Balbus, seemed to agree with
me that the honors which they received were not from their being
regarded as immortals, but as men richly endued with virtue.

But if you think Latona a Goddess, how can you avoid admitting Hecate
to be one also, who was the daughter of Asteria, Latona's sister?
Certainly she is one, if we may judge by the altars erected to her in
Greece. And if Hecate is a Goddess, how can you refuse that rank to the
Eumenides? for they also have a temple at Athens, and, if I understand
right, the Romans have consecrated a grove to them. The Furies, too,
whom we look upon as the inspectors into and scourges of impiety, I
suppose, must have their divinity too. As you hold that there is some
divinity presides over every human affair, there is one who presides
over the travail of matrons, whose name, _Natio_, is derived _a
nascentibus_, from nativities, and to whom we used to sacrifice in our
processions in the fields of Ardaea; but if she is a Deity, we must
likewise acknowledge all those you mentioned, Honor, Faith, Intellect,
Concord; by the same rule also, Hope, Juno, Moneta,[254] and every idle
phantom, every child of our imagination, are Deities. But as this
consequence is quite inadmissible, do not you either defend the cause
from which it flows.

XIX. What say you to this? If these are Deities, which we worship and
regard as such, why are not Serapis and Isis[255] placed in the same
rank? And if they are admitted, what reason have we to reject the Gods
of the barbarians? Thus we should deify oxen, horses, the ibis, hawks,
asps, crocodiles, fishes, dogs, wolves, cats, and many other beasts. If
we go back to the source of this superstition, we must equally condemn
all the Deities from which they proceed. Shall Ino, whom the Greeks
call Leucothea, and we Matuta, be reputed a Goddess, because she was
the daughter of Cadmus, and shall that title be refused to Circe and
Pasiphae,[256] who had the sun for their father, and Perseis, daughter
of the Ocean, for their mother? It is true, Circe has divine honors
paid her by our colony of Circaeum; therefore you call her a Goddess;
but what will you say of Medea, the granddaughter of the Sun and the
Ocean, and daughter of AEetes and Idyia? What will you say of her
brother Absyrtus, whom Pacuvius calls AEgialeus, though the other name
is more frequent in the writings of the ancients? If you did not deify
one as well as the other, what will become of Ino? for all th