Gods are called the false gods of the Gentiles, all creatures to whom honors were rendered as due to the divinity. See Goddess, Idol , etc.

It should be noted that among the Greeks and Latins, the peoples using the name God did not refer to a perfect being with the essential attribute of eternity. They called gods all the beings whom they regarded as superior to human nature, or who might be of some use to them, and even those whose anger thy feared. The ancients (like the moderns) were almost always led by their own interest, that is to say, the hope for good and the fear of evil. Men themselves, they thought, could become gods after their death, because their soul could acquire a degree of excellence that they did not have during their life. See Apotheosis and Consecration. But it was not believed that sages like Socrates, Plato, Cicero and others always spoke according to people’s ideas, but were sometimes obliged to conform to them in order not to be accused of atheism. This was the putative crime imputed to those who believed in only one God .

Poets, according to the remark by Father le Bossu, were theologians, and these two functions, although today separate, were then united in the same person. See Poetry.

They personified the divine attributes because the weakness of the human mind could not conceive of explaining so much power and so much activity in a substance as simple and as indivisible as that of God.

Thus they represented the omnipotence of God in the person and name of Jupiter, his wisdom in that of Minerva, his justice in that of Juno. See Epic, Fable, etc.

The first false gods that were adored were stars, heaven, the sun and moon, because of the heat and light that men received from them. See Idolatry, Astronomy, Star, Sun, etc . and then the earth that supplied fruits and served to feed men and animals. Fire as well as water also became objects of men’s worship because of the advantages received from them. See Water and Fire.

Later the number of these gods multiplied to infinity due to the caprice of their worshippers and there is almost not one thing that has not be deified, not excepting those that are useless or harmful.

To authorize crime and justify debauchery, one made gods that were criminal and debauched, gods that were unjust and violent, gods that were avaricious and thieving; drunken gods , shameless gods , cruel and bloodthirsty gods .

The principal gods that the Romans called dii majorum gentian , and Cicero celestial gods , Varro chosen gods , Ovid nobiles deos, others consentes deos were: Jupiter, Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Diana, Venus, Mars, Mercury, Neptune, Vulcan, Apollo. Jupiter was the god of the sky, Neptune the god of the sea, Marks the god of war, Apollo that of Eloquence, Poetry, and Medicine, Mercury that of thieves, Bacchus that of wine, Cupid that of love, etc.

They also placed in the rank of demi-gods (also called semi-dii , dii minorum gentium, indigetes ) heroes and men who had been deified. The great gods possessed heaven as something that belonged to them by right, and the latter as a recompense for the extraordinary manner in which they had lived on earth. See Hero and Apotheosis.

It would take too long to name here all the gods of Paganism; the details can be found in Trévoux’s dictionary, which reports the greater part of them as extracted from the book by Isaac Vossius titled De Origine and Progressu Idololatriae . There was no excess to which men were not carried in this respect: not content with having made virtue divine, they paid the same honor to vice. Everything was a god , says Bossuet, except for God.

Recognized as gods were health, fever, fear, love, pain, indignation, modesty, impudence, fury, joy, opinion, fame, prudence, science, art, fidelity, felicity, calumny, liberty, money, war, peace, victory, triumph, etc.

But what dishonored humanity was to see a god made of Sterculus because he first taught the smoking of fields; pallor and fear, pallor and pavor , were put into the rank of gods since there were the god desses Coica, Cloaima and Muta. Lactanthius in hos Book I was right to cast shame on pagans for these ridiculous divinities.

Finally, nature and the whole world passed for a god. See Nature.