24. No one, says my opponent, makes supplication to the tutelar deities, and they therefore withhold their usual favours and help. Cannot the gods, then, do good, except they receive incense and consecrated offerings?752    Lit., “salted fruits,” the grits mixed with salt, strewed on the victim. and do they quit and renounce their posts, unless they see their altars anointed with the blood of cattle? And yet I thought but now that the kindness of the gods was of their own free will, and that the unlooked-for gifts of benevolence flowed unsought from them. Is, then, the King of the universe solicited by any libation or sacrifice to grant to the races of men all the comforts of life? Does the Deity not impart the sun’s fertilizing warmth, and the season of night, the winds, the rains, the fruits, to all alike,—the good and the bad, the unjust and the just,753    Supplied by Ursinus. the free-born and the slave, the poor and the rich? For this belongs to the true and mighty God, to show kindness, unasked, to that which is weary and feeble, and always encompassed by misery, of many kinds. For to grant your prayers on the offering of sacrifices, is not to bring help to those who ask it, but to sell the riches of their beneficence. We men trifle, and are foolish in so great a matter; and, forgetting what754    So the edd. reading quid, except Hild. and Oehler, who retain the ms.qui—“who.” God is, and the majesty of His name, associate with the tutelar deities whatever meanness or baseness our morbid credulity can invent.

0970A XXIV. Tutelaribus, inquit, supplicat diis nemo, et idcirco singuli familiaribus officiis atque auxiliis desunt. Nisi enim thura et salsas accipiant fruges, benefacere dii nequeunt? et nisi pecorum sanguine delibutas suas conspexerint arulas, suos deserunt atque abjiciunt praesidatus? At quin ego rebar paulo ante, spontaneas esse numinum benignitates, ultroque ab his fluere inexpectata benevolentiae munera. Numquid enim rex poli libamine aliquo exambitur 0971A aut hostia, ut omnia ista, quibus vivitur, commoda mortalium gentibus largiatur? Non fervorem genitalem solis Deus, noctis et tempora, ventos, pluvias, fruges, cunctis subministrat aequaliter bonis, malis, justis, ingenuis, servis, pauperibus, divitibus? Hoc est enim proprium Dei potentis ac veri, inexorata beneficia praebere fessis atque invalidis rebus, et multiformi semper asperitate vallatis. Nam sacrificiis editis id quod poscaris annuere, non est istud postulantibus subvenire, sed benignitatis propriae munificentiam venditare. Ludimus et lascivimus tanta in re homines, et quid sit Deus obliti, quid istius magnificentia nominis, quidquid vile vel sordidum suspiciosa 0971B potuimus credulitate confingere, divis tutelaribus arrogamus.