 The Epicurean viewpoint also has implications for how we are to consider the relation between god and religion. Velleius’ insistence on an anthropomorphic conception of god (1.46–8) is, in part, motivated by a desire to do justice to the traditional Greek picture of the gods – and, for that matter, the traditional Roman one, which shared an anthropomorphic conception with, and was deeply influenced by, the Greek inheritance. Equally, however, Velleius takes aim at traditional poetic representations of the gods as badly behaved humans on a larger scale. There is, in a correct conception of divinity, no place for war, strife, lust, anger or other violent emotions (1.42). And Velleius has little time for ordinary people’s views about the gods, which he dismisses as ‘mired in the greatest inconsistency through their ignorance of the truth’ (1.43).