ad to be modelled on the
Homeric pattern, not on the Stoic. It is perhaps not going too far to
say that the god, as a theological conception, never recovered from
this treatment; any chance he ever had of becoming the centre of a
real religious system was destroyed by the Aeneid, the _pietas_ of
whose hero is indeed nominally due to him, but in reality to the
decrees of Fate.[570]

While philosophers and poets were thus performing intellectual and
imaginative feats with the gods of the State, the strong tendency to
superstition, untutored fear of the supernatural, which had always
been characteristic of the Italian peoples, so far from losing power,
was actually gaining it, and that not only among the lower classes. As
Lucretius mockingly said, even those who think and speak with contempt
of the gods will in moments of trouble slay black sheep and sacrifice
them to the Manes. This feeling of fear or nervousness, which lies at
the root of the meaning of the word _religio_,[571] had been quieted
in the old days by the prescriptions of the pontifices and their jus
divinum, but it was always ready to break out again; as we have seen,
in the long and awful struggle of the Hannibalic war, it was necessary
to go far beyond the ordinary pharmacopoeia within reach of the
priesthoods in order to convince the people that all possible means
were being taken for their salvation. Again, in this last age of the
Republic, there are obvious signs that both ignorant and educated
were affected by the gloom and uncertainty of the times. Increasing
uncertainty in the political world, increasing doubt in the world of
thought, very naturally combined to produce an emotional tendency
which took different forms in men of different temperament. We can
trace this (1) in the importance attached to omens, portents, dreams;
(2) in a certain vague thought of a future life, which takes a
positive shape in the deification of human beings; (3) at the close of
the period, in something approaching to a sense of sin, of neglected
duty, bringing down upon State and individual the anger of the gods.

1. If we glance over the latter part of the book of prodigies,
compiled by the otherwise unknown writer Julius Obsequens from the
records of the pontifices quoted in Livy's history, we can get a fair
idea of the kind of portent that was troubling the popular mind.
They are much the same as they always had been in Roman
history,--earthquakes, monstrous births,