Note 200 — LIFE OF SULLA.
George Long translation
L. Cornelius Cinna and Cn. Octavius were consuls B.C. 87. the year in which Sulla left Italy to fight with Mithridates. Apuleius (On the God of Sokrates) thus alludes to the kind of oath which Cinna took—"Shall I swear by Jupiter, holding a stone in my hand, after the most ancient manner of the Romans? But if the opinion of Plato is true, that God never mingles himself with man, a stone will hear me more easily than Jupiter. This however is not true: for Plato will answer for his opinion by my voice. I do not, says he, assert that the gods are separated and alienated from us, so as to think that not even our prayers reach them; for I do not remove them from an attention to, but only from a contact with human affairs."