Book 3

When Balbus had thus spoken, Cotta said with a smile: "Too late, Balbus, do you instruct me what to defend. For while you were arguing I was myself pondering what I should say against you — not so much for the sake of refuting you as of asking about the things I understood less well. But since each man must use his own judgement, it is hard for me to think as you would wish."

Here Velleius said: "You do not know, Cotta, with what great expectation I shall hear you. For your discourse against Epicurus was pleasing to our Balbus; I therefore in my turn will show myself an attentive hearer of you against the Stoics. For I trust you come, as is your wont, well prepared."

Then said Cotta: "So, by Hercules, I do, Velleius; for my reckoning with Lucilius is not the same as it was with you." "How so, pray?" said he. "Because your Epicurus seems to me not to contend very strongly about the immortal gods: he only does not dare to deny that the gods exist, lest he incur some odium or charge; but when he affirms that the gods do nothing and care for nothing, and that they are endowed with human limbs but have no use of those limbs, he seems to be jesting, and to think it enough if he has said that there is a certain blessed and eternal nature.

But from Balbus you observed, I believe, how many things were said, and how, even if less true, yet apt and coherent among themselves. And so I purpose, as I said, not so much to refute his discourse as to ask about the things I understood less well. Wherefore, Balbus, I leave it to you: would you rather answer me as I ask you about single matters those things which I have grasped too little, or hear my whole discourse through?" Then said Balbus: "For my part, if you wish anything explained to you, I would rather answer; but if you would question me not so much for the sake of understanding as of refuting, I will do as you will, and either answer at once to the several points you ask, or, when you have made your speech, to all."

Then said Cotta: "Excellent; wherefore let us proceed as the discourse itself leads us. But before the matter, a few words about myself. For I am moved not a little by your authority, Balbus, and by that speech with which, in your peroration, you exhorted me to remember that I am both a Cotta and a pontiff; which, I believe, was meant to this end, that I should defend the opinions about the immortal gods which we have received from our forefathers, and the sacred rites, ceremonies, and observances of religion. These indeed I shall always defend, and always have defended, nor shall the discourse of any man, learned or unlearned, ever move me from that opinion about the worship of the immortal gods which I received from my forefathers. But when it is a question of religion, I follow Tiberius Coruncanius, Publius Scipio, Publius Scaevola, the chief pontiffs, not Zeno or Cleanthes or Chrysippus; and I have Gaius Laelius, an augur and at the same time a wise man, whom I would rather hear speaking of religion in that noble speech of his than any chief of the Stoics. And since the whole religion of the Roman people is divided into rites and auspices, with a third thing joined to these, if from portents and prodigies the interpreters of the Sibyl or the soothsayers have given warning for the sake of prediction, I have judged that none of these religious observances is ever to be despised, and have so persuaded myself that Romulus by the auspices and Numa by the establishment of the rites laid the foundations of our state, which assuredly could never have been so great without the highest favour of the immortal gods.

You have, Balbus, what Cotta, what a pontiff thinks; now make me understand what you think; for from you, a philosopher, I ought to receive a reasoned account of religion, but our forefathers I must believe even though no reason is rendered." Then said Balbus: "What reasoned account, then, do you require of me, Cotta?" And he said: "Your division was fourfold: first, that you would teach that the gods exist; next, of what kind they are; then, that the world is ruled by them; lastly, that they take thought for human affairs. This, if I rightly remember, was the partition." "Most rightly," said Balbus; "but I await what you require."

Then said Cotta: "Let us look at each point in turn. And if the first is this, which is agreed among all but the utterly impious, and which indeed cannot be burned out of my mind — that the gods exist — yet of this very thing, of which I am persuaded by the authority of my forefathers, you teach me nothing as to why it is so." "What is it," said Balbus, "if you are persuaded, that you should wish to learn from me?" Then said Cotta: "Because I approach this discussion as though I had never heard anything of the immortal gods, never thought anything; receive me as a raw and untaught pupil, and teach me the things I ask."

"Say, then," said he, "what you ask." "I? — this first: why, when you had said that on this head the matter was so manifest that it did not even need a discourse, because it was manifest and agreed among all that the gods exist, you yet said so many things about that very point." "Because I observed," said he, "that you too, Cotta, often, when you were pleading in the forum, loaded the juror with as many arguments as you could, if only the case gave you the opportunity. And this same thing the philosophers do, and I have done as I could. But what you ask is as if you should ask me why I look at you with two eyes and do not close one, when I could attain the same with one." Then said Cotta: "How like that is, you shall see.

For I am not wont, in pleadings, if anything is evident on which all agree, to argue it (for clearness is weakened by argument); nor, if I did it in forensic cases, should I do the same in this fineness of discourse. But there would be no reason for closing one eye, since the gaze of both is the same, and since the nature of things, which you would have to be wise, willed us to have two lights bored through from the mind to the eyes. But because you did not trust that this was as manifest as you wished, for that reason you wished to teach by many arguments that the gods exist. For me one was enough, that our forefathers had so handed it down. But you despise authorities, you fight with reason;

suffer my reason, then, to contend with your reason. You bring all these arguments why the gods exist, and, by arguing, you make a thing, in my opinion by no means doubtful, doubtful; for I have committed to memory not only the number but also the order of your arguments. The first was that, when we had looked up at the sky, we straightway understood that there is some divinity by which these things are ruled. From this came also that: 'Behold this gleaming vault on high, whom all men call upon as Jove':

as though, forsooth, any of us call upon that rather than the Capitoline Jove, or as though it were manifest and agreed among all that those are gods which Velleius and many others would not grant to be even living beings! A weighty argument too seemed to you that the opinion about the immortal gods both belonged to all men and grew daily: is it your pleasure, then, that such great matters be judged by the opinion of fools — and you especially, who say that they are madmen? 'But we see the gods present, as Postumius did at Regillus, Vatinius on the Salarian road' — and I know not what too about the battle of the Locrians at the Sagra. Those, then, whom you called the sons of Tyndareus, that is, men born of man, and whom Homer, who lived not long after their age, says were buried at Lacedaemon — those you suppose to have come to meet Vatinius with white nags and no grooms, and to have announced the victory of the Roman people to Vatinius, a rustic, rather than to Marcus Cato, who was then the chief man? And do you, therefore, believe that mark on the flint which appears to this day at Regillus to be, as it were, the trace of the hoof of Castor's horse?

Would you not rather believe that which can be proved — that the souls of illustrious men, such as those sons of Tyndareus were, are divine and eternal — than that men once burned could ride and fight in the line of battle? Or, if you say this could have happened, you ought to teach how, and not bring forward old wives' tales."

Then said Lucilius: "Do they seem to you tales? Do you not see the temple dedicated by Aulus Postumius to Castor and Pollux in the forum, do you not see the decree of the senate about Vatinius? As for the Sagra, there is even a common proverb among the Greeks, who say of things they affirm to be more certain than what happened at the Sagra. By these authorities, then, ought you not to be moved?" Then said Cotta: "With rumours you fight against me, Balbus, but I ask reasons of you. [Here several lines are lost.] ... the things that are to be follow;

for no one can escape that which is to be. And often it is not even useful to know what is to be; for it is wretched to be tormented, profiting nothing, and not to have even the last and yet common solace of hope; especially since you yourselves say that all things come to pass by fate, and that what has always been true from all eternity is fate: what avails it, then, or what does it bring toward taking precaution, to know that something is to be, when it is certainly to be? Whence, moreover, comes that divination? Who discovered the cleft of the liver, who marked the song of the crow, who the lots? In which I believe, nor can I despise the augur's staff of Attus Navius which you mentioned; but how these things came to be understood by the philosophers I ought to learn, especially since those diviners lie about very many things.

