Book 3

3.1 When Balbus had finished, Cotta smiled. “You are late in telling me what to defend, Balbus. While you were speaking, I was thinking over what I should say in reply—not so much to refute you as to inquire into what I did not fully understand. But since everyone must use his own judgment, it is hard for me to think just what you would like.”

3.2 Here Velleius said, “You have no idea, Cotta, how eagerly I am waiting to hear you. Our friend Balbus enjoyed your argument against Epicurus; now, in return, I will give you an attentive hearing against the Stoics. I hope you have come well prepared, as you usually do.”

3.3 “By Hercules, I have, Velleius,” Cotta replied. “My position with Lucilius is not the same as it was with you.”

“How is that?” he asked.

“Because your Epicurus seems to me to put up no great fight about the immortal gods. He merely dares not deny their existence, for fear of incurring hatred or prosecution. But when he insists that the gods do nothing, care for nothing, and possess human limbs without having any use for those limbs, he seems to be playing with us, and to think it enough to say that there is a certain blessed and eternal nature.”

3.4 “But you noticed, I imagine, how much Balbus said, and how closely his points fitted and held together, even if they were not altogether true. As I said, then, I intend not so much to refute his speech as to inquire into what I did not fully understand. So I leave it to you, Balbus: would you rather answer my questions one by one about what I have not quite grasped, or hear my entire speech?”

“For my part,” said Balbus, “if you want anything explained, I would rather answer. But if you are questioning me less to understand than to refute me, I will do whichever you wish: either answer each question as you ask it, or answer everything when you have finished.”

3.5 “Excellent,” said Cotta. “Then let us follow where the discussion itself leads us. But before the subject, a few words about myself. I am deeply moved, Balbus, by your authority, and by that appeal at the end of your speech, urging me to remember that I am both Cotta and a pontiff. Its point, I suppose, was that I should defend the beliefs about the immortal gods inherited from our ancestors, and their sacrifices, ceremonies, and religious observances. I certainly will always defend them, as I always have. No argument from anyone, learned or unlearned, will ever dislodge me from the conviction I inherited from our ancestors about the worship of the immortal gods. But in matters of religion I follow the chief pontiffs Tiberius Coruncanius, Publius Scipio, and Publius Scaevola—not Zeno or Cleanthes or Chrysippus. And I have Gaius Laelius, both augur and sage, whom I would rather hear speaking on religion in that celebrated speech than any leader of the Stoics. The entire religion of the Roman people falls into sacrifices and auspices, with a third category added whenever interpreters of the Sibyl or diviners examining entrails give warnings drawn from portents and prodigies to foretell the future. I have never thought that any of these religious practices should be slighted. I am convinced that Romulus, by establishing the auspices, and Numa, by establishing sacrifices, laid the foundations of our state, which surely could never have grown so great without winning the fullest favor of the immortal gods.”

3.6 “You have heard, Balbus, what Cotta thinks, what a pontiff thinks. Now let me understand what you think. From you, as a philosopher, I ought to receive a reasoned account of religion; our ancestors I ought to trust even when they give no reason.”

“What account, then,” said Balbus, “do you require of me, Cotta?”

“Your division,” he replied, “had four parts: first you intended to show that gods exist; next, what they are like; then, that they govern the world; and finally, that they care for human affairs. That was your division, if I remember rightly.”

“Quite rightly,” said Balbus. “But I am waiting for your questions.”

3.7 “Let us examine each point in order,” said Cotta. “If the first is what everyone but the utterly impious agrees on—that gods exist—this conviction, at least, cannot be burned out of my heart. Yet you give me no instruction at all about why this belief, which I hold on the authority of our ancestors, should be true.”

“If you are convinced,” said Balbus, “why do you want to learn it from me?”

“Because,” Cotta replied, “I approach this discussion as if I had never heard or thought anything about the immortal gods. Take me as a novice, an untouched pupil, and teach me what I ask to know.”

3.8 “Tell me, then,” he said, “what you want to know.”

“What do I want? First, why, after saying that [the obvious point in] this part needed no argument at all, since it was obvious and universally agreed that gods exist, you spoke at such length on that very point.”

“Because I have noticed, Cotta,” he said, “that you too, when speaking in court, often overwhelm a judge with as many arguments as you can, provided the case allows it. Philosophers do the same, and I have done it as best I could. Your question is rather like asking why I look at you with both eyes instead of closing one, when I could achieve the same result with one.”

3.9 “You must judge how close that comparison is,” said Cotta. “In a lawsuit, if something is evident and everyone agrees on it, I do not usually argue the point: argument weakens what is self-evident. And even if I did so in lawsuits, I would not do the same in a discussion as exacting as this. There would be no reason to close one eye, since both have the same view, and since nature, which you claim is wise, has chosen to give us two openings for light, pierced through from the mind to the eyes. But because you did not trust the point to be as obvious as you would like, you tried to prove the gods’ existence by many arguments. For me, one was enough: that our ancestors handed down this belief to us. But you disdain authorities and fight with reason.”

3.10 “Allow my reason, then, to contend with yours.

“You bring forward all these arguments for the existence of gods, and by arguing make doubtful what in my opinion is not doubtful at all. I committed to memory not only the number but the order of your arguments. The first was that, on looking up at the sky, we immediately understand that some divine power governs these things. From this came the quotation, ‘Look at this blazing height above, which all invoke as Jupiter.’”

3.11 “As if any of us called that Jupiter rather than the god on the Capitol! Or as if it were obvious and universally agreed that those beings are gods, when Velleius and many others will not even grant you that they are alive. You also thought it a weighty argument that belief in the immortal gods was universal and growing daily. Are matters of such importance, then, to be decided by the opinions of fools—especially in your school, which calls them mad? ‘But we see the gods in person: Postumius at Lake Regillus, Vatinius on the Salarian Way’—and something, too, about the Locrians’ battle by the Sagra. These beings you called the sons of Tyndareus—that is, men born of a man—and Homer, who lived not long after their time, says they were buried at Sparta. Do you think they came to meet Vatinius on white geldings, without a single groom, and announced the Roman people’s victory to Vatinius, a country fellow, rather than to Marcus Cato, then our leading citizen? Do you also believe that the mark still visible on a flint at Lake Regillus, resembling a hoofprint, was made by Castor’s horse?”

3.12 “Would you not rather believe what can be supported by argument—that the souls of distinguished men, such as those sons of Tyndareus, are divine and eternal—than that men who had once been cremated could ride horses and fight in battle? Or if you say this could happen, you must explain how, not produce old women’s tales.”

3.13 “Do you think these are tales?” Lucilius asked. “Do you not see the temple dedicated by Aulus Postumius to Castor and Pollux in the Forum? Do you not see the Senate’s decree concerning Vatinius? As for the Sagra, the Greeks even have a familiar proverb: they say what they affirm is more certain than what happened at the Sagra. Should not these authorities carry weight with you?”

“You fight me with hearsay, Balbus,” Cotta replied, “but I ask you for reasons. […][…][…][…] follow what is going to happen.”

3.14 “For no one can escape what is going to happen. Often it is not even useful to know the future. It is wretched to torment yourself without accomplishing anything, without even that last, universal comfort, hope—especially since you yourselves say that everything happens by fate, and that fate is what has always been true from all eternity. What benefit is there, then, what aid to taking precautions, in knowing that something will happen, when it will certainly happen anyway? Besides, where does this divination come from? Who discovered the significance of a cleft in a liver? Who took note of the crow’s call, or of lots? I believe in these things, and I cannot treat with contempt the augural staff of Attus Navius, whom you mentioned. But I must learn from philosophers how these things came to be understood, especially since those diviners of yours are wrong about so very much.”

3.15 “‘But doctors too,’ you said, ‘are often mistaken.’ What resemblance is there between medicine, whose principles I can see, and divination, whose origin I do not understand? You also think the gods were appeased by the self-sacrifice of the Decii. How monstrous was their injustice, if they could not be reconciled to the Roman people unless men like those died! That was a commander’s maneuver, what the Greeks call a stratagem—but the maneuver of commanders who cared for their country and did not spare their lives. They thought that the army would follow its commander as he spurred his horse and hurled himself against the enemy; and so it did. As for the voice of Faunus, I have certainly never heard it. If you say you have, I will believe you, though I have no idea what Faunus actually is. So far, then, Balbus, as far as your contribution goes, I do not understand that gods exist. I do believe they exist, but the Stoics teach me nothing.”

3.16 “For Cleanthes, as you said, thinks that conceptions of gods have taken shape in human minds in four ways. One, about which I have said enough, arose from foreknowledge of the future; a second from violent storms and other upheavals; a third from the usefulness and abundance of the things we enjoy; and a fourth from the ordered movements of the stars and the regularity of the heavens. We have discussed foreknowledge. As for disturbances in sky, sea, and earth, we cannot deny that, when they occur, many people fear them and think they are the work of the immortal gods.”

3.17 “But the question is not whether there are people who believe in gods; it is whether gods exist or not. The other reasons Cleanthes gives—the abundance of the benefits we receive, and the ordered succession of the seasons and regularity of the heavens—we shall consider when we discuss the providence of the gods, on which you spoke at such length, Balbus.”

3.18 “To that same point we shall also postpone what you attributed to Chrysippus: that, since nature contains something human beings could not produce, there must be something better than humanity. We shall postpone your comparisons between the beauties of a house and the beauty of the world, and your appeal to the harmony and accord of the universe as a whole. Zeno’s brief and, as you thought, pointed syllogisms will also wait for the part of the discussion I have just named. Then, in their proper place, we shall examine all your physical arguments about the power of fire and the heat from which, you said, everything is generated. Everything you said the day before yesterday, when trying to prove the existence of gods, about why the universe as a whole, the sun, the moon, and the stars possess sensation and intelligence, I shall reserve for that same occasion.”

3.19 “But I shall keep asking you the same question: by what reasoning do you convince yourself that gods exist?”

“I believe I have supplied the reasoning,” said Balbus. “But you refute it in such a way that, just when you seem about to question me and I have prepared to answer, you suddenly turn the discussion aside and give me no opportunity to reply. So matters of the greatest importance have passed without discussion—divination and fate, subjects on which you speak briefly but our school usually has much to say. Yet they are separate from the question now before us. So, if you please, do not jumble the issues; let us settle what this discussion is asking.”

3.20 “Very well,” said Cotta. “Since you divided the whole inquiry into four parts, and we have discussed the first, let us consider the second. It seemed to me to amount to this: while trying to show what the gods are like, you showed that there are none. You said it was extremely difficult to draw the mind away from what the eyes are accustomed to seeing. But since nothing was more excellent than god, you had no doubt that the world was a god, because nothing in nature was better than the world—if only we could conceive of it as alive, or rather see this with the mind as we see other things with our eyes.”

3.21 “But when you deny that anything is better than the world, what do you mean by ‘better’? If more beautiful, I agree; if better suited to our needs, I agree with that too. But if you mean that nothing is wiser than the world, I utterly disagree—not because it is hard to draw my mind away from my eyes, but because the more I withdraw it, the less I can grasp in thought what you intend. ‘Nothing in nature is better than the world.’ Nor is anything on earth better than our city. Do you therefore think the city possesses reason, thought, and intelligence? Or, because it does not, do you think an ant should be ranked above this most beautiful city, because the city has no sensation, while the ant has not only sensation but intelligence, reason, and memory? You must see what is conceded to you, Balbus, not simply assume whatever you wish.”

3.22 “For that whole line of argument was an expansion of Zeno’s old syllogism, brief and, as you thought, pointed […]. Zeno argues as follows: ‘What employs reason is better than what does not employ reason; but nothing is better than the world; therefore the world employs reason.’”

3.23 “If you accept this, you will soon make the world appear an excellent reader of books. Following Zeno’s footsteps, you can construct this syllogism: ‘What is literate is better than what is not literate; but nothing is better than the world; therefore the world is literate.’ In the same way it will also be eloquent, a mathematician and musician, learned in every discipline—in short, a philosopher. You often said that nothing happens without god, and that nature has no power to fashion what is unlike itself. Am I to grant, then, that the world is not only alive and wise, but a lyre player and a trumpeter too, since men skilled in these arts also spring from it? This father of the Stoics offers no reason, then, why we should think the world employs reason, or even why we should think it alive. The world, therefore, is not a god; and yet nothing is better than it. For nothing is more beautiful, nothing more beneficial to us, nothing more splendid to look at or more regular in motion.

“But if the universe as a whole is not a god, neither are the stars, whose countless numbers you placed among the gods. Their even and everlasting courses delighted you—and rightly, by Hercules, for their regularity is marvelous and unbelievable.”

3.24 “But not everything, Balbus, that follows a fixed and regular course must be attributed to a god rather than to nature. What could be more regular, do you think, than the recurring ebb and flow of the Euripus at Chalcis, or of the Sicilian strait, or the surging Ocean in those places ‘where the ravenous wave divides Europe from Libya’? What of the tides on the coasts of Spain or Britain? Can their advance and retreat at fixed times not occur without a god? Consider, please: if we call divine every motion and everything that keeps its order at fixed times, must we not also call tertian and quartan fevers divine? What could be more regular than their recurrence and course? But a reason must be given for all such things.”

3.25 “When you cannot give one, you take refuge in god as if at an altar.

“You also thought Chrysippus spoke shrewdly—a man undoubtedly quick-witted and seasoned. I call people quick-witted whose minds turn quickly, and seasoned those whose minds have been toughened by experience as hands are by work. He says, then: ‘If there is something a human being cannot produce, whoever produces it is better than a human being. But a human being cannot produce the things found in the world. Whoever could produce them is therefore superior to humanity. But who could be superior to humanity except a god? Therefore a god exists.’ All these arguments turn on the same error as Zeno’s.”

3.26 “For no distinction is made between what is better and what is more excellent, or between nature and reason. Chrysippus also denies that, if there are no gods, anything in all nature is better than humanity. Yet he considers it the height of arrogance for anyone to think that nothing is better than a human being. Granted, it may be arrogant to value oneself above the world. But it is not arrogant—rather, it is sensible—to understand that one has sensation and reason, and that Orion and the Dog Star do not. He also says, ‘If a house is beautiful, we understand that it was built for its owners, not for mice; likewise we ought to think of the world as the gods’ house.’ I certainly would think so, if I believed it had been built, rather than—as I shall show—formed by nature.”

3.27 “But Socrates in Xenophon asks where we could have obtained our minds if there were no mind in the world. And I ask where we obtained speech, rhythm, and song—unless we really think the sun talks with the moon when it draws nearer, or that the world sings in harmony, as Pythagoras believes. These are nature’s works, Balbus: not nature ‘proceeding artistically,’ as Zeno says—we shall soon see what that means—but nature setting everything in motion and action through its own movements and changes.”

3.28 “So I liked that account of nature’s harmony and accord, in which you said that its parts, joined as if by kinship, act together. What I did not accept was your denial that this could happen unless they were held together by a single divine breath. Nature holds together and endures by its own powers, not those of gods. It has that kind of mutual accord which the Greeks call ‘sympathy.’ But the greater this is through nature’s own spontaneous action, the less reason there is to think it the work of divine intelligence.”

