The several nations with which history has made us in part acquainted, all considered their different religions as ties by which they were united; it was the association of human kind. There was a kind of law of hospitality among the gods, the same as among men. If a stranger arrived in any town, the first thing he did was to pay his adoration to the gods of the country, even though they were the gods of his enemies. The Trojans offered up prayers even to those gods who fought for the Greeks. Alexander made a journey into the deserts of Libya, purposely to consult the god Ammon, to whom the Greeks gave the name of Zeus and the Latins that of Jupiter, though both countries had their Jupiter and their Zeus among themselves. When they sat down before any town or city, they offered up sacrifices and prayers to the gods of that city or town, to render them propitious to their undertaking. Thus, even in the midst of war, religion united mankind; and though it might sometimes prompt them to exercise the most inhuman cruelties, at other times it frequently softened their fury. I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that not one of all the civilized nations of antiquity ever laid a restraint upon liberty of thinking. They all had a particular religion; but they seem to have acted in this respect toward men in the same manner as they did toward their gods; they all acknowledged one Supreme Being, though they associated him with an infinite number of inferior deities; in like manner, though they had but one faith, yet they admitted a multitude of particular systems. The Greeks, for example, though a very religious people, were not offended with the Epicureans, who denied Providence and the existence of the soul, not to mention divers other sects, whose tenets were all of them repugnant to the pure ideas we ought to entertain of a Creator, and yet were all of them tolerated. Socrates, who came the nearest to the knowledge of the true God, is said to have suffered on that account, and died a martyr to the Deity; he was the only one whom the Greeks ever put to death on account of opinion. If this was really the cause of his being condemned, it does very little honor to persecution, since he was put to death for being the only one who gave true glory to God, whilst those who taught notions the most unworthy of the Deity were held in high honor; therefore, I think, the enemies of toleration should be cautious how they lay a stress upon the infamous example of his judges.