um pectore adibis."[762] Man might
go on with his ancestral worship, but entirely without fear, and as with
"placid mind" he took part in the rites of his fathers, a mysterious
divine influence might enter his mind; "the images of a Zeus, a
Heracles, an Athene, might pass in and impress on him the aspect and
character of each deity, and carry with them suggestions of virtue, of
courage, of wise counsel in difficulty."[763] Evidently both Epicurus
and his followers had felt the difficulty and the peril of breaking
entirely with the religious habits of the mass of the people, and had
conscientiously done their best to reconcile their own belief with
popular practice--an attempt which has its parallel in the religious
speculation of the present day.

But for the Roman follower of Epicurus, wholly unused to such subtle
ideas as the passage of divine influence into the mind by means of
religious contemplation, this lame attempt to bring apathetic gods into
relation with human life must have been quite meaningless. Cicero well
expresses the common sense of a Roman at the very beginning of his
treatise on the _Nature of the Gods_.[764] "If they are right who deny
that the gods have any interest in human affairs, where is there room
for _pietas_, for _sanctitas_, for _religio_?" What, he adds, is the use
of worship, of honour, of prayer? If these are simply make-believes,
_pietas_ cannot exist, and with it we may almost assume that _fides_ and
_iustitia_, and the social virtues generally, which hold society
together, must vanish too. Such criticism is characteristically Roman,
and we may take it as representing accurately the feeling of the
old-fashioned Roman of Cicero's day, as well as of the Stoic or Academic
critic of Epicurism. On the other hand, the believing Epicurean at Rome
was not more likely to accept the compromise; he had done with his own
gods and their worship, and such a "ficta simulatio" was not likely to
attract him. Even Lucretius, whose mind was in a sense really religious,
does no more in the passage I quoted just now than _allude_ to actual
worship of the gods, and he makes it quite clear that the tranquillity
and happiness coming from contemplation, and the punishment that follows
misdoing, are both purely subjective; the gods are not active in
influencing man's life, but man influences that life himself by opening
his mind to the contemplation of the gods. This passage of Lucretius
(vi. 68 foll.) is, if