to seek for
the Roman religion, which in its simplicity was no longer tenable,
a support in foreign philosophy--a support which no doubt ruined
it as faith, but in return at any rate allowed the man of culture
decorously to retain in some measure the names and forms of the
popular creed. But this support could neither be Euhemerism, nor
the system of Carneades or of Epicurus.

Euhemerism Not an Adequate Support

The historical version of the myths came far too rudely into
collision with the popular faith, when it declared the gods
directly to be men; Carneades called even their existence in
question, and Epicurus denied to them at least any influence on
the destinies of men. Between these systems and the Roman religion
no alliance was possible; they were proscribed and remained so.
Even in the writings of Cicero it is declared the duty of a citizen
to resist Euhemerism as prejudicial to religious worship; and if the
Academic and the Epicurean appear in his dialogues, the former has
to plead the excuse that, while as a philosopher he is a disciple
of Carneades, as a citizen and -pontifex- he is an orthodox
confessor of the Capitoline Jupiter, and the Epicurean has even
ultimately to surrender and be converted. No one of these three
systems became in any proper sense popular. The plain intelligible
character of Euhemerism exerted doubtless a certain power of
attraction over the Romans, and in particular produced only too
deep an effect on the conventional history of Rome with its at
once childish and senile conversion of fable into history; but it
remained without material influence on the Roman religion, because
the latter from the first dealt only in allegory and not in fable,
and it was not possible in Rome as in Hellas to write biographies
of Zeus the first, second, and third. The modern sophistry could
only succeed where, as in Athens, clever volubility was indigenous,
and where, moreover, the long series of philosophical systems that
had come and gone had accumulated huge piles of intellectual
rubbish. Against the Epicurean quietism, in fine, everything
revolted that was sound and honest in the Roman character so
thoroughly addressing itself to action. Yet it found more
partisans than Euhemerism and the sophistic school, and this was
probably the reason why the police continued to wage war against
it longest and most seriously. But this Roman Epicureanism was not
so much a philosophic system as a sort o