I CD

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BOM'S CLASSICAL LIBRARY.

THE NATUKE OF THE GODS, DIVINATION, PATE, THE EEPUBLIC, LAWS, ETC.

6308

1878

PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

PREFACE.

THE greater portion of the present volume (i.e. Divination, Fate, Laws, and Republic) was previously translated by Francis Barham, Esq., and published, in two volumes, 8vo, in 1841. Although ably performed, it was not sufficiently close for the purpose of the " CLASSICAL LIBRARY," and was therefore placed in the hands of the present Editor, for revision, as well as for collation with recent texts. This has occasioned material alterations and additions.

The treatise " On the Nature of the Gods " is a revi sion of that usually ascribed to the celebrated Benjamin Franklin.

The letter " On Standing for the Consulship " is presented to the English public for the first time, and is exclusively the work of the Editor.

CONTENTS.

PACK

OP THE NATURE OP THE QODS 1

ON I)IVINATION ,«..••! -41

ON PATE 264

ON THE COMMONWEALTH 283

ON THE LAWS , 389

ON STANDING FOR THE CONSULSHIP 485

INDEX 505

CICEEO'S TREATISE

OF

THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

BOOK I.

I. THERE are many things in philosophy, my dear Brutus, •which are not as yet fully explained to us, and particularly (as you very well know) that most obscure and difficult ques tion concerning the Nature of the Gods, so extremely necessary both towards a knowledge of the human mind, and the prac tice of true religion : concerning which the opinions of men are so various and so different from each other, as to lead strongly to the inference that ignorance ' is the cause, or origin of philosophy; and that the Academic philosophers have been prudent in refusing their assent to things uncertain : for what is more unbecoming to a wise man than to judge rashly? or what rashness is so unworthy of the gravity and stability of a philosopher, as either to maintain false opinions, or without the least hesitation to support and defend what he has not thoroughly examined, and does not clearly comprehend ?

In the question now before us, the greater part of mankind have united to acknowledge that which is most probable, and winch we are all by nature led to suppose, namely, that there are Gods. Protagoras2 doubted whether there were any. Diagoras the Melian and Theodoras of Gyrene entirely believed

1 Some read scientiam and some inscientiam; the latter of which is preferred by some of the best editors and commentators.

2 For a short account of these ancient Greek philosophers, see the sketch prefixed to the Academics (Classical Library).

DE NAT. ETC. B

2 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

there were no such beings. But they who have affirmed that there are Gods, have expressed such a variety of sentiments on the subject, and the disagreement between them is so great, that it would be tiresome to enumerate their opinions ; for they give us many statements respecting the forms of the Gods, and their places of abode, and the employment of their lives. And these are matters on which the philosophers differ with the most exceeding earnestness. But the most considerable part of the dispute is, whether they are wholly inactive; totally unemployed, and free from all care and ad ministration of affairs : or, on the contrary, whether all things were made and constituted by them from the beginning ; and whether they will continue to be actuated and governed by them to eternity. This is one of the greatest points in debate ; and unless this is decided, mankind must necessarily remain in the greatest of errors, and ignorant of what is most im portant to be known.

II. For there are some philosophers, both ancient and modern, who have conceived that the Gods take not the least cognisance of human affaire. But if their doctrine be true, of what avail is piety, sanctity, or religion? for these are feelings and marks of devotion which are offered to the Gods by men with uprightness and holiness, on the ground that men are the objects of the attention of the Gods, and that many benefits are conferred by the immortal Gods on the human race. But if the Gods have neither the power nor the inclination to help us ; if they take no care of us, and pay no regai-d to our actions; and if there is no single advan tage which can possibly accrue to the life of man ; then what reason can we have to pay any adoration, or any honours, or to prefer any prayers to them i Piety, like the other virtues, cannot have any connexion with vain show or dissimulation ; and without piety, neither sanctity nor religion can be sup ported; the total subversion of which must be attended with great confusion and disturbance in life.

I do not even know, if we cast off piety towards the Gods, but that faith, and all the associations of human life, and that most excellent of all virtues, justice, may perish with it.

There are other philosophers, and those too very great and illustrious men, who conceive the whole world to be directed

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 3

and governed by the will and wisdom of the Gods ; nor d they stop here, but conceive likewise that the Deities consult and provide for the preservation of mankind. For they think that -the fruits, and the other 'produce of the earth, and the seasons, and the variety of weather, and the change of climates, by which all the productions of the earth are brought to ma turity, are designed by the immortal Gods for the use of man. . They instance many other things, which shall be related in these books ; and which would almost induce us to believe that the immortal Gods had made them all expressly and solely for the benefit and advantage of men. Against these opinions Carneades has advanced so much, that what he has said should excite a desire in men who are not naturally slothful, to search after truth; for there is no subject on which the learned, as well as the unlearned, differ so strenuously as in this; and since their opinions are so various, and so repugnant one to another, it is possible that none of them may be, and absolutely impossible that more than one should be right.

III. Now in a cause like this, I may be able to pacify well- meaning opposers, and to confute invidious censurers; so as to induce the latter to repent of their unreasonable contra diction, and the former to be glad to learn; for they who admonish one in a friendly spirit should be instructed, they who attack one like enemies should be repelled. But I observe that the several books, which 1 have lately published,1 have occasioned much noise, and- various discourse about them ; some people wondering what the reason has been why I have applied myself so suddenly to the study of philosophy, and others desirous of knowing what my opinion is on such sub jects. I likewise perceive that many peonle wonder at niy following that philosophy2 chiefly, which seems to take away the light, and to bury and envelop things in a kind of artificial night ; and that I should so unexpectedly have taken up the defence of a school that has been long neglected and forsaken. But it is a mistake to suppose that this application to philo sophical studies has been sudden on my part. I have applied

1 Ckero wrote his philosophical works in the last three years of his life. When he wrote this piece, he was in the sixty-third year of his age, in the year of Home 709.

3 The Academic.

B 2

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

myself to them from my youth, at no small expense of time ami trouble ; and I have been in the habit of philosophising a great deal, when I least seemed to think about it : for the truth of which I appeal to my orations, which are filled with quotations from philosophers, and to my intimacy with those very learned men, who frequented my house and conversed daily with me ; particularly Uiodorus, Philo, Antiochus, and Posidonius,1 under whom I was bred ; and, if all the precepts of philosophy are to have reference to the conduct of life, I am inclined to think that I have advanced, both in public and private affairs, only such principles as may be supported by reason and authority.

• IV. But if any one should ask, what has induced me, in the decline of life, to write on these subjects, nothing is more easily answered ; for, when I found myself entirely disengaged from business, and the commonwealth reduced to the necessity of being governed by the direction and care of one ma'.',2 I thought it becoming for the sake of the public, to instruct my countrymen in philosophy ; and that it would be of import ance, and much to the honour and commendation of our city, to have such great and excellent subjects introduced in the Latin tongue. I the less repent of my undertaking, since I plainly see that I have excited in many a desire, not only of learning, but of writing ; for we have had several Romans well grounded in the learning of the Greeks, who were unable to communicate to their countrymen what they had learned, because they looked upon it as impossible to express that in Latin, which they had received from the Greeks. In this point I think I have succeeded so well, that what I have done is not, even in copiousness of expression, inferior to that language.

Another inducement to it was a melancholy disposition of mind and the great and heavy oppression of fortune that was opon me; from which, if I could have found any surer remedy, I would not have sought relief in this pursuit. But I oould procure ease by no means better than by not only applying myself to books, but by devoting myself to the ex amination of the whole body of philosophy. And every

1 Diodorus and Posidouius were Stoics; Philo and Antioclins were Academics; but the latter afterwards inclined to the doctrine of the Stoics. 2 Julias Csesar.

OF THE NATURE OF TOE GOUS. O

part and branch of this is readily discoveied, when every question is propounded in writing ; for there is such an ad mirable continuation and series of things, that each seems connected with the other, and all appear linked together and united.

V. Now those men who desire to know my own private opinion on every particular subject, have more curiosity than is necessary. For the force of reason in disputation is to be sought after rather than authority ; since the authority of the teacher is often a disadvantage to those who are willing to learn; as they refuse to use their own judgment, and rely im plicitly on him whom they make choice of for a preceptor. Nor could I ever approve this custom of the Pythagoreans, who, when they affirmed anything in disputation, and were asked why it was so, used to give this answer, " He him self has said it;" and this " he himself," it seems, was Pythagoras. Such was the force of prejudice and opinion, that his authority was to prevail even without argument or reason.

They who wonder at my being a follower of this sect in particular, may find a satisfactory answer in my four books of Academical Questions. But I deny that I have under taken the protection of what is neglected and forsaken ; for the opinions of men do not die with them, though they may perhaps want the author's explanation. This manner of philosophising, of disputing all things and assuming nothing certainly, was begun by Socrates, revived by Arcesilaus, con firmed by Carneades, and has descended with all its power even to the present age; but I am informed that it is no\v almost exploded even in Greece. However, I do not impute that to any fault in the institution of the Academy, but to the negligence of mankind. If it is difficult to know all the doctrines of any one sect, how much more is it to know those of every sect? which, however, must nec'essarily be known to those, who resolve, for the sake of discovering truth, to dispute for or against all philosophers without partiality.

I do not profess myself to be master of this difficult and noble faculty; but I do assert that I have endeavoured to make myself so; and it is impossible that they, who choose this manner of philosophising, should not meet at least with

G OF THE NATURE OP THE GODS.

something worthy their pursuit. I have spoken more fully on this head in another place. But as some are too slow of apprehension, and some too careless, men stand in perpetual need of caution. For we are not people who believe that there is nothing whatever which is true; but we say that some falsehoods are so blended with all truths, and have so great a resemblance to them, that there is no certain rule for judging of, or assenting to propositions; from which this maxim also follows, that many things are probable, which, though they are not evident to the senses, have still so per suasive and beautiful an aspect, that a wise man chooses to direct his conduct by them.

VI. Now, to free myself from the reproach of partiality, I propose to lay before you the opinions of various philosophers concerning the nature of the Gods; by which means all men may judge which of them are consistent with truth; and if all agree together, or if any one shall be found to have dis covered what may be absolutely called truth, I will then give up the Academy as vain and arrogant. So I may cry out, in the words of Statius, in the Synephebi, —

" Ye gods, I call upon, require, pray, beseech, entreat, and implore the attention of my countrymen all, both young and old ; "

yet not on so trifling an occasion, as when the person in the play complains that,

" In this city we have discovered a most flagrant iniquity ; here is a professed courtezan, who refuses money from her lover ; "

but that they may attend, know, and consider what senti ments they ought to preserve concerning religion, piety, sanc tity, ceremonies, faith, oaths, temples, shrines, and solemn sacrifices ; what they ought to think of the auspices, over which I preside;1 for all these have relation to the present question. The manifest disagreement among the most learned on this subject creates doubts in those who imagine they have some certain knowledge of the subject.

Which fact I have often taken notice of elsewhere, and I did so more especially at the discussion that was held at my friend C. Cotta's, concerning the immortal Gods, and which was carried on with the greatest care, accuracy, and precision :

1 Cicero was one of the College of Augurs.

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. /

for coming to him at the time of the Latin holidays,1 accord ing to his own invitation and message from him, I found him sitting in his study,2 and iu a discourse with C. Yelleius the senator, who was then reputed by the Epicureans the ablest of our countrymen. Q. Lucilius Balbus was likewise there, a great proficient in the doctrine of the Stoics, and esteemed equal to the most eminent of the Greeks in that part of knowledge. As soon as Cotta saw me, You are come, says he, very seasonably ; for I am having a dispute with Yelleius on an important subject, which, considering the nature of your studies, is not improper for you to join in.

VII. Indeed, says I, I think I am come very seasonably, as you say ; for here are three chiefs of three principal sects met together. If M. Piso3 was present, no sect of philosophy that is in any esteem, would want an advocate. If Antiochus's book, replies Cotta, which he lately sent to Balbus, says true, you have no occasion to wish for your friend Piso ; for Antio- chus is of the opinion that the Stoics do not differ from the Peripatetics in fact, though they do in words; and I should be glad to know what you think of that book, Balbus 1 I ? says he. I wonder that Antiochus, a man of the clearest apprehension, should not see what a vast difference there is between the Stoics, who distinguish the honest and the pro fitable, not only in name but absolutely in kind ; and the Peripatetics, who blend the honest with the profitable in such a manner that they differ only in degrees and proportion, and not in kind. This is not a little difference in words, but a great one in things : but of this hereafter. Now, if you think fit, let us return to what we began with.

With all my heart, says Cotta. But that this visitor (look ing at me), who is just come in, may not be ignorant of what we are upon, I will inform him that we were discoursing on the nature of the Gods ; concerning which, as it is a subject

1 The Latinse Feriac was originally a festival of the Latins, altered by Tarquinius Superbus into a Roman one. It was held in the Alban Mount in honour of Jupiter Latiaris. This holiday lasted six days : it was not held at any fixed time ; but the consul was never allowed to take the field till he had held them.— V. Smith, Diet. Gr. Rom. Ant. p. 414.

2 Exhedra, the word used by Cicero, means a study, or place where disputes were held.

3 M. Piso was a Peripatetic. The four great sects were the Stoic*, the Peripatetics, the Academics, and the Epicureans.

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

that always appeared very obscure to me, I prevailed on Vel- leius to give us the sentiments of Epicurus. Therefore, con tinues he, if it is not troublesome, Velleins, repeat what you have already stated to us. I will, says he ; though this new comer will be no advocate for me, but for you ; for you. have both, adds he, with a smile, learned from the same Philo to be certain of nothing.1 What we have learned from him, replied I, Gotta will discovery but I would not have you think I am come as an assistant to him, but as an auditor, with an impartial and unbiassed mind, and not bound by any obliga tion to defend any particular principle, whether I like or dislike it.

VIII. After this Velleius, with the confidence peculiar to his sect, dreading nothing so much as to seem to doubt of anything, began as if he had just then descended from the council of the Gods, and Epicurus's intervals of worlds. Do not attend, says he, to these idle and imaginary tales ; nor to the operator and builder of the World, the God of Plato's Timasus ; nor to the old prophetic dame, the IlpoVoia of the Stoics, which the Latins call Providence ; nor to that roiind, that burning, revolving deity, the World, endowed with sense and understanding; the prodigies and wonders, not of in quisitive philosophers, but of dreamers !

For with what eyes of the mind was your Plato able to see that workhouse of such stupendous toil, in which he makes the world to be modelled and built by God? What materials, what tools, what bars, what machines, what servants, were employed in so vast a work? How could the air, fire, water, and earth, pay obedience and submit to the will of the archi tect 1 From whence arose those five forms,2 of which the rest were composed, so aptly contributing to frame the mind and produce the senses ? It is tedious to go through all, as they are of such a sort that they look more like things to be desired than to be discovered.

But, what is most remarkable, he gives us a world, which has been not only created, but, if I may so say, in a manner formed with hands, and yet he says it is eternal. Do you conceive him to have the least skill in natural philosophy

1 It was a prevailing tenet of the Academics, that there is no certain knowledge.

2 The five forms of Plato are these, owrta, TavT&v, trcoov, cravis, KIMJCTIS.

OF THE NATURE OP THE GODS. 9

who is capable of thinking anything to be everlasting that had a beginning 1 For what can possibly ever have been put together which cannot be dissolved again 1 Or what is there that had a beginning which will not have an end 1 If your Providence, Lucilius, is the same as Plato's God, I ask you, as before, who were the assistants, what were the engines, what was the plan and preparation of the whole work ? If it is not the same, then why did she make the world mortal, and not everlasting, like Plato's God ?

IX. But I would demand of you both, why these world- builders started up so suddenly, and lay dormant for so many ages ? For we are not to conclude, that if there was no world there were therefore no ages. I do not now speak of such ages as are finished by a certain number of days and nights in annual courses ; for I acknowledge that those could not be without the revolution of the world ; but there was- a certain eternity from infinite time, not measured by any circumscrip tion of seasons ; but how that was in space we cannot under stand, because we cannot possibly have even the slightest idea of time before time was. I desire, therefore, to know, Balbus, why this Providence of yours was idle for such an immense space of time 1 Did she avoid labour 1 But that could have no effect on the Deity ; nor could there be any labour, since all nature, air, fire, earth, and water, would obey the divine essence. What was it that incited the Deity to act the part of an aedile, to illuminate and decorate the world 1 If it was in order that God might be the better accom modated in his habitation, then lie must have been dwelling an infinite length of time before in dai-kness as in a dungeon. But do we imagine that he was afterwards delighted with that variety with which we see the heaven and earth adorned? What entertainment could that be to the Deity ? If it was any, he would not have been without it so long.

Or were these things made, as you almost assert, by God, for the sake of men ? Was it for the wise 1 If so, then this great design was adopted for the sake of a very small number. Or for the sake of fools'? First of all, there was no reason why God should consult the advantage of the wicked; and, further, what could be his object in doing so, since all fools are, without doubt, the most miserable of men, chiefly because they are fools ? For what can we pronounce more deplorable

10 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

than folly? Besides, there are many inconveniences in life which the wise can learn to think lightly of, by dwelling rather on the advantages which they receive ; but which fools are nnable to avoid when they are coining, or to bear when they are come.

X. They who affirm the world to be an animated and in telligent being, have by no means discovered the nature of the mind, nor are able to conceive in what form that essence can exist ; but of that I shall speak more hereafter. At present, I must express my surprise at the weakness of those, who endeavour to make it out to be not only animated and im mortal, but likewise happy, and round, because Plato says that is the most beautiful form ; whereas I think a . cylinder, a square, a cone, or a pyramid, more beautiful. But what life do they attribute to that round Deity? Truly it is a being whirled about with a celerity to which nothing can be even conceived by the imagination as equal ; nor can I imagine how a settled mind and happy life can consist in such motion, the least degree of which would be troublesome to us. Why therefore should it not be considered troublesome also to the Deity? For the earth itself, as it is part of the world, is part also of the Deity. We see vast tracts of land barren and un inhabitable ; some, because they are scorched by the too near approach of the sun ; others, because they are bound up with frost and snow, through the great distance which the sun is from them. Therefore, if the world is a Deity, as these are parts of the world, some of the Deity's limbs must be said to be scorched, and some frozen.

These are your doctrines, Lucilius; but what those of others are, I will endeavour to ascertain by tracing them back from the earliest of ancient philosophers. Thales the Milesian, who first inquired after such subjects, asserted water to be the origin of things ; and that God was that mind, which formed all things from water. If the Gods can exist without cor poreal sense, and if there can be a mind without a body, why did he annex a mind to water?

It was Anaximander's opinion that the Gods were born ; that after a great length of time they died ; and that they are innumerable worlds. But what conception can we possibly have of a Deity who is not eternal?

Anaximenes, after him, taught that the air is God; and

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 11

that he was generated; and that he is immense, infinite, and always in motion ; as if air, which has no form, could possibly be God ; for the Deity must necessarily be not only of some form or other, but of the most beautiful form; besides, is not everything that had a beginning, subject to mortality ?

XI. Anaxagoras, who received his learning from Anaxi- menes, was the first who affirmed the system and disposition of all things to be contrived and perfected by the power and reason of an infinite mind; in which infinity he did not per ceive that there could be no conjunction of sense and motion, nor any sense, in the least degree, where nature herself could feel no impulse. If he would have this mind to be a sort of animal, then there must be some more internal principle, from whence that animal should receive its appellation. But what can be more internal than the mind1? Let it therefore be clothed with an external body. But this is not agreeable to his doctrine ; but we are utterly unable to conceive how a pure simple mind can exist without any substance annexed to it.

Alcmseon of Crotona, in attributing a divinity to the sun, the moon, and the rest of the stars, and also to the mind, did not perceive that he was ascribing immortality to mortal beings.

