Physics 141
nor for gods, than to praise with justice the common law for
ever.From another hymn by Cleanthes: Epictetus
Enchiridion 53 (SVF 1.527)
Lead me, 0 Zeus, and you 0 Fate,
to whatever place you have assigned me;[11-22]I shall follow without reluctance, and if I am not willing to,
because I have become a bad man, nevertheless I will follow.Cicero On the Nature ofthe Gods 2
(selections)
[11-23]- Then Balbus [the Stoic] said, "I shall indulge you, and deal with
things as briefly as I can; indeed, once one has exposed the errors of
Epicurus my speech is stripped of all [excuse for] length. Our school
exhaustively divides this whole question about the immortal gods into
four parts: first they teach that there are gods, then what they are like,
then that the cosmos is governed by them, and finally that they take
thought for the affairs of human beings .... - Then Lucilius [Balbus] said, "The first part hardly even seems to
require discussion. For what is so obvious or clear, when we have gazed
up at the heaven and contemplated the heavenly bodies, as that there
exists some divine power of most exceptional intelligence by which these
phenomena are governed? ... If someone were to doubt this, I do not
at all understand why the same fellow could not also doubt whether there
is a sun or not; 5. for how is this any more evident than that? And unless
[such a conception] were known and grasped in our minds, our opinion
would not persist in such a stable fashion, nor would it be confirmed by
the passage of time, nor could it have become fixed as the centuries and
generations of mankind passed. We notice that other opinions, which are
ungrounded and empty, have faded away with the passage of time ....
... 12. Augurs have great authority; is the craft of the soothsayers not
divine? Is not someone who witnesses these things [cases of successful
prediction] and countless others of the same sort not compelled to admit
that there are gods? For it is certainly necessary, if there are spokesmen
for certain beings, that those beings themselves exist; but there are spokes-
men for the gods; let us, therefore, admit that there are gods. But perhaps
not all predictions are fulfilled. Well, just because not all sick men recover
it does not follow that there is no craft of medicine. Signs of future
events are shown by the gods; if some people make mistakes in [interpre-