considered those things which by their influences in the earth do
receive a being and do likewise fructify. It was manifest to men
that the Heaven was the father of those things, and the Earth the
mother; that the Heaven was the father is clear, since from the
heavens there is the pouring down of waters, which have their
spermatic faculty; the Earth the mother, because she receives them
and brings forth. Likewise men considering that the stars are
running (Greek omitted) in a perpetual motion, that the sun and
moon give us the stimulus to view and contemplate (Greek omitted),
they call them all gods (Greek omitted).

In the second and third place, they thus distinguished the deities
into those which are beneficial and those that are injurious to
mankind. Those which are beneficial they call Jupiter, Juno,
Mercury, Ceres; those who are mischievous the Dirae, Furies, and
Mars. These, which threaten dangers and violence, men endeavor to
appease and conciliate by sacred rites. The fourth and the fifth
order of gods they assign to things and passions; to passions,
Love, Venus, and Desire; the deities that preside over things,
Hope, Justice, and Eunomia.

The sixth order of deities are the ones made by the poets;
Hesiod, willing to find out a father for those gods that
acknowledge an original, invented their progenitors,--

Hyperion, Coeus, and Iapetus,
With Creius:
(Hesiod, "Theogony," 134.)

upon which account this is called the fabulous. The seventh rank