Pythagoras, who supposed the Deity to be one soul, mixing with and pervading all nature, from which our souls are taken, did not consider that the Deity himself must, in consequence of this doctrine, be maimed and torn with the rending every human soul from it; nor that, when the human mind is afflicted, (as is the case in many instances,) that part of the Deity must likewise be afflicted; which cannot be. If the human mind were a Deity, how could it be ignorant of any thing1? Besides, how could that Deity, if it is nothing but soul, be mixed with, or infused into, the world?

Then Xenophaues, who said that everything in the world which had any existence, with the addition of intellect, was God, is as liable to exception as the rest, especially in relation to the infinity of it, in which there can be nothing sentient, nothing composite.

Parmenides formed a conceit to himself of something cir cular like a crown. (He names it Stephane.) It is an orb of constant light and heat around the heavens; this he calls

12 OP THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

God ; in which there is no room to imagine any divine form or sense. And he uttered many other absurdities on the same subject; for he ascribed a divinity to war, to discord, to lust, and other passions of the same kind; which are de stroyed by disease, or sleep, or oblivion, or age. The same honour he gives to the stars; but I shall forbear making any objections to his system here, having already done it in another place.

XII. Empedocles, who erred in many things, is most grossly mistaken in his notion of the Gods. He lays down four natures' as divine, from which he thinks that all things were made. Yet it is evident that they have a beginning, that they decay, and that they are void of all sense.

Protagoras did not seem to have any idea of the real nature of the Gods; for he acknowledged that he was altogether ignorant whether there are or are not any, or what they are.

What shall I say of Democritus, who classes our images of objects, and their orbs, in the number of the Gods; as he does that principle through which those images appear and have their influence ? He deifies likewise our knowledge and un derstanding. Is he not involved in a very great error? And because nothing continues always in the same state, he denies that anything is everlasting; does he not thereby entirely destroy the Deity, and make it impossible to form any opinion of him ?

Diogenes of Apollonia looks upon the air to be a Deity. But what sense can the air have? or what divine form can be attributed to it?

It would be tedious to show the uncertainty of Plato's opinion ; for, in his Timseus, he denies the propriety of assert ing that there is one great father or creator of the world; and, in his book of Laws, he thinks we ought not to make too strict an inquiry into the nature of the Deity. And as for his statement when he asserts that God is a being without any body, what the Greeks call do-ayta/ros, it is certainly quite unintelligible, how that theory can possibly be true ; for such a God must then necessarily be destitute of sense, prudence, and pleasure ; all which things are comprehended in our

1 The four natures here to be understood, are the four elements, fire, •water, air, and earth ; which are mentioned as the four principles of Empedocles by Diogenes Luertius.

OF THE NATURE OP THE GODS. 13

notion of the Gods. He likewise asserts in his Timsens, and in his Laws, that the world, the heavens, the stars, the mind, and those Gods which are delivered down to us from our ancestors, constitute the Deity. These opinions, taken separately, are apparently false; and, together, are directly inconsistent with each other.

Xenophon has committed almost the same mistakes, but in fewer words. In those sayings which he has related of Socrates, he introduces him disputing the lawfulness of in quiring into the form of the Deity; and makes him assert the sun and the mind to be Deities : he represents him likewise as affirming the being of one God only ; and at another time of many; which are errors of almost the same kind which I before took notice of in Plato.

XIII. Antisthenes, in his book called the Natural Philoso pher, says that there are many national, and one natural Deity ; but by this saying he destroys the power and nature of the Gods. Speusippus is not much less in the wrong ; who, fol lowing his uncle Plato, says that a certain incorporeal power governs everything; by which he endeavours to root out of our minds the knowledge of the Gods.

Aristotle, in his third book of Philosophy, confounds many things together, as the rest have done; but he does not differ from his master Plato. At one time he attributes all divinity to the mind, at another he asserts that the world is God. Soon afterwards he makes some other essence pre side over the world, and gives it those faculties by which, with certain revolutions, he may govern and preserve the motion of it. Then he asserts the heat of the firmament to be God; not perceiving the firmament to be part of the world, which in another place he had described as God. How can that divine sense of the firmament be preserved in so _ rapid a motion? And where do the multitude of Gods dwell, if heaven itself is a Deity? But when this philosopher says that God is without a body, he makes him an irrational and insensible being. Besides, how can the world move itself, if it wants a body? Or how, if it is in perpetual self-motion, can it be easy and happy ?

Xenocrates, his fellow-pupil, does not appear much wiser on this head; for in his books concerning the nature of the Gods, no divine form is described ; but he says the number of

14 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

them is eight. Five are moving planets,1 the sixth is con tained in all the fixed stars ; which, dispersed, are so many several members, but, considered together, are one single Deity. The seventh is the sun ; and the eighth the moon. But in what sense they can possibly be happy, is not easy to be understood.

From the same school of Plato, Heraclides of Pontus stuffed his books with puerile tales. Sometimes he thinks the world a Deity, at other times the mind. He attributes divinity likewise to the wandering stars. He deprives the Deity of sense, and makes his form mutable ; and, in the same book again, he makes Earth and Heaven Deities.

The unsteadiness of Theophrastus is equally intolerable. At one time he attributes a divine prerogative to the mind ; at another, to the firmament; at another, to the stars and celestial constellations.

Nor is his disciple Strato, who is called the naturalist, any more worthy to be regarded; for he thinks that the divine power is diffused through nature, which is the cause of birth, increase, and diminution ; but that it has no sense nor form.

XIV. Zeno (to come to your sect, Balbus,) thinks the law of nature to be the divinity ; and that it has the power to force us to what is right, and to restrain us from what is wrong. How this law can be an animated being I cannot conceive ; but that God is so, we would certainly maintain. The same per son says, in another place, that the sky is God; but can we possibly conceive that God is a being insensible, deaf to our prayers, our wishes, and our vows, and wholly unconnected with us? In other books he thinks there is a certain rational essence, pervading all nature, indued with divine efficacy. He attributes the same power to the stars, to the years, to the months, and to the seasons. In his interpretation of Hesiod's Theogony,2 he entirely destroys the established notions of the Gods ; for he excludes Jupiter, Juno, and Vesta, and those esteemed divine, from the number of them ; but his doctrine is that these are names which by some kind of allusion are given to mute and inanimate beings. The sentiments of his disciple Aristo are not less erroneous. He thought it

1 These five moving stars are Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury and Venus. Their revolutions are considered in the next book.

2 Or, Generation of the Gods.

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 15

impossible to conceive the form of the Deity ; and asserts that the Gods are destitute of sense ; and he is entirely dubious whether the Deity is an animated being or not.

Cleanthes, who next comes under my notice, a disciple of Zeno at the same time with Aristo, in one place says that the world is God-; in another, he attributes divinity to the mind and spirit of universal nature; then he asserts that the most remote, the highest, the all-surrounding, the all-enclos ing and embracing heat, which is called the sky, is most certainly the Deity.' In the books he wrote against pleasure, in which he seems to be raving, he imagines the Gods to have a certain form and shape ; then he ascribes all divinity to the stars; and lastly, he thinks nothing more divine than reason. So that this God, whom we know mentally and in the specu lations of our minds, from which traces we receive our impres sion, has at last actually no visible form at all.

XV. Persaeus, another disciple of Zeno, says that they who have made discoveries advantageous to the life of man, should be esteemed as Gods ; and the very things, he says, which are healthful and beneficial, have derived their names from those of the Gods ; so that he thinks it not sufficient to call them the discoveries of Gods, but he urges that they themselves should be deemed divine. What can be more absurd than to ascribe divine honours to sordid and deformed things ; or to place among the Gods men who are dead, and mixed with the dust ; to whose memory all the respect that could be paid would be but mourning for their loss?

Chrysippus, who is looked upon as the most subtle inter preter of the dreams of the Stoics, has mustered up a numerous band of unknown Gods ; and so unknown, that we are not able to form any idea about them, though our mind seems capable of framing any image to itself in its thoughts. For he says that the divine power is placed in reason, and in the spirit and mind of universal nature ; that the world, with an universal effusion of its spirit, is God; that the superior part of that spirit, which is the mind and reason, is the great principle of nature, containing and preserving the chain of all things ; that the divinity is the power of fate, and the neces sity of future events. He deifies fire also, and what I before called the etherial spirit, and those elements which naturally proceed from it, water, earth, and air. He attributes divinity

10 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

to the sun, moon, stars, and universal space, the grand con tainer of all things; and to those men likewise, who have obtained immortality. He maintains the sky to be what men call Jupiter; the air, which pervades the sea, to be Neptune; ; and the earth, Ceres. In like manner he goes through the names of the other deities. He says that Jupiter is that im mutable and eternal law, which guides and directs us in our manners; and this he calls fatal necessity, the everlasting- verity of future events. But none of these are of such a nature as to seem to carry any indication of divine virtue in them. These are the doctrines contained in his first book of the Nature of the Gods. In the second, he endeavours to ac commodate the fables of Orpheus, Musseus, Hesiod, and Homer, to what he has advanced in the first ; in order that the most ancient poets, who never dreamed of these things, may seem to have been Stoics. Diogenes the Babylonian was a follower of the doctrine of Chrysippus; and in that book which he wrote, entitled, " A Treatise concerning Mi nerva," he separates the account of Jupiter's bringing forth, and the birth of that virgin, from the fabulous, and reduces it to a natural construction.

XVI. Thus far have I been rather exposing the dreams of dotards, than giving the opinions of philosophers. Not much more absurd than these are the fables of the poets, who owe all their power of doing harm to the sweetness of their language : who have represented the Gods as enraged with anger and in flamed with lust ; who have brought before our eyes their wars, battles, combats, wounds ; their hatreds, dissensions, discords, births, deaths, complaints, and lamentations; their indul gences in all kinds of intemperance ; their adulteries ; their chains; their amours with mortals, and mortals begotten by immortals. To these idle and ridiculous nights of the poets, v,e may add the prodigious stories invented by the Magi, and by the Egyptians also, which were of the same nature, to gether with the extravagant notions of the multitude at all times, who, from total ignorance of the truth, are always fluc tuating in uncertainty.

Now whoever reflects on the rashness and absurdity of these tenets, must inevitably entertain the highest respect and veneration for Epicurus, and perhaps even rank him in the number of those beings who are the subject of this dispute ;

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 17

for he alone first founded the idea of the existence of the Gods on the impression which nature herself hath made on the minds of all men. For what nation, what people are there, who have not, without any learning, a natural idea, or pre- notion of a Deity? Epicurus calls this TrpoXrjif/is ; that is, an antecedent conception of the fact in the mind, without which nothing can be understood, inquired after, or discoursed on ; the force and advantage of which reasoning we receive from that celestial volume of Epicurus, concerning the Rule and Judgment of things.

XVII. Here, then, you see the foundation of this question oleai'ly laid ; for since it is the constant and universal opinion of mankind, independent of education, custom, or law7, that there are Gods ; it must necessarily follow that this knowledge is implanted in our minds, or rather innate in us. That opinion respecting which there is a general agreement in universal nature, must infallibly be true; therefore it must be allowed that there are Gods ; for in this we have the con currence, not only of almost all philosophers, but likewise of the ignorant and illiterate. It must be also confessed that the point is established, that we have naturally this idea, as I said before, or pre-notion of the existence of the Gods. As new things require new names, so that pre-notion was called TTf)6\r]{]/L<; by Epicurus; an appellation never used before. On the same principle of reasoning we think that the Gods are happy and immortal; for that nature, which hath assured us that there are Gods, has likewise imprinted in our minds the know ledge of their immortality and felicity; and if so, what Epi curus hath declared in these words, is true : " That which is eternally happy, cannot be burdened with any labour itself, nor can it impose any labour on another; nor can it be influenced by resentment or favour; because things which are liable to such feelings must be weak and frail." We have said enough to prove that we should worship the Gods with piety, and without superstition, if that were the only question.

For the superior and excellent nature of the Gods requires a pious adoration from men, because it is possessed of immor tality and the most exalted felicity ; for whatever excels has a right to veneration ; and all fear of the power and anger of the Gods should be banished ; for we must understand that anger

DE NAT. ETC. C

18 OP THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

and affection are inconsistent with the nature of a happy and immortal being. These apprehensions being removed, no dread of the superior powers remains. To confirm this opinion, our curiosity leads us to inquire into the form, and life, and action of the intellect and spirit of the Deity.

XVIII. With regard to his form, we are directed partly by nature, and partly by reason. All men are told by nature that none but a human form can be ascribed to the Gods; for under what other image did it ever appear to any one either sleeping or waking ? and without having recourse to our first notions,1 reason itself declares the same ; for as it is easy to conceive that the most excellent nature, either because of its happiness or immortality, should be the most beautiful, what composition of limbs, what conformation of lineaments, what form, what aspect, can be more beautiful than the human? Your sect, Lucilius, (not like my friend Cotta, who sometimes says one thing and sometimes another) when they represent the divine art and workmanship in the human body, are used to describe how very completely each member is formed, not only for convenience but also for beauty. There fore if the human form excels that of all other animal beings, as God himself is an animated being, he must surely be of that form which is the most beautiful. Besides, the Gods are granted to be perfectly happy; and nobody can be happy without virtue, nor can virtue exist where reason is not; and reason can reside in none but the human form; the Gods, therefore, must be acknowledged to be of human form; yet that form is not body, but something like body ; nor does it contain any blood, but something like blood. Though these distinctions were more acutely devised and more artfully ex pressed by Epicurus than any common capacity can compre hend ; yet, depending on your understanding, I shall be more brief on the subject than otherwise I should be. Epicurus, who not only discovered and understood the occult and almost hidden secrets of nature, but explained them with ease, teaches that the power and nature of the Gods is not to discerned by the senses, but by the mind ; nor are they to be considered as bodies of any solidity, or reduceable to number, like those things which, because of their firmness, he calls

1 The irpfarrJHs of Epicurus, before mentioned, is what he here means.

OF THE NATURE 'OF THE GODS. 19

but as images, perceived by similitude and tran sition. As infinite kinds of those images result from innu merable individuals, and centre in the Gods, our minds and understanding are directed towards and fixed with the greatest delight on them, in order to comprehend what that happy and eternal essence is.

XIX. Surely the mighty power of the Infinite Being is most worthy our great and earnest contemplation ; the nature of which we must necessarily understand to be such that everything in it is made to correspond completely to some other answering part. This is called by Epicurus la-ovopla; that is to say, an equal distribution or even disposition of things. From hence he draws this inference ; that, as there is such a vast multitude of mortals, there cannot be a less number of immortals ; and if those which perish are innume rable, those which are preserved ought also to be countless. Your sect, Balbus, frequently ask us how the Gods live, and how they pass their time? Their life is the most happy, and the most abounding with all kinds of blessings, which can be conceived. They do nothing. They are embarrassed with no business ; nor do they perform any work. They rejoice in the possession of their own wisdom and virtue. They are satisfied that they shall ever enjoy the fulness of eternal pleasures.

XX. Such a Deity may properly be called happy ; but yours is a most laborious God. For let us suppose the world a Deity ; — what caii be a more uneasy state than, without the least cessation, to be whirled about the axle-tree of heaven with a surprising celerity] But nothing can be happy that is not at ease. Or let us suppose a Deity residing in the world, who directs and governs it, who preserves the courses of the stars, the changes of the seasons, and the vicissitudes and orders of things, surveying the earth and the sea, and accom modating them to the advantage and necessities of man. Truly this Deity is embarrassed with a very troublesome and laborious office. We make a happy life to consist in a tran quillity of mind, a perfect freedom from care, and an exemp tion from all employment. The philosopher, from whom we

1 'Srfpffj.via. is the word which Epicurus used to distinguish betwixt those objects which are perceptible to sense, and those which are imper ceptible ; as the essence of the Divine Being, and the various operations of the divine power.

c2

20 OF THE NATURE OP THE GOPS.

received all our knowledge, has taught us that the world was made by nature ; that there was no occasion for a work-house to frame it in ; and that, though you deny the possibility of such a work without divine skill, it is so easy to her, that she has made, does make, and will make innumerable worlds. But, because you do not conceive that nature is able to pro duce such effects without some rational aid, you are forced, like the tragic poets, when you cannot wind up your argu ment in any other way, to have recourse to a Deity, whose assistance you would not seek, if you could view that vast and unbounded magnitude of regions in all parts; where the mind, extending and spreading itself, travels so far and wide that it can find no end, no extremity to stop at. In this im mensity of breadth, length, and height, a most boundless company of innumerable atoms are fluttering about, which, notwithstanding the interposition of a void space, meet and cohere, and continue clinging to one another ; and by this union these modifications and forms of things arise, which, in your opinions, could not possibly be made without the help of bellows and anvils. Thus you have imposed on us an eternal master, whom we must dread day and night. For who can be free from fear of a Deity, who foresees, regards, and takes notice of everything; one who thinks all things his own : a curious, ever-busy God?

Hence first arose your Et/xap/x,eV?7, as you call it, your fatal necessity ; so that, whatever happens, you affirm that it flows from an eternal chain and continuance of causes. Of what value is this philosophy, which, like old women and illiterate men, attributes everything to fate 1 Then follows your PXI/TIKT;, in Latin called divinatio, divination ; which, if we would listen to you, would plunge us into such superstition, that we should fall down and worship your inspectors into sacrifices, your augurs, your soothsayers, your prophets, and your fortune-tellers.

Epicurus having freed us from these terrors and restored us to liberty, we have no dread of those beings, whom we have reason to think entirely free from all trouble themselves, and who do not impose any on others. We pay our adoration, indeed, with piety and reverence to that essence, which is above all excellence and perfection. But I fear my zeal for this doctrine has made me too prolix. However, I could not

OF THE NATURE OP THE GODS. 21

easily leave so eminent and important a subject unfinished, though I must confess I should rather endeavour to hear than speak so long.

XXI. Cotta, with his usual courtesy, then began. Velleius, says he, were it not for something which you have advanced, I should have remained silent; for I have often observed, as I did just now upon hearing you, that I cannot so easily con ceive why a proposition is true, as why it is false. Should you ask me what I take the nature of the Gods to be, I should perhaps make no answer. But if you should ask whether I think it to be of that nature which you have described, I should answer that I was as far as possible from agreeing with you. However, before I enter on the subject of your discourse and what you have advanced upon it, I will give you my opinion of youi-self. Your intimate friend, L. Crassus. has been often heard by me to say, that you were beyond all question superior to all our learned Romans ; and that few Epicxireans in Greece were to be compared to you. But, as I knew what a wonder ful esteem he had for you, I imagined that might make him the more lavish in Commendation of you. Now, however, though I do not choose to praise any one when present, yet I must confess that I think you have delivered your thoughts clearly on an obscure and very intricate subject; that you are not only copious in your sentiments, but more elegant in your language than your sect generally are. When I was at Athens, I went often to hear Zeno, by the advice of Philo, who used to call him the chief of the Epicureans ; partly, probably, in order to judge more easily how completely those principles could be refuted after I had heard them stated by the most learned of the Epicureans. And indeed he did not speak in any ordinary manner; but, like you, with clear ness, gravity, and elegance ; yet what frequently gave me great uneasiness when I heard him, as it did while I attended to you, was to see so excellent a genius falling into such frivolous (excuse my freedom) not to say foolish doctrines. However, I shall not at present offer anything better; for, as I said before, we can, in most subjects, especially in physics, sooner discover what is not true, than what is.

XXII. If you should ask me what God is, or what his character and nature are, I should follow the example of Simonides ; who, when Hiei'o the tyrant proposed the same

22 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

question to him, desired a day to consider of it. When he required his answer the next day, Simonides begged two days more ; and as he kept constantly desiring double the number which he had required before instead of giving his answer, Hiero, with surprise, asked him his meaning in doing so : " Because," says he, " the longer I meditate on it, the more obscure it appears to me." Simonides, who was not only a delightful poet, but reputed a wise and learned man in other branches of knowledge, found, I suppose, so many acute and refined arguments occurring to him, that he was doubtful which was the truest, and therefore despaired of discovering any truth.

