o the highest degree in the state and government of Jupiter,
which is most excellently administered. Now what can be more against
sense than that, when Jupiter governs exceedingly well, we should be
exceedingly miserable? But if (which it is unlawful even to say)
he would desire no longer to be a saviour, nor a deliverer, nor a
protector, but the contrary to all these glorious appellations, there
can no goodness be added to the things that are, either as to their
multitude or magnitude, since, as these men say, all men live to the
height miserably and wickedly, neither vice receiving addition, nor
unhappiness increase.

Nor is this the worst; but they are angry with Menander for saying upon
the stage,

The chief beginning of men's miseries
Are things exceeding good;

for that this is against sense. And yet they make God, who is good, the
beginning of evils. "For matter," they contend, "produced not any evil
of itself; for it is without quality, and whatever differences it has,
it has received them all from that which moves and forms it." But that
which moves and forms it is the reason dwelling in it, since matter is
not made to move and form itself. So that of necessity evil, if it come
by nothing, must have been produced from that which has no being; but if
by some moving principle, from God. But if they think that Jupiter has
not the command of his parts nor uses every one of them according to his
reason, they speak against common sense, and imagine an animal, many of
whose parts are not subservient to his will but use their own operations
and actions, to which the whole gives no incitation nor begins their
motion. For there is nothing which has life so ill compacted as that,
against its will, its feet shall go, its tongue speak, its horns push,
or its teeth bite. The most of which things God must of necessity
suffer, if the wicked, being parts of him, do against his will lie,
cheat, rob, and murder one another. But if, as Chrysippus says, the very
least part cannot possibly behave itself otherwise than according to
Jupiter's pleasure, and if every living thing is so framed by Nature as
to rest and move according as he inclines it and as he turns, stays, and
disposes it,

This saying is more impious than the first.
(See Nauck's "Tragic Fragments," p. 704 (No. 345).)

For it were more tolerable to say that many parts of Jupiter are,
through his weakness and want of power, hurried on to do many