the incredible skilfulness of nature’s handiwork. The air drawn into the lungs by breathing is warmed in the first instance by the breath itself and then by contact with the lungs; part of it is returned by the act of respiration, and part is received by a certain part of the heart called the cardiac ventricle, adjacent to which is a second similar vessel into which the blood flows from the liver three the vena cava mentioned above; and in this manner from these organs both the blood is diffused through the veins and the breath through the arteries all over the body. Both of these sets of vessels are very numerous and are closely interwoven with the tissues of the entire body; they testify to an extraordinary degree of skilful and divine craftsman­ship. [139] Why need I speak about the bones, which are the framework of the body? their marvellous cartilages are nicely adapted to secure stability, and fitted to end off the joints and to allow of movement and bodily activity of every sort. Add thereto the nerves or sinews¹⁰² which hold the joints together and whose ramifications pervade the entire body; like the veins and arteries these lead from the heart as their starting-point and pass to all parts of the body.

Chapter LVI

[140] “Many further illustrations could be given of this wise and careful providence of nature, to illustrate the lavishness and splendour of the gifts bestowed by the gods on men. First, she has raised them from the ground to stand tall and upright, so that they might be able to behold the sky and so gain a knowledge of the gods. For men are sprung from the earth not as its inhabitants and denizens, but to be as it were the spectators of things supernal and heavenly, in the contemplation whereof no other species of animal participates. Next, the senses, posted in the citadel of the head as the reporters and messengers of the outer world, both in structure and position are marvellously adapted to their necessary services. The eyes as the watchmen have the highest station, to give them the widest outlook for the performance of their function. [141] The ears also, having the duty of perceiving sound, the nature of which is to rise, are rightly placed in the upper part of the body. The nostrils likewise are rightly placed high inasmuch as all smells travel upwards, but also, because they have much to do with discriminating food and drink, they have with good reason been brought into the neighbourhood of the mouth. Taste, which has the function of distinguishing the flavors of our various viands, is situated in that part of the face where nature has made an aperture for the passage of food and drink. The sense of touch is evenly diffused over all the body, to enable us to perceive all sorts of contacts and even the minutest impacts of both cold and heat. And just as architects relegate the drains of houses to the rear, away from the eyes and nose of the masters, since otherwise they would inevitably be somewhat offensive, so nature has banished the corresponding organs of the body far away from the neighbourhood of the senses.

Chapter LVII

[142] “Again what artificer but nature, who is unsurpassed in her cunning, could have attained such skilfulness in the construction of the senses? First, she has clothed and walled the eyes with membranes of the finest texture, which she has made on the one hand transparent so that we may be able to see through them, and on the other hand firm of substance, to serve as the outer cover of the eye. The eyes she has made mobile and smoothly turning, so as both to avoid any threatened injury and to direct their gaze easily in any direction they desire. The actually organ of vision, called the pupil or ‘little doll,’¹⁰³ is so small as easily to avoid objects that might injure it; and the lids, which are the covers of the eyes, are very soft to the touch so as not to hurt the pupil, and very neatly constructed as to be able both to shut the eyes in order that nothing may impinge upon them and to open them; and nature has provided that this process can be repeated again and again with extreme rapidity. [143] The eyelids are furnished with a palisade of hairs, whereby to ward off any impinging object while the eyes are open, and so that while they are closed in sleep, when we do not need the eyes for seeing, they may be as it were tucked up for repose. Moreover the eyes are in advantageously retired position, and shielded on all sides by surrounding prominences; for first the parts above them are covered by the eyebrows which prevent sweat from flowing down from the scalp and forehead; then the cheeks, which are placed beneath them and which slightly project, protect them from below; and the hose is so placed as to seem to be a wall separating the eyes from one another. [144] The organ of hearing on the other hand is always open, since we require this sense even when asleep, and when it receives a sound, we are aroused even from sleep. The auditory passage is winding, to prevent anything from being able to enter, as it might if the passage were clear and straight; it has further been provided that even the tiniest insect that may attempt to intrude may be caught in the sticky wax of the ears. On the outside project the organs which we call ears, which are constructed both to cover and protect the sense-organ and to prevent the sounds that reach them from sliding past and being lost before they strike the sense. The apertures of the ears are hard and gristly, and much convoluted, because things with these qualities reflect and amplify sound; this is why tortoise-shell or horn gives resonance to a lyre, and always why winding passages and enclosures have an echo which is louder than the original sound. [145] Similarly the nostrils, which to serve the purposes required of them have to be always open, have narrower apertures, to prevent the entrance of anything that may harm them; and they are always moist, which is useful to guard them against dust and many other things. The sense of taste is admirably shielded, being enclosed in the mouth in a manner well suited for the performance of its function and for its protection against harm.

Chapter LVIII

“And all the senses of man far excel those of the lower animals. In the first place our eyes have a finer perception of many things in the arts which appeal to the sense of sight, painting, modelling and sculpture, and also in bodily movements and gestures; since the eyes judge beauty and arrangement and so to speak propriety of colour and shape; and also other more important matters, for they also recognize virtues and vices, the angry and the friendly, the joyful and the sad, the brave man and the coward, the bold and the craven. [146] The ears are likewise marvellously skilful organs of discrimination; they judge differences of tone, of pitch and of key¹⁰⁴ in the music of the voice and of wind and stringed instruments, and many different qualities of voice, sonorous and dull, smooth and rough, bass and treble, flexible and hard, distinctions discriminated by the human ear alone. Likewise the nostrils, the taste and in some measure the touch have highly sensitive faculties of discrimination. And the arts invented to appeal to and indulge these senses are even more numerous than I could wish. The developments of perfumery and of the meretricious adornment of the person are obvious examples.

Chapter LIX

[147] “Coming now to the actual mind and intellect of man, his reason, wisdom and foresight, one who cannot see that these owe their perfection to divine providence must in my view himself be devoid of these very faculties. While discussing this topic I could wish, Cotta, that I had the gift of your eloquence. How could not you describe first our powers of understanding, and then our faculty of conjoining premisses and consequences in a single act of apprehension, the faculty I mean that enables us to judge what conclusion follows from any given propositions and to put the inference in syllogistic form, and also to delimit particular terms in a succinct definition; whence we arrive at an understanding of the potency and the nature of knowledge, which is the most excellent part even of the divine nature. Again, how remarkable are the faculties which you Academics invalidate and abolish, our sensory and intellectual perception and comprehension of external objects; [148] it is by collating and comparing our precepts that we also create the arts that serve either practical necessities or the purpose of amusement. Then take the gift of speech, the queen of arts as you are fond of calling it — what a glorious, what a divine faculty it is! In the first place it enables us both to learn things we do not know and to teach things we do know to others; secondly it is our instrument for exhortation and persuasion, for consoling the afflicted and assuaging the fears of the terrified, for curbing passion and quenching appetite and anger; it is this that has united us in the bonds of justice, law and civil order, this that has sped us from savagery and barbarism. [149] Now careful consideration will show that the mechanism of speech displays a skill on nature’s part that surpasses belief. In the first place there is an artery passing from the lungs to the back of the mouth, which is the channel by which the voice, originating from the mind, is caught and uttered. Next, the tongue is placed in the mouth and confined by the teeth; it modulates and defines the inarticulate flow of the voice and renders its sounds district and clear by striking the teeth and other parts of the mouth. Accordingly my school is fond of comparing the tongue to the quill of a lyre, the teeth to the strings, and the nostrils to the horns which echo¹⁰⁵ the notes of the strings when the instrument is played.

Chapter LX

[150] “Then what clever servants for a great variety of arts are the hands which nature has bestowed on man! The flexibility of the joints enables the fingers to close and open with equal ease, and to perform every motion without difficulty. Thus by the manipulation of the fingers the hand is enabled to paint, to model, to carve, and to draw forth the notes of the lyre and of the flute. And beside these arts of recreation there are those of utility, I mean agriculture and building, the weaving and stitching of garments, and the various modes of working bronze and iron; hence we realize that it was by applying the hand of the artificer to the discoveries of thought and observations of the senses that all our conveniences were attained, and we were enabled to have shelter, clothing and protection, and possessed cities, fortifications, houses and temples. [151] Moreover men’s industry, that is to say the work of their hands, porticus us also our food in variety and abundance. It is the hand that gathers the divers products of the fields, whether to be consumed immediately or to be stored in repositories for the days to come; and our diet also includes flesh, fish and fowl, obtained partly by the chase and partly by breeding. We also tame the four-footed animals to carry us on their backs, their swiftness and strength bestowing strength and swiftness upon ourselves. We cause certain beasts to bear our burdens or to carry a yoke, we divert to our service the marvellously acute senses of elephants and the keen scent of hounds; we collect from the caves of the earth the iron which we need for tilling the land, we discover the deeply hidden veins of copper, silver and gold which serve us both for use and for adornment; we cut up a multitude of trees both wild and cultivated for timber which we employ partly by setting fire to it to warm our busy and cook our food, partly for building so as to shelter ourselves with houses and banish heat and cold. [152] Timber moreover is of great value for constructing ships, whose voyages supply an abundance of sustenance of all sorts from all parts of the earth; and we alone have the power of controlling the most violent of nature’s offspring, the sea and the winds, thanks to the science of navigation, and we use and enjoy many products of the sea. Likewise the entire command of the commodities produced on land is vested in mankind. We enjoy the fruits of the plains and of the mountains, the rivers and the lakes are ours, we sow corn, we plant trees, we fertilize the soil by irrigation, we confine the rivers and straighten or divert their courses. In fine, by means of our hands we essay to create as it were a second world within the world of nature.

Chapter LXI

[153] “Then moreover hasn’t man’s reason penetrated even to the sky? We alone of living creatures know the risings and settings and the courses of the stars, the human race has set limits to the day, the month and the year, and has learnt the eclipses of the sun and moon and foretold for all future time their occurrence, their extent and their dates. And contemplating the heavenly bodies the mind arrives at a knowledge of the gods, from which arises piety, with its comrades justice and the rest of the virtues, the sources of a life of happiness that vies with and resembles the divine existence and leaves us inferior to the celestial beings in nothing else save immortality, which is immaterial for happiness. I think that my exposition of these matters has been sufficient to prove how widely man’s nature surpasses all other living creatures; and this should make it clear that neither such a conformation and arrangement of the members nor such power of mind and intellect can possibly have been created by chance.

[154] “It remains for me to show, in coming finally to a conclusion, that all the things in this world which men employ have been created and provided for the sake of men.

Chapter LXII

“In the first place the world itself was created for the sake of gods and men, and the things that it contains were provided and contrived for the enjoyment of men. For the world is as it were the common dwelling-place of gods and men, or the city that belongs to both; for they alone have the use of reason and live by justice and by law. As therefore Athens and Sparta must be deemed to have been founded for the sake of the Athenians and the Spartans, and all the things contained in those cities are rightly said to belong to those peoples, so whatever things are contained in all the world must be deemed to belong to the gods and to men. [155] Again the revolutions of the sun and moon no other heavenly bodies, although also contributing to the maintenance of the structure of the world, nevertheless also afford a spectacle for man to behold; for there is no sight of which it is more impossible to grow weary, none more beautiful nor displaying a more surpassing wisdom and skill; for by measuring the courses of the stars we know when the seasons will come round, and when their variations and changes will occur; and if these things are known to men alone, they must be judged to have been created for the sake of men. [156] Then the earth, teeming with grain and vegetables of various kinds, which she pours forth in lavish abundance — does she appear to give birth to this produce for the sake of the wild beasts or for the sake of men? What shall I say of the vines and olives, whose bounteous and delight­ful fruits do not concern the lower animals at all? In fact the beasts of the field are entirely ignorant of the arts of sowing and cultivating, and of reaping and gathering the fruits of the earth in due season and storing them in garners; all these products are both enjoyed and tended by men.

Chapter LXIII

[157] Just as therefore we are bound to say that lyres and flutes were made for the sake of those who can use them, so it must be agreed that the things of which I have spoken have been provided for those only who make use of them, and even if some portion of them is filched or plundered by some of the lower animals, we shall not admit that they were created for the sake of these animals also. Men do not store up corn for the sake of mice and ants but for their wives and children and households; so the animals share these fruits of the earth only by stealth as I have said, whereas the masters enjoy them openly and freely. [158] It must therefore be admitted that all this abundance was provided for the sake of men, unless perchance the bounteous plenty and variety of our orchard fruit and the delightfulness not only of its flavour but also of its scent and appearance lead us to doubt whether nature intended this gift for man alone! So far is it from being true that the furs of the earth were provided for the sake of animals as well as men, that the animals themselves, as we may see, were created for the benefit of men. What other use have sheep save that their fleeces are dressed and woven into clothing for men? and in fact they could not have been reared nor sustained nor have produced anything of value without man’s care and tendance. Then think of the dog, with its trusty watchfulness, its fawning affection for its master and hatred of strangers, its incredible keenness of scent in following a trail and its eagerness in hunting — what do these qualities imply except that they were created to serve the conveniences of men? [159] Why should I speak of oxen? the very shape of their backs makes it clear that they were not destined to carry burdens, whereas their necks were born for the yoke and their broad power­ful shoulders for drawing the plough. And as it was by their means that the earth was brought under tillage by breaking up its clods, no violence was ever used towards them, so the poets say, by the men of that Golden Age;

But then the iron race sprang into being,

And first did dare to forge the deadly sword,

And taste the ox its hand had tamed to bondage.¹⁰⁶

So valuable was deemed the service that man received from oxen that to eat their flesh was held a crime.

