“Milesne Crassi conjuge barbara
Turpis maritus vixit et hostium
(Proh curia inversique mores!)
Consenuit socerorum in armis
Sub rege Medo Marsus et Apulus
Anciliorum et nominis et togæ
Oblitus æternæque Vestæ
Incolumi Jove et urbe Roma?” (Od., iii. 5.)
[36] Cf. Boissier: De la Religion Romaine, vol. i. p. 17.—“Nonseulement la religion romaine n’encourage pas la dévotion, mais on peut dire qu’elle s’en méfie. C’est un peuple fait pour agir; la rêverie, la contemplation mystique lui sont étrangères et suspectes. Il est avant tout ami du calme, de l’ordre, de la regularité; tout ce qui excite et trouble les âmes lui déplaît.” Boissier quotes as the remark of Servius on Georgics, 3. 456, the words, “Majores religionem totam in experientia collocabant;” but what Servius really wrote was, “Majores enim expugnantes religionem, totum in experientia collocabant,” and he gives an apt reference to Cato’s speech on the Catilinarian conspiracy as reported by Sallust:—“Non votis neque suppliciis muliebribus auxilia deorum parantur: vigilando, agendo, bene consulendo, prospere omnia cedunt.” Propertius (iii. 22) boasts that Rome is free from the more extravagantly emotional legends of Greek mythology.
[37] Cicero: De Nat. Deor. lib. iii.—Cf. the “theory of Twofold Truth,” which was “accepted without hesitation by all the foremost teachers in Italy during the sixteenth century,” who “were careful to point out, they were philosophers, and not theologians.”—The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance, by John Owen (p. 186, second edition).