Book 2

When Cotta had thus spoken, Velleius said: "How rash of me, to have ventured to engage with an Academic who is at the same time a rhetorician! For an Academic without eloquence I should not have greatly dreaded, nor a rhetorician, however eloquent, without that philosophy; for I am not confounded by a flood of empty words, nor by subtlety of thought if the speech is dry. But you, Cotta, were strong in both respects; only the ring of bystanders and the jury were wanting to you. But of that another time; now let us hear Lucilius, if it suits him."

Then said Balbus: "For my part I would rather hear Cotta again, so that with the same eloquence with which he abolished the false gods he might bring in the true. For it befits a philosopher, a pontiff, and Cotta to hold about the immortal gods an opinion not wandering and unsettled, as the Academics do, but, as we Stoics do, firm and certain. For against Epicurus enough and more than enough has been said; but I am eager to hear what you yourself, Cotta, think." "Have you forgotten," he said, "what I said at the outset — that I can more easily say, especially on matters of this kind, what I do not think than what I do? And even if I had something clear to offer, I should still wish to hear you in my turn, now that I myself have said so much."

Then said Balbus: "I will gratify you, and will be as brief as I can; for, the errors of Epicurus refuted, my argument has been relieved of a long discourse. Our school, on the whole, divides this whole question of the immortal gods into four parts. First they teach that the gods exist; next, of what kind they are; then, that the world is administered by them; lastly, that they take thought for human affairs. In this discourse let us take up the first two of these; the third and fourth, being weightier, I think should be put off to another time." "By no means," said Cotta; "for we are at leisure, and we are dealing with matters that are even to be set before our other concerns."

Then said Lucilius: "The first part does not even seem to need a discourse. For what can be so plain and so manifest, when we have looked up at the sky and contemplated the heavens, as that there is some divinity of a most excellent mind by which these things are governed? Were it not so, how could Ennius have said, with the assent of all, 'Behold this gleaming vault on high, whom all men call upon as Jove' — and that very god both Jove, and lord of all things, and ruler of all by his motion, and, as the same Ennius says, 'the father of gods and men,' a god present and all-powerful? And he who doubts this — I really do not see why he might not as well doubt whether there is a sun or none;

for what is more evident than the one than the other? And unless we held this fixed and grasped in our minds, so steadfast an opinion would not have endured, nor been confirmed by length of time, nor been able to grow old along with the ages and generations of men. For we see that other opinions, false and empty, have wasted away with time. Who now thinks that the Hippocentaur ever existed, or the Chimaera? What old woman is found so witless as to dread those monsters once believed in among the dead? For time blots out the fictions of opinion, but confirms the judgements of Nature.

And so, both among our own people and among others, the worship of the gods and the sanctities of religion grow daily greater and better; and this comes about neither by chance nor at random, but because the gods often manifest their power by their presence, as at Lake Regillus in the war with the Latins, when the dictator Aulus Postumius was fighting Octavius Mamilius of Tusculum, Castor and Pollux were seen fighting on horseback in our line; and within more recent memory the same sons of Tyndareus announced the defeat of Perseus. For Publius Vatinius, the grandfather of this youth, as he was coming to Rome by night from the prefecture of Reate, was told by two young men with white horses that king Perseus had that day been captured; and when he reported this to the senate, he was at first thrown into prison, as having spoken too rashly of public affairs, but afterwards, when letters arrived from Paulus and the same day was found to agree, he was rewarded by the senate with land and exemption from service. And again, when the Locrians had overcome the men of Croton in a great battle at the river Sagra, it is recorded that on that very day the news of that fight was heard at the Olympic games. Often the voices of the Fauns have been heard, often the forms of the gods seen, such as to compel any man not dull or impious to confess that the gods are present.

As for the predictions and forewarnings of things to come, what else do they declare but that to men the things which are to be are shown, displayed, portended, and foretold? Whence those things are called omens (ostenta), prodigies (monstra), portents (portenta), and signs (prodigia). And if we think those figures the inventions of fabling licence — Mopsus, Tiresias, Amphiaraus, Calchas, Helenus (whom, however, not even the fables would have made augurs if the thing were wholly to be rejected) — shall we not, taught by examples even from our own house, prove the divinity of the gods? Will the rashness of Publius Clodius in the first Punic War not move us at all — who, mocking the gods even in jest, when the chickens, let out of the coop, would not feed, bade them be plunged into the water, that they might drink, since they would not eat? — a jest which, when his fleet was defeated, brought many tears to himself and a great disaster to the Roman people. Did not his colleague Lucius Junius in the same war lose his fleet in a storm because he had not obeyed the auspices? And so Clodius was condemned by the people, and Junius took his own life.

Coelius writes that Gaius Flaminius, having neglected religion, fell at Trasimene with a great wound to the commonwealth. From whose destruction it may be understood that the commonwealth was enlarged by the commands of those who had obeyed religion. And if we are willing to compare our own affairs with those of foreigners, we shall be found in other respects either equal or even inferior, but in religion — that is, in the worship of the gods — far superior.

Or is that augur's staff of Attus Navius, with which he marked out the regions of the vineyard to track down the pig, to be despised? I should believe it, were it not that, on his augury, King Hostilius waged great wars. But through the negligence of the nobility the discipline of augury has been let go, the truth of the auspices despised, and only the form retained; and so the greatest affairs of the commonwealth — among them the wars on which the safety of the commonwealth depends — are managed with no auspices: no watching of the river-crossings, none from the points of the spears, no men summoned to arms (whence in old time wills were made in battle-array); for now our generals begin to wage wars only when they have laid the auspices aside.

But among our forefathers the power of religion was so great that some generals even devoted themselves, with veiled head and in set words, to the immortal gods on behalf of the commonwealth. I could recount many things from the Sibylline prophecies, many from the answers of the soothsayers, by which those things might be confirmed which ought to be doubtful to no one. And indeed both the discipline of our augurs and that of the Etruscan soothsayers was proved by the event itself in the consulship of Publius Scipio and Gaius Figulus. When Tiberius Gracchus, consul for the second time, was holding the election of these men, the first teller, as he reported them, suddenly dropped dead on the spot. Gracchus nonetheless carried through the election; but, perceiving that the matter had caused religious scruple among the people, he referred it to the senate. The senate decreed that it be referred to those to whom such things were usually referred. The soothsayers were brought in and answered that the teller of the election had not been duly qualified. Then Gracchus, as I used to hear from my father, blazed up with anger:

'Is it so indeed — that I, who as consul put the question, and as augur, and with auspices taken, was not duly qualified? But you, Etruscans and barbarians, hold the right of the auspices of the Roman people and can be interpreters of our elections?' And so he then bade them depart. But afterwards he sent from his province a letter to the college, saying that, on reading the books, he had recalled that he had taken his observation-tent improperly in the gardens of Scipio, since, having afterwards crossed the pomerium to hold a meeting of the senate, he had on returning forgotten, when he crossed the same pomerium, to take the auspices; and that therefore the consuls had been elected with a flaw. The augurs referred the matter to the senate; the senate decreed that the consuls should abdicate; they abdicated. What greater examples do we seek? A man most wise, and perhaps the most eminent of all, chose rather to confess his own fault, which might have been concealed, than to let a religious flaw cleave to the commonwealth; and the consuls chose at once to lay down their supreme command rather than hold it for an instant of time against religion.

Great is the authority of the augurs; and the art of the soothsayers — is it not divine? Whoever beholds these things and countless others of the same kind — must he not be compelled to confess that the gods exist? For those of whom there are interpreters must certainly themselves exist; but there are interpreters of the gods; therefore let us confess that the gods exist. But perhaps not all things come to pass that have been foretold. Neither do all the sick recover, and yet medicine is not therefore no art. Signs of things to come are shown by the gods; if any have erred in reading them, it is not the nature of the gods but the conjecture of men that has been at fault. And so among all nations the chief point stands agreed; for it is inborn in all, and as it were graven on the mind, that the gods exist. Of what kind they are is disputed; that they exist no one denies.

Our own Cleanthes, indeed, said that the notions of the gods are formed in the minds of men from four causes. The first he set down was the one I just mentioned, which arose from the forewarning of things to come; the second, that which we have derived from the magnitude of the benefits we receive through the temperateness of the climate, the fruitfulness of the lands, and the abundance of many other advantages;

the third, that which terrifies our minds with thunderbolts, storms, rainclouds, snow, hail, devastation, pestilence, earthquakes, and often rumblings, showers of stones, and raindrops as it were of blood, then with landslides or sudden gapings of the earth, then with monstrous births of men and beasts contrary to nature, then with heavenly torches seen, then with those stars which the Greeks call comets and our people the long-haired stars (cincinnatae) — which lately, in the war of Octavius, were forerunners of great calamities — then with the doubling of the sun, which, as I heard from my father, happened in the consulship of Tuditanus and Aquilius, the very year in which Publius Africanus, that second sun, was extinguished: by all which men, terrified, suspected that there was some heavenly and divine power;

the fourth cause, and that the greatest, the evenness of the motion and the most constant revolution of the heaven, and the distinctness, usefulness, beauty, and order of the sun, the moon, and all the stars, the mere sight of which would sufficiently show that these things are not by chance: so that, if anyone comes into a house, or a gymnasium, or a forum, and sees in everything a system, a measure, a discipline, he cannot judge that these things come to be without a cause, but understands that there is someone who presides and is obeyed; much more, amid such great motions and such great vicissitudes, amid the orderings of so many and so vast things, in which through measureless and infinite antiquity nothing has ever played false, he must conclude that so great motions of nature are governed by some mind.

Chrysippus, indeed, though he is of the keenest intellect, yet says these things as though he had learned them from Nature herself, not as though he had himself discovered them. 'For if,' he says, 'there is in the nature of things something which the mind of man, which reason, which human force and power cannot produce, surely that which produces it is better than man; but the heavenly bodies and all things whose order is everlasting cannot be made by man; therefore that by which they are made is better than man. And what could you better call this than god? For indeed, if the gods do not exist, what can there be in the nature of things better than man? For in him alone is reason, than which nothing can be more excellent; but that a man should think nothing in all the world better than himself is the mark of senseless arrogance; therefore there is something better. There is, then, assuredly a god.

Or, if you see a great and beautiful house, could you be brought to think it was built for mice and weasels even though you did not see the master? — so, if you should think this great adornment of the world, this great variety and beauty of heavenly things, this great power and magnitude of sea and land, to be your dwelling and not the gods', would you not seem plainly out of your senses?' Or do we not even understand this — that all things above are better, but the earth is lowest, surrounded by the densest air: so that, for this very cause, which we see befall certain regions and cities too, that men's minds are duller because of the heavier nature of the air, this same has befallen the human race, in that it is placed on the earth, that is, in the densest region of the world?

And yet from the very cleverness of men we ought to judge that there is some mind, and that a keener and a divine one. For whence did man 'snatch' this, as Socrates says in Xenophon? Nay, if anyone should ask whence we have the moisture and the heat that is diffused through the body, and the very solidity of the flesh that is of earth, and that breathing soul, it is plain: one part we took from earth, another from water, another from fire, another from that air which we call breath. But that which surpasses all these — I mean reason, or, if you please, in more words, mind, counsel, thought, prudence — where did we find it, whence did we take it? Shall the world have all other things, but not this one thing which is of most worth? Yet surely nothing of all things is better than the world, nothing more excellent, nothing more beautiful; nor only is there nothing better, but nothing better can even be conceived. And if there is nothing better than reason and wisdom, these must of necessity be present in that which we grant to be best.

And again, who will not be compelled to approve what I say by the great agreement, the harmony, the continuous kinship of things? Could the earth at one time flower and then in turn grow bare, or could the approach and the retreat of the sun be known by so many things themselves changing at the solstices and the winter turns; or could the tides of the sea and the narrows of the straits be stirred by the rising or the setting of the moon; or could the unequal courses of the stars be preserved by the one revolution of the whole heaven? These things, with all the parts of the world chiming together, surely could not come to pass unless they were held together by one divine and continuous spirit.