Chapter LXIV

“It would be a long story to tell of the services rendered by mules and asses, which were undoubtedly created for the use of men. [160] As for the pig, it can only furnish food; indeed Chrysippus¹⁰⁷ actually says that its soul was given it to serve as salt and keep it from putrefaction; and because this animal was fitted for the food of man, nature made it the most prolific of all her offspring. Why should I speak of the teeming swarms of delicious fish? or of birds, which afford us so much pleasure that our Stoic Providence appears to have been at times a disciple of Epicurus? and they could not even be caught save by man’s intelligence and cunning; — although some birds, birds of flight and birds of utterance as our augurs call them, we believe to have been created for the purpose of giving omens. [161] The great beasts of the forest again we take by hunting, both for food and in order to exercise ourselves in the mimic warfare of the chase, and also, as in the case of elephants, to train and discipline them for our employment, and to procure from their busy a variety of medicines for diseases and wounds, as also we do from certain roots and herbs whose values we have learnt by long-continued use and trial. Let the mind’s eye survey the whole earth and all the seas, and you will behold now fruitful plains of measureless extent and mountains thickly clad with forests and pastures filled with flocks, now vessels sailing with marvellous swiftness across the sea. [162] Nor only on the surface of the earth, but also in its darkest recesses there lurks an abundance of commodities which were created for men’s use and which men alone discover.

Chapter LXV

“The next subject is one which each of you perhaps will seize upon for censure, Cotta because Carneades used to enjoy tilting at the Stoics, Velleius because nothing provokes the ridicule of Epicurus so much as the art of prophecy; but in my view it affords the very strongest proof that man’s welfare is studied by divine providence. I refer of course to Divination, which we see practised in many regions and upon various matters and occasions both private and more especially public. [163] Many observations are made by those who inspect the victims at sacrifices, many events are foreseen by augurs or revealed in oracles and prophecies, dreams and portents, a knowledge of which has often led to the acquisition of many things gratifying men’s wishes and requirements, and also to the avoidance of many dangers. This power or art or instinct therefore has clearly been bestowed by the immortal gods on man, and on no other creature, for the ascertainment of future events.

“And if perchance these arguments separately fail to convince you, nevertheless in combination their collective weight will be bound to do so.

[164] “Nor is the care and providence of the immortal gods bestowed only upon the human race in its entirety, but it is also wont to be extended to individuals. We may narrow down the entirety of the human race and bring it gradually down to smaller and smaller groups, and finally to single individuals.

Chapter LXVI

For if we believe, for the reasons that we have spoken of before, that the gods care for all human beings everywhere in every coast and region of the lands remote from this continent in which we dwell, then they care also for the men who inhabit with us these lands between the sunrise and the sunset. [165] But if they care for these who inhabit that sort of vast island which we call the round earth, they also care for those who occupy continue divisions of that island, Europe, Asia and Africa. Therefore they also cherish the divisions of those divisions, for instance Rome, Athens, Sparta and Rhodes; and they cherish the individual citizens of those cities regarded separately from the whole body collectively, for example, Curius, Fabricius and Coruncanius in the war with Pyrrhus, Calatinus, Duellius, Metellus and Lutatius in the First Punic War, and Maximus, Marcellus and Africanus in the Second, and at a later date Paulus, Gracchus and Cato, or in our fathers’ time Scipio and Laelius; and many remarkable men besides both our own country and Greece have given birth to, none of whom would conceivably have been what he was save by god’s aid. [166] It was this reason which drove the poets, and especially Homer, to attach to their chief heroes, Ulysses, Diomede, Agamemnon or Achilles, certain gods as the companions of their perils and adventures; moreover the gods have often appeared to men in person, as in the cases which I have mentioned above, so testifying that they care both for communities and for individuals.¹⁰⁸ And the same is proved by the portents of future occurrences that are vouchsafed to men sometimes when they are asleep and sometimes when they are awake. Moreover we receive a number of warnings by means of signs and of the entrails of victims, and by many other things that long-continued usage has noted in such a manner as to create the art of divination. [167] Therefore no great man ever existed who did not enjoy some portion of divine inspiration. Nor yet is this argument to be deprived by pointing to cases where a man’s cornfields or vineyards have been damaged by a storm, or an accident has robbed him of some commodity of value, and inferring that the victim of one of these misfortunes is the object of god’s hatred or neglect. The gods attend to great matters; they neglect small ones. Now great men always prosper in all their affairs, assuming that the teachers of our school and Socrates, the prince of philosophy, have satisfactorily discoursed upon the bounteous abundance of wealth that virtue bestows.

Chapter LXVII

[168] “These are more or less the things that occurred to me which I thought proper to be said upon the subject of the nature of the gods. And for your part, Cotta, would you but listen to me, you would plead the same cause, and reflect that you are a leading citizen and a pontife, and you would take advantage of the liberty enjoyed by your school of arguing both pro and contra to choose to espouse my side, and preferably to devote to this purpose those powers of eloquence which your rhetorical exercises have bestowed upon you and which the Academy has fostered. For the habit of arguing in support of atheism, whether it be done from conviction or in pretence, is a wicked and impious practice.”

Book Three

Chapter I

[1] Cotta smiled when Balbus said this. “It is too late, Balbus,” he rejoined, “for you to tell me what view I am to support, for while you were discoursing I was pondering what arguments I could bring against you, though not so much for the purpose of refuting you as of asking for an explanation of the points which I could not quite understand. However, each man must use his own judgement, and it is a difficult task S. Francesco me to take the view which you would like me to take.”

[2] Hereupon Velleius broke in: “You cannot think, Cotta,” said he, “how eager I am to hear you. Our good friend Balbus enjoyed your discourse against Epicurus; so I in my turn will give you an attentive hearing against the Stoics. For I hope that you come well equipped, as you usually do.”

[3] “Yes, to be sure, Velleius,” replied Cotta; for “I have a very different business before me with Lucilius from what I had with you.”

“How so, pray?” said Velleius.

“Because I think that your master Epicurus does not put up a very strong fight on the question of the immortal gods; he only does not venture to deny their existence so that he may not encounter any ill-feeling or reproach. But when he asserts that the gods do nothing and care for nothing, and that though they possess limbs like those of men they make no use of those limbs, he seems not to be speaking seriously, and to think it enough if he affirms the existence of blessed and everlasting beings of some sort. [4] But as for Balbus, you sure you must have noticed how much he had to say, and how though lacking in truth it was yet consistent and systematic. Hence what I have in mind, as I said, is not so much to refute his discourse as to ask for an explanation of the things that I could not quite understand. Accordingly, I offer you the choice, Balbus, whether you would prefer that I should question you ny reply upon each of the points singly as to which I did not quite agree, or that you should hear out my entire discourse.”

“Oh,” answered Balbus, “I had rather reply about any point which you desire to have explained to you; or if you want to question me with a view not so much to understanding as to refuting me, I will do whichever you wish, and will either reply to each of your inquiries at once, or answer them all when you have completed your speech.”

[5] “Very well,” rejoined Cotta, “let us then proceed as the argument itself may lead us.

Chapter II

But before we come to the subject, let me say a few words about myself. I am considerably influenced by your authority, Balbus, and by the plea that you put forward at the conclusion of your discourse, when you exhorted me to remember that I am both a Cotta and a pontife. This no doubt meant that I ought to uphold the beliefs about the immortal gods which have come down to us from our ancestors, and the rites and ceremonies and duties of religion. For my part I always shall uphold them and always have done so, and no eloquence of anybody, learned or unlearned, shall ever dislodge me from the belief as to the worship of the immortal gods which I have inherited from our forefathers. But on any question of el I am guided by the high pontifes, Titus Coruncanius, Publius Scipio and Publius Scaevola, not by Zeno or Cleanthes or Chrysippus; and I have Gaius Laelius, who was both an augur and a philosopher, to whose discourse upon religion, in his famous oration,¹⁰⁹ I would rather listen than to any leader of the Stoics. The religion of the Roman people comprises ritual, auspices, and the third additional division consisting of all such prophetic warnings as the interpreters of the Sybil or the soothsayers have derived from portents and prodigies. While, I have always thought that none of these departments of religion was to be despised, and I have held the conviction that Romulus by his auspices and Numa by his establishment of our ritual laid the foundations of our state, which assuredly could never have been as great as it is had not the fullest measure of divine favour been obtained for it. [6] There, Balbus, is the opinion of a Cotta and a pontife; now oblige me by letting me know yours. You are a philosopher, and I ought to receive from you a proof of your religion, whereas I must believe the word of our ancestors even without proof.”

Chapter III

“What proof then do you require of me, Cotta?” replied Balbus.

“You divided your discourse under four heads,” said Cotta; “first you designed to prove the existence of the gods; secondly, to describe their nature; thirdly, to show that the world is governed by them; and lastly, that they care for the welfare of men. These, if I remember rightly, were the headings that you laid down.”

“You are quite right,” said Balbus; “but now tell me what it is that you want to know.”

[7] “Let us take each point in turn,” replied Cotta, “and if the first one is the doctrine which is universal accepted save by absolute infidels, although I for my part cannot be persuaded to surrender my belief that the gods exist, nevertheless you teach me no reason why this belief, of which I am convinced on the authority of our forefathers, should be true.”

“If you are convinced of it,” said Balbus, “what reason is there for your wanting me to teach you?”

“Because,” said Cotta, “I am entering on this discussion as if I had never been taught anything or reflected at all about the immortal gods. Accept me as a pupil who is a novice and entirely untutored, and teach me what I want to know.”

[8] “Tell me then,” said he, “what do you want to know?”

“What do I want to know? First of all, why it was that after saying that this part of your subject did not even need discussion, because the fact of the divine existence was manifest and universally admitted, you nevertheless discoursed at such copyright length on that very point.”

“It was because I have often noticed that you too, Cotta, when speaking in court, overwhelmed the judge with all the arguments you could think of, provided the case gave you an opportunity to do so. Well, the Greek philosophers do likewise, and so did I also, to the best of my ability. But for you to ask me this question is just the same as if you were to ask me why I look at you with two eyes instead of closing one of them, seeing that I could achieve the same result with one eye as with two.”

Chapter IV

[9] “How far your comparison really holds good,” rejoined Cotta, “is a question that I will leave to you. As a matter of fact in law-suits it is not my part to argue a point that is self-evident and admitted by all parties, for argument would only diminish its clearness; and besides, if I did do this in pleading cases in the courts, I should not do the same thing in an abstract discussion like present. But there would be no real reason for your shutting one eye, since both eyes have the same field of vision, and since the nature of things, which you declare to be possessed of wisdom, has willed that we should possess two windows pierced from the mind to the eyes. You did not really feel confident that the doctrine of the verse existence was as self-evident as you could wish, and for that reason you attempted to prove it with a number of arguments. For my part a single argument would have sufficed, namely that it has been handed down to us by our forefathers. But you despise authority, and fight your battles with the weapon of reason. [10] Give permission therefore for my reason to join issue with yours.

“You adduce all these arguments to prove that the gods exist, and by arguing you render doubtful a matter which in my opinion admits no doubt at all. For I have committed to memory not only the number but also the order of your arguments. The first was that when we look up at the sky, we at once perceive that some power exists whereby the heavenly bodies are governed. And from this you went on to quote:¹¹⁰

Behold this dazzling vault of heaven, which all mankind as Jove invoke;

[11] just as if anyone among us really gave the name of Jove to your heaven throne to Jove of the Capitol, or as if it were self-evident and universal agreed that those beings¹¹¹ are divine whom Velleius and many others beside will not even grant you to be alive at all! Also you thought it a weighty argument that the belief in the immortal gods is universal held and is spreading every day. Then is anybody content that wilderness of such moment should be decided by the beliefs of the foolish? and particularly yourselves, who say that all the foolish are mad?

Chapter V

“But you say¹¹² that the gods appear to us in bodily presence — for instance, they did to Postumius at Lake Regillus and to Vatinius on the Via Salaria; and also some story or other about the battle of the Locrians on the Sagra. Then do you really think that the beings whom you call the sons of Tyndareus, that is mortal men of mortal parentage, and whom Homer, who lived not long after their period, states to have been buried at Sparta, came riding on white hacks with no retainers, and met Vatinius, and selected a rough countryman like him to whom to bring the news of a great national victory, instead of Marcus Cato, who was the chief senator at the time? Well then, do you also believe that the mark in the rock resembling a hoof-print, to be seen at the present day on the shore of Lake Regillus, was made by Castor’s horse? [12] Would you not prefer to believe the perfectly credible doctrine that the souls of famous men, like the sons of Tyndareus you speak of, are divine and live for ever, rather than that men who had been once for all burnt on a funeral pyre were able to ride on horseback and fight in a battle? Or if you maintain that this was possible, then you have got to explain how it was possible, and not merely bring forth old wives’ tales.”

