VII. I do not, then, O Balbus, from anything that you have said, perceive as yet that it is proved that there are Gods. I believe it, indeed, but not from any arguments of the Stoics. Cleanthes, you have said, attributes the idea that men have of the Gods to four causes. In the first place (as I have already sufficiently mentioned), to a foreknowledge of future events; secondly, to. tempests, and other shocks of nature; thirdly, to the utility and plenty of things we enjoy; fourthly, to the invariable order of the stars and the heavens.
1 The word sortes is often used for the answers of the oracles, or rather for the rolls in which the answers were written. | 2 Three of this eminent family sacrificed themselves for their country; the father in the Latin war, the: son in the naner war, and the ae in the war with Pyrrhus. 7:; OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. lil The arguments drawn from foreknowledge I have already answered. With regard to tempests in the air, the sea, and the earth, I own that many people are affrighted by them, and imagine that the immortal Gods are the authors of them.
But the question is, not whether there are people who believe that there are Gods, but whether there are Gods or not. As to the two other causes of Cleanthes, one of whiche is derived from the great abundance of desirable things which we enjoy, the other from the invariable order of the seasons and the heavens, I shall treat on them when I answer your discourse concerning the providence of the Gods; a point, Balbus, upon which you have spoken at great length. I shall likewise defer till then examining the argument which you attribute to Chrysippus, that “if there is in nature any- thing which surpasses the power of man to produce, there must consequently be some being better than man.” TI shall also postpone till we come to that part of my argument your comparison of the world to a fine house, your observations on the proportion and harmony of the universe, and those smart short reasons of Zeno which you quote; and I shall examine at the same time your reasons drawn from natural philosophy, concerning that fiery force and that vital heat which you regard as the principle of all things; and I will investigate, in its proper place, all that you advanced the other day on the existence of the Gods, and on the’sense and understanding which you attributed to the sun, the moon, and all the stars; and I shall ask ‘you this question over and over again, By what proofs are you convinced yourself there are Gods?
VIII. I thought, says Balbus, that I had brought ample proofs to establish this point; but such is your manner of opposing, that, when you seem on the point of interrogating — me, and when I am preparing to answer, you suddenly divert the discourse, and give me no opportunity to reply to you; and thus those most important points concerning divination and fate are neglected, which we Stoics have thoroughly examined, but which your school has only slightly touched upon. But they are not thought essential to the question in hand; therefore, if you think proper, do not confuse them together, that we in this discussion may come to a clear exs planation of the subject of our present inquiry.
~ Very well, says Cotta; since, then, you have divided the 112 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.
whole question into four parts, and I have said all that I had to say on the first, I will take the second into consideration; in which, when you attempted to show what the character of the Gods was, you seemed to me rather to prove that there are none; for you said that it was the greatest difficulty to draw our minds from the prepossessions of the eyes; but that eas nothing is more excellent than the Deity, you did not doubt that the world was God, because there is nothing better in nature than the world, and so we may reasonably think it animated, or rather perceive it in our minds as clearly as if it were obvious to our eyes.
Now, in what sense do you say there is nothing better than the world? If you mean that there is nothing more beautiful, I agree with you; that there is nothing more adapted to our wants, I likewise agree with you: but if you mean that nothing is wiser than the world, I am by no means of your opinion. Not that I find it difficult to conceive anything in my mind, independent of my eyes; on the contrary, the more I separate my mind from my eyes, the less I am able to com- prehend your opinion.
IX. Nothing is better than the world, you say. Nor is there, indeed, anything on earth better than the city of Rome; do you think, therefore, that our city has a mind, that it thinks and reasons; or that this most beautiful city, being yoid of sense, is not preferable to an ant, because an ant has sense, understanding, reason, and memory? You should consider, Balbus, what ought to be allowed you, and not advance things because they please you.