And when these matters are argued more fully and at greater length, as I am minded to do, they more easily escape the cavil of the Academics; but when they are concluded more briefly and narrowly, as Zeno was wont, then they are more open to censure. For as a running river is corrupted scarcely or not at all, but enclosed water easily, so by a flood of speech the reproaches of a censurer are washed away, but reason enclosed in narrow space does not easily defend itself. These arguments which we expand Zeno used to press thus:

'That which uses reason is better than that which does not use reason; but nothing is better than the world; therefore the world uses reason.' In like manner it can be shown that the world is wise, in like manner that it is blessed, in like manner that it is eternal; for all these are better than those things that lack them, and nothing is better than the world. From which it will follow that the world is a god.

And the same, thus: 'No part of a thing without sensation can be sentient; but the parts of the world are sentient; therefore the world is not without sensation.' He proceeds and presses more narrowly: 'Nothing,' he says, 'that is void of soul and of reason can generate from itself a living being and one endowed with reason; but the world generates living beings endowed with reason; therefore the world is a living being and endowed with reason.' And the same, by a comparison, as he often does, drew his conclusion thus: 'If from an olive there were born pipes playing in tune, would you doubt that there was in the olive some knowledge of piping? What if plane-trees bore little lutes sounding in measure? Doubtless you would judge the same — that music was in the plane-trees. Why, then, should the world not be judged a living and wise being, since from itself it brings forth living and wise beings?'

But since I have begun to deal with the matter otherwise than I said at the outset (for I had said that this first part needed no discourse, since it was clear to all that the gods exist), yet I wish this very thing to be confirmed by physical, that is, natural, reasons. For the case stands thus, that all things which are nourished and which grow contain in themselves a force of heat, without which they could neither be nourished nor grow. For everything that is hot and fiery is stirred and moved by its own motion; but that which is nourished and grows uses a certain fixed and even motion; and as long as this remains in us, so long do sensation and life remain, but when the heat is chilled and quenched, we ourselves perish and are extinguished.

This indeed Cleanthes shows by these arguments also — how great a force of heat is in every body: for he denies that there is any food so heavy but that it is digested in a night and a day, and that even in its leavings, which Nature has rejected, there is heat. Then too the veins and arteries do not cease to throb, as it were with a kind of fiery motion, and it has often been observed that when the heart of some animal has been torn out it throbs so swiftly as to imitate the rapidity of fire. Everything, then, that lives, whether animal or sprung from the earth, lives by reason of the heat enclosed in it. From which it ought to be understood that this nature of heat has in itself a vital force pervading the whole world.

And we shall discern this the more easily if the whole of this fiery element which permeates all things is more subtly explained. All the parts of the world, then (but I shall touch on the greatest), are upheld and sustained by heat. This may first be perceived in the nature of earth. For we see fire struck out by the collision and rubbing of stones, and the earth steam when freshly dug, while warm; and warm water drawn even from perennial wells, and this happening most of all in the winter season, because a great force of heat is shut up in the hollows of the earth, and the earth is denser in winter and for that cause holds the heat innate in it more tightly.

It is a long discourse and there are many arguments by which it may be shown that all the seeds which the earth conceives, and all that, generated by itself, it holds fixed in its roots, both arise and grow by that tempering of heat. And that heat is mingled with water too, the very fluidity and flowing of water declares; which would neither freeze in the cold nor harden with snow and frost, did it not, by the heat mingled with it, melt and dissolve and spread. And so by north winds and other added colds the moisture hardens, and in turn is softened when warmed and melts with heat. And the seas too, when stirred by the winds, grow so warm that one may easily understand that in those vast waters heat is shut up; for that warmth must not be held to be external and brought from without, but stirred up from the inmost parts of the sea by agitation — which happens also to our own bodies, when they grow warm again with motion and exercise. And the air itself, which by nature is most cold, is by no means without heat;

nay, it is mingled with much heat indeed: for it arises from the exhalation of the waters; for the air must be held to be a kind of vapour of them, and it arises from the motion of that heat which is contained in the waters — a likeness we can discern in those waters which boil up over fires set beneath them. Now the remaining, fourth part of the world: it too is in its whole nature fervid, and imparts to all the other natures a wholesome and vital heat.

From which it is concluded that, since all the parts of the world are sustained by heat, the world itself too is preserved by a like and equal nature through so long a span of time; and the more so because we ought to understand that that hot and fiery element is so diffused through all nature that there is in it a force of begetting and a cause of generating, by which both all living things and those whose stems are held in the earth must of necessity be born and grow.

There is, then, a nature which holds together the whole world and watches over it, and that not without sensation and reason. For every nature which is not solitary nor simple, but joined and connected with another, must have in itself some ruling part, as in man the mind, in the beast something like the mind whence arise the appetites of things; and in trees and the things that grow from the earth the ruling part is thought to reside in the roots. By 'ruling part' I mean that which the Greeks call hegemonikon, than which in each kind nothing can or ought to be more excellent. Thus that too in which is the ruling part of the whole of nature must of necessity be best of all and most worthy of the power and dominion over all things.

But we see that in the parts of the world (for there is nothing in the whole world that is not a part of the universe) there is sensation and reason. In that part, then, in which the ruling principle of the world resides, these must necessarily be present, and keener and greater indeed. Wherefore the world must of necessity be wise, and that nature which embraces and holds all things must excel in perfection of reason; and therefore the world is a god, and all the force of the world is held together by the divine nature. And moreover, that heat of the world is purer, more translucent, and far more mobile, and for these reasons fitter to stir the senses than this heat of ours by which the things known to us are upheld and quickened.

It is absurd, then, to say that, while men and beasts are sustained by this heat and thereby move and feel, the world is without sensation, when it is held together by a heat unimpaired, free, and pure, and at the same time most keen and most mobile; especially since that heat which is the world's is moved not stirred by another nor by an external impulse, but of itself and of its own accord; for what can be mightier than the world, to push and move that heat by which the world is held together?

For let us hear Plato, as a kind of god of philosophers; who holds that there are two motions, one a thing's own, the other from without, and that what is moved of itself by its own accord is more divine than what is stirred by an alien impulse. This motion he sets only in souls, and thinks the beginning of motion is derived from them. Wherefore, since all motion arises from the heat of the world, and that heat is moved not by an alien impulse but of its own accord, it must be a soul; whence it follows that the world is a living being. And from this too it may be understood that there is intelligence in it, because the world is certainly better than any nature. For as there is no part of our body that is not of less worth than we ourselves are, so the whole world must necessarily be of more worth than any part of the universe. And if this is so, the world must be wise. For if it were not, a man, who is a part of the world, since he partakes of reason, would have to be of more worth than the whole world.

And again, if we wish to proceed from the first and rudimentary natures to the last and most perfect, we must of necessity arrive at the nature of the gods. For first we observe that those things are sustained by Nature which are born from the earth, to which Nature has assigned nothing more than to watch over them by nourishing and increasing them.

But to the beasts she gave sensation and motion, and, along with a kind of appetite, an approach to wholesome things and a withdrawal from harmful. To man she added something more — reason, by which the appetites of the soul should be governed, now slackened, now restrained. There is yet a fourth and highest grade, of those who are born by nature good and wise, in whom from the beginning is implanted a right and steadfast reason, which must be reckoned above man and assigned to god, that is, to the world, in which that perfect and absolute reason must of necessity reside.

For it cannot be said that in any ordering of things there is not something final and perfect. For as in the vine, as in the herd, unless some force opposes, we see Nature by a certain path of her own arrive at the utmost; and as painting and building and the other arts have a certain effecting of a finished work, so in all nature, and much more so, something must of necessity be brought to completion and perfection. And indeed in the other natures many external things may hinder them from being perfected, but nothing can impede universal Nature, for the reason that she herself contains and holds together all natures. Wherefore there must be that fourth and highest grade, to which no force can come near.

And this is the grade in which is placed the nature of all things; which, since it is such that it both presides over all and nothing can hinder it, must of necessity be intelligent, and indeed wise too. For what is more ignorant than to say that that nature which has embraced all things is not best, or, being best, is not first a living being, then endowed with reason and counsel, and finally wise? For how can it otherwise be best? For if it were like the plants or even like the beasts, it would have to be thought not best but rather worst. And again, if it partook of reason yet were not wise from the beginning, the condition of the world would be worse rather than human. For a man can become wise, but the world, if through the eternal span of past time it was unwise, will surely never attain wisdom; thus it would be worse than man. And since this is absurd, the world must be held both wise from the beginning and a god.

For there is nothing else besides the world to which nothing is lacking, and which is on every side fitted, perfect, and complete in all its numbers and parts. For Chrysippus aptly says that, as the case is for the sake of the shield and the sheath for the sake of the sword, so, except the world, all other things were generated for the sake of others — as the crops and fruits which the earth brings forth for the sake of living creatures, and living creatures for the sake of men, as the horse for carrying, the ox for ploughing, the dog for hunting and guarding; but man himself was born to contemplate and imitate the world — by no means perfect, but a kind of small particle of the perfect.

But the world, since it has embraced all things, and there is nothing which is not contained in it, is perfect on every side; how, then, can that be lacking to it which is best? But nothing is better than mind and reason; therefore these cannot be lacking to the world. Well, then, does the same Chrysippus, adding comparisons, teach that all things are better in the perfect and the mature — as in the horse than in the colt, in the dog than in the puppy, in the man than in the boy; likewise that what is best in the whole world must reside in something perfect and complete;

but there is nothing more perfect than the world, nothing better than virtue; therefore virtue is proper to the world. Nor indeed is the nature of man perfect, and yet virtue is brought about in man; how much more easily, then, in the world! There is, therefore, virtue in it. The world, then, is wise, and for that reason a god. And, this divinity of the world being perceived, the same divinity must be assigned to the heavenly bodies, which are generated from the most mobile and purest part of the ether, and have besides no other nature mingled in, and are wholly hot and translucent, so that they too may most rightly be said both to be living and to feel and understand.

And that they are wholly fiery, Cleanthes thinks is confirmed by the testimony of two senses, touch and sight. For the heat and brightness of the sun is more brilliant than that of any fire, since it shines so far and wide through the boundless world; and its touch is such that it not only warms but often even burns — neither of which it would do unless it were fiery. 'Therefore,' he says, 'since the sun is fiery and is fed by the moisture of the Ocean' (for no fire can endure without some nourishment), 'it must of necessity be either like that fire which we employ for use and for living, or like that which is contained in the bodies of living creatures.

But this fire of ours, which the use of life requires, is the destroyer and consumer of all things, and wherever it has invaded, it disorders and scatters everything; whereas that bodily fire, vital and wholesome, preserves all things, nourishes, increases, sustains, and gives sensation.' He denies, then, that there is any doubt to which of these fires the sun is like, since it too makes all things flourish and each kind grow to ripeness. Wherefore, since the fire of the sun is like those fires which are in the bodies of living creatures, the sun too must be a living being, and likewise the rest of the stars which arise in that heavenly heat which is called ether or sky.

Since, then, the birth of some living creatures is in the earth, of some in water, of some in air, it seems absurd to Aristotle to think that no living thing is generated in that part which is best fitted for generating living creatures. But the heavenly bodies hold the ethereal region; and since this is most subtle and ever in motion and full of vigour, the living thing that is generated in it must of necessity be of the keenest sensation and the swiftest mobility. Wherefore, since the stars are generated in the ether, it is consistent that there should be sensation and intelligence in them; from which it follows that the stars are to be reckoned in the number of the gods. And indeed it may be observed that the minds of those who dwell in lands where the air is pure and thin are keener and apter for understanding than those of men who breathe a thick and clogged air.

Nay, they think that even the food one uses makes some difference to the keenness of the mind. It is probable, then, that there is a surpassing intelligence in the heavenly bodies, which both dwell in the ethereal part of the world and are fed by the moistures of sea and earth, refined by their long passage. But the sensation and intelligence of the stars is most clearly declared by their order and constancy (for there is nothing that can be moved by measure and number without counsel), in which there is nothing rash, nothing variable, nothing fortuitous. And the order of the heavenly bodies and their constancy through all eternity signify neither nature (for that is full of reason) nor fortune, which, being friendly to variety, rejects constancy. It follows, then, that they move of their own accord, by their own sensation and divinity.