But does your Epicurus (for I had rather contend with him than with you,) say anything that is worthy the name of philosophy, or even of common sense ?

In the question, concerning the nature of the Gods, his first inquiry is, whether there are Gods or not. It would be dangerous, I believe, to take the negative side before a public auditory ; but it is very safe in a discourse of this kind, and in this company. I, who am a priest, and who think that religions and ceremonies ought sacredly to be maintained, am certainly desirous to have the existence of the Gods, which is the principal point in debate, not only fixed in opinion, but proved to a demonstration ; for many notions flow into and disturb the mind, which sometimes seem to convince us that there are none. But see how candidly I will behave to you : as I shall not touch upon those tenets you hold in common with other philosophers, consequently I shall not dispute the existence of the Gods, for that doc trine is agreeable to almost all men, and to myself in parti cular ; but I am still at liberty to find fault with the reasons you give for it, which I think are very insufficient.

XXIII. You have said that the general assent of men of all nations and all degrees, is an argument strong enough to induce us to acknowledge the being of the Gods. This is not only a weak, but a false argument ; for, first of all, how do you know the opinions of all nations 1 I really believe there are many people so savage that they have no* thoughts of a Deity. What think you of Diagoras, who was called the atheist ; and of Theodoras, after him 1 Did not they plainly deny the very essence of a Deity ? Protagoras, of Abdera,

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 23

whom you just now mentioned, the greatest sophist of his age, was banished by order of the Athenians from their city and territories, and his books were publicly burnt, because these words were in the beginning of his treatise concerning the Gods, " I am unable to arrive at any knowledge whether there are, or are not, any Gods." This treatment of him, I imagine, restrained many from professing their disbelief of a Deity; since the doubt of it only could not escape punish ment. What shall we say of the sacrilegious, the impious, and the perjured 1 If Tubulus Lucius, Lupus, or Carbo the son of Neptune, as Lucilius says, had believed that thei-e were Gods, would either of them have carried his perjuries and impieties to such excess ? Your reasoning, therefore, to confirm your assertion is not so conclusive as you think it is. But, as this is the manner in which other philosophers have argued on the same subject, I will take no further notice of it at present ; I rather choose to proceed to what is properly your own.

I allow that there are Gods. Instruct me, then, concerning their origin ; inform me where they are, what sort of body, what mind they have, and what is their course of life; for these I am desirous of knowing. You attribute the most absolute power and efficacy to atoms. Out of them you pre tend that everything is made. But there are no atoms, for there is nothing without body ; every place is occupied by body, therefore there can be no such thing as a vacuum, or an atom.

XXIV. I advance these principles of the naturalists, with out knowing whether they are true or false ; yet they are more like truth than those statements of yours ; for they are the absurdities in which Democritus, or before him Leucippus, used to indulge, saying, that there are certain light corpuscles, some smooth, some rough, some round, some square, some crooked and bent as bows ; which by a fortuitous concourse made heaven and earth, without the influence of any natural power. This opinion, C. Velleius, you have brought down to these our times; and you would sooner be deprived of the greatest advantages of life than of that authority ; for before you were acquainted with those tenets, you thought that you ought to profess yourself an Epicurean ; so that it was necessary that you should either embrace these absurdities, or lose the

24 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

philosophical character which you had taken upon you : and what could bribe you to renounce the Epicurean opinion ? Nothing, you say, can prevail on jon to forsake the truth, and the sure means of a happy life. But is that the truth? for I shall not contest your happy life, which you think the Deity himself does not enjoy unless he languishes in idleness. But where is truth ] Is it in your innumerable worlds ; some of which are rising, some falling, at every moment of time '? Or is it in your atomical corpuscles, which form such excellent works, without the direction of any natural power, or reason? But I was forgetting my liberality, which I had promised to exert in your case, and exceeding the bounds which I at first proposed to myself. Granting, then, everything to be made of atoms, what advantage is that to your argument ? For we are searching after the nature of the Gods; and allowing them to be made of atoms, they cannot be eternal ; because whatever is made of atoms must have had a beginning ; if so, there were no Gods till there was this beginning ; and if the Gods have had a beginning they must necessarily have an end ; as you have before contended when you were discussing Plato's world. Where, then, is your beatitude and immortality, in which two words you say that God is expressed, the endea vour to prove which reduces you to the greatest perplexities ? For you said that God had no body, but something like body ; and no blood, but something like blood.

XXV. It is a frequent practice among you, when you assert anything that has no resemblance to truth, and wish to avoid reprehension, to advance something else which is absolutely and utterly impossible, in order that it may seem to your adversaries better to grant that point which has been a matter of doubt, than to keep on pertinaciously contradicting you on every point : like Epicurus, who, when he found that if his atoms were allowed to descend by their own weight, our actions could not be in our own power, because their motions would be certain and necessary, invented an expedient, which escaped Democritus, to avoid necessity. He says, that when the atoms descend by their own weight and gravity, they move a little obliquely. Surely, to make such an assertion as this is what one ought more to be ashamed of than the ac- knoAvledging ourselves unable to defend the proposition. His practice is the same against the logicians, who say that in all

OP THE XATUKE OF THE GODS. 25

propositions, in which yes or no is required, one of them must be true; he was afraid that if this were granted, then, in such a proposition, as " Epicurus will be alive or dead to morrow," either one or the other must necessarily be admitted ; therefore he absolutely denied the necessity of yes or no. — Can anything show stupidity in a greater degree ] Zeno,1 being pressed by Arcesilas, who pronounced all things to be false which are perceived by the senses, said that some things were false, but not all. Epicurus was afraid that, if any one thing seen should be false, nothing could be true; and there fore he asserted all the senses to be infallible directors of truth. Nothing can be more rash than this; for by endea vouring to repel a light stroke, he receives a heavy blow. On the subject of the nature of the Gods, he falls into the same errors. Whilst he would avoid the concretion of individual bodies, lest death and dissolution should be the consequence, he denies that the Gods have body, but says they have some thing like body; and says they have no blood, but something like blood.

XXVI. It seems an unaccountable thing how one sooth sayer can refrain from laughing when he sees another. It is yet a greater wonder that you can refrain from laughing amongst yourselves. It is no body, but something like body ! I could understand this if it was applied to statues made of wax or clay; but in regard to the Deity I am not able to discover what is meant by a quasi body or quasi blood. Nor indeed are you, Velleius, though you will not confess so much. For those precepts are delivered to you as dic tates, which Epicurus carelessly blundered out ; for he boasted, as we see in his writings, that he had no instructor; which I could easily believe without his public declaration of it, for the same reason that I could believe the master of a very bad edifice, if he were to boast that he had no archi tect but himself: for there is nothing of the Academy, nothing of the Lyceum, in his doctrine ; nothing but puerili ties. He might have been a pupil of Xenocrates. Oh, ye immortal Gods, what a teacher was he ! And there are those who believe that he actually was his pupil : but he says

1 Zeno here mentioned is not the same that Gotta spoke of before. This was the founder of the Stoics. The other was an Epicurean philo sopher, whom he had heard at Athens.

26 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

otherwise ; and I shall give more credit to his word than to another's. He confesses that he was a pupil of a certain dis ciple of Plato, one Pamphilus, at Sanios ; for he lived there, when he was young, with his father and his brothers. His father, Neocles, was a farmer in those parts ; but as the farm, I suppose, was not sufficient to maintain him, he turned school-master ; yet Epicurus treats this Platonic philosopher with wonderful contempt, so fearful was he that it should be thought he had ever had any instruction. But it is well known he had been a pupil of Nausiphanes, the follower of Democritus; and since he could not deny it, he loaded him with insults in abundance. If he never heard a lecture on these Democritean principles, what lectures did he ever hear? What is there in Epicurus's physics that is not taken from Democritus 1 For though he altered some things, as what I mentioned before of the oblique motions of the atoms, yet most of his doctrines are the same ; his atoms — his vacuum — his images — infinity of space — innumerable worlds, their rise and decay — and almost every part of natural learning that he treats of.

Now do you understand what is meant by quasi body and quasi blood 1 For I not only acknowledge that you are a better judge of it than I am, but I can bear it without envy. If any sentiments, indeed, are communicated without obscu rity, what is there that Velleius can understand, and Cotta not? I know what body is, and what blood is; but I cannot possibly find out the meaning of quasi body and quasi blood. Not that you intentionally conceal your principles from me, as Pythagoras did his from those who were not his disciples ; or that you are intentionally obscure like Heraclitus. But the truth is, (which I may venture to say in this company,) you do not understand them yourself.

XXVII. This, I perceive is what you contend for, that the Gods have a certain figure that has nothing concrete, nothing solid, nothing of express substance, nothing prominent in it; but that it is pure, smooth, and transparent. Let us suppose the same with the Venus of Cos, which is not a body, but the representation of a body; nor is the red, which is drawn there and mixed with the white, real blood, but a certain re semblance of blood ; so in Epicurus's deity there is no real substance, but the resemblance of substance.

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 27

Let me take for granted that which is perfectly unintel ligible ; then tell me what are the lineaments and figures of these sketched out Deities. Here you have plenty of argu ments, by which you would show the Gods to be in human form. The first is, that our minds are so anticipated and prepossessed, that whenever we think of a Deity the human shape occurs to us. The next is, that as the divine nature excels all things, so it ought to be of the most beautiful form, and there is no form more beautiful than the human; and the third is, that reason cannot reside in any other shape. First, let us consider each argument separately. You seem to me to assume a principle, despotically I may say, that has no manner of probability in it. Who was ever so blind, in contemplating these subjects, as not to see that the Gods were represented in human form, either by the particular advice of wise men, who thought by those means the more easily to turn the minds of the ignorant from a depravity of manners, to the worship of the Gods ; or through superstition, which was the cause of their believing that when they were paying adoration to these images they were approaching the Gods themselves. These conceits were not a little improved by the poets, painters, and artificers : for it would not have been very easy to represent the Gods planning and executing any work in another form; and perhaps this opinion arose from the idea which mankind have of their own beauty. But do not you, who are so great an adept in physics, see what a soothing flatterer, what a sort of procuress nature is to herself? Do you think there is any creature on the land ' or in the sea, that is not highly delighted with its own form 1 If it were not so, why would not a bull become enamoured of a mare, or a horse of a cow ? Do you believe an eagle, a lion, or a dolphin, prefer any shape to their own ] If nature, therefore, has instructed us in the same manner, that nothing is more beautiful than man, what wonder is it that we, for that reason, should imagine the Gods are of the human form 1 Do you suppose, if beasts were endowed with reason, that every one would not give the prize of beauty to his own species ?

XXVIII. Yet, by Hercules, (I speak as I think,) though I am fond enough of myself, 1 dare not say that I excel in beauty that bull which carried Europa. For the question

28 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

here is not concerning our genius and elocution, but our species and figure. If we could make and assume to our selves any form, would you be unwilling to resemble the sea- triton, as he is painted supported swimming on sea-monsters whose bodies are partly human ? Here I touch on a difficult point; for, so great is the force of nature, that there is no man who would not choose to be like a man; nor, indeed, any ant that would not be like an ant. But like what man 1 For how few can pretend to beauty ! When I was at Athens, the whole flock of youths afforded scarcely one. You laugh, I see: but what I tell you is the truth. Nay, to us, who. after the examples of ancient philosophers, delight in boys, defects are often pleasing. Alcceus was charmed with a wart on a boy's knuckle ; but a wart is a blemish on the body ; yet it seemed a beauty to him. Q. Catulus, my friend and colleague's father, was enamoured with your fellow-citizen Roscius, on whom he wrote these verses :

" As once I stood to hail the rising clay,

Eoscius, appearing on the left I spied : Forgive me, Gods, if I presume to say, The mortal's beauty with th' immortal vied."

Roscius more beautiful than a God ! yet he was then, as he now is, squint-eyed. But what signifies that, if his defects were beauties to Catulus ?

XXIX. I return to the Gods. Can we suppose any of them to be squint-eyed, or even to have a cast in the eye 1 Have they any warts '? Are any of them hook-nosed, flap- eared, beetle-browed, or jolt-headed, as some of us are ? Or are they free from imperfections ? Let us grant you that. Are they all alike in the face 1 For if they are many, then one must necessarily be more beautiful than another, and then there must be some Deity not absolutely most beautiful. Or if their faces are all alike, there would be an Academy ' in heaven ; for if one God does not differ from another, there is no possibility of knowing or distinguishing them.

What if your assertion, Velleius, proves absolutely false, that no form occurs to us, in our contemplations on the Deity, but the human ? Will you, notwithstanding that, persist in the defence of such an absurdity? Supposing that

1 That is, there would be the same uncertainty in heaven as is among the Academics.

OP THE NATURE OF TIIE GODS. 29

form occurs to us, as you say it does, and we know Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Neptune, Vulcan, Apollo, and the other deities, by the countenance which painters and statuaries have given them; and not only by their countenances, but by their decorations, their age, and attire, yet the Egyptians, the Syrians, and almost all barbarous nations,1 are without such distinctions. You may see a greater regard paid by them to certain beasts, than by us to the most sacred temples and images of the Gods ; for many shrines have been rifled, and images of the deities have been carried from their most sacred places by us; but we never heard that an Egyptian offered any violence to- a crocodile, an ibis, or a cat. What do you think, then ] Do not the Egyptians esteem their sacred bull, their Apis, as a deity? Yes, by Hercules, as certainly as you do our protectress Juno, whom you never behold, even in your dreams, without a goatskin, a spear, a shield, and broad sandals. But the Grecian Juno of Argos, aucl the Roman Juno, are not represented in this manner; so that the Grecians, the Lanuvinians, and we, ascribe different forms to Juno ; and our Capitoline Jupiter is not the same with the Jupiter Ammon of the Africans.

XXX. Therefore, ought not a natural philosopher, that is-, an inquirer into the secrets of nature, to be ashamed of seeking a testimony to truth from minds prepossessed by custom. According to the rule you have laid down, it may be said that Jupiter is always bearded, Apollo always beard less; that Minerva has gray, and Xeptune azure eyes; and, indeed, we must then honour that Yulcan at Athens, made by Alcainertes, whose lameness through his thin robes appears to be no deformity. Shall we, therefore, receive a lame deity, because we have such an account of him 1

Consider, likewise, that the Gods go by what names we give them. Now, in the first place, they have as many names as men have languages; for Yulcan is not called Yulcau in Italy, Africa, or Spain; as you are called Yelleius iu all countries. Besides, the Gods are innumerable, though the list of their names is of no great length even in the records of our priests. Have they no names ? You must necessarily confess, indeed, they have none ; for what occasion is there for different names, if their persons are alike ? 1 Those nations which were neither Greek nor Roman.

30 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

How much more laudable would it be, Velleius, to acknow ledge that you do not know what you do not know, than to follow a man whom you must despise ? Do you think the Deity is like either me or you ? You do not really think he is like either of us. What is to be done then ? Shall I call the sun, the moon, or the sky a Deity? If so, they are consequently happy. But what pleasures can they enjoy? And they are wise too. But how can wisdom reside in such shapes'? These are your own principles. Therefore, if they are not of human form, as I have proved, and if you cannot persuade yourself that they are of any other, why are you cautious of denying absolutely the being of any Gods ? You dare not deny it ; which is very prudent in you, though here you are not afraid of the people, but of the Gods them selves. I have known Epicureans who reverence1 even the least images of the Gods, though I perceive it to be the opinion of some that Epicurus, through fear of offending against the Athenian laws, has allowed a Deity in words and destroyed him in fact ; so in those his select and short sentences, which are called by you Kuptai Sofai,2 this, I think, is the first ; " that being which is happy and immortal, is not burdened with any labour, and does not impose any on any one else."

XXXI. In his statement of this sentence, some think that he avoided speaking clearly on purpose, though it was mani festly without design. But they judge ill of a man who had not the least art. It is doubtful whether he means that there is any being happy and immortal, or that if there is any being happy, he must likewise be immortal. They do not consider that he speaks here, indeed, ambiguously ; but in many other places, both he and Metrodorus explain them selves as clearly as you have done. But he believed there are Gods; nor have I ever seen any one who was more exceed ingly afraid of what he declared ought to be no objects of fear — namely, death and the Gods; with the apprehensions of which the common rank of people are very little affected; but he says that the minds of all mortals are terrified by them. Many thousands of men commit robberies in the face

1 Sigilla numerantes is the common reading ; but P. Manucius pro poses veneruntes, which I choose as the better of the two ; and in which sense I have translated it. 2 Fundamental doctrines.

OP THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 3]

of death ; others rifle all the temples they can get into : such as these, no doubt, must be greatly terrified, the one by the fears of death, and the others by the fear of the Gods.

But since you dare not (for I am now addressing my dis course to Epicurus himself) absolutely deny the existence of the Gods, what hinders you from ascribing a divine nature to the sun, the world, or some eternal mind? I never, says he, saw wisdom and a rational soul in any but a human form. What ! did you ever observe anything like the sun, the moon, or the five moving planets 1 The sun, terminating his course in two extreme parts of one circle,1 finishes his annual revolutions. The moon, receiving her light from the sun, completes the same course in the space of a month.2 The five planets in the same circle, some nearer, others more remote from the earth, begin the same courses together, and finish them in different spaces of time. Did you ever observe anything like this, Epicurus 1 So that according to you there can be neither sun, moon, nor stars, because nothing can exist but what we have touched or seen.3 What ! have you ever seen the Deity himself? Why else do you believe there is any ? If this doctrine prevails, we must reject all that history relates or reason discovers ; and the people who in habit inland countries must not believe there is such a thing as the sea. This is so narrow a way of thinking, that if you had been born in Seriplras, and never had been from out of that island, where you had frequently been in the habit of seeing little hares and foxes, you would not, therefore, believe that there are such beasts as lions and panthers; and if any one should describe an elephant to you, you would think that he designed to laugh at you.

XXXII. You indeed, Velleius, have concluded your argu ment, not after the manner of your own sect, but of the logicians, to which your people are utter strangers. You have taken it for granted that the Gods are happy. I allow it. You say that without virtue no one can be happy. I willingly concur with you in this also. You likewise say that

1 That is, the zodiac.

2 The inoon, as well as the sun, is indeed in the zodiac, but she d( es not measure the same course in a month. She moves in another line oi the zodiac nearer the earth.

3 According to the doctrines of Epicurus, none of these bodies them selves are clearly seen, but simulacra ex corporibm effluentia.

32 OP THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

virtue cannot reside where i-eason is not. That I must neces sarily allow. You add, moreover, that reason cannot exist but in a human form. Who, do you think, will admit that1? If it were true, what occasion was there to come so gradually to it 1 And to what purpose 1 You might have answered it on your own authority. I perceive yo/ir gradations from happiness to virtue, and from virtue to reason ; but how do you come from reason to human form 1 There, indeed, you do not descend by degrees, but precipitately.

Nor can I conceive why Epicurus. should rather say the Gods are like men, than that men are like the Gods. You ask what is the difference ; for, say you, if this is like that, that is like this. I grant it ; but this I assert, that the Gods coiild not take their form from men; for the Gods always existed, and never had a beginning, if they are to exist eternally ; but men had a beginning ; therefore that form, of which the immortal Gods are, must have had existence before mankind; consequently the Gods should not be said to be ol human form, but our form should be called divine. However, let this be as you will. I now inquire how this extraordinary good fortune came about ; for you deny that reason had any share in the formation of* things. But still what was this extraordinary fortune? Whence proceeded that happy con course of atoms, which gave so sudden a rise to men in the form of Gods '? Are we to suppose the divine seed fell from heaven upon earth, and that men sprung up in the likeness of their celestial sires? I wish you would assert it; for I should not be unwilling to acknowledge my relation to the Gods. But you say nothing like it; no, our resemblance to the Gods, it seems, was by chance. Must I now seek for arguments to refute this doctrine seriously? I wish I could as easily dis cover what is true, as T can overthrow what is false.

