Plato's (or Socrates'?) views on the gods are articulated in Book 2 of The Republic. I, too, have wondered where he got the idea that they must be perfect, since it is, as he there admits, antithetical to their depiction in Homer and Hesiod, etc. Was there, then, a separate tradition on the nature of the gods? Why should Socrates and Glaucon (his sounding board) so easily assume that the gods must be perfect? The idea must have been around somewhere . . . ?