Nor indeed is Aristotle not to be praised for this, that he held that all things which move are moved either by nature, or by force, or by will; that the sun and moon and all the stars move; that things moved by nature are borne either downward by weight or upward by lightness — neither of which befalls the stars, because their motion is borne round in a circle; nor can it be said that it comes about by some greater force that the stars move contrary to nature (for what force can be greater?); it remains, then, that the motion of the stars is voluntary. And he who sees this would act not only ignorantly but impiously if he should deny that the gods exist. Nor does it much matter whether he denies it or strips them of all care and action; for to me one who does nothing seems not to exist at all. That the gods, then, exist is so manifest that I should hardly count him of sound mind who denies it.

It remains to consider of what kind their nature is; in which nothing is harder than to draw the mind's keen sight away from the habit of the eyes. This difficulty has led both the ignorant common folk, and philosophers like the ignorant, to be unable to conceive anything of the immortal gods save in the established shapes of men; the shallowness of which opinion, refuted by Cotta, needs no discourse of mine. But since by a sure conception of the mind we forefeel that god is such — first, that he is a living being, and next, that in all nature there is nothing more excellent than he — to this our forefeeling and conception I see nothing I can better fit than to judge, first, this very world, than which nothing more excellent can be, to be a living being and a god.

Here let Epicurus jest as he will — a man least fitted to jest, and savouring not at all of his country — and let him say that he cannot understand what a rolling, round god may be like; yet from this, which he himself grants, he will never move me. For he holds that the gods exist, because there must be some excellent nature than which nothing is better. But surely nothing is better than the world; nor is there any doubt that what is a living being and has sensation, reason, and mind is better than what lacks these.

So it is concluded that the world is a living being, partaking of sensation, mind, and reason; by which reasoning it is inferred that the world is a god. But these things will presently be more easily known from the very works which the world produces. Meanwhile, Velleius, do not, I pray, parade the fact that you Epicureans are altogether without learning. You say that a cone, a cylinder, and a pyramid seem to you more beautiful than a sphere. You have indeed a novel judgement of the eyes. But grant that these are more beautiful — to the sight alone (which, however, does not seem so even to me); for what is more beautiful than that figure which alone, embracing all other figures, contains them, and which can have nothing of roughness, nothing of offence, nothing cut by angles, nothing of windings, nothing jutting out, nothing hollow? And since there are two most excellent forms — among solids the globe (for so it pleases me to render sphaira), among plane figures the circle or disc (which in Greek is called kyklos) — to these two forms alone it belongs that all their parts are most like one another, and the outermost is everywhere equally distant from the centre,

than which nothing can be more apt. But if you do not see this, because you have never touched that learned dust, could you not even understand this much, as natural philosophers, that this evenness of motion and constancy of orderings could not have been preserved in any other figure? And so nothing can be more unlearned than what you are wont to assert. For you do not even say for certain that this very world is round, since it may be that it is of another figure, and that there are innumerable other worlds of other shapes.

Which, if Epicurus had learned how many twice two is, he certainly would not say; but while he judges with his palate what is best, he never looked up to the 'palate of the heaven,' as Ennius says. For since there are two kinds of heavenly bodies, of which one, travelling through unchangeable spaces from rising to setting, never bends any trace of its course, while the other completes two continuous revolutions through the same spaces and courses, from both these facts both the rolling of the world, which could not be save in a globular form, and the round circuits of the stars are recognised. And first the sun, which holds the chief place among the stars, moves so that, when it has filled the lands with its broad light, it shadows the same now from these parts now from those; for the shadow of the earth itself, falling across the sun, makes the night. And the evenness of the nightly spaces is the same as that of the daily. And the moderate approaches and retreats of the same sun temper the measure of cold and heat. For the circuits of three hundred and sixty-five revolutions of the sun's orbit, with about a fourth part of a day added, complete the yearly revolution; and the sun, bending its course now to the north, now to the south, makes summers and winters and those two seasons of which one is joined to declining winter, the other to summer: so that from the changes of the four seasons are derived the beginnings and causes of all things that are born on land and sea.

Now the moon follows the yearly courses of the sun in monthly spaces, whose thinnest light is made by its nearest approach to the sun, and its fullest by each farthest departure. And not only is its appearance and form changed, now by waxing, now by waning back to its beginnings, but also its region; which, when it is northern or southern, gives in the moon's course too a kind of likeness of winter and of solstice; and many things flow and stream from it, by which living creatures are nourished and grow and reach their maturity, and the things that arise from the earth come to ripeness.

But most wonderful are the motions of those five stars which are falsely called wandering; for nothing wanders that through all eternity preserves its advances and retreats and its other motions constant and fixed. And this is the more wonderful in the stars we speak of, because at one time they are hidden, then again disclosed; now approach, now retire; now go before, now follow after; now move more swiftly, now more slowly; now do not move at all, but for a certain time stand still. From their unequal motions the mathematicians have named the Great Year, which is brought about when the sun and moon and the five wanderers, all their spaces being completed, come round to the same relation among themselves;

how long this is, is a great question, but that it is fixed and definite is certain. For that which is called the star of Saturn, and is named by the Greeks Phainon, which is farthest from the earth, completes its course in about thirty years, in which course, while it does many wonderful things, now going before, now slackening, now hiding itself in the evening, now disclosing itself again in the morning, it changes nothing through the everlasting ages of time but that it does the same things at the same times. Below this, nearer the earth, moves the star of Jupiter, which is called Phaethon, and it completes the same circle of the twelve signs in twelve years, and shows in its course the same variations as the star of Saturn.

Next below this holds the lower orbit Pyroeis, the star which is called the star of Mars, and it traverses the same circle which the two higher ones do in four and twenty months, less six days, as I think. Below this is the star of Mercury (it is called Stilbon by the Greeks), which traverses the zodiac in about a year's space, and never departs farther from the sun than the interval of one sign, now going before, now following after. The lowest of the five wanderers, and nearest the earth, is the star of Venus, which is called Phosphoros in Greek and Lucifer in Latin when it goes before the sun, but Hesperos when it follows; it completes its course in a year, traversing both the breadth and the length of the zodiac (which the higher stars do likewise), and never departs farther from the sun than the interval of two signs, now going before, now following after.

This constancy in the stars, then, this great accord of seasons amid such various courses through all eternity, I cannot understand without mind, reason, and counsel. And since we see these present in the heavenly bodies, we cannot but reckon these very bodies among the number of the gods. Nor indeed do those stars which are called fixed fail to signify the same mind and prudence. Their daily revolution is harmonious and constant, and they have no ethereal courses, nor are they fixed to the heaven, as most say who are ignorant of natural reasoning; for the nature of the ether is not such that by its own force it embraces and whirls the stars, since the ether, being thin and translucent and suffused with an even heat, does not seem well fitted to hold the stars together;

the fixed stars, then, have their own sphere, separate and free from any conjunction with the ether. And their perennial and perpetual courses, with their wonderful and incredible constancy, declare that there is in them a divine force and mind, so that he who does not perceive that these very things have a divine power would seem likely to perceive nothing at all.

There is, then, in the heaven neither fortune, nor rashness, nor wandering, nor vanity, but on the contrary all order, truth, reason, and constancy; and the things that lack these — lying and false and full of error — dwell about the earth, below the moon, which is the lowest of all, and on the earth. Whoever, then, thinks that the heavenly order, so wonderful, and its incredible constancy, from which arises the preservation and safety of all things, is void of mind must himself be held void of mind.

I shall not, then, I think, err if I draw the beginning of this discourse from the leader in the search for truth. Zeno, then, defines nature thus, that he calls it an artificer fire proceeding by a method to generation. For he holds that it is most proper to art to create and generate, and that what the hand brings about in the works of our arts, Nature brings about far more skilfully, that is, as I said, as an artificer fire and the master of the other arts. And by this reasoning all nature is an artificer, since it has, as it were, a certain path and method which it follows.

But the nature of the world itself, which restrains and contains all things in its embrace, is called by the same Zeno not only an artificer but plainly an artist, a forethinking and provident contriver of all advantages and opportunities. And as the other natures are each generated, increased, and held together by their own seeds, so the nature of the world has all its motions voluntary, and impulses and appetites, which the Greeks call hormai, and applies actions consistent with these, just as we ourselves do who are moved by mind and senses. Such, then, being the mind of the world, and able for that cause to be rightly called either prudence or providence (for in Greek it is called pronoia), it provides especially and is most occupied with these things: first, that the world should be as fit as may be for enduring; next, that it should lack nothing; and most of all, that there should be in it surpassing beauty and every adornment.

We have spoken of the whole world; we have spoken too of the heavenly bodies; so that now there appears, near enough, a multitude of gods neither idle nor toiling at their works with laborious and troublesome effort. For they are not held together by veins, sinews, and bones, nor do they feed on such food or drink as to gather humours too sharp or too clotted, nor are they of such bodies as to dread falls or blows, or to fear diseases from the weariness of their limbs — fearing which, Epicurus invented his shadow-sketch gods that do nothing.

But they, endowed with the most beautiful form and placed in the purest region of the heaven, so move and order their courses that they seem to have agreed together for the preservation and protection of all things. Many other natures of gods, too, have, not without cause, been established and named, both by the wisest men of Greece and by our forefathers, from their great benefits. For whatever brought great usefulness to the human race they thought came to pass not without the divine goodness toward men. And so at one time they called by the name of a god the thing which was born of a god, as when we call the crops Ceres and wine Liber — whence that line of Terence,

'Without Ceres and Liber, Venus grows cold' — and at another time the thing itself, in which there is some greater force, is so named that the very force is called a god, as Faith, as Mind, which we see dedicated on the Capitol, the one quite lately by Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, while Faith had been consecrated earlier by Aulus Atilius Calatinus. You see the temple of Virtue, you see that of Honour, renewed by Marcus Marcellus, which many years before had been dedicated by Quintus Maximus in the Ligurian war. What of Plenty, what of Safety, of Concord, of Liberty, of Victory? Since the force of all these was so great that it could not be governed without a god, the thing itself obtained the name of a god. Of which kind are the consecrated names of Cupid and Pleasure and Lubentine Venus — names of vicious and unnatural things (though Velleius judges otherwise; yet those very vices often assail Nature more violently).

By the greatness of their usefulness, then, were those gods established who generated the several advantages; and indeed by those names which were just now mentioned the force that is in each god is declared. The life and common custom of men, moreover, have taken it up to raise to heaven, by fame and goodwill, men eminent in benefits. Hence Hercules, hence Castor and Pollux, hence Aesculapius, hence Liber too (I mean the Liber born of Semele, not him whom our forefathers solemnly and reverently consecrated as Liber with Ceres and Libera, the nature of which may be understood from the mysteries; but because we call our children liberi, born of us, Liber and Libera were named as born of Ceres, a thing they preserve in the case of Libera but not so in that of Liber) — hence too Romulus, whom some think to be the same as Quirinus. Since the souls of these remained and enjoyed eternity, they were rightly held to be gods, being both most excellent and eternal.

