How to Think about God
By Marcus Tullius Cicero, translated by Philip Freeman
Princeton, 151pp, £13.99/$16.95
This handy little book could just have well been called “How to Think about God – just before Jesus Turned Up”.
It is a translation (with Latin on the lefthand page, as in a Loeb) of Cicero’s works On the Nature of the Gods and The Dream of Scipio. And it’s a good summary of the religious thoughts of the Stoics.
But what’s particularly striking is that it’s written by Cicero (106-43 BC), the great politician and orator, just before the birth of Jesus Christ. And, as such, it shows quite how dramatically different Christian thought was from Roman thought – and what a revolutionary religion Christianity is.
