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lius. One thousand Achaeans carried to Rome in the following year: among them the historian Polybius.

146. Fall of Carthage. Corinth taken by Mummius. Greece made into the Roman province of Achaia.

For an account of the social and literary influence of Greece on Rome, the reader is referred to Mommsen's History of Rome Bk. III. chapters 13 and 14. I must content myself here with a few remarks on the special influence of Greek philosophy'. This is first seen in the

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poet Ennius, who appears to have rationalized the Y

national religion in two directions, 1st, by physical and allegorical explanations in his Epicharmus, and 2ndly by a so-called 'pragmatical' or historical explanation, in his translation of the Sacred History of Euhernerus, in which Jupiter and the rest of the Gods were represented as ancient kings or other historical personages, who had been deified by their descendants. His free-thinking is also shown in the lines quoted from one of his tragedies: Ego deum genus esse semper dixi et dicam caelitum,

Sed eos non curare opinor quid agat humanum genus; Nam, si curent, bene bonis sit, male malis, quod nunc abest. In 181 B.C. an attempt was made to add to what may be called the canonical books of Rome, certain spurious writings, said to have been discovered in the tomb of Numa, containing a sort of Pythagorean philosophy of religion. These were burnt by order of the Senate as likely to disturb the faith of their readers. Further evidence of the growing influence of philosophy may

1 For what follows, see Marquardt Römische Staatsverwaltung, vol. VI. pp. 1-80; Preller Römische Mythologie; Benjamin Constant Du Polythéisme Romain; Havet Le Christianisme et ses Origines, Vol. II.

be seen in the decree of the senate made in 161 B.C. by which philosophers and rhetoricians were forbidden to reside in Rome, and still more in the interest excited by the Athenian embassy in the year 156 B.C. The object of the embassy was to induce the Romans to remit or reduce a fine which had been imposed upon the Athenians for plundering Oropus; and the fact that the leaders of the three schools which stood highest in public estimation, the Academic Carneades, the Peripatetic Critolaus and the Stoic Diogenes, were selected as ambassadors, not only shows the confidence which their fellow-citizens had in their powers of oratory, but also implies a belief, as Cicero has remarked, that their philosophy would not be unacceptable in Rome'. Accordingly we are told that the envoys found there numerous patrons and admirers, and that, while their cause was pending in the senate, each of them, but especially Carneades, drew crowds of the young nobility to their private exhibitions of philosophical rhetoric. Cato was deeply displeased and alarmed by the reports he heard of the fascination they were exerting on the Roman youth: and censured the magistrates for allowing men, who had the power of making the worst doctrines seem probable, to wait so long for the dispatch of their business. It seems that Carneades had shocked the moral sense of Rome by arguing on one day in favour of justice, and the next day taking the opposite side and citing the greatness of Rome itself as a proof that justice was impracticable, since it would necessitate the Romans giving back their conquests and returning to their primitive huts. Cicero tells another anecdote of the embassy on the authority of

1 Tusc. IV. 5.

Clitomachus, the pupil of Carneades. The praetor Albinus having asked, 'Is it true, Carneades, that you hold me to be no praetor, because I am not wise, and this city to be no city?' 'It is not I, who thinks so,' replied Carneades, 'but this Stoic here,' pointing to Diogenes'. Cicero dates the commencement of the study of philosophy in Rome from this embassy, and there is no doubt that from this time forward we constantly find Greek philosophers resident in Rome, either as tutors of youth or as inmates of great houses, domestic chaplains, as they have been called, and on the other hand that it became the practice for Romans who were ambitious of literary or oratorical distinction to attend lectures at Athens and the other seats of Greek philosophy. The earliest and most famous philosophical coterie in Rome was that of which Panaetius was the centre, including such names as the younger Africanus, with whom he resided, Laelius, Tubero, Q. Mucius Scaevola, and many others.

We have next to consider what was the effect on the Romans of this influx of Greek philosophy. We may probably say that, in the first instance, it was not unlike the effect of the Sophistic rhetoric on the Athenians in the days of Socrates. It was welcomed as promising new light when people were beginning to feel that there was great need for light, and as providing new powers just at the time when the field for the use of those powers was immensely widened. The old religion, which had stood the Romans in good stead, as we have seen, while they were still a struggling Italian tribe, was after all little better than a mere ceremonial drill, which fostered religious awe and deepened the sense of duty, but supplied no food for 1 Cic. Acad. II. 137, Tusc. IV. 5. 2 See Zeller, pp. 535, 548, 571.

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ECLECTICISM.

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thought or imagination; the Gods whom it taught them to worship were objects of fear, not of veneration or love, and the worship which it inculcated was not Socrates' prayer of mingled trust and resignation, not the spontaneous expression of gratitude or repentance, but the use of certain rites and formulas, now generally felt to be irrational or unintelligible, by the mechanical repetition. of which it was asserted that the will of the Gods might be ascertained, their wrath averted, or their favour secured. Already the faith in the old religion had been seriously undermined'. It was no longer a secret that it was employed as a political engine by the magistrates; and the introduction of various foreign deities, of Cybele, of Bacchus, of Isis, showed that even among the multitude a more full-blooded religion was wanted, that the religious instinct could no longer be satisfied with the old dreary round of lifeless ceremonial. In this state of things the first effect of philosophy was to open men's eyes to that of which they had been dimly conscious before; and hence it was, as Cicero tells us, that the common opinion identified philosophy with unbelief3.

But, however it might be with the other sects, it was never the aim of Stoicism to overthrow a traditional religion, but rather to purify and strengthen it. And so we find the Pontifex, Mucius Scaevola, in accordance with the principles of his master Panaetius, distinguishing between three different theologies, that of the poets, that

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of the philosophers, and that of the magistrates. the first XY

1 It was Cato, the great opponent of philosophy, who wondered how one soothsayer (haruspex) could meet another without laughing, Cic. Divin. II. 51.

2 Cic. De Invent. § 46.

he said was altogether unworthy of belief, the second was true, but not suited to the multitude,—for instance it was not expedient to proclaim openly that the images did not really resemble the Gods after whom they were named, since the true God was without sex or age and had no resemblance to the form of man,—the third ought to be such an approach to the truth as the magistrates thought the people were capable of receiving. The same idea was developed with more fulness by Cicero's friend the antiquarian Varro, in his famous work on the religious antiquities of Rome, where he distinctly states that his object in writing it was to revive a decaying worship'. He classifies the almost countless deities of the Roman pantheon, as different manifestations or functions of the one selfexistent God, whom he even compares with the God of the Jews. He regrets that the use of images, unknown for 170 years after the founding of the city, had ever been introduced, and says that, if he had had to do with the first establishment of religion in Rome he would have kept more closely to the religion of nature as understood by the philosophers.

It may be doubted however whether the well-meant efforts of Varro and others were really successful in their object. Granting that the effect of philosophy was on the whole to elevate and improve the moral and religious→ ideal of the few who were capable of receiving it, we have to set against this the demoralizing tendency of Epicureanism, as vulgarly understood, and the general

1 August. C. D. IV. 31, ad eum finem illa scribere se dicit Varro ut potius deos magis colere quam despicere vulgus velit.

2 Aug. de Cons. Evang. I. 22, 41, cited by Döllinger, and de Civ. Dei IV. 31.

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