XLV. There is no doubt, but it has been very common for men to deify one another, from all, or each of those four motives. The poets did it above two thousand five hundred years ago, and have not yet got the better of the bad habit; for there is not a fine woman at this day, whom their pens don’t elevate to the rank of a goddess. The flatterers made deities of those, who, on account of their vices, were unworthy to be called men, as is evident from the apotheosis of the Roman emperors; and the vanity of descendants, deified their illustrious ancestors, by attributing a divine origin to the founders of many empires and republics. The Romans, not content with feigning the god Mars to have been the father of their first prince Romulus, raised Romulus himself to the rank of a divinity, and made him their tutelar deity. XLVI. From the passion of love, was derived the most ancient propensity to deify mortals; for the book of Ecclesiastes, chap. 14, points this out as the first principle or source, from whence this species of idolatry sprang. A father extremely afflicted for the loss of his son, snatched away in the flower of his youth, to express his great tenderness and affection for him, causes his statue to be carved; and this tenderness and affection, being afterwards extended to the utmost limits of human feeling, disturbs his understanding, and causes him so far to forget himself, as to make the image the object of his adoration. His authority and example, extends the superstition to his domestics; from them it is communicated to all the inhabitants of a town, and from the inhabitants of that town to those of a whole region. There was seen many ages after this delirium commenced, an intention of repeating it, from the influence of the same passion, by one of the greatest men of antiquity. Cicero, that very Cicero, who at one time was the oracle of the Romans, and afterwards the admiration of succeeding ages, so far lost himself upon the death of his most beloved daughter Tullia, as to persist for a long while, in a determination of erecting altars to her as a deity. He also transmitted to posterity in his writings, testimonies, of his having once entertained so extravagant and mad a resolution. XLVII. This impious and ridiculous folly was carried to the most shameless length by the emperor Adrian; who built temples, raised altars, constituted priests, festivals, and sacrifices, to whom? Why, to a boy of Bythinia named Antonio, the accomplice of his abominable turpitudes, who as some say was drowned by accident in the Nile, and as others tell the story, he of his own free will offered up his life in a magic sacrifice, which was made to prolong that of the emperor, and which according to the rites and ceremonies appertaining to it, required a voluntary victim.