the Greek thinkers had done all the work and the Latin poem is a hymn of triumph over prostrate deities, yet in the literature of free thought it must always hold an eminent place by the sincerity of its audacious, defiant spirit.  In the history of rationalism its interest would be greater if it had exploded in the midst of an orthodox community.  But the educated Romans in the days of Lucretius were sceptical in religious matters, some of them were Epicureans, and we may suspect that not many of those who read it were shocked or influenced by the audacities of the champion of irreligion.

The Stoic philosophy made notable contributions to the cause of liberty and could hardly have flourished in an atmosphere where discussion was not free.  It asserted the rights of individuals against public

[39] authority.  Socrates had seen that laws may be unjust and that peoples may go wrong, but he had found no principle for the guidance of society.  The Stoics discovered it in the law of nature, prior and superior to all the customs and written laws of peoples, and this doctrine, spreading outside Stoic circles, caught hold of the Roman world and affected Roman legislation.

These philosophies have carried us from Greece to Rome.  In the later Roman Republic and the early Empire, no restrictions were imposed on opinion, and these philosophies, which made the individual the first consideration, spread widely.  Most of the leading men were unbelievers in the official religion of the State, but they considered it valuable for the purpose of keeping the uneducated populace in order.  A Greek historian expresses high approval of the Roman policy of cultivating superstition for the benefit of the masses.  This was the attitude of Cicero, and the view that a false religion is indispensable as a social machine was general among ancient unbelievers.  It is common, in one form or another, to-day; at least, religions are constantly defended on the ground not of truth but of utility.  This defence belongs to the statecraft of Machiavelli, who taught that religion is necessary for government,

[40] and that it may be the duty of a ruler to support a religion which he believes to be false.

A word must be said of Lucian (second century A.D.), the last Greek man of letters whose writings appeal to everybody.  He attacked the popular mythology with open ridicule.  It is impossible to say whether his satires had any effect at the time beyond affording enjoyment to educated infidels who read them.  Zeus in a Tragedy Part is one of the most effective.  The situation which Lucian imagined here would be paralleled if a modern writer were blasphemously to represent the Persons of the Trinity with some eminent angels and saints discussing in a celestial smoke-room the alarming growth of unbelief in England and then by means of a telephonic apparatus overhearing a dispute between a freethinker and a parson on a public platform in London.  The absurdities of anthropomorphism have never been the subject of more brilliant jesting than in Lucian’s satires.