  In his book On Piety, Philodemus defends the Epicureans against accusations of atheism, giving examples from the writings of Epicurus and Metrodorus to prove their belief in the gods’ immortality and their encouragement of Epicureans to participate in the ordinary cult observance of the gods. Epicureans have good reasons to uphold belief in divinity, not only on civic grounds, but also because a proper understanding of the gods gives us models of perfect happiness that we can emulate. In promotion of the proper understanding of the divine, Philodemus gives an extended critique of the distortions promulgated in poetry and in other philosophers’ works (on Philodemus’ theology, see now Essler 2011).