For that old, concise, and, as it seemed to you, acute syl- logism of Zeno, has been all which you haye so much enlarged upon in handling this topic: “That which reasons is superior to that which does not; nothing is superior to the world; therefore the world reasons.” If you would prove also that the world can very well read a book, follow the example of Zeno, and say, “That which can read is better than that which cannot; nothing is better than the world; the world therefore can read.” After the same manner you may prove the.world to be an orator, a mathematician, a musician, that ‘it possesses all sciences, and, in short, is a philosopher. You have often said that God made all things, and that no-cause can produce an effect unlike itself. From hence it will follow, OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.. LES not only that the world is animated, and.is wise, but also plays upon the fiddle and the flute, becanse it produces men who play on those instruments. Zeno, therefore, the chief of. your sect, advances no argument sufficient to induce us to think that the world reasons, or, indeed, that it is animated at all, and consequently none to think it a deity; though it may be said that there is nothing superior to it, as there is’ nothing more beautiful, nothing more useful to us, nothing more adorned, and nothing more regular in its motions. But if: the world, considered as one great whole, is not God, you should not surely deify, as you have done, that infinite mul- titude of stars, which only form a part of it, and which so- delight you with the regularity of their eternal courses; not but that there is something truly wonderful and incredible in their regularity, but this regularity of motion, Balbus, may as well be ascribed to a natural as to a divine cause.
X. What can be more regular than the flux and reflux of the Euripus at Chalcis, the Sicilian sea, and the violence of the ocean in those parts;'— Where the rapid tide Does ibicpe from the Libyan coast divide? The same appears on the Spanish and British coasts. Must. we conclude that some Deity appoints and directs these ebbings and flowings to certain fixed times? Consider, I pray, if everything which is regular in its motion is deemed divine, whether it will not follow that tertian and quartan agues must. likewise be so, as their returns have the greatest regularity. These effects are to be explained by reason; but, because you are unable to assign any, you have recourse to a Deity as your last refuge.
The arguments of Chrysippus appeared to you of great. weight; a man undoubtedly of great quickness and subtlety; (I call those quick, who have a sprightly turn of thought, and those subtle, whose minds are seasoned by use as their hands are by labour.) “If,” says he, “there is anything which is be- yond the power of man to produce, the being who produces it is better than man. Man is unable to make what is in the world; the being, therefore, that could do it is superior to man. What being is there but a God superior to man? Therefore there is a God.”
1 The Straits of Gibraltar.
DE NAT. ETC. I 114 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.
These arguments are founded on the same erroneous prin- ciples as Zeno’s, for he does not define what is meant by being better or more excellent, or distinguish between an intelligent cause: and a natural cause. Chrysippus adds, “If there are no Gods, there is nothing better than man; but we cannot, without the highest arrogance, have this idea of ourselves.” Let us grant that it is arrogance in man to think himself _ better than the world; but to comprehend that he has under- standing and reason, and that in Orion and Canicula there is neither, is no arrogance, but an indication of good sense. “Since we suppose,” continues he, “when we see a beautiful house, that it was built for the master, and not for mice, we should likewise judge that the world is the mansion of the Gods.” Yes, if I believed that the Gods built the world; but not if, as I believe, and intend to prove, it is the work of nature.
XI. Socrates, in Xenophon, asks, “Whence had man bis. understanding, if there was none in the world?” And I ask, Whence had we speech, harmony, singing; unless we think it is the sun conversing with the moon when she approaches near it, or that the world forms an harmonious concert, as Pythagoras imagines? This, Balbus, is the effect of nature; not of ‘that nature which proceeds artificially, as Zeno says, and the character of which I shall presently examine into, but a nature which, by its own proper motions and mutations, modifies everything.
