igion as a pontifex,
while he argues against it as a philosopher. The toleration of Rome
consisted in this, that as long as there was outward conformity to
prescribed observances, it troubled itself very little about opinions. It
said to all religions what Gallio said to the Jews: "If it be a question
of words and names and of your law, look ye to it; for I will be no judge
of such matters." Gallio was a genuine representative of Roman sentiment.
With religion, as long as it remained within the limits of opinion or
feeling, the magistrate had nothing to do; only when it became an act of
disobedience to the public law it was to be punished. Indeed, the very
respect for national law in the Roman mind caused it to legalize in Rome
the worship of national gods. They considered it the duty of the Jews, in
Rome, to worship the Jewish God; of Egyptians, in Rome, to worship the
gods of Egypt. "Men of a thousand nations," says Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, "come to the city, and must worship the gods of their
country, according to their laws at home." As long as the Christians in
Rome were regarded as a Jewish sect, their faith was a _religio licita_,
when it was understood to be a departure from Judaism, it was then a
criminal rebellion against a national faith[268].

The Roman religion has often been considered as a mere copy of that of
Greece, and has therefore been confounded with it, as very nearly the same
system. No doubt the Romans were imitators; they had no creative
imagination. They borrowed and begged their stories about the gods, from
Greece or elsewhere. But Hegel has long ago remarked that the resemblance
between the two religions is superficial. The gods of Rome, he says, are
practical gods, not theoretic; prosaic, not poetic. The religion of Rome
is serious and earnest, while that of Greece is gay. Dionysius of
Halicarnassus thinks the Roman religion the better of the two, because it
rejected the blasphemous myths concerning the loves and quarrels of the
heavenly powers. But, on the other hand, the deities of Greece were more
living and real persons, with characters of their own. The deities of Rome
were working gods, who had each a task assigned to him. They all had some
official duty to perform; while the gods of Olympus could amuse themselves
as they pleased. While the Zeus of Greece spent his time in adventures,
many of which were disreputable, the Jupiter Capitolinus remained at home,
attending to his sole bus