'But physicians too' (for so you said) 'are often deceived.' What likeness is there between medicine, whose reasoning I see, and divination, whose source I do not understand? You also think the gods were appeased by the self-devotions of the Decii. What was their great injustice, that the Roman people could not be appeased unless such men perished? That was a general's design, which the Greeks call a stratagem, but of those generals who took thought for their country and did not spare their lives; for they reckoned that the army would follow a general who, spurring on his horse, hurled himself upon the enemy — which is what happened. As for the voice of a Faun, I for my part have never heard it; if you say you have heard it, I will believe you, though what a Faun is at all I do not know. So far, then, so far as in you lies, Balbus, I do not understand that the gods exist; whom indeed I do believe to exist, but the Stoics teach me nothing.

For Cleanthes, as you said, thinks that the notions of the gods are formed in the minds of men in four ways. One way is that of which I have said enough, which is derived from the forewarning of things to come; another from the disturbances of the weather and the other commotions; a third from the convenience of the things we perceive, and from their abundance; a fourth from the order of the stars and the constancy of the sky. Of forewarning we have spoken. Of the disturbances of sky and sea and land we cannot say, since these happen, that there are not many who fear them and judge them to be brought about by the immortal gods;

but this is not the question — whether there are some who think the gods exist; the question is whether the gods exist or not. As for the remaining causes which Cleanthes brings forward, of which one is about the abundance of the conveniences we receive, the other about the order of the seasons and the constancy of the sky, these shall be handled by us when we discuss the providence of the gods, about which very much has been said by you, Balbus;

and to the same place we shall put off those things too which you said Chrysippus said — that, since there was something in the nature of things which could not be brought about by man, there is something better than man — and the things you compared in the beautiful house with the beauty of the world, and when you brought forward the harmony and agreement of the whole world; and Zeno's brief and over-subtle conclusions we shall defer to that part of the discourse which I just named; and at the same time all those things which were said by you on natural science, about the fiery force and about that heat from which you said all things are generated, shall in their place be inquired into; and all those things which were said by you the day before yesterday, when you wished to teach that the gods exist, why both the whole world and the sun and the moon and the stars should have sensation and mind, I will reserve to the same time.

But of you I will ask again and again that same thing — by what reasonings you persuade yourself that the gods exist." Then said Balbus: "For my part I think I have brought forward my reasons; but you so refute them that, when you seem about to question me, and I have prepared myself to answer, you suddenly turn your discourse aside and give no place for answering. And so the greatest matters have passed by in silence — about divination, about fate — on which questions you, indeed, touch briefly, but our school is wont to say much, though they are kept separate from this question which is now in hand. Wherefore, if you please, do not deal with the matter confusedly, that we may unfold, by this discussion, the thing that is in question." "Excellent," said Cotta.

"And so, since you divided the whole question into four parts, and of the first we have spoken, let us consider the second; which seemed to me to be such that, while you wished to show of what kind the gods are, you showed that there are none. To draw the mind away from the habit of the eyes you said was most difficult; but, since nothing was more excellent than god, you doubted not that the world was a god, than which nothing in the nature of things was better — if only we could conceive it to be a living being, or rather discern this with the mind, as we discern other things with the eyes.

But when you say that nothing is better than the world, what do you mean by 'better'? If 'more beautiful,' I agree; if 'fitter for our advantages,' that too I agree; but if you mean that nothing is wiser than the world, in no way at all do I agree — not because it is hard to call the mind away from the eyes, but because, the more I call it away, the less can I grasp with my mind that which you would have. 'There is nothing better than the world in the nature of things.' Nor on earth than our city; do you, then, on that account think that in the city there is reason, thought, mind? Or, since there is not, do you on that account judge that an ant is to be set before this most beautiful city, because in the city there is no sensation, but in the ant not only sensation but even mind, reason, memory? You ought to see, Balbus, what is granted you, not yourself to assume what you will.

For this whole topic that old, and as it seemed to you acute, brief conclusion of Zeno enlarged. [A few words are lost.] For Zeno concludes 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.' If this is granted, you will presently make it appear that the world reads a book most excellently; for, in Zeno's steps, you will be able to conclude the reasoning thus: 'That which is lettered is better than that which is not lettered; but nothing is better than the world; therefore the world is lettered' — and in that way it will be eloquent too, and indeed a mathematician, a musician, in short learned in every branch of knowledge, and finally a philosopher. You have often said that nothing comes to be without god, and that there is no force of nature such that it could fashion things unlike itself: shall I grant that the world is not only a living and wise being but also a lyre-player and a trumpeter, since men of those arts too are begotten from it? Nothing, then, does that father of the Stoics bring forward why we should think that the world uses reason, nor even why it is a living being. The world, then, is not a god; and yet there is nothing better than it: for there is nothing more beautiful than it, nothing more wholesome to us, nothing more adorned in aspect or more constant in motion. But if the whole world is not a god, neither are the stars, which you reckoned, innumerable, in the number of the gods. Their even and eternal courses delighted you — and, by Hercules, not without cause, for they are of wonderful and incredible constancy.

But not all things, Balbus, which have fixed and constant courses are to be assigned to a god rather than to nature. What can you think more constant than the Euripus of Chalcis in its ever-recurring ebb and flow, what than the Sicilian strait, what than the boiling of the Ocean in those regions 'where the ravening wave divides Europe and Libya'? What of the tides of the sea, whether of Spain or of Britain, and their advances or retreats at fixed times — cannot they come to be without a god? See, I pray, if we call all motions and all things which keep their order at fixed times divine, lest we must say that tertian and quartan fevers too are divine, than whose return and motion what can be more constant? But of all such things a reason must be rendered;

which, since you cannot do, you flee, as it were to an altar, to a god. And Chrysippus seemed to you to speak acutely — a man without doubt clever and shrewd (I call those clever whose mind turns quickly, but those shrewd whose mind, like the hand by work, has grown hard with use); he, then, says: 'If there is anything which man cannot bring about, he who brings it about is better than man; but man cannot bring about these things which are in the world; he who could, then, surpasses man; but who could surpass man save god? There is, therefore, a god.' All these dwell in the same error as those of Zeno.

For what 'better,' what 'more excellent' may be, what is the difference between nature and reason, is not distinguished. And the same man, if the gods do not exist, denies that there is in all nature anything better than man; but for any man to think that nothing is better than man he holds to be the height of arrogance. Let it be the part of an arrogant man to think himself of more worth than the world; but that other thing is not only not the part of an arrogant man, but rather of a prudent one — to understand that he has sensation and reason, and that Orion and the Dog-star have not these same things. And: 'If a house is beautiful, let us understand that it was built for masters,' he says, 'not for mice; so, then, we ought to judge the world the house of the gods.' I should so judge it indeed, if I thought it built, and not, as I shall show, framed by nature.

