The deities of the vulgar are so little superior to human creatures, that where men are affected with strong sentiments of veneration or gratitude for any hero or public benefactor; nothing can be more natural than to convert him into a god, and fill the heavens, after this manner, with continual recruits from amongst mankind. Most of the divinities of the antient world are supposed to have once been men, and to have been beholden for their apotheosis to the admiration and affection of the people. And the real history of their adventures, corrupted by tradition, and elevated by the marvellous, became a plentiful source of fable; especially in passing thro' the hands of poets, allegorists, and priests, who successively improved upon the wonder and astonishment of the ignorant multitude.
Painters too and sculptors came in for their share of profit in the sacred mysteries; and furnishing men with sensible representations of their
animates, renews, and beautifies the universe: But is soon betrayed by the mythology into incoherencies, while he prays to that allegorical personage to appease the furies of her lover, Mars: An idea not drawn from allegory, but from the popular religion, and which Lucretius, as an Epicurean, could not consistently admit of.
divinities,