XXXIII. You have enumerated with so ready a memory, and so copiously, the opinions of philosophers, from Thales the Milesian, concerning the nature of the Gods, that I am surprised to see so much learning in a Roman. But do you think they were all madmen, who thought that a Deity could by some possibility exist without hands and feet. Does not even this consideration have weight with you when you con sider what is the use and advantage of limbs in men, and lead you to admit that the Gods have no need of them? what

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 33,

necessity can there be of feet, without walking; or of hands, if there is nothing to be grasped? The same may be asked of the other parts of the body, in which nothing is vaiu, nothing useless, nothing superfluous; therefore we may infer, that no art can imitate the skill of nature. Shall the Deity, then, have a tongue, and not speak ; teeth, palate, and jaws, though he will have no use for them. Shall the members, which nature has given to the body for the sake of generation, be useless to the Deity ! Nor would the internal parts be less superfluous than the external. What comeliness is there in the heart, the lungs, the liver, and the rest of them, abstracted from their use 1 I mention these because you place them in the Deity on account of the beauty of the human form.

Depending on these dreams, not only Epicurus, Metrodorus. and Hermachus, declaimed against Pythagoras, Plato, and Empedocles, but that little harlot Leontium presumed to write against Theophrastus ; indeed, she had a neat Attic style ; but yet, to think of her arguing against Theophrastus ! So much did the garden of Epicurus1 abound with these liberties, and indeed, you are always complaining against them. Zeno wrangled. Why need I mention Albutius ? Nothing could be more elegant or humane than Phsedrus; yet a sharp expression would disgust the old man. Epicurus treated Aristotle with great contumely. He foully slandered Phfedo, the disciple of Socrates. He pelted Tirnocrates, the brother of his companion Metrodorus, with whole volumes, because he disagreed with him in some trifling point of phi losophy. He was ungrateful even to Democritus, whose follower he was; and his master Nausiphanes, from whom he learned nothing, had no better treatment from him.

XXXIV. Zeuo gave abusive language not only to those who were then living, as Apollodorus, Syllus, and the rest ; but he called Socrates, who was the father of philosophy, the Attic buffoon ; using the Latin wrord Scurra. He never called Chrysippus by any name but Chesippus. And you yourself a little before, when you were numbering up a senate, as we may call them, of philosophers, scrupled not to say that the most eminent men talked like foolish visionary dotards. Cer tainly, therefore, if they have all erred in regard to the nature 1 Epicurus taught his disciples in a garden.

I>E NAT. ETC. D

34 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

of the Gods, it is to be feared there are no such beings. What you deliver on that head are all whimsical notions, and not worthy the consideration even of old women. For you do not seem to be in the least aware what a task you draw on yourselves, if you should prevail on us to grant that the same form is common to Gods and Men. The deity would then require the same trouble in dressing, and the same care of the body that mankind does. He must walk, run, lie down, lean, sit, hold, speak, and discourse. You need not be told the consequence of making the Gods male and female.

Therefore I cannot sufficiently wonder how this chief of yours came to entertain these strange opinions. But you constantly insist on the certainty of this tenet, that the Deity is both happy and immortal. Supposing he is so, would his happiness be less perfect if he had not two feet? Or cannot that blessedness or beatitude, call it which you will (they are both harsh terms, but we must molify them by use), can it not, I say, exist in that sun, or in this world, or in some eternal mind, that has not human shape or limbs ? All you say against it is, that you never saw any happiness in the sun or the world. What then 1 Did you ever see any world but this 1 No, you will say. Why, therefore, do you presume to assert that there are not only six hundred thousand worlds, but that they are innumerable. Reason tells you so. Will not reason tell you likewise, that as, in our inquiries into the most excellent nature, we find none but the divine nature can be happy and eternal, so the same divine nature surpasses us in excellence of mind; and, as in mind, so in body? Why, therefore, as we are inferior in all other respects, should we be equal in form 1 For human virtue approaches nearer to the divinity than human form.

XXXV. To return to the subject I was upon ; what can be more childish than to assert that there are no such creatures as are generated in the Red Sea or in India? The most curious inquirer cannot arrive at the knowledge of all those creatures, which inhabit the earth, sea, fens, and rivers ; and shall we deny the existence of them, because we never saw them 1 That similitude, which you are so very fond of, is nothing to the purpose. Is not a dog like a wolf? And, as Ennius says,

The monkey, filthiest beast, how like to man !

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. i <W

Yet they differ in nature. No beast has more sagacity than an elephant ; yet where can you find any of a larger size ? I am speaking here of beasts. But among men, do we not see a disparity of manners in persons very much alike, and a similitude of manners in persons unlike? If this sort of argument were once to prevail, Velleius, observe what it would lead to. You have laid it down as certain that reason cannot possibly reside in any but the human form. Another may affirm that it can exist in none but a terrestrial being ; in none but a being that is bom, that grows up, and receives instruction, and that consists of a soul and an infirm and perishable body; in short, in none but a mortal man. But if you decline those opinions, why should a single form dis turb you 1 You perceive that man is possessed of reason and understanding, with all the infirmities which I have men tioned interwoven with his being; abstracted from which, you nevertheless know God, you say, if the lineaments do but remain. This is not talking considerately, but at a venture; for surely you did not think what an incumbrance anything superfluous or useless is. not only in a man, but a tree. How troublesome it is to have a finger too much ! And why so '? Because neither use nor ornament requires more than five ; but your Deity has not only a finger more than he wants, but a head, a neck, shoulders, sides, a paunch, back, hams, hands, feet, thighs, and legs. Are these parts necessary to immor tality'? Are they conducive to the existence of the Deity? Is the face itself of use 1 One would rather say so of the brain, the heart, the lights, and the liver ; for these are the seats of life. The features of the face contribute nothing to the pre servation of it.

XXXVI. You censured those, who, beholding those ex cellent and stupendous works, the world, and its respective parts ; the heaven, the earth, the seas, and the splendour with which they are adorned; who, contemplating the sun, moon, and stars ; and who, observing the maturity and changes of the seasons, and vicissitudes of times, inferred from thence that there must be some excellent and eminent essence, that originally made, and still moves, directs, and governs them. Suppose they should mistake in their conjecture, yet I see what they aim at. But what is that great and noble work, which appears to you to be the effect of a divine mind,

D2

36 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

and from which you conclude that there are Gods ? " I have/' say you, " a certain information of a Deity imprinted in my mind." Of a bearded Jupiter, I suppose, and a helmeted Minerva.

But do you really imagine them to be such ? How much better are the notions of the ignorant vulgar, who not only believe the Deities have members like ours, but that they make use of them ; and therefore they assign them a bow and arrows, a spear, a shield, a trident, and lightning ; and though they do not behold the actions of the Gods, yet they cannot entertain a thought of a Deity doing nothing. The Egyp tians (so much ridiculed) held no beasts to be sacred, except on account of some advantage which they had received from them. The Ibis, a very large bird, with strong legs and a horny long beak, destroys a great number of serpents. These birds keep Egypt from pestilential diseases, by killing and devouring the flying serpents, brought from the deserts of Lybia by the south-west wind; which prevents the mischief that may attend their biting while alive, or any infection when dead. I could speak of the advantage of the ichneumon, the crocodile, and the cat ; but I am unwilling to be tedious : yet I will conclude with observing that the barbarians paid divine honours to beasts, because of the benefits they re ceived from them; whereas your Gods not only confer no benefit, but are idle, and do no single act of any description whatever.

XXXVII. " They have nothing to do," your teacher says. Epicurus truly, like indolent boys, thinks nothing preferable to idleness ; yet those very boys, when they have an holiday, entertain themselves in some sportive exercise. But we are to suppose the Deity in such an inactive state, that if he should move, we may justly fear he would be no longer happy. . This doctrine divests the Gods of motion and opera tion ; besides, it encourages men to be lazy, as they are by this taught to believe that the least labour is incompatible even with divine felicity.

But let it be as you would have it, that the Deity is in the form and image of a man. Where is his abode 1 Where is his habitation? Where is the place where he is to be found ? What is his course of life ] And what is it that constitutes the happiness which you assert that he enjoys1?

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 37

For it seems necessary that a being who is to be happy, must use and enjoy what belongs to him. And with regard to place, even those natures which are inanimate have each their proper stations assigned to them : so that the earth is the lowest ; then water is next above the earth ; the air is above the water; and fire has the highest situation of all allotted to it. Some creatures inhabit the earth, some the water, and some, of an amphibious nature, live in both. There are some, also, which are thought to be born in fire, and which often appear fluttering in burning furnaces.

In the first place, therefore, I ask you; Where is the habi tation of your deity 1 Secondly, What motive is it that stirs him from his place, supposing he ever moves? And lastly, since it is peculiar to animated beings to have an inclination to something that is agreeable to their several natures, what is it that the Deity affects, and to what purpose does he exert the motion of his mind and reason ? In short, how is he happy, how eternal 1 Whichever of these points you touch upon, I am afraid you will come lamely off. For there is never a proper end to reasoning which proceeds on a false foundation ; for you asserted likewise that the form of the Deity is perceptible by the mind, but not by sense ; that it is neither solid, nor invariable in number; that it is to be discerned by similitude and transition, and that a constant supply of-images is perpetually flowing on from innumerable atoms, on which our minds are intent; so that we from that conclude that divine nature to be happy and everlasting.

XXXVIII. What, in the name of those Deities, concerning •whom we are now disputing, is the meaning of all this? For if they exist only in thought, and have no solidity nor sub stance, what difference can there be between thinking of a Hippocentaur, and thinking of a Deity? Other philosophers call every such conformation of the mind a vain motion ; but you term it " the approach and entrance of images into the mind." Thus, when I imagine that I behold T. Gracchus haranguing the people in the capitol, and collecting their suffrages concerning M. Octavius, I call that a vain motion of the mind ; but you affirm that the images of Gracchus and Octavius are present, which are only conveyed to my mind when they have arrived at the capitol. The case is the same, you say, in regard to the Deity, with the frequent representation

38 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

of which the mind is so affected, that from thence it may be clearly understood that the Gods ' are happy and eternal.

Let it be granted that there are images by which the mind is affected, yet it is only a certain form that occurs; and why must that form be pronounced happy, why eternal ? But what are those images you talk of, or whence do they pro ceed ? This loose manner of arguing is taken from Democri- tus ; but he is reproved by many people for it ; nor can you derive any conclusions from it ; the whole system is weak and imperfect. For what can be more improbable than that the images of Homer. Archilochus, Romulus, Numa, Pythagoras, and Plato, should come into my mind; and yet not in the form in which they existed 1 How therefore can they be those persons ? And whose images are they? Aristotle tells us that there never was such a person as Orpheus the poet;2 and it is said that the verse, called Orphic verse, was the invention of Cercops. a Pythagorean ; yet Orpheus, that is to say, the image of him, as you will have it, often runs in my head. What is the reason that I entertain one idea of the figure of the same person, and you another ? Why do we image to ourselves such things as never had any existence, and which never can have, such as Scyllas and Chimeeras ? Why do we frame ideas of men, countries, and cities, which we never saw t How is it that the very first moment that I choose I can form representations of them in my mind? How is it that they come to me, even in my sleep, without being called or sought after ?

XXXIX. The whole affair, Velleius, is ridiculous. You do not impose images on our eyes only, but on our minds. Such is the privilege which you have assumed of talking nonsense with impunity. But there is, you say, a transi tion of images flowing on in great crowds in such a way, that out of many some one at least must be perceived ! I should be ashamed of my incapacity to understand this if

1 By the word Deus, as often used by our author, we are to under stand all the Gods in that theology then treated of, and not a single personal Deity.

2 The best commentators on this passage agree, that Cicero does not mean that Aristotle affirmed that there was no such person as Orpheus, but that there was no such poet, and that the verse called Orphic was said to be the invention of another. The passage of Aristotle to which Cicero here alludes, has, as Dr. Davis observes, been long lost.

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 39

you, who assert it, could comprehend it yourselves; for how do you prove that these images are continued in uninter rupted motion 1 Or, if uninterrupted, still how do you prove them to be eternal 1 There is a constant supply, you say, of innumerable atoms. But must they, for that reason, be all eternal ? To elude this, you have recourse to equilibration, (for so, with your leave, I will call your 'lo-ovop/a,)1 and say, that as there is a sort of nature mortal, so there must also be a sort which is immortal; by the same rule, as there are men mortal, there are men immortal ; and as some arise from the earth, some must arise from the water also ; and as there are causes which destroy, there must likewise be causes which pre serve. Be it as you say ; but let those causes preserve, which have existence themselves ; I cannot conceive these your Gods to have any. But how does all this face of things arise from atomic corpuscles 1 Were there any such atoms (as there are not), they might perhaps impel one another, and be jumbled together in their motion; but they could never be able to impart form, or figure, or colour, or animation, so that you by no means demonstrate the immortality of your Deity.

XL. Let us now inquire into his happiness. It is cer tain, that without virtue there can be no happiness; but virtue consists in action : now your Deity does nothing ; therefore he is void of virtue, and consequently cannot be happy. What sort of life does he lead? He has a constant supply, you say, of good things without any intermixture of bad. What are those good things ? Sensual pleasures, no doubt ; for you know no delight of the mind, but what arises from the body, and returns to it. I do not suppose, Velleius, that you are like some of the Epicureans, who are ashamed of those expressions of Epicurus,2 in which he openly avows that he has no idea of any good separate from wanton and obscene pleasures; which, without a blush, he names dis tinctly. What food, therefore, what drink, what variety of music or flowers, what kind of pleasures of touch, what odours, will you offer to the Gods to fill them with pleasures ? The poets indeed provide them with banquets of nectar and

1 A just proportion between the different sorts of beings.

2 Some give quos non pudeat earum Epicuri vocum; but the best copies have not non; nor would it be consistent with Cotta to say quos non pudeat, for he throughout represents Velleius as a perfect Epicurean in every article.

40 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

ambrosia, and a Hebe or a Ganymede to serve up the cup. But what is it, Epicurus, that you do for them? For I do not see from whence your Deity should have those things, nor how he could use them. Therefore the nature of man is better constituted for a happy life, than the nature of the Gods, because men enjoy various kinds of pleasures; but you look on all those pleasures as superficial, which delight the senses only by a titillation, as Epicurus calls it. Where is to be the end of this trifling? Even Philo, who followed the Academy, could not bear to hear the soft and luscious delights of the Epicureans despised; for with his admirable memory he perfectly remembered and used to repeat many sentences of Epicurus in the very words in which they were written. He likewise used to quote many, which were more gross, from Metrodorus, the sage colleague of Epicurus, who blamed his brother Timocrates, because he would not allow- that everything which had any reference to a happy life was to be measured by the belly ; nor has he said this once only, but often. You grant what I say, I perceive ; for you know- it to be true. I can produce the books, if you should deny it; but I am not now reproving you for referring all things to the standard of pleasure ; that is another question. What I am now showing is. that your Gods are destitute of pleasure ; and therefore, according to your own manner of reasoning, they are not happy.

XLI. But they are free from pain. Is that sufficient for beings, who are supposed to enjoy all good things and the most supreme felicity? The Deity, they say, is constantly meditating on his own happiness, for he has no other idea which can possibly occupy his mind. Consider a little ; reflect what a figure the Deity would make, if he were to be idly thinking of nothing through all eternity but, " it is very well with me, and I am happy;" nor do I see why this happy Deity should not fear being destroyed, since without any in termission he is driven and agitated by an everlasting incursion of atoms, and since images are constantly flowing off from him. Your Deity therefore is neither happy nor eternal.

Epicurus, it seems, has written books concerning sanctity and piety towards the Gods. But how does he speak on these subjects? You would say that you were listening to Corun- canius or Sceevola, the high priests, and not to a man who

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 41

tore up all religion by the roots, and who overthrew the temples and altars of the immortal Gods; not, indeed, with hands, like Xerxes, but with arguments; for, what reason is there for your saying that men ought to worship the Gods, when the Gods not only do not regard men, but are entirely careless of everything, and absolutely do nothing at all?

But they are, you say, of so glorious and excellent a nature, that a wise man is induced by their excellence to adore them. Can there be any glory or excellence in that nature, which only contemplates its own happiness, and neither will do, nor does, nor ever did anything? Besides, what piety is due to a being from whom you receive nothing? Or how can you, or any one else, be indebted to him who bestows no benefits ? For piety is only justice towards the Gods; but what right have they to it, when there is no communication whatever between the Gods and men? And sanctity is the knowledge of how we ought to worship them ; but I do not understand why they are to be worshipped, if we are neither to receive or expect any good from them.

XLII. And why should we worship them from an admira tion only of that nature, in which we can behold nothing excellent? and as for that freedom from superstition, which you are in the habit of boasting of so much, it is easy to be free from that feeling when you have renounced all belief in the power of the Gods. Unless, indeed, you imagine that Diagoras or Theodoras, who absolutely denied the being of the Gods, could possibly be superstitious. I do not suppose that even Protagoras could, who doubted whether there were Gods or not. The opinions of these philosophers are not only destructive of superstition, which arises from a vain fear of the Gods, but of religion also, which consists in a pious adoration of them.

What think you of those, who have asserted that the whole doctrine concerning the immortal Gods was the invention of politicians, whose view was to govern that part of the com munity by religion, which reason could not influence? Are not their opinions subversive of all religion? Or what religion did Prodicus the Chian leave to men, who held that every thing beneficial to human life should be numbered amongst the Gods? Were not they likewise void of religion, who taught that the Deities, at present the object of our prayers

42 OF THE NATURE OF THE GOLS.

and adoration, were valiant, illustrious and mighty men, who arose to divinity after death ? Euhemerus, whom our Ennius translated, and followed more than other authors, has par ticularly advanced this doctrine, and treated of the deaths and burials of the Gods ; can he then be said to have confirmed religion, or rather to have totally subverted it? I shall say nothing of that sacred and august Eleusina, into whose mysteries the most distant nations were initiated, nor of the solemnities in Samothrace, or in Lemnos, secretly resorted to by night, and surrounded by thick and shady groves ; which, if they were properly explained, and reduced to reasonable principles, would rather explain the nature of things, than discover the knowledge of the Gods.

XLIII. Even that great man Democritus, from whose fountains Epicurus watered his little garden, seems to me to be very inferior to his usual acuteness when speaking about the nature of the Gods. For at one time he thinks, that there are images endowed with divinity, inherent in the universality of things; at another, that the principles and minds contained in the universe are Gods; then he attributes divinity to animated images, employing themselves in doing us good or harm ; and lastly, he speaks of certain images of such vast extent that they encompass the whole outside of the universe ; all which opinions are more worthy of the country1 of Demo critus than of Democritus himself; for who can frame in his mind any ideas of such images 1 Who can admire them ? Who can think they merit a religious adoration?

But Epicurus, when he divests the Gods of the power of doing good, extirpates all religion from the minds of men ; for though he says the divine nature is the best and the most excellent of all natures, he will not allow it to be susceptible of any benevolence ; by which he destroys the chief and peculiar attribute of the most perfect being ; for what is better and more excellent than goodness and beneficence ? To refuse your Gods that quality, is to say that no man is any object of their favour, and no Gods either; that they neither love nor esteem any one ; in short, that they not only give themselves no trouble about us, but even look on each other with the greatest indifference.

1 His country was Abdera, the natives of which were remarkable for their stupidity.

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 43

XLIV. How much more reasonable is the doctrine of the Stoics, whom you censure? It is one of their maxims, that the wise are friends to the wise, though unknown to each other; for as nothing is more amiable than virtue, he who possesses it is worthy our love, to whatever country he be longs. But what evils do your principles bring, when you make good actions and benevolence the marks of imbecility ? For, not to mention the power and nature of the Gods, you hold that even men, if they had no need of mutual assistance, would be neither courteous nor beneficent. Is there no natural charity in the dispositions of good men ? The very name of love, from which friendship is derived, is dear to men ;l and if friendship is to centre in our own advantage only, without regard to him whom we esteem a friend, it cannot be called friendship, but a sort of traffic for our own profit. Pastures, lands, and herds of cattle, are valued in the same manner on account of the profit we gather from them ; but charity and friendship expect no return. How much more reason have we to think that the Gods, who want nothing, should love each other, and employ themselves about us ! If it were not so, why should we pray to, or adore them 1 Why do the priests preside over the altars, and the augurs over the auspices? What have we to ask of the Gods, and why do we prefer our vows to them ?

