he State. For it is
impossible to deny that this resuscitation was real; that both _pax
deorum_ and _ius divinum_ became once more terms of force and meaning.
Beset as it was by at least three formidable enemies, which tended to
destroy it even while they fed on it, like parasites in the animal or
vegetable world feeding on their hosts,--the rationalising philosophy of
syncretism, the worship of the Caesars, and the new Oriental cults,--the
old religion continued to exist for at least three centuries in outward
form, and to some extent in popular belief.

We must remember the tenacious conservatism of the Roman mind: the
emotional stimulus of the age of depression and despair which preceded
this revival: and the conscientious care with which the successors of
Augustus, Tiberius in particular, carried out his religious policy.[901]
Then as we become more familiar with the Corpus of inscriptions and the
writings of the early Christian fathers, we begin to appreciate the fact
that the natural and inherited religion of a people cannot altogether
die, and that to describe this old Roman religion as _dead_ is to use
too strong a word. The votive inscriptions of the Empire show us
overwhelming proof of surviving belief in the great deities of the olden
time, and of the care taken of their temples. Antoninus Pius is honoured
"ob insignem erga caerimonias publicas curam et religionem."[902] Marcus
Aurelius himself did not hesitate in times of public distress to put in
action the whole apparatus of the old religion.[903] Constantius in A.D.
329 was shown round the temples when he visited Rome for the first time,
and in spite of his Christianity took a curious interest in them.[904]
That the private worship, too, went on into the fourth century we know
from the Theodosian code, where in the interest of Christianity the
worship of Lares Penates and Genius is strictly forbidden.[905] Again,
the constant ridicule with which the Christian writers speak of the
_minutiae_ of the heathen worship makes it quite plain that they knew it
as actually existing, and not merely from books like those of Varro.
They do not so much attack the Oriental religions of their time as the
genuine old Roman cults; more especially is this the case with St.
Augustine, from whose _de Civitate Dei_ we have learnt so much about the
latter. The very necessity under which the leaders of Christianity
found themselves of suiting their own religious character, and in