Lactantius, Divine Institutes 15

Once it is established that these figures were human, the reason they came to be called gods is clear. Before Saturn or Uranus, there were no kings because the human population was so sparse that people lived a rustic life without any ruler. In those early times, therefore, men began to honor their king and their whole community with the highest praises and honors, so that they even called them gods — whether out of wonder at their virtue (the rude and simple people truly believed this), or out of flattery toward present power, as often happens, or because of the benefits by which these rulers had civilized humanity. When those kings died, they left behind a great longing in the people whose lives they had ordered. Consequently, men fashioned images of them to find some solace in contemplating their likenesses; then, driven further by love, they began to venerate the memory of the dead, both to appear grateful to their benefactors and to entice successors with the desire to rule well. Cicero teaches this in On the Nature of the Gods, saying that human life and common custom adopted the practice of raising excellent men to heaven by fame and will because of their benefits — hence Hercules, Castor, Pollux, Aesculapius, Liber. Elsewhere he adds that in most cities one can see that the memory of brave men was consecrated with the honors of immortal gods to encourage virtue and so that the best men would more readily face danger for the republic. By this same logic the Romans consecrated their Caesars and the Moors their kings. Thus religions gradually arose: the first generation who knew these rulers taught the rite to their children and grandchildren, then to all posterity, until those most famous kings were worshiped in every province because of the renown of their names. Privately, individual peoples or cities honored their own founders — whether men distinguished by bravery or women remarkable for chastity — with the highest veneration: the Egyptians Isis, the Moors Juba, the Macedonians Cabirus, the Carthaginians Urania, the Latins Faunus, the Sabines Sancus, the Romans Quirinus; likewise the Athenians Minerva, the Samians Juno, the Paphian Venus, the Lemnians Vulcan, the Naxians Liber, the Delians Apollo. So various sacred rites spread among peoples and regions, because men wished to be grateful to their princes but could find no other honors to bestow on the lifeless. Moreover, the piety of successors greatly fueled the error: wanting to appear of divine stock, they paid divine honors to their parents and ordered them to be worshiped. Can anyone doubt how the religions of the gods were instituted, when we read Aeneas commanding his companions in Virgil: "Now pour libations to Jupiter and invoke the father Anchises"? To Anchias he attributed not only immortality but also power over the winds: "Let us ask for winds, and let these rites, which I wish established in the city's temples, be offered to him every year." Liber, Pan, Mercury, and Apollo did the same, and afterward their successors. Poets also contributed; composing songs for pleasure, they elevated these figures to heaven, just as flatterers praise even bad kings with mendacious panegyrics. This evil originated with the Greeks, whose levity, armed with rhetorical skill and abundance of language, stirred up incredible clouds of falsehood. Admiring them, men adopted their sacred rites and passed them on to all nations. Because of this vanity the Sibyl rebukes them: "O Greece, what do you trust in, relying on leaders? Why do you offer vain gifts to the dead? Do you sacrifice to idols? Who put this plan in your mind, abandoning the face of the great God?" Marcus Tullius — not only a consummate orator but also a philosopher, the sole imitator of Plato — in the book where he consoled himself for his daughter's death, did not hesitate to say that the gods worshiped publicly were men. His testimony carries the greatest weight because he held the augural priesthood and attests that he himself worshiped and venerated them. In a few verses he gives us two things: while professing that he will consecrate his daughter's image in the same manner as the ancients consecrated theirs, he teaches that those figures were dead and reveals the origin of vain superstition. When he says we see many men and women from the human race in the number of the gods, and we venerate their most august temples in cities and fields, let us agree with the wisdom of those whose genius and inventions have cultivated and established our whole life with laws and institutions. If any mortal was ever to be consecrated, this one surely was. If the offspring of Cadmus, Amphitryon, or Tyndareus was raised to heaven by fame, then the same honor ought to be given to her — which I will do, and with the approval of the immortal gods themselves I will place you, most excellent and learned, in their assembly, in the opinion of all mortals, I will consecrate. Someone might claim that Cicero spoke deliriously from excessive grief. But that entire speech — perfect in doctrine, examples, and the very manner of speaking — came from a steady mind and sound judgment, and this very statement shows no sign of grief. I do not think he could have written so varied, so copious, so ornate a work unless his grief had been softened by reason itself, the consolation of friends, and the passage of time. What of the fact that he says the same in On the Republic and On Glory? In On the Laws, where he followed Plato to establish laws for a just and wise city, he sanctioned this concerning religion: "Let them worship the gods and those who have always been considered heavenly, and those whom merit has placed in heaven — Hercules, Liber, Aesculapius, Castor, Pollux, Quirinus." Similarly in the Tusculan Disputations, when he said almost the whole heaven is filled with the human race, he added that if we investigate ancient things and extract what Greek writers have recorded, we will find that those very gods of the nations, considered to have originated from us, have gone to heaven. Since their tombs are shown in Greece, remember — since you have been initiated — what is handed down in the mysteries: then you will finally understand how far this extends. He testified, evidently appealing to Atticus's conscience, that from the mysteries themselves it can be understood that all those who are worshiped were men; and when he freely confessed this concerning Hercules, Liber, Aesculapius, Castor, and Pollux, concerning Apollo and Jupiter their fathers, and concerning Neptune, Vulcan, Mars, and Mercury, whom he called the gods of the nations, he feared to speak openly. Therefore he says this extends far, so that we may understand the same concerning Jupiter and the other more ancient gods, whose memory — if the ancients consecrated it in the same manner as he says he will consecrate his daughter's image and name — can be forgiven to the grieving but not to the believing. For who is so foolish as to think that the consensus and applause of innumerable fools can open heaven to the dead, or that anyone can give what he himself does not have to another? Among the Romans, Julius was made a god because it pleased the wicked Antony; Quirinus was made a god because it seemed good to the shepherds — one the twin brother, the other the parricide of his fatherland. If Antony had not been consul, Gaius Caesar would have been denied even the honors of a dead man for his services to the republic, blocked by the counsel of his father-in-law Piso, his relative Lucius Caesar (who forbade his funeral), and the consul Dolabella (who overthrew the column, that is the tomb, in the forum and purified the forum). Ennius declares that Romulus was deeply desired by his people; the people, grieving their lost king, cry out: "O Romulus, Romulus, tell us what kind of guardian of the fatherland the gods produced in you! You brought us within the boundaries of light, O father, O begetter, O blood kin of the gods." Because of this longing, it was more easily believed that Julius Proculus was lying — suborned by the fathers to announce to the plebs that he had seen the king in a form more august than human, and that the king had commanded them to build him a shrine, saying he was a god and should be called Quirinus. By this act he persuaded the people that Romulus had gone to the gods and freed the senate from the suspicion of the king's murder.