ors rather to preserve them in freedom than reduce them to slavery. So that it is more advantageous for those who are insignificant in property and capacity to be supported by the care of one excellent and eminently powerful man. The nobles here present themselves, who profess that they can do all this in much better style; for they say that there is much more wisdom in many than in one, and at least as much faith and equity. And, last of all, come the people, who cry with a loud voice that they will render obedience neither to the one nor the few; that even to brute beasts nothing is so dear as liberty; and that all men who serve either kings or nobles are deprived of it. Thus, the kings attract us by affection, the nobles by talent, the people by liberty; and in the comparison it is hard to choose the best.
Lælius. I think so too, but yet it is impossible to despatch the other branches of the question, if you leave this primary point undetermined.
XXXVI. Scipio. We must then, I suppose, imitate Aratus, who, when he prepared himself to treat of great things, thought himself in duty bound to begin with Jupiter.
Lælius. Wherefore Jupiter? and what is there in this discussion which resembles that poem?
Scipio. Why, it serves to teach us that we cannot better commence our investigations than by invoking him whom, with one voice, both learned and unlearned extol as the universal king of all gods and men.
How so? said Lælius.
Do you, then, asked Scipio, believe in nothing which is not before your eyes? whether these ideas have been established by the chiefs of states for the benefit of society, that there might be believed to exist one Universal Monarch in heaven, at whose nod (as Homer expresses it) all Olympus trembles, and that he might be accounted both king and father of all creatures; for there is great authority, and there are many witnesses, if you choose to call all many, who attest that all nations have unanimously recognized, by the decrees of their chiefs, that nothing is better than a king, since they think that all the Gods are governed by the divine power of one sovereign; or if we sus-
