SOURCE: A. J. Festugière, "The Religion of Epicurus," in Epicurus and His Gods, translated by C. W. Chilton, Basil Blackwell, 1955, pp. 51-65.

Originally published in France in 1946, Festugière's Epicurus and his Gods quickly became standard criticism in discussions of Epicurean theology. In the excerpt below, Festugière looks at Epicurus—both as an Athenian citizen and as a philosopher—in the context of his culture's religious thought.

Ever since men in Greece had believed in the existence of gods—and this belief seems to go back to an unfathomable antiquity—they had thought also that the gods rule human affairs. These two aspects of faith are connected; for this very faith in the existence of superior powers, whose favour we must win and whose anger we must turn aside, is born of the observation, a thousand times repeated, that most of our actions do not achieve...