matters is perhaps very nearly expressed in the striking anecdote which he puts, in this dialogue, into the mouth of the Epicurean.
"If you ask me what the Deity is, or what his nature and attributes are, I should follow the example of Simonides, who, when the tyrant Hiero proposed to him the same question, asked a day to consider of it. When the king, on the next day, required from him the answer, Simonides requested two days more; and when he went on continually asking double the time, instead of giving any answer, Hiero in amazement demanded of him the reason. 'Because,' replied he, 'the longer I meditate on the question, the more obscure does it appear.'"[1]
The position of Cicero as a statesman, and also as a member of the College of Augurs, no doubt checked any strong expression of opinion on his part as to the forms of popular worship and many particulars of popular belief. In the treatise which he intended as in some sort a sequel to this Dialogue on the 'Nature of the Gods'—that upon 'Divination'—he states the arguments for and against the national belief in omens, auguries, dreams, and such intimations of the Divine will.[2] He puts the defence of the system in the mouth of his brother Quintus, and takes himself the destructive side of the argument: but whether this was meant to give his own real views on the subject,