From another reasoning too, and that a physical one, a great multitude of gods has flowed, who, clad in human shape, have furnished fables to the poets and stuffed the life of men with every superstition. And this topic, handled by Zeno, was afterwards expounded at greater length by Cleanthes and Chrysippus. For this old opinion filled Greece, that Caelus was mutilated by his son Saturn, and Saturn himself bound by his son Jove:

a not inelegant physical reasoning is shut up in these impious fables. For they meant that the highest and ethereal — that is, the fiery — nature of the heaven, which of itself generated all things, was free from that part of the body which would need conjunction with another for procreating. And they meant Saturn to be that which contains the course and revolution of spaces and times. Which god has in Greek that very name: for he is called Kronos, who is the same as chronos, that is, a space of time. But Saturn was so named because he is sated (saturaretur) with years; for he is feigned to have been wont to devour his own offspring, because time consumes the spaces of the seasons and is insatiably filled with the years that are past. And he was bound by Jove, lest he should have immoderate courses, and that Jove might bind him with the chains of the stars. But Jupiter himself — that is, the helping father (iuvans pater), whom, with the cases turned, we call Jove (Iovem) from helping (a iuvando), is by the poets called 'father of gods and men,' and by our forefathers 'best and greatest,' and indeed 'best,' that is, most beneficent, before 'greatest,' because it is greater and surely more pleasing to benefit all than to have great wealth —

this Jupiter, then, Ennius, as I said above, names, saying thus: 'Behold this gleaming vault on high, whom all men call upon as Jove,' more plainly than in another place the same poet: 'I will curse this — whatsoever it is that shines — with all that is in me.' Him too our augurs mean when they say 'Jove flashing, thundering'; for they say 'the sky flashing and thundering.' And Euripides, as in many places admirably, so here briefly: 'You see the boundless ether spread on high, that with its tender embrace clasps the earth round about: hold this the highest of the gods, call this Jove.'

The air, moreover, as the Stoics argue, lying between sea and sky, is consecrated under the name of Juno, who is the sister and wife of Jove, because it both has a likeness to the ether and is most closely joined with it. And they made it feminine and assigned it to Juno, because nothing is softer than it. But Juno, I believe, was named from helping (a iuvando). Water remained and earth, that there might be three realms divided according to the fables. To Neptune, then, the brother of Jove, as we will have it, was given the second, the whole realm of the sea; and his name was drawn, as Portunus from porta (a gate), so Neptune from swimming (a nando), the first letters being a little changed. But all the earthly force and nature was dedicated to Father Dis, who is the rich one — as among the Greeks Plouton — because all things both fall back into the earth and arise from the earth. To whom Proserpina (which is a Greek name, for she is the one who is called in Greek Persephone) — whom they will have to be the seed of the crops, and feign to be hidden and sought by her mother.

And her mother is Ceres, from the bearing of crops (a gerendis frugibus), as if geres, the first letter being likewise changed, as among the Greeks; for by them too she was named Demeter, as if ge meter (mother earth). And he who turns great things (qui magna verteret) is Mavors, while Minerva is she who either lessens (minueret) or threatens (minaretur). And since in all things the first and the last have the greatest force, they would have Janus be foremost in sacrificing, whose name is drawn from going (ab eundo), whence the open passages are called iani and the doors at the thresholds of profane houses ianuae. The name of Vesta is from the Greeks (for she is the one who is called by them Hestia); but her force pertains to altars and hearths, and so in this goddess, who is the keeper of the inmost things, every prayer and every sacrifice ends.

Nor far from this force are the Penates, whose name is drawn either from penus (for everything on which men feed is penus) or from their dwelling deep within (penitus); whence too they are called by the poets penetrales. Now the name of Apollo is Greek; whom they will have to be the sun, and they think Diana and the moon to be the same; the sun being so called either because it is the only one (solus) of all the stars of such size, or because, when it has risen, all else being darkened, it alone appears; and the moon (luna) being named from shining (a lucendo); for she is the same as Lucina, and so, as among the Greeks they call upon Diana, and her as Lucifera, so among our people they call upon Juno Lucina in childbirth. The same Diana is called Omnivaga (the all-wandering), not from hunting (a venando) but because she is reckoned among the seven, as it were, wandering bodies;

Diana so called because by night she makes, as it were, a day (quasi diem). And she is invoked at births, because these come to maturity sometimes in seven, but for the most part in nine, courses of the moon, which, because they complete measured spaces (mensa spatia), are called months (menses); and, neatly, as Timaeus does many things, who, having said in his history that on the night Alexander was born the temple of Diana at Ephesus burned down, added that this was by no means to be wondered at, since Diana, having wished to be present at the childbed of Olympias, was absent from home. And the goddess who would come to all things our people named Venus, and rather charm (venustas) is from her than Venus from charm.

Do you see, then, how the reasoning, drawn from natural things well and usefully discovered, has been carried over to invented and fictitious gods? Which thing has begotten false opinions and turbulent errors and superstitions almost of old wives. For both the forms of the gods, and their ages, and their dress and adornment are known to us, their families besides, their marriages, their kinships, and all things brought down to the likeness of human weakness. For they are even brought in with troubled minds: for we have received the desires of the gods, their sicknesses, their fits of anger; nor indeed, as the fables tell, were they without wars and battles — not only as in Homer, when different gods defended two opposing armies from different sides, but even when they waged their own proper wars, as with the Titans, as with the Giants. These things are both told and believed most foolishly, and are full of futility and the height of triviality.

Yet, those fables despised and rejected, a god pervading the nature of each thing — through the lands Ceres, through the seas Neptune, others through others — may be understood, who and of what kind they are, and by what name custom has named them. These gods we ought both to revere and to worship. And the worship of the gods is best, and likewise most chaste, most holy, and most full of piety, that we should always revere them with a mind and a voice pure, whole, and uncorrupted. For not only the philosophers but our forefathers too separated superstition from religion.

For those who used to pray and sacrifice whole days that their children might survive (superstites) them were called superstitious — a name which afterwards spread more widely; while those who diligently handled over again, and as it were re-read (relegerent), all that pertained to the worship of the gods were called religious from re-reading (ex relegendo), as elegant (elegantes) from choosing (ex eligendo), as diligent (diligentes) from being careful (ex diligendo), as intelligent (intellegentes) from understanding (ex intellegendo); for in all these words there is the same force of 'choosing' (legendi) which there is in 'religious.' So it came about that of 'superstitious' and 'religious' the one became a name of fault, the other of praise. And I think I have sufficiently shown both that the gods exist and of what kind they are.

The next thing is for me to show that the world is administered by the providence of the gods. A great topic indeed, and one assailed by your school, Cotta, and assuredly all the contest is with you. For to you, Velleius, it is less known how each thing is stated; for you read only your own writings, love your own, and condemn the rest with the case unheard. Thus you yourself said yesterday that a soothsaying old woman, Pronoia, that is, Providence, is brought in by the Stoics. You said this by that error, because you suppose that Providence is feigned by them as a kind of single goddess who governs and rules the whole world.

But this is said elliptically: just as, if anyone says that the commonwealth of the Athenians is ruled by the counsel of the Areopagus, the word 'of the Areopagus' is omitted; so, when we say that the world is administered by providence, judge that the word 'of the gods' is wanting, and reckon that it is fully and completely said thus: that the world is administered by the providence of the gods. So that wit, which your tribe lacks, do not spend in mocking us; and, by Hercules, if you would listen to me, do not even attempt it; it does not become you, it has not been given you, you cannot do it. Nor indeed does this apply to you alone, polished by domestic manners and the urbanity of our countrymen, but to the rest of your school, and most of all to him who begot these doctrines — a man without art, without letters, insolent toward all, without any keenness, without authority, without charm.

I say, then, that the world, and all the parts of the world, were both established in the beginning and are at all times administered by the providence of the gods. And this discourse our school commonly divides into three parts. The first is that which is drawn from the reasoning which teaches that the gods exist; which granted, it must be confessed that the world is administered by their counsel. The second is that which teaches that all things are subject to a sentient Nature, and that all things are most beautifully governed by it; which established, it follows that it was generated from living principles. The third topic is that which is drawn from the wonder of things heavenly and earthly.

First, then, either it must be denied that the gods exist — which both Democritus, by bringing in his 'phantoms' (simulacra), and Epicurus, by bringing in his 'images' (imagines), in a manner deny — or those who grant that the gods exist must confess that they do something, and that something glorious; but there is nothing more glorious than the administration of the world; therefore it is administered by the counsel of the gods. But if it is otherwise, there must assuredly be something better and endowed with greater force than god, whatever it be, whether an inanimate nature or a necessity driven by great force, producing these most beautiful works which we behold;

the nature of the gods, then, is not all-powerful nor pre-eminent, if indeed it is subject to that necessity or nature by which sky, seas, and lands are ruled. But nothing is more excellent than god; therefore the world must of necessity be ruled by him; the god, therefore, is obedient or subject to no nature; he himself, then, rules all nature. For if we grant that the gods are intelligent, we grant also that they are provident, and of the greatest matters indeed. Do they, then, not know what matters are greatest, and in what way they are to be handled and watched over; or have they not the power to sustain and manage so great things? But both ignorance of things is foreign to the nature of the gods, and difficulty in sustaining their office through weakness by no means befalls the majesty of the gods. From which is brought about what we wish — that the world is administered by the providence of the gods.

And it must of necessity be that, since the gods exist (if indeed they do, as assuredly they do), they are living beings, and not only living but endowed with reason and joined together among themselves as it were by a civil bond and fellowship, ruling one world as a common commonwealth and a kind of city.

It follows that there is in them the same reason as in the human race, that the same truth is in both, and the same law, which is the prescribing of right and the repelling of wrong. From which it is understood that prudence too and mind have come to men from the gods (and for that cause, by the institutions of our forefathers, Mind, Faith, Virtue, Concord have been consecrated and publicly dedicated; for how is it fitting to deny that these are among the gods, when we revere their august and holy images? But if mind, faith, virtue, concord are in the race of men, whence could these have flowed to earth but from on high?), and since there are in us counsel, reason, prudence, the gods must of necessity have these very things greater, and not only have them but also use them in the greatest and best matters.

But nothing is greater or better than the world; the world, therefore, must of necessity be administered by the counsel and providence of the gods. Finally, when we have sufficiently shown these to be gods whose marked force and brilliant aspect we behold — I mean the sun and moon, and the wandering and the fixed stars, and the sky, and the world itself, and the force of those things which are present in the whole world with great use and advantage to the human race — it is brought about that all things are ruled by a divine mind and prudence. And of the first part enough has been said.

It follows that I should show that all things are subject to Nature, and that they are most beautifully governed by it. But what Nature itself is must first be briefly explained, that what we wish to show may the more easily be understood. For some hold that Nature is a certain force without reason that stirs up necessary motions in bodies; but others hold it to be a force partaking of reason and order, proceeding as it were by a method, and declaring what each thing's cause produces and what follows, whose skill no art, no hand, no craftsman can attain in imitating. For the force of a seed is so great that, although it is exceedingly small, yet, if it falls upon a nature that conceives and grasps it, and gets hold of material by which it can be nourished and increased, it so fashions and produces each thing in its own kind that some are nourished only through their own stems, while others can even move and feel and desire and beget from themselves things like themselves.

There are, however, some who call all things by the name of nature, like Epicurus, who divides thus: that the nature of all that exists is bodies and void and the things that befall these. But when we say that the world consists of, and is administered by, nature, we do not so speak as of a clod, or a fragment of stone, or anything of that kind, which has no nature of holding together, but as of a tree, as of a living creature, in which there is no rashness but order appears, and a kind of likeness of art.

But if the things which are held in the earth by their stems live and flourish by the art of Nature, surely the earth itself is held together by the same force, by the art of Nature, since, made pregnant with seeds, it brings forth and pours out all things from itself, embraces the stems, nourishes and increases them, and is itself in turn nourished by the higher and external natures; and by its exhalations both the air and the ether and all things above are nourished. So, if the earth is held together and flourishes by nature, the same reasoning holds in the rest of the world; for the stems cling to the earth, while living creatures are sustained by the breathing of the air; and the air itself sees with us, hears with us, sounds with us, for none of these can be done without it; nay, it even moves with us, for wherever we go, wherever we move, it seems as it were to give place and yield.

And the things which are borne to the middle place of the world, which is the lowest, and the things which from the middle are borne to the upper, and the things which are carried round about the middle in a circular revolution, make up the continuous world and one nature. And since there are four kinds of bodies, the nature of the world is made continuous by their interchange. For from earth arises water, from water air, from air ether; then, backward again in turn, from ether air, then water, from water the lowest earth. Thus, by the natures of which all things consist passing to and fro, up and down, this way and that, the conjunction of the parts of the world is held together.

