Juppiter Tragoedus

TIMOCLES What can I say in reply to all this impudence, Damis ?

DAMIS Tell me what I wanted you to tell me long ago, how you were induced to believe that the gods exercise providence.

TIMOCLES In the first place the order of nature convinced me, the sun always going the same road and the moon likewise and the seasons changing and plants growing and living creatures being born, and these latter so cleverly devised that they can support life and move and think and walk and build houses and cobble shoes—and all the rest of it; these seem to me to be works of providence.

DAMIS That is just the question, Timocles, and you are trying to beg it, for it is not yet proved that each of

these things is accomplished by providence. While I myself would say that recurrent phenomena are as you describe them, I need not, however, at once admit a conviction that they recur by some sort of providence, for it is possible that they began at random[*](In my opinion ἄλλως contrasts with ὁμοίως καὶ κατὰ ταὐτά, not with ὑπό τινος προμηθείας. The idea is more fully and clearly presented in Lucretius 1, 1024-1028.) and now take place with uniformity and regularity. But you call necessity “order” and then, forsooth, get angry if anyone does not follow you when you catalogue and extol the characteristics of these phenomena and think it a proof that each of them is ordered by providence. So, in the words of the comic poet,

1. That’s but a sorry answer ; try again.