3.29 “How, though, do you answer the arguments Carneades used to advance? If no body is immortal, no body is everlasting; but no body is immortal, nor is any body indivisible or incapable of being broken or pulled apart. Since every living being has a nature susceptible to outside influences, none can escape the necessity of receiving something from without—of undergoing, as it were, and suffering something. If every living being is like this, none is immortal. Likewise, if every living being can be cut and divided, none is indivisible, none eternal. But every living being is liable to receive and undergo an external force. Every living being must therefore be mortal, capable of dissolution and division.”

3.30 “For if all wax were changeable, nothing made of wax could be unchangeable; likewise nothing made of silver or bronze, if the nature of silver and bronze were changeable. In the same way, then, if all things that are […] from which everything is composed are changeable, no body can be unchangeable. But the elements of which everything is composed are changeable, in your view; therefore every body is changeable. Yet if any body were immortal, not every body would be changeable. The result is that every body is mortal. For every body is either water or air or fire or earth, or something compounded of these, or of some portion of them.”

3.31 “None of these is exempt from destruction. Everything earthy can be divided; liquid is so soft that it can easily be compressed and crushed; fire and air are very easily driven aside by any blow, and by nature yield readily and disperse. Besides, all these things perish when they turn into another element: this happens when earth changes to water, when air arises from water, and ether from air, and when these same elements return in the opposite direction. But if the elements that compose every living being perish, no living being is everlasting.”

3.32 “And even if we leave this aside, no living being can be found that was never born and will always exist. For every living being has sensations: it therefore feels heat and cold, sweetness and bitterness; no sense can receive pleasant impressions without also receiving their opposites. If, then, it feels pleasure, it feels pain as well; and what is subject to pain must also be subject to destruction. We must therefore admit that every living being is mortal. Further, if something feels neither pleasure nor pain, it cannot be a living being.”

3.33 “But if whatever is a living being must feel them, and whatever feels them cannot be eternal, and every living being has sensations, then no living being is eternal. Further, there can be no living being without natural desire and aversion. What accords with nature is desired, and its opposites are avoided. Every living being desires some things and flees others; what it flees is contrary to its nature, and what is contrary to nature has the power to destroy. Every living being must therefore perish.”

3.34 “There are countless grounds on which we can establish and demonstrate that nothing endowed with sensation can escape destruction. For the very things we feel—cold, heat, pleasure, pain, and the rest—destroy us when intensified. No living being lacks sensation; therefore no living being is eternal. Moreover, a living being’s nature is either simple—earthy, fiery, airy, or watery, a condition we cannot even conceive—or compounded of several elements, each with its own place toward which nature’s force carries it: one to the lowest region, another to the highest, another to the middle. These can hold together for a certain time, but by no means forever: each must be swept by nature to its own place. No living being, then, is everlasting.”

3.35 “But your people, Balbus, usually trace everything back to the power of fire, following, I believe, Heraclitus. Not everyone interprets even him in the same way; †since he did not wish what he said to be understood†, let us leave him aside. You, however, say that every active force is fire, and that living beings therefore die when their heat fails, while throughout nature what has warmth lives and flourishes. I do not understand why bodies die when their heat is extinguished, but not when their moisture or breath is lost—especially since they also die from too much heat.”

3.36 “So heat is no exception in this respect. Still, let us see where the argument leads. Your view, I think, is that, outside living bodies, nothing in nature and the world is alive except fire. Why fire rather than breath, of which living beings’ souls too consist, and from which they are called ‘animate’? How can you assume as conceded that the soul is nothing but fire? It seems more plausible that the soul is something like a blend of fire and breath. ‘But if fire is itself alive, with no admixture of another element, then, since its presence in our bodies enables us to feel, it cannot itself lack sensation.’ Again, the same reply applies: whatever has sensation must feel both pleasure and pain, and whatever pain can reach, destruction can reach as well. The result is that you cannot even make fire eternal.”

3.37 “What, then? Do you not also hold that every fire needs food and cannot possibly endure unless it is fed; that sun, moon, and the other stars are nourished by water, some fresh, some seawater? Cleanthes gives this as the reason the sun turns back and does not advance beyond the summer circle or the winter one: it must not stray too far from its food. We shall consider the merits of this account shortly. For now, let us draw the conclusion: what can perish is not eternal by nature; fire will perish unless it is fed; therefore fire is not everlasting by nature.”

3.38 “What sort of god, moreover, can we conceive who possesses no virtue? Shall we attribute practical wisdom to a god, the knowledge of things good, bad, and neither good nor bad? If nothing bad affects him or can affect him, what need has he to distinguish good from bad? What need has he of reasoning or understanding, which we use to reach the obscure through the evident, when nothing can be obscure to a god? As for justice, which allots each his due, what has that to do with gods? Human fellowship and community, as you say yourselves, brought justice into being. Temperance consists in forgoing bodily pleasures: if there is room for it in heaven, there is room for pleasures too. And how can a god be conceived as courageous? In pain, in toil, or in danger?”

3.39 “None of these touches a god. How, then, can we conceive of a god who neither employs reason nor possesses any virtue?

“Nor, when I consider what the Stoics say, can I look down on the ignorance of ordinary, uneducated people. Here are the practices of the uneducated: the Syrians worship a fish; the Egyptians have consecrated almost every kind of animal. In Greece they have many gods who were once human: Alabandus at Alabanda, Tenes at Tenedos, and throughout Greece Leucothea, who was Ino, and her son Palaemon—Hercules, Aesculapius, the sons of Tyndareus, our own Romulus, and many others, whom they think admitted to heaven like new citizens added to the register.”

3.40 “So much for the unlearned. What of you philosophers, who know better? I pass over your lofty doctrines: let the world itself be a god. This, I suppose, is that ‘blazing height above, which all invoke as Jupiter.’ Why, then, do we add more gods? And what a multitude! To me, at least, they seem very numerous. You count the individual stars as gods, and call them either by animals’ names—the Goat, the Scorpion, the Bull, the Lion—or by those of inanimate things—the Argo, the Altar, the Crown.”

3.41 “But even if we concede these points, how can the rest not merely be conceded but even understood? When we call grain Ceres and wine Liber, we are using a familiar figure of speech. But do you think anyone so mad as to believe that what he eats is a god? As for those you say have passed from humanity into the company of gods, give an account of how this could happen, or why it has ceased to happen, and I will gladly learn. As things stand, I cannot see how the man to whom, as Accius says, ‘torches were brought on Mount Oeta,’ could pass from that burning ‘into his father’s eternal home.’ Yet Homer has Ulysses meet him in the underworld, like the others who had departed this life.”

3.42 “Indeed, I should very much like to know which Hercules in particular we worship. Those who explore the inner recesses of obscure literature hand down several. The oldest was born of Jupiter—but the oldest Jupiter, too, since we also find several Jupiters in the ancient writings of the Greeks. From him and Lysithoe, then, came the Hercules whom we are told contended with Apollo over the tripod. A second, an Egyptian, is said to have been born of the Nile and to have composed the Phrygian writings. A third belongs to the Idaean Fingers, to whom they bring offerings for the dead †to whom. A fourth, son of Jupiter and Asteria, Latona’s sister, is worshiped especially at Tyre; they say Carthage was his daughter. A fifth is in India, called Belus. The sixth is this familiar son of Alcmena, fathered by Jupiter—but the third Jupiter, since, as I shall soon show, several Jupiters too have come down to us.”

3.43 “Since the discussion has brought me to this point, I will show that I have learned better lessons on worshiping the immortal gods from pontifical law and ancestral custom, from those little sacrificial cups Numa left us, of which Laelius speaks in that precious little speech, than from the reasoning of the Stoics. For if I follow you, tell me what to answer someone who asks me this: ‘If there are gods […], are the Nymphs also goddesses? If the Nymphs are, so are the little Pans and Satyrs. But these are not gods; therefore the Nymphs are not [goddesses] either. Yet temples have been publicly vowed and dedicated to them. Therefore the other gods to whom temples have been dedicated are not gods either. Go further: you count Jupiter and Neptune as gods; therefore their brother Orcus is also a god, and the rivers said to flow in the underworld—Acheron, Cocytus, Pyriphlegethon—and then Charon and Cerberus must be considered gods.’”

3.44 “‘But that must be rejected; therefore Orcus is not a god either. What do you say, then, about his brothers?’ Carneades used to say these things not to abolish the gods—what could less befit a philosopher?—but to prove that the Stoics explain nothing about them. He therefore pressed on: ‘Well, if these brothers are counted among the gods, can their father Saturn be denied a place, when he is so widely worshiped, especially in the West? If he is a god, we must admit that his father Heaven is also a god. If so, Heaven’s parents, Aether and Day, must also be held gods, along with their brothers and sisters, whom the ancient genealogists name as follows: Love, Deceit, †Measure, Toil, Envy, Fate, Old Age, Death, Darkness, Misery, Lamentation, Favor, Fraud, Obstinacy, the Fates, the Hesperides, Dreams. All these, they say, were born of Erebus and Night. Either we must accept these monstrosities, then, or reject those first gods too.’”

3.45 “What? Will you say that Apollo, Vulcan, Mercury, and the others are gods, but hesitate over Hercules, Aesculapius, Liber, Castor, and Pollux? Yet these are worshiped just as much as those, and among some peoples far more. These too, then, must be considered gods, though born of mortal mothers. What of Aristaeus, said to have discovered the olive, Apollo’s son; Theseus, Neptune’s son; and the others whose fathers are gods? Will they not be counted among the gods? What of those whose mothers are goddesses? Even more so, I imagine. Just as [in] civil law the child of a free mother is free, so by natural law the child of a divine mother must be a god. Thus the islanders of Astypalaea worship Achilles with the greatest reverence. If he is a god, Orpheus and Rhesus are gods too, each born of a Muse—unless perhaps marriages at sea rank higher than those on land. If these are not gods because they are worshiped nowhere, how are the others gods?”

3.46 “Consider, then, whether these honors are paid to human excellence, not immortality—as you too, Balbus, seemed to suggest. And if you think Latona a goddess, how can you not think the same of Hecate, whose mother Asteria is Latona’s sister? Or is she a goddess too? We have seen her altars and shrines in Greece. But if she is a goddess, why not the Eumenides? If they are goddesses—they have a sanctuary at Athens and, as I understand it, the grove of Furina here at Rome—then the Furies are goddesses, watchers, I suppose, and avengers of crime and wickedness.”

3.47 “But if there are gods of a kind that intervene in human affairs, Natio too must be considered a goddess. We regularly offer sacrifice to her when we make the circuit of the shrines in the territory of Ardea. Because she watches over married women in childbirth, she was named Natio, Birth, from those being born. If she is a goddess, all those you mentioned are gods: Honor, Faith, Mind, Concord; therefore Hope and Moneta the Warner too, and everything we can fashion for ourselves in thought. If that is not plausible, neither is the premise from which these conclusions flowed. Tell me, moreover: if those we worship and have received by tradition are gods, why should we not count Serapis and Isis in the same class? If we do, why reject the gods of foreign peoples? We shall then include among the gods oxen and horses, ibises and hawks, asps, crocodiles and fish, dogs, wolves and cats, and many other beasts besides. If we reject these, we shall also reject the premises that gave rise to them.”

3.48 “What next? Will Ino be considered a goddess and called Leucothea, the White Goddess, by the Greeks, and Matuta by us, though she is Cadmus’s daughter, while Circe, Pasiphae, and Aeetes, born of Perseis, Ocean’s daughter, and fathered by the Sun, are not counted among the gods? Yet our colonists at Circeii also worship Circe devoutly. So you consider her a goddess. What will you answer Medea, whose two grandfathers were gods, the Sun and Ocean, and whose father was Aeetes and mother Idyia? What of her brother Absyrtus—called Aegialeus in Pacuvius, though the former name is more common in ancient writings? If these are not gods, I fear for Ino’s position; for all these claims have flowed from the same source.”

3.49 “Will Amphiaraus and Trophonius, then, be gods? Our tax contractors, at least, when the censors’ contract exempted lands belonging to immortal gods in Boeotia, denied that anyone who had once been human was immortal. But if these are gods, Erechtheus certainly is: we have seen both his shrine and his priest at Athens. If we make him a god, what doubt can we have about Codrus, or the others who fell fighting for their country’s freedom? If this is not acceptable, neither should we accept the earlier claims from which these flow.”

3.50 “In most states, indeed, we can understand that the memory of brave men has been consecrated with honors paid to immortal gods in order to foster courage, so that the best men might more readily face danger for their country. For this very reason Erechtheus and his daughters are counted among the gods at Athens, where there is also the daughters of Leos’ shrine, called the Leocorion. The people of Alabanda worship Alabandus, who founded that city, more devoutly than any of the renowned gods. When someone there pestered Stratonicus, insisting that Alabandus was a god but Hercules was not, he gave one of his many witty replies: ‘Then,’”

3.51 “he said, ‘let Alabandus be angry with me, and Hercules with you.’ But do you not see, Balbus, how far your arguments drawn from heaven and the stars spread? The sun and moon are gods; the Greeks identify the one with Apollo, the other with Diana. But if the moon is a goddess, then the Morning Star and the other wandering stars will also take their place among the gods; therefore the fixed stars too. Why should the rainbow’s form not be counted among the gods? It is beautiful, and because of that appearance, and because its origin is marvelous, it is said to be the daughter of Thaumas, Wonder. If its nature is divine, what will you do with clouds? The rainbow itself is made from clouds colored in a certain way; one cloud is even said to have given birth to the Centaurs. But if you enroll clouds among the gods, you will certainly have to enroll storms, which have been consecrated in the rites of the Roman people. Rain, storm clouds, squalls, and whirlwinds must therefore be considered gods. Our generals, at least, have customarily sacrificed a victim to the waves when embarking at sea.”

3.52 “Again, if Ceres is named from ‘bearing,’ as you said, the earth itself is a goddess—and is held to be one, for what else is Tellus? But if the earth is, so is the sea, which you identified with Neptune; therefore rivers and springs too. Accordingly, Masso dedicated a shrine to Fons, the god of springs, after his campaign in Corsica; and in the augurs’ prayer we see Tiberinus, Spino, Anemo, Nodinus, and other names of neighboring rivers. Either this will spread without limit, then, or we shall accept none of it. That limitless system of superstition cannot be approved; therefore none of these claims should be approved.”

3.53 “So, Balbus, we must also argue against those who say that these gods, whom we all worship with solemn reverence, were transferred from the human race to heaven not in reality but only in belief. To begin with, the so-called theologians count three Jupiters. The first and second were born in Arcadia: one had Aether for his father and, they say, fathered Proserpina and Liber; the other had Heaven for his father, and is said to have fathered Minerva, whom they call the originator and inventor of war. The third was a Cretan, Saturn’s son, whose tomb is shown on that island. The Greeks also give the name Dioscuri, Sons of Zeus, to several groups. First are the three called the Anactes, the Lords, at Athens: Tritopatreus, Eubuleus, and Dionysus, born of the most ancient King Jupiter and Proserpina. Second are Castor and Pollux, born of the third Jupiter and Leda. The third group, according to some, consists of Alco, Melampus, and †Euiolus, sons of Atreus, who was Pelops’s son.”

