in the interest of personal freedom, and it came very naturally from Greek influences.  The Roman could not contemplate the exuberant development of Greek thought, art, literature, society, without bitterly feeling how confined was his own range, how meagre and empty his own life.  Hence, very early, Roman society began to be Hellenized, but especially after the unification of Italy.  To quote Mommsen once more:  “The Greek civilization was grandly human and cosmopolitan; and Rome not only was stimulated by this influence, but was penetrated by it to its very centre.”  Even in politics there was a new school, whose fixed idea was the consolidation and propagandism of republicanism; but this Philhellenism showed itself especially in the realm of thought and faith.  As the old faith died, more ceremonies were added; for as life goes out, forms come in.  As the winter of unbelief lowers the stream of piety, the ice of ritualism accumulates along its banks.  In addition to the three colleges of Pontiffs, Haruspices, and Quindecemviri, another of Epulones, whose business was to attend to the religious feasts, was instituted in A.U. 558 (B.C. 196).  Contributions and tithes of all sorts were demanded from the people.  Hercules, especially, as is more than once intimated in the plays of Plautus, became very rich by his tithes.[294] Religion became more and more a charm, on the exact performance of which the favor of the gods depended; so that ceremonies were sometimes performed thirty times before the essential accuracy was attained.

The gods were now changed, in the hands of Greek statuaries, into ornaments for a rich man’s home.  Greek myths were imported and connected with the story of Roman deities, as Ennius made Saturn the son of Coelus, in imitation of the genealogy of Kronos.  That form of rationalism called Euhemerism, which explains every god into a mythical king or hero, became popular.  So, too, was the doctrine of Epicharmos, who considered the divinities as powers of nature symbolized.  According to the usual course of events, superstition and unbelief went hand in hand.  As the old faith died out, new forms of worship, like those of Cybele and Bacchus, came in.  Stern conservatives like Cato opposed all these innovations and scepticisms, but ineffectually.

Gibbon says that “the admirable work of Cicero,’De Natura Deorum,’ is the best clew we have to guide us through this dark abyss” (the moral and religious teachings of the philosophers).[295] After, in the first two books, the arguments for the existence and providence of the gods have been set forth and denied, by Velleius the Epicurean, Cotta the academician, and Balbus the Stoic; in the third book, Cotta, the head of the priesthood, the Pontifex Maximus, proceeds to refute the stoical opinion that there are gods who govern the universe and provide for the welfare of mankind.  To be sure, he says, as Pontifex, he of course believes in the gods, but he feels free as a philosopher to deny their existence.