Ennius, the great literary figure of this period, was the first to strike a direct blow at the popular belief in the efficacy of prayer and sacrifice, by openly declaring that the gods did not interest themselves in mankind,[550]—­the same Epicurean doctrine preached afterwards by Lucretius.  It may indeed be doubted whether this doctrine became popular, or acceptable even to the cultured classes; but the fact remains that the same man who did more than any one before Virgil to glorify the Roman character and dominion, was the first to impugn the belief that Rome owed her greatness to her divine inhabitants.

But in the next generation there arrived in Rome a man whose teaching had so great an influence on the best type of educated Roman that, as we have already said, he may almost be regarded as a missionary.[551] We do not know for certain whether Panaetius wrote or taught about the nature or existence of the gods; but we do know that he discussed the question of divination[552] in a work [Greek:  Peri pronoias], where he could hardly have avoided the subject.  In any case the Stoic doctrines which he held, themselves ultimately derived from Plato and the Old Academy, were found capable in the hands of his great successor Posidonius of Rhodes of supplying a philosophical basis for the activity as well as the existence of the gods.  These men, it must be repeated, were not merely professed philosophers, but men of the world, travellers, writing on a great variety of subjects; they were profoundly interested, like Polybius, in the Roman character and government; they became intimate with the finer Roman minds, from Scipio the younger to Cicero and Varro, and seem to have seen clearly that the old rigid Stoicism must be widened and humanised, and its ethical and theological aspects modified, if it were to gain a real hold on the practical Roman understanding.  We have already seen[553] how their modified Stoic ethics acted for good on the best Romans of our period.  In theology also they left a permanent mark on Roman thought; Posidonius wrote a work on the gods, which formed the basis of the speculative part of Varro’s Antiquitates divinae, and almost certainly also of the second book of Cicero’s de Natura Deorum[554].  Other philosophers of the period, even if not professed Stoics, may have discussed the same subjects in their lectures and writings, arriving at conclusions of the same kind.

It is chiefly from the fragments of Varro’s work that we learn something of the Stoic attempt to harmonise the old religious beliefs with philosophic theories of the universe[555].  Varro, following his teacher, held the Stoic doctrine of the animus mundi the Divine principle permeating all material things which, in combination with them, constitutes the universe, and is Nature, Reason, God, Destiny, or whatever name the philosopher might choose to give it.  The universe is divine, the various parts of it are, therefore, also divine, in virtue of this