'But Socrates in Xenophon asks whence we snatched our mind, if there were none in the world.' And I ask whence we got speech, whence numbers, whence song; unless, forsooth, we think that the sun talks with the moon when it has come nearer, or that the world sings in harmony, as Pythagoras supposes. These things, Balbus, are of nature — of a nature not 'walking artfully,' as Zeno says (what kind of thing that is we shall presently see), but stirring and moving all things by its own motions and changes.

And so that discourse of yours about the harmony and agreement of nature pleased me, which you said breathes in concert, as it were continued by kinship; but that I did not approve, which you said could not have come to pass unless it were held together by one divine spirit. It does, indeed, cohere and abide by the forces of nature, not of the gods, and there is in it that agreement, as it were, which the Greeks call sympatheia; but the more it is of its own accord, the less is it to be thought brought about by a divine reason.

But those arguments which Carneades brought forward — how do you dissolve them? If no body is immortal, no body is everlasting; but no body is immortal, not even an indivisible one, nor one that cannot be sundered or torn apart; and since every living being has a nature capable of suffering, there is none of them that escapes the necessity of receiving something from without, that is, as it were, of bearing and suffering; and if every living being is such, none is immortal. So likewise, if every living being can be cut and divided, none of them is indivisible, none eternal; but every living being is fitted for receiving and bearing an external force; therefore every living being must of necessity be mortal and dissoluble and divisible.

For just as, if all wax were changeable, there would be nothing waxen that could not be changed, and likewise nothing silver, nothing of bronze, if the nature of silver and of bronze were changeable — so in like manner, if all things [which exist] of which all are composed are mutable, there can be no body that is not mutable; but those things of which all are composed are mutable, as you hold; every body, therefore, is mutable. But if there were any immortal body, not every body would be mutable; so it follows that every body is mortal. For every body is either water or air or fire or earth, or that which is compounded of these or of some part of them.

But of these there is none that does not perish; for everything earthy is divisible, and moisture is so soft that it can easily be pressed and crushed; while fire and air are most easily driven off by any blow, and are by nature most yielding and dissipable. And besides, all these perish when they are turned into another nature, which happens when earth turns itself into water, and when from water air arises, from air ether, and when these same pass back again in turn. But if it is so, that those things perish of which every living being consists, no living being is everlasting.

And, to pass over these things, yet no living being can be found which both was never born and will always be. For every living being has sensation; it feels, then, both hot and cold, and sweet and bitter, nor can it by any sense receive the pleasant and not receive the contrary; if, then, it takes the sense of pleasure, it takes also that of pain; but that which receives pain must of necessity receive also destruction; every living being, therefore, must be confessed to be mortal. Besides, if there is anything which feels neither pleasure nor pain, it cannot be a living being;

but if it is a living being, it must of necessity feel those things, and that which feels them cannot be eternal; and every living being feels; no living being, therefore, is eternal. Besides, there can be no living being in which there is not both a natural appetite and a natural avoidance. But the things that are according to nature are desired, the contrary avoided; and every living being desires some things and flees from some; but that which it flees from is contrary to nature, and that which is contrary to nature has the power of destroying. Every living being, therefore, must of necessity perish.

Innumerable are the things from which it can be brought about and concluded that there is nothing which has sensation but it perishes; for those very things which are felt — as cold, as heat, as pleasure, as pain, and the rest — when they are amplified, destroy; and no living being is without sensation; no living being, therefore, is eternal. For either the nature of a living being is simple — so that it is either earthy or fiery or airy or moist, which, of what kind it would be, cannot even be understood — or compounded of several natures, of which each has its own place to which it is borne by the force of nature, one to the lowest, another to the highest, another to the middle. These can cohere for a certain time, but always in no way can they; for each must of necessity be snatched by nature to its own place. No living being, therefore, is everlasting.

But your school, Balbus, is wont to refer all things to a fiery force, following, I believe, Heraclitus, whom not all interpret in one way; and since he meant something which he did not wish to be understood, let us pass him by. But you say thus, that all force is fire, and so that living beings perish when their heat has failed, and that in all the nature of things that lives, that flourishes, which is warm. But I do not understand how, the heat being quenched, bodies perish, but do not perish when moisture or breath is lost — especially since they perish even by too much heat.

Wherefore that point indeed is common, about the hot; but yet let us see the issue. You mean, I suppose, that there is no living being from without in nature and the world save fire: why so, rather than save breath, of which too the soul of living beings consists, from which a thing is called animal? But how do you assume, as if it were granted, that the soul is nothing but fire? For it seems more probable that the soul is some such thing as is tempered of fire and breath. 'But if fire is of itself a living being, with no other nature mingling itself, since it, when it is in our bodies, makes us feel, it cannot itself be without sensation.' Again the same things may be said: for whatever has sensation must of necessity feel both pleasure and pain, and that to which pain comes, to the same comes also destruction. So it comes about that you cannot make even fire eternal.

For what — do not you Stoics hold that all fire needs nourishment and cannot endure in any way unless it is fed, but that the sun, moon, and the other heavenly bodies are fed by waters, some by fresh, some by sea-water? And Cleanthes brings forward this as the reason why the sun turns back and does not advance farther than the solstitial circle, and likewise the wintry, lest it should depart too far from its food. What this whole matter is like, presently; but for now let that be concluded: that what can perish is not by nature eternal; but fire is going to perish unless it is fed; fire, therefore, is not by nature everlasting.

But what kind of god can we understand who is endowed with no virtue? For what — shall we assign prudence to god, which consists of the knowledge of things good and bad, and of things neither good nor bad? For one to whom there is no evil, nor can be, what need has he of choosing between good and bad, and what of reason, what of intelligence — which we use for this end, that from things plain we may attain things obscure? But to god nothing can be obscure. For justice, which distributes to each his own, what has it to do with the gods? For the fellowship and community of men, as you say, begot justice. But temperance consists in the foregoing of bodily pleasures: if there is a place for this in heaven, there is a place also for pleasures. For how can god be understood to be brave — in pain, or in toil, or in danger?

Of which none touches god. Neither, then, can we understand god to be one using reason nor endowed with any virtue. Nor indeed can I despise the ignorance of the common folk and the unlearned, when I consider those things which are said by the Stoics. For those things are of the ignorant: the Syrians worship a fish; the Egyptians have consecrated almost every kind of beast; and now in Greece they have many gods made out of men — Alabandus at Alabanda, at Tenedos Tenes; Leucothea, who was Ino, and her son Palaemon, all Greece worships — as well as Hercules, Aesculapius, the sons of Tyndareus, our own Romulus, and very many others, whom they think received into heaven as it were new and enrolled citizens.

These things, then, the unlearned hold; what of you philosophers, who hold better things? I pass over those — for they are excellent: let the world itself, by all means, be a god. This, I believe, is that 'gleaming vault on high, whom all men call upon as Jove.' Why, then, do we add more gods? And how great is their multitude! To me, indeed, they seem very many; for you reckon the single stars to be gods, and call them either by the name of beasts — as the Goat, the Scorpion, the Bull, the Lion — or of lifeless things, as Argo, the Altar, the Crown.

But, granting these, how can the rest not only be granted but even at all understood? When we call the crops Ceres and wine Liber, we use indeed a customary manner of speech; but do you think anyone so mad as to believe that the thing he feeds on is a god? As for those whom you say came from men to be gods, you shall render account in what way that could have come to pass, or why it ceased to come to pass, and I shall gladly learn; for as the matter now stands, I do not see how he upon whom 'on Mount Oeta the torches were borne,' as Accius says, came from that burning 'to the eternal house of his father'; whom yet Homer makes to be met among the dead by Ulysses, like the rest who had departed life.