- For I readily agree to what you said about the harmony and general agreement of nature, which you pronounced to be firmly bound and united together, as it were, by ties of blood; but I do not approve of what you added, that “it could not possibly be so, unless it were so united by one divine spirit.” On the contrary, the whole subsists by the power of nature, independently of the Gods, and there is a kind of sympathy (as the Greeks call it) which joins together all the parts of the universe, and the greater that is in its own power, the less is it necessary to have recourse to a divine intelligence. | ' XII. But how will you get rid of the objections which ‘ €Carneades made?:“ If,” says he, “there is no body immortal, there is none eternal; but there is no body immortal, nor even indivisible, or that cannot be separated and disunited; _. QF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. a a and as every animal is in its nature passive,-so there is not one which is not subject to the impressions of -extraneous bodies; none, that is to say, which can avoid the necessity of enduring and suffering: and if every animal is mortal, there is none immortal; so likewise, if every animal may be cut up and divided, there is none indivisible, none eternal, but all are liable to be affected by, and compelled to submit to, external power: every animal, therefore, is necessarily mortal, dis- soluble, and divisible.” C3 For as there is no wax, no silver, no brass, which cannot be converted into something else, whatever is composed of wax, or silver, or brass, may cease to be what it is; by the same eason, if all the elements are mutable, every body is mutable.
_ Now, according to your doctrine, all the elements are mutable; all bodies, therefore, are mutable. But if there were any body immortal, then all bodies would not be mutable.. Every body, then, is mortal; for every body is either water, air, fire, or earth, or composed of the four elements together, or of some of them. Now there is not one of all these elements that does not perish; for earthly bodies: are fragile; water is so soft, that the least shock will separate its parts, and fire and air yield to the least impulse, and are subject to dissolution; besides, any of these elements perish when converted into another nature; as when water is formed from earth, the air from water, and the sky from air; and when they change in the same manner back again. ‘Therefore, if there is nothing but what is perishable in the composition of all animals, there is no animal eternal. bey tS XIII. But, not to insist on these arguments, there is no animal to be found that had not a beginning, and will not have an end; for every animal being sensitive, they are con- sequently all sensible of cold and heat, sweet and bitter; nor can they have pleasing sensations without being subject to the contrary. As, therefore, they receive pleasure, they likewise receive pain; and whatever being is subject to pain, must necessarily be subject to death; it must be allowed, therefore, that every animal is mortal.
Besides, a being that is not sensible of pleasure or pain, can- not have the essence of an animal; if then, on the one hand, every animal must be sensible of pleasure and pain, and if, on the other, every being that has these sensations cannot be 12 116.: OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS,’ immortal, we may conclude, that as there is no animal insensi-' ble, there is none immortal. Besides, there is no animal without inclination and aversion; an inclination to that which is agreeable to nature, and an aversion to the contrary: there are in the case of every animal some things which they covet, and others they reject; what they reject are repugnant to: their nature, and consequently would destroy them. Every animal, therefore, is inevitably subject to be destroyed. ‘There are innumerable arguments to prove, that whatever is sensitive. is perishable; for cold, heat, pleasure, pain, and all that affects the sense, when they become excessive, cause destruction; since then there is no animal that is not sensitive, there is none immortal.: XTV. The substance of an animal is either simple or com- pound; simple, if it is composed only of earth, of fire, of air, or of water, (and of such a sort of being we can form no idea;) compound, if it is formed of different elements, which have each their proper situation, and have a natural tendency to it; this element tending towards the highest parts, that towards the lowest, and another towards the middle. This conjunction may for some time: subsist, but not for ever; for every element must return to its first situation; no animal, » therefore, is eternal.
But your school, Balbus, allows fire only to be the sole: active principle; an opinion which I believe you derive from Heraclitus, whom some men-understand in one sense, some in another; but since he seems unwilling to be understood, we will pass him by. You Stoics then say that fire is the universal principle of all things; that all living bodies cease to live on the extinction of that heat, and that. throughout all nature whatever is sensible of that heat lives and flourishes. Now I cannot conceive that bodies should perish for want of heat, rather than for want of moisture or air, especially as they even die through excess of heat; so that the life of animals does not depend more on fire than:on the other. elements.