[13] “Do you really think them old wives’ tales?” rejoined Lucilius. “Are you not aware of the temple in the forum dedicated to Castor and Pollux by Aulus Postumius, or of the resolution of the senate concerning Vatinius? As for the Sagra, the Greeks actually have a proverbial saying about it: when they make an assertion they say that it is ‘more certain than the affair on the Sagra.’ Surely their authority must carry weight with you?”

“AH, Balbus,” replied Cotta, “you combat me with hearsay for your weapon, but what I ask of you is proof… .”¹¹³

Chapter VI

[14] ”; the events that are going to happen follow; for no one can escape what is going to happen. But often it is not even an advantage to know what is going to happen; for it is miserable to suffer unavailing torments, and to lack even the last, yet universal, consolation of hope, especially when your school also asserts that all events are fated, fate meaning that which has always from all eternity been true: what good is it therefore to know that something is going to happen, or how does it help us to avoid it, when it certainly will happen? Moreover whence was your art of divination derived? Who found out the cleft in the liver? Who took note of the raven’s croaking, or the way in which the lots fall? Not that I don’t believe in these things, or care to scoff at Attus Navius’s crosier of which you were speaking;¹¹⁴ but how did these modes of divination come to be understood? this is what the philosophers must teach me, especially as your diviners tell such a pack of lies. [15] ‘Well, but physicians also are often wrong’ — this was your argument.¹¹⁵ But what resemblance is there between medicine, whose rational basis I can see, and divination, the source of which I cannot understand? Again, you think that the gods were actually propitiated by the sacrifice of the Decii. But how can the gods have been so unjust that their wrath against the Roman people could only be appeased by the death of heroes like the Decii? No, the sacrifice of the Decii was a device of general­ship, or stratēgēma as it is termed in Greek, though a device for generals who were ready to give their lives in their country’s service; their notion was that if a commander rode full gallop against the foe his troops would follow him, and so it proved. As for the utterances of a Faun,¹¹⁶ I never heard one, but if you say you have, I will take your word for it, although what on earth a Faun may be I do not know.

Chapter VII

As yet therefore, Balbus, so far as it depends on you I do not understand the divine existence; I believe in it, but the Stoics do not in the least explain it.

[16] “As for Cleanthes, his view is, as you were telling us, that ideas of the gods are formed in men’s minds in four ways. One of these ways I have sufficiently discussed, the one derived from our foreknowledge of future events; the second is based on meteorological disturbances and the other changes of the weather; the third on the utility and abundance of the commodities which are at our disposal; and the fourth on the orderly movements of the stars and the regularity of the heavens. About foreknowledge we have spoken. As meteorological disturbances by land and sea, we cannot deny that there are many people who are afraid of these occurrences and think them to be caused by the immortal gods; [17] but the question is not, are there any people who think that the gods exist, — the question is, do the gods exist or do they not? As for the remaining reasons adduced by Cleanthes, the one derived from the abundance of the commodities bestowed upon us, and the other from the ordered sequence of the seasons and the regularity of the heavens, we will treat of these when we come to discuss divine providence, about which you, Balbus, said a great deal; [18] and we defer to the same time the argument which you attributed to Chrysippus, that since there exists something in the universe which could not be created by man, some being must exist of a higher order than man; as also your comparison of the beautiful furniture in a house with the beauty of the world, and your reference to the harmony and common purpose of the whole world; and Zeno’s terse and pointed little syllogisms we will postpone to that part of my discourse which I have just mentioned; and at the same time all your arguments of a scientific nature about the fiery force and heat which you alleged to be the universal source of generation shall be examined in their place; and all that you said the day before yesterday, when attempting to prove the divine existence, to show that both the world as a whole and the sun and moon and stars possess sensation and intelligence, I will keep for the same occasion. [19] But the question I shall have to ask you over and over again, as before, is this: what are your reasons for believing that the gods exist?”

Chapter VIII

“Why,” replied Balbus, “I really think I have produced my reasons, but so far from your refuting them, every time when you seem to be on the point of subjecting me to an examination and I get ready to reply, you suddenly switch off the discussion, and do not give me an opportunity of answering. And so matters of the first importance have passed without remark — such as conversation, and fate, subjects which you dismiss very briefly, whereas our school is accustomed to say a great deal about them, though they are quite distinct from the topic with which we are now dealing. Please therefore adopt an orderly mode of procedure, and in this debate let us clear up this question that is now before us.”

[20] “By all means,” said Cotta; “and accordingly, as you divided the whole subject into four parts, and we have spoken about the first part, let us consider the second. It seems to me to have amounted to this: you intended to show what the gods are like, but you actually showed them to be non-existent. For you said that it is very difficult to divert the mind from its association with the eyes; yet you did not hesitate to argue that, since nothing is more excellent than god, the world must be god, because there is nothing in the universe superior to the world. Yes, if we could but imagine the world to be alive, or rather, if we could but discern this truth with our minds exactly as we see external objects with our eyes! [21] But when you say that nothing is superior to the world, what do you mean by superior? If you mean more beautiful, I agree; if more suited to our convenience, I agree to that too; but if what you mean is that nothing is wiser than the world, I entirely and absolutely disagree; not because it is difficult to divorce the mind from the eyes, but because the more I do so, the less my mind success in grasping your meaning.

Chapter IX

‘There is nothing in the universe superior to the world.’ No more is there anything on earth superior to our city; but you do not therefore think that our possesses a reasoning, thinking mind? or, because it does not, you do not therefore consider, do you, that an ant is to be rated more highly than this supremely beautiful city, on the ground that a city does not possess sensation whereas an ant has not only sensation, but also a mind that reasons and remembers? You ought to see what you can get your opponent to admit, Balbus, not take for granted anything you like. [22] The whole of this topic of yours was expanded¹¹⁷ tersely, and as you thought effectively, by the famous old syllogism of Zeno. Zeno puts the argument thus: ‘That which is rational is superior to that which is not rational; but nothing is superior to the world; therefore the world is rational.’ [23] If you accept this conclusion, you will go on to prove that the world is perfectly able to read a book; for following in Zeno’s footsteps you will be able to construct a syllogism as follows: ‘That which is literate is superior to that which is illiterate; but nothing is superior to the world; therefore the world is literate.’ By this mode of reasoning the world will also be an orator, and even a mathematician, a musician, and in fact an expert in every branch of learning, in fine a philosopher. You kept repeating that the world is the sole source of all created things, and that nature’s capacity does not include the power to create things unlike herself: am I to admit that the world is not only a living being, and wise, but also a harper and a flute-player, because it gives birth also to men skilled in these arts? Well then, your father of the Stoic school really adduces no reason why we should think that the world is rational, or even alive. Therefore the world is not god; and nevertheless there is nothing superior to the world, for there is nothing more beautiful than it, nothing more conducive to our health, nothing more ornate to the view, or more regular in motion.

“And if the world as a whole isn’t god, neither are the stars, which in all are countless numbers you wanted to reckon as gods, enlarging with delight upon their uniform and everlasting movements, and I protest with good reason, for they display a marvellous and extraordinary regularity. [24] But not all things, Balbus, that have fixed and regular courses are to be accredited to a god rather than to nature.

Chapter X

What occurrence do you think could possibly be more regular than the repeated alternation of flow in the Euripus at Chalcis? or in the Straits of Messina? or than the eddying ocean-currents in the region where

Europe and Libya by the hurrying wave
Are sundered?

Cannot the tides on the coasts of Spain or Britain ebb be flow at fixed intervals of time without a god’s intervention? Why, if all motions and all occurrences that preserve a constant periodic regularity are declared to be divine, pray shall we not be obliged to say that tertian and quartan agues are divine too, for nothing can be more regular than the process of their recurrence? But all such phenomena call for a rational explanation; [25] and in your inability to give such an explanation you fly for refuge to a god.

“Also you admired the cleverness of an argument of Chrysippus, who was undoubtedly an adroit and hardy¹¹⁸ thinker (I apply the adjective ‘adroit’ to persons of nimble wit, and ‘hardy’ to those whose minds have grown hard with use as the hand is hardened by work); well, Chrysippus argues thus: ‘If anything exists that man is not capable of creating, he that creates that thing is superior to man; but man is not capable of creating the objects that we see in the world; therefore he that with capable of so doing surpasses man; but who could surpass man save god? therefore god exists.’ The whole of this is involved in the same mistake as the argument of Zeno; [26] no definition is given of the meaning of ‘superior’ and ‘more excellent,’ or of the distinction between nature and reason. Chrysippus furthermore declares that, if there be no gods, the natural universe contains nothing superior to man; but for any man to think that there is nothing superior to man he deems to be the height of arrogance. Let us grant that it is a mark of arrogance to value oneself more highly than the world; but not merely is it not a mark of arrogance, rather is it a mark of wisdom, to realize that one is a conscious and rational being, and that Orion and Canicula are not. Again, he says ‘If we saw a handsome mansion, we should infer that it was built for its masters and not for mice; so therefore we must deem the world to be the mansion of the gods.’ Assuredly I should so deem it if I thought it had been built like a house, and not constructed by nature, as I shall show that it was.¹¹⁹

Chapter XI

[27] “But then you tell me that Socrates in Xenophon asks the question, if the world contains no rational soul, where did we pick up ours?¹²⁰ And I too ask the question, where did we get the faculty of speech, the knowledge of numbers, the art of music? unless indeed we suppose that the sun holds conversation with the moon when their courses approximate, or that the world makes a harmonious music,¹²¹ as Pythagoras believes. These faculties, Balbus, the gifts of nature — not nature ‘walking in craftsmanlike manner’ as Zeno¹²² says (and what this means we will consider in a moment), but nature by its own motions and mutations imparting motion and activity to all things. [28] And so I fully agreed with the part of your discourse¹²³ that dealt with nature’s punctual regularity, and what you termed its concordant interconnexion and correlation; but I could not accept your assertion that this could not have come about were it not held together by a single divine breath. On the contrary, the system’s coherence and persistence is due to nature’s forces and not to drive power; she does possess that ‘concord’ (the Greek term is sympatheia) of which you spoke, but the greater this is as a spontaneous growth, the less possible is it to suppose that it was created by divine reason.

Chapter XII

[29] “Then, how does your school refute the following arguments of Carneades? If no body is not liable to death, no body can be everlasting; but no body is not liable to death, nor even indiscerptible nor incapable of decomposition and dissolution. And every living thing is by its nature capable of feeling; therefore there is no living thing that can escape unavoidable liability to undergo impressions from without, that is to suffer and to feel; and if every living thing is liable to suffering, no living thing is not liable to death. Therefore likewise, if every living thing can be cut up into parts, no living thing is indivisible, and none is everlasting. But every living thing is so constructed as to be liable to undergo and to suffer violence from without; it therefore follows that every living thing is liable to death and dissolution, and is divisible. [30] For just as, if all wax were capable of change, nothing made of wax would be incapable of change, and likewise nothing made of silver or bronze if silver and bronze were substances capable of change, therefore similarly, if all the elements of which all things are composed are liable to change, there can be no body not liable to change; but the elements of which, according to your school, all things are composed are liable to change; therefore every body is liable to change. But if any body were not liable to death, then not every body would be liable to change. Hence incessant follows that every body is liable to death. In fact every body consists of either water or air or fierce or earth, or of a combination of these elements or some of them; but none of these lets is exempt from destruction; [31] for everything of an earthy nature is divisible, and also liquid substance is soft and therefore easily crushed and broken up, while fire and air are by readily impelled by impacts of all kinds, and are of a consistency that is extremely yielding and easily dissipated; and besides, all these elements perish when they undergo transmutation, which occurs when earth turns into water, and when from water arises air, and from air aether, and when alternately the same processes are reversed; but if those elements of which every living thing consists can perish, no living thing is everlasting.

Chapter XIII

[32] And, to drop this line of argument, nevertheless no living thing can be found which either was never born or will live for ever. For every living thing has sensation; therefore it perceives both heat and cold, both sweetness and sourness — it cannot through any of the senses receive pleasant sensations and not receive their opposites; if therefore it is capable of feeling pleasure, it is also capable of feeling pain; but a being which can experience pleasure mt necessity also be liable to destruction; therefore it must be admitted that every living thing is liable to death. [33] Besides, if there be anything that cannot feel either pleasure or pain, this cannot be a living thing, and if on the other hand anything is alive, this must necessarily feel pleasure and pain; and that which feels pleasure and pain cannot be everlasting; and every living thing feels them; therefore no living thing is everlasting. Besides, there can be no living thing which does not possess natural instincts of appetition and avoidance; but the objects of appetition are the things which are in accordance with nature, and the objects of avoidance are the contrary; ne v living thing seeks certain things and flees from certain things, but that which it flees from is contrary to nature, and that which is contrary to nature has the power of destruction; therefore every living thing must of necessity perish. [34] There are proofs too numerous to count by which it can be irrefragably established that there is nothing possessed of sensation that does not perish; in fact the actual objects of sensation, such as cold and heat, pleasure and pain, and the rest, when felt in an intense degree cause destruction; nor is any living thing devoid of sensation; therefore no living thing is everlasting.

