"... Perhaps the last major writer to embrace the Enoch-inspired exegesis of the passage was Lactantius (240-320 CE) in his Divine Institutes (written from 304-311). He begins his work by affirming divine providence and the unity of God but soon turns to pagan accounts of origins and the evil effects produced by the Greek and Roman cults. The second hook of the Divine Institutes focuses on worship of humans and celestial phenomena. As Lactantius tries to explain how such religions began, he bases himself heavily on the Watcher myth, though he fails to name the source from which he drew it. The relevant sections are book 2, chapters 14-17. It may seem that he places the angel narrative after the flood. He treats that event in chapter 13 and proceeds beyond it to trace ignorance of the deity to the descendants of the accursed Canaan and to charge the Egyptians with being especially inclined to worship the stars and to indulge in other forms of idolatry. However, he closes the thirteenth chapter by saying: 'Now let us return to the beginning of the world'. The opening words of chapter 14 leave no doubt that Genesis 6:1 underlies the report: 'When, therefore, the number of men had begun to increase ...' Lactantius indicates that God sent the angels to foil the devil, the ruler of the earth. They were to prevent him from corrupting humanity as he had at the first. In spite of God's warnings to the angels 'not to lose the dignity of their celestial substance through contagion with the stain of the earth,' the plan went awry ..."