However, air and water have this quality in common with: _ fire and heat; but let us see to what this tends. If I am not mistaken, you believe that in all nature there is nothing but. fire, which is self-animated. Why fire rather than air, of which the life of animals consists, and which is called from: OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. Lig thence anima,' the soul? But how is it that you take it for granted that life is nothing but fire? It seems more probable that it is a compound of fire and air, But if fire is self-ani- mated, unmixed with any other element, it must be sensitive, because it renders our bodies sensitive; and.the same objection which I just now made, will arise, that whatever is sensitive must necessarily be susceptible of pleasure and pain, and what- ever is sensible of pain is likewise subject to the approach of death; therefore you cannot prove fire to be eternal.
You Stoics hold that all fire has need of nourishment, with- out which it cannot possibly subsist; that the sun, moon, and all the stars, are fed either with fresh or salt waters; and the reason that Cleanthes gives why the sun is retrograde, and does not go beyond the tropics in the summer or winter, is, that he may not be too far from his sustenance. This I shall fully examine hereafter; but at present we may conclude, that whatever may cease to be, cannot of its own nature be eternal; that if fire wants sustenance, it will cease to be, and that therefore fire is not of its own nature eternal.
XV. After all, what kind of a Deity must that be who is not graced with one single virtue, if we should succeed in forming this.idea of such an one? Must we not attribute pru- dence to a Deity? a virtue, which consists in the knowledge of things good, bad, and indifferent. Yet what need has a being for the discernment of good and ill, who neither has nor can have any ill? Of what use is reason to him? of what use is understanding? We men, indeed, find them useful to aid us in finding out things which are obscure by those which are clear to us; but nothing can be obscure to a Deity.. As to justice, which gives to every one his own, it is not the concern of the Gods; since that virtue, according to your doctrine, received its birth from men, and from civil society. Tem- perance consists in abstinence from corporeal pleasures, and if” such abstinence hath a place in heaven, so also must the plea- sures abstained from. Lastly, if fortitude is ascribed to the 3 The common reading is, ex guo anima dicitur; but Dr. Davis and M. Bouhier prefer animal, though they keep anima in the text, because our author says elsewhere, anitmum ex anima dictum, Tuse. 1.1. Cicero is not here to be accused of contradictions; for we are to consider that he speaks in the characters of other persons; but there appears to be nothing in these two passages irreconcilable, and probably anima is the right word here, 118 OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS.
Deity, how does it appear? In afflictions, in labour, in danger? None of these things can affect a God. How then can we conceive this to be a Deity, that makes no use of reason, and is not endowed with any virtue?
However, when I consider what is advanced by the Stoics, my contempt for the ignorant multitude vanishes. For these are their divinities. The Syrians worshipped a fish. The Egyptians consecrated beasts of almost every kind. The Greeks deified many men; as Alabandus' at Alabandee, Tenes at Tenedos; and all Greece pay divine honours to Leucothea, who was before called Ino, to her son Palzemon, to Hercules, to Aisculapius, and to the Tyndaride; our own people to Romulus, and to many others, who, as citizens newly admitted into the ancient.body, they imagine have been received into heaven.
These are the Gods of the illiterate.
XVI. What are the notions of you philosophers? In what respect are they superior to these ideas? I shall pass them over; for they are certainly very admirable. Let the world then be a Deity, for that I conceive is what you méan by— The refulgent heav’n above, Which all men call, unanimously, Jove.
But why are we to add many more Gods? What a multi- tude of them there is! at least it seems so to me; for every constellation, according to you, is a Deity; to some you give the name of beasts, as the goat, the scorpion, the bull, the lion; to others the names of inanimate things, as the ship, set 3 altar, the crown.