And yet which Hercules above all we should worship I should much like to know; for several are handed down to us by those who search out the inner and hidden lore: the most ancient born of Jove — but likewise of the most ancient Jove, for we find several Joves too in the ancient writings of the Greeks: of that one, then, and of Lysitho, is that Hercules whom we have heard to have striven with Apollo for the tripod. A second is handed down, an Egyptian born of the Nile, who is said to have written the Phrygian letters. The third is of the Idaean Dactyls, to whom they bring funeral offerings. The fourth is of Jove and of Asteria, sister of Latona, who is worshipped most at Tyre, whose daughter they say Carthage was. The fifth is in India, who is called Belus. The sixth is this one, born of Alcmena, whom Jupiter begot — but the third Jupiter, since, as I shall presently show, we have received several Joves too.

For, since the discourse has led me to this place, I will show that I have learned better things about worshipping the immortal gods, by the pontifical law and the custom of our forefathers, from these little ladles which Numa left us, of which Laelius speaks in that golden little oration, than from the reasonings of the Stoics. For if I follow you, tell me what I should answer to one who asks me thus: 'If the gods exist [...], are the Nymphs also goddesses? If the Nymphs, the Pans too and the Satyrs; but these are not; therefore not even the Nymphs are goddesses. Yet their temples are publicly vowed and dedicated. Neither, then, are the rest gods whose temples are dedicated. Come further: you reckon Jove and Neptune a god; therefore Orcus too, their brother, is a god, and those who are said to flow in the underworld, Acheron, Cocytus, Pyriphlegethon; then Charon, then Cerberus must be thought gods.

But that indeed must be rejected; not even Orcus, then, is a god; what, then, do you say of the brothers?' These things Carneades said, not to do away with the gods (for what is less becoming a philosopher?), but to prove that the Stoics explain nothing about the gods; and so he pressed on: 'For what,' he said, 'if these brothers are in the number of the gods, can it be denied of their father Saturn, whom the common folk worship most of all toward the west? But if he is a god, his father Caelus too must be confessed to be a god. And if it is so, the parents of Caelus too must be held gods, Aether and Day, and their brothers and sisters, who by the ancient genealogists are named thus: Love, Guile, Fear, Toil, Envy, Fate, Old Age, Death, Darkness, Misery, Lamentation, Favour, Fraud, Stubbornness, the Fates, the Hesperides, the Dreams; all of whom they say were born of Erebus and Night. Either, then, these monstrosities must be approved, or those first ones done away with.'

Will you say that Apollo, Vulcan, Mercury, and the rest are gods, but doubt about Hercules, Aesculapius, Liber, Castor, and Pollux? But these indeed are worshipped equally with those, and among some peoples even much more. These, then, must be held gods, though born of mortal mothers. What of Aristaeus, who is said to be the discoverer of the olive, the son of Apollo; Theseus, who was the son of Neptune; and the rest whose fathers are gods — will they not be in the number of the gods? What of those whose mothers are goddesses? Even more so, I think; for as in the civil law he who is born of a free mother is free, so by the law of nature he who is of a divine mother must of necessity be a god. And so the islanders of Astypalaea most devoutly worship Achilles; but if he is a god, then Orpheus and Rhesus too are gods, born of a Muse for their mother — unless, perhaps, marriages with sea-deities are set above those with earthly ones. If these are not gods, because they are nowhere worshipped, how are those?

See, then, whether these honours are paid to the virtues of men, not to their immortalities; which you too, Balbus, seemed to say. But how can you, if you think Latona a goddess, not think Hecate one, who is the daughter of Asteria, the sister of Latona? Or is she too a goddess? For we have seen her altars and shrines in Greece. But if she is a goddess, why not the Eumenides? And if these are goddesses, whose shrine is both at Athens and among us, as I interpret it, the grove of Furina, then the Furies are goddesses — spies, I suppose, and avengers of crime and wickedness.

But if the gods are such as to take part in human affairs, Natio too must be thought a goddess, to whom, when we go round the shrines in the territory of Ardea, we are wont to make sacrifice; who, because she watches over the births of matrons, is named Natio from those being born. If she is a goddess, then all those gods whom you mentioned — Honour, Faith, Mind, Concord — and therefore also Hope, and Moneta, and all the things which by thought we can fashion for ourselves. But if this is not probable, neither is that probable from which these things have flowed. And what do you say — if those whom we worship and have received are gods, why should we not reckon Serapis and Isis in the same kind? And if we do this, why should we reject the gods of the barbarians? We shall, then, reckon oxen and horses, ibises, hawks, asps, crocodiles, fishes, dogs, wolves, cats, and many beasts besides, in the number of the gods. And if we reject these, we shall reject also those from which these are sprung.

What, then — shall Ino be held a goddess, and called Leucothea by the Greeks and Matuta by us, since she is the daughter of Cadmus, while Circe, Pasiphae, and Aeetes, born of Perseis the daughter of Ocean, with the Sun for their father, shall not be held in the number of the gods? Although our colonists of Circeii too worship Circe devoutly. You hold her, then, a goddess: what will you answer about Medea, who was begotten of two divine grandfathers, the Sun and Ocean, of Aeetes for her father and Idyia for her mother; what of her brother Absyrtus (who in Pacuvius is Aegialeus, but that name is more usual in the writings of the ancients)? And if these are not gods, I fear what becomes of Ino; for all these have flowed from the same spring.

Or shall Amphiaraus be a god, and Trophonius? Our tax-farmers, indeed, when there were in Boeotia lands exempted by the censor's law as belonging to the immortal gods, denied that any were immortal who had once been men. But if these are gods, surely Erectheus is, whose shrine and priest we have seen at Athens. And if we make him a god, what can we doubt either of Codrus or of the rest who fell fighting for the liberty of their country? And if this is not probable, neither are those higher things probable from which these flow.

And in most states it may be understood that, for the sake of increasing virtue, that each best man might the more gladly meet danger for the commonwealth's sake, the memory of brave men has been consecrated with the honour of the immortal gods. For that very cause Erectheus at Athens, and his daughters, are in the number of the gods; and likewise there is at Athens the shrine of Leos, which is called Leokorion. The Alabandans indeed worship Alabandus, by whom that city was founded, more devoutly than any of the noble gods; among whom Stratonicus, not without wit, as in many things, when a certain troublesome fellow affirmed that Alabandus was a god and denied that Hercules was, said: 'Then

may Alabandus be angry with me and Hercules with you.' But those things, Balbus, which you drew from the sky and the stars — do you not see how far they creep? That the sun is a god and the moon, of which the Greeks think the one Apollo, the other Diana. But if the moon is a goddess, then Lucifer too and the rest of the wanderers will hold the number of the gods; therefore also the fixed stars. And why should not the appearance of the rainbow be reckoned in the number of the gods? For it is beautiful (and on account of that beauty, because it has a wonderful cause, it is said to be born of Thaumas). But if its nature is divine, what will you make of the clouds? For the rainbow itself is made of clouds in some way coloured; one of which is even said to have brought forth the Centaurs. But if you reckon the clouds among the gods, the storms must certainly be reckoned, which have been consecrated in the rites of the Roman people. Therefore showers, rainclouds, squalls, whirlwinds must be thought gods; our generals indeed, on entering the sea, are wont to sacrifice a victim to the waves.

