I thought I should be doing an immense benefit both to myself and to my countrymen if I could entirely eradicate all superstitious errors. Nor is there any fear that true religion can be endangered by the demolition of this superstition; for as this religion which is united with the knowledge of nature is to be propagated, so, also, are all the roots of superstition to be destroyed; for that presses upon and pursues and persecutes you wherever you turn yourself, whether you consult a diviner or have heard an omen or have immolated a victim, or beheld a flight of birds; whether you have seen a Chaldæan or a soothsayer; if it lightens or thunders, or if anything is struck by lightning; if any kind of prodigy occurs; some of which things must be frequently coming to pass, so that you can never rise with a tranquil mind.
The completion of Roman conquest in the reign of Augustus was another potent influence in the destruction of the old Roman religion. The chief employment of the Roman gods had ever been as servants of the Roman state in the extension of the Roman empire. Their services were now no longer needed in this regard, and their ancient worshipers were ready to repudiate and dismiss them. The Hebrew characteristic of humility and resignation in the presence of divine displeasure was not a Roman trait. The ancient masters of the world reserved the right to object and even to rebel when the gods failed to do their duty after appropriate prayers had been said and proper ceremonies had been performed. Sacrilege, as the result of disappointment, was a frequent occurrence in Roman religious life. Bitter defiance of the heavenly powers sometimes followed a defeat in battle or a failure in diplomacy. Augustus, as supreme pontiff, chastised Neptune, the god of the sea, because he lost his fleet in a storm, by forbidding the image of the god to be carried in the procession of the next Circensian games. The emperor Julian was regarded as a most pious potentate, but he did not hesitate to defy the gods when he became displeased. At the time of the Parthian war, he was preparing to sacrifice ten select and beautiful bulls to Mars the Avenger, when nine of them suddenly lay down while being led to the altar, and the tenth broke his band. The fury of the monarch was aroused, and he swore by Jupiter that he would not again offer a sacrifice to Mars.[145] Claudius, the commander of the Roman fleet at Drepanum, ordered the sacred pullets to be thrown into the sea because they would not eat. When Germanicus was sick in Asia, his devoted admirers offered frequent prayers to the gods for his recovery. When the report of his death reached Rome, the temples of the unaccommodating deities were stoned, and their altars were overturned.[146]
The same feeling of angry resentment and defiance may be discerned in inscriptions on the graves of relatives prematurely snatched away by death. An epitaph on the monument of a child of five years was this: "To the unrighteous gods who robbed me of my life." Another on the tombstone of a maiden of twenty, named Procope, read as follows: "I lift my hand against the god who has deprived me of my innocent existence."[147]
The soil of familiarity, contempt and sacrilege which we have just described, was most fertile ground for the growth of that rank and killing skepticism which was destroying the vitals of the Roman faith at the time of Christ. This unbelief, it is true, was not universal. At the time of the birth of the Savior, the Roman masses still believed in the gods and goddesses of the Greek and Roman mythologies. Superstition was especially prevalent in the country districts of both Greece and Italy. Pausanias, who lived about the middle of the second century of the Christian era, tells as that in his time the olden legends of god and hero were still firmly believed by the common people. As he traveled through Greece, the cypresses of Alcmæon, the stance of Amphion, and the ashes of the funeral piles of Niobe's children were pointed out to him. In Phocis, he found the belief still existing that larks laid no eggs there because of the sin of Tereus.[148] Plutarch, who lived about the middle of the first century of our era, tells us that the people were still modeling the gods in wax and clay, as well as carving them in marble and were worshiping them in contempt and defiance of philosophers and statesmen.[149] But this credulity was limited to the ignorant and unthinking masses. The intellectual leaders of both the Greek and Roman races had long been in revolt against the absurdity and vulgarity of the myths which formed the foundation of their popular faiths. The purity and majesty of the soul felt keenly the insult and outrage of enforced obedience to the obscene divinities that Homer and Hesiod had handed down to them. Five hundred years before Christ, Pindar, the greatest lyric poet of Greece, had denounced the vulgar tales told of the deities, and had branded as blasphemous the story of the cannibal feast spread for the gods by the father of Pelops. Xenophanes, also, in the sixth century before Christ, had ridiculed the mythical tales of the Homeric poems, and had called attention to the purely human character of popular religions. He had pointed out that the Ethiopians painted the images of their deities black, and gave them flat noses, in the likeness of themselves; that the Thracians, on the other hand, created their gods blue-eyed and red; and that, in general, every race had reflected its own physical peculiarities in the creation of its gods. He declared it to be his opinion that if the beasts of the field should attempt to produce a likeness of the gods, the horses would produce a resemblance of themselves, and that oxen and lions would ascribe to their own divinities their own images and peculiarities.