And this must of necessity be either everlasting, in this same adornment which we see, or at least very long-lasting, enduring for a far and almost measureless time. And whichever of these be the case, it follows that the world is administered by Nature. For what voyaging of fleets, or what marshalling of an army, or, again, to compare the things which Nature produces, what generation of a vine or a tree, what shape of a living creature, or framing of its limbs, signifies so great a skill of Nature as the world itself? Either, then, there is nothing that is ruled by a sentient nature, or it must be confessed that the world is ruled.

For how can that which contains all the other natures and their seeds be itself not administered by Nature? — just as, if anyone should say that teeth and the growth of manhood come into being by nature, but that the man himself in whom these come into being does not consist by nature, he would not understand that the things which put forth something out of themselves have more perfect natures than the things which are put forth from them. But of all the things that are administered by Nature, the sower, the begetter, the parent, so to speak, the rearer and nourisher is the world; and it nurses and holds together all things as its members and parts. But if the parts of the world are administered by Nature, the world itself must of necessity be administered by Nature. Whose administration, indeed, has in it nothing that can be censured; for out of those natures which existed, what could best be produced has been produced.

Let someone, then, show that it could have been done better; but no one will ever show it, and if anyone shall wish to correct anything, he will either make it worse or will be longing for what could not have been done. But if all the parts of the world are so constituted that they could be neither better for use nor more beautiful for appearance, let us see whether these things are fortuitous, or in such a state that they could in no way cohere save under the direction of sense and divine providence. If, then, those things which Nature has perfected are better than those which art has, and art makes nothing without reason, neither must Nature be held void of reason. How is it fitting, then, that when you behold a statue or a painted tablet you know that art has been employed, and when you see from afar the course of a ship you doubt not that it is moved by reason and art, and when you look upon a sundial, whether marked out or worked by water, you understand that the hours are shown by art and not by chance, yet you think the world, which embraces these very arts and their craftsmen and all things, to be void of counsel and reason?

But if anyone should carry into Scythia or Britain that sphere which our friend Posidonius lately made, whose single revolutions bring about the same in the sun and in the moon and in the five wandering stars as is brought about in the heaven on single days and nights, who in that barbarous land would doubt that that sphere had been perfected by reason? Yet these men doubt about the world, from which all things arise and come to be, whether it has been brought about by chance or by some necessity, or by reason and a divine mind; and they think Archimedes had more power in imitating the revolutions of the sphere than Nature in producing them — especially when those revolutions were perfected with far more skill than these were copied.

And as that shepherd in Accius, who had never before seen a ship, when from a mountain he beheld afar the divine and strange vessel of the Argonauts, at first wondering and terrified speaks in this wise: 'So vast a mass glides roaring from the deep with mighty din and breath: it rolls the waves before it, by force whirls up eddies, plunges headlong, drenches the sea, blows it back; so that now you would believe a broken storm-cloud is rolling, now that some rock, driven by the winds or by tempests, is being snatched aloft, or that round whirlwinds are arising, struck by the clashing waves — unless the sea is stirring up some wreck of the land, or perhaps Triton, overturning with his trident the caverns beneath the very roots, heaves from the depths a mass of rock to the sky in the surging strait': at first he doubts what that nature is which he beholds unknown; and the same man, when the youths are seen and the sailors' song is heard, says, 'Like swift and eager dolphins snorting with their snouts' — and much else besides — that the song is borne to his ears like to the melody of Silvanus —

so, as he at first sight thinks he beholds some lifeless thing void of sense, but afterwards, by surer signs, begins to suspect what kind of thing it is about which he had doubted, thus the philosophers ought, if perchance the first sight of the world had confounded them, afterwards, when they had seen its motions bounded and even, and all things governed by fixed orders and unchangeable constancy, to have understood that there is in this heavenly and divine house not only an inhabitant but a ruler and governor, and as it were the architect of so great a work and so great a charge. But as it is, they seem to me not even to suspect how great is the wonder of things heavenly and earthly.

For in the beginning the earth, set in the middle part of the world, is surrounded on every side by this living and breathable nature whose name is air — that word indeed is Greek, but yet has now been received into use by our people; for it is worn smooth as if it were Latin. This in turn is embraced by the boundless ether, which consists of the highest fires (let us borrow this word too, and let ether be said in Latin as air is, though Pacuvius interprets it: 'This which I speak of our people call sky, the Greeks ether' — as though, forsooth, it were not a Greek who says this. 'But he speaks Latin.' Yes, if indeed we do not hear him as one speaking Greek; for the same poet teaches in another place,

'Greek-born — the speech itself reveals it' from yonder line) — but let us return to greater things. From the ether, then, arise the innumerable flames of the heavenly bodies, of which the chief is the sun, lighting up all things with the clearest light, many times greater and ampler than the whole earth; then the rest of the heavenly bodies, of measureless magnitudes. And these fires, so great and so many, not only do no harm to the earth and earthly things, but so benefit them that, if they were moved from their place, the earth must inevitably be burned up by such fires, all moderation and tempering being removed.

Here am I to wonder that there is any man who persuades himself that certain solid and indivisible bodies are borne along by force and weight, and that out of the fortuitous concourse of those bodies a world most adorned and most beautiful is made? He who thinks this could have come to pass, I do not see why he should not also think that, if innumerable forms of the one-and-twenty letters, whether of gold or of any kind you please, were thrown together somewhere, the Annals of Ennius could be produced out of them, cast upon the ground, so that they could be read straight through; whereas I doubt whether chance could avail so far even in a single verse.

But how do these men assert that the world has been perfected out of little bodies endowed with no colour, no quality (which the Greeks call poiotes), no sensation, but rushing together rashly and by chance — or rather that innumerable worlds, at every point of time, are some being born, some perishing? But if the concourse of atoms can make a world, why can it not make a portico, a temple, a house, a city, which are less laborious to make, and indeed many of them far easier? Certainly they prate so rashly about the world that to me they seem never to have looked up at this wonderful adornment of the heaven — which is the topic that comes next.

Excellently, then, Aristotle says: 'If there were men who had always dwelt beneath the earth, in good and well-lighted dwellings adorned with statues and paintings and furnished with all those things with which they abound who are thought happy, but who had never come out above the earth, yet had received by report and hearsay that there was some divinity and power of the gods; and if then, at some time, the jaws of the earth being opened, they could escape from those hidden seats into these regions which we inhabit and come forth: when suddenly they beheld the earth and seas and sky, when they had come to know the greatness of the clouds and the force of the winds, and had gazed upon the sun and come to know both its greatness and beauty and also its efficacy, in that it makes the day by pouring light over the whole sky, and when, after night had darkened the lands, they beheld the whole sky picked out and adorned with stars, and the changing lights of the moon, now waxing, now waning, and the risings and settings of all these, and their fixed and unchangeable courses through all eternity — when they beheld these things, they would assuredly judge both that the gods exist, and that these great works

are the works of the gods.' Thus far he. But let us think of darkness as great as that which once, by an eruption of the fires of Etna, is said to have darkened the neighbouring regions, so that for two days no man recognised a man; and yet, when on the third day the sun shone out, they seemed to themselves to have come to life again: but if this same thing should befall us out of eternal darkness, that we should suddenly behold the light, what an aspect of the sky would seem to us! But by daily continuance and the habit of the eyes our minds grow accustomed, and they neither wonder at, nor seek the reasons of, the things they always see — as though it were the novelty rather than the magnitude of things that ought to rouse us to search out their causes.

For who would call that man a man, who, when he has seen such fixed motions of the sky, such ordered courses of the stars, and all things so connected and fitted together among themselves, denies that there is any reason in these, and says that they come about by chance — things which, with how great counsel they are managed, we cannot attain by any counsel of our own? Or, when we see something moved by some mechanism, as a sphere, a clock, and very many other things, do we not doubt that those works are of reason; and yet, when we see the rushing of the heaven moved and turned round with wonderful speed, most constantly bringing about the yearly vicissitudes with the highest welfare and preservation of all things, do we doubt that these are done not only by reason but by an excellent and divine reason?

For now, the subtlety of arguing laid aside, we may in a manner contemplate with our eyes the beauty of those things which we say have been established by divine providence. And first let the whole earth be beheld, set in the middle seat of the world, solid and globular, gathered on every side into itself by its own inclinations, clad with flowers, herbs, trees, crops, of all which the incredible multitude is set off with an insatiable variety. Add to this the cool perennity of springs, the translucent waters of rivers, the greenest clothing of the banks, the hollow depths of caverns, the roughness of the rocks, the heights of overhanging mountains, and the immensities of the plains; add also the hidden veins of gold and silver and the boundless store of marble.

And what and how varied are the kinds of beasts, whether tame or wild, what the gliding flights and songs of birds, what the pasturing of cattle, what the life of the woodland creatures! What, now, shall I say of the race of men, who, set as it were to till the earth, suffer it neither to be made savage by the brutishness of beasts nor laid waste by the roughness of plants, and by whose works the fields, islands, and shores shine, picked out with dwellings and cities? If we could behold these things with our eyes as with our minds, no one, gazing on the whole earth, would doubt of a divine reason.

But again, how great is the beauty of the sea, what the aspect of the whole, what the multitude and variety of islands, what the loveliness of the coasts and shores, how many and how diverse the kinds of beasts, some submerged, some floating and swimming, some clinging to the rocks by their own shells! And the sea itself, so reaching toward the land, sports along the shores, so that it seems one nature blended of two.

Next, the air, neighbour to the sea, is distinguished into day and night; and it, now diffused and rarefied, is borne aloft, now, condensed, is gathered into clouds, and, collecting moisture, increases the earth with showers; now, flowing this way and that, makes the winds. It also makes the yearly variations of cold and heat; the same sustains the flights of birds, and, drawn in by the breath, nourishes and sustains living creatures. There remains the last and, from our dwellings, the highest embrace of the sky, girding and confining all things, which is also called ether, the outermost border and bound of the world, in which the fiery shapes mark out their ordered courses with the greatest wonder.

Among which the sun, by whose magnitude the earth is many times surpassed, revolves about that very earth, and, rising and setting, makes day and night; and, now approaching, now retiring, makes two reversals in each year, the one opposite to the other, from the extreme points, in the interval of which it now contracts the earth as with a kind of sadness, now in turn gladdens it, so that it seems made joyful along with the sky.

The moon, moreover, which is, as the mathematicians show, larger than half the earth, ranges through the same spaces as the sun, but, now meeting the sun, now parting from it, both sends to the earth that light which it has received from the sun, and itself has various changes of light; and at one time, set under and opposite to the sun, it obscures its rays and light, at another, itself falling into the shadow of the earth, when it is in the region opposite the sun, by the interposition and intervention of the earth suddenly fails. And through the same spaces those stars which we call wandering are borne about the earth, and in the same way rise and set, whose motions are now quickened, now slackened,

and often even stand still — than which spectacle nothing can be more wonderful, nothing more beautiful. There follows the very great multitude of the fixed stars, whose distinctness is so marked out that, from the likeness of known figures, they have found their names." And at this point, looking at me, he said: "I will use the verses of Aratus, which, translated by you when quite a young man, delight me so, because they are Latin, that I hold many of them in memory. So, as we see continually with our eyes, the rest of the heavenly bodies glide on, without any change or variety, with swift motion, and along with the sky are borne onward, by night and by day;

in the contemplation of which the mind of one who desires to behold the constancy of Nature can never be filled. And the uttermost point, from a double hinge, is said to be the pole.' About this are borne the two Bears, never setting; of which one is called by the Greeks Cynosura, the other is said to be Helice, whose brightest stars we behold all night long, which our people are wont to call the Seven Plough-oxen (Triones);

and with stars equal and marked out alike the little Cynosura traverses the same pole of the sky. In her the Phoenicians trust as their guide on the deep at night. But the former shines forth more marked with stars, and is seen widely and at once at the first coming of night. This indeed is small, but to sailors there is use in it; for it turns in a brief and inner circle. And, that the aspect of these stars may be the more wonderful, between them, like a river with a rapid flood, the grim Dragon glides, winding itself below and above and making coils bent out of its body.

