religions to continue among the people subject to them._
Varro says also, concerning the generations of the gods, that
the people have inclined to the poets rather than to the natural
philosophers; and that therefore their forefathers,--that is, the
ancient Romans,--believed both in the sex and the generations of the
gods, and settled their marriages; which certainly seems to have
been done for no other cause except that it was the business of
such men as were prudent and wise to deceive the people in matters
of religion, and in that very thing not only to worship, but also
to imitate the demons, whose greatest lust is to deceive. For just
as the demons cannot possess any but those whom they have deceived
with guile, so also men in princely office, not indeed being just,
but like demons, have persuaded the people in the name of religion
to receive as true those things which they themselves knew to be
false; in this way, as it were, binding them up more firmly in civil
society, so that they might in like manner possess them as subjects.
But who that was weak and unlearned could escape the deceits of both
the princes of the state and the demons?