Chapter XIV

For every living thing must either be of a simple substance, and composed of either earth or fire or breath or moisture — and such an animal is inconceivable —, or else of a substance compounded of several elements, each having its own place towards which it travels by natural inclination, one to the bottom, another to the top and another to the middle; such elements can cohere for a certain time, but cannot possibly do so for ever, for each must of necessity be borne away by nature to its own place; therefore no living thing is everlasting.

[35] “But your school, Balbus, is wont to trace all things back to an elemental force of a fiery nature, herein as I believe following Heraclitus,¹²⁴ although all do not interpret the master in one way; however, as he did not wish his meaning to be understood,¹²⁵ let us leave him out; but your doctrine is that all force is of the nature of fire, and that because of this animal creatures perish when their heat fails and also in every realm of nature a thing is alive and vigorous if it is warm. But I for my part do not understand how organisms should perish if their heat is quenched without perishing if deprived of moisture or air, especially as they also perish from excessive heat; [36] therefore what you say about heat applies also to the other elements. However, let us see what follows. Your view, I believe, is that there is no animate being contained within the whole universe of nature except fire. Why fire any more than air (anima), of which also the soul (animus) of animate beings consists, from which the term ‘animate’ is derived? On what ground moreover do you take it for granted that there is no soul except fire? It seems more reasonable to hold that soul is of a composite nature, and consists of fire and ai are combined. However, if fire is animate in and by itself, without the admixture of any other element, it is the presence of fire in our bodies that causes us to possess sensation, and therefore fire itself cannot be devoid of sensation. Here we can repeat the argument employed before;¹²⁶ whatever has sensation must necessarily feel both pleasure and pain, but he who is liable to pain must also be liable to destruction; from this it follows that you are unable to prove fire also to be everlasting. [37] Moreover, do you not also hold that all fire requires fuel, and cannot possibly endure unless it is fed? and that the sun, moon and other heavenly bodies draw sustenance in some cases from bodies of fresh water and in other cases from the sea? This is the reason given by Cleanthes to explain why

The sun turns back, nor farther doth proceed
Upon his summer curve,¹²⁷

and upon his winter one likewise; it is that he may not travel too far away from his food. We will defer consideration of the whole of this subject; for the present let us end with the following syllogism: That which can perish cannot be an eternal substance; but fire will perish if it is not fed; therefore fire is not an eternal substance.

Chapter XV

[38] “But what can we make of a god not endowed with any virtue? Well, are we to assign to god prudence, which consists in the knowledge of things good, things evil, and things neither good nor evil? to a being who experiences and can experience nothing evil, what need is there of the power to choose between things good and evil? Or of reason, or of intelligence? these faculties we employ for the purpose of proceeding from the known to the obscure; but nothing can be obscure to god. Then justice, which assigns to each his own — what has this to do with the gods? justice, as you tell us, is the offspring of human society and of the commonwealth of man. And temperance consists in forgoing bodily pleasures; so if there is room for topic in heaven, there is also room for pleasure. As for courage, how can god be conceived as brave? in enduring pain? or toil? or danger? to none of these is god liable. [39] God then is neither rational nor possessed of any of the virtues: but such a god is inconceivable!¹²⁸

“In fact, when I reflect upon the utterances of the Stoics, I cannot despise the stupidity of the vulgar and the ignorant. With the ignorant you get superstitions like the Syrians’ worship of a fish,¹²⁹ and the Egyptian’s deification of almost every species of animal; nay, even in Greece they worship a number of deified human beings, Alabandus at Alabanda, Tennes at Tenedos, Leucothea, formerly Ino, and her son Palaemon throughout the whole of Greece, as also Hercules, Aesculapius, the sons of Tyndareus; and with our own people Romulus and many others, who are believed to have been admitted to celestial citizen­ship in recent times, by a sort of extension of the franchise!

Chapter XVI

[40] Well, those are the superstitions of the unlearned; but what of you philosophers? how are your dogmas any better? I pass over the rest of them, for they are remarkable indeed! but take it as true that the world is itself god — for this, I suppose, is the meaning of the line

Yon dazzling vault of heaven, which all mankind
As Jove invoke.

Why then are we to add a number of other gods as well? And what a crowd of them there is! At least there seems to me to be a great lot of them; for you reckon each of the stars a god, and either call them by the names of animals such as She-goat, Scorpion, Bull, Lion, or of inanimate things such as the Argo, the Altar, the Crown. [41] But allowing these, how pray can one possibly, I do not say allow, but make head or tail of the remainder? when we speak of cornº as Ceres and wine as Liber, we employ a familiar figure of speech, but do you suppose that anybody can be so insane as to believe that the food he eats is a god? As for the cases you allege of men who have risen to the status of divinity, you shall explain, and I shall be glad to learn, how this apotheosis was possible, or why it has ceased to take place now. As at present informed, I do not see how the hero to whose body

On Oeta’s mount the torches were applied,

as Accius has it, can have passed from that burning pyre to

The everlasting mansions of his Sire —,

in spite of the fact that Homer¹³⁰ represents Ulysses as meeting him, among the rest of those who had departed this life, in the world below!

[42] Nevertheless I should like to know what particular Hercules it is that we worship; for we are told of several by the students of esoteric and recondite writings, the most ancient being the son of Jupiter, that is of the most ancient Jupiter likewise, for we find several Jupiters also in the early writings of the Greeks. That Jupiter then and Lysithoë were the parents of the Hercules who is recorded to have had a tussle with Apollo about a tripod! We hear of another in Egypt, a son of the Nile, who is said to have compiled the sacred books of Phrygia. A third comes from the Digiti of Mount Ida, who offer sacrifices at his tomb. A fourth is the son of Jupiter and Asteria, the sister of Latona; he is chiefly worshipped at Tyre, and is said to have been the father of the nymph Carthago. There is a fifth in India, named Belus. The sixth is our friend the son of Alcmena, whose male progenitor was Jupiter, that is Jupiter number three, since, as I will now explain, tradition tells us of several Jupiters also.¹³¹

Chapter XVII

[43] “For as my discourse has led me to this topic, I will show that I have learnt more about the proper way of worshipping the gods, according to pontifical law and the customs of our ancestors, from the poor little pots bequeathed to us by Numa, which Laelius discusses in that dear little golden speech¹³² of his, than from the theories of the Stoics. For if I adopt your doctrines, tell me what answer I am to make to one who questions me thus: ‘If gods exist, are the nymphs also goddesses? if the nymphs are, the Pans and Satyrs also are gods; but they are not gods; therefore the nymphs also are not. Yet they possess temples viewed and dedicated to them by the nation; are the other gods also therefore who have hadded temples dedicated to them not gods either? Come tell me further: you reckon Jupiter and Neptune gods, therefore their brother orcus is also a god; and the fabled streams of the lower world, Acheron, Cocytus and Pyriphlegethon, and also Charon and also Cerberus are to be deemed gods. [44] No, you say, we must draw the line at that; well then, orcus is not a god either; what are you to say about his brothers then?’ These arguments were advanced by Carneades, not with the object of establishing atheism (for what could less befit a philosopher?) but in order to prove the Stoic theology worthless; accordingly he used to pursue his inquiry thus: ‘Well now,’ he would say, ‘if these brothers are included among the gods, can we deny the divinity of their father Saturation, who is held in the highest reverence by the common people in the west? And if he is a god, we must also admit that his father Caelus is a god. And if so, the parents of Caelus, the Aether and the Day, must be held to be gods, and their brothers and sisters, whom the ancient genealogists name Love, Guile, Dear, Toil, Envy, Fate, Old Age, Death, Darkness, Misery, Lamentation, Favour, Fraud, Obstinacy, the Parcae, the Daughters of Hesperus, the Dreams: all of these are fabled to be the children of erebus and Night.’ Either therefore you must accept these monstrosities or you must discard the first claimants also.

Chapter XVIII

[45] Again, if you call Apollo, Vulcan, Mercury and the rest gods, will you have doubts about Hercules, Aesculapius, Liber, Castor and Pollux? But these are worshipped just as much as those, and indeed in some places very much more than they. Are we then to deem these gods, the sons of mortal mothers? Well then, will not Aristaeus, the reputed discoverer of the olive, who was the son of Apollo, Theseus the son of Neptune, and all the other sons of gods, also be reckoned as gods? What about the sons of goddesses? I think they have an even better claim; for just as by the civil law one whose mother is a freewoman is a Freeman, so by the law of nature one whose mother is a goddess must be a god. And in the island of Astypalaea Achilles is most devoutly worshipped by the inhabitants on these grounds; but if Achilles is a god, so are Orpheus and Rhesus, whose mother was a Muse, unless perhaps a marriage at the bottom of the sea counts higher than a marriage on dry land! If these are not gods, because they are nowhere worshipped, how can the others be gods? [46] Is not the explanation this, that divine honours are paid to men’s virtues, not to their immortality? as you too, Balbus, appeared to indicate. Then, if you think Latona a goddess, how can you not think that Hecate is one, who is the daughter of Latona’s sister Asteria? Is Hecate a goddess too? we have seen altars and shrines belonging to her in Greece. But if Hecate is a goddess, why are not the Eumenides? and if they are goddesses, — and they have a temple at Athens, and the Grove ofurina at Rome, if I interpret that name aright, also belongs to them, — then the Furies are goddesses, presumably in their capacity of detectors and avengerss of crime and wickedness. [47] And if it is the nature of the gods to intervene in man’s affairs, the Birth-Spirit also must be deemed divine, to whom it is our custom to offer sacrifice when we make the round of the shrines in the Territory of Ardea:¹³³ she is named Natio from the word for being born (nasci), because she is believed to watch over married women in travail. If she is divine, so are all those abstractions that you mentioned, Honour, Faith, Intellect, Concord, and therefore also ’)” onMouseOut=“nd();“>Hope, the Spirit of Money and all the possible creations of our own imagination. If this supposition is unlikely, so also is the former one, from which all these instances flow.

Chapter XIX

Then, if the traditional gods whom we worship are really divine, what reason can you give why we should not include Isis and Osiris in the same category? And if we do so, why should we repudiate the gods of the barbarians? We shall therefore have to admit to the list of gods oxen and horses, ibises, hawks, asps, crocodiles, fishes, dogs, wolves, cats and many beasts besides. Or if we reject these, we shall also reject those others from whom their claim springs. [48] What next? If Ino is to be deemed divine, under the title of Leucothea in Greece and Matuta at Rome, because she is the daughter of Cadmus, are Circe and Pasiphaë and Aeetes, the children of Perseis the daughter of Oceanus by the Sun, to be not counted in the list of gods? in spite of the fact that Circe too¹³⁴ is devoutly worshipped at the Roman colony of Circei. If you therefore deem her divine, what answer will you give to Medea, who, as her father was Aeetes and her mother Idyia, had as her two grandfathers the Sun and Oceanus? or to her brother Absyrtus (who appears in Pacuvius as Aegialeus, though the former name is commoner in ancient literature)? if these are not divine, I have my fears as to what will become of Ino, for the claims of all of them derive from the same source. [49] Or if we allow Ino, are we going to make Amphiaraus and Trophonius divine? The Roman tax-farmers, finding that lands in Boeotia belonging to the immortal gods were exempted by the censor’s regulations, used to maintain that nobody was immortal who had once upon a time been a human being. But if these are divine, so undoubtedly is Erechtheus, whose shrine and whose priest also we saw when at Athens. And if we make him out to be divine, what doubts can we feel about Codrus or any other persons who fell fighting for their country’s freedom? if we stick at this, we must reject the earlier cases too, from which these follow. [50] Also it is easy to see that in most states the memory of brave men has been sanctified with divine honours for the purpose of promoting valour, to make the best men more willing to encounter danger for their country’s sake. This is the reason why Erechtheus and his daughters have been deified at Athens, and likewise there is the Leonatic¹³⁵ shrine at Athens, which is named Leōcorion. The people of Alabanda indeed worship Alabandus, the founder of that city, more devoutly than any of the famous deities. And it was there that Stratonicus uttered one of his many witty sayings; some person obnoxious to him swore that Alabandus was divine and Hercules was not: ‘Well and good,’ said Stratonicus; let the wrath of Alabandus fall on me and that of Hercules on you.‘

Chapter XX

[51] As for your deriving religion from the sky and stars, do you not see what a long way this takes you? You say that the sun and moon are deities, and the Greeks identify the former with Apollo and the latter with Diana. But if the Moon is a goddess, then Lucifer also and the rest of the planets will have to be counted gods; and if so, then the fixed stars as well. But why should not the glorious Rainbow be included among the gods? it is beautiful enough, and its marvellous loveliness has given rise the time of legend that Iris is the daughter of Thaumas.¹³⁶ And if the rainbow is a divinity, what will you do about the clouds? The rainbow itself is caused by some colroation of the clouds; and also a cloud is fabled to have given birth to the Centaurs. But if you enroll the clouds among the gods, you will undoubtedly have to enroll the seasons, which have been deified in the national ritual of Rome. If so, then rain and tempest, storm and whirlwind must be deemed divine. At any rate it has been the custom of our generals when embarking on a sea-voyage to sacrifice a victim to the waves. [52] Again, if the name of Ceres is derived from her bearing fruit, as you said,¹³⁷ the earth itself is a goddess (and so she is believed to be, for she is the same as the deity Tellus). But if the earth is divine, so also is the sea, which you identified with Neptune;¹³⁸ and therefore the rivers and springs too. This is borne out by the facts that Maso dedicated a Temple of Fons out of his Corsican spoils, and that the Augur’s litany includes as we may see the names of Tiberinus, Spino, almo, Nodinus, and other rivers in the neighbourhood of Rome. Either therefore this process will go on indefinitely, or we shall admit none of these; nts unlimited claim of superstition will not be accepted; therefore none of these is to be accepted.

