Saepe mihi dubiam traxit sententia mentem, curarent superi terras an nullus inesset rector et incerto fluerent mortalia casu. nam cum dispositi quaesissem foedera mundi praescriptosque mari fines annisque meatus 5 et lucis noctisque vices: tunc omnia rebar consilio firmata dei, qui lege moveri sidera, qui fruges diverso tempore nasci, qui variam Phoeben alieno iusserit igni compleri Solemque suo, porrexerit undis 10 litora, tellurem medio libraverit axe. sed cum res hominum tanta caligine volvi adspicerem laetosque diu florere nocentes vexarique pios, rursus labefacta cadebat relligio causaeque viam non sponte sequebar 15 alterius, vacuo quae currere semina motu adfirmat magnumque novas per inane figuras fortuna non arte regi, quae numina sensu ambiguo vel nulla putat vel nescia nostri. * * * * * Page 27 BOOK I (III.) My mind has often wavered between two opinions: have the gods a care for the world or is there no ruler therein and do mortal things drift as dubious chance dictates? For when I investigated the laws and the ordinances of heaven and observed the sea’s appointed limits, the year’s fixed cycle and the alternation of light and darkness, then methought everything was ordained according to the direction of a God who had bidden the stars move by fixed laws, plants grow at different seasons, the changing moon fulfil her circle with borrowed light and the sun shine by his own, who spread the shore before the waves and balanced the world in the centre of the firmament. But when I saw the impenetrable mist which surrounds human affairs, the wicked happy and long prosperous and the good discomforted, then in turn my belief in God was weakened and failed, and even against mine own will I embraced the tenets of that other philosophy[48] which teaches that atoms drift in purposeless motion and that new forms throughout the vast void are shaped by chance and not design--that philosophy which believes in God in an ambiguous sense, or holds that there be no gods, or that they are careless of our doings. At [48] Epicureanism. * * * * * Page 28 abstulit hunc tandem Rufini poena tumultum 20 absolvitque deos. iam non ad culmina rerum iniustos crevisse queror; tolluntur in altum, ut lapsu graviore ruant. vos pandite vati, Pierides, quo tanta lues eruperit ortu.