But supposing these were to be allowed, how can the rest be granted, or even so much as understood? When we call corn Ceres, and wine Bacchus, we make use of the common manner of speaking; but do you think any one so mad as to believe that his food is a Deity? With regard to those who, you say, from having been men became Gods, I should be very willing to learn of you, either how it was possible for- merly, or, if it had ever been, why it is not so now? I do not conceive, as things are at present, how Hercules, Burnt with fiery torches on Mount Cita, 1 He is said to have led a colony from Greece into Caria in Asia, and to have built a town, and called it after his own name, for which his countrymen paid him divine honours after his death.; OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 119 as Accius says, should rise, with the flames, | To the eternal mansions of his father.
Besides, Homer also says that Ulysses’ met him in the shades below, amongst the other dead.
But yet I should be glad to know which Hercules we should chiefly worship; for they who have searched into those histories, which are but little known, tell us of several. The most ancient is he who fought with Apollo about the Tripos of. Delphi, and is son of Jupiter and Lisyto; and of the most ancient Jupiters too, for we find many Jupiters also in the Grecian chronicles. The second is the Egyptian Hercules, and is believed to be the son of Nilus, and to be the author of. the Phrygian characters. The third, to whom they offered sacrifices, is one of the Idei Dactyli.? The fourth is the son of Jupiter and Asteria, the sister of Latona, chiefly honoured by the Tyrians, who pretend that Carthago* is his daughter. The fifth, called Belus, is worshipped in India. The sixth is the son of Alemena by Jupiter; but by the third Jupiter, for there are many Jupiters, as you shall soon see.
XVII. Since this examination has led me so far, I will convince you, that in matters of religion I have learnt more from the pontifical rites, the customs of our ancestors, and the vessels of Numa,* which Lelius mentions in his little “ golden oration,” than from all the learning of the Stoics; for tell me, if I were a disciple of your school, what answer could I make to these questions? If there are Gods, are nymphs also God- ? Our great author is under a mistake here. Homer does not say he met Hercules himself, but his EzdwAoy, his “ visionary likeness;” and adds that he himself per dcinlesis Oeote. réprerat év Oadrtins, kat Exe kadAAlopupoy “HBny, maida Ads peryddoto kad “Hons xpvootediAou" which Pope translates,— A shadowy form, for high in heav’n’s abodes Himself resides, a God among the Gods, There, in the bright assemblies of the skies, He nectar quaffs, and Hebe crowns his j Joys.
2 They are said to have been the first workers in iron. They were called Idzei, because they inhabited about Mount Ida in Crete, and Dactyli, from ddéervAa (the fingers), their number being five.
3 From whom, some say, the city of that name was called.
* Capedunculee seem to have been bowls or cups with handles on each side, set apart for the use of the altar.—Davis.
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desses? If they are Goddesses, are Pans and Satyrs in the same rank? But they are not, consequently nymphs are not Goddesses. Yet they have temples publicly dedicated to them. What do you conclude from thence? Others, who have temples, are not therefore Gods. But let us go on. You call Jupiter and Neptune Gods; their brother Pluto then is one; and if so, those rivers also are deities, which they say flow in the infernal regions, Acheron, Cocytus, Pyriphlegethon; Charon also, and Cerberus, are Gods; but that cannot be allowed; nor can Pluto be placed amongst the Deities;—what, then, will you say of his brothers?
Thus reasons Carneades; not with any design to destroy the existence of the Gods, (for what would less become a phi- losopher?) but to convince us, that, on that matter, the Stoics have said nothing plausible. If, then, Jupiter and Neptune are Gods, adds he, can that divinity be denied to their father Saturn, who is principally worshipped throughout the west? If Saturn is a God, then must his father, Coelus, be one too, and so must the parents of Coelus, which are the Sky and Day, as also their brothers and sisters, which by ancient genealogists are thus named, Love, Deceit, Fear, Labour, Envy, Fate, Old Age, Death, Darkness, Misery, Lamentation, Favour, Fraud, Obstinacy, the Destinies, the Hesperides, and Dreams; ali which are the offspring of Erebus and Night. These monstrous deities, therefore, must be received, or else those from whom they sprung must be disallowed.
