The first was, that when we lift up our eyes towards the heavens, we immediately conceive that there is some divinity that governs those celestial bodies; on which you quoted this passage-- Look up to the refulgent heaven above, Which all men call, unanimously, Jove; intimating that we should invoke that as Jupiter, rather than our Capitoline Jove[243], or that it is evident to the whole world that those bodies are Gods which Velleius and many others do not place even in the rank of animated beings.
Another strong proof, in your opinion, was that the belief of the existence of the Gods was universal, and that mankind was daily more and more convinced of it.

What! should an affair of such importance be left to the decision of fools, who, by your sect especially, are called madmen?
V.But the Gods have appeared to us, as to Posthumius at the Lake Regillus, and to Vatienus in the Salarian Way: something you mentioned, too, I know not what, of a battle of the Locrians at Sagra.

Do you believe that the Tyndaridae, as you called them; that is, men sprung from men, and who were buried in Lacedaemon, as we learn from Homer, who lived in the next age--do you believe, I say, that they appeared to Vatienus on the road mounted on white horses, without any servant to attend them, to tell the victory of the Romans to a country fellow rather than to M.Cato, who was at that time the chief person of the senate?
Do you take that print of a horse's hoof which is now to be seen on a stone at Regillus to be made by Castor's horse?
Should you not believe, what is probable, that the souls of eminent men, such as the Tyndaridae, are divine and immortal, rather than that those bodies which had been reduced to ashes should mount on horses, and fight in an army?
If you say that was possible, you ought to show how it is so, and not amuse us with fabulous old women's stories.
Do you take these for fabulous stories?
says Balbus.

Is not the temple, built by Posthumius in honor of Castor and Pollux, to be seen in the Forum?
Is not the decree of the senate concerning Vatienus still subsisting?
As to the affair of Sagra, it is a common proverb among the Greeks; when they would affirm anything strongly, they say "It is as certain as what passed at Sagra." Ought not such authorities to move you?
You oppose me, replies Cotta, with stories, but I ask reasons of you[244].

* * * VI.