Now if Ceres is from bearing (for so you said), the earth itself is a goddess (and so it is held; for what else is Tellus?); but if the earth, the sea too, which you said was Neptune; therefore also rivers and springs. And so Massa dedicated a shrine of the Spring from Corsica, and in the prayer of the augurs we see Tiberinus, Spino, Anemo, Nodinus, and other names of neighbouring rivers. This, then, either will creep on to infinity, or we shall receive none of these; nor will that boundless system of superstition be approved; nothing, therefore, of these is to be approved.

We ought, then, Balbus, to speak against those too who say that these gods, translated from the race of men into heaven, are so not in fact but in opinion, whom all of us reverence with awe and holiness. In the first place, those who are called theologians reckon three Joves, of whom the first and the second were born in Arcadia, the one with Aether for his father, of whom they say Proserpina too and Liber were born, the other with Caelus for his father, who is said to have begotten Minerva, whom they say to be the chief and inventor of war; the third the Cretan, son of Saturn, whose tomb is shown in that island. The Dioscuri too among the Greeks are named in many ways: the first three, who are called Anactes at Athens, born of the most ancient king Jove and Proserpina — Tritopatreus, Eubuleus, Dionysus; the second, born of the third Jove and Leda, Castor and Pollux; the third are said by some to be Alco, Melampus, and Eumolus, sons of Atreus, who was born of Pelops.

Again, the first Muses, four in number, born of the second Jove — Thelxinoe, Aoede, Arche, Melete; the second, nine, begotten of the third Jove and Mnemosyne; the third, born of the third Jove (the Pierian) and Antiopa, whom the poets are wont to call Pierides and Pieriae, by the same names and in the same number as the next above. And whereas you say that the sun (sol) was so named because it is alone (solus), how many Suns are brought forward by the theologians! One of them born of Jove, grandson of Aether; a second of Hyperion; a third of Vulcan the son of the Nile, whose city the Egyptians will have to be that which is called Heliopolis; a fourth, he whom in heroic times Acantho is said to have borne at Rhodes, the father of Ialysus, Camirus, and Lindus, whence the Rhodians; a fifth, who is said to have begotten in Colchis Aeetes and Circe. Of Vulcans likewise there are several:

the first born of Caelus, of whom and of Minerva was that Apollo in whose tutelage the ancient historians would have Athens to be; the second born in the Nile, Opas as the Egyptians call him, whom they will have to be the guardian of Egypt; the third, of the third Jove and Juno, who is handed down to have presided over the smithy at Lemnos; the fourth, born of Maemalius, who held the islands near Sicily which were called Vulcaniae.

The first Mercury, born of Caelus for his father and Day for his mother, whose nature is handed down to have been too indecently aroused because he was moved at the sight of Proserpina; the second the son of Valens and Phoronis, he who is held to dwell beneath the earth, the same as Trophonius; the third, born of the third Jove and Maia, of whom and of Penelope they say Pan was born; the fourth with the Nile for his father, whom the Egyptians hold it impious to name; the fifth, whom the people of Pheneus worship, who is said to have slain Argus, and for that cause to have fled to Egypt, and to have handed down to the Egyptians their laws and letters: him the Egyptians call Theyt, and by the same name the first month of the year is called among them.

Of the Aesculapii the first is the son of Apollo, whom the Arcadians worship, who is said to have discovered the probe and to have first bound up a wound; the second the brother of the second Mercury: he, struck by a thunderbolt, is said to have been buried at Cynosura; the third the son of Arsippus and Arsinoe, who first, as they say, discovered the purging of the bowels and the drawing of teeth, whose tomb and grove are shown in Arcadia not far from the river Lusius. Of the Apollos the most ancient is he whom I said a little before was born of Vulcan, the guardian of Athens; the second the son of Corybas, born in Crete, whose contest with Jove himself for that island is handed down; the third born of the third Jove and Latona, whom they say came from the Hyperboreans to Delphi; the fourth in Arcadia, whom the Arcadians call Nomion, because they say they received their laws from him.

Of Dianas likewise there are several: the first, of Jove and Proserpina, who is said to have brought forth the winged Cupid; the second, the better known, whom we have received as born of the third Jove and Latona; the third whose father is handed down to be Upis, her mother Glauce: her the Greeks often call Upis by her father's name. Of Dionysi we have many: the first born of Jove and Proserpina; the second of the Nile, who is said to have slain Nysa; the third with Cabirus for his father, and they say he ruled as king over Asia, to whom the Sabazia were instituted; the fourth of Jove and the Moon, to whom the Orphic rites are thought to be performed; the fifth, born of Nysus and Thyone, by whom the trieteric festivals are thought to have been established.

The first Venus born of Caelus and Day, whose shrine we have seen at Elis; the second begotten of the foam, of whom and of Mercury we have received that the second Cupid was born; the third born of Jove and Dione, who married Vulcan, but of her and of Mars is said to have been born Anteros; the fourth conceived of Syria and Cyprus, who is called Astarte, who is recorded to have married Adonis. The first Minerva, whom we said above to be the mother of Apollo; the second born of the Nile, whom the Egyptians of Sais worship; the third that one whom we said above to have been generated by Jove; the fourth born of Jove and Coryphe the daughter of Ocean, whom the Arcadians call Coria and say to be the inventor of four-horse chariots; the fifth the daughter of Pallas, who is said to have slain her father when he tried to violate her virginity, to whom they affix winged sandals.

The first Cupid is said to be born of Mercury and the first Diana, the second of Mercury and the second Venus, the third, who is the same as Anteros, of Mars and the third Venus. And these things indeed, and others of the like kind, have been gathered from the old report of Greece. By which you understand that they must be resisted, lest the religious observances be confounded; but your school not only does not refute these things but even confirms them by interpreting what each thing means. But let us now return to the point from which we digressed hither. Do you think, then, that a subtler reasoning is needed to refute these things?

For we see that Mind, Faith, Hope, Virtue, Honour, Victory, Safety, Concord, and the rest of this kind have the force of things, not of gods. For either they are in us ourselves — as mind, as hope, as faith, as virtue, as concord — or they are to be wished for by us, as honour, as safety, as victory; of which things I see the usefulness, I see also the consecrated images; but why there should be the force of a god in them I shall understand when I have learned it. In which kind fortune above all is to be reckoned, whom no one will sever from inconstancy and rashness — things which surely are not worthy of a god.

And now, what delights you in that unfolding of fables and untying of names? That Caelus was mutilated by his son, that Saturn likewise was bound by his son — these things and others of the same kind you so defend that those who invented them seem not only not mad but even to have been wise. But in untying names you labour at what is pitiable: 'Saturn, because he sates himself with years; Mavors, because he turns great things; Minerva, because she lessens, or because she threatens; Venus, because she comes to all things; Ceres, from bearing.' How dangerous a practice! For in many names you will stick fast: what will you make of Veiovis, what of Vulcan? Although, since you think Neptune named from swimming, there will be no name which you cannot explain, by one letter, whence it is drawn; in which indeed you seemed to me to swim more than Neptune himself.