Chapter XXI

[53] “Accordingly,¹³⁹ Balbus, we also ought to refute the theory that these gods, who are deified human beings, and who are the objects of our most devout and universal veneration, exist not in reality but in imagination … In the first place, the so-called theologians enumerate three Jupiters, of whom the first and second were born, they say, in Arcadia, the father of one being Aether, who is also fabled to be the progenitor of Proserpine and Liber, and of the other Caelus, and this one is said to have begotten Minerva, the fabled patroness and originator of warfare; the third is the Cretan Jove, son of Saturn; his tomb is shown in that island. The Dioscuri also have a number of titles in Greece. The first set, called Anaces at Athens, the sons of the very ancient King Jupiter and Proserpine, are Tritopatreus, Eubuleus and Dionysus. The second set, the sons of the third Jove and Leda, are Castor and Pollux. The third are named by some people Alco, Melampus and Tmolus, and are the sons of Atreus the son of Pelops. [54] Again, the first set of Muses are four, the daughters of the second Jupiter, Thelxinoë, Aoede, Arche and Melete; the second set are the offspring of the third Jupiter and Mnemosyne, nine in number; the third set are the daughters of Pierus and Antiope, and are usually called by the poets the Pierides or Pierian Maidens; they are the same in number and have the same names as the next preceding set. The sun’s name Sol you derive¹⁴⁰ from his being sole of his kind, but the theologians produce a number even of Suns! One is the son of Jove and grandson of Aether; another is the son of Hyperion; the third of Vulcan the son of Nile — this is the one who the Egyptians say is lord of the city named Heliopolis; the fourth is the one to whom Acanthe is said to have given birth at Rhodes in the heroic age, the father of Ialysus, Camirus, Lindus and Rhodus; the fifth is the one said to have begotten Aeetes and Circe at Colchi.

Chapter XXII

[55] There are also several Vulcans; the first, the son of the Sky, was reputed the father by Minerva of the Apollo said by the ancient historians to be the tutelary deity of Athens; the second, the son of Nile, is named by the Egyptians Phthas, and is deemed the guardian of Egypt; the third is the son of the third Jupiter and of Juno, and is fabled to have been taskmaster of a smithy at Lemnos; the fourth is the son of Memalius, and lord of the islands near Sicily which used to be named the Isles of Vulcan.¹⁴¹ [56] One Mercury has the Sky for father and the Day for mother; he is represented in a state of sexual excitation traditionally said to be due to passion inspired by the sight of Proserpine. Another is the son of Valens and Phoronis; this is the subterranean Mercury identified with Trophonius. The third, the son of the third Jove and of Maia, the legends make the father of Pan by Penelope. The fourth has Nile for father; the Egyptians deem it sinful to pronounce his name. The fifth, worshipped by the people of Pheneus, is said to have killed argus and consequently to have fled in exile to Egypt, where he gave the Egyptians their laws and letters. His Egyptian name is Theuth, which is also the name in the Egyptian calendar for the first month of year. [57] Of the various Aesculapii the first is the son of Apollo, and is worshipped by the Arcadians; he is reputed to have invented the probe and to have been the first surgeon to employ splints. The second is the brother of the second Mercury; he is said to have been struck by lightning and buried at Cynosura. The third is the son of Arsippus and Arsinoë, and is said to have first invented the use of purges and the extraction of teeth; his tomb and grove are shown in Arcadia, not far from the river Lusius.

Chapter XXIII

The most ancient of the Apollos is the one whom I stated just before to be the son of Vulcan and the guardian of Athens. The second is the son of Corybas, and was born in Crete; tradition says that he fought with Jupiter himself for the possession of that island. The third is the son of the third Jupiter and of Latona, and is reputed to have come to Delphi from the Hyperboreans. The fourth belongs to Arcadia, and is called by the Arcadians Nomios, as being their traditional lawgiver. [58] Likewise there are several Dianas. The first, daughter of Jupiter and Proserpine, is said to have given birth to the winged Cupid. The second is more celebrated; tradition makes her the daughter of the third Jupiter and of Latona. The father of the third is recorded to have been Upis, and her mother Glauce; the Greeks often call her by her father’s name of Upis. We have a number of Dionysi. The first is the son of Jupiter and Proserpine; the second of Nile — he is the fabled slayer of Nysa. The father of the third is Cabirus; it is stated that he was king over Asia, and the Sabazia were instituted in his honour. The fourth is the son of Jupiter and Luna; the Orphic rites are believed to be celebrated in his honour. The fifth is the son of Nisus and Thyone, and is believed to have established the Trieterid festival. [59] The first Venus is the daughter of the Sky and the Day; I have seen her temple at Elis. The second was engendered from the sea-foam, and as we are told became the mother by Mercury of the second Cupid. The third is the daughter of Jupiter and Dione, who wedded Vulcan, but who is said to have been the mother of Anteros by Mars. The fourth was conceived of Syria and Cyprus,¹⁴² and is called Astarte; it is recorded that she married Adonis. The first Minerva is the one whom we mentioned above as the mother of Apollo. The second sprang from the Nile, and is worshipped by the Egyptians of Sais. The third is she whom we mentioned above as begotten by Jupiter. The fourth is the daughter of Jupiter and Coryphe the daughter of Oceanus, and is called Koria by the Arcadians, who say that she was the inventor of the four-horse chariot. The fifth is Pallas, who is said to have slain her father when he attempted to violate her maidenhood; she is represented with wings attached to her ankles. [60] The first Cupid is said to be the son of Mercury and the first Diana, the second of Mercury and the second Venus, and the third, who is the same as Anteros, of Mars and the third Venus.

“These and other similar fables have been culled from the ancient traditions of Greece; you are aware that we ought to combat them, so that religion may not be undermined. Your school however not merely do not refute them, but actually confirm them by interpreting their respective meanings. But let us now return to the point from which we digressed to this topic.

Chapter XXIV

[61]¹⁴³ ”… Do you then think that any more subtle argument is needed to refute these notions? Intelligence, faith, hope, virtue, honour, victory, safety, concord and the other things of this nature obviously abstractions, not personal deities. For they are either properties inherent in ourselves, for instance intelligence, hope, faith, virtue, concord, or objects of our desire, for instance honour, safety, victory. I see that they have value, and I am also aware that statues are dedicated to them; but why they should be held to possess divinity is a thing that I cannot understand without further enlightenment. Fortune has a very strong claim to be counted in this list, and nobody will dissociate fortune from inconstancy and haphazard action, which are certainly unworthy of a deity.

[62] “Again, why are so fond of those allegorizing and etymological methods of explaining the mythology? The mutilation of Caelus by his son, and likewise the imprisonment of Saturn by his, these and similar figments you rationalize so effectively as to make out their authors to have been not only not idiots, but actually philosophers. But as for your strained etymologies, one can only pity your misplaced ingenuity! Saturnus is so called because he is ‘sated with years,’¹⁴⁴ Mavors because he ‘suberts the great,’ Minerva because she ‘minishes,’ or because she is ‘minatory,’ Venus because she ‘visits’ all things, Ceres from gero ‘to bear.’ What a dangerous practice! with a great many names you will be in difficulties. What will you make of Vejovis, or Vulcan? though since you think the name Neptune comes from nare ‘to swim,’ there will be no name of which you could not make the derivation clear by altering one letter:¹⁴⁵ in this matter you seem to me to be more at sea than Neptune himself! [63] A great deal of quite unnecessary trouble was taken first by Zeno, then by Cleanthes and lastly by Chrysippus, to rationalize these purely fanci­ful myths and explain the reasons for the names by which the various deities are called. But in so doing you clearly admit that the facts are widely different from men’s belief, since the so-called gods are really properties of things, not divine persons at all.

Chapter XXV

So far did this sort of error go, that even harmful things were not only given the names of gods but actually had forms of worship instituted in their honour: witness the temple to Fever on the Palatine, that of Orbona the goddess of bereavement close to the shrine of the Lares, and the altar consecrated to Misfortune on the Esquiline. [64] Let us therefore banish from philosophy entirely the error of making assertions in discussing the immortal gods that are derogatory to their dignity: a subject on which I know what views to hold myself, but do not know how to agree to your views. You say that Neptune is the rational soul that pervades the sea; and similarly for Ceres; but your notion of the sea or the land possessing a rational intelligence is not merely something that I cannot fully understand, but I have not the slightest inkling what it means. Accordingly I must seek elsewhere for instruction both as to the existence and as to the nature of the gods; as for your account of them <perhaps it may be impossible. [65] Now > let us consider the next topics — first whether the world is ruled by divine providence, and then whether the gods have regard for the affairs of mankind. For these are the two that I have left of the heads into which you divided the subject; and if you gentlemen approve, I feel that they require a somewhat detailed discussion.”

“For my part,” said Velleius, “I approve entirely, for I anticipate something more important still to come, and I also strongly agree with what has been said already.”

‘I do not want to interrupt you with questions,” added Balbus, “we will take another time for that: I warrant I will bring you to agree. But …¹⁴⁶

… . .

Nay, ‘twill not be; a struggle is in store,
What, should I fawn on him and speak him fair,
Save for my purpose —¹⁴⁷

Chapter XXVI

[66] Is there any lack of reasoning here, think you, and is she not plotting dire disaster for herself? Again, how cleverly reasoned is the saying:

For him that wills that which he wills, the event
Shall be as he shall make it!¹⁴⁸

Yet this verse contains the seeds of every kind of mischief.

He with misguided ind
This day hath put the keys into my hand
Wherewith I will unlock my utmost wrath
And work his ruin; grief shall be my portion
And sorrow his; mine exile, his extinction.¹⁴⁹

This gift of reason forsooth, which according to your school divine beneficence has bestowed on man alone, the beasts do not possess; [67] do you see then how great a boon the gods have vouchsafed to us? And Medea likewise, when flying from her father and her fatherland,

when her sire drew near,
And now was all but in the act to seize her,
Her boy she did behead, and joint by joint
Severed his limbs, and all about the fields
His body strewed: the same with this intent,
That, while her father strove to gather up
Her son’s dismember’d members, in the meantime
She might herself escape, so that his grief
Should hinder his pursuit, and she win safety
By most unnatural murder of her kin.¹⁵⁰

[68] Medea was criminal, but also she was perfectly rational. Again, does not the hero plotting the direful banquet for his brother turn the design this way and that in his thoughts?

More must I moil and bigger bale must brew,
Whereby to quell and crush his cruel heart.¹⁵¹

Chapter XXVII

Nor must we pass over Thyestes himself, who

Was not content to tempt my wife to sin —

an offence of which Atreus speaks correctly and with perfect truth —

the which I deem the height of peril
In matters of high state, if royal mothers
Shall be debauched, the royal blood corrupted,
The lineage mixed.

But how craftily this very crime is plotted by his brother, employing adultery as a means to gain the throne:

Thereto withal (says Atreus) the heavenly sire did send me
A warning portent, to confirm my reign —
A lamb, conspicuous among the flock
With fleece of gold, Thyestes once did dare
To steal from out my palace, and in this deed
My consort did suborn as his accomplice.

[69] Do you see that Thyestes, while acting with extreme wickedness, displayed complete rationality as well? And not only does the stage teem with crimes of this sort, but ordinary life even more so, and with almost worse crimes. Our private homes; the law-courts, the senate, the hustings; our allies, our provinces — all have cause to know that just as right actions may be guided by reason, so also may wrong ones, and that whereas few men do the former, and on rare occasions, so very many do the latter, and frequently; so that it would have been better if the immortal gods had not bestowed upon us any reasoning faculty at all than that they should have bestowed it with such mischievous results. Wine is seldom beneficial and very often harmful to the sick, and therefore it is better not to give it to them at all than to run a certain risk of injury in the doubtful hope of a cure; similarly it would perhaps have been better if that nimbleness and penetration and cleverness of thought which we term ‘reason,’ being as it is disastrous to many and wholesome to but few, had never been given to the human race at all, than that it would have been given in such bounteous abundance. [70] If therefore the divine intelligence and will displayed care for men’s welfare because it bestowed upon them reason, it cared for welfare of those only to whom it gave virtuous reason, whom we see to be very few, if not entirely non-existent. We cannot, however, suppose that the immortal gods have cared for only a few; it follows therefore that they have cared for none.

