far better suited than the dogmatism of Lucretius to the conservative character of the Roman mind, for it found a place for the deities of the State, and therefore for the ius divinum, in a philosophical system already widely accepted by educated men.  This school may be described as Stoic, though its theology was often accepted by men who did not actually call themselves Stoics; for example, by Cicero himself, who, as an adherent of the New Academy, the school which repudiated dogmatism and occupied itself with dialectic and criticism, was perfectly entitled to adopt the tenets of other schools if he thought them the most convincing.  Its most elaborate exponent in this period was Varro, and behind both Varro and Cicero there stands the great figure of the Rhodian Posidonius[548], of whose writings hardly anything has come down to us.  It is worth while to trace briefly the history of this school at Rome, for it is in itself extremely interesting, as an attempt to reconcile the old theology—­if the term may be used—­with philosophical thought, and it probably had an appreciable influence on the later quasi-religious Stoicism of the Empire.

We must go back for a moment to the period succeeding the war with Hannibal.  The awful experience of that war had done much to discredit the old Roman religious system, which had been found insufficient of itself to preserve the State.  The people, excited and despairing, had been quieted by what may be called new religious prescriptions, innumerable examples of which are to be found in Livy’s books.  The Sibylline books were constantly consulted, and lectisternia, supplicationes, ludi, in which Greek deities were prominent, were ordered and carried out.  Finally, in 204 B.C., there was brought to Rome the sacred stone of the Magna Mater Idaea, the great deity of Pessinus in Phrygia, and a festival was established in her honour, called by the Greek name Megalesia.  All this means, as can be seen clearly from Livy’s language,[549] that the governing classes were trying to quiet the minds of the people by convincing them that no effort was being spared to set right their relations with the unseen powers; they had invoked in vain their own local and native deities, and had been compelled to seek help elsewhere; they had found their own narrow system of religion quite inadequate to express their religious experience of the last twenty years.  And indeed that old system of religion never really recovered from the discredit thus cast on it.  The temper of the people is well shown by the rapidity with which the orgiastic worship of the Greek Dionysus spread over Italy a few years later; and the fact that it was allowed to remain, though under strict supervision, shows that the State religion no longer had the power to satisfy the cravings of the masses.  And the educated class too was rapidly coming under the influence of Greek thought, which could hardly act otherwise than as a solvent of the old religious ideas.