Are they all alike in the face?
For if they are many, then one must necessarily be more beautiful than another, and then there must be some Deity not absolutely most beautiful.

Or if their faces are all alike, there would be an Academy[90] in heaven; for if one God does not differ from another, there is no possibility of knowing or distinguishing them.
What if your assertion, Velleius, proves absolutely false, that no form occurs to us, in our contemplations on the Deity, but the human?
Will you, notwithstanding that, persist in the defence of such an absurdity?
Supposing that form occurs to us, as you say it does, and we know Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Neptune, Vulcan, Apollo, and the other Deities, by the countenance which painters and statuaries have given them, and not only by their countenances, but by their decorations, their age, and attire; yet the Egyptians, the Syrians, and almost all barbarous nations,[91] are without such distinctions.

You may see a greater regard paid by them to certain beasts than by us to the most sacred temples and images of the Gods; for many shrines have been rifled, and images of the Deities have been carried from their most sacred places by us; but we never heard that an Egyptian offered any violence to a crocodile, an ibis, or a cat.

What do you think, then?
Do not the Egyptians esteem their sacred bull, their Apis, as a Deity?
Yes, by Hercules! as certainly as you do our protectress Juno, whom you never behold, even in your dreams, without a goat-skin, a spear, a shield, and broad sandals.

But the Grecian Juno of Argos and the Roman Juno are not represented in this manner; so that the Grecians, the Lanuvinians, and we, ascribe different forms to Juno; and our Capitoline Jupiter is not the same with the Jupiter Ammon of the Africans.
XXX.