XVIII. If you say that Apollo, Vulcan, Mercury, and the rest of that sort, are Gods, can you doubt the divinity of Hercules and Aisculapius, Bacchus, Castor and Pollux? These are worshipped as much as those, and even more in some places. Therefore they must be numbered among the Gods, though on the mother’s side they are only of mortal race. Aristeeus, who is said to have been the son of Apoilo, and to have found out the art of making oil from the olive; Theseus, the son of Neptune; and the rest, whose fathers were deities, shall they not be placed in the number of the Gods? But what think you of those, whose mothers were Goddesses? They surely have a better title to divinity; for, in the civil law, as he is a freeman who is born of a free- woman, so, in the law of nature, he whose mother is a God- dess, must be a God. The isle Astypalea religiously honour OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 121 Achilles; and if he is a Deity, Orpheus and Rhesus are so, who were born of one of the Muses; unless, perhaps, there may be a privilege belonging to sea-marriages, which land- marriages have not. Orpheus and Rhesus are nowhere wor- shipped; and if they are therefore not Gods, because they are nowhere worshipped as such, how can the others be deities? You, Balbus, scemed to agree with me, that the honours which they received were not from their being regarded as immortals, but as men richly endued with virtue.
But if you think Latona a Goddess, how can you avoid admitting Hecate to be one also, who was the daughter of Asteria, Latona’s sister? Certainly she is one, if we may judge by the altars erected to her in Greece. And if Hecate is a Goddess, how can you refuse that rank to the Eumenides? for they also have a temple at Athens, and, if I understand right, the Romans have consecrated a grove to them. The Furies, too, whom we look upon as the inspectors into, and scourges of impiety, I suppose, must have their divinity too. As you hold that there is some divinity presides over every human affair, there is one who presides over the travail of matrons, whose name, Vatio, is derived a nascentibus, from nativities, and to whom we used to sacrifice in our proces- sions in the fields of Ardea; but if she is a Deity, we must likewise acknowledge all those you mentioned, Honour, Faith, Intellect, Concord; by the same rule also Hope, Juno, ‘Moneta,’ and every idle phantom, every child of our imagi- nation, are Deities. But as this consequence is quite in- admissible, do not you either defend the cause from which it flows.
XIX. What say you to this?. If these are Deities, which we worship and regard as such, why are not Serapis and Isis* placed in the same rank? And if they are admitted, what reason have we to reject the Gods of the barbarians? Thus we should deify oxen, horses, the ibis, hawks, asps, crocodiles, fishes, dogs, wolves, cats, and many other beasts. If we go back to the source of this superstition, we must 1 See Cicero de Divinatione, and Ovid. Fast.
2 In the consulship of Piso and Gabinius, sacrifices to Serapis and Isis were prohibited in Rome; but the Roman people afterwards placed them again in the number of their gods. See Tertullian’s Apol. and his first book Ad Nationes, and Arnobius, lib, 2.—Davis.
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equally condemn all the deities from which they proceed. Shall Ino, whom the Greeks call Leucothea, and we Matuta, — be reputed a Goddess, because she was the daughter of Cadmus, and shall that title be refused to Circe and Pasiphae,’ who had the Sun for their father, and Perseis, daughter of the Ocean, for their mother? It is true, Circe has divine honours paid her by our colony of Circzeum; therefore you call her a Goddess; but what will you say of Medea, the grand-daughter of the Sun and the Ocean, and daughter of Aetes and Idyia? What will you say of her brother Absyrtus, whom Pacuvius calls Adgialeus, though the other name is more frequent in the writings of the ancients? If you did not deify one as well as the other, what will become of Ino? for all these deities have the same origin. | Shall Amphiaraus and Tryphonius be called Gods? Our publicans, when some lands in Beeotia were exempted from the tax, as belonging to the immortal Gods, denied that any were immortal who had been men. But if you deify these, Erech- theus surely is a God, whose temple and priest we have seen at Athens. And can you then refuse to acknowledge also Codrus, and many others who shed their blood for the preser- vation of their country? And if it is not allowable to con- sider all these men as Gods, then, certainly, probabilities are not in favour of our acknowledging the Divinity of those pre- viously-mentioned beings from whom these have proceeded.
