[70] Epict. _Disc._ ii 7, 3 and 4. The Stoic belief in divination is very severely criticized by Zeller: ‘these vagaries show in Stoicism practical interests preponderating over science’ _Stoics_, etc. p. 280. But the belief in μαντική is traced back to Zeno and Cleanthes, who were hardly ‘practical’ men in the sense in which Zeller seems to use the word. [71] See above, § 245. [72] See above, § 209. [73] Cic. _N. D._ ii 30, 77. [74] ‘[di immortales] nec volunt obesse nec possunt. natura enim illis mitis et placida est’ Sen. _Dial._ iv 27, 1; ‘di aequali tenore bona sua per gentes populosque distribuunt, unam potentiam sortiti, prodesse’ _Ben._ vii 31, 4. [75] ‘Faune, Nympharum fugientum amator, | per meos fines et aprica rura | lenis incedas, abeasque parvis | aequus alumnis’ Hor. _C._ iii 18, 1-4. [76] ‘tantum relligio potuit suadere malorum’ Lucr. _R. N._ i 102. [77] ‘Does the Zeus at Olympia lift up his brow? No, his look is fixed as becomes him who is ready to say—Irrevocable is my word and shall not fail’ Epict. _Disc._ ii 8, 26 (quoting from Hom. _Il._ i 526). [78] ‘sic vestras hallucinationes fero quemadmodum Iuppiter ineptias poetarum, quorum alius illi alas imposuit, alius cornua; alius adulterum illum induxit et abnoctantem, alius saevum in deos, alius iniquum in homines, alius parricidam et regni alieni paternique expugnatorem’ Sen. _Dial._ vii 26, 6. [79] This feeling finds expression at Rome as far back as the times of Hannibal; ‘hoc scelesti illi in animum inducunt suum, | Iovem se placare posse donis, hostiis; | et operam et sumptum perdunt’ Plaut. _Rud._ 22 to 24. [80] ‘[Chrysippus] disputat aethera esse eum, quem homines Iovem appellarent’ Cic. _N. D._ i 15, 40. [81] ‘aer autem, ut Stoici disputant, Iunonis nomine consecratur ... effeminarunt autem eum Iunonique tribuerunt, quod nihil est eo mollius’ _ib._ ii 26, 66. [82] ‘quoniam tenuitate haec elementa paria sunt, dixerunt esse germana’ Serv. _ad Verg. Aen._ i 47 (Arnim ii 1066). [83] Rival philosophers in the earlier times, and the church fathers later, concurred in reviling Chrysippus because he extended this principle of interpretation to a ‘disgraceful’ representation found in Argos or Samos, in which Hera receives the divine seed in her mouth; yet Christian antiquity was about to absorb the similar notion of the conception of the Virgin Mary through the ear (‘quae per aurem concepisti’ in an old Latin hymn). Chrysippus of course rightly estimated the absurdity of criticising cosmic processes as if they were breaches of social decency, and by so doing relieved the pious souls of his own day from a real source of distress. See Arnim ii 1071-1074. [84] Cic. _N. D._ ii 26, 66. [85] _ib._ i 15, 40 and ii 26, 66. [86] ‘Proserpinam, quam frugum semen esse volunt absconditamque quaeri a matre fingunt’ _ib._ [87] _ib._ 27, 68.