We have now seen how the politicians were turning the state religion into a tool for the accomplishment of their own selfish ends, and how the masses of the people were seeking satisfaction for their religious needs in sensational foreign worships, introduced from Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria, and Persia.  We must now see whether any efforts were being made by any members of the community in behalf of the old religion, and whether there were still in existence any traces of the pure old Roman worship.

The latter-day philosophies of Greece had dealt a severe blow at Roman religion by convincing the intellectual classes in the community that in the nature of things there could be no such knowledge as that upon which religion was based, and hence that religion was an idle thing unworthy of a true man’s interest.  Yet all the philosophy in the world could not take away from a Roman his sense of duty to the state.  Now the state in its experience had found religion so necessary that she had built up a formal system of it and made it a part of herself.  As it was the duty of the citizen to support the state in every part of her activity, it was clearly his duty to support the state religion.  Hence there arose that crass contradiction, which existed in Rome to a large degree as long as these particular systems of philosophy prevailed, between the duty which a man, as a thinking man, owed to himself, and the duty which he, as a good citizen, owed to the state.  We have seen how during the second century before Christ no attempt was made to reconcile these two views and how they existed side by side in such a man, for example, as Ennius, who wrote certain treatises embodying the most extraordinary sceptical doctrines, and certain patriotic poems in which the whole apparatus of the Roman gods is prominently exhibited and most reverently treated.  We have also seen how this “double truth” could not but have disastrous results on the state religion in spite of all efforts to the contrary.  The first effort which was made to improve the situation was not so much an attempt at reconciliation as a frank statement of the difficulties of the case.  The problem had advanced considerably toward solution when once it had been clearly stated.  The man who had the courage to make the statement was Quintus Mucius Scaevola, a famous lawyer as well as the head of the college of Pontiffs (Pontifex Maximus).  He was a contemporary of Sulla, and was admirably fitted for his task because he not only represented religion in his position as Pontifex Maximus, but could speak also in behalf of the state both theoretically as a lawyer, and practically because he had filled almost all the important political offices (consul, B.C. 95).  The treatise in which he made his statements has been lost to us, but we may obtain a fair idea of what he said from a quotation by the Christian writer Augustine in his wonderful book The City of God (iv. 27).  For Scaevola the double truth