h Colotes so much praises, the first and most
important article is the belief and persuasion of the gods. Wherefore
also Lycurgus heretofore consecrated the Lacedaemonians, Numa the
Romans, the ancient Ion the Athenians, and Deucalion universally all the
Greeks, through prayers, oaths, oracles, and omens, making them devout
and affectionate to the gods by means of hopes and fears at once. And if
you will take the pains to travel through the world, you may find
towns and cities without walls, without letters, without kings, without
houses, without wealth, without money, without theatres and places of
exercise; but there was never seen nor shall be seen by man any city
without temples and gods, or without making use of prayers, oaths,
auguries, and sacrifices for the obtaining of blessings and benefits,
and the averting of curses and calamities. Nay, I am of opinion, that
a city might sooner be built without any ground to fix it on, than a
commonweal be constituted altogether void of any religion and opinion
of the gods,--or being constituted, be preserved. But this, which is the
foundation and ground of all laws, do these men, not going circularly
about, nor secretly and by enigmatical speeches, but attacking it
with the first of their most principal opinions directly subvert and
overthrow; and then afterwards, as if they were haunted by the Furies,
they come and confess that they have grievously offended in thus taking
away the laws, and confounding the ordinances of justice and policy,
that they may not be capable of pardon. For to err in opinion, though it
be not the part of wise men, is at least human; but to impute to others
the errors and offences they commit themselves, how can any one declare
what it is, if he forbears to give it the name it deserves?

For if, in writing against Antidorus or Bion the sophister, he had made
mention of laws, policy, order, and justice, might not either of them
have said to him, as Electra did to her mad brother Orestes:--

Lie still at ease, poor wretch; keep in thy bed,
(Euripides, "Orestes," 258.)

and there cherish thy bit of body, leaving those to expostulate and
find fault with me who have themselves lived the life of a citizen and
householder? Now such are all those whom Colotes has reviled and railed
at in his book. Amongst whom, Democritus in his writings advises
and exhorts to the learning of the science of politics, as being the
greatest of all, and to the acc