But Epicurus, you say, has written a book concerning sanctity. A trifling performance by a man whose wit is not so remarkable in it, as the unrestrained licence of writing which he has permitted himself; for what sanctity can there be if the Gods take no care of human affairs? Or how can that nature be called animated, which neither regards nor performs anything? Therefore our friend Posidonius has well observed, in his fifth book of the Nature of the Gods, that E^icjjnis^elieyed_there were no GodSj and that what he had said about the immortal Gods was only said from a desire to avoid unpopularity. He could not be so weak as to imagine that the Deity has only the outward features of a simple mortal, without any real solidity ; that he has all the mem bers of a man, without the least power to use them ; a certain

1 This passage will not admit of a translation answerable to the sense of the original. Cicero says the word amicitia (friendship) is derived from amor ('ove or affection).

44 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

unsubstantial pellucid being, neither favourable nor beneficial to any one, neither regarding nor doing anything : there can be no such being in nature ; and as Epicurus said this plainly, he allows the Gods in words, and destroys them in fact; and if the Deity is truly such a being that he shows no favour, no benevolence to mankind, away with him ! For why should I entreat him to be propitious1? He can be propitious to none, since, as you say, all his favour and benevolence are the effects of imbecility.

BOOK II.

I. WHEN Cotta had thus concluded, Velleius replied, I cer tainly was inconsiderate to engage in argument with an Aca demician who is likewise a rhetorician; I should not have feared an Academician without eloquence, nor a rhetorician without that philosophy, however eloquent he might be ; for I am never puzzled by an empty flow of words, nor by the most subtle reasonings delivered without any grace of oratory. But you, Cotta, have excelled in both. You only wanted the assembly and the judges. However, enough of this at pre sent. Now let us hear what Lucilius has to say, if it is agreeable to him.

I had much rather, says Balbus, hear Cotta resume his dis course, and demonstrate the true Gods with the same eloquence which he made use of to explode the false ; for on such a sub ject the loose, unsettled doctrine of the Academy does not become a philosopher, a priest, a Cotta, whose opinions should be, like those we hold, firm and certain. Epicurus has been more than sufficiently refuted; but I would willingly hear your own sentiments, Cotta.

Do you forget, replies Cotta, what I at first said, that it is easier forme, especially on this point, to explain what opinions those are which I do not hold, rather than what those are which I do? Nay. even if I did feel some cer tainty on any particular point, yet, after having been so diffuse myself already, I would prefer now hearing you speak in your turn. I submit, says Balbus, and will be as brief as I possibly can; for as you have confuted the

OF THE NATUKE OF THE GODS. 45

errors of Epicurus, my part in the dispute will be the shorter. Our sect divide the whole question concerning the immortal Gods into four parts. First, they prove that there are Gods; secondly, of what character and nature they are ; thirdly, that the universe is governed by them ; and lastly, that they exercise a superintendence over human affairs. But in this present discussion let us confine ourselves to the first two articles, and defer the third and fourth till another oppor tunity, as they require more time to discuss. By no means, says Cotta; for we have time enough on our hands, besides that we are now discussing a subject which should be pre ferred even to serious business.

II. The first point then, says Lucilius, I think needs no discourse to prove it ; for what can be so plain and evident, when we behold the heavens, and contemplate the celestial bodies, as the existence of some supreme, divine intelligence, by which all these things are governed? Were it otherwise, Ennius would not, with an universal approbation, have said,

Look up to the refulgent heaven above, Which all men call, unanimously, Jove.

This is Jupiter, the governor of the world, who rules all things with his nod, and is, as the same Ennius adds, — of Gods and men the sire,1

an omnipresent and omnipotent God. And if any one doubts this, I really do not understand why the same man may not also doubt whether there is a sun or not. For what can possibly be more evident than this? And if it were not a truth universally impressed on the minds of men, the belief in it would never have been so firm ; nor would it have been, as it is, increased by length of years, nor would it have gathered strength and stability through every age. And in truth we see that other opinions, being false and groundless, have already fallen into oblivion by lapse of time. Who now believes in Hippocentaurs and Chimeras? Or what old woman is now to be found so weak and ignorant, as to stand in fear of those infernal monsters which once KO terrified mankind? For time destroys the fictions of error

1 This manner of speaking of Jupiter frequently occurs in Homer,

TTO.TTJP aV^pHlV Tf OfUJV Te,

and has been used by Virgil and other poets since Ennius.

46 OF THE NATURE OP THE GODS.

and opinion, while it confirms the determinations of nature and of truth. And therefore it is that, both amongst us and amongst other nations, sacred institutions and the divine •worship of the Gods have been strengthened and improved from time to time. And this is not to be imputed to chance or folly, but to the frequent appearance of the Gods them selves. In the war with the Latins, when A. Posthumius the dictator attacked Octavius Mamilius the Tusculan at Regillus, Castor and Pollux were seen fighting in our army on horse back; and since that the same offspring of Tyndarus gave notice of the defeat of Perses ; for as P. Vatienus, the grand father of the present young man of that name, was coming in the night to Rome from his government of Reate, two young men on white horses appeared to him, and told him that king1 Perses was that day taken prisoner. This news he carried to the senate, who immediately threw him into prison for speak ing inconsiderately on a state affair ; but when it was confirmed by letters from Paullus, he was recompensed by the senate with land and immunities.2 Nor do we forget when the Locrians defeated the people of Crotone, in a great battle on the banks of the river Sagra, that it was known the same day at the Olympic Games. The voices of the Fauns have been often heard, and Deities have appeared in forms so visible, that they have compelled every one who is not senseless or hardened in impiety to confess the presence of the Gods.

III. What do predictions and foreknowledge of future events indicate, but that such future events are shown, pointed out, portended, and foretold to men? From whence they are called omens, signs, portents, prodigies. But though we should esteem fabulous what is said of Mopsus/ Tiresias,4

1 Perses, or Perseus, the last king of Macedonia, was taken by Cnseus Octavius the prsetor, and brought as prisoner to Paullus jEmilius, B.O. 167.

2 An exemption from serving in the wars, and from paying public taxes.

* Mopsus. There were two soothsayers of this name : the first was one of the Lapithse, son of Ampycus and Chloris ; called also the son of Apollo and Hienantis; the other a son of Apollo and Manto, who is said to have founded Mallus in Asia Minor, where his oracle existed as late as the time of Strabo.

* Tiresias was the great Theban prophet at the time of the war of the Seven against Thebes.

OF THE NATURE OF THE OCDS. 47

Amphiaraus,1 Calchas,2 and Helenus,3 (who would not have been delivered down to us as augurs even in fable, if their art had been despised,) may we not be sufficiently apprised of the power of the Gods by domestic examples 1 Will not the temerity of P. Claudius, in the first Punic war, affect us ? who, when the poultry were let out of the coop and would not feed, ordered them to be thrown into the water, and, joking even upon the Gods, said, with a sneer, Let them drink, since they will not eat; which piece of ridicule, being followed by a victory over his fleet, cost him many tears, and brought great calamity on the Roman people. Did not his colleague Junius, in the same war, lose his fleet in a tempest by disre garding the auspices ? Claudius therefore was condemned by the people; and Junius killed himself. Coelius says, that P. Flaminius, from his neglect of religion, fell at Thrasimenus ; a loss which the public severely felt. By these instances of calamity we may be assured that Rome owes her grandeur and success to the conduct of those who were tenacious of their religious duties; and if we compare ourselves to our neighbours, we shall find that we are infinitely distinguished above foreign nations by our zeal for religious ceremonies, though in other things we may be only equal to them, and in other respects even inferior to them.

Ought we to contemn Attius Navius's staff, with which he divided the regions of the vine to find his sow?1 I should despise it, if I were not aware that king Hostilius had carried on most important wars in deference to his auguries; but by

1 Amphiaraus was king of Argos ; (he had been one of the Argonauts also.) He was killed after the war of the Seven against Thebes, which he was compelled to join in by the treachery of his wife Eriphyle, by the earth opening and swallowing him up as he was fleeing from Periclymenus.

2 Calchas was the prophet of the Grecian army at the siege of Troy.

3 Helenus was a son of Priam and Hecuba. He is represented as a prophet in the Pliiloctetes of Sophocles. And in the j£neid he is also represented as king of part of Epirus, and as predicting to ^Eneas the dangers and fortunes which awaited him.

* This short passage would be very obscure to the reader without an explanation from another of Cicero's treatises. The expression here, ad investifjandum suein regiones vinece terminavit, which is a metaphor too bold, if it was not a sort of augural language, seems to me to have been the effect of carelessness in our great author ; for Navius did not divide the regions, as he calls them, of the vine to find his sow, but to find a grape.

48 OF THE NATURE OP THE GODS.

the negligence of our nobility the discipline of the augury is now omitted, the truth of the auspices despised, and only a . mere form observed; so that the most important affairs of the commonwealth, even the wars, on which the public safety i depends, are conducted without any auspices; the Peremnia1 are discussed; no part of the Acumina2 performed; no select men are called to witness to the military testaments ; ;i our generals now begin their wars as soon as they have arranged the Auspicia. The force of religion was so great amongst our ancestors that some of their commanders have, with their faces veiled, and with the solemn formal expressions of reli gion, sacrificed themselves to the immortal Gods to save their country.4 I could mention many of the Sibylline prophecies, and many answers of the haruspices, to confirm t;:ose things, which ought not to be doubted.

IV. For example ; our augurs and the Etrurian haruspices saw the truth of their art established when P. Scipio and C. Figulus were consuls; for as Tiberius Gracchus, who was a second time consul, washed to proceed to a fresh election, the first Rogator,5 as he was collecting the suffrages, fell down dead on the spot. Gracchus nevertheless went on with the assembly, but perceiving that this accident had a religious influence on the people, he brought the affair before the senate. The senate thought fit to refer it to those who usually took cognizance of such things. The haruspices were called, and declared that the man who had acted as Rogator of the assembly, had no right to do so ; to which, as I have

1 The Peremnia were a sort of auspices performed just before the passing a river.

2 The Acumina were a military auspices, and \vere partly performed on the point of a spear, from which they were called Acumina.

3 Those were called testamenta in procinctu, which were made l>y soldiers just before an engagement, in the presence of men called as witnesses.

4 This especially refers to the Decii, one of whom devoted himself for his country in the war with the Latins, B.C. 340, and his son imitated the action in the war with the Samnites, B.C. 295. Cicero (Tusc. i. 37) says that his son did the same thing in the war with Pyrrhus, at tlu battle of Asculum, though in other places (De Off. iii. 4) he speaks of only two Decii as having signalized themselves in this manner.

5 The Rogator, who collected the votes, and pronounced who was the person chosen. There were two sorts cf Rogators ; one was the officer here mentioned, and the other was the Rogator, or speaker of the whole assembly.

OF TIIE NATURE OF THE GODS. 49

heard my father say, he replied with great warmth, Have I no right, who am consul, and augur, and favoured by the Auspicia ? And shall you, who are Tuscans and Barbarians, pretend that you have authority over the Roman Auspicia, and a right to give judgment in matters respecting the forma lity of our assemblies ? Therefore, he then commanded them to withdraw; but not long afterwards he wrote from his province ' to the college of augurs, acknowledging that in. reading the books2 he remembered that he had illegally chosen a place for his tent in the gardens of Scipio, and had afterwards entered the Pomoarium, in order to hold a senate, but that in repassing the same Pomcerium he had forgotten to take the auspices; and that, therefore, the consuls had been created informally. The augurs laid the case before the senate. The senate decreed that they should resign their charge, and so they accordingly abdicated. What greater example need we seek for? The wisest, perhaps the most excellent of men, chose to confess his fault, which he might have concealed, rather than leave the public the least atom of religious guilt; and the consuls chose to quit the highest office in the state, rather than fill it for a moment in defiance of religion. How great is the reputation of the augurs !

And is not the art of the soothsayers divine ? And must not every one who sees what innumerable instances of the same kind there are, confess the existence of the Gods ? For they who have interpreters, must certainly exist them selves; now, there are interpreters of the Gods; there fore we must allow there are Gods. But it may be said, perhaps, that all predictions are not accomplished. We may as well conclude there is no art of physic, because all sick persons do not recover. The Gods show us signs of future events ; if we are occasionally deceived in the results it is not to be imputed to the nature of the Gods, but to the con jectures of men. All nations agree that there are Gods; the opinion is innate, and as it were engraved in the minds of all men. The only point in dispute amongst us is, what they are.

V. Their existence no one denies. Cleanthes, one of our sect, imputes the way in which the idea of the Gods is

1 Which was Sardinia, as appears from one of Cicero's epistles to his brother Quintus. 2 Their sacred books of ceremonies.

DE NAT. ETC. E

50 OF THE NATURE OP THE GODS.

implanted in the minds of men, to four causes. The first is that which I just now mentioned, the foreknowledge of future things. The second is, the great advantages which we enjoy from the temperature of the air, the fertility of the earth, and the abundance of various benefits of other kinds. The third cause is deduced from the terror with which the mind is affected by thunder, tempests, storms, snow, hail, devastation, pestilence, earthquakes often attended with hideous noises, showers of stones, and rain like drops of blood ; by rocks and sudden openings of the earth ; by mon strous births of men and beasts ; by meteors in the air, and blazing stars, by the Greeks called cometce, by us crinitce, the appearance of which, in the late Octavian war,1 were fore- boders of great calamities; by two suns, which, as I have heard my father say, happened in the consulate of Tuditanus and Aquillius, and in which year also another sun (P. Africanus) was extinguished. These things terrified man kind, and raised in them a firm belief of the existence of some celestial and divine power.

His fourth cause, and that the strongest, is drawn from the regularity of the motion and revolution of the heavens, the distinctness, variety, beauty, and order of the sun, moon, and all the stars, the appearance only of which is sufficient to convince us they are not the effects of chance ; as when we enter into a house, or school, or court, and observe the exact order, discipline, and method of it, we cannot suppose that it is so regulated without a cause, but must conclude that there is some one who commands, and to whom obedience is paid ; it is quite impossible for us to avoid thinking that the won derful motions, revolutions, and order of those many and great bodies, no part of which is impaired by the countless and infinite succession of ages, must be governed and directed by some supreme intelligent being.

VI. Chrysippus, indeed, had a very penetrating genius ; yet such is the doctrine which he delivers, that he seems rather to have been instructed by nature, than to owe it to any dis covery of his own. " If," says he, " there is anything in the universe which no human reason, ability, or power can make, the being who produced it must certainly be preferable to man; now celestial. bodies, and all those things which proceed i The war between Octavius and Cinna, the consuls.

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 51

in any eternal order, cannot be made by man; the being \vho made them is therefore preferable to man. What then is that being but a God1? If there be no such thing as a Deity, what is there better than man, since he only is pos sessed of reason, the most excellent of all things ? But it is a foolish piece of vanity in man to think there is nothing- preferable to him ; there is therefore something preferable , consequently there is certainly a God."

When you behold a large and beautiful house, surely no one can persuade you it was built for mice and weasels, though you do not see the master; and would it not, there fore, be most manifest folly to imagine that a world so magni ficently adorned, with such an immense variety of celestial bodies of such exquisite beauty, and that the vast sizes and magnitude of the sea and land, were intended as the abode of man, and not as the mansion of the immortal Gods ? Do we not also plainly see this, that all the most elevated regions are the best, and that the earth is the lowest region, and is surrounded with the grossest air? so that as we perceive that in some cities and countries, the capacities of men are naturally duller from the thickness of the climate, so man kind in general are affected by the heaviness of the air which surrounds the earth, the grossest region of the world.

Yet even from this inferior intelligence of man we may discover the existence of some intelligent agent that is divine, and wiser than ourselves ; for, as Socrates says, in Xenophon, from whence had man his portion of understanding ? And, indeed, if any one were to push his inquiries about the moisture and heat which is diffused through the human body, and the earthy kind of solidity existing in our entrails, and that soul by which we breathe, and to ask whence we derived them, it would be plain that we have received one thing from the earth, another from liquid, another from fire, and another from that air which we inhale every time that we breathe.

VII. But where did we find that which excels all these things, I mean reason, or (if you please, in other terms) the mind, understanding, thought, prudence 1 and from whence did we receive it 1 Shall the world be possessed of every other perfection, and be destitute of this one, which is the most important and valuable of all 1 But certainly there is nothing

E2

r>°2 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

better, or more excellent, or more beautiful than the world, and not only there is nothing better, but we cannot even conceive anything superior to it; and if reason and wisdom are the greatest of all perfections, they must necessarily be a part of what we all allow to be the most excellent.

Who is not compelled to admit the truth of what I assert by that agreeable, uniform, and continued agreement of things in the universe 1 Could the earth at one season be adorned with flowers, at another be covered with snow 1 Or, if such a number of things regulated their own changes, could the approach and retreat of the sun in the summer and winter solstices be so regularly known and calculated 1 Could the flux and reflux of the sea and the height of the tides be affected by the increase or wane of the moon ? Could the different courses of the stars be preserved by the uniform movement of the whole heaven 1 Could these things subsist. I say, in such a harmony of all the parts of the universe, without the continued influence of a divine spirit ?

If these points are handled in a free and copious manner, as I purpose to do, they will be less liable to the cavils of the Academics; but the narrow, confined way in which Zeno reasoned upon them, laid them more open to objection; for as running streams are seldom or never tainted, while standing waters easily grow corrupt, so a fluency of expression washes away the censures of the caviller, while the narrow limits of a discourse which is too concise is almost defenceless ; for the arguments which I am enlarging upon are thus briefly laid down by Zeno : —

VIII. "That which reasons, is superior to that which does not ; nothing is superior to the world ; the world, therefore, reasons." By the same rule the world may be proved to be wise, happy, and eternal; for the possession of all these qualities is superior to the want of them; and nothing is superior to the world; the inevitable consequence of which argument is, that the world therefore is a Deity. He goes on, " No part of anything void of sense is capable of percep tion; some parts of the world have perception; the world therefore has sense." He proceeds, and pursues the argument closely. " Nothing," says he, " that is destitute itself of life and reason, can generate a being possessed of life and reason ; but the world does generate beings possessed of life and

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 53

reason ; the world therefore is not itself destitute of life and reason."

He concludes his argument in his usual manner with a simile : " If well-tuned pipes should spring out of the olive, would you have the slightest doubt that there was in the olive-tree itself some kind of skill and knowledge? or if the plane-tree could produce harmonious lutes, surely you would infer on the same principle that music was contained in the plane-tree. Why, then, should we not believe the world is a living and wise being, since it produces living and wise beings out of itself?"

IX. But as I have been insensibly led into a length of dis course beyond my first design, (for I said that as the existence of the Gods was evident to all, there was no need of any long oration to prove it,) I will demonstrate it by reasons deduced from the nature of things. For it is a fact, that all beings which take nourishment and increase, contain in themselves a power of natural heat, without which they could neither be nourished nor increase. For everything which is of a warm and fiery character is agitated and stirred up by its own motion. But that which is nourished and grows is influenced by a certain regular and equable motion. And as long as this motion remains in us, so long does sense and life remain ; but the moment that it abates and is extinguished, we our selves decay and perish.

By arguments like these, Cleanthes shows how great is the power of heat in all bodies. He observes, that there is no food so gross as not to be digested in a night and a day ; and that even in the excrementitious parts, which nature rejects, there remains a heat. The veins and arteries seem, by their continual quivering, to resemble the agitation of fire ; and it has often been observed when the heart of an animal is just plucked from the body, that it palpitates with such visible motion as to resemble the rapidity of fire. Everything, therefore, that has life, whether it be animal or vegetable, owes that life to the heat inherent in it; it is this nature of ' heat which contains in itself the vital power which extends throughout the whole world. This will appear more clearly on a more close explanation of this fiery quality, which per vades all things.

