How much more reason have we to think that the Gods, who want nothing, should love each other, and employ themselves about us! If it were not so, why should we pray to or adore them?
Why do the priests preside over the altars, and the augurs over the auspices?
What have we to ask of the Gods, and why do we prefer our vows to them?
But Epicurus, you say, has written a book concerning sanctity.

A trifling performance by a man whose wit is not so remarkable in it, as the unrestrained license of writing which he has permitted himself; for what sanctity can there be if the Gods take no care of human affairs?
Or how can that nature be called animated which neither regards nor performs anything?
Therefore our friend Posidonius has well observed, in his fifth book of the Nature of the Gods, that Epicurus believed there were no Gods, and that what he had said about the immortal Gods was only said from a desire to avoid unpopularity.

He could not be so weak as to imagine that the Deity has only the outward features of a simple mortal, without any real solidity; that he has all the members of a man, without the least power to use them--a certain unsubstantial pellucid being, neither favorable nor beneficial to any one, neither regarding nor doing anything.

There can be no such being in nature; and as Epicurus said this plainly, he allows the Gods in words, and destroys them in fact; and if the Deity is truly such a being that he shows no favor, no benevolence to mankind, away with him! For why should I entreat him to be propitious?
He can be propitious to none, since, as you say, all his favor and benevolence are the effects of imbecility.
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