ow absolutely nothing, and try to
disguise their ignorance behind a show of learning based on etymological
sleight-of-hand; in regard to the rest their information is so tangled
with Greek ideas that it is often almost impossible to unravel the mass
and separate the old from the new. This unravelling has been the tedious
occupation of the last half century in the study of Roman religion; and
so patiently and successfully has it been accomplished that, although we
would give almost anything for a few books of Varro's _Divine
Antiquities_, it is tolerably certain that the possession of these books
would not change in the least the fundamental concepts underlying the
modern reconstruction of ancient Roman religion; though it is equally
certain that these books would emphasise just so much more strongly,
what we already realise, that this modern reconstruction is in distinct
contradiction to many of Varro's favourite theories. It is an
accomplishment of which History may well be modestly proud, that modern
scholars have been able to eliminate, to a large degree, the personal
equation and the myopic effects of his own time from the statements of
the greatest scholar of Roman antiquity, and thus though handicapped by
the possession of merely a small percentage of the facts which Varro
knew, to arrive at a concept of the whole matter infinitely more correct
than that which his books contained.

During this second century before Christ, therefore, the state religion
was apparently unchanged so far as the outward form was concerned. The
terminology and the ceremonies were much the same as before, but the
content was quite different: Greek gods and Greek ideas had displaced
Roman gods and Roman ideas, and the official representatives of
religion, the state priests, were carrying the whole burden of worship
on their own shoulders, because popular interest had been in the main
deflected and was working along other lines. These lines of rival
interest were superstition and scepticism, phenomena which at first
sight appear as distinct opposites, but which are on the contrary very
closely akin, so that they usually occur together not only in the same
age, but frequently even in the same individual. They are purely
relative terms, and the essence of superstition consists in its surplus
element, just as the essence of scepticism lies in its deficiency. No
religion judged from the standpoint of the worshipper can properly be
called a sup