ese elements are especially the ideas of politics, trade,
commerce, and the liberal arts. Then for a moment under Servius an
equilibrium seems to have been reached, and a religion to have been
brought into being which was simple enough for the old lovers of
simplicity and varied enough to satisfy the new demands of the
community. But this was not for long, for the spiritual conquest of Rome
by Greece began then, three centuries before the physical conquest of
Greece by Rome. The hosts of Greek deities invaded and captured Rome
under the leadership of the Sibylline books, and though at first they
had been kept outside the _pomerium_, even this iron barrier was melted
in the heat of the Second Punic War, and the new Greek gods swarmed into
the city proper. At the same time as a last heritage from the baleful
books an Oriental goddess, the Magna Mater, was taken into the cult and
into the hearts of the people, and the elements of decay were thus all
present. These elements were threefold: the natural spiritual reaction
resulting from the excesses of the period of the Second Punic War; the
fascination of the Orient, exhibited to Rome in the cult of the Magna
Mater; and the new gift which Greece now made to Rome, the knowledge of
her literature, especially of her philosophy. In the last two centuries
of the republic then these forces alone would have been sufficient to
cause the downfall of religion, but they were aided by politics, which
fastened itself upon the formalism of the state religion and sucked the
little life-blood that was left. Rome's scholars and wise men could
deplore the result and point out the causes, but they could not cure
the state of affairs. What politics had done, politics alone could undo,
hence only the reforms of an autocrat could restore something of the
outward structure of the old state religion. But beyond this politics
and the autocrat were alike powerless. Against philosophy and Oriental
ecstasy they were of no avail. Hence the spirit had left the religion
which Augustus had restored even before the marble temples which he had
built in its honour had fallen into decay.

The age of formalism had passed, the religious demands of the individual
could no longer be satisfied by a mere ritual. For good or for evil
something more personal, more subjective, was needed. Men sought for it
in various ways and with varying success, but except in the simple forms
of family worship old Roman religion was d