A great and least necessary toil did Zeno first, then Cleanthes, then Chrysippus take upon themselves — to render the reason of invented fables, to explain the causes why each thing was so named. And in doing this you assuredly confess that the matter stands far otherwise than is the opinion of men; for those who are called gods are the natures of things, not the figures of gods. So great was the error that even to pernicious things not only the name of gods was given but even rites were established. For we see a shrine of Fever on the Palatine, and of Orbona near the temple of the Lares, and an altar of Evil Fortune consecrated on the Esquiline.

Let all such error, then, be driven from philosophy, so that, when we discuss the immortal gods, we may say things worthy of the immortal gods. About whom I have indeed what I myself think, but I have not what to grant you. You say that Neptune is a soul with intelligence pervading the sea, the same of Ceres; but that intelligence either of sea or of earth I cannot only not grasp with my mind but cannot even touch with surmise. And so I must seek elsewhere, that I may learn both that the gods exist and of what kind the gods are, such as you would have them be [...].

[...] let us see the things that follow: first, whether the world is ruled by the prudence of the gods; next, whether the gods take thought for human affairs. For these two remain to me out of your partition; of which, if it seems good to you, I think we must discuss more carefully." "To me indeed," said Velleius, "it seems very good; for I both expect greater things and vehemently assent to what has been said." Then said Balbus: "I do not wish to interrupt you, Cotta, but we will take another time; I will assuredly bring it about that you confess. But [here several lines are lost] ... In the first place, then, it is not probable that that matter of things, whence all things arose, was made by divine providence, but that it both has and has had its own force and nature. As, then, a builder, when he is about to build something, does not himself make the material but uses that which is ready, and likewise the modeller his wax, so to that divine providence the material ought to have been ready at hand, not such as it should itself make but such as it should have prepared. But if the matter was not made by a god, neither was the earth, nor the water, nor the air, nor the fire made by a god. [Here the text is corrupt; a fragment of a tragic passage follows, in which a character, debating with cunning, plots a deadly course:] ... men surpass all the beasts ... in no wise will it go that way; great is the strife within. For why should I beseech him with such fair-spoken pleading, if not for a purpose? Does she not seem to reason but ill, and to contrive against herself a wicked ruin?

And how with cunning reasoning: 'Whoever wishes what he wishes, the matter so gives itself as he shall give his pains' — who is the sower of all evils. He, with crooked mind, has this day delivered to me the bars by which I shall unbar all my wrath and bring ruin upon him: griefs to myself, mourning to him; destruction to him, exile to me. This reasoning, forsooth, which you say was given to man alone by the divine bounty, the beasts have not; do you see, then, with how great a gift of the gods we have been endowed?

And the same Medea, fleeing her father and her fatherland, when her father draws near and is already all but ready to seize her, meanwhile slays the boy and divides his limbs joint by joint, and scatters his body here and there over the fields; to this end, that, while the parent gathered up the scattered limbs of his son, she herself might meanwhile escape, that mourning might delay him from following, and that she might procure safety for herself by a kinsman's murder. To her, as wickedness, so reason too was not lacking.

And he who prepared the deadly banquet for his brother — does he not turn his reasoning this way and that in thought? 'A greater mass is mine, a greater evil must be mingled, by which I may crush and press down his bitter heart.' Nor yet must that one himself be passed over, who was not content to have lured the other's wife into adultery; of whom Atreus speaks rightly and most truly: 'What I judge to be, in the highest matter, the highest peril — that the wives of kings be defiled, the stock contaminated, the race confounded.' But that very thing, how cunningly, in one who sought a kingdom by adultery! 'I add,' he says, 'to this, that as a portent the father of the heavenly ones sent me a prodigy, the prop of my reign, a lamb among the flock, bright with golden fleece, which Thyestes once dared to steal from the palace, wherein he took my wife to aid him in the deed.' Does he not seem to have used, with the height of wickedness, no small height of reason?

Nor indeed is the stage alone filled with these crimes, but common life with far greater. The house of each man feels it, the forum feels it, the senate-house, the field, the allies, the provinces feel it — that, as right is done by reason, so by reason wrong is done; and the one both by few and rarely, the other both always and by very many; so that it would have been better that no reason at all had been given us by the immortal gods than that it should have been given with so great ruin. As wine, because it rarely profits the sick, very often harms them, it is better not to administer it at all than to run into open ruin in hope of a doubtful cure; so I am not sure whether it had not been better for the human race that that swift motion of thought, that keenness, that cunning, which we call reason, since it is pernicious to very many and wholesome to very few, should not have been given at all than given so munificently and so largely.

Wherefore, if the divine mind and will took thought for men on this ground, that it bestowed reason on them, it took thought for those alone on whom it bestowed good reason — whom, if there are any at all, we see to be very few. But it does not please us that the immortal gods took thought for a few; it follows, then, that they took thought for no one. To this point you are wont to meet thus: that it is not therefore not best provided for us by the gods because many use their benefit perversely; that many use their patrimonies ill too, and not for that cause have no benefit from their fathers. Who denies that? Or what likeness is there in that comparison? For Deianira did not wish to harm Hercules when she gave him the tunic dyed with the Centaur's blood, nor did he who with the sword opened the abscess of Jason of Pherae, which the physicians could not cure, wish to benefit him. For many have profited even when they wished to harm, and harmed when they wished to profit; so it does not follow from what is given that the will of him who gave it appears, nor, if he who received it uses it well, did he who gave it therefore give it in friendship. For what lust, what avarice, what crime is either undertaken without counsel taken, or, without motion and thought of the mind, brought to its end by reason?

For every opinion is reason, and indeed good reason if the opinion is true, but bad if it is false. But from god we have only reason, if indeed we have it; but good reason or not good is from ourselves. For reason was not given to man by the gods' benefit as a patrimony is left; for what rather would the gods have given to men if they had wished to harm them? And what would be the seeds of injustice, of intemperance, of cowardice, if reason did not underlie these vices? Medea and Atreus were just now mentioned by us, heroic persons plotting wicked crimes by reckoning taken and cast up.

What of the trivialities of comedy — are they not always engaged in reason? Does not that fellow in the Eunuch argue subtly enough: 'What, then, shall I do? She has shut me out, she calls me back; shall I return? Not if she should beseech me.' And that one in the Comrades, after the manner of the Academics, does not hesitate to fight with reason against the common opinion, who says that 'in the height of love and the height of want it is pleasant' to have a father avaricious, ungracious toward his children, harsh, who neither loves you nor is zealous for you; and to this incredible opinion he supplies his little reasons:

'either you may cheat him of his gain, or by letters divert some debt, or by a little slave frighten him in his fear; in short, what you take from a stingy father, how much more gladly you squander it!' And the same fellow argues that a father easy and liberal is a hindrance to a son in love: 'whom I know not in any way how to cheat, nor what to carry off from him, nor what trick or contrivance to set in motion against him: so has the obligingness of my father baffled all my tricks, deceits, jugglings.' What, then, of those tricks, those contrivances, those deceits and jugglings — could they have been without reason? O glorious gift of the gods! that Phormio could say: 'Bring me the old man; all my counsels are now drawn up in my heart.' But let us go out of the theatre, let us come into the forum.

