of the truths of Stoicism in a form which was intelligible to the lower classes.  Had this group of Scipio and his associates made an effort to emphasise these particular doctrines of Stoicism in relation to religion, the downfall of the state religion, which occurred in the following century, might have been hindered.  But for reasons, which we shall see in a moment, this downfall could not have been prevented, and it is doubtful whether the influence of any philosophical system, even when supported by such prominent men, could have perceptibly postponed the catastrophe.  Meantime the only visible contribution of Stoicism to the problem of religion was the growth under her influence of the idea of a “double truth,” one truth for the intellectual classes and one for the common people, reaching its climax in the phrase “It is expedient for the state to be deceived in matters of religion” (expedit igitur falli in religione civitatem).  This was the attitude toward religion of the most intellectual men in the community at the beginning of what was in many ways the most terrible period in Rome’s history.

The last century before Christ (more exactly B.C. 133-B.C. 27) is the story of how Rome became an empire because she was no longer able to be a republic; it is the history of the growth of one-man power because many-men power had become impossible.  This growth was caused not only, nor at first even chiefly, by the grasping character of Rome’s statesmen, but by the increase of the rabble and the consequent unmanageable character of her population, except under the firm hand of a single master.  And the reason why it took one hundred years of civil war to change the republic into the empire was not because the spirit of the republic was so slow in dying that its death struggles filled a century, but merely because the republic died too easily and the way to one-man power was so simple that there were too many candidates for the position, and hence the civil wars between them.  These civil wars were bound to continue until the bitter lessons of experience had taught men not only how to gain the supreme control, which was relatively easy, but how to keep it and exclude rivals, which was much more difficult.  The ambitious leaders of this century did not have to create a throne; that was ready to their hand.  Their task was only to put defences around it.  Even these defences of it were not directly against the people, for the people had no desire to overthrow the throne, but merely against the rival candidates.  Step by step from Tiberius Gracchus to Gaius Gracchus, and on to Marius, to Sulla, to Pompey, to Julius Caesar, possession became more and more permanent; until from being a mere momentary position, it became nine points of the law, and Octavian made the tenure perfect by adding an almost religious reverence to his person in the title Augustus.