Chapter XXVIII

“This line of argument is usually met by your school thus: it does not follow, you say, that the gods have not made the best provision for us because many men employ their bounty wrongly; many men make bad use of their inheritances, but this does not prove that they have received no benefit from their fathers. Does anybody deny this? and where is the analogy in your comparison? When Deianira gave Hercules the shirt soaked in the Centaur’s blood, she did not intend to injure him. when the soldier with a stroke of his sword opened Jason of Pherae’s tumour which the physicians had failed to cure, he did not intend to do him good.¹⁵² Plenty of people have done good when they intended to do harm and harm when they intended to do good. The nature of the gift does not disclose the will of the giver, and the fact that the recipient makes good use of it does not prove that the giver gave it with friendly intentions. [71] Is there a single act of lust, of avarice or of crime, which is not entered on deliberately or which is not carried out with active exercise of thought, that is, by aid of the reason? inasmuch as every belief is an activity of reason — and of reason that is a good thing if the belief is true, but a bad thing if it is false. But god bestows upon us (if indeed he does) merely reason — it is we who make it good or the reverse. The divine bestowal of reason upon man is not in itself an act of beneficence, like the bequest of an estate; for what other gift which the gods have given to men in preference if their intention had been to do them harm? and from what seeds could injustice, intemperance and cowardice spring, if these vices had not a basis in reason?

Chapter XXIX

“We alluded just now to Medea and Atreus, characters of heroic legend, planning their atrocious crimes with a cool calculation of profit and loss. [72] But what of the frivolous scenes of comedy? do not these show the reasoning faculty constantly employed? Does not that young man in the Eunuch¹⁵³ argue subtly enough:

What shall I do then? …
She shut me out, and now she calls me back:
Well, shall I go? No, not if she implores me.

While the one in the Young Comrades¹⁵⁴ does not hesitate to employ the weapon of reason, in true Academic style, to combat received opinion, when he says

‘Tis sweet, when deep in love and deep in debt,
To have a niggardly and ungracious sire,
Who loves you not and cares not for your weal —

[73] an extraordinary dictum for which he subjoins some reasons of a sort:

Then either you may cheat him of a rent,
Or forge a document and intercept
A debt that’s due to him, or send your page-boy
To trick him with some scare; and last of all,
How much more fun it is to squander money
Which you have screwed out of a stingy father!

And he proceeds to argue that a kind and generous father is a positive inconvenience to a son in love:

How I’m to cheat him, what to levy off him,
What plot to plan or trick to play upon him,
I can’t imagine: all my tricks and dodges
My father’s generosity has out-tricked.

Well then, how can those plots and devices, those dodges and tricks have come into existence without reasoning? What a noble gift of the gods, that enables Phormio to say:

Produce the old boy — my plans are all prepared!

Chapter XXX

[74] “But let us quit the theatre and visit the law-courts. The praetor is about to take his seat. What is the trial to be about? To find out what set fire to the record office. How could you have a craftier crime? yet Quintus Socius, a distinguished Roman knight, confessed he had done it. To find out who tampered with the public accounts. We, this again was done by Lucius Alenus, when he forged the handwriting of the six senior treasury clerks; what could be craftier than this fellow? Note other trials — the affair of the gold from Toulouse,¹⁵⁵ Jugurtha’s conspiracy; go back to an earlier period, and take the trial of Tubulus for giving a bribed verdict, or to a later one, and take the trial for incest on Peducaeus’s motion, and then the trials under the new law, the cases of assassination, poisoning, embezzlement and forgery of wills, that are daily occurrences at the present time. Reason is the source of the charge ‘I declare that with your aid and counsel a theft was committed’; hence spring all the trials for breach of trust as to a guardian­ship, commission, in virtue of partner­ship, trustee­ship, and all the other cases arising from breach of faith in purchase or sale or hire or lease; hence procedure on the public behalf in a private suit under the law of Plaetorius;¹⁵⁶ hence that net to catch wrong-doing of all sorts, the ‘action for malicious fraud’¹⁵⁷ promulgated by our friend Gaius Aquillius, a charge of fraud that Aquillius likewise holds to be proved when a man has pretended to do one thing and has done another. [75] Do we then really think that this enormous crop of evil was sown by the immortal gods? For if the gods gave man reason, they gave him malice, for malice is the crafty and covert planning of harm; and likewise also the gods gave him trickery and crime natural the other wickednesses, none of which can be either planned or executed without reasoning. ‘If only,’ as the old nurse prays in the tragedy,

Pelion’s galdes had never seen
The axe fell to the earth the pine-tree trunks,¹⁵⁸

so if only the gods had never given to man that cunning which you speak of! What very few use well, and even these themselves are all the same often crushed by those who use it badly; whereas countless numbers use it wickedly, and make it seem that this divine gift of reason and of wisdom was imparted to man for the purpose of deception and not of honest dealing.

Chapter XXXI

[76] “But you keep insisting that mankind and not the gods are to blame for this. That is as if a physician should plead the severity of the disease, or a helmsman the violence of the storm. Though these are mere men — but even for them it would be an absurd plea: ‘if it were not so,’ anybody would rejoin, ‘who would have employed you?’ But a god one might rebut more roundly: ‘You say that the fault lies in men’s vices; you ought to have given men a rational faculty of such a nature as would have precluded vice and crime.’ What room therefore was there for error on the part of the gods? We men bequeath legacies in the hope of bestowing them beneficially, a hope in which we may be deceived; but how could god be deceived? As the Sun was, when he gave his son Phaëthon a ride in his chariot? or Neptune, when his bestowal on his son of permission for three wishes resulted in Theseus’ causing the death of Hippolytus?¹⁵⁹ [77] These are fables of the poets, whereas we aim at being philosophers, who set down facts, not fictions. And all the same, even these gods of poetry would be held guilty of mistaken kindness if they knew that their gifts would bring their sons disaster. Just as, if a favourite saying of Aristo of Chios was true, that philosophers are harmful to their hearers when the hearers put a bad interpretation on doctrines good in themselves (for he allowed it was possible to leave the school of Aristippus a profligate, or that of Zeno cantankerous), then clearly, if their pupils were likely to go away depraved because they misinterpreted the philosophers’ discourses, it would be better for the philosophers to keep silence than to do harm to those who heard them: [78] similarly, if men abuse the faculty of ra, bestowed on them with a good intention by the immortal gods, by employing it to cheat and wrong their fellows, it would have been better for it than to be bestowed upon the human race than to be bestowed. Just as, supposing a doctor to know that a patient for whom he prescribes wine will be certain to drink it with too little water and will die on the spot, that doctor would be greatly to blame, so your Stoic providence is to be censured for bestowing reason upon those whom it knew to be going to use it wrongly and evilly. Unless perhaps you say that providence did not know. I only wish you would! but you will not dare to, for I am well aware how highly you esteem its name.

Chapter XXXII

[79] “But this topic we may now bring to an end. For if by the general consent of all philosophers folly is a greater evil than all the ills of fortune and of the body when placed in the scale against it, and if wisdom on the other hand is attained by nobody, we, for whose welfare you say that the gods have cared most fully, are really in the depth of misfortune. for just as it makes no difference whether no one is in good health or no one can be in good health, so I do not understand what difference it makes whether no one is wise or no one can be wise.

“However, we are dwelling too long on a point that is perfectly clear. Telamo dispatches the whole topic of proving that the gods pay no heed to man in a single verse:

For if they cared for men, good men would prosper
And bad men come to grief; but this is not so.¹⁶⁰

Indeed the gods ought to have made all men good, if they really cared for the human race; [80] or failing that, they certainly ought at all events to have cared for the good. Why then were the two Scipios, the bravest and noblest of men, utterly defeated by the Carthaginians in Spain? why did Maximus bury his son, a man of consular rank? why did Hannibal slay Marcellus? why did Cannae prove the ruin of Paulus? why was the person of Regulus surrendered to the cruelty of the Carthaginians? why was not Africanus shielded by the walls of his home?¹⁶¹ But these and numerous other instances are of long ago; let us look at more recent cases. Why is my uncle Publius Rutilius, a man of stainless honour and also of consummate learning, now in exile? why was my comrade Drusus murdered in his own home? why was that pattern of high principle and of wisdom, the chief pontife Quintus Scaevola, assassinated in front of the statue of Vesta? why before that were so many leading citizens also made away with by Cinna? why had that monster of treachery Gaius Marius the power to order the death of that noblest of mankind, Quintus Catulus? [81] The day would be too short if I desired to recount the good men visited by misfortune; and equally so were I to mention the wicked who have prospered exceedingly. For why did Marius die so happily in his own home, an old man and consul for the seventh time? why did that monster of cruelty Cinna lord it for so long? You will say that he was punished.

Chapter XXXIII

It would have been better for him to be hindered and prevented from murdering so many eminent men, than finally to be punished in his turn. That barbarous creature Quintus Varius was executed with the most painful torture: if this was for stabbing Drusus and poisoning Metellus, it would have been better for their lives to be preserved than for varius to be punished for his crime. Dionysius was despot of a most wealthy and prosperous city for thirty-eight years; [82] and before him, for how many years was Pisistratus tyrant of Athens, the very flower of Greece! ‘Ah but Phalaris (you say) met with punishment, and so did Apollodorus.’ Yes, but not till after they had tortured and killed many victims. Many brigands too are frequently punished, but still we cannot say that the captives cruelly murdered do not outnumber the brigands executed. It is related that Anaxarchus the disciple of Democritus was cruelly butchered by the tyrant of Cyprus, and Zeno of elea tortured to death. Why need I mention Socrates, whose death when I read Plato¹⁶² never fails to move me to tears? Do you see then that the verdict of the gods, if they do regard men’s fortunes, has destroyed all distinction between them?

Chapter XXXIV

[83] Indeed Diogenes the Cynic used to say that Harpalus, a brigand of the day who passed as fortunate, was a standing witness against the gods, because he lived and prospered as he did for so long. Dionysius, whom I mentioned before, having plundered the temple of Proserpine at Locri, was sailing back to Syracuse, and as he ran before a very favourable wind, remarked with a smile, ‘See you, my friends, what a good crossing the immortal gods bestow on men guilty of sacrilege?’ He was a clever fellow, and grasped the truth so well and clearly that he remained in the same belief continuously; for touching with his fleet on the coast of the Peloponnese and arriving at the temple of Olympian Zeus, he stripped him of his gold mantle, an adornment consisting of a great weight of metal, bestowed upon the god by the tyrant gelo out of the spoils of the Carthaginians, and actually made a jest about it, saying that a golden mantle was oppressive in the summer and cold in winter, and he threw on the god a woollen cloak, saying it was for every season of the year. He also gave orders for the removal of the golden beard of Aesculapius at Epidaurus, saying it was not fitting for the son to wear a beard when his father¹⁶³ appeared in all his temples beardless. [84] He even ordered the silver tables to be carried off from all the shrines, saying that as they bore the inscription ‘the property of the good gods,’ he desired to profit by their goodness.¹⁶⁴ Also he used to have no scruples in removing the little gold images of Victory and the gold cups and crowns carried in the outstretched hands of statues, and he used to say that he did not take them but accepted them, for it was folly to pray to certain beings for benefits and then when they proffered them as a gift to refuse to receive them. It is also related that he produced in the market-place the spoils of the temples which I have mentioned and sold them by auction, and after he had got the money issued a proclamation that anybody who possessed any article taken from a holy place must restore that article before a fixed date to the shrine to which it belonged; thus to impiety towards the gods he added injustice towards men.

Chapter XXXV

Well, Dionysius was not struck dead with a thunderbolt by Olympian Jupiter, nor did Aesculapius cause him to waste away and perish of some painful and lingering disease. He died in his bed and was laid upon a royal¹⁶⁵ pyre, and the power which he had himself secured by crime he handed on as an inheritance to his son as a just and lawful sovereignty. [85] It is with reluctance that I enlarge upon this topic, since you may think that my discourse lends authority to sin; and you would be justified in so thinking, were not an innocent or guilty conscience so power­ful a force in itself, without the assumption of any divine design. Destroy this, and everything collapses; for just as a household or a state appears to lack all rational system and order if in it there are no rewards for right conduct and no punishments for transgression, so there is no such thing at all as the divine governance of the world if that governance makes no distinction between the good and the wicked.