And while its whole shape is splendid, yet above all are to be looked upon the figure of its head and the fire of its eyes: for it not a single star alone that gleams adorning its head, but its temples are marked with a double brightness, and from its fierce eyes two glowing lights flash, and its chin shines with one radiant star; its head is bent aslant, but turned back on its rounded neck, so that you would say it fixed its gaze upon the tail of the Greater Bear.

And the rest of the Dragon's body we behold all night long; this its head here a little, and suddenly, hides itself, where rising and setting are mingled in one quarter. And touching this head there turns, as it were the image of one weary and mourning, which the Greeks are wont to call Engonasin (the Kneeler), because it is borne propped on its knees. Here is placed, with surpassing brightness, that Crown. And these things indeed are behind; but near the head is the Serpent-holder, whom the Greeks call by the famous name Ophiuchus.

He with the double pressure of his palms holds the Serpent, and himself remains entwined by its twisted body; for the Serpent girds the man about the middle below the breast. Yet he, straining, plants his footsteps heavily and presses with his feet upon the eyes and breast of the Scorpion. The Plough-oxen are followed by Arctophylax, who is commonly called Bootes, because, as it were yoked to a wagon-pole, he drives before him the Bear. Then what follows:

for beneath the breast of this Bootes is seen a star sparkling with its rays, Arcturus by famous name; beneath whose feet is borne the bright Virgin, holding the gleaming Ear of Corn in her shining body. And the signs are so measured out that in such great arrangements divine skill appears: you would have seen the twin-born Sons beneath the head of the Bear; the Crab is set beneath, in the middle, and by the feet is held the great Lion, shaking the quivering flame from his body. The Charioteer is borne beneath the left part of the Twins, drawn over against it; the fierce countenance of Helice looks upon his head. But the bright Goat holds his left shoulder. Then what follows: but this is endowed with a great and brilliant sign, while over against it the Kids cast a slender fire to mortals. Beneath whose feet the horned Bull is set, straining with his strong body. His head is sprinkled with thronging stars;

these stars the Greeks are wont to call Hyades, from raining (for hyein in Greek is to rain), but our people unskilfully the Little Pigs (Suculae), as though they were named from pigs (sues), not from showers (imbres). And the Lesser Bear, Cepheus follows behind with outspread palms; for he turns at the very back of the Bear, the Cynosura. Him there goes before, of dim aspect of stars, Cassiopeia. And near her, with brilliant body, moves Andromeda, fleeing the mournful gaze of her parent. To her that Horse, shaking his mane with sparkling brightness, touches the top of her head with his belly, and one star, joining them, holds the two shapes with a common light, desiring to bind an everlasting knot from the stars. Next clings the Ram with twisted horns; near whom the Fishes, of which one glides on a little in front and is more touched by the bristling breezes of the north wind.

At the feet of Andromeda Perseus is figured, whom from the highest region of the north the blasts beat. Near his left knee you will see the Pleiades (Vergiliae) with faint light. Thence the Lyre (Fides) is seen, lightly set and curved. Thence is the winged Bird beneath the broad covering of the sky. And nearest to the head of the Horse is the right hand of Aquarius, and then the whole Aquarius in succession. Then, breathing chill cold from its strong breast, half-beast in body, the Goat (Capricorn) in his great circle; whom, when the Sun has clothed him with perpetual light, bending his car at the wintry season, he wheels round.

Here is beheld, showing himself, emerging on high, the Scorpion, drawing back behind him with the force of his body the bent Bow. Near whom, gleaming on its wings, the Bird wheels itself. But near it the Eagle bears itself with glowing body. Then the Dolphin. Thence Orion, straining with his slanting body.

Whom following, that fiery Dog shines with the light of its stars. After it the Hare follows, ceasing its course never with weary body. But at the Dog's tail the Argo glides serpent-wise. This the Ram covers, and with scaly body the Fishes, touching with its shining body the banks of the River; which you will see winding far and streaming, and the long Bonds you will behold, which hold the Fishes, set at the part of their tails. Then, near the gleaming sting of the Scorpion, you will discern the Altar, which the breath of the south wind caresses with its breeze. Near which the Centaur withdraws, hastening to join the parts of the Horse to the Claws. He, reaching out his right hand, by which the vast four-footed beast is held, stretches forth and fierce withdraws toward the bright Altar. Here from the lower parts the Hydra rears itself, whose body is spread far, and in the midst of its fold the gleaming Bowl shines. The Raven at the end, straining with feathered body, pecks with its beak; and here, beneath the very Twins, is that one Before the Dog, Procyon, which is borne under its Greek name.

Can this whole arrangement of the heavenly bodies, and this so great adornment of the sky, seem to any man of sound mind to have been able to come about from bodies coursing this way and that by chance and at random; or could any other nature, void of mind and reason, have produced these things, which not only needed reason that they might come to be, but cannot even be understood, of what kind they are, without the highest reason? Nor indeed are these things alone wonderful, but nothing is greater than that the world is so stable and so coheres for enduring that nothing fitter can even be conceived. For all its parts, everywhere pressing toward the middle place, strain equally. And bodies joined together remain longest when they are bound as by a kind of encircling chain; which is done by that nature which, achieving all things by mind and reason, is poured through the whole world, and snatches all to the middle and turns the extremes inward.

Wherefore, if the world is globular, and for that cause all its parts everywhere even are held together both by themselves and among themselves, the same must of necessity befall the earth, so that, all its parts tending toward the middle (and that middle is the lowest point in a sphere), there is nothing to break in by which so great a tension of gravity and of weights could be made to give way. And by the same reasoning the sea, though it is above the earth, yet, seeking the middle place of the earth, is gathered into a globe evenly on every side, and never overflows nor is poured out.

And the air, continuous with this, is borne aloft indeed by its lightness, but yet pours itself into all parts; and so it is both continued and joined with the sea, and by nature is borne to the sky, by whose thinness and heat tempered, it furnishes a vital and wholesome breath to living creatures. Embracing this, the highest part of the sky, which is called ethereal, both retains its own heat, thin and condensed by no admixture, and is joined with the outermost border of the air. And in the ether the stars are rolled, which both hold themselves gathered into globes by their own effort, and sustain their poise by their very form and figure; for they are round, by which forms, as I think I said before, they can least be harmed.

Now the stars are by nature flaming; wherefore they are fed by the vapours of the earth, the sea, and the other waters, which are raised by the sun from the warmed fields and from the waters; by which the stars, fed and renewed, and all the ether, pour forth the same and again draw it back from the same source, so that almost nothing perishes, or only a very little, which the fire of the stars and the flame of the ether consume. From which our school thinks that will come to pass about which they used to say Panaetius was in doubt — that at the last the whole world will catch fire, when the moisture is consumed and neither can the earth be nourished nor the air return, whose origin could not be, all the water being drained away: so that nothing is left but fire, by which, being itself animate and a god, the world is renewed and the same adornment arises again.

I do not wish to seem to you long-winded about the reasoning of the stars, and most of all of those which are said to wander; whose great concert from most unlike motions is such that, while the highest, Saturn's, chills, the middle, Mars's, sets on fire, and Jupiter's, set between them, lights up and tempers, and below Mars two obey the sun, the sun itself fills all the world with its light, and the moon, lighted by it, brings on pregnancies and births and the ripenings of generation. Whom this coupling of things, and this consenting, as it were, fitting-together of Nature for the safety of the world, does not move, that man, I am sure, has never reflected on any of these things.

Come, that we may pass from heavenly to earthly things, what is there in these in which the reasoning of an intelligent Nature does not appear? First, of the things that are born from the earth, the stems both give stability to the things they sustain, and draw from the earth the sap by which the things held in their roots are nourished; and the trunks are clothed with bark or rind, that they may be the safer from cold and heat. Now the vines so grasp their props with their tendrils, as it were with hands, and so raise themselves up, like living creatures; nay, they are even said to flee, as from things harmful and noxious, from the stalks of the cabbage, if it has been planted near, and not to touch them in any part.

And how great is the variety of living creatures, how great in each a force to abide in its own kind! Of which some are covered with hides, some clothed with shaggy hair, some bristling with spines; some we see covered with feathers, some with scales, some armed with horns, some having the refuge of wings. But Nature has provided abundantly and copiously the food fitted for each living creature. I could enumerate, for the taking and consuming of that food, what skill there is in the shapes of living creatures, and how cunning and subtle the arrangement of their parts, and how wonderful the framing of their limbs. For all things which are enclosed within are so born and so placed that none of them is superfluous, none not necessary for the maintaining of life.

The same Nature, moreover, gave to the beasts both sensation and appetite, that by the one they might have an impulse to take their natural food, by the other might separate the harmful from the wholesome. Now some animals come to their food by walking, some by creeping, some by flying, some by swimming, and they take their food partly by the gape of the mouth and the very teeth, partly seize it by the gripping of claws, partly by the hookedness of their beaks; some suck, some crop, some devour, some chew. And again, some are of such lowness that they easily reach earthly food with their snouts; but those which are taller, as geese, swans, cranes, camels, are helped by the length of their necks;

a hand too has been given to the elephant, because, on account of the greatness of its body, it had difficult approaches to its food. But to those beasts whose food was such that they must feed on the flesh of other kinds, Nature gave either strength or swiftness. To some, too, a kind of contrivance and skill has been given, as among the little spiders some weave, as it were, a net, that they may dispatch whatever has stuck in it, while others watch, as it were, from an unexpected place, and, if anything falls in, seize it and consume it. But the pina (for so it is called in Greek), opening with two great shells, enters into a kind of partnership with a little shrimp for procuring food; and so, when little fishes have swum into the gaping shell, the pina, warned by the shrimp, closes the shells with a snap: thus by most unlike little creatures food is sought in common;

wherein it is to be wondered whether they have come together by some meeting with one another, or have been associated by Nature herself from their very birth. There is also no little wonder concerning those water-creatures which are born on land; such as the crocodiles, the river-tortoises, and certain serpents, which, born away from the water, as soon as they are first able to crawl, make for the water. Nay, we often set ducks' eggs under hens; from which the chicks, hatched, are at first nourished by them as by mothers, by which they were hatched and warmed, but then leave them and flee from them when they follow, as soon as ever they could see the water as it were their natural home: so great a guard for preserving itself has Nature implanted in living creatures. I have read it written too, that there is a certain bird called the spoonbill (platalea), which seeks its food by flying upon those birds which dive into the sea, and, when they have emerged and caught a fish, presses their heads with its bite until they let go their catch, upon which it itself pounces. And it is written too that this same bird is wont to fill itself with shellfish, and, when it has digested these by the heat of its stomach, to vomit them up, and so to pick out from them those parts that are edible.

The sea-frogs, again, are said to be wont to cover themselves with sand and to move near the water, toward which the fishes, as toward food, when they have approached, are dispatched and consumed by the frogs. The kite has a kind of natural war, as it were, with the raven; and so each, wherever it has come upon them, breaks the other's eggs. But that thing (noticed by Aristotle, by whom most things were noticed) — who can fail to wonder at it: that the cranes, when, seeking warmer regions, they cross the seas, make the form of a triangle? And by the foremost angle of this the opposing air is driven back from them, then by little and little, on either side, as by oars, so by their wings the course of the birds is lightened; but the base of the triangle which the cranes make is helped, as it were from the stern, by the winds; and they rest their necks and heads on the backs of those flying before them; and because the leader himself cannot do this, since he has nothing to rest on, he flies back that he too may rest, and into his place comes one of those that have rested, and this interchange is kept up throughout the whole flight.

