aw.

But meantime what were the multitudes of the god-fearing to believe? The
arm of the state was not very strong or effective. Labour as he might to
supply good teaching to all provincial towns, Julian could not hope to
educate the poor and ignorant to understand Plato and M. Aurelius. For
them, he seems to say, all that is necessary is that they should be
pious and god-fearing in their own way. But for more or less educated
people, not blankly ignorant, and yet not professed students of
philosophy, there might be some simple and authoritative treatise
issued--a sort of reasoned creed, to lay down in a convincing manner the
outlines of the old Hellenic religion, before the Christians and
Atheists should have swept all fear of the gods from off the earth.

The treatise is this work of Sallustius.

* * * * *

The Christian fathers from Minucius Felix onward have shown us what was
the most vulnerable point of Paganism: the traditional mythology.
Sallustius deals with it at once. The _Akroates_, or pupil, he says in
Section 1, needs some preliminary training. He should have been well
brought up, should not be incurably stupid, and should not have been
familiarized with foolish fables. Evidently the mythology was not to be
taught to children. He enunciates certain postulates of religious
thought, viz. that God is always good and not subject to passion or to
change, and then proceeds straight to the traditional myths. In the
first place, he insists that they are what he calls 'divine'. That is,
they are inspired or have some touch of divine truth in them. This is
proved by the fact that they have been uttered, and sometimes invented,
by the most inspired poets and philosophers and by the gods themselves
in oracles--a very characteristic argument.

The myths are all expressions of God and of the goodness of God; but
they follow the usual method of divine revelation, to wit, mystery and
allegory. The myths state clearly the one tremendous fact that the Gods
_are_; that is what Julian cared about and the Christians denied: _what_
they are the myths reveal only to those who have understanding. 'The
world itself is a great myth, in which bodies and inanimate things are
visible, souls and minds invisible.'

'But, admitting all this, how comes it that the myths are so often
absurd and even immoral?' For the usual purpose of mystery and allegory;
in order to make people think. The soul that wish