Excerpt from Poemata

From Anca's collection, these verses of Petronius argue that fear first made the gods in the world: lightning falling from the sky, walls shaken apart by flames, Athos struck — then the sun's rising, the moon's age and renewed honour, the signs spread across the world, the year divided into months. And how error's empty bidding soon taught the first farmers to honour Ceres with harvests, Bacchus with full vines, Pales by shepherds' hands, Neptune drowned in water, and Pallas claiming the shops.