The conception of the universe prevalent among the men of this period, and the histories of themselves which they related, of their origins, warfare and fortunes, were also poetical, or rather mythical. It was even the case as we have seen that their conceptions in the sphere of social history preceded those of a cosmological, physical or psychological character. By a rigid application of this principle Vico developed his doctrine of "natural theogony," arising naturally in the imagination on the occasion of certain human needs and utilities: the genesis of the twelve greater Gods, _Di maiores,_ that is to say, the gods invented by the _gentes maiores_ and, to a great extent, brought by them to the foundation of the state. Jupiter or the sky, with his language of lightning, was the author of the first laws of the family; Juno symbolised marriage, Diana matrimonial chastity, Apollo the light of civilisation; Vulcan, Saturn and Cybele were respectively the fire with which the forests were burnt to make clearings, the sowing of seed and the tilling of land; Mars symbolised the warfare of the heroes _"pro aris et focis,"_ and Venus civilised beauty. In addition to this celestial Venus arose a plebeian Venus to whom was given the attribute of doves; not as typifying the passion of love, but because they were _"degeneres"_ common birds in comparison with the eagle. A double signification, patrician and plebeian, was given in the same way to Vulcan and Mars. The stormy relations of the fathers with the slaves, the struggles and penalties referred to in the myths of Tantalus and Sisyphus, begin to be reflected in the twelve greater gods. Hercules, struggling with Antaeus, signifies the nobles of the heroic cities, and Antaeus the mutinied slaves led back into the primitive cities on the mountain-tops (Antaeus lifted up into the air) and overcome and bound down to the earth, that is to say forced back to their servile labour. The birth of the tenth divinity, Minerva, expresses the weakening and diminution of the heroic power, since the plebeian Vulcan (the mutinied slaves) strikes the head of Jupiter with an axe, the tool of a servile art. Mercury represents the granting of bonitary rights to the plebs and the maintenance of quiritary rights by the fathers. The last of the twelve deities, Neptune, arose when the peoples descended to the sea-coast; and the legends of Minos, the Argonauts, the Trojan war, the return of Ulysses, Europa and the bull, the Minotaur, Perseus and Theseus refer to colonisation and piracy. The mythological interpretation of history does not cease with the foundation of states. The founders of civilisation, Zoroaster and Mercurius Trimegistus, Orpheus and Confucius, even if they are not strictly gods, are at least poetical characters. Aesop is typical of the _"socii"_ or slaves of the heroes and hence is represented as ugly, that is, devoid of civilised beauty (_honestas_); and his fable of the