You call Jupiter and Neptune Gods; their brother Pluto, then, is one; and if so, those rivers also are Deities which they say flow in the infernal regions--Acheron, Cocytus, Pyriphlegethon; Charon also, and Cerberus, are Gods; but that cannot be allowed; nor can Pluto be placed among the Deities.

What, then, will you say of his brothers?
Thus reasons Carneades; not with any design to destroy the existence of the Gods (for what would less become a philosopher ?), but to convince us that on that matter the Stoics have said nothing plausible.

If, then, Jupiter and Neptune are Gods, adds he, can that divinity be denied to their father Saturn, who is principally worshipped throughout the West?
If Saturn is a God, then must his father, Coelus, be one too, and so must the parents of Coelus, which are the Sky and Day, as also their brothers and sisters, which by ancient genealogists are thus named: Love, Deceit, Fear, Labor, Envy, Fate, Old Age, Death, Darkness, Misery, Lamentation, Favor, Fraud, Obstinacy, the Destinies, the Hesperides, and Dreams; all which are the offspring of Erebus and Night.

These monstrous Deities, therefore, must be received, or else those from whom they sprung must be disallowed.
XVIII.

If you say that Apollo, Vulcan, Mercury, and the rest of that sort are Gods, can you doubt the divinity of Hercules and AEsculapius, Bacchus, Castor and Pollux?
These are worshipped as much as those, and even more in some places.