De Stoicorum repugnantiis

Having often written that there is nothing reprehensible, nothing to be complained of in the world, all things being finished according to a most excellent nature, he again elsewhere leaves certain negligences to be reprehended, and those not concerning small or base matters.

For having in his Third Book of Substance related that some such things befall honest and good men, he says: Is it because some things are not regarded, as in great families some bran—yea, and some grains of corn also—are scattered, the generality being nevertheless well ordered; or is it that there are evil Genii set over those things in which there are real and faulty negligence And he also affirms that there is much necessity intermixed, I let pass, how inconsiderate it is to compare such accidents befalling honest and good men, as were the condemnation of Socrates, the burning of Pythagoras, whilst he was yet living, by the Cyloneans, the putting to death—and that with torture—of Zeno by the tyrant Demylus, and of Antiphon by Dionysius, with the letting of bran fall. But that there should be evil Genii placed by Providence over such charges,—how can it but be a reproach to God, as it would be to a king, to commit the administration of his provinces to evil and rash governors and captains, and suffer the best of his subjects to be despised and ill-treated by them? And furthermore, if there is much necessity mixed amongst affairs, then God has not power over them all, nor are they all administered according to his reason.

He contends much against Epicurus and those that take away providence from the conceptions we have of the Gods, whom we esteem beneficial and gracious to men. And these things being frequently said by them, there is no necessity of setting down the words. Yet all do not conceive the Gods to be good and favorable to us. For see what the Jews and Syrians think of the Gods; see also with how much superstition the poets are filled. But there is not any one, in a manner to speak of, that imagines God to be corruptible or to have been born. And to omit all others, Antipater the Tarsian, in his book of the Gods writes thus, word for word: At the beginning of our discourse we will briefly repeat the opinion we have

concerning God. We understand therefore God to be an animal, blessed and incorruptible, and beneficial to men. And then expounding every one of these terms he says: And indeed all men esteem the Gods to be incorruptible. Chrysippus therefore is, according to Antipater, not one of all men; for he thinks none of the Gods, except Fire, to be incorruptible, but that they all equally were born and will die. These things are, in a manner, everywhere said by him. But I will set down his words out of his Third Book of the Gods: It is otherwise with the Gods. For some of them are born and corruptible, but others not born. And to demonstrate these things from the beginning will be more fit for a treatise of Nature. For the Sun, the Moon, and other Gods who are of a like nature, were begotten; but Jupiter is eternal. And again going on: But the like will be said concerning dying and being born, both concerning the other Gods and Jupiter. For they indeed are corruptible, but his parts incorruptible. With these I compare a few of the things said by Antipater: Whosoever they are that take away from the Gods beneficence, they attack in some part our preconception of them; and according to the same reason they also do this, who think they participate of generation and corruption. If then he who esteems the Gods corruptible is equally absurd with him who thinks them not to be provident and gracious to men, Chrysippus is no less in an error than Epicurus. For one of them deprives the Gods of beneficence, the other of incorruptibility.