courses of the planets, their progressive motions, their laws? These
were all great men. But they were greater still who invented food, and
raiment, and houses; who introduced civilization among us, and armed us
against the wild beasts; by whom we were made sociable and polished,
and so proceeded from the necessaries of life to its embellishments.
For we have provided great entertainments for the ears by inventing and
modulating the variety and nature of sounds; we have learned to survey
the stars, not only those that are fixed, but also those which are
improperly called wandering; and the man who has acquainted himself
with all their revolutions and motions is fairly considered to have a
soul resembling the soul of that Being who has created those stars in
the heavens: for when Archimedes described in a sphere the motions of
the moon, sun, and five planets, he did the very same thing as Plato's
God, in his Timæus, who made the world, causing one revolution to
adjust motions differing as much as possible in their slowness and
velocity. Now, allowing that what we see in the world could not be
effected without a God, Archimedes could not have imitated the same
motions in his sphere without a divine soul.

XXVI. To me, indeed, it appears that even those studies which are more
common and in greater esteem are not without some divine energy: so
that I do not consider that a poet can produce a serious and sublime
poem without some divine impulse working on his mind; nor do I think
that eloquence, abounding with sonorous words and fruitful sentences,
can flow thus without something beyond mere human power. But as to
philosophy, that is the parent of all the arts: what can we call that
but, as Plato says, a gift, or, as I express it, an invention, of the
Gods? This it was which first taught us the worship of the Gods; and
then led us on to justice, which arises from the human race being
formed into society; and after that it imbued us with modesty and