The negation of providence (pronoia) and, accordingly, of fate (heimarmenē) entailed that Epicurus even came to be regarded as an atheist by the other philosophical schools of antiquity and above all by the Stoics. This is a real (and intentional) misunderstanding since Epicurus’s philosophy has a systematic theology in which the gods have a function that is not at all marginal. From some of Epicurus’s texts, one can notice that the philosopher mentions the three essential and ineliminable characteristics of the divine: that it is a zōion, and hence a living being; its incorruptibility (aphtharsia); and, finally, its blessedness (makariotēs). Incorruptibility must be understood entirely in materialist terms: the gods are atomic aggregates, albeit very “special”: their atomic constitution is eternally harmonious and never admits of any kind of perturbation or disturbance to its atomic structure. For Epicurus, to assign complete inactivity to gods means to grant them an honor and majesty such as to make of divinity a being wholly “incommensurable” with any other real thing: this supremely elevated condition of a god is reducible to those traits of blessedness and incorruptibility which make it a living ideal for human beings, a paradigm of absolute well-being to which we may continually aspire.