The Nature of the Gods, Cicero, and America
March 12, 2025
by William P. Meyers

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De Natura Deorum by Cicero

We remember the names of very few people from the times of the Roman Republic and Empire. One name still relevant today is Marcus Tullius Cicero, usually known simply as Cicero. He was a statesman and philosopher. Many, but not all, of his writings have been preserved. The founding fathers of the United States of America, those who had formal education, likely read some writings of Cicero, in Latin. Given the current debates about all things American, including the Constitution, provoked mainly by conservative Republican Party advocates, the thoughts of Cicero still matter. If you are a liberal or progressive, if you care about the separation of church and state, you should bone up on Cicero. The Christian Nationalists, the conservative Catholics, and billionaires who believe Christianity is good for the masses, are all selling the American people packages of lies. Knowing Cicero helps you know the founding fathers and counter Christian lies. As well as Supreme Court decisions and laws restricting your rights.

Cicero's classic work on religious and philosophical beliefs is De Natura Deorum, or The Nature of the Gods. It was written about 50 years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. It is written in the form of a discussion between friends who represent several schools of religion or philosophy: Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Skepticism. Although no one speaks explicitly for belief in the Roman (or Greek, or other pagan) Gods, they are much in the discussion. The Academic Skepticism school of philosophy, which not seem to have been very popular, is also covered in a separate book by Cicero, Academica.

I think the main point to take away from The Nature of the Gods is that reasonable people can disagree. It contains no mention of the Jewish religion, and it was written well before Christianity emerged as a religion, with its own myths, around perhaps 100 A.D. Despite the later claims of Christian leaders that Jesus revealed the truth (that he was God and the Son of God both, and that all good people should give 10% to Christian leaders), it is clear that revelations of various truths were made by many pagan priests and priestesses over many centuries and in many locations. Revelation, in itself, cannot be trusted.

One of the more memorable passages for me concerns the gods that have multiple back stories and powers. Hercules stood out: a son of God, he had several different versions that were worshipped in different places. The modern context is that Christians tend to be unfamiliar with the history of their sect. There were quite a few early Christian sects. What they were really fighting over was probably tithes, but they argued about what to make of Jesus's teachings and the relationships of the Trinity (God, Jesus, Holy Spirit). Finally, centuries after Jesus died, the Roman Emperor Constantine gathered a bunch of bishops together so they could decide on a common doctrine. That is the basis of both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theology.

The settlers of what would become the United States were also not able to decide on a common Christian religion. Columbus first reached the Americas in 1492, when the Roman Catholic Church still was able to suppress or execute anyone in Europe who disagreed with it. Martin Luther became the first to disagree with the Pope, in 1517, and survive to lead his own sect. By the time Virginia was colonized by Europeans in 1607, the English had split from Roman Catholicism, forming the Anglican religions (aka Episcopalian). New England was settled by other Christian sects of the Puritan camp. By the time of the American Revolution, the Age of Reason had been embraced by many Americans. Though they might have claimed to be Christian, they did not subscribe to any particular sect's theology.

It is important to remember (or find out) that the American rebellion against "established religion" was not led by atheists. The established religion was Anglican. Everyone (at least is some states) had to pay tithes to support the Anglican ministers and churches. Since the Baptists and Methodists, among others, also had to pay to support their own ministers and churches, that was seen as double taxation. So there were fights at the state level about established religions. The very first Amendment to the Constitution followed, making certain that at the federal level, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"

The Romans of Cicero's era had a mixed system. There were established temples for specific Roman gods, and a religious establishment in Rome led by the Pontiff or Pope. At the same time there was freedom in the more extended Republic and later Empire to worship local deities. Often there was syncretism: different people spoke different languages, so it was allowed that a local god could have a Roman equivalent, as with Zeus (Greek) and Jupiter (Roman), or Aphrodite and Venus.

Cicero was interested in bigger philosophical issues than which gods were worth worshipping. The nature of the gods is looked at literally: are they fleshed gods with superhuman powers, or pure spirit with some ability to interact with ordinary matter and humans, or perhaps made of the same substance as the planets and stars in the sky? Nature is also examined in detail: was it created for mankind, is it perfect? If so, what to make of disease, war and human stupidity?

My take on much of De Natura Deorum is that reasoning can only get you so far. In some ways the Romans (and other ancient peoples) knew a lot about animals, and about human anatomy. On the other hand their understanding of physics, and how that applied to the stars and planets, was so off that any reasoning from what they thought were the facts could lead them (the Stoic, Epicure, and Skeptic all) to wrong conclusions.

While we can see the influence of Cicero on the founding fathers and the Constitution, there is little record (that I was able to find) of them recording which particular works of Cicero they read. It would be interesting to know when copies of The Nature of the Gods first appeared in libraries at Harvard, William and Mary, etc. [add to incredibly long to-do list]

America is not mentioned in the New Testament: of that I am sure. I like to think that most American Christian Nationalists are well-intended, but too intellectually lazy to carefully read the Bible, early Christian literature, and works like The Nature of the Gods. Not much different, in many ways, from the Roman Catholics of the James David Vance / Peter Thiel school.

Due to modern science we (those of us who bother) know much more about the universe than the Romans ever did. Yet in many ways we still have much to learn about the nature of Nature. The Big Bang might explain some cosmological observations, but it does not explain existence. Perhaps the Romans would have called our forces of nature gods. I think Cicero would have deeply appreciated Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. What that theory means about how humans should behave remains debatable. I favor kindness, up to a point.