On the God of Socrates

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11 Therefore, as majesty demanded, he dedicated the heavens to the immortal gods. Some of these heavenly gods we perceive by sight, while others we investigate through the intellect. And indeed, by sight we discern you, 117 O brightest lights of the world, who lead the gliding year through the sky; nor do we see only those primary ones—the sun, the maker of the day, and the moon, the rival of the sun and glory of the night—whether she be crescent-shaped, or divided in half, or bulging, or full. With her changing torch of fires, the further she departs from the sun, the more she is illuminated, measuring her months by equal increases of travel and light, and thereafter by equal losses. She may possess her own perpetual brightness, as the Chaldeans Ancient Babylonian astronomers and philosophers. believe, being gifted with light on one side and void of radiance on the other, varying her appearance by the turning of her multicolored face. 118 Or perhaps, being entirely without her own brightness and in need of foreign light, she catches the rays of the sun, whether grazing or directly opposite, with her dense or mirror-like body. 12 and, to use the words of Lucretius, she tosses a borrowed II light from her own body original: "notham... lucem"; literally "bastard" or "unauthentic" light, referring to reflected light.. 119 Whichever of these opinions is true—for I shall see to that later—yet neither regarding the moon 120 nor the sun would any Greek or foreigner easily hesitate to call them gods. Nor would they doubt only those, as I said, but also the five stars which are commonly called "wanderers" The planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. by the unlearned, which nevertheless, with an unswerving, certain, and fixed course, perform most orderly journeys in eternal, divine successions. Indeed, with the varied appearance of their paths, but with a single and always constant speed, they simulate now a forward movement and now a backward retreat by a wonderful change, according to the position, curve, 13 and obstruction of the circles, which he who has learned the risings and settings of the constellations knows well. In that same number of visible gods, you who agree with Plato should place the other stars as well: Arcturus, 121 the rainy Hyades, the twin Plow-oxen original: "Triones"; the constellations of the Great and Little Bear., and likewise other radiating gods, by whom we see the vault of heaven adorned and crowned in clear weather. We gaze up at these "painted nights" with a stern grace and a grim beauty, seeing the carvings varied with wondrous brilliance upon this most perfect "shield of the world," as Ennius calls it. 14 There is another class of gods, which nature has denied to our sight, yet nonetheless we contemplate them with a searching mind [more keenly with the edge of the intellect...

1 Plato, Laws XI, 931 A: "For some of the gods we honor, seeing them clearly, while for others we establish statues as their likenesses." Augustine, The City of God X, 27.
2 Virgil, Georgics I, 5 and following. — Augustine, The City of God IX, 16.
11 Lucretius, V, 575 and following: "And the moon, whether she is carried along illuminating places with a borrowed light, or tosses her own light from her own body."
19 Augustine, The City of God IX, 16: "the stars . . . all of which he calls visible gods." — Virgil, Aeneid III, 516.
22 Varro, On the Latin Language VII, 73 M: "What of the night is seen in the high-sounding shield of heaven?" compare V, 19.

Critical Notes: 4 "sun" omitted in the original manuscript, added by old editors. 7 "she her own and" I have written following Rohde, where the original said "whether." 9 "multi-yoked" changed to "multi-wandering" by a later hand. 10 "mirror-like" I have written where the original said "whether." 21 "vault" (cohum) is a specialized term for the sky suggested by Kiessling where the original had "choir." 24 The phrase "contemplating more keenly with the edge of the mind" has been removed as a likely later addition.