The praetor goes to take his seat. To judge what? Who has set fire to the record-office. What crime more hidden? But Quintus Sosius, a brilliant Roman knight from the Picene country, confessed that he had done it. Who has falsified the public records? That too Lucius Alenus did, when he imitated the handwriting of the six chief clerks; what more cunning than this man? Mark other inquiries — of the Tolosan gold, of the Jugurthine conspiracy; recall earlier ones — of Tubulus, about money taken for giving judgement; later ones — of incest, by the Peducaean bill; then these everyday ones — of the dagger, of poisons, of embezzlement, and, by a new law, even inquiries about wills. Hence that action, 'I say a theft was committed by your help and counsel'; hence so many judgements about bad faith — of guardianship, of mandate, of partnership, of trust — and the rest which are done against good faith out of buying or selling or hiring or letting; hence the public judgement of a private matter by the Laetorian law; hence that broom of all knaveries, the judgement concerning evil fraud, which our friend Gaius Aquillius brought forward — which fraud the same Aquillius holds to be present when one thing is pretended and another done.

Do we think, then, that this great sowing of evils was made by the immortal gods? For if the gods gave reason to men, they gave malice; for malice is a crafty and deceitful reasoning of doing harm; the gods likewise gave fraud, crime, and the rest, of which none can either be undertaken without reason or accomplished. Would, then, that — as that old woman wishes the fir-beams had not fallen to the ground, cut by axes in the grove of Pelion — the gods had not given men that cunning, which very few use well, who yet themselves are often oppressed by those who use it ill, while innumerable use it wickedly; so that this divine gift of reason and counsel seems to have been imparted to men for fraud, not for goodness.

But you press again and again that this is the fault of men, not of the gods. As if a physician should blame the gravity of the disease, a pilot the force of the storm; even these, indeed, are poor mortals, yet ridiculous: 'for who would have called you in,' one might say, 'if these things did not exist?' Against god one may argue more freely: 'You say the fault is in the vices of men: you should have given men that reason which would have shut out vices and fault.' Where, then, was there room for an error of the gods? For we leave our patrimonies in hope of handing them on well, in which we may be deceived; but how could god be deceived? Or as the Sun when he took up his son Phaethon into his car, or Neptune when Theseus destroyed Hippolytus, having got from his father Neptune the power of wishing thrice?

These things are the poets'; but we wish to be philosophers, authors of facts not of fables. And yet these very poetic gods, if they had known those things would be pernicious to their sons, would be thought to have erred in their benefit. And if it is true what Aristo of Chios was wont to say — that the philosophers harm their hearers who interpret well-spoken things ill (for prodigals could come out of the school of Aristippus, sour men out of the school of Zeno) — then plainly, if those who had heard them were going to come away vicious, because they interpreted the philosophers' discourse perversely, it were better for the philosophers to be silent than to harm those who had heard them;

so, if men turn the reason given by the immortal gods with good intent to fraud and malice, it had been better for the human race that it not be given than that it be given. As, if a physician should know that a sick man who has been bidden to take wine will take it too strong and straightway perish, he would be greatly at fault, so that Providence of yours is to be blamed, which gave reason to those whom it knew would use it perversely and wickedly. Unless, perhaps, you say it did not know. Would indeed that you might! But you will not dare, for I am not ignorant how greatly you esteem its name.

But this topic indeed can now be concluded. For if folly, by the consent of all philosophers, is a greater evil than if all the evils both of fortune and of the body were set on the other side, and yet no one attains wisdom, we are all in the greatest evils — we for whom you say it is best provided by the immortal gods. For as it makes no difference whether no one is well or no one can be well, so I do not understand what difference there is whether no one is wise or no one can be wise. But we are saying too much about a most manifest matter; while Telamon in one verse settles the whole topic, why the gods neglect men: 'For if they cared, it would be well with the good, ill with the bad; which now is not so.' They indeed ought to have made all men good, if they took thought for the human race;

but if that less, at least they ought to have taken thought for the good. Why, then, did the Carthaginian crush in Spain the two Scipios, bravest and best of men; why did Maximus bury his son, a man of consular rank; why did Hannibal slay Marcellus; why did Cannae carry off Paulus; why was the body of Regulus given to the cruelty of the Carthaginians; why did his own household walls not shelter Africanus? But these are old, and very many others; let us look at nearer ones. Why is my uncle, a most blameless and most learned man, Publius Rutilius, in exile; why was my comrade Drusus slain in his own house; why was that pattern of temperance and prudence, Quintus Scaevola, the chief pontiff, butchered before the image of Vesta; why before that too were so many leading men of the state slain by Cinna; why could Gaius Marius, most treacherous of all, bid Quintus Catulus, a man of most excellent dignity, to die?

The day would fail me if I should wish to number those good men to whom it has gone ill, nor less if I should recall those wicked men to whom it has gone most well. For why did Marius, so happily consul for the seventh time, die an old man in his own house; why did Cinna, most cruel of all, reign so long? 'But he paid the penalty.' It had been better that he be hindered and prevented from slaying so many of the highest men than that he himself at last pay the penalty. With the utmost torment and punishment Quintus Varius, a most ruthless man, perished; if it was because he had cut off Drusus with the sword and Metellus with poison, it had been better that those be preserved than that Varius pay the penalty of his crime. The tyrant Dionysius was for eight-and-thirty years master of a most opulent and most prosperous state;

how many before him, in the very flower of Greece, was Pisistratus! 'But Phalaris, but Apollodorus paid the penalty.' Yes, but after many had first been tortured and slain. And many robbers often pay the penalty, yet we cannot say that more captives have not been cruelly slain than robbers. We have heard that Anaxarchus the Democritean was tortured to death by the tyrant of Cyprus, that Zeno of Elea was slain amid torments; what shall I say of Socrates, over whose death I am wont to weep when I read Plato? Do you see, then, that, in the judgement of the gods, if they see human affairs, the distinction has been done away?

Diogenes the Cynic, indeed, was wont to say that Harpalus, who in those days was held a fortunate robber, bore witness against the gods, because he lived so long in that fortune. Dionysius, of whom I spoke before, when he had plundered the shrine of Proserpina at Locri, was sailing to Syracuse; and when he held his course with a most favourable wind, laughing he said: 'Do you see, my friends, what a good voyage the immortal gods grant to the sacrilegious?' And the shrewd fellow, when he had perceived this well and plainly, persevered in the same opinion. When he had brought his fleet to the Peloponnese and had come into the shrine of Olympian Jove, he took off from him a golden cloak of great weight, with which the tyrant Gelo had adorned Jove out of the spoils of the Carthaginians, and even jested over it, that a golden cloak was heavy in summer and cold in winter, and threw over him a woollen mantle, saying that this was fit for every season of the year. The same man bade the golden beard of Aesculapius at Epidaurus be taken off; for it was not fitting, he said, that the son should be bearded when in all the shrines the father was beardless.

Then he bade the silver tables be carried off from all the shrines, on which, since after the custom of old Greece there was inscribed 'belonging to the good gods,' he said he wished to make use of their goodness. The same man without hesitation took away the little golden Victories and the bowls and crowns which were held in the outstretched hands of the images, and said he was receiving, not carrying off, these things; for it was folly to be unwilling to take from those, holding them out and giving them, from whom we prayed for good things. And they say the same man brought out these things which I have said, taken from the shrines, into the forum, and sold them by the crier, and, the money exacted, made proclamation that whatever anyone had of sacred things he should bring back, before a certain day, each to its own shrine: so to impiety toward the gods he joined injustice toward men. This man, then, neither did Olympian Jove smite with a thunderbolt nor did Aesculapius destroy, wasting away with a wretched and lingering disease; but he died in his own bed, was borne to the pyre as a tyrant, and the power which he himself had gotten by crime he handed on to his son as a just and lawful inheritance.