3.54 “Then there are the Muses: the first four, [born] of the second Jupiter, †born, and Thelxinoe†, Aoede, Arche, and Melete; the second nine, offspring of the third Jupiter and Mnemosyne; and the third, [of the third Jupiter,] born of Pierus and Antiope. Poets commonly call these last Pierides and Pieriae; their names and number are the same as those immediately before them. You say the sun was named Sol because it is alone; yet how many Suns the theologians bring forward! One was born of Jupiter and was Aether’s grandson; another of Hyperion; a third of Vulcan, the Nile’s son, whose city the Egyptians maintain is the one called Heliopolis. A fourth is the one whom Acantho is said to have borne at Rhodes in the heroic age, father of Ialysus, Camirus, and Lindus, from whom the Rhodians descend. A fifth is said to have fathered Aeetes and Circe in Colchis. There are several Vulcans too:”

3.55 “the first was born of Heaven, and by Minerva fathered the Apollo whom ancient historians held to be the guardian of Athens. The second, born [in] the Nile, is called Opas by the Egyptians, who regard him as the guardian of Egypt. The third was born of the third Jupiter and Juno, and is said to have presided over the smithy on Lemnos. The fourth was born of Maemalius and ruled the islands near Sicily that were called the Vulcanian Islands.”

3.56 “One Mercury was born of Heaven as father and Day as mother; his private parts are said to have become indecently aroused because the sight of Proserpina excited him. Another, the son of Valens and Phoronis, is the subterranean being identified with Trophonius. A third was born of the third Jupiter and Maia; they say he and Penelope were Pan’s parents. A fourth had the Nile for his father; the Egyptians consider it sacrilege to speak his name. The fifth, worshiped by the people of Pheneus, is said to have killed Argus and for that reason fled to Egypt, where he gave the Egyptians laws and writing. The Egyptians call him Theyt, and the first month of their year bears the same name.”

3.57 “The first Aesculapius was Apollo’s son, worshiped by the Arcadians, who is said to have invented the surgical probe and to have been the first to bandage a wound. The second was the second Mercury’s brother: they say he was struck by lightning and buried at Cynosurae. The third, son of Arsippus and Arsinoe, is said to have first discovered purging the bowels and extracting teeth; his tomb and grove are shown in Arcadia, not far from the River Lusius. The oldest Apollo is the one I mentioned a little earlier as born of Vulcan, the guardian of Athens. Another, son of Corybas, was born in Crete and is said to have contested that island with Jupiter himself. The third was born of the third Jupiter and Latona; they say he came to Delphi from the Hyperboreans. The fourth is in Arcadia; the Arcadians call him Nomion, the Lawgiver, because they say they received their laws from him.”

3.58 “There are also several Dianas: the first, daughter of Jupiter and Proserpina, is said to have borne the winged Cupid. The second is better known, the one we are told was born of the third Jupiter and Latona. The third is said to have Upis for her father and Glauce for her mother; the Greeks often call her Upis after her father. We have many Dionysuses: the first born of Jupiter and Proserpina; the second of the Nile, said to have killed Nysa; the third had Cabirus for his father, and is said to have ruled as king over Asia—the Sabazian rites were established for him. The fourth was born of Jupiter and the Moon, and the Orphic rites are thought to be performed for him. The fifth was born of Nysus and Thyone, and is believed to have instituted the festivals celebrated every third year.”

3.59 “The first Venus was born of Heaven and Day; we have seen her shrine at Elis. Another sprang from foam; she and Mercury, we are told, were the parents of the second Cupid. A third, born of Jupiter and Dione, married Vulcan, but she and Mars are said to have been the parents of Anteros, Love Returned. The fourth, conceived in Syria and Cyprus, is called Astarte and is recorded as having married Adonis. The first Minerva is the one we mentioned above as Apollo’s mother; the second sprang from the Nile and is worshiped by the Egyptians of Sais. The third is the one we said above was begotten by Jupiter. The fourth, born of Jupiter and Coryphe, Ocean’s daughter, is called Coria by the Arcadians and is said to have invented four-horse chariots. The fifth is Pallas’s daughter, said to have killed her father when he tried to violate her virginity; they attach winged sandals to her feet.”

3.60 “The first Cupid is said to have been born of Mercury and the first Diana; the second of Mercury and the second Venus; the third, who is also Anteros, of Mars and the third Venus. These and other such stories have been gathered from the ancient traditions of Greece. You understand that they must be resisted if religion is not to be thrown into confusion. Yet your school not only fails to refute them, but actually confirms them by interpreting what each story signifies.

“But let us now return to the point from which we digressed. Do you really think, then, that any subtler reasoning is needed to refute these claims?”

3.61 “For we see that mind, faith, hope, virtue, honor, victory, safety, concord, and the like have the character of things, not gods. They either reside within us, like mind, hope, faith, virtue, and concord, or are things we should wish for, like honor, safety, and victory. I see the usefulness of these things; I also see statues consecrated to them. But why divine power should reside in them I shall understand when I have learned it. Fortune especially must be counted in this class: no one will separate her from fickleness and recklessness, qualities certainly unworthy of a god.”

3.62 “And why are you so delighted with that explanation of myths and unraveling of names? Heaven was castrated by his son, Saturn likewise bound by his son: these and similar stories you defend in a way that makes their inventors appear not merely sane but wise. And in unraveling names you toil pitifully: ‘Saturn, because he saturates himself with years; Mavors, because he overturns great things; Minerva, because she diminishes or because she threatens; Venus, because she comes to everything; Ceres, from bearing.’ What a dangerous practice! Many names will leave you stranded. What will you do with Vejovis? What with Vulcan? Though, since you think Neptune was named from swimming, there will be no name whose derivation you cannot explain from a single letter. In that case, indeed, it seemed to me that you were floundering more than Neptune himself.”

3.63 “First Zeno, then Cleanthes, then Chrysippus undertook an enormous and wholly unnecessary burden: to account for invented myths and explain why each thing was given its particular name. When you do this, you surely admit that reality is very different from what people believe: that those called gods are natural substances, not divine persons. So great was the error that destructive things were not only given divine names but even assigned rites of worship. We see a shrine of Fever on the Palatine, one of Orbona, Bereavement, beside the temple of the Lares, and an altar consecrated to Bad Fortune on the Esquiline.”

3.64 “Let philosophy banish every such error, so that when we discuss the immortal gods we say things worthy of the immortal gods. I have my own view about them, but I have nothing on which to agree with you. You say Neptune is an intelligent soul extending throughout the sea, and say the same of Ceres. Yet I cannot grasp this intelligence of sea or earth in thought, or even form a conjecture about it. I must therefore seek elsewhere to learn both that gods exist and what they are like; such as you wish them to be […].”

3.65 “[…] let us examine what follows: first, whether the world is governed by the gods’ wisdom; then, whether the gods care for human affairs. These are the two points left from your division, and, if you agree, I think we should discuss them more closely.”

“‘I certainly agree,’ said Velleius. ‘I expect greater things still, and I heartily assent to what has been said.’”

“Then Balbus said, ‘I do not want to interrupt you, Cotta, but we shall take another occasion; I will certainly make you admit it. But […]’”

“[…]Cicero — — after saying many things that could undermine religious observances, nevertheless says that [Cotta] holds that these matters should not be debated before the public, lest such discussion extinguish the religious practices publicly adopted (Lact. Inst. 2.3.2)”

“[…]For, to begin with, we cannot be brought to believe that this immortal and supremely excellent nature is divided into sexes — — before all others, Tullius — — fearing no charge of impiety — — showed with greater piety what he thought of such a belief (Arnob. Nat. 3.6)”

“[…]whether the world is governed by the gods’ wisdom (v. 5)”

“[…] on the abundance of the benefits we receive”

“[…] on the ordered succession of the seasons and the regularity of the heavens”

“[…] on Chrysippus’s arguments, on the comparison of a beautiful house with the beauty of the world, on the harmony and accord of the whole world, on Zeno’s syllogisms”

“[…] on the power of fire and the heat from which all things are generated”

“[…] whether the universe as a whole, the sun, the moon, and the stars possess sensation and intelligence; on the heavenly bodies’ need for nourishment”

“[…] on nature proceeding artistically”

“[…] that the world was not built but formed by nature[…]”

“First, then, it is not plausible that the matter from which all things arose was produced by divine providence; rather, it has and has always had its own power and nature. Just as a builder, when about to build something, does not make the material himself but uses what is available, and a modeler likewise uses wax, so this divine providence needed material at hand—not material it made itself, but material it found ready. But if matter was not made by god, neither were earth, water, air, and fire made by god.[…]”

“Why, if god made everything for humanity’s sake, are so many things found in both sea and land that oppose us, are hostile to us, and bring us destruction? [10] Failing to see the truth, the Stoics have met this objection most foolishly. They say that among growing things and among animals there are many whose usefulness is still hidden, but that it will be discovered in the course of time, just as necessity and experience have already discovered many things unknown to earlier ages. [11] What use, after all, can be found in mice, cockroaches, and snakes, which trouble and harm human beings? Is some medicine hidden in them? If there is, let it eventually be discovered: it will, of course, be a remedy against evils, whereas their complaint is that evil exists at all. [12] They say that a viper, burned and reduced to ash, cures the bite of the same creature. How much better it would have been for the creature not to exist at all than for a remedy against it to be required from the creature itself! (Lact. ira 13.9-12)

“[…]God either wishes to remove evils and cannot, or can and does not wish to, or neither wishes to nor can, or both wishes to and can. [21] If he wishes to and cannot, he is weak, which is incompatible with god. If he can and does not wish to, he is begrudging, which is equally foreign to god. If he neither wishes to nor can, he is both begrudging and weak, and therefore not a god. If he both wishes to and can, which alone befits god, where do evils come from, or why does he not remove them? (Lact. ira 13.20-21)

“[…]Human beings surpass all beasts (Diom. GL. 1.313.10)

“[…]”

“Human beings surpass all beasts[…]”

“Things will certainly not go that way; there is a great struggle ahead.

“For would I plead with him in such honeyed words,

if not to serve my purpose?”

3.66 “Does she seem to reason too little, and not to be plotting monstrous destruction for herself? And how cunningly reasoned is this:‘Who wants what he wants will find things turn out as he works for them’—a line that sows every kind of evil.‘Today, in his misguided thinking, he has handed me the bars

with which I will unlock all my anger and bring him ruin,

grief for me and mourning for him, death for him and exile for me.’“Beasts, of course, do not have this reason, which you say was granted to humanity alone as a divine gift.”

3.67 “Do you see, then, what a gift the gods have bestowed on us? And the same Medea, fleeing her father and her country:‘After her father

draws near and is already almost ready to seize her,

meanwhile she slaughters the boy, divides his limbs joint by joint,

and scatters his body far and wide across the fields. She does this

so that, while the father gathers up his son’s scattered limbs,

she may escape, and grief delay him in pursuit,

and she may secure her safety by murdering her own kin.’”

3.68 “She lacked neither wickedness nor reason. And what of the man preparing that deadly feast for his brother? Does he not turn his reasoning this way and that in thought?‘I must raise a greater weight, stir up a greater evil,

to batter and crush his bitter heart.’“Nor should we pass over the other man himself,‘who was not content to lure his brother’s wife to adultery,’“of whom Atreus speaks rightly and with perfect truth:‘What I think the highest danger in the highest affairs

is that royal mothers should be defiled,

the bloodline tainted, the lineage mixed.’“But how cunning was this very man, who sought a kingdom through adultery:‘I add to this,’ he says, ‘that the father of the heavenly gods,

as a portent, sent me a marvel, a bulwark of my reign:

a lamb among the flocks, gleaming with golden fleece,

which Thyestes once dared steal from the royal house,

[in] which deed he took my wife as his accomplice.’”

3.69 “Does he not seem to have used the utmost reason along with the utmost wickedness? Nor is the stage alone full of these crimes: everyday life is full of crimes almost greater still. Every household feels it; so do the Forum, the Senate house, the Field of Mars, our allies, and our provinces: reason serves wrongdoing just as it serves right action. But right action comes from few people, and rarely; wrongdoing comes constantly, and from the great majority. It would have been better, then, for the immortal gods to have given us no reason at all than to have given it with such destructive consequences. Just as it is better not to give wine to the sick at all, since it rarely helps and very often harms, than to risk certain destruction in the hope of uncertain recovery, so perhaps it would have been better for humanity never to have received that swift movement of thought, that keenness and ingenuity we call reason, rather than to have received it so generously and abundantly, since it destroys so many and saves so very few.”

3.70 “If, then, divine intelligence and will cared for human beings by bestowing reason on them, it cared only for those to whom it gave good reason. These, as we see, are very few, if indeed there are any. But it is unacceptable that the immortal gods should have cared for only a few. It follows, therefore, that they cared for no one.

“You usually meet this argument by saying that the gods have not provided any less excellently for us because many people misuse their gift; many people also misuse inherited estates, yet that does not mean they have received no benefit from their fathers. Does anyone deny it? But what likeness is there in this comparison? Deianira did not intend to harm Hercules when she gave him the tunic steeped in the Centaur’s blood; nor did the man who opened Jason of Pherae’s abscess with his sword intend to help him, though doctors had been unable to cure it. Many people have helped when they meant to harm, and harmed when they meant to help. Thus the result of a gift does not reveal the giver’s intention; nor, if the recipient makes good use of it, does that prove the giver gave it out of friendship.”

3.71 “For what lust, what greed, what crime is undertaken without a plan, or accomplished without mental activity and thought—that is, reason? Every judgment is an act of reason: good reason if the judgment is true, bad reason if it is false. But from god we have only reason, if indeed we have it from him; good reason or bad comes from ourselves. Reason was not given to human beings by the gods’ favor in the way that an estate is bequeathed. For what could the gods have given humanity instead, if they had wanted to harm us? What seeds of injustice, intemperance, and cowardice could there have been, unless reason underlay those vices?

“We were just mentioning Medea and Atreus, heroic figures who, after reckoning and calculating, planned monstrous crimes.”

3.72 “What of comedy’s frivolities? Do they not constantly turn on reason? Does the man in The Eunuch not argue with considerable subtlety?‘What am I to do, then?

“‘She shut me out; she calls me back. Shall I return? Not if she begs me.’“And the man in The Young Comrades certainly does not hesitate, in the Academic manner, to use reason to fight the common view, when he says that ‘in the depths of love and poverty it is pleasant’‘to have a father miserly, graceless, harsh toward his children,

who neither loves you nor cares for you.’”

3.73 “He even supplies little arguments for this incredible opinion:‘You might cheat him of some income, or through the accounts

divert some payment, or use a little slave

to frighten the timid man out of his money. In short, what you get

from a stingy father, how much more gladly you squander!’“The same man argues that an easygoing, generous father is a disadvantage to a son in love:‘I do not know how to trick him, or what to take from him,

or what deceit or scheme to contrive against him:

my father’s kindness has tied up all my tricks,

my frauds and sleights of hand.’“What, then? Could these tricks, schemes, frauds, and sleights of hand have existed without reason? What a splendid gift from the gods, allowing Phormio to say:‘Bring on the old man; all my plans are ready in my heart.’”

