For indeed, if this god desires a black hide and that one a white; if to this one sacrifice must be made with head veiled, to that one bare-headed; if that one is consulted about marriages while this one provides remedies for troubles — it cannot be of no consequence whether it is this Novensilis or that one, since ignorance of the facts and confusion of persons both offends the gods and necessarily compels an expiation to be incurred. For imagine that I myself, for the sake of some misfortune and to avert a danger, pray to one of these deities, saying: 'Be present, be present, ye Penates gods, thou Apollo and thou Neptune, and by the clemency of your divinity turn aside all these evils by which I am burned, terrified, and vexed':
— will there be any hope of aid being brought by these, if it is Ceres, Pales, Fortune, the Jovial one or the Genius, and not Neptune and Apollo, who are the Penates gods? Or if I invoke the Curetes in place of the Lares — whom part of your authorities affirm to be the Samothracian Fingers — how shall I be able to have these as helpers and favorable ones, when I shall have imposed on the ones their own surnames, and on the others names not their own? To such a degree does the matter require that the gods be known properly, and that one neither be uncertain nor doubt about the power and name of each, lest, if they be invoked with rites and appellations belonging to others, they keep their ears stopped and hold us bound by inexpiable expiations.
Wherefore, if it is clear to you that this multitude of gods which you enumerate dwells and abides in the lofty palaces of heaven, it befits you to stand within the bounds of a single statement, and not, torn apart by various and conflicting opinions, to withdraw credibility from the very things you are constructing. If it is Janus, let it be Janus; if it is Liber, let it be Liber; if Summanus, let it be Summanus: for this is to be confident, this is to hold firm, to be fixed in the knowledge of an ascertained matter, and not, after the manner of the blind and the wandering, to say:
'The Novensiles are the Muses; nay rather they are the Trebian gods; nay, they are the number nine; nay rather the presiding deities of overthrown cities' — and thereby to bring matters so great into this danger, that, while you remove some and put others in their place, it may rightly be doubted concerning all of them whether they exist in any respect at all.