THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 251what piety is due to a being from whom you receive noth

ing? Or how can you, or any one else, be indebted to him who bestows no benefits? For piety is only justice towards the Gods ; but what right have they to it, when there is no communication whatever between the Gods and men? And sanctity is the knowledge of how we ought to worship them; but I do not understand why they are to be worshipped, if we are neither to receive nor expect any good from them. XLIL And why should we worship them from an ad miration only of that nature in which we can behold noth ing excellent ? and as for that freedom from superstition, which you are in the habit of boasting of so much, it is easy to be free from that feeling when you have re nounced all belief in the power of the Gods ; unless, in deed, you imagine that Diagoras or Theodorus, who ab solutely denied the being of the Gods, could possibly be superstitious. I do not suppose that even Protagoras could, who doubted whether there were Gods or not. The opinions of these philosophers are not only destructive of superstition, which arises from a vain fear of the Gods, but of religion also, which consists in a pious adoration of them. What think you of those who have asserted that the whole doctrine concerning the immortal Gods w r as the in vention of politicians, whose view was to govern that part of the community by religion which reason could not in fluence? Are not their opinions subversive of all relig ion? Or what religion did Prodicus the Chian leave to men, who held that everything beneficial to human life should be numbered among the Gods? Were not they likewise void of religion who taught that the Deities, at present the object of our prayers and adoration, were val iant, illustrious, and mighty men who arose to divinity after death ? Euhemerus, whom our Ennius translated, and followed more than other authors, has particularly advanced this doctrine, and treated of the deaths and burials of the Gods ; can he, then, be said to have con firmed religion, or, rather, to have totally subverted it? I shall say nothing of that sacred and august Eleusina,

into whose mysteries the most distant nations were initi-