continual setting up of new cults and new
sanctuaries, and on the other hand to a fear of letting any of the old
cults die out. In consequence thereof a great deal of dead and worthless
ritual material must have accumulated in Rome in the course of centuries,
and was of course in the way during the rapid development of the city in
the last century of the Republic. Things must gradually have come to such
a pass that a thorough reform, above all a reduction, of the whole cult
had become a necessity. To introduce such a reform the republican
government was just as unsuited as it was to carry out all the other tasks
imposed by the development of the empire and the capital at that time. On
this point, however, it must not be forgotten that the governing class not
only lacked ability, for political reasons, to carry out serious reforms,
but also the will to do so, on account of religious indifference, and so
let things go altogether to the bad. The consequence was anarchy, in this
as in all other spheres at that time; but at the same time the tendency
towards the only sensible issue, a restriction of the old Roman
State-cult, is plainly evident. The simultaneous strong infusion of
foreign religions was unavoidable in the mixed population of the capital.
That these influences also affected the lower classes of the citizens is
at any rate a proof that they were not indifferent to religion.

In its main outlines this is all the information that I have been able to
glean about the general decline of the belief in the gods during the
Hellenistic period. Judging from such information we should expect to find
strong tendencies to atheism in the philosophy of the period. These
anticipations are, however, doomed to disappointment. The ruling
philosophical schools on the whole preserved a friendly attitude towards
the gods of the popular faith and especially towards their worship,
although they only accepted the existing religion with strict reservation.

Most characteristic but least consistent and original was the attitude of
the Stoic school. The Stoics were pantheists. Their deity was a substance
which they designated as fire, but which, it must be admitted, differed
greatly from fire as an element. It permeated the entire world. It had
produced the world out of itself, and it absorbed it again, and this
process was repeated to eternity. The divine fire was also reason, and as
such the cause of the harmony of the world-order. What