1. Term

The ancients wondered about the reasons for evil in the world, about its causes. In the Bible, Job wrestled with why he had undeserved miseries heaped upon him. In his dialogue The Nature of the Gods, Cicero asked why, if the gods care for human beings, the good fail to prosper or bad people not come to grief (3.79). There Cotta, Cicero’s spokesperson for Skepticism, who attacks the Stoic belief in providence, declares that “divine p…