lar religions. It found much to condemn in the vulgar notions about the gods and in the forms of worship, but it made no attack on polytheism itself. Indeed, its universe in stories was peculiarly adapted to make place above and below for all manner of gods, visible and invisible, and for innumerable demons, good, bad, and indifferent, including the Jewish angels and archangels. The good demons preside over provinces of nature or the occupations of men; they are tutelary genii of cities and countries, and guardian spirits of individuals; through others the will of God is revealed to men, the prayers of men conveyed to God. Evil demons work all manner of mischief, cause earthquakes and plagues and unfruitful seasons, inspire men with false notions and evil lusts, lying in wait for the soul even before its entrance into the earthly life; they appear in visible and tangible forms, beastly or monstrous; they invade the body, especially by way of animal food, and cause physical disorders.

The soul of man can only by degrees ascend to the highest: not only to the Nous and the Soul of the Universe belongs a worship accordant to their nature, but the good demons are to be revered with prayers and bloodless offerings. In a similar way the Catholic church maintains the veneration of angels and saints, distinguishing between λaτpeía and Sovλeía, that the homage due to God only may not seem to be impaired by being shared with creatures. Iamblichus goes farther, teaching that the help of the gods is necessary to deliver the soul by their intervention from the bondage of destiny-that is, from natural necessity.

Neoplatonism not only thus accommodated itself to the popular religions, Greek and barbarian, but it undertook their defence against the attacks of Christianity. Nor did its adherents confine themselves to repelling assaults: Porphyry was the author of the ablest of all the counter-attacks on Christianity. The philosophical apologetics of paganism come chiefly from this school; from its bosom sprang the last religious revival of the ancient faiths. After the failure of the emperor Julian's attempt to restore paganism, phi

losophy flourished for a while at Alexandria, where Hypatia fell a victim to the brutal fanaticism of the monks, and then found its last refuge in Athens, until in 529 A. D. Justinian by edict forbade the teaching of philosophy there.

Outwardly the closing of the school at Athens was a small matter the silencing of a few professors, the dispersing of a small body of students, the confiscation of the endowments; but it impresses the imagination. What thoughts and feelings must have come over Damascius and his fellows as they turned their backs on the scenes where Plato and Aristotle had taught, to seek in Persia the freedom to think like Greeks! The flame of science and philosophy which for nine hundred years had burned, now brighter, now more dimly, was extinguished on its own hearth. Yet here once more the vanquished gave laws to the victors. Philosophy might be suppressed at Athens and die a natural death elsewhere, but Neoplatonism had long since become the orthodox philosophy of the Christian religion, the basis of its dogma and the source of its mysticism.

CHAPTER XXI

THE ROMANS

THE RELIGION OF THE CITY OF ROME

The Sources-The Gods of the Old Roman Calendar-Character of the Religion-Provinces of the Gods-Functional Deities-Legal Theory of the National Religion-The Priesthoods-Offerings and Expiations-Festivals-Augurs and Auspices-Holy Places-Domestic Religion-Di Manes-Introduction of Alien Deities-Greek Gods and Cults-Magna Mater-Differentiations and Gods of Qualities-The Etruscan Art of Divination-Greek Philosophy-Roman Stoicism-Social Demoralisation and the Decadence of Religion.

THE study of the Roman religion is beset by peculiar difficulties. The poets of the Augustan age, through whom we all made our first acquaintance with it, wrote at a time when it had been thoroughly Hellenised: many Greek gods had been given a place in the public cultus; native Italian deities were identified with Greek, and Greek myths appropriated for them; the old forms of worship were enriched with Greek rites. The impression we thus bring from school that the Greek and Roman religions were closely similar, if not substantially the same an opinion, it may be added, that was universal among the Romans themselves at the beginning of our era-was strengthened by the comparative mythologers of the last generation, prepossessed as they were by the theory of common Indo-European origins and their mistaken notion that the Greeks and Italians formed a closely cognate subdivision of the Indo-Germanic race.

If we turn from the poets and historians to the investigations of antiquarians like Varro, we find that many features. of the old Roman religion were hardly less obscure to them

than to us-gods whose names were perpetuated in the calendar, but whose cult had long been extinct; priesthoods and sodalities whose functions had been forgotten; rites whose motive and meaning no man knew. We are indebted to these authors for the preservation of many facts and of some authentic traditions, but their reconstruction of the stages of development-the origins, the institutions of Numa, the innovations of the Tarquins-is manifestly not based on records or monuments, but on inference and conjecture, often ingenious and sometimes plausible. The scheme in which they are framed is the same in which the constitutional and legal history is cast. The results of these learned researches have for the most part reached us only through extracts in later authors, but their volume is considerable, and their value, apart from all theories, inestimable. They are confirmed and supplemented by a multitude of inscriptions of diverse character and age. From these various sources it is possible to form a picture of the genuine old Roman religion which, however defective in details, is true at least in its main outlines.

The most important of the monumental sources is the calendar of public festivals, of which many copies are extant in more or less complete preservation. These inscriptions are from the age of Augustus and his next successors, but the body of the calendar includes only the festivals of the religious year as the Roman antiquarians believed Numa to have ordered it, and as it remained unchanged through all the centuries of the republic. An alphabetical list of the deities in whose honour these festivals were celebrated (including a few which are otherwise attested) enables us to survey this oldest Roman pantheon: Anna Perenna, Carmenta, Carna, Ceres, Consus, Diva Angerona, Falacer, Faunus, Flora, (Fons), Furrina, Janus, Juppiter, Larenta, Lares, (? Lemures), Liber, Mars, Mater Matuta, Neptunus, Ops, Pales, (Palatua), Pomona, Portunus, Quirinus, (? Robigus), Saturnus, Tellus, (? Terminus), Vejovis, Vesta, Volcanus, Volturnus.

The catalogue contains many unfamiliar names, though some of these deities were important enough to have not only

annual festivals but their own priests (flamines), e. g., Carmenta, Falacer, Furrina. Of the last Varro could write: "Cuius deæ honos apud antiquos, nam ei sacra annua et flamen attributus: nunc vix nomen notum paucis." In imperial times the site of her deserted sanctuary was appropriated by Oriental gods, beneath the ruins of whose shrines remains of hers have lately been discovered. With her worship the memory of her nature and functions was lost; Cicero could do no better than guess that Furrina was somehow related to the Furiæ. Of Falacer even less was known, though Varro preserves the high-sounding title, "Divus pater Falacer." In some instances the festival survived the god: Palatua, who had once a flamen of her own had disappeared, and of the goddess Pales who seems to have succeeded her all that could be said was that she was the deity of the Parilia. Not less noteworthy than the long array of forgotten deities is the absence of others who in later centuries were counted among the great gods-not only the Greek Apollo, but Italic divinities such as Diana, Venus, and Minerva. The unavoidable inference that when the calendar was formed these gods had not yet been received into the pantheon of the Roman state is confirmed by independent evidence. That Juno's name is also missing is due to the construction of the table; her festivals, falling on the calends of every month, were not specifically noted.

The first place is held by Juppiter, to whom, besides seasonal festivals, the ides of every month are sacred. Next to him comes Mars, with eight or nine festivals in the course of the year; Quirinus, also a god of war, stands by his side. The high rank of Janus in the primitive Roman religion is proved by the fact that his priest, the Rex Sacrorum, takes precedence of all others, and that the sacrificial litanies, no matter to what deity the offering was made, always began with the invocation of Janus; in the hymn of the Salii he is addressed as "good creator" and "the god of gods" (divom deus). In the same litanies Vesta always closes the series. The oldest order of precedence was, therefore, Janus, Juppiter, Mars,