3.74 “But let us leave the theater and come to the Forum. The praetor takes his seat. What is to be tried? Who set fire to the public records office. What crime could be more secret? Yet Quintus Sosius, a distinguished Roman knight from Picenum, confessed that he had done it. Who falsified public records: Lucius Alenus did that too, when he forged the signatures of the six leading clerks. What could be more ingenious than this man? Look at other trials: the gold of Tolosa, the conspiracy in Jugurtha’s interest. Recall earlier cases: Tubulus, for taking money to decide a case. Later ones: the trial for unchastity under Peducaeus’s bill. Then these everyday cases: assassinations, poisonings, embezzlement, and the trials concerning wills under the new law. From this comes the legal claim, ‘I declare that the theft was committed with your assistance and advice’; from this, so many proceedings for bad faith—in guardianship, agency, partnership, and trust, and all the other breaches of good faith in buying, selling, hiring, and letting. From this comes the public prosecution over a private matter under the Laetorian law; from this, that net that sweeps up every kind of dishonesty, the action for malicious fraud introduced by our friend Gaius Aquillius. Aquillius himself holds that such fraud is established when one thing is pretended and another done.”

3.75 “Are we to think, then, that the immortal gods sowed this vast crop of evils? For if the gods gave human beings reason, they gave them malice: malice is cunning and deceitful reasoning directed toward harm. Those same gods also gave fraud, crime, and all the rest, none of which can be undertaken or accomplished without reason. Just as that old woman wishes‘that in the woods of Pelion the fir beams,

cut down by axes, had never fallen to the ground,’“so I wish the gods had never given humanity this cunning, which very few use well—and even those few are often crushed by those who use it badly—while countless people use it wickedly. It seems, then, that this divine gift of reason and planning was bestowed on human beings for deceit, not goodness.”

3.76 “But you keep insisting that the fault belongs to human beings, not gods. As if a doctor blamed the severity of a disease, or a helmsman the violence of a storm! They are only little human beings, certainly, but ridiculous all the same. ‘Who would have called you in,’ someone might say, ‘if those things did not exist?’ Against a god one may argue more freely: ‘You say the fault lies in human vices. You should have given human beings a kind of reason that excluded vice and fault.’ Where, then, was there room for the gods to make a mistake? We leave estates in the hope of making a good bequest, and that hope may deceive us. How could a god be deceived? As the Sun was when he let his son Phaethon mount his chariot? Or Neptune when Theseus destroyed Hippolytus, having received from his father Neptune the power to make three wishes?”

3.77 “These are poets’ tales; we want to be philosophers, authorities on facts, not fictions. Yet even those poetic gods, if they had known their gifts would be fatal to their sons, would be thought to have erred in their generosity. And if what Aristo of Chios used to say is true—that philosophers harm those of their listeners who misinterpret sound teaching, since the profligate can emerge from Aristippus’s school and the harsh from Zeno’s—then certainly, if those who heard them were going to leave as vicious people because they twisted the philosophers’ arguments, it would be better for philosophers to remain silent than to harm their listeners.”

3.78 “Likewise, if human beings turn reason, given by the immortal gods with good intentions, to deceit and malice, it would have been better for humanity not to have received it than to have received it. Just as a doctor would be gravely at fault if he knew that a patient prescribed wine would drink it too strong and immediately die, so your Providence deserves blame for giving reason to people it knew would use it perversely and wickedly. Unless perhaps you say it did not know! If only you would—but you will not dare, for I am well aware how highly you esteem its name.”

3.79 “But this argument can now be brought to a close. If folly, as all philosophers agree, is a greater evil than all evils of fortune and body put together on the other side, and no one attains wisdom, then all of us are in the utmost misery, though you say the immortal gods have cared for us so excellently. For just as it makes no difference whether no one is healthy or no one can be healthy, so I cannot understand what difference there is between no one’s being wise and no one’s being able to be wise.

“We have said far too much about something perfectly obvious. Telamon, however, completes the whole argument for the gods’ neglect of humanity in a single line:‘For if they cared, good people would fare well, bad people badly—which is not the case.’“They ought indeed to have made everyone good, if they really cared for the human race.”

3.80 “But failing that, they certainly ought to have cared for the good. Why, then, did the Carthaginian overwhelm the two Scipios, supremely brave and excellent men, in Spain? Why did Maximus bury his son, a former consul? Why did Hannibal kill Marcellus? Why did Cannae carry off Paulus? Why was Regulus’s body surrendered to Carthaginian cruelty? Why did the walls of his own home not protect Africanus? But these and many others are old examples; let us look at more recent ones. Why is my uncle Publius Rutilius, a man of utmost integrity and learning, in exile? Why was my fellow priest Drusus killed in his own home? Why was the chief pontiff Quintus Scaevola, a model of self-control and wisdom, butchered before Vesta’s image? Why, even earlier, were so many leading citizens killed by Cinna? Why was that most treacherous of men, Gaius Marius, able to order the death of Quintus Catulus, a man of the highest distinction?”

3.81 “The day would fail me if I tried to count the good people who have met with misfortune, and no less if I listed the wicked who have prospered. Why did Marius die so happily in his own home, an old man in his seventh consulship? Why did Cinna, the cruelest of men, rule so long? ‘But he paid the penalty.’ It would have been better to restrain him and prevent him from killing so many outstanding men than for him eventually to pay the penalty himself. Quintus Varius, a monstrous man, perished in the utmost torture and torment. If this was because he had killed Drusus with a sword and Metellus with poison, it would have been better for them to be saved than for Varius to pay for his crime. Dionysius was tyrant of a most wealthy and prosperous city for thirty-eight years.”

3.82 “And for how many years before him did Pisistratus rule in the very flower of Greece! ‘But Phalaris, but Apollodorus paid the penalty.’ Yes, after torturing and killing many people. Many pirates, too, are often punished; yet we cannot deny that more captives have been cruelly killed than pirates. We have heard that Anaxarchus, the follower of Democritus, was butchered by a Cypriot tyrant, and Zeno of Elea killed under torture. What shall I say of Socrates, whose death often brings me to tears as I read Plato? Do you see, then, that in the gods’ judgment—if they observe human affairs—all distinction has been abolished?”

3.83 “Diogenes the Cynic used to say that Harpalus, considered a successful brigand in those days, bore witness against the gods by living so long in such good fortune. Dionysius, whom I mentioned earlier, was sailing to Syracuse after plundering Proserpina’s sanctuary at Locri. As he held his course with a most favorable wind, he laughed and said, ‘Do you see, friends, what a fine voyage the immortal gods grant the sacrilegious?’ Being a shrewd man, once he had grasped the lesson clearly and fully, he held to the same view. When he brought his fleet to the Peloponnese and entered the temple of Olympian Jupiter, he stripped the god of a gold mantle of great weight, with which the tyrant Gelo had adorned Jupiter from the spoils of the Carthaginians. He even joked that a gold mantle was heavy in summer and cold in winter, and threw a woolen cloak over him, saying that it suited every season. He also ordered the gold beard removed from Aesculapius at Epidaurus: it was not fitting, he said, for the son to wear a beard when his father was beardless in every shrine.”

3.84 “He then ordered the silver tables removed from all the shrines. Since they bore the inscription ‘of the good gods,’ according to ancient Greek custom, he said he wished to make use of their goodness. He likewise took without hesitation the little gold Victories, bowls, and crowns held out in the statues’ extended hands, saying that he was accepting them, not taking them away: it was foolish to ask the gods for good things but refuse to take them when they held them out and offered them. They also say that he brought the things I have mentioned, taken from the shrines, into the marketplace and sold them by auction. After collecting the money, he issued an edict that everyone who possessed anything from the sanctuaries should return each object to its own shrine before a fixed day. Thus to impiety toward the gods he added injustice toward human beings. Yet Olympian Jupiter did not strike him with lightning, nor did Aesculapius waste him away with a wretched, lingering disease and kill him. He died in his own bed and was carried to the †tyrant’s funeral pyre; and the power he himself had won by crime he handed down to his son as an inheritance, as though it were just and lawful.”

3.85 “My argument dwells unwillingly on this subject, for it seems to sanction wrongdoing. It would rightly seem so, were it not that, quite apart from any divine reckoning, conscience itself has great weight in matters of virtue and vice. Remove conscience, and everything collapses. Just as no household or state would seem to be ordered by any rational discipline if it provided neither rewards for right action nor punishments for wrong, so surely there is no divine governance of the world in relation to humanity if it makes no distinction between good and bad.”

3.86 “‘But the gods neglect lesser matters; they do not attend to everyone’s little fields or vines, and if blight or hail has harmed someone, Jupiter was not obliged to take notice. Even kings in their kingdoms do not concern themselves with every tiny detail.’ That is what you say—as if I had just been complaining about Publius Rutilius’s estate at Formiae, not the loss of his civic security. Yet all mortals hold that they receive their external advantages from the gods—vineyards, grainfields, olive groves, abundant crops and fruit, in short, every comfort and success in life. But no one has ever credited a god with the gift of virtue.”

3.87 “And rightly so. For we are justly praised for virtue, and rightly take pride in it; this would not be so if we received it as a gift from a god rather than from ourselves. But if our honors or wealth increase, or if we acquire some other accidental good or avert some evil, then we thank the gods, and then we think no credit belongs to us. Has anyone ever thanked the gods for being a good man? But for being rich, honored, or unharmed, yes. People call Jupiter Best and Greatest for these reasons—not because he makes us just, temperate, or wise, but because he makes us safe, sound, wealthy, and well supplied.”

3.88 “Nor has anyone ever vowed a tenth to Hercules if he became wise—though Pythagoras, on discovering something new in geometry, is said to have sacrificed an ox to the Muses. I do not believe that, however, since he would not sacrifice a victim even to Apollo at Delos, for fear of spattering the altar with blood. To return to the point, all mortals judge that good fortune should be sought from a god, but wisdom obtained from oneself. However many shrines we consecrate to Mind, Virtue, and Faith, we still see that these things lie within ourselves. The means of gaining hope, safety, aid, and victory must be sought from the gods.

“The prosperity and success of the wicked, then, disprove, as Diogenes said, all the gods’ force and power.”

3.89 “‘But good people sometimes have good outcomes.’ We seize on these cases and attribute them to the immortal gods without any reason. When Diagoras—the one called the Atheist—came to Samothrace, a friend said to him, ‘You think the gods neglect human affairs. Do you not notice, from all these painted tablets, how many people escaped the violence of a storm through their vows and reached harbor safely?’ ‘That is how it appears,’ he said, ‘for those who were shipwrecked and died at sea are not pictured anywhere.’ On another occasion, while he was sailing, his fellow passengers, frightened and terrified by a storm, told him their misfortune was deserved, since they had admitted him to the same ship. He pointed out many other ships struggling on the same course and asked whether they thought Diagoras was also aboard those ships. The truth is that your character and the way you have lived make no difference to good or bad fortune.”

3.90 “‘The gods do not attend to everything,’ he says, ‘any more than kings do.’ What resemblance is there? If kings knowingly overlook something, they are greatly at fault; but a god does not even have ignorance as an excuse. A fine defense you make of him, when you say that the gods’ power is such that, even if someone escapes punishment for his crime through death, the punishment is exacted from his children, grandchildren, and descendants! What marvelous fairness in the gods! Would any state tolerate a legislator who proposed a law condemning a son or grandson if his father or grandfather had done wrong?‘What limit will be set to the slaughter of Tantalus’s line,

or when, in paying for Myrtilus’s death,

will punishment ever have its fill?’”

3.91 “I could not easily say whether poets corrupted the Stoics or the Stoics lent authority to the poets: both speak monstrous and shameful things. A man hurt by Hipponax’s iambic verse or wounded by a poem of Archilochus did not harbor a grief sent by a god rather than conceived within himself. Nor, when we see the lust of Aegisthus or Paris, do we seek its cause in a god, when we can almost hear guilt speak. Nor do I judge that the recovery of many sick people came from Aesculapius rather than Hippocrates; nor will I ever say that the Spartans’ discipline was given to Sparta by Apollo rather than Lycurgus. Critolaus, I say, destroyed Corinth, and Hasdrubal Carthage. Those two gouged out those eyes of the seacoast—not some angry god, whom you deny can feel anger at all.”

3.92 “But a god could certainly have come to their aid and saved cities so great and noble. You yourselves habitually say that there is nothing a god cannot accomplish, and without any effort. Just as the human limbs move without exertion at the mind’s mere wish and will, so, you say, all things can be shaped, moved, and changed by the gods’ command. You do not say this in a superstitious, old-womanish way, but on consistent physical principles: the matter from which and in which everything exists is entirely flexible and changeable, so that there is nothing that cannot be fashioned and transformed from it, however suddenly; divine providence is the shaper and governor of it all, and therefore, wherever it turns, can accomplish whatever it wishes. Accordingly, it either does not know its own power, or neglects human affairs, or cannot judge what is best.”

3.93 “‘It does not care for individual people.’ No wonder: not even for cities. Not for cities? Not even for nations and peoples. If it disregards even these, what wonder that it has disregarded the entire human race?

“But how can you both say that the gods do not attend to everything and maintain that dreams are distributed and allotted to human beings by the immortal gods? I bring this up with you because belief in the truth of dreams belongs to your school. And you also say that vows ought to be undertaken. Yet individuals make vows; therefore the divine mind hears about individuals too. You see, then, that it is not as busy as you supposed. Grant that it is fully occupied, turning the heavens, watching over the earth, governing the seas: why does it let so many gods remain idle and do nothing? Why does it not put some unoccupied gods in charge of human affairs—those gods whose countless numbers you described, Balbus?

“This is nearly all I had to say about the nature of the gods—not to abolish it, but to make you understand how obscure it is and how difficult to explain.”

3.94 With these words Cotta finished. Lucilius said, “You have certainly attacked with great force, Cotta, the Stoic doctrine of divine providence, which they established with the utmost reverence and wisdom. But since evening is coming on, you will give us another day to answer these arguments. My contest with you is for hearths and altars, for the gods’ temples and shrines, and for the walls of the city, which you pontiffs declare sacred, encircling the city more carefully with religion than with its actual ramparts. To abandon these, as long as I can breathe, I consider a sacrilege.”

3.95 “For my part,” said Cotta, “I both wish to be refuted, Balbus, and preferred to discuss the points I argued rather than pronounce judgment on them. I know for certain that you can easily defeat me.”

“Of course,” said Velleius, “since he even thinks dreams are sent to us by Jupiter—though dreams themselves are less insubstantial than the Stoics’ account of the nature of the gods.”

After these words we parted: Velleius thought Cotta’s argument truer, while I thought Balbus’s leaned more toward the probable truth.

3.1 When Balbus finished, Cotta smiled and said, “Balbus, you’re rather late in telling me what to defend. While you were speaking, I was already working out my reply. My aim was not so much to refute you as to ask about things I didn’t fully understand. But we each have to use our own judgment. It’s hard for me to think just what you want me to.”

3.2 Then Velleius said, “Cotta, you have no idea how eagerly I’m waiting to hear you. Our friend Balbus enjoyed your attack on Epicurus. Now I’ll return the favor and listen carefully to your attack on the Stoics. I hope you’ve come as well prepared as usual.”

3.3 “By Hercules, I have, Velleius,” Cotta said. “My position with Lucilius isn’t the same as it was with you.”

