d perhaps this opinion arose from
the idea which mankind have of their own beauty. But do not you, who
are so great an adept in physics, see what a soothing flatterer, what a
sort of procuress, nature is to herself? Do you think there is any
creature on the land or in the sea that is not highly delighted with
its own form? If it were not so, why would not a bull become enamored
of a mare, or a horse of a cow? Do you believe an eagle, a lion, or a
dolphin prefers any shape to its own? If nature, therefore, has
instructed us in the same manner, that nothing is more beautiful than
man, what wonder is it that we, for that reason, should imagine the
Gods are of the human form? Do you suppose if beasts were endowed with
reason that every one would not give the prize of beauty to his own
species?

XXVIII. Yet, by Hercules (I speak as I think)! though I am fond enough
of myself, I dare not say that I excel in beauty that bull which
carried Europa. For the question here is not concerning our genius and
elocution, but our species and figure. If we could make and assume to
ourselves any form, would you be unwilling to resemble the sea-triton
as he is painted supported swimming on sea-monsters whose bodies are
partly human? Here I touch on a difficult point; for so great is the
force of nature that there is no man who would not choose to be like a
man, nor, indeed, any ant that would not be like an ant. But like what
man? For how few can pretend to beauty! When I was at Athens, the whole
flock of youths afforded scarcely one. You laugh, I see; but what I
tell you is the truth. Nay, to us who, after the examples of ancient
philosophers, delight in boys, defects are often pleasing. Alcaeus was
charmed with a wart on a boy's knuckle; but a wart is a blemish on the
body; yet it seemed a beauty to him. Q. Catulus, my friend and
colleague's father, was enamored with your fellow-citizen Roscius, on
whom he wrote these verses:

As once I stood to hail the rising day,
Roscius appearing on the left I spied:
Forgive me, Gods, if I presume to say
The mortal's beauty with th' immortal vied.

Roscius more beautiful than a God! yet he was then, as he now is,
squint-eyed. But what signifies that, if his defects were beauties to
Catulus?

XXIX. I return to the Gods. Can we suppose any of them to be
squint-eyed, or even to have a cast in the eye? Have they any warts?
Are any of them hook-nosed, flap-eared, beetle-browed, or