The sources of On the Nature of the Gods

1. Aristotle 2 authority · 1 refuted · 3 endorsed 6 citations · 7 passages

   book 1 2 passages anchored here · book 2 5 passages anchored here

   The third book of Aristotle's Philosophy is explicitly named as the source of the critiqued doctrines.

   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.

2. Terence 1 authority · 2 neutral 3 citations · 4 passages

   book 2 2 passages anchored here · book 3 2 passages anchored here

   Terence's line is invoked to support the claim that ordinary usage deifies natural goods.

   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,

3. Homer 2 authority 2 citations · 3 passages

   book 2 · book 3 2 passages anchored here

   Homer's attaching of gods to heroes is cited as authoritative literary support for the claim that gods care for individual men

   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?

4. Plato 2 authority 2 citations

   book 2 · book 3

   Plato is explicitly named ('let us hear Plato, as a kind of god of philosophers') and his doctrine is used as authoritative support.

   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.

5. physical/etymological theology of the gods Cleanthes 2 extended 2 citations · 1 passage

   book 2

   Cleanthes is explicitly credited with elaborating the doctrine at greater length.

   And this topic, handled by Zeno, was afterwards expounded at greater length by Cleanthes and Chrysippus.

6. unspecified poem (Annales or similar) Ennius 1 authority · 1 neutral 2 citations

   book 2 2 passages anchored here

   Ennius is named as the poet whose verses are invoked to support the argument for the gods' existence.

   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?

7. Euripides 1 authority 1 citation

   book 2

   Euripides is explicitly quoted and named in support of the argument.

   'You see the boundless ether spread on high, that with its tender embrace clasps the earth round about:

8. Laws Plato 1 refuted 1 citation

   book 1

   Plato's Laws is explicitly named as a distinct work whose claims are contrasted with the Timaeus to show contradiction.

   It would be long to speak of Plato's inconsistency, who in the Timaeus denies that the father of this world can be named, while in the books of the Laws he holds that we ought not to inquire at all what god is.

9. Phaenomena Aratus 1 extended 1 citation · 9 passages

   book 2 9 passages anchored here

   The passage is Cicero's own poetic translation/adaptation of the Aratean star-catalogue tradition (Phaenomena), extending it into Latin verse within the dialogue; though Aratus is not named within these paragraphs, the content is unmist …

   and with stars equal and marked out alike the little Cynosura traverses the same pole of the sky.

10. Phormio Terence 1 neutral 1 citation

    book 3

    Phormio is quoted directly: 'Bring me the old man; all my counsels are now drawn up in my heart,' citing Terence's comedy of that name.

    that Phormio could say:

11. Theogony Hesiod 1 extended 1 citation

    book 1

    The Theogony is explicitly named as Hesiod's account of the gods' origin, which Zeno reinterprets.

    And when he interprets Hesiod's Theogony — that is, the origin of the gods — he abolishes altogether the customary and received notions of the gods;

12. Timaeus Plato 1 refuted 1 citation · 4 passages

    book 1 4 passages anchored here

    Plato's Timaeus is explicitly named as the source of the craftsman-god doctrine and is repeatedly quoted-by-reference and argued against.

    It would be long to speak of Plato's inconsistency, who in the Timaeus denies that the father of this world can be named, while in the books of the Laws he holds that we ought not to inquire at all what god is.

13. Xenophon 1 refuted 1 citation

    book 1

    Xenophon's report of Socrates' sayings is explicitly cited and judged inconsistent.

    for in the sayings which he reported as spoken by Socrates he makes Socrates argue that we ought not to inquire into the shape of god, and the same Socrates call both the sun and the soul a god, and speak now of one god, now of several — which fall into nearly the same mistakes as those we lay to Plato's charge.

Each stands at a single passage. The chapter carries the anchors.

book 1 30 sources

Academics (four books) · Kyriai Doxai · On Minerva · On the Nature of the Gods (book five) · On the Standard and Judgement · Physicus · Stoic doctrine of friendship among the wise · The Comrades · attribution of the Orphic poem to Cercon · book on Stoic-Peripatetic agreement · books on holiness and piety toward the gods · books on the nature of the gods · doctrine that reason exists only in human shape · doctrine that religion was invented by wise men for the commonwealth · doctrine that useful things were reckoned as gods · fables of Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod, and Homer · line on the ape's resemblance to man · pontifical books · satiric verse mentioning the 'son of Neptune' · sayings of Metrodorus · sayings/maxims of Epicurus · teachings of Pythagoras · teachings on the nature of the gods (doxography from Thales onward) · theory of deified mortals · translation/adaptation of Euhemerus's theory · unnamed treatise 'Of the gods' · unspecified Epicurean doctrinal writings (on atomic images and isonomia) · unspecified natural philosophy of Democritus and Leucippus · various accounts of the nature of the gods (images, mind-principles, animate images, world-embracing images) · verses on Roscius

book 2 27 sources

Academic arguments against the Stoics · Academic epistemology (scepticism about the senses and reason) · Annals · Epicurean rejection of divination · Sibylline prophecies · Stoic doctrine of ekpyrosis (world-conflagration) · argument from human reason to divine nature · argument on heat and vitality · argument on the world's perfection and hierarchy of purposes · argument that the sun is fiery · astronomical poem (Phaenomena) · history · physical theology of nature as artificer fire · saying on the origin of human intelligence · syllogistic arguments for the world's rationality and divinity · teaching on the four causes of the notion of the gods · teaching on the sufficiency of virtue · the mechanical sphere · theory of images/simulacra and inert gods · theory of phantoms/simulacra · unspecified Stoic teaching on the pig's soul · unspecified historical work · unspecified play (the shepherd's speech) · unspecified poetic tradition on the golden and iron races · unspecified tragedy (lines on ether/sky) · unspecified verses on Jove · unspecified view on world-conflagration

book 3 27 sources

Greek proverb about the certainty of the Sagra · Lex Aquilia / judgement on evil fraud (de dolo malo) · Stoic doctrine of providence · Stoic doctrine of the four sources of belief in the gods · Stoic theological allegory (etymological doctrine of divine names) · Thyestes (tragedy) · account of the tripod contest with Apollo and Hercules genealogies · argument from the mind's origin · arguments against the immortality of any body or living being · cosmic harmony doctrine · doctrine that all force is fire · explanation of solstitial turning of the sun · golden oration on Numa's sacrificial ladles · line on Hercules's pyre on Mount Oeta · philosophy of Epicurus · pontifical law and custom of the forefathers · saying about votive tablets and shipwreck survivors · saying on philosophers harming hearers · saying on the prosperity of the wicked as evidence against the gods · sorites argument against the divinity of underworld and primordial figures · syllogism on man's inability and divine causation · syllogism on the world's use of reason · the philosophical school of the Stoa · tragedy naming Absyrtus as Aegialeus · unspecified poem containing 'this gleaming vault on high, whom all men call upon as Jove' · unspecified tragedy (possibly Ennius, Medea) · unspecified verse (Telamon)

The harvest records where a citation is made: the paragraph in the citing book, and the book that paragraph stands in. It does not record which page of this book is meant. Where the citing text names a locus, you will find it in the quotation.

1. On Fate Cicero, Marcus Tullius 1 neutral 1 citation

   on fate

   Explicitly named as one of the narrator's own earlier books, referenced for its method of balanced argument.

   But what I did in my other books, those on the nature of the gods, and likewise in those I published on divination—namely, that the argument should be developed continuously on both sides, so that each man might the more readily accept whatever seemed to him most probable—a certain accident prevented me from doing in this discussion on fate.