Many things of this kind I could bring forward, but you see the general sort. Now those things too are better known — how greatly the beasts guard themselves, how they look about in feeding, how they hide in their lairs. And those things are wonderful, that — the very things which lately, that is, a few ages ago, were discovered by the genius of physicians — the dogs cure themselves by vomiting, but the Egyptian ibises by purging the bowels. It has been heard that the panthers, which in barbarous lands are caught by poisoned flesh, have a certain remedy, which, when they have used it, they do not die; and that the wild goats in Crete, when they have been pierced by poisoned arrows, seek an herb which is called dittany, which, when they have tasted, they say the arrows fall out of their bodies;

and that the hinds, a little before bringing forth, thoroughly purge themselves with a certain herb which is called seselis. Now those things we behold — how each defends itself with its own weapons against violence and fear: the bulls with their horns, the boars with their tusks, the lions by running; some protect themselves by flight, some by hiding, the cuttlefish by pouring forth ink, the torpedo-fish by numbing, and many drive off their pursuers by the intolerable foulness of their smell. But that the adornment of the world might be perpetual, great care was taken by the providence of the gods that there should always be both kinds of beasts and trees and all the things which are held in the earth by their stems; all which indeed have in themselves that force of seed that from one many are generated. And that seed is enclosed in the inmost part of those berries which are poured forth from each plant, and by the same seeds both men are fed abundantly and the earth is filled with the renewal of plants of the same kind.

Why should I tell how great a design appears in the beasts for the perpetual preservation of their kind? For first, some are male, some female, which Nature contrived for the sake of perpetuity; next, the parts of the body are most apt both for procreating and for conceiving, and in male and female there are wonderful desires for the mingling of their bodies; and when the seed has settled in its place, it draws to itself almost all the nourishment and, walled in by it, fashions the living creature; which, when it has slipped from the womb and fallen out, in those creatures which are nourished by milk almost all the food of the mothers begins to turn to milk, and the things which have just been born, without a teacher, by the guidance of Nature, seek the teats and are filled with their abundance. And, that we may understand that none of these things is fortuitous, and that all these are the works of a provident and skilful Nature, those creatures which bring forth manifold offspring, as the sows, as the dogs, have been given a multitude of teats, which same teats those beasts have few which bring forth few.

Why should I tell how great is the love of beasts in rearing and guarding the things they have begotten, even to that limit at which they can defend themselves? Although the fishes, as they say, when they have produced their eggs, leave them, for those eggs are easily both sustained by the water and bring forth the brood; but tortoises and crocodiles, they say, when they have laid their eggs on land, bury them and then go away: so the young are both born and reared of themselves. Now hens and the rest of the birds both seek a quiet place for laying, and build themselves beds and nests, and strew these as soft as they can, that the eggs may be most easily preserved; and when they have hatched out their chicks from these, they so watch over them that they both warm them with their wings, lest they be hurt by the cold, and, if there is heat from the sun, set themselves against it; but when the chicks can use their little wings, then the mothers attend their flights and are freed from the rest of their care.

There is added, too, for the preservation and safety of some living creatures and of those things which the earth produces, the skill and diligence of men. For there are many both flocks and plants which cannot be safe without the care of men. Great opportunities, too, for the tillage and abundance of men are found in different places. The Nile waters Egypt, and, when it has held it through the whole summer overwhelmed and covered, then retires and leaves the fields, softened and silted, for sowing. The Euphrates makes Mesopotamia fertile, into which it carries every year, as it were, new fields. The Indus, indeed, which is the greatest of all rivers, not only gladdens and softens the fields with its water, but even sows them; for it is said to carry down with it a great quantity of seeds like grain.

And I could bring forward many other memorable things in other places, many fields fertile, some of one kind of fruit, some of another. But how great is the kindness of Nature, in that it brings forth so many things for food, so varied, so pleasant, and these not at one season of the year, so that we are always delighted both by novelty and by abundance! How seasonable, too, how wholesome, not only to the race of men but also to that of cattle, and in short to all things that arise from the earth, are the Etesian winds which she has given; by whose blowing excessive heats are tempered, and by the same the swift and sure courses of the sea are directed! Many things must be passed over, and yet many are told.

For there cannot be enumerated the conveniences of rivers, the tides of the sea ever advancing and retreating, the mountains clothed and wooded, the salt-pans far removed from the seashore, the lands most full of wholesome medicines, and finally the innumerable arts necessary for sustenance and for life. Now the alternation of day and night preserves living creatures, granting one time for acting, another for resting. Thus on every side, by every reasoning, it is concluded that all things in this world are administered wonderfully by a divine mind and counsel for the welfare and preservation of all.

But if anyone shall ask for whose sake so great a construction of things was made — was it for the trees and herbs, which, though without sensation, are yet sustained by Nature? But that indeed is absurd. Or for the beasts? It is no whit more probable that the gods toiled so greatly for the sake of dumb things that understand nothing. For whose sake, then, would one say the world was made? Doubtless for the sake of those living creatures which use reason; these are gods and men, than whom assuredly nothing is better, for it is reason which excels all things. So it becomes credible that the world, and all the things that are in that world, were made for the sake of gods and men. And it will the more easily be understood that the immortal gods have provided for men, if the whole framing of man is surveyed, and all the figure and perfection of human nature.

For since the life of living creatures is held by three things — food, drink, breath — for the taking in of all these the mouth is best fitted, which, with the nostrils joined to it, is increased by the breath, while by the teeth set in the mouth the food is chewed and by them made small and soft. The front ones, sharp, divide the food by biting, but the inmost, which are called the grinders (genuini), reduce it; which reducing seems to be helped also by the tongue.

The tongue, then, the gullet, clinging to its roots, receives, into which first slide down the things which have been taken in by the mouth. It, touching the tonsils on either side, is bounded by the outermost and inmost part of the palate, and, when by the working and motions of the tongue it has received the food thrust down and as it were forced upon it, drives it downward. And those parts of it which are below that which is swallowed are dilated, while those above are contracted.

But since the rough windpipe (for so it is called by the physicians) has its opening joined to the roots of the tongue a little above where the gullet is fastened to the tongue, and reaches as far as the lungs and receives the air which is drawn in by the breath, and breathes the same out again from the lungs and gives it back, it is covered by a kind of lid, which was given for this cause, that, if any food should by chance fall into it, the breath might not be hindered. But since the belly, set beneath the gullet, is the receptacle of food and drink, while the lungs and heart draw in breath from without, in the belly many things are wonderfully effected, which consist for the most part of fibres; and it is manifold and winding, and confines and holds whatever it has received, whether dry or moist, that it may be changed and digested, and it is now drawn tight, now relaxed, and forces and confounds all that it has received, so that easily, both by the heat which it has in plenty, and by the grinding of the food, and besides by the breath, all things, cooked and prepared, are distributed to the rest of the body. In the lungs, moreover, there is a certain rareness and a softness like to sponges, very apt for drawing in the breath, which now contract themselves in breathing in, now are dilated by breathing out, that the food of the air may be drawn in frequently, by which living creatures are chiefly nourished.

From the intestines, moreover, the juice by which we are nourished, separated from the rest of the food, flows through to the liver by certain ways drawn and directed from the middle intestine even to what are called the 'gates' of the liver, which reach to the liver and cling to it; and from there other channels [run on], through which falls the food that has slipped down from the liver. From that food, when the bile has been separated, and the humours which are poured forth from the kidneys, the rest turns itself into blood and flows together to those same gates of the liver, to which all its ways lead; through which the food, slipping down, is in this very place poured into that vein which is called the hollow vein (cava), and through it, now prepared and digested, glides to the heart; and from the heart it is distributed into the whole body through very many veins reaching into all parts of the body.

But in what manner the leavings of the food are driven off, the intestines now drawing themselves tight, now relaxing, it is not at all hard to say, but yet it must be passed over, lest the discourse should have anything of unpleasantness. Let rather that incredible workmanship of Nature be unfolded: for the air which is drawn into the lungs by the breath grows warm, first by the breath itself, then by the contact of the lungs, and of it part is given back in breathing out, part is received by a certain part of the heart which is called the ventricle of the heart, to which another like it is joined, into which the blood flows from the liver through that hollow vein. And in that way, from those parts, both the blood is diffused through the veins into the whole body and the breath through the arteries; and both, frequent and many, interwoven through the whole body, bear witness to a certain incredible force of skilful and divine workmanship.

Why should I speak of the bones, which, set beneath the body, have wonderful joints, both fitted for stability, and suited for limiting the limbs, and apt for motion and for every action of the body? Add to this the sinews, by which the limbs are held together, and their interlacing reaching through the whole body, which, like the veins and arteries, drawn and set out from the heart, are led into the whole body.

To this providence of Nature, so diligent and so skilful, many things can be added, from which it may be understood how great and how surpassing are the gifts bestowed on men by the gods. Who first set men upright, raised from the ground, lofty and erect, that, gazing at the sky, they might be able to attain the knowledge of the gods. For men are sprung from the earth not as dwellers and inhabitants but as it were spectators of the things above and the heavenly, the spectacle of which belongs to no other kind of living creature. The senses, moreover, the interpreters and messengers of things, are wonderfully made and placed in the head as in a citadel, for their necessary uses. For the eyes, as scouts, hold the highest place, from which, beholding most things, they perform their office;

and the ears, since they must perceive sound, which by nature is borne aloft, are rightly placed in the high parts of the body; and likewise the nostrils, because every smell is borne upward, are rightly above, and, because their judgement of food and drink is great, not without cause have followed the neighbourhood of the mouth. Now taste, which should perceive the kinds of the things we feed on, dwells in that part of the mouth by which Nature has opened a way for things eaten and drunk. But touch is spread evenly over the whole body, that we may be able to feel all blows and all too violent assaults of cold and heat. And as in buildings the architects turn away from the eyes and noses of the masters those things which, flowing off, must needs have something foul, so Nature has banished like things far from the senses.

But what craftsman besides Nature, than whom nothing can be more cunning, could have pursued so great a skill in the senses? Who first clothed and fenced the eyes with the thinnest membranes; which first she made translucent, that one might see through them, but firm, that they might be held together. But she made the eyes slippery and mobile, both that they might turn aside if anything should harm them, and that they might easily turn their gaze where they would; and the very keen point by which we see, which is called the pupil, is so small that it easily avoids the things which might harm it; and the eyelids, which are the coverings of the eyes, most soft to the touch lest they should hurt the eyesight, were made most aptly both for closing the pupils, lest anything fall in, and for opening them; and she provided that this could be done again and again with the greatest speed.

And the eyelids are fenced as with a rampart of hairs, by which, when the eyes are open, anything that fell in might be repelled, and, when they are closed in sleep, since we needed the eyes not for seeing, they might rest as it were wrapped up. Besides, they are usefully hidden and fenced on every side by lofty parts. For first the upper parts, overhung by the brows, repel the sweat flowing down from the head and forehead; the cheeks next, set beneath and slightly rising, guard from the lower part; and the nose is so placed that it seems set as a wall between the eyes.

The hearing, moreover, is always open, for we need its sense even when asleep, and when a sound has been received by it we are roused even from sleep. It has a winding passage, lest anything should be able to enter if it lay open simple and straight; and provision was made too that, if any tiny creature should try to break in, it should stick fast in the dirt of the ears as in birdlime. But on the outside project what are called the ears, both made for covering and protecting the sense, and lest the voices that strike should slip away and wander before the sense had been struck by them. But they have entrances hard and as it were horny and with many windings, because by these natures the sound carried back is amplified; wherefore in the lyre too there is resonance from the shell or from horn, and from winding and enclosed places things are echoed back more fully.

Likewise the nostrils, which, on account of necessary uses, are always open, have narrower entrances, lest anything that might harm should be able to pass into them; and they always have a moisture not useless for driving off dust and many other things. The taste is excellently fenced; for it is contained in the mouth, both aptly for use and for the keeping of safety. And all the senses of men far surpass the senses of the beasts. For first, in those arts of which the judgement belongs to the eyes — in painted, modelled, and engraved forms, and also in the motion and gesture of bodies — the eyes discern many things more subtly; and the eyes judge also the charm and order, and, so to say, the seemliness of colours and shapes; and even greater things: for they know both virtues and vices; they know the angry and the propitious, the rejoicing and the grieving, the brave and the cowardly, the bold and the timid.

And of the ears likewise there is a kind of wonderful and skilful judgement, by which is judged, in the songs of voice and pipe and string, the variety of sounds, the intervals, the distinctness, and the very many kinds of voice — tuneful and dull, smooth and rough, deep and shrill, flexible and hard — which are judged by the ears of men alone. And of the nostrils likewise, and of taste, and in part of touch, there are great judgements. And for the taking and full enjoyment of these senses, more arts even than I could wish have been discovered; for it is plain to what lengths the compoundings of perfumes, the seasonings of foods, the allurements of bodies have advanced.

