rious 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 thence 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 sepulchres 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 till 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 looked on as a law of
nature. Who is there, then, that does not lament the loss of his friends,
principally from imagining them deprived of the conveniences of life? Take
away this opinion, and you remove with it all grief; for no one is
afflicted merely on account of a loss sustained by himself. Perhaps we may
be sorry, and grieve a little; but that bitter lamentation, and those
mournful tears, have their origin in our apprehensions that he whom we
loved is deprived of all the advantages of life, and is sensible of his
loss. And we are led to this opinion by nature, without any arguments or
any instruction.

XIV. But the greatest p