A vivid and accessible new translation of Cicero’s influential Stoic writings around the divine

Most ancient Romans were deeply religious and their world was overflowing with gods-from Jupiter, Minerva, and Mars to countless community divinities, household gods, and ancestral spirits. Perhaps one of the most important Roman perspectives on religion came from a nonreligious perception system that is finding brand-new adherents right now: Stoicism. How do the Stoics think about religion? In How exactly to Consider God, about how exactly to Think About God: An Ancient Guidebook for Believers and Nonbelievers Philip Freeman presents vivid new translations of Cicero’s On the type of the Gods as well as the Imagine Scipio. In these brief works, Cicero offers a Stoic look at of perception, divinity, and human being immortality, giving eloquent expression towards the spiritual ideas of 1 of the very most popular universities of Roman and Greek viewpoint.

On the Nature of the Gods as well as the Dream of Scipio are Cicero’s best-known & most important writings on religion, plus they have profoundly shaped Christian and non-Christian thought for a lot more than two thousand years, influencing such luminaries as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, and Thomas Jefferson. These works reveal many of the religious aspects of Stoicism, including a knowledge of the world like a materialistic yet continuous and living whole in which both gods and a supreme God are essential elements.