Every division, then, of the world, (and I shall touch upon

54 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

the most considerable,) is sustained by heat; and first it may be observed in earthly substances, that fire is produced from stones, by striking or rubbing one against another ; that " the warm earth smokes"1 when just turned up, and that water is drawn warm from well-springs; and this is most especially the case in the winter season, because there is a great quan tity of heat contained in the caverns of the earth; and this becomes more dense in the winter, and on that account con fines more closely the innate heat which is discoverable in the earth.

X. It would require a long dissertation, and many reasons would require to be adduced, to show that all the seeds which the earth conceives, and all those which it contains having been generated from itself, and fixed in roots and trunks, derive all their origin and increase from the tempe rature and regulation of heat. And that even every liquor has a mixture of heat in it is plainly demonstrated by the effusion of water; for it would not congeal by cold, nor become solid, as ice or snow, and return again to its natural state, if it were not that, when heat is applied to it, it again becomes liquefied and dissolved, and so diffuses itself. There fore by northern and other cold winds it is frozen and hardened, and in turn it dissolves and melts again by heat. The seas likewise, we find, when agitated by winds, grow warm, so that from this fact we may understand that there is heat included in that vast body of water; for we cannot imagine it to be external and adventitious heat, but such as is stirred up by agitation from the deep recesses of the seas; and the same thing takes place with respect to our bodies, which grow warm with motion and exercise.

And the very air itself, which indeed is the coldest element, is by no means void of heat; for there is a great quantity, arising from the exhalations of water, which appears to be a sort of steam occasioned by its internal heat, like that of boiling liquors. The fourth part of the universe is entirely fire, and is the source of the salutary and vital heat which is found in the rest. From hence we may conclude, that, as all parts of the world are sustained by heat, the world itself also has such a great length of time subsisted from the same

1 This, in the original, is a fragment of an old Latin verse, Terrain fumare calentem.

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 55

cause ; and so much the more because we ought to understand that that hot and fiery principle is so diffused over universal nature, that there is contained in it a power and cause of generation and procreation, from which all animate beings and all those creatures of the vegetable world, the roots of which are contained in the earth, must inevitably derive their origin and their increase.

XL It is nature consequently that continues and preserves the world; and that, too, a nature which is not destitute of sense and reason ; for in every essence that is not simple, but composed of several parts, there must be some predominant quality ; as for instance, the mind in man, and in beasts some thing resembling it ; from which arise all the appetites and desires for anything. As for trees, and all the vegetable pro duce of the earth, it is thought to be in their roots. I call that the predominant quality,1 which the Greeks call ^ye^oi'ixoV ; which must and ought to be the most excellent quality, wher ever it is found. That, therefore, in which the prevailing quality of all nature resides, must be the most excellent of all things and most worthy of the power and preeminence over all things.

Now we see that there is nothing in being that is not a part of the universe, and as there are sense and reason in the parts of it, there must therefore be these qualities, and these too in a more energetic and powerful degree, in that part in which the predominant quality of the world is found. The world, therefore, must necessarily be possessed of wisdom ; and that element, which embraces all things, must excel iu perfection of reason. The world, therefore, is a God, and the whole power of the world is contained in that divine element.

The heat also of the world is more pure, clear, and lively, and consequently better adapted to move the senses, than the heat allotted to us; and it vivifies and preserves all things within the compass of our knowledge.

It is absurd, therefore, to say that the world, which is endued with a perfect, free, pure, spirituous and active heat, is not sensitive, since by this heat men and beasts are preserved, and move, and think ; more especially since this heat of the

1 The Latin word is principatus, which exactly corresponds with the Greek word here used by Cicero ; by which is to be understood the superior, the most prevailing excellence in every kind and species of things through the universe.

56 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

world is itself the sole principle of agitation, and has no external impulse, but is moved spontaneously ; for what can be more powerful than the world, which moves and raises that heat by which it subsists1?

XII. For let us listen to Plato, who is regarded as a God amongst philosophers. He says that there are two sorts of motion, one innate and the other external; and that that which is moved spontaneously, is more divine than that which is moved by another power. This self-motion he places in the mind alone, and concludes that the first principle of motion is derived from the mind. Therefore, since all motion arises from the heat of the world, and that heat is not moved by the effect of any external impulse, but of its own accord, it must neces sarily be a mind; from whence it follows, that the world is animated.

On such reasoning is founded this opinion, that the world is possessed of understanding, because it certainly has more perfections in itself than any other nature ; for as 'there is no part of our bodies so considerable as the whole of us, so it is clear that there is no particular portion of the universe equal in magnitude to the whole of it; from whence it follows, that wisdom must be an attribute of the world; otherwise, man, who is a part of it, and possessed of reason, would be superior to the entire world.

And thus if we proceed from the first rude unfinished natures, to the most superior and perfect ones, we shall inevi tably come at last to the nature of the Gods. For, in the first place, we observe that those vegetables which are produced out of the earth are supported by nature, and she gives them no further supply than is sufficient to preserve them, by nourishing them and making them grow. To beasts she has given sense and motion, and a faculty which directs them to what is wholesome, and prompts them to shun what is noxious to them. On man she has conferred a greater portion of her favour ; inasmuch as she has added reason, by which he is enabled to command his passions, to moderate some, and to subdue others.

XIII. In the fourth and highest degree are those beings, which are naturally wise and good, who from the first moment of their existence are possessed of right and consistent reason, which we must consider superior to man and deserving to bo

OP THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 51

attributed to a God ; that is to say, to the world : in which it is inevitable that that perfect and complete reason should be inherent. Nor is it possible that it should be said with justice, that there is any arrangement of things in which there cannot be something entire and perfect. For as in a vine or in beasts we see that nature, if not prevented by some superior violence, proceeds by her own appropriate path to her destined end; and as in painting, architecture, and the other ails, there is a point of perfection, which is attainable, and occa sionally attained; so it is even much more necessary that in universal nature there must be some complete and perfect result arrived at. Many external accidents may happen to all other natures which may impede their progress to perfec tion, but nothing can hinder universal nature, because she is herself the ruler and governor of ail other natures. That therefore must be the fourth and most elevated degree, to which no other power can approach.

But this degree is that on which the nature of all things is placed ; and since she is possessed of this, and she presides over all things, and is subject to no possible impediment, the world must necessarily be an intelligent, and even a wise being. But how marvellously great is the ignorance of those men. who dispute the perfection of that nature which encircles all things ; or who, allowing it to be infinitely perfect, yet deny it to be in the first place animated, then reasonable, and lastly, prudent and wise ! For how without these qualities could it be infinitely perfect ? If it were like vegetables, or even like beasts, there would be no more reason for thinking it extremely good than extremely bad; and if it were possessed of reason, and had not wisdom from the beginning, the world would be in a worse condition than man ; for man may grow wise, but the world, if it were destitute of wisdom through an infinite space of time past, could never acquire it. Thus it would be worse than man. But as that is absurd to imagine, the world must be esteemed wise from all eternity, and con sequently a Deity ; since there is nothing existing that is not defective, except the universe, which is well provided and fully complete and perfect in all its numbers and parts.

XIV. For Chrysippus says, very acutely, that as the case is made for the buckler, and the scabbard for the sword, so all things, except the universe, were made for the sake of

58 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

something else. As for instance, all those crops and fruits which the earth produces were made for the sake of animals, and animals for man ; as the horse for carrying, the ox for the plough, the dog for hunting and for a guard. But man him self was born to contemplate and imitate the world ; being in nowise perfect, but, if I may so express myself, a particle of perfection; but the world, as it comprehends all, and as nothing exists that is not contained in it, is entirely perfect. In what, therefore, can it be defective, since it is perfect? It cannot want understanding and reason, for they are the most desirable of all qualities. The same Chrysippus observes also, by the use of similitudes, that everything in its kind, when arrived at maturity and perfection, is superior to that which is not ; as a horse to a colt, a dog to a puppy, and a man to a boy ; so whatever is best in the whole universe must exist in some complete and perfect being. But nothing is more per fect than the world, and nothing better than virtue. Virtue, therefore, is an attribute of the world. But human nature is not perfect, and nevertheless virtue is produced in it-: with how much greater reason, then, do we conceive it to be in herent in the world? Therefore, the world has virtue, and it is also wise, and consequently a Deity.

XV. The divinity of the world being now clearly perceived, we must acknowledge the same divinity to be likewise in the stars, which are formed from the lightest arid purest part of the aether, without a mixture of any other matter; and, being altogether hot and transparent, we may justly say they have life, sense, and understanding. And Cleanthes thinks that it may be established by the evidence of two of our senses, feel ing and seeing, that they are entirely fiery bodies; for the heat and brightness of the sun far exceed any other fire, inas much as it enlightens the whole universe, covering such a vast extent of space, and its power is such that we perceive that it not only warms, but often even burns: neither of which it could do, if it were not of a fiery quality. Since, then, says he, the sun is a fiery body, and is nourished by the vapours of the ocean, (for no fire can continue without some suste nance,) it must be either like that fire which we use to warm us and dress our food, or like that which is contained in the bodies of animals.

And this fire, which the convenience of life requires, is the

OF THE NATUBE OF THE GODS. 59

devourer and consumer of everything, and throws into con fusion and destroys -whatever it reaches. On the contrary, the corporeal heat is full of life, and salutary ; and vivifies, pre serves, cherishes, increases, and sustains all things, and is productive of sense ; therefore, says he, there can be no doubt which of these fires the sun is like, since it causes all things in their respective kinds to flourish and arrive to maturity ; and as the fire of the sun is like that which is contained in the bodies of animated beings, the sun itself must likewise be animated, and so must the other stars also, which arise cut of the celestial ardour that we call the sky or firmament.

As, then, some animals are generated in the earth, some in the water, and some in the air, Aristotle1 thinks it ridiculous to imagine that no animal is formed in that part of the universe which is the most capable to produce them. But the stars are situated in the ethereal space ; and as this is an element the most subtle, whose motion is continual, and whose force does not decay, it follows of necessity, that every animated being which is produced in it must be endowed with the quickest sense and the swiftest motion. The stars therefore being there generated, it is a natural inference to suppose them endiied with such a degree of sense and understanding as-places them in the rank of Gods.

XVI. For it may be observed, that they who inhabit countries of a pure clear air, have a quicker apprehension, and a readier genius, than those who live in a thick foggy climate. It is thought likewise, that the nature of a man's diet has an effect on the mind ; therefore it is probable that the stars are possessed of an excellent understanding, inasmuch as they are situated in the ethereal part of the universe, and are nourished by the vapours of the earth and sea, which are purified by their long passage to the heavens. But the in variable order and regular motion of the stars plainly mani fest their sense and understanding ; for all motion which seems to be conducted with reason and harmony, supposes an in telligent principle, that does not act blindly, or inconsistently, or at random. And this regularity and consistent course of the stars from all eternity indicates not any natural order, for it is pregnant with sound reason, not fortune (for fortune being a friend to change, despises consistency). It follows, 1 The passage of Aristotle, to which Cicero here refers, is lost.

GO OF THE NATURE OP THE GODS.

therefore, that they move spontaneously by their ow« sense and divinity.

Aristotle also deserves high commendation for his observa tion, that everything that moves is either put in motion by natural impulse, or by some external force, or of its own accord. And that the sun, and moon, and all the stars move ; but that those things which are moved by natural impulse, are either borne downwards by their weight, or upwards by their lightness ; neither of which things could be the case with the stars, because they move in a regular circle and orbit. Nor can it be said, that there is some superior force which causes the stars to be moved in a manner contrary to nature. For what superior force can there be? It follows, therefore, that their motion must be voluntary. And who ever is convinced of this must discover not only great igno rance, but great impiety likewise, if he denies the existence of the Gods ; nor is the difference great whether a man denies their existence, or deprives them of all design and action ; for whatever is wholly inactive seems to me not to exist at all. Their existence, therefore, appears so plain, that I can scarcely think that man in his senses who denies it.

XVII. It now remains that we consider what is the cha racter of the Gods. Nothing is more difficult than to divert our thoughts and judgment from the information of our corporeal sight, and the view of objects which our eyes are accustomed to : and it is this difficulty which has had such an influence on the unlearned, and on philosophers1 also who resembled the unlearned multitude, that they have been unable to form any idea of the immortal Gods except under the clothing of the human figure ; the weakness of which opinion Cotta has so well confuted, that I need not add my thoughts upon it. But as the previous idea which we have of the Deity comprehends two things, — first of all, that he is an animated being; secondly, that there is nothing in all nature superior to him, — I do not see what can be more consis tent with this idea and preconception, than to attribute a mind and divinity to the world,2 the most excellent of all beings.

1 He means the Epicureans.

2 Here the Stoic speaks too plain to be misunderstood. His world, his mundus, is the universe, and that universe is his great Deity, in quo sit totius naturce principatus, in which the superior excellence of

, universal nature consists.

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 61

Epicurus may be as merry with this notion as he pleases ; a man not the best qualified for a joker, as not having the wit and sense of his country.1 Let him say that a voluble round Deity is to him incomprehensible ; yet he shall never dissuade me from a principle, which he himself approves ; for he is of opinion there are Gods, when he allows that there must be a nature most excellently perfect. But it is certain that the world is most excellently perfect : nor is it to be doubted, that whatever has life, sense, reason, and understanding, must excel that which is destitute of these things. It follows then that the world has life, sense, reason, and understanding, and is consequently a Deity. But this shall soon be made more manifest by the operation of these very things which the world causes.

XVIII. In the meanwhile, Velleius, let me entreat you not to be always saying that we are utterly destitute of every sort of learning. The cone, you say, the cylinder, and the pyramid, are more beautiful to you than the sphere. This is to have different eyes from other men. But suppose they are more beautiful to the sight only, which does not appear to me, for I can see nothing more beautiful than that figure which contains all others, and which has nothing rough in it, nothing offensive, nothing cut into angles, nothing broken, nothing swelling, and nothing hollow; yet as there are two forms most esteemed,2 the globe in solids, (for so the Greek word 0-</>atpa, I think, should be construed,) and the circle, or orb, in planes, (in Greek Kv/cAos;) and as they only have an exact similitude of parts, in which eveiy extreme is equally distant from the centre, what can we imagine in nature to be more just and proper ? But if you have never raked into this learned dust,3 to find out these things, surely at all events you natural philosophers must know that equality of motion and invariable order could not be preserved in any other figure. Nothing therefore can be more illiterate than to assert, as you are in the habit of doing, that it is doubtful whether the world is round or not, because it may possibly be of another shape, and that there are innumerable worlds of

1 Athens, the seat of learning and politeness, of which Balbus will not allow Epicurus to be worthy.

2 This is Pytha'jjoras's doctrine, as appears in Diogenes Laertius.

3 He here alludes to mathematical and ireoinetrical instruments.

62 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

different forms ; which Epicurus, if he ever had learned that two and two are equal to four, would not have said. But while he judges of what is best by his palate, he does not look up to the " palace of heaven," as Ennius calls it.

XIX. For as there are two sorts of stars;1 one kind of which measure their journey from east to west by immutable stages, never in the least varying from their usual course ; while the other completes a double revolution with an equally constant regularity ; from each of these facts we demonstrate the volubility of the world (which could not possibly take place in any but a globular form), and the circular orbits of the stars. And first of all the s\m, which has the chief rank among all the stars, is moved in such a manner that it fills the whole earth with its light, and illuminates alternately one part of the earth, while it leaves the other in darkness. The shadow of the earth interposing, causes night ; and the intervals of night are equal to those of day. And it is the regular approaches and retreats of the sun from which arise the regulated degrees of cold and heat. His annual circuit is in three hundred and sixty-five days, and nearly six hours more.- At one time he bends his course to the north, at another to the south, and thus produces summer and winter, with the other two seasons, one of which succeeds the decline of winter, and the other that of summer. And so to these four changes of the seasons we attribute the origin and cause of all the productions both of sea and land.

The moon completes the same course every month, which the sun does in a year. The nearer she approaches to the sun the dimmer light does she yield, and when most remote from

1 Balbus here speaks of the fixed stars, and of the motions of the orbs of the planets. He here alludes, says M. Bouhier, to the different and diurnal motions of these stars ; one sort from east to west, the other from one tropic to the other : and this is the construction which our learned and great geometrician and astronomer Dr. Halley made of this passage.

2 This mensuration of the year into three hundred and sixty-five days and near six hours (by the odd hours and minutes of which, in every fifth year, the dies intercalaris, or leap-year, is made) could not but be known, Dr. Halley states, by Hipparchus, as appears from the re mains of that great astronomer of the ancients. We are inclined to think that Julius Caesar had divided the year, according to what we call the Julian year, before Cicero wrote this book ; for we see, in the beginning of it, how pathetically he speaks of Csesar's usurpation.

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 63

it she shines with the fullest brilliancy ; nor are her figure and form only changed in her increase and in her wane, but her situation likewise, which is sometimes in the north and some times -in the south. By this course she has a sort of summer and winter solstices; and by her influence she contributes to the nourishment and increase of animated beings, and to the ripeness and maturity of all vegetables.

XX. But most worthy our admiration is the motion of those five stars, which are falsely called wandering stars ; for they cannot be said to wander, which keep from all eternity their approaches and retreats, and have all the rest of their motions in one regular constant and established order. What is yet more wonderful in these stars which we are speaking of is, that sometimes they appear, and sometimes they disappear ; sometimes they advance towards the sun, and sometimes they retreat; sometimes they precede him, and sometimes follow him; sometimes they move faster, sometimes slower, and sometimes they do not stir in the least, but for a while stand still. From these unequal motions of the planets, mathema ticians have called that the " great year," ' in which the sun, moon, and five wandering stars, having finished their revolu tions, are found in their original situation. In how long a time this is effected is much disputed, but it must be a certain and definite period. For the planet Saturn (called by the Greeks <&ai'vwv), which is farthest from the earth, finishes his course in about thirty years ; and in his course there is some thing very singular ; for sometimes he moves before the sun, sometimes he keeps behind it, at one time lying hid in the night, at another again appearing in the morning, and ever performing the same motions in the same space of time, with out any alteration, so as to be for infinite ages regular in these courses. Beneath this planet, and nearer the earth, is Jupiter, called QaiOuv ; which passes the same orbit of the twelve signs2 in twelve years, and goes through exactly the same variety in its course that the star of Saturn does. Next to Jupiter is the planet Mars (in Greek llupoeis), which finishes its revolution through the same orbit as the two

1 The words of Censorinus, on this occasion, are to the same effect. The opinions of philosophers concerning this great year are very dif ferent ; but the institution of it is ascribed to Democritus.

2 The zodiac.

04 OP THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

previously mentioned,1 in twenty-four months, wanting six days, as I imagine. Below this is Mercury (called by the Greeks STI'A/SWV), which performs the same course in little less than a year, and is never further distant from the sun than the space of one sign, whether it precedes or follows it. The lowest of the five planets, and nearest the earth, is that of Venus (called in Greek <£>wcr(/>o/3os). Before the rising of the sun it is called the morning star, and after the setting, the evening star. It has the same revolution through the zodiac, both as to latitude and longitude, with the other planets, in a year, and never is more than two2 signs from the sun, whether it precedes or follows it.

XXI. I cannot therefore conceive that this constant course of the planets, this just agreement in such various motions, through all eternity, can be preserved without a mind, reason, and consideration; and since we may perceive these qualities in the stars, we cannot but place them in the rank of Gods. Those which are called the fixed stars, have the same indica tions of reason and prudence. Their motion is daily, regular, and constant. They do not move with the sky, nor have they an adhesion to the firmament, as they who are ignorant of natural phiiosophy affirm. For the sky, which is thin, transparent, and suffused with an equal heat, does not seem by its nature to have power to whirl about the stars, or to be proper to contain them. The fixed stars, therefore, have their own sphere, separate and free from any conjunction with the sky. Their perpetual courses, with that admirable and in credible regularity of theirs, so plainly declare a divine power and mind to be in them, that he who cannot perceive that they also are endowed with divine power, must be incapable of all perception whatever.