“How is that?” he asked.

“Because your Epicurus doesn’t seem to put up much of a fight about the immortal gods. He simply doesn’t dare deny that gods exist, for fear of making enemies or facing a charge. But he insists that the gods do nothing and care about nothing. He says they have human limbs but make no use of them. He seems to be playing a game. He thinks it’s enough to say that some blessed and eternal nature exists.

3.4 “But you noticed, I think, how much Balbus had to say. Even if his arguments weren’t all true, they fitted together and formed a whole. So, as I said, I intend less to refute his speech than to ask about the things I didn’t quite understand. Balbus, I’ll leave the choice to you. Would you rather answer my questions one at a time about what I didn’t grasp, or hear my whole speech?”

Balbus replied, “If you want anything explained, I’d certainly rather answer. But if you’re questioning me to refute me rather than to understand me, I’ll do whichever you prefer. I’ll answer each question at once, or answer them all when you’ve finished.”

3.5 “Excellent,” Cotta said. “Then let’s follow the discussion wherever it takes us. But before we get to the subject, a few words about me. Your authority carries real weight with me, Balbus. So do your closing remarks, when you urged me to remember that I’m both Cotta and a pontiff. I assume you meant that I should defend the beliefs about the immortal gods that we inherited from our ancestors, along with our sacred rites, ceremonies, and religious practices. I’ll always defend them, and I always have. No argument from anyone, educated or not, will ever shake the beliefs I inherited about worshiping the immortal gods. But in religious matters, I follow the chief pontiffs Ti. Coruncanius, P. Scipio, and P. Scaevola—not Zeno, Cleanthes, or Chrysippus. And I’d rather listen to what C. Laelius, an augur and a wise man too, says about religion in that famous speech than to any leading Stoic. The Roman people’s religion as a whole falls into two parts: sacred rites and the taking of omens. There’s a third part as well: any warnings about the future that interpreters of the Sibyl or readers of sacrificial entrails have drawn from portents and unnatural occurrences. I’ve never thought any of these religious practices should be treated with contempt. I’m convinced that Romulus laid our state’s foundations by establishing the taking of omens, and Numa by establishing sacred rites. It could certainly never have become so great without securing the fullest favor of the immortal gods.”

3.6 “Now you know what Cotta thinks, and what a pontiff thinks, Balbus. Next, make me understand what you think. From you, a philosopher, I ought to get a reasoned account of religion. Our ancestors I must trust even when they give no reasons.”

“What reasoned account do you want from me, then, Cotta?” Balbus asked.

“You divided your subject into four parts,” he replied. “First you meant to show that gods exist, next what they are like, then that they govern the world, and last that they care for human affairs. That was your outline, if I remember correctly.”

“Quite correctly,” said Balbus. “But I’m waiting to hear your questions.”

3.7 “Let’s take each point in order,” Cotta said. “First comes something everyone agrees on, except the utterly irreligious: that gods exist. Nothing could burn that belief out of my heart. Still, although our ancestors’ authority has convinced me of it, you give me no explanation of why it is true.”

“If you’re convinced,” Balbus said, “why do you want me to teach you?”

“Because I’m approaching this discussion,” Cotta replied, “as though I’d never heard or thought anything about the immortal gods. Treat me as a beginner, a pupil with no prior views, and teach me what I ask.”

3.8 “Tell me, then,” he said, “what you want to ask.”

“First, why did you say so much on this very point? You said that [the clear point in] this part needed no argument, because it was clear and everyone agreed <that gods exist>.”

“Because I’ve noticed you too, Cotta,” he replied, “when speaking in court, piling as many arguments as you can on the judge, whenever your case gives you the chance. Philosophers do the same. I did it too, as well as I could. Your question is like asking me why I look at you with two eyes instead of closing one, when I could get the same result with just one.”

3.9 “You must judge how good that comparison is,” Cotta said. “In court, when something is clear and everyone agrees about it, I don’t usually argue for it. Arguments weaken what is self-evident. Even if I did that in legal cases, I wouldn’t do it in a discussion requiring this sort of precision. You’d have no reason to close one eye: both have the same view. Besides, nature, which you want to make wise, wanted us to have two openings running from the mind to the eyes, to let in light. No, you wanted to prove the gods’ existence with many arguments because you didn’t trust it to be as clear as you would like. For me, one thing was enough: our ancestors handed this belief down to us. But you set authority aside and fight with reasoning.

3.10 “So let my reasoning compete with yours.

“You put forward all these arguments for the gods’ existence. In my opinion, your arguments turn something not at all doubtful into a matter of doubt. I’ve remembered not only the number of your arguments but their order. The first was that, when we look up at the sky, we immediately realize that some divine power rules all this. That led to the line: ‘Look at this shining height above, which everyone calls Jupiter.’

3.11 “As if that’s what any of us means by Jupiter, rather than Jupiter on the Capitol! Or as if it were obvious, and everyone agreed, that those things are gods, when Velleius and plenty of others won’t even grant you that they’re alive. You also thought it was a weighty argument that everyone believes in the immortal gods and that this belief grows stronger every day. So you’re happy to let fools’ opinions settle questions this important? That’s especially strange coming from you people, who say those fools are insane. ‘But we see the gods in person: Postumius did at Lake Regillus, and Vatinius on the Salarian Road.’ There was something or other, too, about the Locrians’ battle at the Sagra. Now, you called these gods the Tyndaridae. In other words, they were human beings born to a human father. Homer, who lived not long after their time, says they were buried at Sparta. Yet you think they met Vatinius on white geldings, without any camp servants, and announced the Roman people’s victory to him? To Vatinius, a countryman, rather than M. Cato, the leading public figure at the time? Then do you also believe that the mark still visible in the flint at Lake Regillus, which looks like a hoofprint, was made by Castor’s horse?”

3.12 “Wouldn’t you rather believe something that can be established: that the souls of outstanding men, such as those Tyndaridae, are divine and eternal? Isn’t that better than believing that men who’d already been cremated could ride horses and fight in battle? If you say that was possible, you need to explain how. Don’t offer old women’s fairy tales.”

3.13 “Do you think they’re fairy tales?” Lucilius asked. “Don’t you see the temple in the forum dedicated to Castor and Pollux <by> A. Postumius? Don’t you see the senate’s decree about Vatinius? As for the Sagra, the Greeks even have a common saying about it. When they insist that something is true, they say it’s more certain than what happened at the Sagra. Shouldn’t authorities like these carry weight with you?”

“You’re fighting me with hearsay, Balbus,” Cotta said. “What I want from you is reasons […][…][…][…] follow what will happen;”

3.14 “because no one can escape what’s going to happen. Often, knowing the future isn’t even useful. It’s miserable to suffer without being able to do anything, without even hope—that last comfort, but one everyone shares. That’s especially true when you yourselves say everything happens by fate, and define fate as whatever has always been true for all eternity. What good does it do to know that something will happen? How does that help you guard against it, if it’s certain to happen anyway? And where does this divination come from? Who discovered the split in a liver? Who took note of a crow’s call, or of the drawing of lots? I believe in these things, and I can’t dismiss that curved staff of Attus Navius you mentioned. But I need philosophers to teach me how people came to understand these signs, especially since those diviners say so many things that aren’t true.”

3.15 “‘But doctors often make mistakes too’—that was what you said. What does medicine have in common with divination? I can see the reasoning behind medicine. I don’t understand where divination comes from. You also think the Decii appeased the gods by vowing to give their own lives. How could the gods have been so unfair that they wouldn’t be reconciled to the Roman people unless men like that died? That was a commander’s tactic, what the Greeks call a στρατήγημα. But it was the tactic of commanders who looked after their country and didn’t spare their own lives. They thought the army would follow a commander who spurred his horse and charged into the enemy. And that’s what happened. As for Faunus’s voice, I’ve certainly never heard it. If you say you’ve heard it, I’ll believe you, though I don’t know what Faunus actually is. So, Balbus, you still haven’t helped me understand that gods exist. I do believe they exist, but the Stoics teach me nothing about it.”

3.16 “As you said, Cleanthes thinks the idea of gods took shape in human minds in four ways. One was through foreknowledge of the future; I’ve said enough about that. The second was through storms and other violent disturbances. The third was through the usefulness and abundance of the things we receive. The fourth was through the orderly arrangement of the stars and the regularity of the sky. We’ve discussed foreknowledge. As for disturbances in the sky, sea, and land, we can’t deny that, when they happen, many people fear them and think the immortal gods cause them.

3.17 “But the question isn’t whether some people think gods exist. It’s whether gods exist or not. The other reasons Cleanthes gives concern, first, the abundance of benefits we receive, and second, the order of the seasons and the regularity of the sky. We’ll deal with those when we discuss the gods’ care for the world, about which you said so much, Balbus.

3.18 “We’ll also leave until that same discussion what you said Chrysippus argued: since there’s something in nature that a human being couldn’t make, there must be something better than a human being. We’ll leave your comparison between the beautiful things in a house and the beauty of the universe, too, along with your appeal to the harmony and agreement of the universe as a whole. Zeno’s short, rather clever arguments can also wait for the part of the discussion I just mentioned. At that same time, in their proper place, we’ll examine everything you said about nature: the power of fire and the heat from which you said everything is generated. I’ll also save for that discussion everything you said the day before yesterday when you wanted to prove that gods exist—your reasons for saying that the whole universe, the sun, the moon, and the stars have awareness and intelligence.”

3.19 “But I’ll keep asking you the same question, over and over: what reasons convince you that gods exist?”

“I think I’ve given my reasons,” Balbus replied. “But here’s how you refute them. You seem about to ask me a question, and I get ready to answer. Then you suddenly turn the discussion elsewhere and don’t give me a chance to respond. So some very important subjects have gone by without discussion: divination and fate. You touch on those questions briefly, while our school usually has a great deal to say about them. But they’re separate from the question we’re dealing with now. So, if you don’t mind, don’t mix things up. Let’s use this discussion to settle the question we’re asking.”

3.20 “Excellent,” Cotta said. “You divided the whole question into four parts, and we’ve discussed the first. So let’s consider the second. As I see it, when you set out to show what the gods are like, you ended up showing that there aren’t any. You said it was extremely hard to free the mind from its habit of relying on the eyes. But nothing is more excellent than a god, and nothing in nature is better than the universe. So you had no doubt that the universe was a god. We only needed to be able to think of it as alive—or rather, to see this with the mind, just as we see other things with our eyes.”

3.21 “But when you say nothing is better than the universe, what do you mean by ‘better’? If you mean more beautiful, I agree. If you mean better suited to our needs, I agree with that too. But if you mean nothing is wiser than the universe, I don’t agree at all. It’s not because I find it hard to turn my mind away from what my eyes see. The more I do that, the less I can grasp what you want me to think. ‘Nothing in nature is better than the universe.’ Well, nothing on earth is better than our city, either. Does that make you think our city has reason, thought, and intelligence? Or, since it doesn’t, do you think an ant should rank above this beautiful city? The city has no awareness, while the ant has not only awareness but intelligence, reason, and memory. You need to look at what I’m granting you, Balbus, not just assume whatever you want.”

3.22 “That whole argument grew out of Zeno’s old, short argument—the one you thought was so clever […]. Zeno reasons like this: ‘What uses reason is better than what doesn’t use reason. But nothing is better than the universe. So the universe uses reason.’”

3.23 “If you accept that, you’ll soon have the universe reading a book like an expert. Following Zeno’s lead, you can argue this way: ‘Something that can read is better than something that can’t. Nothing is better than the universe. So the universe can read.’ By that reasoning, it’s also a good speaker, a mathematician, and a musician. In fact, it’s trained in every branch of learning, and finally, it’s a philosopher. You’ve often said that nothing happens without a god, and that nature has no power to produce things unlike itself. Should I grant you that the universe isn’t just alive and wise, but also plays the lyre and the trumpet, since people with those skills are born from it too? So this founding father of the Stoics gives us no reason to think the universe uses reason, or even that it’s alive. The universe, then, isn’t a god. Still, nothing is better than it. Nothing is more beautiful, nothing is better for us, nothing is more splendid to look at or steadier in its movements.”

“If the universe as a whole isn’t a god, neither are the stars, those countless stars you included among the gods. Their steady, eternal courses delighted you. And rightly so, by Hercules: their regularity is amazing, almost beyond belief.”

3.24 “But, Balbus, not everything that follows a fixed, steady course should be credited to a god rather than to nature. What could be more regular, do you think, than the constant back-and-forth movement of the Euripus at Chalcis? What about the Sicilian strait? Or the surge of the Ocean in those places ‘where the sweeping wave divides Europe and Libya’? And the tides off Spain or Britain—can’t they come in or go out at fixed times without a god? Please consider this: if we call every movement divine, and everything that keeps to a regular schedule, won’t we also have to call fevers divine when they return every third or fourth day? What could be more regular than their return and their course? But we need to explain all such things;”

3.25 “and when you can’t do that, you run to a god as though taking refuge at an altar.”

“You also thought Chrysippus made a sharp argument. He was certainly a clever, shrewd man. By versutus, ‘clever,’ I mean people whose minds versantur, ‘turn,’ quickly; by callidus, ‘shrewd,’ those whose minds, through experience, have ‘become calloused’—concalluit—as hands do through work. Here’s what he says: ‘If there’s something a human being can’t make, whoever makes it is better than a human being. But a human being can’t make the things in the universe. So whoever could make them is superior to a human being. And who could be superior to a human being except a god? Therefore, a god exists.’ All of this involves the same mistake as Zeno’s arguments.”

3.26 “He doesn’t distinguish what ‘better’ or ‘superior’ means, or how nature differs from reason. This same man says that if there are no gods, nothing in all nature is better than a human being. Yet he thinks it’s the height of arrogance for any human to believe that nothing is better than a human. Granted, it may be arrogant to think you’re worth more than the universe. But there’s nothing arrogant about recognizing that you have senses and reason, while Orion and the Dog Star don’t. That’s good sense instead. He also says, ‘If a house is beautiful, we understand that it was built for its owners, not for mice. In the same way, we should think of the universe as the gods’ house.’ That’s exactly what I’d think—if I believed it had been built, rather than shaped by nature, as I’ll show.”

3.27 “‘But in Xenophon’s account,’ you say, ‘Socrates asks where we got our minds from, if there was no mind in the world.’ Well, I ask where we got speech, rhythm, and song. Unless we think the sun talks with the moon when it comes closer, or that the world sings in harmony, as Pythagoras believes! These are nature’s work, Balbus. Not a nature that ‘moves along like a skilled craftsman,’ as Zeno says—we’ll soon see what that means—but a nature that stirs and drives everything through its own movements and changes.

3.28 “So I liked your discussion of nature’s agreement and harmony. You said its parts were linked as if by kinship and worked together. What I didn’t accept was your claim that this couldn’t happen unless a single divine breath held it together. Nature holds together and lasts through natural forces, not through gods. It has that sort of harmony which the Greeks call ‘sympathy,’ a mutual response between its parts. But the greater that harmony is through nature’s own action, the less we should think divine planning produces it.

