Salve Favoni Corneli

Cicero's De Natura Deorum poses a discussion among friends representing three schools of philosophy. Their subject is whether there can be offered logical proofs for the existence of the Gods, and then what might be the nature of the Gods. Cicero himself speaks through G. Aurelius Cotta, a pontifex and consul of 80 BCE, who represents the Platonists. At this time the Platonist school was in its Cynic phase and the character Cotta poses questions against the arguments of G. Vellius, and the Epicurean, and the Stoic Q. Lucilius Balbus. Cotta affirms that as a pontifex he believes in the Gods on the authority of the maiores, but as a philosopher he poses what we would consider an agnostic position. In this discussion there is mention of others who were atheists. Arguing against the ex consensus gentium Cotta says (1.63):

Did not Diagoras, the man they called the Atheist, and after him Theodorus, openly dispense with gods and their nature? As for Protagoras of Abdera, whom you have mentioned and who was quite the most important sophist of his day, he prefaced his books with the words "I cannot say whether gods exist or not," and by order of the Athenians he was banished from their city and territory, and had his books publicly burned. I personally think that this precedent induced many to be more reluctant to declare similar convictions, for mere expressions of doubt could not guarantee them immunity from punishment.

Cotta at that point was responding to what Vellius had argued, and he, too, accused earlier philosophers of agnosticism or atheism. Empedocles (1.29) he criticized for holding the four elements as divine when "it is obvious that the elements come into existence and are destroyed, and lack all sensation." They cannot very well be immortal if are destroyed. Then Vellius says

Protagoras likewise appears to have no inkling of the nature of the gods; he says that he has no clear notion whatsoever of gods, of their existence or nonexistence, or their nature.

Likewise Democritus is criticized for his atomic theory where

he is surely in the toils of grievous error, since he also maintains that there is absolutely nothing that endures, because nothing maintains its own condition for ever, he surely disposed of god so completely as to leave no possible belief in him.

This last criticism would certainly apply to Lucretius Carus as well. His poem De Rerum Natura extols the Roman version of Democritian atomic theory. It holds that atoms are created and perish, and that they form into larger objects through accident rather than design. Lucretius does not exactly dispute the existence of gods. He even begins his poem with a prayer to Venus Genetrix. But he poses gods as composed of atoms, impermanent, emerging from and withdraw back into a chaotic nature. The creation story at the beginning of Ovid's Metamorphoses with an evolutionary universe born from chaos, is based in the ideas of Lucretius.

Before land and sea; before air and sky
Arched over all, all Nature was all Chaos ?
No God, no Titan shone from sky or sea,
No Moon, no Phoebe outgrew slanted horns
And walked the night, nor was Earth poised in air.

~ Ovid Metamorphoses

The conclusions that Lucretius offers is that men should not concern themselves with the gods, if they exist, since everything is chaos and ever changing, including the Gods in Nature. He holds that belief in the Gods gives rise to fear, terror and superstition and we should therefore adopt a more rational and scientific perspective of the universe. Among the philosophers there was recognition that the Di inferi were of the Earth, and the Di superi of the universe, both being impermanent, and therefore these lesser Gods were impermanent Themselves. But there was also held, as Seneca mentions, superior Gods, the Involuti, who remain hidden from us and who direct the greater Universe, having authority even over Jupiter. "Even Jupiter cannot dissuade the Fates." Nor does Jupiter have power over Nemessis or Hecate, and Jupiter is Himself compelled by Higher Gods. Of the three kinds of lightning the most destructive is thrown by Jupiter at the direction of the consilium diis quos superiores et involutos. (Seneca Naturales Quaestiones II, 41.2). Where Lucretius then comes out as an atheist is in his denial that Superior and Hidden Gods, directing anything in Nature, exists.