ons with indulgent contempt; but they inculcated the duty of
honouring the gods, and the observance of public ceremonial. Beyond
these limits the practice of local and customary worship was, I think,
free and unrestrained; though I need hardly add that toleration, as
understood by the States of antiquity, was a very different thing from
the modern principle of religious neutrality. Under the Roman
government the connection between the State and religion was much
closer, as the dominion of Rome expanded and its power became
centralised. The Roman State maintained a strict control and
superintendence over the official rituals and worships, which were
regulated as a department of the administration, to bind the people
together by established rites and worships, in order to cement
political and social unity. It is true that the usages of the tribes
and principalities that were conquered and annexed were left
undisturbed; for the Roman policy, like that of the English in India,
was to avoid giving offence to religion; and undoubtedly this policy,
in both instances, materially facilitated the rapid building up of a
wide dominion. Nevertheless, there was a tendency to draw in the
worship toward a common centre. The deities of the conquered provinces
were respected and conciliated; the Roman generals even appealed to
them for protection and favour, yet they became absorbed and
assimilated under Roman names; they were often identified with the
gods of the Roman pantheon, and were frequently superseded by the
victorious divinities of the new rulers--the strange deities, in fact,
were Romanised as well as the foreign tribes and cities. After this
manner the Roman empire combined the tolerance of great religious
diversity with the supremacy of a centralised government. Political
amalgamation brought about a fusion of divine attributes; and latterly
the emperor was adored as the symbol of manifest power, ruler and
pontiff; he was the visible image of supreme authority.

This _regime_ was easily accepted by the simple unsophisticated
paganism of Europe. The Romans, with all their statecraft, had as yet
no experience of a high religious temperature, of enthusiastic
devotion and divine mysteries. But as their conquest and commerce
spread eastward, the invasion of Asia let in upon Europe a flood of
Oriental divinities, and thus Rome came into contact with much
stronger and deeper spiritual forces. The European polytheism might be
utili