3.29 “And how do you answer these arguments that Carneades put forward? If no body is immortal, no body lasts forever. But no body is immortal, nor is any body indivisible or incapable of being split or pulled apart. Every living thing has a nature that can be affected. None can avoid taking something in from outside—that is, in a sense, having something done to it and being affected by it. If every living thing is like that, none is immortal. Likewise, if every living thing can be cut up and divided, none is indivisible and none is eternal. Yet every living thing is open to receiving and enduring an outside force. So every living thing must be mortal, capable of coming apart, and divisible.”

3.30 “Suppose all wax could change. Then nothing made of wax could be unchangeable. The same would hold for anything made of silver or bronze if silver and bronze were changeable by nature. So, in the same way, suppose all the things that are […]—the things everything is made of—can change. Then no body can be unchangeable. But the things everything is made of can change, according to you. So every body can change. Yet if any body were immortal, not every body could change. It follows that every body is mortal. After all, every body is water, air, fire, earth, or something made from these or from some part of them.”

3.31 “None of these is free from destruction. Everything made of earth can be divided. Liquid is so soft that it can easily be pressed and crushed. Fire and air are very easily displaced by any impact. Their nature is especially yielding and easily scattered. Besides, all these things cease to exist when they change into a different substance. That happens when earth turns into water, water gives rise to air, and air to the upper fire, and when these same changes take place in reverse. If <it’s true that> the things that make up every living being perish, no living being lasts forever.

3.32 “And even if we set these points aside, no living thing can be found that has never been born and will go on existing forever. Every living thing has senses. So it feels hot and cold, sweet and bitter. It can’t take in pleasant things through any sense without also taking in their opposites. So if it can feel pleasure, it can feel pain too. And anything that can suffer pain must also be capable of destruction. We must therefore admit that every living thing is mortal. Besides, anything that feels neither pleasure nor pain can’t be a living thing;”

3.33 “But if it is a living being, it must feel them. And what feels them can’t be eternal. Every living being feels them. Therefore no living being is eternal. Besides, there can be no living being without natural attraction and avoidance. Things in keeping with its nature attract it; it avoids their opposites. Every living being seeks some things and flees others. What it flees is against its nature. What is against its nature has the power to destroy it. Therefore every living being must perish.

3.34 “There are countless ways to establish and prove that nothing with senses can escape destruction. The very things we feel—like cold, like heat, <like> pleasure, like pain, and like the rest—kill us when they become intense. No living thing is without senses. So no living thing is eternal. A living thing must either have a simple nature, consisting of earth, fire, air, or moisture—we can’t even understand what such a thing would be like—or be made of several kinds of matter. Each of these has its own place, which nature’s force carries it toward: one to the bottom, another to the top, another to the middle. They can hold together for a time, but there’s no way they can do so forever. Nature must pull each to its own place. So no living thing lasts forever.”

3.35 “But your school, Balbus, usually traces everything to the power of fire. In this you follow Heraclitus, I think. People don’t all interpret even him the same way. †Since he didn’t want what he said to be understood†, let’s leave him aside. You say that every active force is fire. So living beings die when their heat fails, and throughout nature what has heat has life and strength. But I don’t see why bodies should die when their heat goes out, yet not die when they lose moisture or breath—especially since too much heat kills them too.

3.36 “So that point about heat is common ground. Still, let’s see where the argument ends. Your position, I think, is that in nature and the world outside us, nothing is alive except fire. Why fire rather than breath? Breath also makes up the mind of living things, and its name, anima, gives us the word animal. And how can you take it for granted that the mind is nothing but fire? It seems more likely that the mind is something like a blend of fire and breath. ‘But if fire is itself alive, without any other kind of matter mixed into it, then it can’t lack sensation. After all, when it’s in our bodies, it makes us feel.’ We can repeat the same answer: whatever has senses must feel both pleasure and pain, and whatever can suffer pain can also suffer destruction. So you can’t establish that even fire is eternal.”

3.37 “What’s more, don’t you yourselves hold that all fire needs food and can’t possibly last unless it’s fed? And that the sun, moon, and other stars feed on water, some on fresh water, others on seawater? Cleanthes gives this as the reason the sun turns back instead of going beyond the circle of the summer solstice, and likewise the winter solstice: it mustn’t get too far from its food. We’ll examine that whole account shortly. For now, let’s settle this conclusion: anything that can perish isn’t eternal by nature. Fire will perish unless it’s fed. So fire isn’t everlasting by nature.”

3.38 “And what sort of god can we imagine who has no virtue? Shall we give a god practical wisdom? That consists in knowing what is good, what is bad, and what is neither. If nothing bad affects him or ever can, why does he need to distinguish good from bad? Why does he need reasoning or understanding? We use those to work from what is clear to what is hidden. But nothing can be hidden from a god. And what has justice, which gives each their due, to do with the gods? As you say yourselves, justice arose from human association and community. Self-control consists in passing over bodily pleasures. If there is a place for it in heaven, there is also a place for pleasures. And how can we imagine a brave god? Brave in pain, in hard work, or in danger?

3.39 “none of which applies to a god. So how can we conceive of a god who neither uses reason nor has any virtue?”

“And I can’t look down on the ignorance of ordinary, uneducated people when I consider what the Stoics say. Here are things uneducated people do: the Syrians worship a fish, and the Egyptians have made nearly every kind of animal sacred. In Greece, they count many former humans as gods: Alabandus at Alabanda, Tenes at Tenedos, and, throughout Greece, Leucothea, who was once Ino, and her son Palaemon. Then there are Hercules, Aesculapius, the sons of Tyndareus, our own Romulus, and many others. People think they’ve been admitted to heaven like new citizens added to the rolls.”

3.40 “So that’s what uneducated people say. What better ideas do you philosophers have? I’ll pass over those other claims—they’re splendid, of course. Let’s grant that the world itself is a god. I suppose this is that ‘shining height above, whom everyone calls on as Jupiter.’ Why add more gods, then? And what a crowd there is! There certainly seem to be plenty to me. You count every individual star as a god. You name these gods either after animals, like the Goat, the Scorpion, the Bull, and the Lion, or after lifeless things, like the Argo, the Altar, and the Crown.”

3.41 “But suppose we grant all that. How can the rest possibly be accepted—or even understood? When we call grain Ceres and wine Liber, we’re using ordinary figures of speech. But do you think anyone is crazy enough to believe that what he eats is a god? As for those you say became gods after being human, you explain how that could have happened or why it stopped happening. I’ll gladly learn. As things stand, though, I don’t see how the man to whom ‘torches were applied on Mount Oeta,’ as Accius says, could have gone from that blaze ‘to his father’s eternal home.’ And yet Homer has Ulysses meet him in the underworld, just like the others who had died.”

3.42 “Still, I’d very much like to know which Hercules we’re supposed to worship. People who dig into obscure, little-known writings tell us there were several. The oldest was Jupiter’s son—but the oldest Jupiter’s son, since we also find several Jupiters in early Greek writings. That Jupiter and Lysithoe were the parents of the Hercules who, we’re told, fought Apollo over the tripod. Another is said to have been an Egyptian, the son of Nile, who supposedly put the Phrygian writings together. The third is one of the Idaean Dactyls. People bring him offerings for the dead †to whom. The fourth is the son of Jupiter <and> Asteria, Latona’s sister. He’s worshiped especially at Tyre, and Carthage is said to be his daughter. The fifth is in India and is called Belus. The sixth is this familiar Hercules, whom Jupiter fathered by Alcmena—but that was the third Jupiter. As I’ll soon show, we’ve been told of several Jupiters too.”

3.43 “Now that my argument has brought me here, I’ll show that I’ve learned better lessons about worshiping the immortal gods from the rules for our priests and our ancestors’ customs—from these little cups Numa left us, which Laelius discusses in that little gem of a speech—than from Stoic arguments. If I follow your teachings, tell me how to answer someone who asks me this: ‘If there are gods […], are the Nymphs goddesses too? If the Nymphs are, so are the little Pans and the Satyrs. But those aren’t gods, so the Nymphs aren’t [goddesses] either. Yet temples have been publicly promised and dedicated to them. Then the other gods with dedicated temples aren’t gods either. Now take this further. You count Jupiter and Neptune as gods. That makes their brother Orcus a god too. We must also consider the rivers said to flow in the underworld gods—Acheron, Cocytus, and Pyriphlegethon—and then Charon and Cerberus.’”

3.44 “‘But we have to reject that. Then Orcus isn’t a god either. So what do you say about his brothers?’ Carneades used to make these arguments, not to do away with the gods—what could be less fitting for a philosopher?—but to prove that the Stoics explained nothing about them. So he kept pressing: ‘If these brothers belong among the gods, can anyone deny that their father Saturn does too? People generally worship him most in the west. If he’s a god, we must admit that his father, Caelus (Heaven), is also a god. In that case, Caelus’s parents, Aether, the upper air, and Dies (Day), must count as gods too, along with their brothers and sisters. The ancient writers on divine family trees give these names: Love, Deceit, †Measure, Work, Envy, Fate, Old Age, Death, Darkness, Misery, Complaint, Favor, Fraud, Stubbornness, the Fates, the Hesperides, and Dreams. They say all these were born to Erebus and Night. So either we must accept these monsters or we must give up the gods we started with.’”

3.45 “What? Will you say Apollo, Vulcan, Mercury, and the rest are gods, but have doubts about Hercules, Aesculapius, Liber, Castor, and Pollux? Yet people worship these just as much as those others, and some people worship them far more. So we must count these sons of mortal mothers as gods. What about Aristaeus, Apollo’s son, who is said to have discovered the olive? What about Theseus, Neptune’s son, and the others whose fathers were gods? Won’t they belong among the gods? And those whose mothers were goddesses? I’d think their claim was even stronger. Just as [under] civil law a person whose mother is free is free, so under natural law someone whose mother is a goddess must be a god. That’s why the islanders of Astypalaea worship Achilles with such devotion. If he’s a god, Orpheus and Rhesus are gods too, since each had a Muse for his mother. Unless, of course, marriages at sea count for more than marriages on land. If these aren’t gods because no one worships them anywhere, how can those others be gods?”

3.46 “So consider whether these honors reward people’s good qualities rather than their immortality. You seemed to be saying that yourself, Balbus. But if you think Latona is a goddess, how can you deny that Hecate is one? Her mother is Asteria, Latona’s sister. Or is she a goddess too? We’ve certainly seen her altars and shrines in Greece. But if she’s a goddess, why not the Eumenides? If they’re goddesses—they have a shrine in Athens, and here, as I understand it, the grove of Furina—then the Furies are goddesses. I suppose they watch for criminal acts and wickedness and punish them.”

3.47 “If gods of this kind exist and take part in human affairs, we must also consider Natio a goddess. We regularly offer her a sacrifice when we make the circuit of shrines in the countryside around Ardea. Her name, Natio, comes from those being born, since she watches over married women in childbirth. If she’s a goddess, all those you mentioned are gods: Honor, Good Faith, Mind, and Harmony. Then Hope and Moneta are too, along with everything we can dream up in our own minds. If that isn’t plausible, neither is the starting point these ideas came from. And tell me this: if the gods we’ve inherited and worship really are gods, why shouldn’t we put Serapis and Isis in the same class? If we do that, why reject the gods of foreign peoples? Then we’ll add cattle and horses to the gods, ibises and hawks, asps, crocodiles, and fish, dogs, wolves, and cats, and plenty of other animals. If we reject these, we’ll also reject the beliefs they came from.”

3.48 “What next? Will Ino count as a goddess, called Leucothea, ‘White Goddess,’ by the Greeks and Matuta by us, though she’s Cadmus’s daughter? Yet Circe, Pasiphae, and Aeetes won’t belong among the gods, though their mother was Perseis, Oceanus’s daughter, and their father was Sun? Besides, our colonists at Circeii worship Circe devoutly too. So you count her as a goddess. What answer will you give Medea? Her two <divine> grandfathers were Sun and Oceanus, her father was Aeetes, and her mother was Idyia. And what about her brother Absyrtius? Pacuvius calls him Aegialeus, but the older writings more often use the other name. If these aren’t gods, I’m worried about what will become of Ino. All these claims flow from the same source.”

3.49 “Or will Amphiaraus and Trophonius be gods? When land belonging to the immortal gods in Boeotia was exempted under the censors’ rules, our tax contractors denied that anyone who had once been human was immortal. But if these are gods, Erechtheus certainly is. We’ve seen both his shrine and his priest in Athens. If we make him a god, how can we have any doubts about Codrus, or about the others who fell fighting for their country’s freedom? But if that isn’t convincing, we shouldn’t accept the earlier claims these conclusions come from either.”

3.50 “And in most communities, you can see why brave men have been remembered with honors paid to immortal gods. It was a way to encourage courage, so that the best citizens would be more willing to face danger for their country. That’s precisely why Erechtheus and his daughters rank as gods at Athens. Athens also has a shrine to the daughters of Leos, called the Leocorion. The people of Alabanda actually show more devotion to Alabandus, their city’s founder, than to any of the famous gods. While visiting them, Stratonicus made one of his many witty remarks. Someone kept pestering him, insisting that Alabandus was a god and Hercules wasn’t. ‘Then,’

3.51 “he said, ‘let Alabandus be angry with me, and Hercules with you.’ But Balbus, you don’t see how far your arguments about the sky and stars can spread. You say the sun and moon are gods. The Greeks identify the sun with Apollo and the moon with Diana. But if the moon is a goddess, Lucifer and the other wandering stars will have to count as gods too. So will the fixed stars. And why shouldn’t the rainbow we see count as a god? It’s beautiful. Because of its appearance, and because something wonderful produces it, it’s said to have been born to Thaumas. If the rainbow has a divine nature, what will you do with clouds? After all, a rainbow forms when clouds take on certain colors. One cloud is even said to have given birth to the Centaurs. If you admit clouds among the gods, you’ll certainly have to admit storms. The Roman people have consecrated them in their religious rites. So rain, rain clouds, gales, and whirlwinds must be considered gods. Our own commanders have regularly sacrificed an animal to the waves when setting out to sea.

3.52 “Now, if Ceres gets her name from gerere, ‘bearing,’ as you said, the earth itself is a goddess. People do regard it that way: what else is Tellus? But if the earth is a god, the sea is too. You said the sea was Neptune. Then rivers and springs must be gods as well. That’s why Masso dedicated a shrine to Fons after coming back from Corsica. And in the augurs’ prayer we find Tiberinus, Spino, Anemo, Nodinus, and other names of nearby rivers. So either this will spread without any limit, or we won’t accept any of these things. We can’t approve that endless line of superstitious reasoning. That means we shouldn’t accept any of these things as gods.

3.53 “So, Balbus, we must also argue against those who say that the gods we all worship with such reverence and devotion were raised from human life to heaven in people’s beliefs, not in fact. To begin with, the people called theologians count three Jupiters. The first two were born in Arcadia. The first had Aether as his father and is also said to have fathered Proserpina and Liber. The second had Caelus as his father. He’s said to have fathered Minerva, whom they describe as the first to practice war and its inventor. The third was from Crete, a son of Saturn. His tomb is shown on that island. The Greeks also give different accounts of the Dioscuri, the sons of Jupiter. The first group consists of three, called the Anactes, ‘Lords,’ at Athens: Tritopatreus, Eubuleus, and Dionysus. Their parents were the most ancient King Jupiter and Proserpina. The second group, Castor and Pollux, were born to the third Jupiter and Leda. Some give the names of the third group as Alco, Melampus, and †Euiolus. They were sons of Atreus, whose father was Pelops.

