he whole history of
Roman religion. There was no violent religious enthusiasm, but then
there was no corresponding depression offsetting it. It was the cold but
conscientious formalism which was best adapted to the Roman character,
because so long as it held sway the excesses of superstition were
avoided.

But this element of superstition was already on the way, it came in
within a few years of the opening of the republic, and it exercised its
insidious influence ever more and more powerfully until it celebrated
its wildest orgies in the time of the Second Punic War. It is in this
period of the first three centuries of the republic, roughly from B.C.
500 to B.C. 200, that this change was produced. Outwardly it resembled a
steady growth in religious feeling and enthusiasm, and it might well
have seemed so to contemporaries. It was a period of many new gods and
many new temples, but this in itself was no harm. It was the principle
behind it which did the damage. It was the essential contradiction to
what true Roman religion and Roman character demanded; and the last half
of the republic paid the price for what the first half had done, in a
decline of faith which has scarcely been exceeded in the world's
history.

It has been customary for writers on the history of Roman morals to
attribute these changes to the coming of Greek influence; and of course
in the main this is correct, but these writers have in general neglected
to analyse this Greek influence more closely, and to distinguish the
various aspects of it in different periods, and to ask and answer the
question why this influence should be so particularly harmful to the
Romans. It is generally spoken of as the influence of Greek literature
and philosophy, but for our present period this is entirely incorrect,
for we all know that Greek literature did not begin to influence Rome
until the time of the Punic wars, and yet the Greek influence of which
we speak here began to exert its effects two hundred and fifty years
before the Punic wars. The real cause of the unnatural stimulation of
religion during these three centuries is nothing more nor less than the
books of the Sibylline oracles. It is therefore a very definite and
interesting problem which we have before us. It is to examine the
workings of these oracles and to explain why they had such an
extraordinary effect on religion and society, that in three centuries
they could entirely change both the form and the