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All those treatises, beginning with the Academica written when he was sixty-two, two years only before his death, and carried on during twelve months with indomitable energy the De Finibus, the Tusculan Disputations, the De Natura Deorum, the De Divinatione, and the De Fato were composed during the time named.
Wherever is the sepulchre, there is thy temple, O melancholy Time! "Per ambages et ministeria deorum." Mr. Roger Morton was behind his counter one drizzling, melancholy day. Mr. Roger Morton, alderman, and twice mayor of his native town, was a thriving man. He had grown portly and corpulent.
In theology also they left a permanent mark on Roman thought; Posidonius wrote a work on the gods, which formed the basis of the speculative part of Varro's Antiquitates divinae, and almost certainly also of the second book of Cicero's de Natura Deorum . Other philosophers of the period, even if not professed Stoics, may have discussed the same subjects in their lectures and writings, arriving at conclusions of the same kind.
To less informed or less critical ages than our own, the absolute contribution of Cicero to ethics and metaphysics seemed comparable to that of the great Greek thinkers; the De Natura Deorum was taken as a workable argument against atheism, and the thin and wire-drawn discussions of the Academics were studied with an attention hardly given to the founder of the Academy.
Even in the consideration of moral questions Cicero is pursued by the conflict of opinions, although in this department he is most at home. The points he is most anxious to establish are the doctrines of God and the soul. These are most fully treated in his essay "De Natura Deorum," in which he submits the doctrines of the Epicureans and the Stoics to the objections of the Academy.
De Natura Deorum, an examination of the principal theories regarding the nature and power of the gods; Cato Maior, on old age; Laelius, on friendship; De Fato, discussing Fate and Free Will; Paradoxa, a book setting forth certain remarkable views of the Stoics; De Officiis, a treatise on practical ethics, the application of moral principles to the questions and difficulties of ordinary life.
From him we learn that Varro feared the entire collapse of the old faith; that he attributed its decline in some measure to the outward representations of divine objects; and, observing that Rome had existed 170 years without any image in her temples, instanced Judea to prove "eos qui primi simulacra deorum populis posuerunt, eos civitatibus suis et metum dempsisse, et errorem addidisse."
For instance, he calls Ptolemy Fortunae pudor crimenque deorum; he arraigns the gods as caring more for vengeance than liberty; he calls Septimius a disgrace to the gods, the death of Pompey a tale at which heaven ought to blush; he speaks of the expression on Pompey's venerable face as one of anger against the gods, of the stone that marks his tomb as an indictment against heaven, and hopes that it may soon be considered as false a witness of his death as Crete is to that of Jove; he makes young Pompey, speaking of his father's death, say: "Whatever insult of fate has scattered his limbs to the winds, I forgive the gods that wrong, it is of what they have left that I complain;" saddest of all, he gives us that tremendous epigram:
Inesse quin etiam sanctum aliquid et providum putant: nec aut consilia earum aspernantur, aut responsa negligunt. Vidimus sub divo Vespasiano Veledam diu apud plerosque numinis loco habitam. Sed et olim Auriniam et complures alias venerati sunt non adulatione, nec tanquam facerent deas. IX. Deorum maxime Mercurium colunt, cui certis diebus humanis quoque hostiis litare fas habent.
The Germans, on the other hand, really thought some of their wise women to be divine. Cf. His. 4, 62, and my note ibid. Reverence and affection for woman was characteristic of the German Tribes, and from them has diffused itself throughout European society. IX. Deorum. Sec. 3. Mercurium. So Caes. B.G. 6, 17: Deum maxime Mercurium colunt. Tur. His. Ang. Sax. App. to B. 2. chap. 3.
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