even his imagination would have shrunk in despair. CHAP. This remained to be conceived and accomplished

by one who appeared to the mass of mankind in his own age, as a peasant of Palestine.

I.

philoso

ism ac

racter;

It cannot be denied that, to those whom it deigned Varieties of to address, philosophy was sufficiently accommo- phic sysdating; and whatever the bias of the individual tems. mind, the school was open, and the teacher at hand, to lead the inquirer, either to the luxurious gardens of Epicurus, or among the loftier spirits of the Porch. In the two prevalent systems of philosophy, the Epicurean and the Stoic, appears a striking assimilation to the national character of the two predominant races which constituted the larger part of the Roman world. The Epicurean, with its subtle meta- Epicureanphysics, its abstract notion of the Deity, its imagin- cordant to ative materialism, its milder and more pleasurable Greek chamorals, and perhaps its propensity to degenerate into indolence and sensuality, was kindred and congenial to that of Greece, and the Grecian part of the Roman society. The Stoic, with its more practical Stoicism character, its mental strength and self-confidence, its fatalism, its universally diffused and all-governing Deity, the soul of the universe (of which the political power of the all-ruling republic might appear an image), bore the same analogy to that of Rome. While the more profound thinkers, who could not disguise from themselves the insufficiency of the grounds on which the philosophical systems rested, either settled into a calm and contented scepticism, or with the Academics, formed an eclectic creed from Academies. what appeared the better parts of the rest.

to Roman.

CHAP.

I.

Philosophy

pular re

ligion.

Such on all the great questions of religion, the divine nature, providence, the origin and future state of the soul*, was the floating and uncertain state of the human mind. In the department of morals, Philosophy nobly performed her part; but perhaps her success in this respect more clearly displayed her inefficiency. The height to which moral science was carried in the works of Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Antoninus, while it made the breach still wider between the popular religion and the advanced state of the human mind, more vividly displayed the want of a faith, which would associate itself with the purest and loftiest morality; and remarry, as it were, those thoughts and feelings, which connect man with a future state of being, to the practical duties of life.t

For while these speculations occupied the loftier fatal to po- and more thinking minds, what remained for the vulgar of the higher and of the lower orders? Philosophy had shaken the old edifice to its base; and even if it could have confined its more profound and secret doctrines within the circle of its own elect, if its contempt for the old fables of the popular creed had been more jealously guarded, it

is impossible but that the irreligion of the upper order must work downwards upon the lower. When religion has, if not avowedly, yet manifestly, sunk into an engine of state policy, its most imposing and solemn rites will lose all their commanding life and energy. Actors will perform ill who do not feel their parts. "It is marvellous," says the Epicurean in Cicero, "that one soothsayer (Haruspex), can look another in the face without laughing." And when the Epicurean himself stood before the altar, in the remarkable language of Plutarch, "he hypocritically enacted prayer and adoration from fear of the many; he uttered words directly opposite to his philosophy. While he sacrifices, the ministering priest seems to him no more than a cook, and he departs uttering the line of Menander, "I have sacrificed to Gods in whom I have no concern."

CHAP.

I.

Unless indeed the literature as well as the philo- Literature. sophy of the age, immediately preceding Christianity, had been confined to the intellectual aristocracy, the reasoning spirit, which rejected with disdain the old imaginative fables, could not but descend at least as low as the rudiments of liberal education. When the gravest writers, like Polybius and Strabo, find it necessary to apologise to their more learned and thinking readers, for the introduction of those mythic legends, which formed the creed of their ancestors, and to plead the necessity of avoiding offence, because such tales are still sacred among

* Quoted also by Neander from Plutarch. (Non poss. suav. viv. sec.

Epic.) I have adopted Reiske's
reading of the latter clause.

CHAP.

I.

the vulgar, this deference shows rather the in-
creasing indifference, than the strength of popular
opinion. "Historians," says the former writer,
"must be pardoned, if for the sake of maintaining
piety among the many, they occasionally introduce
miraculous or fabulous tales; but they must not be
permitted on these points to run into extrava-
gance." "Religion," he declares in another passage,
"would perhaps be unnecessary in a commonwealth
of wise men.
But since the multitude is ever
fickle, full of lawless desires, irrational passions and
violence, it is right to restrain it by the fear of the
invisible world, and such tragic terrors. Whence
our ancestors appear to have introduced notions con-
cerning the Gods, and opinions about the infernal
regions not rashly or without consideration. Those
rather act rashly and inconsiderately who would ex-
pel them."*
"It is impossible," observes the in-
quiring geographer, "to govern a mob of women,
or the whole mixed multitude, by philosophic rea-
soning, and to exhort them to piety, holiness, and
faith; we must also employ superstition with its
fables and prodigies. For the thunder, the ægis, the
trident, the torches, the serpents, the thyrsi of the
Gods are fables, as is all the ancient theology; but
the legislature introduced these things as bugbears
to those who are children in understanding." + In
short even when the Roman writers professed the
utmost respect for the religious institutions of their
country, there was a kind of silent protest against
their sincerity. It was an evident, frequently an

* Polyb. vi. 56.

Strabo, lib. i. p. 19.

avowed, condescension to the prejudices of the vulgar. Livy admires the wisdom of Numa, who introduced the fear of the Gods, as a "most efficacious means of controlling an ignorant and barbarous populace."* Even the serious Dionysius judges of religion according to its usefulness, not according to its truth, as the wise scheme of the legislator, rather than as the revelation of the Deity.t Pausanias, while he is making a kind of religious survey of Greece, expressing a grave veneration for all the temples and rites of antiquity, frequently relating the miraculous intervention of the several deities, is jealous and careful lest he should be considered a believer in the fables which he relates.§ The natural consequence of this double doctrine was not unforeseen. "What," says the Academic in Cicero, "when men maintain all belief in the immortal Gods to have been invented by wise men for the good of the state, that religion might lead to their duty those who would not be led by reason, do they not sweep away the very foundations of all religion?" ||

СНАР,
I.

Life.

The mental childhood of the human race was Future passing away, at least it had become wearied of its old toys. The education itself, by which, accord

* H. R. i. 19.
+ Ant. Rom. ii. 8, 9.

Baotica, 25.; Laconica, 4. Τοῦτον τὸν λόγον, καὶ ὅσα ἐοικότα εἴρηται, οὐκ ἀποδεχόμενος γράow, ypάow de ovdiv hooov. Corinth. xvii. In another place he repeats that he gives the popular legend as he finds it. Arcad. viii.

De Nat. Deor. i. 42.

¶ Gibbon has a striking sentence in his juvenile Essai sur la Litterature (Misc. Works, iv. 61.): "Les Romains étaient éclairés: cependant ces mêmes Romains ne furent pas choqués de voir réunir dans la personne de César un dieu, un prêtre, et un athée." He adds atheist, as disbelieving with the Epicureans the providence of God.