ILLEGITIMATE GODS IN LUCIAN, CICERO AND PLUTARCH: CONNECTING SCEPTICISM AND RELIGION

Abstract This article analyses the philosophical discourse on illegitimate gods in Lucian’s Concilium deorum, Cicero’s De natura deorum and Plutarch’s Amatorius. Lucian describes certain gods as bastards ( νόθοι ) who have been illegally registered ( παρέγγραπτοι ) in the divine community. Similar descriptions occur in Cicero and Plutarch, although textual transmission has obscured this. The references to illegitimate gods in these three texts should be interpreted as engaging in different ways with so-called sorites paradoxes. Academic sceptics used such paradoxes to point out the vagueness of the concept ‘god’ in Stoic theology. As the example of illegitimate gods is invoked with a similar goal in a negative, sceptical context by Cicero and in a positive defence of religion by Plutarch, it shows how scepticism could be reconciled with religion. Once this intellectual background is reconstructed, unnoticed aspects of Lucian’s satirical take on it can be brought out. Based on the integrated analysis of these key passages, two emendations are proposed: at Cic. Nat. D. 3.39 read nothos [: nouos MSS] et adscripticios ; at Plut. Amat . 756C read παρεγγραφῆς [: παρεισγραφῆς MSS] … καὶ νοθείας ( παρεισγραφή should be omitted from our dictionaries).