of other schools if he thought them the most convincing. Its most
elaborate exponent in this period was Varro, and behind both Varro and
Cicero there stands the great figure of the Rhodian Posidonius[548],
of whose writings hardly anything has come down to us. It is worth
while to trace briefly the history of this school at Rome, for it is
in itself extremely interesting, as an attempt to reconcile the old
theology--if the term may be used--with philosophical thought, and it
probably had an appreciable influence on the later quasi-religious
Stoicism of the Empire.

We must go back for a moment to the period succeeding the war with
Hannibal. The awful experience of that war had done much to discredit
the old Roman religious system, which had been found insufficient of
itself to preserve the State. The people, excited and despairing,
had been quieted by what may be called new religious prescriptions,
innumerable examples of which are to be found in Livy's books.
The Sibylline books were constantly consulted, and _lectisternia,
supplicationes, ludi_, in which Greek deities were prominent, were
ordered and carried out. Finally, in 204 B.C., there was brought to
Rome the sacred stone of the Magna Mater Idaea, the great deity of
Pessinus in Phrygia, and a festival was established in her honour,
called by the Greek name Megalesia. All this means, as can be seen
clearly from Livy's language,[549] that the governing classes were
trying to quiet the minds of the people by convincing them that no
effort was being spared to set right their relations with the unseen
powers; they had invoked in vain their own local and native deities,
and had been compelled to seek help elsewhere; they had found their
own narrow system of religion quite inadequate to express their
religious experience of the last twenty years. And indeed that old
system of religion never really recovered from the discredit thus cast
on it. The temper of the people is well shown by the rapidity with
which the orgiastic worship of the Greek Dionysus spread over Italy a
few years later; and the fact that it was allowed to remain, though
under strict supervision, shows that the State religion no longer had
the power to satisfy the cravings of the masses. And the educated
class too was rapidly coming under the influence of Greek thought,
which could hardly act otherwise than as a solvent of the old
religious ideas. Ennius, the great literary figure of this period,
was t