Fl. mid-1st century BC, Rome. Wrote and spoke in Latin. A Roman senator who voices and defends the Epicurean position on the nature of the gods in Book I of Cicero's De Natura Deorum, arguing for Epicurus's theology against the Stoic and Academic positions represented by the dialogue's other speakers.
1. Key Texts
[Velleius] I have given a rough account of what are more like the dreams of madmen than the considered opinions of philosophers. For they are little less absurd than the outpourings of the poets, harmful as these have been owing to the mere charm of their style. The poets have represented the gods as inflamed by anger and maddened by lust, and have displayed to our gaze their wars and battles, their fights and wounds, their hatreds, enmities and quarrels, their births and deaths, their complaints and lamentations, the utter and unbridled license of their passions, their adulteries and imprisonments, their unions with human beings and the birth of mortal progeny from an immortal parent. With the errors of the poets may be classed the monstrous doctrines of the magi and the insane mythology of Egypt, and also the popular beliefs, which are a mere mass of inconsistencies sprung from ignorance. (Rackham)