cerning God. We understand therefore God to be an
animal, blessed and incorruptible, and beneficial to men." And then
expounding every one of these terms he says: "And indeed all men esteem
the gods to be incorruptible." Chrysippus therefore is, according to
Antipater, not one of "all men"; for he thinks none of the gods, except
Fire, to be incorruptible, but that they all equally were born and will
die. These things are, in a manner, everywhere said by him. But I will
set down his words out of his Third Book of the Gods: "It is otherwise
with the gods. For some of them are born and corruptible, but others not
born. And to demonstrate these things from the beginning will be more
fit for a treatise of Nature. For the Sun, the Moon, and other gods who
are of a like nature, were begotten; but Jupiter is eternal." And again
going on: "But the like will be said concerning dying and being
born, both concerning the other gods and Jupiter. For they indeed are
corruptible, but his past incorruptible." With these I compare a few of
the things said by Antipater: "Whosoever they are that take away from
the gods beneficence, they affect in some part our conception of them;
and according to the same reason they also do this, who think they
participate of generation and corruption." If, then, he who esteems the
gods corruptible is equally absurd with him who thinks them not to be
provident and gracious to men, Chrysippus is no less in an error than
Epicurus. For one of them deprives the gods of beneficence, the other
of incorruptibility. ============ And moreover, Chrysippus, in his Third
Book of the Gods treating of the other gods being nourished, says thus:
"The other gods indeed use nourishment, being equally sustained by it;
but Jupiter and the World are maintained after another manner from those
who are consumed and were engendered by fire." Here indeed he declares,
that all the other gods are nourished except the World and Jupiter; but
in his First Book of Providence he says: "Jupiter increases till he has
consumed all things into himself. For since death is the separation
of the soul from the body, and the soul of the World is not indeed
separated, but increases continually till it has consumed all matter
into itself, it is not to be said that the World dies." Who can
therefore appear to speak things more contradictory to himself than he
who says that the same god is now nourished and again not nourished? Nor
is there any need of