3.54 “Then there are the Muses. The first group numbered four, [born] to the second Jupiter: †born and Thelxinoe†, Aoede, Arche, Melete. The second group numbered nine, born to the third Jupiter and Mnemosyne. The third were born [to the third Jupiter], to Pierus and Antiope. Poets commonly call them the Pierides or Pieriae. They have the same names and number as the group just before them. And although you say the Sun, Sol, got his name because he is solus, ‘alone,’ look how many Suns the theologians produce! One was a son of Jupiter and a grandson of Aether. Another was a son of Hyperion. A third was a son of Vulcan, himself a son of the Nile. The Egyptians say his city is the one called Heliopolis. The fourth is said to have been born to Acantho on Rhodes in the heroic age. He was the <father> of Ialysus, Camirus, and Lindus, from whom the Rhodians come. The fifth is said to have fathered Aeetes and Circe in Colchis. There are several Vulcans too:

3.55 “the first was a son of Caelus. He and Minerva were the parents of the Apollo whom ancient historians regarded as Athens’ protector. The second was born [in] the Nile. The Egyptians call him Opas and regard him as Egypt’s guardian. The third was born to the third Jupiter and Juno. He’s said to have run the forge on Lemnos. The fourth was a son of Maemalius. He ruled the islands near Sicily that used to be called the Vulcanian Islands.

3.56 “One Mercury had Caelus as his father and Dies as his mother. His penis is said to have become obscenely erect because the sight of Proserpina excited him. Another, the son of Valens and Phoronis, is thought to live underground and is identified with Trophonius. A third was born to the third Jupiter and Maia. He and Penelope are said to have been Pan’s parents. The fourth had the Nile as his father. The Egyptians consider it wrong to speak his name. The fifth is worshipped by the people of Pheneus. He’s said to have killed Argus and fled to Egypt because of it, then given the Egyptians laws and writing. The Egyptians call him Theyt. Their first month of the year has that same name.

3.57 “The first Aesculapius was a son of Apollo and is worshipped by the Arcadians. He’s said to have invented the surgical probe and to have been the first to bandage a wound. The second was the brother of the second Mercury. He’s said to have been struck by lightning and buried at Cynosurae. The third was a son of Arsippus and Arsinoe. They say he first discovered how to purge the bowels and pull teeth. His tomb and sacred grove are shown in Arcadia, not far from the river Lusius. The oldest Apollo is the one I mentioned a little earlier, Vulcan’s son and the guardian of Athens. Another was a son of Corybas, born in Crete. He’s said to have fought Jupiter himself for possession of that island. A third was born to the third Jupiter and Latona. They say he came to Delphi from the Hyperboreans. A fourth was born in Arcadia. The Arcadians call him Nomion, from nomos, ‘law,’ because they say they got their laws from him.

3.58 “There are several Dianas as well. The first was born to Jupiter and Proserpina and is said to have given birth to the winged Cupid. The second is better known. We’ve been told that her parents were the third Jupiter and Latona. The third is said to have had Upis as her father and Glauce as her mother. The Greeks often call her Upis, using her father’s name. We have many gods called Dionysus. The first was born to Jupiter and Proserpina. The second was a son of the Nile and is said to have killed Nysa. The third had Cabirus as his father. They say he ruled Asia as its king, and the Sabazia festival was established for him. The fourth was born to Jupiter and Luna. The Orphic rites are believed to be performed in his honor. The fifth was born to Nysus and Thyone. He’s thought to have established the festivals held every third year.

3.59 “The first Venus was born to Caelus and Dies. We’ve seen her shrine at Elis. The second sprang from foam. We’ve been told that she and Mercury were the parents of the second Cupid. The third was born to Jupiter and Dione and married Vulcan. But she’s said to have had Anteros by Mars. The fourth was conceived in Syria and Cyprus. She’s called Astarte and is said to have married Adonis. The first Minerva is the one we mentioned earlier as Apollo’s mother. The second was born to the Nile and is worshipped by the Egyptians of Sais. The third is the one we said earlier was fathered by Jupiter. The fourth was born to Jupiter and Coryphe, a daughter of Oceanus. The Arcadians call her Κορίαν and say she invented four-horse chariots. The fifth was a daughter of Pallas. She’s said to have killed her father when he tried to violate her virginity. She’s given winged sandals to wear.

3.60 “The first Cupid is said to have been born to Mercury and the first Diana. The second was born to Mercury and the second Venus. The third, who is also Anteros, was born to Mars and the third Venus. These stories <and others> like them have been collected from the old traditions of Greece. You understand that they must be challenged if religious beliefs aren’t to become confused. But your people don’t just fail to reject them. They actually support them by explaining what each detail stands for.

“But let’s return now to the point we left when we went off on this discussion. Do you really think we need a more intricate argument to refute these ideas?”

3.61 “We see that intelligence, faithfulness, hope, virtue, honor, victory, safety, concord, and other such things are things, not gods. Either they are in us—like intelligence, hope, faithfulness, virtue, and concord—or we have to wish for them—like honor, safety, and victory. I see how useful these things are. I also see the statues dedicated to them. But why they should contain divine power I will understand when I’ve been taught it. Fortune especially belongs in this class. No one can separate her from inconsistency and blind chance, which certainly aren’t worthy of a god.

3.62 “Now why do you enjoy explaining myths and unraveling names so much? Caelus was castrated by his son, and Saturn too was tied up by his son. You defend these stories and others like them in a way that makes the people who invented them look not just sane but wise. And the effort you put into explaining names is pitiful: ‘Saturnus, because he saturat, fills himself with years; Mavors, because he magna vertit, overturns mighty things; Minerva, because she minuit, diminishes, or minatur, threatens; Venus, because she venit, comes to everything; Ceres, from gerendo, carrying.’ What a dangerous habit! Plenty of names will leave you stuck. What will you do with Veiovis? What about Vulcan? Still, since you think Neptune gets his name from nando, ‘swimming,’ you’ll be able to explain the origin of any name from a single letter. But in that explanation, you seemed to be floundering more than Neptune himself.”

3.63 “First Zeno, then Cleanthes, then Chrysippus took on a great and quite unnecessary burden: to give rational accounts of made-up myths, and explain why each name was given. When you do this, you certainly admit that the facts are very different from what people think. The things called gods are natural substances, not divine persons. The mistake went so far that even harmful things not only received divine names but had rites established for them. We see a shrine to Fever on the Palatine, <one to Orbona, Bereavement, at> the temple of the Lares, and an altar to Bad Fortune consecrated on the Esquiline.

3.64 “So let’s drive every mistake of this kind out of philosophy. When we discuss the immortal gods, let’s say things worthy of them. I have my own views about them, but I can’t find anything in yours to agree with. You say Neptune is a mind with intelligence extending throughout the sea. You say the same about Ceres. But I can’t grasp this intelligence of the sea or the earth. I can’t even form a faint idea of it. So I have to look elsewhere to learn both that gods exist and what they’re like, the kind you want them to be […].”

3.65 “[…] Let’s look at what comes next. First, <do> the gods govern the world through wise planning? Second, do they look after human affairs? Those are the two parts of your outline I still have to deal with. If you all agree, I think we should discuss them more closely.”

“I certainly agree,” said Velleius. “I’m expecting even more important things, and I strongly agree with what’s been said.”

Then Balbus said, “I don’t want to interrupt you, Cotta. We’ll find another time. I’ll certainly get you to admit it. But […]”

“[…]Cicero — — reports that, although he had said many things that could undermine religious practices, [Cotta] nevertheless held that these matters shouldn’t be debated in public, so that a debate of this kind wouldn’t wipe out the religious practices the community had adopted (Lact. Inst. 2.3.2)”

“[…]For, to begin with, we can’t be brought to believe that this immortal, supremely excellent nature is divided into sexes — — above all, Tullius — — without fearing any accusation of irreverence — — showed with greater reverence what he thought about such a belief (Arnob. Nat. 3.6)”

“[…]whether the gods govern the world through wise planning (v. 5)”

“[…] about the abundance of benefits we enjoy”

“[…] about the orderly succession of seasons and the regularity of the heavens”

“[…] about Chrysippus’s arguments, about comparing a beautiful house with the beauty of the world, about the harmony and agreement of the whole world, about Zeno’s conclusions”

“[…] about the power of fire and the heat from which everything is generated”

“[…] whether the whole world, the sun, the moon, and the stars have sensation and a mind; about the heavenly bodies needing food”

“[…] about nature proceeding with skill”

“[…] the world wasn’t built but was shaped by nature[…]”

“First, then, it isn’t likely that divine foresight made the material from which everything came. Rather, that material has its own power and nature, and had them in the past. When a builder is about to build something, he doesn’t make the material himself. He uses what’s ready for him. A sculptor does the same with wax. In the same way, this divine foresight must have had material available—not material it made itself, but material already at hand. But if a god didn’t make matter, then a god didn’t make earth, water, air, or fire either.[…]”

“Why, if a god made everything for human beings, do we find so many things both at sea and on land that work against us, harm us, <and> kill us? [10] The Stoics failed to see the truth and gave a thoroughly foolish answer to this. They say that many plants and animals have uses we haven’t discovered yet. In time, they say, we’ll find those uses, just as need and experience have already discovered many things unknown in earlier ages. [11] But what possible use can we find in mice, cockroaches, and snakes, which trouble and harm human beings? Is some medicine hidden in them? If there is, let it be discovered someday. It will still be a remedy against harm, when the very complaint is that harm exists at all. [12] They say a viper burned down to ashes cures a bite from that same kind of creature. How much better it would’ve been if the creature hadn’t existed at all, instead of our having to look to it for a remedy against itself. (Lact. ira 13.9-12)

“[…]A god either wants to remove evils and can’t, or can and doesn’t want to, or neither wants to nor can, or both wants to and can. [21] If he wants to and can’t, he’s weak, which can’t be true of a god. If he can and doesn’t want to, he’s spiteful, which is just as foreign to a god. If he neither wants to nor can, he’s both spiteful and weak, and so isn’t a god at all. If he both wants to and can—the only possibility that suits a god—then where do evils come from, or why doesn’t he remove them? (Lact. ira 13.20-21)

[…]human beings surpass all animals (Diom. GL. 1.313.10)

“[…]”

“human beings surpass all animals[…]”

“That won’t work that way at all; there’s a great struggle ahead.

“For me to beg him with all that sweet talk,

unless I had something to gain:”

3.66 “Does she seem short on reasoning, as she plots a wicked disaster for herself? And how cunningly reasoned is this:If you want what you want, things will turn out as you work for them.That line is the seed of every evil.Distracted, today he handed me the bars,

with which I’ll let all my anger loose and bring ruin on him:

grief for me, mourning for him; destruction for him, exile for me.Beasts certainly don’t have this reason, which you say the gods gave as a favor to human beings alone.

3.67 “So do you see how great a gift we’ve received from the gods? And the same Medea, fleeing her father and her country,after her father

comes close and is almost ready to seize her,

meanwhile kills the boy and cuts his body apart, limb by limb,

and scatters it all over the fields. She does this

so that, while the father gathers his son’s scattered limbs,

she can escape, and grief can slow his pursuit,

so that murdering her own kin can bring her safety.

3.68 “She had no lack of reason, any more than she lacked wickedness. And the man preparing that deadly meal for his brother—isn’t he turning his reasoning this way and that in his mind?I must build a greater weight of trouble, stir up a greater evil,

to crush and break his bitter heart.Nor should we pass over that other man himself,who wasn’t content to lure a wife into adultery.Atreus speaks rightly and truly about him:What I consider the greatest danger at the highest level of power

is that royal mothers are defiled,

the line corrupted, the blood mixed.Yet how cunningly he acted, seeking a kingdom through adultery:‘I add to this that the father of the gods sent me a sign,

a marvel to secure my reign:

a lamb among my flocks, shining with golden fleece,

which Thyestes once dared steal from the palace,

[in] this matter he took my wife as his helper.’

3.69 “Doesn’t he seem to have used the greatest wickedness along with the greatest powers of reasoning? The stage isn’t the only place filled with these crimes. Everyday life is full of almost greater ones. Every household feels it; so do the courts, the Senate house, the electoral field, our allies, and our provinces. Just as reason is used for right action, it is used for wrongdoing. The first happens rarely and among few people; the second happens all the time and among very many. It would have been better for the immortal gods to give us no reason at all than to give it with so much harm. Wine rarely helps the sick and very often harms them. So it’s better not to give it at all than to run into obvious danger in the hope of an uncertain cure. In the same way, I wonder whether it would have been better for the human race not to receive at all that quick movement of thought, that sharpness and cleverness we call reason, rather than to receive it so generously and freely. It destroys many and benefits very few.

3.70 “So if the divine mind and will looked after human beings by giving them reason, it looked after only those it gave good reason to. We can see that there are very few such people, if there are any at all. But you won’t accept that the immortal gods looked after only a few people. It follows, then, that they looked after no one.”

“Here’s your usual answer to this point: the gods haven’t failed to provide for us in the best possible way just because many people misuse their gift. Plenty of people misuse their inheritances too, but that doesn’t mean their fathers gave them no benefit. Does anyone deny that? But how are the two cases alike? Deianira didn’t mean to hurt Hercules when she gave him the tunic soaked in the Centaur’s blood. And the man whose sword opened Jason of Pherae’s abscess, which the doctors couldn’t cure, didn’t mean to help him. Many people have helped when they meant to hurt, and hurt when they meant to help. So what someone gives doesn’t reveal what they intended by giving it. And just because the person receiving something uses it well, that doesn’t mean the giver gave it out of friendship.”

3.71 “What act of lust or greed, what crime, is undertaken without a plan? Or carried out without mental activity and thought—that is, without reasoning? Every opinion involves reason. If the opinion is true, it’s good reasoning; if false, bad reasoning. But all we get from a god, if we get it at all, is reason. Whether that reason is good or bad comes from us. Reason isn’t a gift the gods give human beings in the way a father leaves an inheritance. If the gods had wanted to hurt human beings, what better gift could they have given? And where would the seeds of injustice, lack of self-control, and cowardice be if reason didn’t lie behind those vices?”

“We just mentioned Medea and Atreus, characters from heroic stories who work out and weigh their plans as they plot appalling crimes.”

3.72 “What about the frivolous plots of comedy? Aren’t they always based on reasoning? Doesn’t that young man in The Eunuch argue cleverly enough?What am I to do, then?

“She shut me out and calls me back. Go back? Not if she begs me.And in The Young Comrades, another character doesn’t hesitate to use reason against common opinion, just as the Academics do. He says that, when you’re deeply in love and have no money, it’s pleasantto have a father who is greedy, unkind to his children,

hard to deal with, who doesn’t love you or care about you,

3.73 “And he supports this unbelievable view with little arguments:Either cheat him out of his income, or use the account books

to divert a payment, or use a slave boy

to scare money out of him. After all, money from a stingy father

is so much more fun to throw away;and he argues that an easygoing, generous father is a nuisance to a son in love:How I can fool him, what I can get out of him,

what trick or scheme I can cook up against him—

“I’ve got no idea. Every plot, every lie,

every sleight of hand—my father’s kindness has shut them all down.So could those plots, schemes, lies, and tricks have existed without reason? What a splendid gift from the gods! It lets Phormio say:Bring on the old man! I’ve already got every plan ready in my mind.”

