by an examination of Greek mythology to
purify the state religion from its immoral influences; third, to show
that the state religion so purified was fully in accord with Stoic
philosophy. In regard to the "three religions," therefore, he agreed
with Scaevola in casting out entirely the religion of the poets, and in
accepting both the others, but he differed from Scaevola in that he
denied the contradiction between them and asserted that they were not
two truths but two forms of the same truth. We are not able to go into
the details of his attempt, because unfortunately the books in which he
wrote it have been lost to us, and we have again merely the quotation in
Augustine's _City of God_. But we know that in general he tried to show
that the formal doctrines of the state religion were merely a popular
presentation of the truths of the Stoic philosophy, and that the whole
system of Roman gods could be reduced in theory to the great
philosophical contrast between the sky and the earth, the procreative
and the conceptive elements. A man might therefore hold fast to both
religions as to a simpler creed and a more abstruse one. Hence a man's
belief as a good citizen and his belief as an intelligent individual
were not in contrast so far as the truth was concerned, but merely in
the matter of form, in the manner of presentation. Varro's heroic
effort, supported as it was by all the learning of his day and all the
influence that his fame lent to his words, was nevertheless a failure.
The religion of the state was dead; politics had killed it. It was a
political power alone which could restore life to it, but that was the
work of an emperor, Augustus, and not of a scholar, Varro.

While Varro, with the weapon of philosophy, was attempting to defend the
religion of the state against its enemies, the poets and the
philosophers, a poet, also armed with philosophy, was trying to defend
the Roman people against its worst enemy, superstition. It may not seem
as though Lucretius belonged among the friends of old Roman religion,
and as though the _De Rerum Natura_ were exactly a religious poem, and
yet his work was in so far helpful to old Roman religion in that it
attacked the excesses of a latter-day superstition which had alienated
the hearts of the people from their old beliefs. Superstition is a
parasite which lives on scepticism, and with the killing of the parasite
scepticism sometimes dies as well; and it is open to question wh