Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, On the Nature of the Gods, and On the Commonwealth

ON THE CONTEMPT OF DEATH.

as Ennius says, agreeing with the common belief. Hence, too, Hercules is considered such a great and propitious God among the Greeks, and from them he was introduced among us, and his worship has extended even to the very ocean itself. This is how Bacchus, the offspring of Semele, was deified; and from the same illustrious fame we receive Castor and Pollux as Gods, who are reported not only to have helped the Romans to victory in their battles, but to have been the messengers of their success. What shall we say of Ino, the daughter of Cadmus? Is she not called Leucothea by the Greeks and Matuta by us? Nay, more; is not the whole of heaven (not to dwell on particulars) almost filled with the offspring of men? /

Should I attempt to search into antiquity and produce from there what the Greek writers have asserted, it would appear that even those who are called their principal Gods were taken from among men up into heaven.

XIII. Examine the tombs of those which are shown in Greece; recollect, for you have been initiated, what lessons are taught in the mysteries; then will you perceive how extensive this doctrine is. But they who were not acquainted with natural philosophy—for it did not begin to be in vogue until many years later—had no higher belief than what natural reason could give them. They were not acquainted with the principles and causes of things; they were often induced by certain visions, and those generally in the night, to think that those men who had departed from this life were still alive. // And this may further be brought as an irrefragable argument for us to believe that there are Gods—that there never was any nation so barbarous, nor any people in the world so savage, as to be without some notion of Gods. Many have wrong notions of the Gods, for that is the nature and ordinary consequence of bad customs, yet all allow that there is a certain divine nature and energy. Nor does this proceed from the conversation of men or the agreement of philosophers; it is not an opinion established by institutions or by laws; but, no doubt, in every case the consent of all nations is to be </insert> looked on as a law of nature. ) Who is there, then, that ) does not lament the loss of his friends, principally from