3.74 “But let’s leave the theater and go to the forum. The praetor takes his seat. What’s the case about? Who set fire to the public records office? What crime could be more secret? Yet Quintus Sosius, a distinguished Roman knight from Picenum, admitted doing it. Who altered the public records? Lucius Alenus did that too, by copying the handwriting of the six leading officials. Could anyone be more ingenious? Look at the other investigations: the gold from Tolosa and the Jugurthine conspiracy. Go back further, to Tubulus taking money to decide a lawsuit. Then come forward to the investigation into sexual offenses under Peducaeus’s bill. Then there are the everyday cases: murder, poisoning, theft of public money, and now investigations into wills under the new law. That’s where we get the legal claim, ‘I declare that the theft took place with your help and advice.’ That’s where we get all those lawsuits over breaches of trust in guardianship, agency, partnership, and property held in trust, along with the other dishonest dealings involved in buying, selling, hiring, or renting out. That’s where we get a public prosecution over a private matter under the Laetorian law. And that’s where we get the sweeping net that catches every kind of dishonesty: the legal action for fraud introduced by our friend Gaius Aquillius. Aquillius himself holds that fraud is established when someone pretends to do one thing but actually does another.”

3.75 “Are we really to believe that the immortal gods sowed this enormous crop of evils? If the gods gave people reason, they also gave them malice. Malice is simply a clever, deceptive use of reason to hurt someone. Those same gods also gave us fraud, crime, and all the other things that no one can plan or carry out without reason. So, just as that old woman wishes,‘If only axes in Pelion’s woods

had never felled fir beams to the ground!’I wish the gods had never given people this cleverness. Very few use it well, and even they are often crushed by those who use it badly. Countless people use it dishonestly. So this divine gift of reason and judgment seems to have been given to people to help them cheat, not to help them be good.”

3.76 “But you keep insisting that people are to blame, not the gods. That’s like a doctor blaming the seriousness of the disease, or a ship’s captain blaming the force of the storm. Of course, they’re only human. Still, it’s ridiculous. Someone might say, ‘Who would have called you in if those problems didn’t exist?’ We can argue more freely against a god: ‘You say people’s faults are to blame. Then you should have given people a kind of reason that ruled out faults and wrongdoing.’ So how could the gods have made a mistake? We leave estates to people in the hope that we’re choosing well, and our hope can prove wrong. But how could a god be wrong? Or was it like Sol letting his son Phaethon into his chariot, or Neptune, when Theseus destroyed Hippolytus after his father Neptune had granted him three wishes:”

3.77 “Those are poets’ tales. We want to be philosophers, reporting facts, not fables. Yet even those poetic gods, if they’d known their gifts would destroy their sons, would be thought to have done wrong in giving them. And take what Aristo of Chios used to say. Philosophers harm listeners who put a bad interpretation on good teaching: people can leave Aristippus’s school as reckless pleasure-seekers, or Zeno’s as harsh men. If that is true—if listeners are going to leave as worse people because they twist philosophers’ discussions—then surely it would be better for philosophers to keep silent than to harm their listeners.

3.78 “In the same way, if people turn the reason the immortal gods gave them with good intentions into a tool for fraud and malice, humanity would have been better off without it. Suppose a doctor orders a sick man to drink wine, knowing he’ll drink it too strong and die at once. The doctor would be seriously at fault. Your Providence deserves the same blame for giving reason to people it knew would use it wrongly and dishonestly. Unless perhaps you say it didn’t know. I wish you would! But you won’t dare. I know how highly you value its name.”

3.79 “But we can finish this part of the argument now. All philosophers agree that foolishness is a greater evil than all the evils of fortune and the body put together on the other side. Yet no one achieves wisdom. So all of us are suffering the worst evils, even though you say the immortal gods have taken excellent care of us. There’s no difference between no one being healthy and no one being able to be healthy. In the same way, I don’t see what difference it makes whether no one is wise or no one can be wise.”

“We’ve already said far too much about something completely obvious. Telamon settles the whole question of the gods’ neglect of people in a single line:‘If they cared, good people would do well and bad people badly. That’s not what happens.’If the gods really were looking after humanity, they should have made everyone good;”

3.80 “or, failing that, they should at least have looked after the good. Why, then, did the Carthaginian defeat the two Scipios in Spain, men of outstanding courage and goodness? Why did Maximus have to bury his son, who had been consul? Why did Hannibal kill Marcellus? Why did Cannae take Paulus’s life? Why was Regulus’s body handed over to Carthaginian cruelty? Why couldn’t Africanus find protection within the walls of his own home? But these are old cases, and there are many more. Let’s look at more recent ones. Why is my uncle Publius Rutilius in exile, a man as blameless as he is learned? Why was my friend Drusus murdered in his own home? Why was the chief priest Quintus Scaevola, a model of self-control and good judgment, butchered in front of Vesta’s statue? Why, even before that, did Cinna kill so many of the state’s leading men? Why was Gaius Marius, the most treacherous man of all, able to order the death of Quintus Catulus, a man of exceptional standing?”

3.81 “The day would end before I could list all the good people who have suffered, or all the wicked people who have done wonderfully well. Why did Marius die so happily, an old man in his own home, during his seventh consulship? Why did Cinna, the cruelest man of all, rule for so long? ‘But he paid for it.’ It would have been better to stop him, to prevent him from killing so many outstanding men, than to make him pay for it eventually. Quintus Varius, a thoroughly vicious man, died under the most agonizing torture and punishment. If that was because he’d killed Drusus with a sword and Metellus with poison, it would have been better to keep those men alive than to make Varius pay for his crime. Dionysius was tyrant of an immensely wealthy and prosperous city for thirty-eight years;”

3.82 “and long before him, Pisistratus ruled for many years in the most flourishing part of Greece. ‘But Phalaris and Apollodorus paid for their crimes.’ Yes, after they’d tortured and killed many people. Plenty of bandits pay for their crimes too. Still, we can’t say that more bandits have been killed than captives have been put to cruel deaths. We’re told that Anaxarchus, a follower of Democritus, was tortured to death by a Cypriot tyrant, and that Zeno of Elea was killed under torture. What can I say about Socrates? Whenever I read Plato, I find myself crying over his death. So don’t you see? If the gods watch human affairs, their judgment makes no distinction between good and bad.”

3.83 “Diogenes the Cynic used to say that Harpalus testified against the gods. In those days Harpalus was considered a successful robber, and he lived in that good fortune for so long. Take Dionysius, whom I mentioned earlier. After plundering Proserpina’s temple at Locri, he was sailing to Syracuse. With a perfectly favorable wind carrying him along, he laughed and said, ‘Do you see, friends, what a fine voyage the immortal gods give people who rob their temples?’ He was a sharp man. Once he’d fully and clearly grasped the point, he stuck to that view. When he brought his fleet to the Peloponnese and entered the temple of Olympian Jupiter, he stripped Jupiter of a very heavy gold cloak. The tyrant Gelo had adorned Jupiter with it, using spoils taken from the Carthaginians. Dionysius even joked that a gold cloak was heavy in summer and cold in winter. He threw a woolen cloak over Jupiter instead, saying that it was suitable for every season. He also ordered the gold beard removed from Aesculapius at Epidaurus. It wasn’t right, he said, for the son to have a beard when his father was beardless in every temple.”

3.84 “He then ordered the silver tables removed from all the shrines. They bore the inscription ‘Of the good gods,’ following the old Greek custom. He said he wanted to benefit from their goodness. He also took, without a moment’s hesitation, little gold Victories, offering bowls, and wreaths held in the outstretched hands of the statues. He said he was accepting them, not taking them away. After all, it was foolish to ask the gods for good things and then refuse to accept them when they held them out and offered them. They say this same man brought the things I’ve mentioned out of the temples into the marketplace and sold them through an auctioneer. Once he’d collected the money, he issued an order: anyone who possessed anything from a shrine had to return each object to its own shrine by a fixed date. So he added injustice toward people to his disrespect for the gods. Yet Olympian Jupiter didn’t strike him with a thunderbolt. Aesculapius didn’t waste him away and kill him with a long, painful illness. Instead, he died in his own bed and was carried to a †tyrant’s funeral pyre. The power he’d gained through crime he passed on to his son as an inheritance, as though it were just and lawful.”

3.85 “I discuss this point unwillingly, because it seems to give people license to do wrong. It would rightly seem so if our own conscience didn’t carry serious weight in judging both virtue and vice, even without considering the gods. Take conscience away, and everything collapses. A household or state wouldn’t seem organized by any plan or rule if it had no rewards for good actions and no penalties for wrongdoing. In the same way, the world certainly has no divine direction of human affairs if it makes no distinction between good and bad.

3.86 “‘But the gods neglect smaller matters. They don’t attend to everyone’s little fields and little vines. If blight or hail damages someone’s crops, Jupiter wasn’t required to take notice. Even kings don’t concern themselves with every tiny detail in their kingdoms.’ That’s what you say. As if I’d been complaining just now about Publius Rutilius’s estate at Formiae, not about the loss of his security! And all human beings do hold this view: they get their outward advantages from the gods—their vineyards, grainfields, olive groves, rich harvests of grain and fruit, and in short all life’s comfort and prosperity. But no one has ever credited a god with giving him virtue.

3.87 “Of course, that’s right. We deserve praise for our goodness, and we’re right to take pride in it. That wouldn’t be true if it were a gift from a god rather than something that came from ourselves. But when we gain honors or wealth, get some other lucky break, or escape some misfortune, we thank the gods. Then we don’t think any credit belongs to us. Has anyone ever thanked the gods for being a good person? But people have thanked them for being rich, honored, or unharmed. They call Jupiter Best and Greatest for these things—not because he makes us just, self-controlled, and wise, but because he keeps us safe and sound, wealthy and well supplied.”

3.88 “No one’s ever promised Hercules a tenth as an offering if they became wise—although Pythagoras is said to have sacrificed an ox to the Muses when he discovered something new in geometry. But I don’t believe that story, since he wouldn’t even sacrifice an animal to Apollo on Delos, to avoid splashing blood on the altar. To get back to the point, everyone agrees on this: we should ask a god for good luck, but get wisdom from ourselves. However many shrines we dedicate to Mind, Virtue, and Good Faith, we still recognize that these things lie within us. We have to ask the gods to make hope, safety, help, and victory possible.”

“So, as Diogenes used to say, the prosperity and success of bad people show that the gods have no power or authority at all.”

3.89 “‘But sometimes things turn out well for good people.’ We seize on those cases and credit the immortal gods for them without any reason. When Diagoras—the man they call the Atheist—visited Samothrace, a friend said to him, ‘You think the gods don’t care about human affairs. Don’t you see from all these painted panels how many people have escaped a violent storm and reached harbor safely by making vows?’ ‘That’s how it is,’ he said. ‘There aren’t any pictures anywhere of the people who were shipwrecked and died at sea.’ On another occasion, when he was sailing, the passengers were frightened and terrified by a storm. They told him they deserved what was happening because they’d taken him aboard their ship. He pointed out many other ships struggling on the same course and asked whether they thought Diagoras was aboard those ships too. That’s how things are: whether your luck is good or bad has nothing to do with the kind of person you are or how you’ve lived.”

3.90 “‘The gods don’t take notice of everything,’ he says, ‘nor do kings.’ What similarity is there? If kings knowingly let things pass, they are seriously at fault. But a god can’t even plead ignorance. You make a fine defense of him when you say the gods have the power to exact a criminal’s punishment from his children, grandchildren, and descendants, even if he escapes it by dying. What wonderful fairness from the gods! Would any state tolerate someone proposing a law that condemned a son or grandson because his father or grandfather had done wrong?What limit will be set to the slaughter of Tantalus’s descendants?

“Or when will there ever be enough punishment

to pay for Myrtilus’s death?

3.91 “I couldn’t easily say whether the poets corrupted the Stoics or the Stoics gave the poets authority. Both say monstrous and shameful things. Someone hurt by Hipponax’s iambic verse or wounded by Archilochus’s poetry wasn’t carrying around pain sent by a god. It was pain they’d developed themselves. And when we see the lust of Aegisthus or Paris, we don’t look to a god for its cause, since we can almost hear their guilt speaking. I also credit Hippocrates rather than Aesculapius with restoring many sick people to health. And I’ll never say that the Spartan system of training was given to Sparta by Apollo rather than Lycurgus. Critolaus, I tell you, destroyed Corinth, and Hasdrubal destroyed Carthage. Those two men gouged out those eyes of the coast, not some angry god. You deny that a god can get angry at all.”

3.92 “But a god could certainly have helped and saved such great and splendid cities. You yourselves often say there is nothing a god can’t do, and without any effort. Just as people’s limbs move without strain, by thought and will alone, so everything can be shaped, moved, and changed by the gods’ will. You don’t say this superstitiously, like an old woman’s tale, but on a consistent basis in natural science. The matter of things, from which and in which everything exists, is wholly flexible and changeable. So there is nothing that can’t be shaped or transformed out of it, however suddenly. Divine providence shapes and governs all of it. Wherever this providence turns, it can do whatever it wants. Therefore it either doesn’t know its own power, neglects human affairs, or can’t judge what is best.

3.93 “‘It doesn’t care about individual people.’ That’s no surprise: it doesn’t even care about cities. Not cities? Not even nations and peoples. If it’s going to disregard even them, why be surprised that it’s disregarded the whole human race?”

“But how can you say that the gods don’t attend to everything, while also insisting that the immortal gods distribute and allot dreams to people? (I’m discussing this with you because your school holds that dreams tell the truth.) And at the same time you also say that people should make vows? After all, individuals make vows, so the divine mind listens to individuals too. You see, then, that it isn’t as busy as you thought. Suppose it is fully occupied, turning the sky, watching over the earth, and governing the seas. Why does it let so many gods do nothing and sit idle? Why doesn’t it put some of those idle gods in charge of human affairs? You’ve described countless gods, Balbus.”

“That’s about all I had to say about the nature of the gods. My aim wasn’t to deny it, but to help you understand how unclear it is and how hard it is to explain.”

3.94 With those words Cotta ended. But Lucilius said, “Cotta, you’ve attacked very forcefully the Stoic account of divine providence, which they have established with the greatest reverence and wisdom. But since evening is coming on, give us another day to answer these arguments. I’m fighting you for our altars and hearths, for the gods’ temples and shrines, and for the city’s walls. You pontiffs say those walls are sacred, and you surround the city with religion more carefully than with the walls themselves. I think it would be wrong for me to abandon them as long as I can breathe.”

3.95 “I certainly hope to be refuted, Balbus,” Cotta replied. “I preferred to discuss the points I raised rather than decide them, and I know very well that you can easily defeat me.”

“Of course,” Velleius said, “when he even thinks Jupiter sends us dreams! Yet dreams themselves aren’t as empty as the Stoics’ account of the gods’ nature.”

After these words, we parted. Velleius thought Cotta’s argument nearer the truth; I thought Balbus’s came closer to what seemed true.