Now the very mind and intellect of man, his reason, counsel, prudence — whoever does not perceive that these have been perfected by divine care, he seems to me to lack these very things. While I discuss this, I could wish that your eloquence, Cotta, were given me. For in what fashion would you set forth how great, first, is the intelligence in us, then the joining and grasping of consequences along with their first principles; from which, of course, we judge what is brought about from what causes, and conclude this by reason, and define single things and grasp them within a circumscribing bound; from which is understood what force knowledge has and of what kind it is, than which not even in god is there anything more excellent. But how great are those things which you Academics weaken and do away with — that both by the senses and by the mind we perceive and grasp the things that are outside us;

from which, compared and matched among themselves, we also form arts, some necessary for the use of life, some for delight. And again, that mistress of things, as you are wont to say, the power of speaking, how splendid it is and how divine! Which first brings it about that we can both learn the things we do not know and teach others the things we know; then by this we exhort, by this we persuade, by this we console the afflicted, by this we lead the terrified away from fear, by this we restrain the exultant, by this we quench desires and angers; this has bound us together by the fellowship of law, of statutes, of cities; this has separated us from a savage and brutish life.

And for the use of speech it is incredible, unless you attend diligently, how great works Nature has contrived. For first the windpipe reaches from the lungs to the inmost mouth, through which the voice, taking its beginning from the mind, is received and poured forth. Then in the mouth is set the tongue, bounded by the teeth; it shapes and limits the voice poured forth without measure, and makes the sounds of the voice distinct and pressed, when it strikes both the teeth and other parts of the mouth; and so our people are wont to call the tongue like a plectrum, the teeth like strings, the nostrils like the horns which resound to the strings in songs.

And how apt, and how serviceable for many arts, are the hands which Nature gave to man! For the bending of the fingers is easy, and easy their stretching, on account of the soft joints and articulations, and they labour in no motion. And so for painting, modelling, carving, for drawing forth the sounds of strings and pipes, the hand is apt by the application of the fingers. And these are matters of delight, those of necessity — I mean the tillage of fields, the building of houses, the coverings of bodies whether woven or sewn, and all the working of bronze and iron; from which it is understood that, by things discovered by the mind, perceived by the senses, with the hands of craftsmen brought to bear, we have attained all things, so that we could be housed, clothed, safe, and have cities, walls, dwellings, and shrines.

Now by the works of men, that is, by their hands, variety also and abundance of food is found. For the fields bring forth many things sought by the hand, which are either consumed at once or, stored up, are entrusted to keeping; and besides, we feed on beasts both of land and of water and of the air, partly by catching, partly by rearing. We also bring about, by our taming, the carriages of four-footed beasts, whose swiftness and strength lend strength and swiftness to ourselves. We lay burdens on some beasts, we put yokes upon them; we turn to our advantage the most acute senses of elephants and the keenness of dogs; we draw forth iron from the caverns of the earth, a thing necessary for tilling the fields; we find the deeply hidden veins of bronze, silver, and gold, both apt for use and comely for adornment. And by the felling of trees and by all timber, whether cultivated or of the woods, we use it partly for warming the body by applying fire and for softening food, partly for building, that, fenced by roofs, we may drive off cold and heat;

and it brings great use, too, for the making of ships, by whose voyages all supplies for life are furnished from every side; and the things which Nature has begotten most violent — the sea and the winds — we alone have the governing of, through our knowledge of nautical matters, and we enjoy and use very many things of the sea. And likewise of earthly advantages there is in man the whole mastery: we enjoy plains, we enjoy mountains; ours are the rivers, ours the lakes; we sow crops, we plant trees; we give fertility to the lands by leading in waters; we dam, direct, and turn aside rivers; in short, with our own hands we strive to make, in the nature of things, as it were a second nature.

And what of the reason of men — has it not penetrated even to the sky? For we alone of living creatures have come to know the risings, settings, and courses of the stars; by the race of men the day, the month, the year have been bounded; the eclipses of the sun and moon have been known and foretold for all time to come — how great they will be, and when. Contemplating which, the mind comes to the knowledge of the gods, from which arises piety, to which justice is joined and the rest of the virtues, from which springs a blessed life, equal and like to that of the gods, yielding to the heavenly ones in nothing save immortality, which has nothing to do with living well. By the setting forth of which things I seem to have sufficiently shown how far the nature of man surpasses all living creatures. From which it ought to be understood that neither the figure and position of the limbs nor the force of the genius and mind could have been brought about by fortune.

It remains for me to show, and at length to conclude, that all things which are in this world, of which men make use, were made and prepared for the sake of men. In the first place, the world itself was made for the sake of gods and men, and the things which are in it were prepared and devised for the use of men. For the world is, as it were, the common house of gods and men, or a city of both; for they alone, using reason, live by right and by law. As, then, we must hold that Athens and Lacedaemon were founded for the sake of the Athenians and Lacedaemonians, and all the things that are in those cities are rightly said to belong to those peoples, so whatever things are in the whole world must be held to belong to the gods and to men.

Now the circuits of the sun and moon and the rest of the heavenly bodies, although they pertain also to the coherence of the world, yet furnish a spectacle to men too; for there is no sight more insatiable, none more beautiful, and none more excellent for reason and skill; for, measuring their courses, we have come to know the ripenings and the varieties and changes of the seasons. And if these are known to men alone, we must judge that they were made for the sake of men.

And the earth, teeming with crops and with the various kinds of pulse, which it pours forth with the greatest bounty — does it seem to bring these forth for the sake of beasts or of men? What shall I say of the vines and the olive-groves, whose most plentiful and most joyous fruits in no way pertain to the beasts? For of sowing, of tilling, of reaping the fruits in season and gathering them in, of storing and laying them by, there is no knowledge in the cattle, and the use and care of all these things is man's.

As the lyre, then, and the pipes must be said to have been made for the sake of those who could use them, so the things I have spoken of must be confessed to have been prepared for those alone who use them; nor, if some beasts steal or snatch something of them, shall we say that they too were born for the sake of the beasts. For men do not store grain for the sake of mice and ants, but for the sake of their wives, children, and households; so the beasts, as I said, enjoy it by stealth, the masters openly and freely;

it must be confessed, then, that these stores of things were procured for the sake of men. Unless perhaps the great abundance and variety of fruits, and their pleasantness not only of taste but also of smell and sight, brings any doubt that Nature has given them to men alone. And so far is it from being true that these things were prepared even for the sake of the beasts, that we see the very beasts begotten for the sake of men. For what else do the sheep furnish but that, their fleeces being dressed and woven, men may be clothed? — sheep which indeed could neither be fed nor sustained nor yield any fruit from themselves without the tillage and care of men. And the so faithful guarding of dogs, their so loving fawning upon their masters, their so great hatred of strangers, and their so incredible keenness of nose for tracking, their so great eagerness in hunting — what else does it mean but that they were begotten for the conveniences of men?

Why should I speak of oxen? Whose very backs declare that they were not shaped for receiving a burden, but their necks born for the yoke, and the strength and breadth of their shoulders for drawing ploughs. By which, when the lands were broken up by the cleaving of clods, by that golden race, as the poets say, no violence was ever done them; but then the iron race suddenly arose, and dared first to forge the deadly sword and to taste the bullock joined to the yoke and tamed by its own hand: so great a usefulness was thought to be got from oxen that to feed upon their flesh was held a crime. It would be long to follow out the uses of mules and asses, which surely were prepared for the use of men.

But the pig — what has it besides food? To which indeed Chrysippus says that its very soul was given for salt, lest it should rot; in which beast, because it was fitted for the feeding of men, Nature has begotten nothing more fruitful. What shall I say of the multitude and the sweetness of fishes, what of birds? From which so great a pleasure is got that at times our Stoic Providence seems to have been Epicurean; and these could not even be caught save by the reason and skill of men — although certain birds, both flyers and singers (as our augurs call them), we think to have been born for the sake of taking auguries.

Now the huge and wild beasts we get by hunting, both that we may feed on them and that we may exercise ourselves in hunting after the likeness of military training, and that we may use them tamed and well-broken, as the elephants, and that we may choose out of their bodies many remedies for diseases and wounds, just as from certain plants and herbs, whose usefulness we have perceived by the experience and trial of long time. One may survey with the mind, as with the eyes, the whole earth and all the seas: you will discern now the fruitful and measureless spaces of the plains, and the thickest clothing of the mountains, the pastures of cattle, then the sea-courses of incredible swiftness.

Nor indeed above the earth alone, but even in its inmost darkness, lies hidden the usefulness of very many things, which, arising for the use of men, is found by men alone. But that point, which either of you will perhaps seize on to censure — Cotta, because Carneades gladly inveighed against the Stoics; Velleius, because Epicurus mocks nothing so much as the prediction of things to come — seems to me to confirm most of all that human affairs are cared for by the prudence of the gods. For there is assuredly divination, which appears in many places, things, and times, both in private and most of all in public affairs:

the soothsayers discern many things, the augurs foresee many things; many things are declared by oracles, many by prophecies, many by dreams, many by portents; by the knowledge of which many things have often been gained according to the wish and advantage of men, and many dangers also driven off. This, then, whether it be a power, or an art, or a nature, has assuredly been given to man for the knowledge of things to come, and to no other by the immortal gods. And if these things, taken singly, perhaps do not move you, yet at least, all connected and joined together among themselves, they ought to have moved you.

Nor indeed is it for the whole race of men alone, but for individuals also, that the immortal gods are wont to take thought and provide. For we may contract the universality of the human race and bring it down step by step to fewer, and at last to single men. For if we judge that the gods take thought for all men who are anywhere, on whatever coast and part of the lands, distant from the continuity of this land which we inhabit, for the causes which we mentioned before, they take thought also for these men who, with us, dwell in these lands from east to west.

But if they take thought for those who dwell, as it were, in a kind of great island which we call the orb of the earth, they take thought also for those who hold the parts of that island, Europe, Asia, Africa. Therefore they cherish both the parts of these, as Rome, Athens, Sparta, Rhodes, and, of those cities, apart from the whole, single men, as in the war with Pyrrhus, Curius, Fabricius, Coruncanius; in the first Punic War, Calatinus, Duellius, Metellus, Lutatius; in the second, Maximus, Marcellus, Africanus; after these, Paulus, Gracchus, Cato; and in our fathers' memory, Scipio, Laelius; and many other singular men besides, both our state and Greece has borne, of whom we must believe that none was such save by the help of god.

This reasoning impelled the poets, and most of all Homer, to attach to the chief of the heroes — Ulysses, Diomedes, Agamemnon, Achilles — certain gods as companions of their crises and dangers. Besides, the frequent presences of the gods themselves, such as I recounted above, declare that the gods take thought both for states and for single men. Which indeed is understood also by the foretokens of things to come, which are portended now to the sleeping, now to the waking; besides, we are admonished by many omens, by many things in the entrails, and by many other things, which long use has so marked that it has made the art of divination.

No man, therefore, was ever great without some divine inspiration. Nor indeed must it be so refuted that, if a storm has harmed the crops or vineyards of anyone, or if chance has taken away anything from the conveniences of life, we should judge the man to whom any of these things has happened either hated by god or neglected by god. The gods care for great things, the small they neglect. But to great men all things are always prosperous, if indeed enough has been said by our school and by the chief of philosophy, Socrates, concerning the rich plenty and abundance of virtue.

These things, in the main, came into my mind which I thought ought to be said concerning the nature of the gods. But you, Cotta, if you would listen to me, would plead the same cause, and would bethink yourself that you are both a leading citizen and a pontiff, and, since it is allowed you to argue on either side, would take this side rather, and would bring to this rather that faculty of arguing which, received from your rhetorical exercises, the Academy has enlarged. For an evil and impious custom it is to argue against the gods, whether it be done in earnest or in pretence."