The whole structure of the Roman religion, built upon myths and adorned with fables, was ill fitted to stand the tests of analysis and criticism. It was destined to weaken and crumble the moment it was subjected to serious rational inquiry. Such inquiry was inevitable in the progress of that soul-growth which the centuries were sure to bring. Natural philosophy and historical study began to dissolve the sacred legends and to demand demonstration and proof where faith had before sufficed. Skeptical criticism began to dissect the formulæ of prayer and to analyze the elements of augury and sacrifice. Reason began to revolt against the proposition that Jupiter was justified in rejecting a petition because a syllable had been omitted or a word mispronounced. Men began to ask: "What explanation could be given of the strange changes of mind in the gods, often threatening evil on the first inspection of the victim, and at the second promising good? How did it happen that a sacrifice to Apollo gave favorable, and one to Diana unfavorable signs? Why did the Etruscan, the Elan, the Egyptian, and the Punic inspectors of sacrifice interpret the entrails in an entirely different manner? Again, what connection in nature was there between a fissure in the liver of a lamb, and a trifling advantage to a man, an inheritance to be expected, or the like? And on a man's intending to sacrifice, did a change, corresponding to his circumstances, take place in the entrails of the beast; so that, supposing another person had selected the same victim, he would have found the liver in a quite different condition?"
The gods themselves became subjects of inspection and analysis. Their origin and nature were studied historically, and were also reviewed in the light of natural and ethical products. Three hundred years before Christ, Evhemere of Messina boldly declared that the gods were simply ancient kings deified by fear and superstition after death. Anaxagoras sought to identify the several deities with the forces and phenomena of nature, thus converting the pantheon into an observatory, or into a physical and chemical laboratory. Metrodorus contended that the gods were deifications of mere abstract ethical precepts.
Instances are recorded in history, from time to time, where the philosophers attempted to explain to the people the natural meaning of those things which they believed were pregnant with supernatural import. On a certain occasion, a ram with one horn was found on the farm of Pericles, and, from this circumstance, an Athenian diviner, named Lampon, predicted that the party of the orator would triumph over the opposite faction and gain control of the government. Whereupon Anaxagoras dissected the skull, and demonstrated to the people the natural cause of the phenomenon in the peculiar shape of the animal's brain. But this reformer finally suffered the fate of other innovators, was prosecuted for impiety, and was only saved by the influence of Pericles.
At the beginning of the Christian era, the religion of Rome was privately ridiculed and repudiated by nearly all statesmen and philosophers of the empire, although they publicly professed it on grounds of public policy. Seneca, a contemporary of Jesus, advised observance of rites appointed by law, on patriotic grounds. "All which things," he says, "a wise man will observe as being commanded by the laws, but not as being pleasing to the gods." Again he says: "All that ignoble rabble of gods which the superstition of ages has heaped up, we shall adore in such a way as to remember that their worship belongs rather to custom than to reality." Ridiculing the popular notions of the matrimonial relations of the deities, the same eminent philosopher says: "And what of this, that we unite the gods in marriage, and that not even naturally, for we join brothers and sisters? We marry Bellona to Mars, Venus to Vulcan, Salacia to Neptune. Some of them we leave unmarried, as though there were no match for them, which is surely needless, especially when there are certain unmarried goddesses, as Populonia, or Fulgora, or the goddess Rumina, for whom I am not astonished that suitors have been wanting."
The prevailing skepticism of the times is well illustrated in a dialogue which Cicero introduces into his first Tusculan Disputation between M, which may be interpreted Marcus, and A, which may be translated Auditor:
Marcus: Tell me, are you not afraid of the three-headed Cerberus in the infernal regions, and the roaring of Cocytus, and the passage over Acheron, and Tantalus, dying with thirst, while water laves his chin, and Sisyphus,
"Who sweats with arduous toil in vain
The steepy summit of the mount to gain?"Perhaps you are also afraid of the inexorable judges, Minos and Rhadamanthus, because before them neither L. Crassus nor M. Antonius can defend you, and because appearing before Grecian judges, you will not be permitted to employ Demosthenes, but must plead for yourself before a very great crowd. All these things, perhaps, you fear, and therefore regard death as an eternal evil.
Auditor: Do you think I'm such a fool as to give credence to such things?
Marcus: What! You don't believe in them?
Auditor: Truly, not in the least.
Marcus: I am deeply pained to hear that.
Auditor: Why?
Marcus: Because, if occasion had offered, I could very eloquently have denounced them, myself.[150]