edonian religion, it would have been easy to see that the Gods of
Macedon were the real rulers of the world. But they most markedly did
not. They accepted hospitably all the religions that crossed their path.
Some power or other was disturbing the world, that was clear. It was not
exactly the work of man, because sometimes the good were exalted,
sometimes the bad; there was no consistent purpose in the story. It was
just Fortune. Happy is the man who knows how to placate Fortune and make
her smile upon him!

It is worth remembering that the best seed-ground for superstition is a
society in which the fortunes of men seem to bear practically no
relation to their merits and efforts. A stable and well-governed society
does tend, speaking roughly, to ensure that the Virtuous and Industrious
Apprentice shall succeed in life, while the Wicked and Idle Apprentice
fails. And in such a society people tend to lay stress on the reasonable
or visible chains of causation. But in a country suffering from
earthquakes or pestilences, in a court governed by the whim of a despot,
in a district which is habitually the seat of a war between alien
armies, the ordinary virtues of diligence, honesty, and kindliness seem
to be of little avail. The only way to escape destruction is to win the
favour of the prevailing powers, take the side of the strongest invader,
flatter the despot, placate the Fate or Fortune or angry god that is
sending the earthquake or the pestilence. The Hellenistic period pretty
certainly falls in some degree under all of these categories. And one
result is the sudden and enormous spread of the worship of Fortune. Of
course, there was always a protest. There is the famous

_Nullum numen habes si sit prudentia: nos te,
Nos facimus, Fortuna, deam_,

taken by Juvenal from the Greek. There are many unguarded phrases and at
least three corrections in Polybius.[133:1] Most interesting of all
perhaps, there is the first oration of Plutarch on the Fortune of
Alexander.[133:2] A sentence in Pliny's _Natural History_, ii. 22, seems
to go back to Hellenistic sources:

'Throughout the whole world, at every place and hour, by
every voice Fortune alone is invoked and her name spoken: she
is the one defendant, the one culprit, the one thought in
men's minds, the one object of praise, the one cause. She is
worshipped with insults, counted as fickle and often as blind,
wandering, inconsistent, e