I am, but
I can bear it without envy. If any sentiments, indeed, are communicated
without obscurity, what is there that Velleius can understand and Cotta
not? I know what body is, and what blood is; but I cannot possibly find
out the meaning of quasi-body and quasi-blood. Not that you
intentionally conceal your principles from me, as Pythagoras did his
from those who were not his disciples; or that you are intentionally
obscure, like Heraclitus. But the truth is (which I may venture to say
in this company), you do not understand them yourself.

XXVII. This, I perceive, is what you contend for, that the Gods have a
certain figure that has nothing concrete, nothing solid, nothing of
express substance, nothing prominent in it; but that it is pure,
smooth, and transparent. Let us suppose the same with the Venus of Cos,
which is not a body, but the representation of a body; nor is the red,
which is drawn there and mixed with the white, real blood, but a
certain resemblance of blood; so in Epicurus's Deity there is no real
substance, but the resemblance of substance.

Let me take for granted that which is perfectly unintelligible; then
tell me what are the lineaments and figures of these sketched-out
Deities. Here you have plenty of arguments by which you would show the
Gods to be in human form. The first is, that our minds are so
anticipated and prepossessed, that whenever we think of a Deity the
human shape occurs to us. The next is, that as the divine nature excels
all things, so it ought to be of the most beautiful form, and there is
no form more beautiful than the human; and the third is, that reason
cannot reside in any other shape.

First, let us consider each argument separately. You seem to me to
assume a principle, despotically I may say, that has no manner of
probability in it. Who was ever so blind, in contemplating these
subjects, as not to see that the Gods were represented in human form,
either by the particular advice of wise men, who thought by those means
the more easily to turn the minds of the ignorant from a depravity of
manners to the worship of the Gods; or through superstition, which was
the cause of their believing that when they were paying adoration to
these images they were approaching the Gods themselves. These conceits
were not a little improved by the poets, painters, and artificers; for
it would not have been very easy to represent the Gods planning and
executing any work in another form, an