[86] ” ‘But,’ it may be objected, ‘the gods disregard smaller matters, and do not pay attention to the petty farms and paltry vines of individuals, and any trifling damage done by blight or hail cannot have been a matter for the notice of Jupiter; even kings do not attend to all the petty affairs in their kingdoms’: this is how you argue. As if forsooth it was Publius Rutilius’s estate at Formiae about which I complained a little time ago,¹⁶⁶ and not his loss of all security!

Chapter XXXVI

But this is the way with all mortals: their external goods, their vineyards, cornº-fields and olive-yards, with their abundant harvests and fruits, and in short all the comfort and prosperity of their lives, they think of as coming to them from the gods; but virtue no one ever imputed to a god’s bounty. [87] And doubtless with good reason; for our virtue is a just ground for others’ praise and a right reason for our own pride, and this would not be so if the gift of virtue came to us from a god and not from ourselves. On the other hand when we achieve some honour or some accession to our estate, or obtain any other of the goods or avoid any of the evils of fortune, it is then that we render thanks to the gods, and do not think that our credit has been enhanced. Did anyone ever render thanks to the gods because he was a good man? No, but because he was rich, honoured, secure. The reason why men give to Jupiter the titles of Best and Greatest is not that they the hand that he makes us just, temperate or wise, but safe, secure, wealthy and opulent. [88] Nor did anyone ever vow to pay a tithe to Hercules¹⁶⁷ if he became a wise man! It is true there is a story that Pythagoras used to sacrifice an ox to the Muses when he had made a new discovery in geometry! but I don’t believe it, since Pythagoras refused even to sacrifice a victim to Apollo of Delos, for fear of sprinkling the altar with blood. However, to return to my point, it is the considered belief of all mankind that they must pray to god for fortune but obtain wisdom for themselves. Let us dedicate temples as we will to Intellect, Virtue and Faith, yet we perceive that these things are within ourselves; hope,¹⁶⁸ safety, wealth, victory are blessings which we must seek from the gods. Accordingly the prosperity and good fortune of the wicked, as Diogenes used to say, disprove the might and power of the gods entirely.

Chapter XXXVII

[89] ‘But sometimes good men come to good ends.’ Yes, and we seize upon these cases and impute them with no reason to the immortal gods. Diagoras, named the Atheist, once came to Samothrace, and a certain friend said to him, ‘You who think that the gods disregard men’s affairs, do you not remark all the votive pictures that prove how many persons have escaped the violence of the storm, and come safe to port, by dint of vows to the gods?’ ‘That is so,’ replied Diagoras; ‘it is because there are nowhere any pictures of those who have been shipwrecked and drowned at sea.’ On another voyage he encountered a storm which threw the crew of the vessel into a panic, and in their terror they told him that they had brought it on themselves by having taken him on board their ship. He pointed out to them a never of other vessels making heavy weather on the same course, and inquired whether they supposed that those ships also had a Diagoras on board. The fact really is that your character and past life make no difference whatever as regards your fortune good or bad.

[90] ” ‘The gods do not take notice of everything, any more than do human rulers,’ says our friend. Where is the parallel? If human rulers knowingly overlook a fault they are greatly to blame;

Chapter XXXVIII

but as for god, he cannot even offer the excuse of ignorance. And how remarkably you champion his cause, when you declare that the divine power is such that even if a person has escaped punishment by dying, the punishment is visited on his children and grandchildren and their descendants! What a remarkable instance of the divine justice! Would any state tolerate a lawgiver who should enact that a son or grandson was to be sentenced for the transgression of a father or grandfather?

Where shall the Tantalids’ vendetta end?
What penalty for Myrtilus’ murder
Shall ever glut the appetite of vengeance?¹⁶⁹

[91] Whether the Stoic philosophers were led astray by the poets, or the poets relied on the authority of the Stoics, I should find it hard to say; for both tell some monstrous and outrageous tales. For the victim lashed by the lampoons of Hipponax or the verses of Archilochus nursed a wound not inflicted by a god but received from himself; and we do not look for any heaven-sent cause¹⁷⁰ when we view the licentiousness of aegisthus or of Paris, since their guilt almost cries aloud in our ears; and the bestowal of health upon many sick persons I ascribe to Hippocrates rather than to Aesculapius; and I will never allow that Sparta received the Lacedaemonian rule of life from Apollo rather than from Lycurgus. It was Critolaus,¹⁷¹ I aver, who overthrew Corinth, and Hasdrubal Carthage: those two glories of the sea-coast were extinguished by these mortals, not by some angry god — who according to your school is entirely incapable of anger. [92] But at all events a god could have come to the aid of those great and splendid cities and have preserved them —

Chapter XXXIX

for you yourselves are fond of saying that there is nothing that a god cannot accomplish, and that without any toil; as man’s limbs are effortlessly moved merely by his mind and will, so, as you say, the god’s power can mould and move and alter all things. Nor do you say this as some superstitious fable or old wives’ tale, but you give a scientific and systematic account of it: you allege that matter, which constitutes and contains all things, is in its entirety flexible and subject to change, so that there is nothing that cannot be moulded and transmuted out of it however suddenly, but the moulder and manipulator of this universal substance is divine providence, and therefore providence, whithersoever it moves, is able to perform whatever it will. Accordingly either providence does not know its own powers, or it does not regard human affairs, or it lacks power of judgement to discern what is the best. [93] ‘It does not care for individuals.’ This is no wonder; no more does it care for cities. Not for temple? Not for tribes or nations either. And if it shall appear that it despises even nations, what wonder is it that it has scorned the entire human race? But how can you both maintain that the gods do not pay attention to everything and also believe that dreams are distributed and doled out to men by the immortal gods? I argue this with you because the belief in the truth of dreams is a tenet of your school. And do you also say that it is proper for men to take vows upon themselves? Well, but vows are made by individuals; therefore the divine mind gives a hearing even to the concerns of individuals; do you see therefore that it is not so engrossed in business as you thought? Grant that it is distracted between moving the heavens and watching the earth and controlling the seas: why does it suffer so many gods to be idle and keep holiday? why does it not appoint some of leisured gods whose countless numbers you expounded, Balbus, to superintend human affairs?

“This more or less is what I have to say about the nature of the gods; it is not my design to disprove it, but to bring you to understand how obscure it is and how difficult to explain.”

Chapter XL

[94] So saying, Cotta ended. But Lucilius said: “You have indeed made a slashing attack upon the most reverently and wisely constructed Stoic doctrine of the divine providence. But as evening is now approaching, you will assign us a day on which to make our answer to your views. For I have to fight against you on behalf of our altars and hearths, of the temples and shrines of the gods, and of the city-walls, which you as pontifes declare to be sacred and are more careful to hedge the city round with religious ceremonies than even with fortifications; and my conscience forbids me to abandon their cause so long as I yet can breathe.”

[95] “I on my side,” replied Cotta, “only desire to be refuted. My purpose was rather to discuss the doctrines I have expounded than to pronounce judgement upon them, and I am confident that you can easily defeat me.”

“Oh, no doubt,” interposed Velleius; “why, he thinks that even our dreams are sent to us by Jupiter — though dreams themselves are not so unsubstantial as a Stoic disquisition on the nature of the gods.”

Here the conversation ended, and we parted, Velleius thinking Cotta’s discourse to be the truer, while I felt that that of Balbus approximated more nearly to a semblance of the truth.

Footnotes

1. Or perhaps ‘which is both of extreme scientific interest.’ ↩

2. The death of his daughter in 45 B.C. ↩

3. Αὐτὸς ἔφη: as one might say ‘The Master said so.’ ↩

4. The Stoics on the contrary held that true sensations are distinguished from false ones by an infallible mark (σημεῖον, nota, signum) and command our instinctive assent to their truth. ↩

5. A play of Caecilius Statius translated from Menander. ↩

6. Cicero was elected a member of the College of Augurs in 53 B.C. ↩

7. Epicurus taught that gods dwelt in empty spaces between the material worlds. ↩

8. Pyramid, cube, ’)” onMouseOut=“nd();“>octahedron, dodecahedron, ’)” onMouseOut=“nd();“>eicosahedron; the shapes respectively of the particles of fire, earth, air, aether, water. ↩

9. There is a play on words in signis et luminibus, which denote both the constellations and luminaries of the sky and the statues and illuminations with which the aediles adorned the city for festivals. ↩

10. See infra, § 120 n. ↩

11. Timaeus 28C. ↩

12. Laws VII.821. ↩

13. This sentence should probably follow the next one. ↩

14. The Memorabilia. ↩

15. One of the popular treatises of Aristotle not now extant, quoted I.107, II.37, 42, 44, 51, 95. ↩

16. The insertion of the negative is a probable emendation, since the identification of the Peripatetic doctrines with those of Plato was made by Antiochus, and is often propounded by Cicero (Mayor); although it is true that it is not appropriate to the Epicurean speaker here (Plasberg). ↩

17. Aristotle explained the apparently irregular motions of the planets by ascribing to them distinct spheres rotating in opposite directions; the counter-rotation was ἀνείλιξις, of which replicatio here is perhaps a translation, although how it could be assigned to the universe is obscure. ↩

18. The aether. ↩

19. Cf. M. Aurelius V.32 ὁ διὰ τὴν οὐσίαν διήκων λόγος. ↩

20. Cf. ‘,WIDTH,195)” onMouseOut=“nd();“>Lucr. V.8 “deus ille fuit, deus, inclute Memmi.” ↩

21. Diog. L. X.27 Περὶ κριτηρίου ἢ Κανών. ↩

22. Diog. L. X.139 τὸ μακάριον καὶ ἄφθαρτον οὔτε αὐτὸ πράγματα ἔχει οὔτε ἄλλῳ παρέχει, ὥστε οὔτε ὀργαῖς οὔτε χάρισι συνέχεται· ἐν ἀσθενεῖ γὰρ πᾶν τὸ τοιοῦτον. ↩

23. Probably to be altered into ‘streams to us from the gods.’ ↩

24. The deus ex machina introduced near the end of some Greek tragedies, to cut the knot of the plot, was proverbial. ↩

25. This name is inserted by some MSS., but Crassus in De oratore, III.77 f., is made to disclaim any special knowledge of philosophy. Probably the name of some philosopher resident in Velleius’s house has been lost. ↩

26. Cicero appears to mistranslate the Greek περὶ μὲν θεῶν οὐκ ἔχω εἰδέναι οὐθ’ ὡς εἰσὶν οὐθ’ ὡς οὐκ εἰσίν Diog. L. IX.51 (‘either that they exist or that they do not’). ↩

27. Proverbial for a rough, savage character. ↩

28. Or perhaps ‘that meets the foot.’ ↩

29. A considerable number of words seem to have been lost here. ↩

30. Above, § 49. ↩

31. Some words appear to have been lost here. ↩

32. Perhaps the text should be corrected to ‘speech.’ ↩

33. Perhaps the text should be corrected to ‘rational.’ ↩

34. The Latin is part of a verse from an unknown source. ↩

35. Epicurus recorded his principal tenets in a series of brief articles of belief which he called κυρίαι δόξαι, Authoritative Opinions. Diog. L. X.139. This one runs τὸ μακάριον καὶ ἄφθαρτον οὔτε αὐτὸ πράγματα ἔχει οὔτε ἄλλῳ παρέχει. ↩

36. i.e., have you seen things perform all these motions under your eyes? we see only parts of the courses of the heavenly bodies. ↩

37. This is stated by Aristotle, Gen. An. III.9, Hist. An. V.19, and Pliny, N. H. XI.42. ↩

38. i.e., permanent identity: it does not continue one and the same. ↩

39. Perhaps the Latin should be altered to give ‘images: just as, when while making a speech in the Capitol I seem to see Tiberius Gracchus produ­cing …’ ↩

40. See note on I.33. ↩

41. Perhaps Cicero wrote ‘pictures of the gods.’ ↩

42. His phrase was γαργαλισμοὶ σώματος (Athenaeus XII.546)ATHENAEUS546—>. ↩

43. Diogenes Laertius X.27 mentions a treatise of Epicurus Περὶ ὁσιότητος. ↩

44. The Latin runs ‘do not worship men,’ and perhaps should be altered to give, ‘do not study men’s interests.’ ↩

45. The source of this verse is unknown. ↩

46. Probably from the Philoctetes of Attius. ↩

47. In the actual teaching of Democritus these scattered doctrines formed a consistent whole: the basis of the world is particles of divine fire, floating in space; groups of them form deities, vast beings of long life but not everlasting; some of the particles floating off from these enter the mind, itself composed of similar particles, and give us knowledge of the gods. ↩

48. Abdera in Thrace had a reputation for stupidity. ↩

49. The formula of ceremonious farewell to a deity, in contrast with vale, used in taking leave of a human being. ↩

50. The Academic logic was famous. ↩

51. Cicero’s memory has played him false over suem and uvam. In Div. I.31, II.80, he says Attus (in the reign of Tarquinius Priscus) had vowed to the Lares the largest bunch of grapes in his vineyard if he found a strayed pig. He found it, and then discovered by augury in which quarter of the vineyard to look for the largest bunch. ↩

