“I believe in the gods,” says he, “on the authority and tradition of our ancestors; but if we reason, I shall reason against their existence.”  “Of course,” he says, “I believe in divination, as I have always been taught to do.  But who knows whence it comes?  As to the voice of the Fauns, I never heard it; and I do not know what a Faun is.  You say that the regular course of nature proves the existence of some ordering power.  But what more regular than a tertian or quartan fever?  The world subsists by the power of nature.”  Cotta goes on to criticise the Roman pantheon, ridiculing the idea of such gods as “Love, Deceit, Fear, Labor, Envy, Old Age, Death, Darkness, Misery, Lamentation, Favor, Fraud, Obstinacy,” etc.  He shows that there are many gods of the same name; several Jupiters, Vulcans, Apollos, and Venuses.  He then denies providence, by showing that the wicked succeed and the good are unfortunate.  Finally, all was left in doubt, and the dialogue ends with a tone of triumphant uncertainty.  This was Cicero’s contribution to theology; and Cicero was far more religious than most men of his period.

Many writers, and more recently Merivale,[296] have referred to the remarkable debate which took place in the Roman Senate, on the occasion of Catiline’s conspiracy.  Caesar, at that time chief pontiff, the highest religious authority in the state, gave his opinion against putting the conspirators to death; for death, says he, “is the end of all suffering.  After death there is neither pain nor pleasure (ultra neque curae, neque gaudii locum).”  Cato, the Stoic, remarked that Caesar had spoken well concerning life and death.  “I take it,” says he, “that he regards as false what we are told about the sufferings of the wicked hereafter,” but does not object to that statement.  These speeches are reported by Sallust, and are confirmed by Cicero’s fourth Catiline Oration.  The remarkable fact is, not that such things were said, but that they were heard with total indifference.  No one seemed to think it was of any consequence one way or the other.  Suppose that when the question of the execution of Charles I. was before Parliament, it had been opposed by the Archbishop of Canterbury (had he been there) on the ground that after death all pain and pleasure ceased.  The absurdity of the supposition shows the different position of the human mind at the two epochs.

In fact, an impassable gulf yawned between the old Roman religion and modern Roman thought.  It was out of the question for an educated Roman, who read Plato and Zeno, who listened to Cicero and Hortensius, to believe in Janus and the Penates.  “All very well for the people,” said they.  “The people must be kept in order by these superstitions."[297] But the secret could not be kept.  Sincere men, like Lucretius, who saw all the evil of these superstitions, and who had no strong religious sense, would speak out, and proclaim all religion to be