In the heavens, therefore, there is nothing fortuitous, unad vised, inconstant, or variable; all there is order, truth, reason, and constancy ; and all the things which are destitute of these qualities are counterfeit, deceitful, and erroneous, — and havu

1 Though Mars is said to hold his orbit in the zodiac with the rest, and to finish his revolution through the same orbit (that is, the zo diac) with the other two, yet Balbus means in a different line of the zodiac.

2 According to late observations, it never goes but a sign and a half from the sun.

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 65

their residence about the earth1 beneath the moon, the lowest of all the planets. He, therefore, who believes that this ad mirable order and almost incredible regularity of the hea venly bodies, by which the preservation and entire safety of all things is secured, is destitute of intelligence, must be considered to be himself wholly destitute of all intellect whatever.

I think, then, I shall not deceive myself in maintaining this dispute upon the principle of Zeno, who went the farthest in his search after truth.

XXII. Zeno then defines nature to be " an artificial fire, proceeding in a regular way to generation;" for he thinks that to create and beget are especial properties of art, and that whatever may be wrought by the hands of our artificers is much more skilfully performed by nature ; that is, by this artificial fire, which is the master of all other arts.

According to this manner of reasoning, every particular nature is artificial, as it operates agreeably to a certain method peculiar to itself; but that universal nature, which embraces all things, is said by Zeno to be not only artificial, but abso lutely the artificer, ever thinking and providing all things useful and proper; and as every particular nature owes its rise and increase to its own proper seed, so universal nature has all her motions voluntary, has affections and desires (by the Greeks called op/xas) productive of actions agreeable to them, like us, who have sense and understanding to direct us. Such then is the intelligence of the universe ; for which reason it may be properly termed prudence or providence (in Greek TTpovoLa), since her chiefest care and employment is to provide all things fit for its duration ; that it may want nothing ; and, above all, that it may be adorned with all perfection of beauty and ornament.

XXIII. Thus far have I spoken concerning the universe, and also of the stars ; from whence it is apparent that there is almost an infinite number of Gods, always in action, but •without labour or fatigue. For they are not composed of veins, nerves, and bones. Their food and drink are not such as cause humours, too gross or too subtle. Nor are their bodies such as to be subject to the fear of falls or blows, or in

1 These, Dr. Davis says, arc "aerial fires ; " concerning which he refers to the second book of Pliiiy.

DE NAT. ETC. F

GS OF THE NATURE OF THE GODs.

danger of diseases from a weariness of limbs. Epicurus, to secure his Gods from such accidents, has made them only out lines of Deities, void of action ; but our Gods being of the most beautiful form, and situated in the purest region of the heavens, dispose and rule their course in such a manner, that they seem to contribute to the support and preservation of all things.

Besides these, there are many other natures, which have with reason been deified by the wisest Grecians, and by our ancestors, in consideration of the benefits derived from them ; for they were persuaded that whatever was of great utility to human kind, must proceed from divine goodness, and the name of the Deity was applied to that which the Deity pro duced, as when we call corn Ceres, and wine Bacchus ; whence that saying of Terence,1

Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus starves.

And any quality also, in which there was any singular virtue, was nominated a Deity, such as Faith, and Wisdom, which are placed amongst the divinities in the Capitol ; the last by /Ernilius Scaurus ; but Faith was consecrated before by Atilius Calatinus. You see the temple of Virtue and that of Honour repaired by M. Marcellus, erected formerly, in the Ligurian war, by Q. Maximus. Need I mention those dedicated to Help, Safety, Concord, Liberty, and Victory, which have been called Deities, because their efficacy has been s>o great, that it could not have proceeded from any but from some divine power ? In like manner are the names of Cupid, Voluptas, and of Lubeutine Venus consecrated, though they were things vicious and not natural, whatever Velleius may think to the contrary, for they frequently stimulate nature in too violent a manner. Everything, then, from which any great utility proceeded, was deified; and indeed the names I have just now mentioned are declaratory of the particular virtue of each Deity.

XXIV. It has been a general custom likewise, that men who have done important service to the public, should be exalted to heaven by fame and universal consent. Thus Hercules, Castor and Pollux, .^Esculapius, and Liber, became Gods; (I mean Liber2 the son of Semele, and not him 3 whom

1 In the Eunuch of Terence. 2 Bacchu. 3 Th e son of Ceres.

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. G<

our ancestors consecrated in such state and solemnity with Ceres and Libera; the difference in which may be seen in our Mysteries.1 But because the offsprings of our bodies are called " Liberi " (children), therefore the offsprings of Ceres are called Liber and Libera; (Libera2 is the feminine, and Liber the masculine;) thus likewise Romulus, or Quirimis. for they are thought to be the same, became a God.

They are justly esteemed as Deities, since their souls sub sist and enjoy eternity, from whence they are perfect and immortal beings.

There is another reason, too, and that founded on natural philosophy, which has greatly contributed to the number of Deities, namely, the custom of representing in human form a crowd of Gods who have supplied the poets with fables, and filled mankind with all sorts of superstition. Zeno has treated of this subject, but it has been discussed more at length by Cleanthes and Chrysippus. All Greece was of opinion that Ccelum was castrated by his son Saturn,3 and that Saturn was chained by his son Jupiter. In these impious fables, a physical and not inelegant meaning is contained; for they would denote that the celestial, most exalted, and ethereal nature, that is, the fiery nature, which produces all things by itself, is destitute of that part of the body which is necessary for the act of generation by conjunction with another.

XXV. By Saturn they mean that which comprehends the course and revolution of times and seasons ; the Greek name for which Deity implies as much; for he is called Kpovos,

1 The books of Ceremonies.

2 This Libera is taken for Proserpine, who, with her brother Liber, was consecrated by the Komans ; all which are parts of nature in Pro sopopoeias ; Cicero, therefore, makes Balbus distinguish between the person Liber, or Bacchus, and the Liber which is a part of nature in Prosopopoeia.

3 These allegorical fables are largely related by Hesiod in his Theogony.

Horace says exactly the same thing: —

Hac arte Pollux et vagus Hercules Enisus arccs attigit igneas :

Quos inter Augustus recumbens

Purpureo bibit ore nectar. Hac te merentem, Bacche pater, tuse Vexere tigres indocili jugum Collo ferentes : hac Quirinus

Martis equis Acheronta fugit. — Hor. iii. 3. 9. F 2

68 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODb.

which is the same with Xpdvo9, that is, a "space of time." But he is called Saturn, because he is filled (saturatur) with years ; and he is usually feigned to have devoured his children, because time, ever insatiable, consumes the rolling years ; but to restrain him from immoderate haste, Jupiter has confined him to the course of the stars, which are as chains to him. Jupiter (that is, juvans pater) signifies a "helping father," whom, by changing the cases, we call Jove,1 a juvando. The poets call him "father of Gods and men;"2 and our ancestors "the most good, the most great;" and as there is something more glorious in itself, and more agreeable to others, to be good, that is beneficent, than to be great, the title of "most good" precedes that of "most great." This, then, is he whom Kniiius means in the following passage, before quoted —

Look up to the refulgent heaven above, Which ail men call, unanimously, Jove :

which is more plainly expressed than in this other passage3 of the same poet —

On whose account I'll curse that flood of light, Whate'er it is above that shines so bright.

Our augurs also mean the same, when, for the "thundering and lightning heaven," they say the " thundering and light ning Jove." Euripides, amongst many excellent things, has this —

The vast, expanded, boundless sky behold, See it with soft embrace the earth enfold ; This own the chief of deities above, And this acknowledge by the name of Jove.

XXVI. The air, according to the Stoics, which is between the sea and the heaven, is consecrated by the name of Juno, and is called the sister and wife of Jove, because it resembles the sky, and is in close conjunction with it. They have made it feminine, because there is nothing softer. But I believe it is called Juno, a juvando, " from helping."

1 Cicero means by conversis casibus, varying the cases from the com mon rule of declension ; that is, by departing from the true grammatical rules of speech ; for if we would keep to it, we should decline the word Jupiter, Jupiteris in the second case, &c.

2 Pater divAmque liominumque.

3 The common reading is, planiusque olio loco idem ; which, as Dr. Davis observes, is absurd ; therefore, in his note, he prefers planius quam alio loco idem, from two copies, in which sense I have translated it.

OF THE NATURE OF THE GO!;!-. 09

To make three separate kingdoms, by fable, there remained yet the water and the earth. The dominion of the sea is given, therefore, to Neptune, a brother, as he is called, of Jove; whose name Neptunus, (as Portunus, a portu, from a port,) is derived a nando, from swimming, the first letters being a little changed. The sovereignty and power over the earth is the portion of a God, to whom we, as well as the Greeks, have given a name that denotes riches, (in Latin Dis, in Greek nAoirrwv,) because all things arise from the earth, and return to it. He forced away Proserpine (in Greek called IIepcre<£oi/y?), by which the poets mean the "seed of corn," from whence comes their fiction of Ceres, the mother of Proserpine, seeking for her daughter, who was hid from her. She is called Ceres, which is the same as Geres, a geren- dis frugibus,1 "from bearing fruit," the first letter of the word being altered after the manner of the Greeks, for by them she is called ATJ/^'T^P, the same as r^^/r^p.2 Again, he (qui magna vorteret) " who brings about mighty changes," is called Mavora ; and Minerva is so called because (ininueret, or minaretur) she diminishes or menaces.

XXVII. And as the beginnings and endings of all things are of the greatest importance, therefore they would have their sacrifices to begin with Janus.3 His name is derived ab eundo, from passing ; from whence thorough passages are called jani; and the outward doors of common houses are called janua?. The name of Vesta is, from the Greeks, the same with their 'Eorta. Her province is over altars and hearths; and in the name of this goddess, who is the keeper of all things within, prayers and sacrifices are concluded. The Dii Penates, " household gods," have some affinity with this power, and are so called either from penus, " all kind of human provisions," or because penitus insident, "they reside within," from which, by the poets, they are called penetrales also. Apollo, a Greek name, is called Sol, the sun; and Diana, Luna, the moon. The sun (sot) is so named either because he is solus, alone, so eminent above all the stars; or because he obscures all the stars, and appears alone as soon

1 From the verb yero, to bear. * That is, " mother earth."

3 Janus is said to be the first who erected temples in Italy, and in stituted religious rites, and from whom the first month in the Eoman calendar is derived.

70 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

as he rises. Luna, the moon, is so called a lucendo, from shining; she bears the name also of Lucina; and as in Greece the women in labour invoke Diana Lucifera, so here they invoke Juno Lucina. She is likewise called Diana omnivaga, not a venando, from hunting, but because she is reckoned one of the seven stars that seem to wander.1 She is called Diana, because she makes a kind of day of the night ; 2 and presides over births, because the delivery is effected sometimes in seven, or at most in nine courses of the moon ; which, because they make mensa spatia, "measured spaces," are called menses, months. This occasioned a pleasant observa tion of Ti masus (as he has many). Having said in his history, that "the same night in which Alexander was born, the temple of Diana at Ephesus was burned down," he adds, " it is not in the least to be wondered at, because Diana, being willing to assist at the labour of Oljmpias,3 was absent from home." But to this Goddess, because ad res omnes veniret, "she has an influence upon all things," we have given the appellation of Venus,4 from whom the word venustas, beauty, is rather derived, than Venus from, venustas.

XXVIII. Do you not see, therefore, how from the produc tions of nature, and the iiseful inventions of men, have arisen fictitious and imaginary Deities ; which have been the founda tion of false opinions, pernicious errors, and wretched super stitions 1 For we know how the different forms of the Gods, their ages, apparel, ornaments, their pedigrees, marriages, relations, and everything belonging to them, are adapted to human weakness, and represented with our passions; with lust, sorrow, and anger, according to fabulous history, they have had wars and combats, not only, as Homer relates, when they have interested themselves in two different armies, but when they have fought battles in their own defence against the Titans and giants. These stories, of the greatest weakness

1 Stdlce vagantes.

2 Noctu quasi diem efficeret. Ben Jonson says the same thing, —

Thou that mak'st a day of night,

Goddess excellently bright. — Ode to the Moon.

3 Olympias was the mother of Alexander.

4 Venus is here said to be one of the names of Diana, because ad res omn°s reniret ; but she is not supposed to be the same as the mother of Cupid.

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 71

and levity, are related and believed with the most implicit folly.

E^ut, rejecting these fables with contempt, a Deity is dif fused in every part of nature; in earth under the name of Ceres, in the sea under the name of Neptune, in other parts under other names. Yet whatever they are, and whatever characters and dispositions they have, and whatever name custom has given them, we are bound to worship and adore them. The best, the chastest, the most sacred and pious worship of the Gods, is to reverence them always with a pure, perfect, and unpolluted mind and voice; for our ancestors, as well as the philosophers, have separated superstition from religion. They, who prayed whole days and sacrificed, that their children might survive them, (ut superstates essent,) were called superstitious, which word became afterwards more general; but they who diligently perused, and, as we may say, read or practised over again, all the duties relating to the worship of the Gods, were called religiosi, religious, from relegendo, "reading over again, or practising;" as elegantes, elegant, ex eligendo, "from choosing, making a good choice;" diligentes, diligent, ex diligendo, " from attending on what we love;" intelligentes, intelligent, from understanding, for the signification is derived in the same manner. Thus are the words superstitious and religious understood; the one being a term of reproach, the other of commendation. I think I have now sufficiently demonstrated that there are Gods, and what they are.

XXTX. I am now to show that the world is governed by the providence of the Gods. This is an important point, which you Academics endeavour to confound; and, indeed, the whole contest is with you, Cotta; for your sect, Velleius, know very little of what is said on different subjects by other schools. You read and have a taste only for your own books, and condemn all others without examination. For instance, when you mentioned yesterday1 that prophetic old dame Hpovoia, Providence, invented by the Stoics, you were led into that error by imagining that Providence was made by them to be a particular Deity that governs the whole universe,

1 Here is a mistake, as Fulvius Ursinus observes; for the discourse seems to be continued in one day, as appears from the beginning of this book. This may be an inadvertency of Cicero.

72 OF THE NATURE OP THE GOI-S.

whereas it is only spoken in a short manner ; as when it is said, "the commonwealth of Athens is governed by the council," it is meant " of the Areopagus;"1 so when wa say "the world is governed by providence," we mean "by the pro vidence of the Gods." To express ourselves, therefore, more fully and clearly, we say, "the world is governed by the providence of the Gods." Be not, therefore, lavish of your railleries, of which your sect has little to spare : if I may advise yoil, do not attempt it. It does not become you, it is not your talent, nor is it in your power. This is not applied to you in particular, who have the education and politeness of a Roman, but to all your sect in general, and especially to your leader,2 — a man unpolished, illiterate, insulting, without wit, without reputation, without elegance.

XXX. I assert, then, that the universe, with all its parts, was originally constituted, and has, without any cessation, been ever governed by the providence of the Gods. This argument we Stoics commonly divide into three parts; the first of which is, that the existence of the Gods being once known, it must follow, that the world is governed by their wisdom; the second, that as everything is under the direction of an intelligent nature, which has produced that beautiful order in the world, it is evident that it is formed from ani mating principles ; the third is deduced from those glorious wTorks, winch we behold in the heavens and the earth.

First, then, we must either deny the existence of the Gods (as Democritus and Epicurus by their doctrine of images in some sort do), or, if we acknowledge that there are Gods, we must believe they are employed, and that, too, in something excellent. Now nothing is so excellent as the administration of the universe. The universe, therefore, is governed by the wisdom of the Gods. Otherwise, we must imagine that there is some cause superior to the Deity, whether it be a nature inanimate, or a necessity agitated by a mighty force, that produces those beautiful works which we behold. The nature of the Gods would then be neither supreme nor excellent, if you subject it to that necessity or to that nature, by which you would make the heaven, the earth, and the seas to be governed. But there is nothing superior to the Deity ; the

1 The senate of Athens was so called from the words "Apetos Tldyos, the Village, some say the Hill of Mars. 3 Epicurus.

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 73

world, therefore, must be governed by him : consequently, the Deity is under no obedience or subjection to nature, but does himself rule over all nature. In effect, if we allow the Gods have understanding, we allow also their providence, which regards the most important things; for, can they be ignorant of those important things, and how they are to be conducted and preserved, or do they want power to sustain and direct them ? Ignorance is inconsistent with the nature of the Gods, and imbecility is repugnant to their majesty. From whence it follows, as we assert, that the world is governed by the providence of the Gods.

XXXI. But sxipposing, which is incontestable, that there are Gods, they must be animated, and not only animated, but endowed with reason, united, as we may say, in a civil agree ment and society, and governing together one universe, as a republic or city. Thus the same reason, the same verity, the same law, which ordains good and prohibits evil, exists in the Gods as it does in men. From them, consequently, we have prudence and understanding, for which reason our ancestors erected temples to the Mind, Faith, Virtue, and Concord. Shall we not, then, allow the Gods to have these perfections, since we worship the sacred and august images of them ? But if understanding, faith, virtue, and concord reside in human kind, how could they come on earth, unless from heaven? And if we are possessed of wisdom, reason, and prudence, the Gods must have the same qualities in a greater degree ; and not only have them, but employ them in the best and greatest works. The universe is the best and greatest work, therefore it must be governed by the wisdom and providence of the Gods.

Lastly, as we have sufficiently shown that those glorious and luminous bodies which we behold are Deities, I mean the sun, the moon, the fixed and wandering stars, the firmament, and the world itself, and those other things also which have any singular virtue, and are of any great utility to human kind, it follows that all things are governed by providence and a divine mind. But enough has been said on the first part.

XXXII. It is now incumbent on me to prove that all things are subjected to nature, and most beautifully directed by her. But, first of all, it is proper to explain precisely

74 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

what that nature is, in order to come to the more easy under standing of what I would demonstrate. Some think that nature is a certain irrational power exciting in bodies the necessary motions. Others, that it is an intelligent power, acting by order and method, designing some end in every cause, and always aiming at that end; whose works express such skill, as no art, no hand can imitate ; for, they say, such is the virtue of its seed, that, however small it is, if it falls into a place proper for its reception, and meets with matter conducive to its nourishment and increase, it forms and pro duces everything in its respective kind; either vegetables, which receive their nourishment from their roots ; or animals, endowed with motion, sense, appetite, and abilities to beget their likeness.

Some apply the word nature to everything; as Epicurus does, who acknowledges no cause, but atoms, a vacuum, and their accidents. But when we ' say that nature forms and governs the world, we do not apply it to a clod of earth, or piece of stone, or anything of that sort, whose parts have not the necessary cohesion,2 but to a tree, in which there is not the appearance of chance, but of order, and a resem blance of art.

XXXIII. But if the art of nature gives life and increase to vegetables, without doubt it supports the earth itself; for, being impregnated with seeds, she produces every kind of vegetable, and embracing their roots, she nourishes and in creases them; while, in her turn, she receives her nourish ment from the other elements, and by her exhalations gives proper sustenance to the air, the sky, and all the superior bodies. If nature gives vigour and support to the earth, by the same reason she has an influence over the rest of the world; for, as the earth gives nourishment to vegetables, so the air is the preservation of animals. The air sees with us, hears with us, and utters sounds with us; without it, there

1 The Stoics.

a By nulla cohcerendi natura, if it is the right, as it is the common reading, Cicero must mean the same as by nulla crescendi natura, or coalescendi, either of which Lambinus proposes ; for, as the same learned critic well observes, is there not a cohesion of parts in a clod, or in a piece of stone? Our learned Walker proposes sola cohcerendi natura, which mends the sense very much ; and I wish he had the authority of any copy for it.