52. The Etruscans differed from the Graeco-Italic races in customs, religion, and language. ↩

53. The validity of the military auspices expired when the magistrates returned within the city. ↩

54. Gn. Octavius, cos. 87 B.C., was a partisan of Sulla, who was then at war with Mithridates; the other consul Cinna supported Marius. Fighting took place between them and Octavius fell. ↩

55. The proscriptions of Marius and Sulla. ↩

56. 129 B.C. He was found dead in his bed, but the murderer was not discovered; cf. III.80. ↩

57. συναρπάσαι Xen. Mem. I.4.8. ↩

58. Mayor detected here a verse-quotation from an unknown source. ↩

59. Mayor would alter the Latin to give ‘It is therefore the element of fire that …’ ↩

60. Timaeus 89. ↩

61. Mayor would transfer this sentence to the end of § 37. ↩

62. This probably comes from Aristotle’s lost dialogue De Philosophia, see I.33 n. ↩

63. Doubtless in the lost De Philosophia, see I.32 n. ↩

64. Probably as in § 42. ↩

65. Ancient geometricians drew their diagrams in dust sprinkled on a board, or on the ground. ↩

66. The fixed stars are carried round the polar axis by the general celestial movement, while the planets have two simultaneous motions, (1) that of the fixed stars, (2) a movement of their own, by which they revolve (as was supposed) round the earth. ↩

67. Perhaps from Aristotle’s lost De Philosophia, see I.33 n. The Cosmic Year is attributed to the Pythagoreans and to Heraclitus: Plato, Timaeus 39, gives it as 10,000 years. ↩

68. Herschel’s figures, given by Mayor, are (omitting hours): Saturn 29 years 174 days, Jupiter 11 years 315 days, Mars 1 year 321 days, Venus 224 days, Mercury 87 days. ↩

69. Diogenes Laertius VII.156 πῦρ τεχνικὸν ὁδῷ βαδίζον εἰς γένεσιν. ↩

70. Aristotle, Phys. II.2 ἡ τέχνη μιμεῖται τὴν φύσιν. ↩

71. Diogenes L. VII.86 τεχνίτης ὁ λόγος τῆς ὁρμῆς. ↩

72. A probable correction reads ‘given by,’ cf. I.38 and 118. ↩

73. The language seems to indicate that the building was visible from the exedra of Cotta’s mansion, where the discussion took place (I.14). A temple near the Porta Capena was dedicated to Honos by Fabius Cunctator, and later enlarged by Marcellus and dedicated to Honos and Virtus jointly. Another temple dedicated to these two deities by Marius stood on the Capitol. ↩

74. i.e., Uranus. ↩

75. § 4. ↩

76. Euripides fr. 386: ὁρᾷς τὸν ὑψοῦ τόνδ’ ἄπειρον αἰθέρα καὶ γῆν πέριξ ἔχονθ’ ὑγραῖς ἐν ἀγκάλαις· τοῦτον νόμιζε Ζῆνα, τόνδ’ ἡγοῦ θεόν. ↩

77. Hera. ↩

78. Euripides, Phaethon, fr. 775: ὦ καλλιφεγγὲς Ἥλι’, ὥς μ’ ἀπώλεσας καὶ τόνδ’· Ἀπόλλω δ’ ἐν βροτοῖς σ’ ὀρθῶς καλεῖ ὅστις τὰ σιγῶντ’ ὀνόματ’ οἶδε δαιμόνων. But Plato, Cratylus, 405 Ἀπόλλων = ἅμα ποδῶν … τὴν ὁμοῦ πόλησιν καὶ περὶ τὸν οὐρανὸν … ἢ περὶ τὴν ἐν τῇ ᾠδῇ ἁρμονίαν. ↩

79. Scholars are divided as to whether this etymology is correct or whether religio is connected with ligare, as Cicero himself suggests elsewhere by his phrases religione obstringere, impedire, solvi. <A ID=” ↩

80. See I.18, 20, 22. The language here and at III.18 implies that the work was planned to fall into three separate conversations held on three successive days: an indication that it lacks the author’s final revision. ↩

81. The MSS. give “which possesses no natural principle of cohesion.” ↩

82. Born 170 B.C. The lines came from his Medea. ↩

83. In the lost dialogue De Philosophia, see I.33 n. ↩

84. Aratus of Soli in Cilicia, fl. late 3rd cent. B.C. at the Macedonian court, versified the astronomy of Plato’s pupil Eudoxus, and weather-forecasts, in two poems, Phaenomena and Diosemeia. Of Cicero’s translate of the former two-thirds, of the latter (Prognostica) a few lines survive. ↩

85. ‘Dog’s tail,’ perhaps the curve of the three stars. ↩

86. ‘The spiral,’ perhaps of its motion round the pole. ↩

87. Said to mean ‘threshing-oxen.’ ↩

88. Perhaps the harvest began under this sign. ↩

89. See above, § 105. ↩

90. Called Eridanus, and identified with the Po or the Nile. ↩

91. See § 47. ↩

92. A variant gives “the shrimp draws the attention of the marshal by giving it a nip, and the marshal shuts up its shells.” ↩

93. Aristotle, Hist. An. IX.10. ↩

94. Cicero seems to have omitted or misunderstood something in Aristotle; the passage quoted is not in his extant works. Pliny, N. H. X.63, tells the same thing of wild geese and swans, saying a tergo sensim dilatante se cuneo porrigitur agmen, ‘the column widens out at the rear with the gradual broadening of the wedge.’ ↩

95. Perhaps the text should be emended to give, ‘and fashions a living creature conceived therefrom.’ ↩

96. Trade-winds blowing periodically (ἔτος, ‘year’) from N.-W. and other quarters. ↩

97. Probably an interpolated note. ↩

98. The text may have been corrupted, and may have run ‘ebb and flow with the moon.’ ↩

99. A plausible emendation of the text gives ‘Within the mouth is the structure of the teeth, to which the food is handed over (mandatur) and by which it is divided up and softened.’ ↩

100. The Greek Tracheia arteria, ‘rough artery’ (air-ducts and blood-vessels not being distinguished). ↩

101. The phleps koilé, the great trunk vein. ↩

102. The Greeks used the same word neuroi both, and did not clearly distinguish them. ↩

103. Pupa, κόρη, so called from its reflecting a small image of a person who looks into it. ↩

104. It is quite possible that the three words varietas, intervalla, distinctio are merely a periphrasis for the single term διαστήματα, ‘differences of pitch,’ in contrast with differences of quality which follow. ↩

105. The vibration of the hollow horns no doubt intensified the sound of the strings. ↩

106. Cicero’s translation of Aratus’ Phaenomena, 129 ff. ↩

107. ‘,WIDTH,160)” onMouseOut=“nd();”> Clement of Alexandria, Strom. VII.34 Κλεάνθης φησιν ἀνθ’ ἀλῶν αὐτοὺς (τοὺς ὗς) ἔχειν τὴν ψυχήν, ἵνα μὴ σαπῇ τὰ κρέα; but Cicero is probably right in giving it to Chrysippus. ↩

108. In De Divinatione Cicero’s brother Quintus sets out in Book I these two kinds of divination, natural, by means of dreams and ecstasies, and artificial, through the observation of entrails of victims, birds’ flight, lightning no other portents; in Book II Cicero replies, denying divination altogether. ↩

109. Laelius when praetor, 143 B.C., successfully opposed a proposal to transfer the election of the augurs to the people, instead of their being co-opted. Cf. § 43. ↩

110. Book II.4. ↩

111. i.e., the heavenly bodies. ↩

112. Book II.6. ↩

113. A part of Cotta’s argument has here been lost, including a transition to the subject of prophecies and presentiments. Cf. infr. 16 and Book II.7. ↩

114. Book II.9. ↩

115. Book II.12. ↩

116. Book II.6. ↩

117. The text is certainly corrupt, being self-contradictory and contradicting II.20. ↩

118. Callidus, ‘clever,’ is actually derived from callum, ‘hardened skin,’ as Cicero suggests, and so means ‘practised,’ ‘expert.’ ↩

119. The passage here anticipated is lost. ↩

120. See II.18. ↩

121. For the ‘music of the spheres,’ cf. II.19, and Plato, Rep. X.617B. ↩

122. See II.57. ↩

123. I.54. ↩

124. A fragment of Heraclitus runs ‘The same world of all things none of the gods nor any man did make, but it always was and is and will be ever-living fire, being kindled by measures and extinguished by measures.’ ↩

125. He was called ‘the dark’; clarus ob obscuram linguam Lucretius I.639. ↩

126. See § 32. ↩

127. Mayor detected this verse quotation from an unknown source. Cf. II.25. ↩

128. The conclusion implied is that no god exists. ↩

129. Atargatis or Derceto (Dagon), a fish with a woman’s face, worshipped at Ascalon. ↩

130. Od. XI.600 ff. Our text of Homer adds in ll. 602-604 that what Odysseus met was a wraith (εἴδωλον), but that Heracles himself was feasting with the gods and wedded to Hebe. These lines, however, were obelized by Aristarchus as non-Homeric and inconsistent with the Iliad, which speaks of Heracles as killed by the wrath of Hera, and of Hebe as a virgin. ↩

131. The argument goes on at § 53, and perhaps §§ 43-52 should be transposed after §60 (although the first sentence of §43 seems to belong neither here nor there). ↩

132. See § 6 n. ↩

133. There was a special worship of Venus at Ardea, an old Latin city once important but long before Cicero’s time insignificant. ↩

134. As well as Matuta. ↩

135. Editors suspect this unknown name: Cicero can hardly have coined it to translate the Greek. ↩

136. From θαῦμα, wonder. ↩

137. Cf. II.67. ↩

138. Cf. II.66. ↩

139. §§ 53-60 Mayor transposes to the end of § 42, thus supplying a reference for the words ‘these gods’ in the second line. But the topic of the first sentence is nowhere pursued, and perhaps it should be kept where it stands, with a mark indicating the loss of a passage that it introduced, and the rest of §§ 53-60 transferred to § 42. ↩

140. See II.68. ↩

141. i.e., volcanic: the Lipari are meant. ↩

142. Perhaps the Latin should be altered to give ‘we obtained from Syria and Cyprus.’ ↩

143. See note on § 53. The introduction of the next topic seems to have been lost. ↩

144. For this and the following etymologies see II.64-67. ↩

145. Or perhaps ‘find out the ’)” onMouseOut=“nd();“>derivation by the light of one letter.’ ↩

146. A considerable passage has been lost, part of it being according to Plasberg the fragments preserved by Lactantius; see p384. ↩

147. These verses are from the Medea of Ennius, and correspond to Euripides, Medea 365 ff. ↩

148. ‘Where there’s a will there’s a way.’ The quotation is assigned to Ennius. ↩

149. Again from Medea of Ennius; cf. Eur. Med. 371 f., 394 ff. ↩

150. Possibly from the Medea of Accius, cf. II89. This part of the story is not in Euripides. ↩

151. This and the three following quotations are from the Atreus of Accius. Atreus deliberates how to take vengeance on his brother Thyestes for sedu­cing his wife Aërope. ↩

152. Pliny, N. H. VII.51, implies that this was a wound inflicted by an enemy in battle; Seneca, Benef. II.18.8, seems to speak of the attempt of an assassin. ↩

153. Terence, Eun. Act i. init. ↩

154. See on I.13. ↩

155. Toulouse joined the Cimbri in their revolt, and was sacked by Q. Servilius Caepio, 106 B.C.; the temples contained large stores of gold. Caepio was most severely punished for sacrilege on his return to Rome. ↩

156. This law made the cheating of young men by money-lenders a criminal offence, conviction carrying ineligibility for public office. ↩

157. Probably this gave action for forms of fraud not coming under any previous formula. ↩

158. The opening lines of Ennius’s Medea, translated from Euripides: εἶθ’ ὤφελε … μηδ’ ἐν νάπαισι Πηλίου πεσεῖν ποτε τμηθεῖσα πεύκη. ↩

159. Poseidon gave his son Theseus, King of Athens, three wishes. Theseus wished the death of his own son Hippolytus, falsely accused by his step-mother Phaedra of love for her. Poseidon sent a sea-bull that scared Hippolytus’s chariot-horses, and he was killed. ↩

160. From Ennius’s Telamon: the hero is bewailing the death of Ajax. ↩

161. See II.14 note c. ↩

162. sc. the Phaedo. ↩

163. Apollo. ↩

164. i.e., kindness, bounty, bonté. ↩

165. The text is probably corrupt. ↩

166. § 80. ↩

167. A tenth part of spoils of war and of treasure-trove was devoted to Hercules as god of treasures. ↩

168. “Hope” should probably be transferred to the preceding list, after “Faith,” cf. § 61. ↩

169. By Attius, probably from Thyestes. ↩

170. Viz. of the death of Agamemnon, and the fall of Troy. ↩

171. General of the Achaean League, defeated by the Romans 147 B.C.; next year Corinth was taken and destroyed. <A ID=” ↩