Noah Goats's Reviews > The Nature of the Gods

Of course we are all familiar with the Greek myths adopted by the Romans (The Metamorphoses, by Ovid, is a great Roman retelling of the classic Greek myths), but what did they really believe? In his Treatise on the Nature of the Gods, Cicero tells us. Here he gives us not dogma or a rehash of myths, but a sense of what educated men from the time of the late republic actually believed. This book is written as a dialogue, and its characters freely argue for their points of view and the bases for their beliefs or lack thereof. Interesting, but not so interesting that I didn’t find myself skimming bits of it. And, unfortunately for Cicero, I’ve read a couple of Plato’s dialogues at the same time I’ve been reading this, and Cicero suffers by the comparison. I love him, but his dialogue lacks the humor, characterization, and literary skill demonstrated by Plato.