OP THE NATURE OP THE GODS. 75

would be no seeing, hearing, or sounding. It even moves with us ; for wherever we go, whatever motion we make, it seems to retire and give place to us.

That which inclines to the centre, that which rises from it to the surface, and that which rolls about the centre, con stitute the universal world, and make one entire nature ; and as there are four sorts of bodies, the continuance of nature is caused by their reciprocal changes ; for the water arises from the earth, the air from the water, and the fire from the air ; and reversing this order, the air arises from fire, the water from the air, and from the water the earth, the lowest of the four elements, of winch all beings are formed. Thus by their con tinual motions backwards and forwards, upwards and down wards, the conjunction of the several parts of the universe is preserved ; an union which, in the beauty we now behold it, must be eternal, or at least of a very long duration, and almost for an infinite space of time ; and, whichever it is, the universe must of consequence be governed by nature. For what art of navigating fleets, or of marshalling an army, and, to instance the produce of nature, what vine, what tree, what animated form and conformation of their members, give us so great an indication of skill as appears in the universe ? There fore we must either deny that there is the least trace of an intelligent nature, or acknowledge that the world is governed by it. But since the universe contains all particular beings, as well as their seeds, can we say that it is not itself governed by nature? That would be the same as saying that the teeth and the beard of man are the work of nature, but that the man himself is not. Thus the effect would be understood to be greater than the cause.

XXXIV. Now the universe sows, as I may say, plants, produces, raises, nourishes, and preserves, what nature admi nisters, as members and parts of itself. If nature therefore governs them, she must also govern the universe. And lastly, in nature's administration there is nothing faulty. She pro duced the best possible effect out of those elements which existed. Let any one show how it could have been better. But that can never be ; and whoever attempts to mend it, will either make it worse, or aim at impossibilities.

But if all the parts of the universe are so constituted that nothing could be better for use or beauty, let us consider

70 OP THE XATURE OF TEE GODS.

whether this is the effect of chance, or whether, in such a state, they could possibly cohere, but by the direction of wisdom and divine providence. Nature therefore cannot be void of reason, if art can bring nothing to perfection without it, and if the works of nature exceed those of art. How is it con sistent with common sense, that when you view an image or a picture, you imagine it is wrought by art ; when you behold afar off a ship under sail, you judge it is steered by reason and art; when you see a dial or water-clock.1 you believe the hours are shown by art, and not by chance ; and yet that you should imagine that the universe, which contains all arts and the artificers, can be void of reason and understanding ?

But if that sphere, which was lately made by our friend Posidonius, the regular revolutions of which show the course of the sun, moon, and five wandering stars, as it is every day and night performed, were carried into Scythia or Britain, who, in those barbarous countries, would doubt that that sphere had been made so perfect by the exertion of reason'?

XXXV. Yet these people 2 doubt whether the universe, from whence all things arise and are made, is not the effect of chance, or some necessity, rather than the work of reason and a divine mind. According to them, Archimedes shows more knowledge in representing the motions of the celestial globe than nature does in causing them, though the copy is so infinitely beneath the original. The shepherd in Attius,3 who had never seen a ship, when he perceived from a moun tain afar off the divine vessel of the Argonauts, surprised and frighted at this new object, expressed himself in this manner : —

What horrid bulk is that before my eyes,

Which o'er the deep with noise and vigour flies :

It turns the whirlpools up, its force so strong,

And drives the billows as it rolls along.

The ocean's violence it fiercely braves ;

Huns furious on, and throws about the waves.

Swiftly impetuous in its course, and loud,

Like the dire bursting of a show'ry cloud ;

1 •Nasica Scipio, the censor, is said to have been the first who made a water-clock in Home.

2 The Epicureans.

3 An old Latin poet, commended by Quintilian for the gravity of his sense, and his loftiness of style.

OP THE NATURE OP THE GODS. 77

Or, like a rock, forced by the winds and rain, Now whirl'd aloft, then plunged into the main. But hold, perhaps the Earth and Neptune jar, And fiercely wage an elemental war ; Or Triton with his trident has o'ert.hrown His den, and loosen'd from the roots the stone ; The rocky fragment, from the bottom torn, Is lifted up, and on the surface borne.

At first, he is in suspense at the sight of this unknown object ; but on seeing the young mariners, and hearing their singing, he says,

Like sportive dolphins, with their snouts they roar; '

and afterwards goes on —

Loud in my ears methinks their voices ring, As if I heard the god Sylvanus sing.

As at first view the shepherd thinks he sees something in animate and insensible, but afterwards, judging by more trustworthy indications, he begins to figure to himself what it is; so philosophers, if they are surprised at first at the sight of the imiverse, ought, when they have considered the regular, uniform, and immutable motions of it, to conceive that there is some Being, that is not only an inhabitant of this celestial and divine mansion, but a ruler and a governor, as architect of this mighty fabric.

XXXVI. Now, in my opinion, they2 do not seem to have even the least suspicion that the heavens and earth afford any thing marvellous. For in the first place, the earth is situated in the middle part of the universe, and is surrounded on all sides by the air, which we breathe, and which is called " aer,"J which indeed is a Greek word, but by constant use it is well understood by our countrymen, for indeed it is employed as a Latin word. The air is encompassed by the boundless eether (sky), which consists of the fires above. This word we borrow also, for we use cether in Latin as well as aer ; though Pacuvius thus expresses it, —

This, of which I speak,

In Latin 's cesium, cether call'd in Greek.

1 The shepherd is here supposed to take the stem or beak of the ship for the mouth, from which the roaring voices of the sailors came. Rostrum is here a lucky word to put in the mouth of one who never saw a ship before, as it is used for the beak of a bird, the snout of a beast or fish, and for the stem of a ship.

2 The Epicureans. * Greek, a^p, Latin, aer.

78 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

As though he were not a Greek into whose mouth he puts this sentence ; but he is speaking in Latin, though we listen as if he were speaking Greek ; for, as he says elsewhere, —

His speech discovers him a Grecian born.

But to return to more important matters. In the sky innumerable fiery stars exist, of which the sun is the chief, en lightening all with his refulgent splendour, and being by many degrees larger than the whole earth; and this multitude of vast fires are so far from hurting the earth, and things terres trial, that they are of benefit to them ; whereas, if they were moved from their stations, we should inevitably be burnt, through the want of a proper moderation and temperature of heat.

XXXVII. Is it possible for any man to behold these things, and yet imagine that certain solid and individual bodies move by their natural force and gravitation, and that a world so beautifully adorned was made by their fortuitous concourse? He who believes this, may as well believe, that if a great quantity of the one-and-twenty letters, composed either of gold, or any other matter, were thrown upon the ground, they would fall into such order as legibly to form the Annals of Ennius. I doubt whether fortune could make a single verse of them. How therefore can these people assert that the world was made by the fortuitous concourse of atoms, which have no colour, no quality, which the Greeks call iroioTrjs, no sense1? or that there are innumerable worlds, some rising and some perishing, in every moment of time? But if a concourse of atoms can make a world, why not a porch, a temple, a house, a city, which are works of less labour and difficulty1?

Certainly those men talk so idly and inconsiderately con cerning this lower world, that they appear to me never to have contemplated the wonderful magnificence of the heavens ; which is the next topic for our consideration.

Well, then, did Aristotle ' observe : " If there were men whose habitations had been always under ground, in great and commodious houses, adorned with statues and pictures, furnished with everything which they who are reputed happy abound with; and if, without stirring from thence, 1 The treatise of Aristotle, from whence this is taken, is lost.

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 79

they should be informed of a certain divine power and majesty, and, after some time, the earth should open, and they should quit their dark abode to come to us; where they should immediately behold the earth, the seas, the heavens ; should consider the vast extent of the clouds and force of the winds; should see the suu, and observe his grandeur and beauty, and also his generative power, inasmuch as day is occasioned by the diffusion of his light through the sky; and when night has obscured the earth, they should contemplate the heavens bespangled and adorned with stars ; the surpris ing variety of the moon, in her increase and wane ; the rising and setting of all the stars, and the inviolable regularity of their courses; when," says he, "they should see these things, they would undoubtedly conclude that there are Gods, and that these are their mighty works."

XXX VI i I. Thus far Aristotle. Let us imagine also as great darkness as was formerly occasioned by the irruption of the fires of Mount ./Etna, which are said to have obscured the adjacent countries for two days to such a degree that no man could recognise his fellow ; but on the third, when the sun appeared, they seemed to be risen from the dead. Now, if we should be suddenly brought from a state of eternal darkness to see the light, how beautiful would the heavens seem ! But our minds have become used to it from the daily practice and habituation of our eyes, nor do we take the trouble to search into the principles of what is always in view ; as if the novelty, rather than the importance of things, ought to excite us to investigate their causes.

Is he worthy to be called a man, who attributes to chance, not to an intelligent cause, the constant motion of the heavens, the regular courses of the stars, the agreeable pro portion and connexion of all things, conducted with so much reason, that our intellect itself is unable to estimate it rightly1? When we see machines move artificially, as a sphere, a clock, or the like, do we doubt whether they are the productions of reason ? And when we behold the heavens moving with a prodigious celerity, and causing an annual succession of the different seasons of the year, which vivify and preserve all things, can we doubt that this world is directed, I will not say only by reason, but by reason most excellent and divine 1 For without troubling ourselves with too refined a subtlety

80 OF THE XATURE OF THE GODS.

of discussion, we may use our eyes to contemplate the beauty of those things, which we assert have been arranged by divine providence.

XXXIX. First, let us examine the earth, whose situation is in the middle of the universe,1 solid, round, and conglobular by its natural tendency ; clothed with flowers, herbs, trees, and fruits ; the whole in multitudes incredible, and with a variety suitable to every taste : Let us consider the ever cool and running springs, the clear waters of the rivers, the ver dure of their banks, the hollow depths of caves, the cragginess of rocks, the heights of impending mountains, and the bound less extent of plains, the hidden veins of gold and silver, and the infinite quarries of marble.

What and how various are the kinds of animals, tame or wild1? The flights and notes of birds? How do the beasts live in the fields, and in the forests? What shall I say of men, who being appointed, as we may say, to cultivate the earth, do not suffer its fertility to be choked with weeds, nor the ferocity of beasts to make it desolate ; who, by the houses and ' cities which they build, adorn the fields, the isles, and the shores? If we could view these objects with the naked eye, as we can by the contemplation of the mind, nobody, at such a sight, would doubt there was a divine intelligence.

But how beautiful is the sea! How pleasant to see the extent of it ! What a multitude and variety of islands ! How delightful are the coasts ! What numbers and what diversity of inhabitants does it contain; some within the bosom of it, some floating on the surface, and others by their shells cleav ing to the rocks ! While the sea itself, approaching to the land, sports so closely to its shores, that those two elements appear to be but one.

Next above the sea is the air, diversified by day and night; when rarified, it possesses the higher region ; when condensed, it turns into clouds, and with the waters which it gathers enriches the earth by the rain. Its agitation produces the winds. It causes heat and cold according to the different seasons. It sustains birds in their flight ; and, being inhaled, nourishes and preserves all animated beings.

' To the universe the Stoics certainly annexed the idea of a limited space, otherwise they could not have talked of a middle; for there can be no middle but of a limited space; infinite space can have no middle, there being infinite extension from every part.

OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 81

XL. Add to these, which alone remaineth to be mentioned, the firmament of heaven; a region the farthest from our abodes, which surrounds and contains all things. It is like wise called tether or sky, the extreme bounds and limits of the universe, in which the stars perform their appointed courses in a most wonderful manner. Amongst which, the sun, whose magnitude far surpasses the earth, makes his revolution round it ; and by his rising and setting, causes day and night ; some times coming near towards the earth, and sometimes going from it, he every year makes two contrary reversions1 from the extreme point of its course. In his retreat the earth seems locked up in sadness ; in his return it appears exhila rated with the heavens. The moon, which, as mathematicians demonstrate is bigger than half the earth, makes her revolu tions through the same spaces2 as the sun, but at one time approaching and at another receding from the sun, she dif fuses the light which she has borrowed from him over the whole earth, and has herself also many* various changes in her appearance. When she is found under the sun, and opposite to it, the brightness of her rays is lost; but when the earth directly interposes between the moon and sun, the moon is totally eclipsed. The other wandering stars have their courses round the earth in the same spaces,3 and rise and set in the same manner ; their motions are sometimes quick, sometimes slow, and often they stand still. There is nothing more won derful, nothing more beautiful. There is a vast number of fixed stars, distinguished by the names of certain figures, to which we find they have some resemblance.

XLI. I will here, says Balbus, looking at me, make use of the verses, which, when you were young, you translated from. Aratus,' and which, because they are in Latin, gave me so These two contrary reversions are from the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. They are the extreme bounds of the sun's course. The reader must observe, that the astronomical parts of this book are intro duced by the Stoic as proofs of design and reason in the universe ; and notwithstanding the errors in his planetary system, his intent is well answered, because all he means is, that the regular motions of the heavenly bodies, and their, dependencies, are demonstrations of a divine mind. The inference proposed to be drawn from his astronomical obser vations is as just as if his system was in every part uncxceptionably right ; the same may be said of his anatomical observations.

2 In the zodiac. 3 Ibid.

4 These vorses of Cicero are a translation from a Greek poem of Aratns, called the Phenomena.

DE NAT. ETC. G

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much delight that I have many of them still in my memory. As then we daily see, without any change or variation —

the rest l

Swiftly pursue the course to which they're bound • And with the heavens the days and nights go round ;

the contemplation of which, to a mind desirous of observing the constancy of nature, is inexhaustible.

The extreme top of either point is call'd The pole.2

About this the two "ApKrot are turned, which never set ; —

Of these, the Greeks one Cynosura call, The other Helice.3

The brightest stars4 indeed of Helice are discernible all

night —

Which are by us Septentriones call'd.

Cynosura moves about the same pole, with a like number of stars, and ranged in the same order : —

This5 the Phoenicians choose to make their guide, When on the ocean in the night they ride. Adorned with stars of more refulgent light, The other6 shines, and first appears at night. Though this is small, sailors its use have found ; More inward is its course, and short its round.

XLTI. The aspect of those stars is the more admirable- because —

The Dragon grim betwixt them bends his way, As through the winding banks the currents stray, And up and down in sinuous bending rolls.7

His whole form is excellent; but the shape of his head and the ardour of his eyes are most remarkable.

1 The fixed stars. 2 The arctic and antarctic poles.

3 The two Arctoi are northern constellations. Cynosura is what we call the Lesser Bear ; Helice the Greater Bear ; in Latin Ursa Minor and Ursa Major.

* These stars in the Greater Bear are vulgarly called the " seven stars," or the " northern wain ;" by the Latins " Septentriones."

5 The Lesser Bear. 6 The Greater Bear.

7 Exactly agreeable to this, and the following description of the Dragon, is the same northern constellation described in the map, by Flamsteed in his " Atlas Ccelestis ;" and all the figures here described by Aratus nearly agree with the maps of the same constellations in the "Atlas Ccelestis," though they are not all placed precisely alike.

OP THE NATURE OP THE GODS. 83

Various the stars which deck his glittering head ;

His temples are with double glory spread ;

From his fierce eyes two fervid lights afar

Flash, and his chin shines with one radiant, star ;

Bow'd is his head ; and his round neck he bends,

And to the tail of Helice1 extends.

The rest of the Dragon's body we see 2 at every hour in the night.

Here3 suddenly the head a little hides

Itself, where all its parts, which are in sight,

And those unseen in the same place unite. Near to this head —

Is placed the figure of a man that movea

Weary and sad, which the Greeks —

Engonasis do call, because he 's borne*

About with bended knee. Near him is placed

The crown with a refulgent lustre graced.

This indeed is at his back ; but Anguitenens, the Snake-holder, is near his head ; 5 —

The Greeks him Ophiuchus call, renown'd

The name. He strongly grasps the serpent round,

With both his hands ; himself the serpent folds

Beneath his breast, and round his middle holds ;

Yet gravely he, bright shinging in the skies,

Moves on, and treads on Nepa's6 breast and eyes. The Septentriones 7 are followed by —

Arctophylax,8 that 's said to be the same

Which we Bootes call, who has the name,

1 The tail of the Greater Bear.

2 That is, in Macedon, where Aratus lived.

3 The true interpretation of this passage is as follows. Here in Macedon, says Aratus, the head of the Dragon does not entirely immerge itself in the ocean, but only touches the superficies of it. By ortus and obitus I doubt not but Cicero meant, agreeable to Aratus, those parts which arise to view, and those which are removed from sight.

* These are two northern constellations. Engonasis, (in some cata logues called Hercules,) because he is figured kneeling ev y6vatnv, on his knees ; ''E.vy&vaaiv Ka.Keova', as Aratus says, they call Engonasis.

5 The crown is placed under the feet of Hercules in the "Atlas Coalestis;" but Ophiuchus, ('O^ioOxos) the Snake-holder, is placed in the map by Flamsteed as described here by Aratus ; and their heads almost meet.

6 The Scorpion. Ophiuchus, though a northern constellation, is not far from that part of the zodiac where the Scorpion is, which is one of the si x southern signs. ' The wain of seven stars.

8 The wain-driver. This northern constellation is, in our present m ps. figured with a club in his right hand behind the Greater Bear.

84 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.

Because he drives the Greater Bear along Yoked to a wain.

Besides, in Bootes, —

A star of glittering rays, about his waist, Arcturus called, a name renown'd, is placed.1

Beneath which is

The Virgin of illustrious form, whose hand Holds a bright spike.

XLTII. And truly these signs are so regularly disposed, that a divine wisdom evidently appears in them : —

Beneath the Bear's2 head have the twins their seat. Under his chest the Crab, beneath his feet The mighty Lion darts a trembling flame.3

The Charioteer —

On the left side of Gemini we see,4

And at his head behold fierce Helice ;

On his left shoulder the bright Goat appears.

But to proceed —

This is indeed a great and glorious star. On th' other side the Kids, inferior far, Yield but a slender light to mortal eyes.

Under his feet —

The horned Bull,5 with sturdy limbs, is placed ; his head is spangled with a number of stars ;

These by the Greeks are called the Hyades,

1 In some modern maps Arcturus, a star of the first magnitude, is placed in the belt that is round the waist of Bootes. Cicero says subter prcecordia, which is about the waist ; and Aratus says virb tyvri, under the belt.

2 Sub caput Arcii, under the head of the Greater Bear.

3 The Crab is, by the ancients and moderns, placed in the zodiac, as here, betwixt the Twins and the Lion ; and they are all three northern signs.

4 The Twins are placed in the zodiac with the side of one to the northern hemisphere, and the side of the other to the southern hemi sphere Auriga, the Charioteer, is placed in the northern hemisphere near the zodiac, by the Twins ; and at the head of the Charioteer, is Helice, the Greater Bear, placed ; and the Goat is a bright star of the first magnitude placed on the left shoulder of this northern constellation, and called Capra, the Goat ; Haidi, the Kids, are two more stars of the same constellation.

3 A constellation ; one of the northern signs in the zodiac, in which the Hyades are placed.

OP THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 85

from raining, for veiv is to rain ; therefore they arc injudiciously called tiuculce by our people, as if they had their name from us, a sow, and not from wo.

Behind the Lesser Bear, Cepheus1 follows with extended hands, —

For close behind the Lesser Bear he comes.

Before him goes —

Cassiopea2 with a faintish light ;

But near her moves (fair and illustrious sight !)

Andromeda,3 who with an eager pace,

Seems to avoid her parent's mournful face.4

With glittering mane the Horse 5 now seems to tread,

So near he comes, on her refulgent head ;

With a fair star, that close to him appears,

A double form G and but one light he wears ;

By which he seems ambitious in the sky

An everlasting knot of stars to tie.

Near him the Ham, with wreathed horns, is placed ;

by whom —

The Fishes 7 are ; of which one seems to haste Somewhat before the other, to the blast Of the north wind exposed.

XLIV. Perseus is described as placed at the feet of Andro meda : —

And him the sharp blasts of the