Distinguished ancestors shed a powerful light on their descendants, and forbid the concealment either of their merits or of their demerits.

Fortune rules in all things, and advances and depresses things more out of her own will than right and justice.

All this care for the world, we must believe, is taken by the Gods without any act of will or labor. As bodies which possess some power produce their effects by merely existing: e.g. the sun gives light and heat by merely existing; so, and far more so, the providence of the Gods acts without effort to itself and for the good of the objects of its forethought. This solves the problems of the Epicureans , who argue that what is divine neither has trouble itself nor gives trouble to others.

For harmony makes small states great, while discord undermines the mightiest empires.

As the blessings of health and fortune have a beginning, so they must also find an end. Everything rises but to fall, and increases but to decay.

It is not unlikely, too, that the rejection of God is a kind of punishment: we may well believe that those who knew the Gods and neglected them in one life may in another life be deprived of the knowledge of them altogether. Also those who have worshipped their own kings as gods have deserved as their punishment to lose all knowledge of God.

We employ the mind to rule, the body to serve.