ing dates was known to them at an early time; but there was no
spontaneous rise of physical science to suggest by its analogies of law
and order a new method of research, nor any natural springing up of the
questioning spirit of philosophy with its unification of all phenomena
and all knowledge. At the very time when the whole tide of Eastern
superstition was sweeping into the heart of the Capitol the Senate
banished the Greek philosophers from Rome. And of the three systems
which did at length take some root in the city those of Zeno and Epicurus
were merely used as the rule for the ordering of life, while the dogmatic
scepticism of Carneades, by its very principles, annihilated the
possibility of argument and encouraged a perfect indifference to
research.

Nor were the Romans ever fortunate enough like the Greeks to have to face
the incubus of any dogmatic system of legends and myths, the immoralities
and absurdities of which might excite a revolutionary outbreak of
sceptical criticism. For the Roman religion became as it were
crystallised and isolated from progress at an early period of its
evolution. Their gods remained mere abstractions of commonplace virtues
or uninteresting personifications of the useful things of life. The old
primitive creed was indeed always upheld as a state institution on
account of the enormous facilities it offered for cheating in politics,
but as a spiritual system of belief it was unanimously rejected at a very
early period both by the common people and the educated classes, for the
sensible reason that it was so extremely dull. The former took refuge in
the mystic sensualities of the worship of Isis, the latter in the Stoical
rules of life. The Romans classified their gods carefully in their order
of precedence, analysed their genealogies in the laborious spirit of
modern heraldry, fenced them round with a ritual as intricate as their
law, but never quite cared enough about them to believe in them. So it
was of no account with them when the philosophers announced that Minerva
was merely memory. She had never been much else. Nor did they protest
when Lucretius dared to say of Ceres and of Liber that they were only the
corn of the field and the fruit of the vine. For they had never mourned
for the daughter of Demeter in the asphodel meadows of Sicily, nor
traversed the glades of Cithaeron with fawn-skin and with spear.

This brief sketch of the condition of Roman thought will s