It is easy to observe, likewise, that if in many countries people have’ paid divine honours to the memory of those who have signalized their courage, it was done in order to animate others to practise virtue, and to expose themselves the more willingly to dangers in their country’s cause. From this motive the Athenians have deified Erechtheus and his daugh- — ters, and have erected also a temple called Leocorion to the daughters of Leus.2 Alabandus is more honoured in the city which he founded, than any of the more illustrious deities; from thence Stratonicus had a pleasant turn, as he had many, when he was troubled with an impertinent fellow, who insisted that Alabandus was a God, but that Hercules " In some » copies Circe, Pasiphae, and Ma are mentioned together; but Ala is rejected by the most judicious editors.
2 They were three, and are said to have averted a plague by offering themselves a sacrifice.
OF THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 123 was not; “ Very well,” says he, “then let the anger of Ala- bandus fall upon me, and that of Hercules upon you.”
XX. Do you not consider, Balbus, to what lengths your arguments for the divinity of the heaven and the stars will carry you? You deify the sun and the moon, which the Greeks take to be Apollo and Diana. If the moon is a deity, the morning-star, the other planets, and all the fixed stars, are also deities; and why shall not the rainbow be placed in that number? for it is so wonderfully beautiful, that it is justly said to be the daughter of Thaumas.1 But if you deify the rainbow, what regard will you pay to the clouds? for the colours which appear in the bow are only formed of the clouds, one of which is said to have brought forth the Cen- taurs; and if you deify the clouds, you cannot pay less regard to the seasons, which the Roman people have really conse- crated; tempests, showers, storms, and whirlwinds, must then be deities. It is certain, at least, that our captains used to sacrifice a victim to the waves-before they embarked on any voyage.
As you deify the earth under the name of Ceres,” be- cause, as you said, she bears fruits (a gerendo), and the ocean under that of Neptune; rivers and fountains have the same right. Thus we see that Maso, the conqueror of Corsica, dedicated a temple to a fountain, and the names of the Tiber, Spino, Almo, Nodinus, and other neighbouring rivers, are in the prayers’ of the augurs; therefore, either the number of such — deities will be infinite, or we must admit none of them, and wholly disapprove of such an endless series of superstition.
XXI. None of all these assertions, then, are to be admitted. I must proceed now, Balbus, to answer those who say, that, with regard to those deified mortals, so religiously and devoutly reverenced, the public opinion should have the force of reality. To begin, then; they who are called theologists say that there are three Jupiters; the first and second of whom were born in Arcadia; one of whom was the son of Aither, and father of Proserpine and Bacchus; the other, the son of Coelus, and | father of Minerva, who is ‘called the ‘Goddess and inventress.
1 So called from the Greek word @avudéw, to wonder.
2 She was first called Geres, from gero, to bear.
3’ The word is precatione, which means the books or forms of pray ers used by the augurs.!
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of war; the third one born of Saturn in the isle of Crete, where his sepulchre is shown. The sons of Jupiter (Avdoxovpor) also, among the Greeks, have many names; first, the three, who at Athens have the title of Anactes,’ Tritopatreus, Kubuleus, and Dionysius, sons of the most ancient king Jupiter and Proserpine; the next are Castor and Pollux, sons of the third Jupiter and Leda; and lastly, three others, by some called Alco,* Melampus, and Emolus, sons of Atreus, the son of Pelops.