at Delos, lest he should defile the altar with blood. But to
return. It is universally agreed that good fortune we must ask of the
Gods, but wisdom must arise from ourselves; and though temples have
been consecrated to the Mind, to Virtue, and to Faith, yet that does
not contradict their being inherent in us. In regard to hope, safety,
assistance, and victory, we must rely upon the Gods for them; from
whence it follows, as Diogenes said, that the prosperity of the wicked
destroys the idea of a Divine Providence.

XXXVII. But good men have sometimes success. They have so; but we
cannot, with any show of reason, attribute that success to the Gods.
Diagoras, who is called the atheist, being at Samothrace, one of his
friends showed him several pictures[287] of people who had endured very
dangerous storms; "See," says he, "you who deny a providence, how many
have been saved by their prayers to the Gods." "Ay," says Diagoras, "I
see those who were saved, but where are those painted who were
shipwrecked?" At another time, he himself was in a storm, when the
sailors, being greatly alarmed, told him they justly deserved that
misfortune for admitting him into their ship; when he, pointing to
others under the like distress, asked them "if they believed Diagoras
was also aboard those ships?" In short, with regard to good or bad
fortune, it matters not what you are, or how you have lived. The Gods,
like kings, regard not everything. What similitude is there between
them? If kings neglect anything, want of knowledge may be pleaded in
their defence; but ignorance cannot be brought as an excuse for the
Gods.

XXXVIII. Your manner of justifying them is somewhat extraordinary, when
you say that if a wicked man dies without suffering for his crimes, the
Gods inflict a punishment on his children, his children's children, and
all his posterity. O wonderful equity of the Gods! What city would
endure the maker of a law which should condemn a son or a grandson for
a crime committed by the father or the grandfather?

Shall Tantalus' unhappy offspring know
No end, no close, of this long scene of woe?
When will the dire reward of guilt be o'er,
And Myrtilus demand revenge no more?[288]

Whether the poets have corrupted the Stoics, or the Stoics given
authority to the poets, I cannot easily determine. Both alike are to be
condemned. If those persons whose names have been branded in the
satires of Hipponax or Archilochus[289]