Unwillingly does the discourse dwell on this point, for it seems to lend authority to sinning; and rightly would it seem so, were there not, even without any divine reason, the heavy weight of conscience itself, both of virtue and of vices, which taken away, all lies in ruins. For as neither a house nor a commonwealth would seem ordered by any reason and discipline, if in it there were no rewards for things rightly done and no punishments for sins, so there is assuredly no divine governance of the world over men, if in it there is no distinction between the good and the bad.

'But the gods neglect lesser things, and do not pursue the little fields of individuals nor their little vines, and, if blight or hail has harmed anyone, that was not for Jove to take notice of; not even in their kingdoms do kings care for all the least things': for so you say. As if I had a little while ago complained about the Formian farm of Publius Rutilius and not about his lost welfare. And this indeed all mortals so hold — that external conveniences, vineyards, crops, olive-groves, the abundance of fruits and produce, in short every convenience and prosperity of life, they have from the gods; but virtue no one ever ascribed as received from a god.

And rightly, no doubt; for on account of virtue we are justly praised and in virtue rightly glory; which would not happen if we had it as a gift from a god, not from ourselves. But indeed, when we are increased in honours, or in estate, or if we have gotten any other fortuitous good or driven off an evil, then we give thanks to the gods, then we think nothing added to our own praise. Did anyone ever give thanks to the gods because he was a good man? But because he was rich, because honoured, because safe; and they call Jove best and greatest on account of these things, not because he makes us just, temperate, wise, but because safe, sound, opulent, well-supplied;

nor did anyone ever vow a tenth to Hercules if he should be made wise — although Pythagoras, when he had discovered something new in geometry, is said to have sacrificed an ox to the Muses; but that indeed I do not believe, since he was unwilling to sacrifice a victim even to Apollo at Delos, lest he should sprinkle the altar with blood. But, to return to the point, this is the judgement of all mortals — that fortune is to be sought from god, but wisdom to be taken from oneself. Although we may consecrate shrines to Mind and to Virtue and to Faith, yet we see these placed in ourselves; the means of hope, of safety, of help, of victory must be sought from the gods. The prosperity and good fortune of the wicked, therefore, refute, as Diogenes said, all the force and power of the gods.

'But sometimes the good have good ends.' Those indeed we seize upon and ascribe, without any reason, to the immortal gods. But Diagoras, that one who is called the Atheist, when he had come to Samothrace, and a certain friend said to him: 'You, who think the gods neglect human things — do you not observe, from so many painted tablets, how many have escaped the force of the storm by their vows and come safe into harbour?' said: 'So it is; for those are nowhere painted who suffered shipwreck and perished at sea.' And the same man, when, as he was sailing, the passengers in an adverse storm, timid and terrified, told him that this had befallen them not unjustly, since they had taken him aboard the same ship, showed them in the same course many others labouring, and asked whether they believed Diagoras was being carried in those ships too. For so the matter stands, that toward prosperous or adverse fortune it makes no difference what kind of man you are, or how you have lived.

'The gods,' he says, 'do not take note of all things, not even kings.' What is the likeness? For if kings knowingly pass things over, it is a great fault; but for god there is not even the excuse of ignorance. Whom you defend gloriously, when you say that the power of the gods is such that, even if anyone has escaped the penalties of his crime by death, those penalties are demanded of his children, grandchildren, and descendants. O wonderful equity of the gods! Would any state endure a proposer of a law of this kind, that a son or grandson should be condemned if a father or grandfather had offended? 'What end will be set to the slaughter of the house of Tantalus, or what satiety of punishment will ever be given, for the death of Myrtilus, by paying penalties?' Whether the poets have corrupted the Stoics, or the Stoics have lent authority to the poets, I could not easily say;

for portents and shameful things are said by both. For neither did he whom the iambic of Hipponax had wounded, or who was hurt by the verse of Archilochus, contain a grief sent in by a god and not conceived by himself; nor, when we see the lust of Aegisthus or that of Paris, do we ask a cause sent by a god, when we almost hear the voice of guilt itself; nor do I judge the health of many sick men to have been given rather by Hippocrates than by Aesculapius; nor shall I ever say that the discipline of the Lacedaemonians was given to Sparta by Apollo rather than by Lycurgus. Critolaus, I say, overthrew Corinth, Hasdrubal Carthage; these two men gouged out those eyes of the sea-coast — not some angry god, whom you say cannot be angry at all.

But surely a god could have come to their aid and preserved cities so great and so noble; for you yourselves are wont to say that there is nothing which a god cannot do, and that without any toil; for as the limbs of men are moved by the mind itself and the will with no effort, so by the will of the gods all things can be fashioned, moved, and changed. And this you say not superstitiously and like old wives, but with a physical and consistent reasoning; for you say that the matter of things, out of which and in which all things are, is wholly flexible and changeable, so that there is nothing which cannot, however suddenly, be fashioned and changed out of it, but that the fashioner and governor of this universal matter is divine providence; this, then, whithersoever it moves itself, can bring about whatever it will. And so either it does not know what it can do, or it neglects human affairs, or it cannot judge what is best.

'It does not care for individual men.' No wonder: not even for states; not for these: not even for nations and peoples. But if it will despise even these, what wonder is it that the whole human race has been despised by it? But how, while you say the same — that the gods do not pursue all things — do you also will that dreams be distributed and divided among men by the immortal gods (this I say to you because it is your school's opinion about the truth of dreams), and also say that vows ought to be undertaken? For individuals make vows; the divine mind, then, hears even concerning individuals; you see, then, that it is not so occupied as you thought. Grant that it is stretched out, turning the sky, watching the earth, governing the seas: why does it suffer so many gods to do nothing and be idle? Why does it not set over human affairs some of those idle gods who were unfolded by you, Balbus, in numbers innumerable? These things, in the main, I had to say about the nature of the gods, not that I might do away with it, but that you might understand how obscure it is and how difficult its explanations have." When he had said this, Cotta ended.

But Lucilius said: "Too vehemently, Cotta, have you indeed inveighed against that doctrine of the Stoics which has been most devoutly and most prudently established by them concerning the providence of the gods. But since evening is coming on, you will give us some day that we may argue against these things. For there is a contest between me and you for our altars and hearths, and for the temples and shrines of the gods, and for the walls of the city, which you pontiffs say are holy, and you gird the city more carefully with religion than with the walls themselves; which I judge it impious to forsake, so long indeed as I can breathe."

Then said Cotta: "For my part I both wish to be refuted, Balbus, and chose rather to discuss the things I have argued than to pass judgement, and I know for certain that I can easily be overcome by you." "Doubtless," said Velleius, "who even thinks that dreams are sent to us by Jove — which yet are not so trivial as is the Stoics' discourse about the nature of the gods." When these things had been said, we parted thus: that to Velleius the discourse of Cotta seemed the truer, but to me that of Balbus seemed to incline more toward the likeness of truth.