Page:1888 Cicero's Tusculan Disputations.djvu/343

storms, and whirlwinds must then be Deities. It is certain, at least, that our captains used to sacrifice a victim to the waves before they embarked on any voyage.

As you deify the earth under the name of Ceres,^[1] because, as you said, she bears fruits (a gerendo), and the ocean under that of Neptune, rivers and fountains have the same right. Thus we see that Maso, the conqueror of Corsica, dedicated a temple to a fountain, and the names of the Tiber, Spino, Alrno, Nodinus, and other neighboring rivers are in the prayers^[2] of the augurs. Therefore, either the number of such Deities will be infinite, or we must admit none of them, and wholly disapprove of such an endless series of superstition.

XXI. None of all these assertions, then, are to be admitted. I must proceed now, Balbus, to answer those who say that, with regard to those deified mortals, so religiously and devoutly reverenced, the public opinion should have the force of reality. To begin, then: they who are called theologists say that there are three Jupiters; the first and second of whom were born in Arcadia; one of whom was the son of Æther, and father of Proserpine and Bacchus; the other the son of Cœlus, and father of Minerva, who is called the Goddess and inventress of war; the third one born of Saturn in the isle of Crete,^[3] where his sepulchre is shown. The sons of Jupiter (Διόσκουροι) also, among the Greeks, have many names; first, the three who at Athens have the title of Anactes,^[4] Tritopatreus, Eubuleus, and Dionysus, sons of the most ancient king Jupiter and Proserpine; the next are Castor and Pollux, sons of the third Jupiter and Leda; and, lastly, three others, by some called Alco,^[5] Melampus, and Tmolus, sons of Atreus, the son of Pelops.

1. She was first called Geres, from gero, to bear.
2. The word is precatione, which means the books or forms of prayers used by the augurs.
3. Cotta's intent here, as well as in other places, is to show how unphilosophical their civil theology was, and with what confusions it was embarrassed; which design of the Academic the reader should carefully keep in view, or he will lose the chain of argument.
4. Anactes, Ἄνακτες, was a general name for all kings, as we find in the oldest Greek writers, and particularly in Homer.
5. The common reading is Aleo; but we follow Lambinus and Davis, who had the authority of the best manuscript copies.

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