es,
none can have; for you say that fate governs all things, and call that
fate which has been true from all eternity. What advantage, then, is
the knowledge of futurity to us, or how does it assist us to guard
against impending evils, since it will come inevitably?

But whence comes that divination? To whom is owing that knowledge from
the entrails of beasts? Who first made observations from the voice of
the crow? Who invented the Lots?[245] Not that I give no credit to
these things, or that I despise Attius Navius's staff, which you
mentioned; but I ought to be informed how these things are understood
by philosophers, especially as the diviners are often wrong in their
conjectures. But physicians, you say, are likewise often mistaken. What
comparison can there be between divination, of the origin of which we
are ignorant, and physic, which proceeds on principles intelligible to
every one? You believe that the Decii,[246] in devoting themselves to
death, appeased the Gods. How great, then, was the iniquity of the Gods
that they could not be appeased but at the price of such noble blood!
That was the stratagem of generals such as the Greeks call [Greek:
strategema], and it was a stratagem worthy such illustrious leaders,
who consulted the public good even at the expense of their lives: they
conceived rightly, what indeed happened, that if the general rode
furiously upon the enemy, the whole army would follow his example. As
to the voice of the Fauns, I never heard it. If you assure me that you
have, I shall believe you, though I really know not what a Faun is.

VII. I do not, then, O Balbus, from anything that you have said,
perceive as yet that it is proved that there are Gods. I believe it,
indeed, but not from any arguments of the Stoics. Cleanthes, you have
said, attributes the idea that men have of the Gods to four causes. In
the first place (as I have already sufficiently mentioned), to a
foreknowledge of future events; secondly, to tempests, and other shocks
of nature; thirdly, to the utility and plenty of things we enjoy;
fourthly, to the invariable order of the stars and the heavens. The
arguments drawn from foreknowledge I have already answered. With regard
to tempests in the air, the sea, and the earth, I own that many people
are affrighted by them, and imagine that the immortal Gods are the
authors of them.

But the question is, not whether there are people who believe that
there are Gods, but whether the