ore
Gods. But let us go on. You call Jupiter and Neptune Gods; their
brother Pluto, then, is one; and if so, those rivers also are Deities
which they say flow in the infernal regions--Acheron, Cocytus,
Pyriphlegethon; Charon also, and Cerberus, are Gods; but that cannot be
allowed; nor can Pluto be placed among the Deities. What, then, will
you say of his brothers?

Thus reasons Carneades; not with any design to destroy the existence of
the Gods (for what would less become a philosopher?), but to convince
us that on that matter the Stoics have said nothing plausible. If,
then, Jupiter and Neptune are Gods, adds he, can that divinity be
denied to their father Saturn, who is principally worshipped throughout
the West? If Saturn is a God, then must his father, Coelus, be one too,
and so must the parents of Coelus, which are the Sky and Day, as also
their brothers and sisters, which by ancient genealogists are thus
named: Love, Deceit, Fear, Labor, Envy, Fate, Old Age, Death, Darkness,
Misery, Lamentation, Favor, Fraud, Obstinacy, the Destinies, the
Hesperides, and Dreams; all which are the offspring of Erebus and
Night. These monstrous Deities, therefore, must be received, or else
those from whom they sprung must be disallowed.

XVIII. If you say that Apollo, Vulcan, Mercury, and the rest of that
sort are Gods, can you doubt the divinity of Hercules and AEsculapius,
Bacchus, Castor and Pollux? These are worshipped as much as those, and
even more in some places. Therefore they must be numbered among the
Gods, though on the mother's side they are only of mortal race.
Aristaeus, who is said to have been the son of Apollo, and to have found
out the art of making oil from the olive; Theseus, the son of Neptune;
and the rest whose fathers were Deities, shall they not be placed in
the number of the Gods? But what think you of those whose mothers were
Goddesses? They surely have a better title to divinity; for, in the
civil law, as he is a freeman who is born of a freewoman, so, in the
law of nature, he whose mother is a Goddess must be a God. The isle
Astypalaea religiously honor Achilles; and if he is a Deity, Orpheus and
Rhesus are so, who were born of one of the Muses; unless, perhaps,
there may be a privilege belonging to sea marriages which land
marriages have not. Orpheus and Rhesus are nowhere worshipped; and if
they are therefore not Gods, because they are nowhere worshipped as
such, how can the others be Deities? You,