f life; this influence was the rise
of the Roman power. It produced a wonderful activity all over the
Mediterranean Sea and throughout the adjoining countries. It insured
perpetual movements in all directions. Where there had been only a single
traveller there were now a thousand legionaries, merchants, government
officials, with their long retinues of dependents and slaves. Where
formerly it was only the historian or philosopher in his retirement who
compared or contrasted the laws and creeds, habits and customs of different
nations incorrectly reported, now the same things were vividly brought
under the personal observation of multitudes. The crowd of gods and
goddesses congregated in Rome served only to bring one another into
disrepute and ridicule.

[Sidenote: The alarm of good and religious men.]

[Sidenote: Plato's remedy for the evil.]

Long, therefore, previous to the triumph of Christianity, paganism must
be considered as having been irretrievably ruined. Doubtless it was the
dreadful social prospect before them--the apparent impossibility of
preventing the whole world from falling into a totally godless state,
that not only reconciled so many great men to give their support to the
ancient system, but even to look without disapprobation on that
physical violence to which the uneducated multitude, incapable of
judging, were so often willing to resort. They never anticipated that
any new system could be introduced which should take the place of the
old, worn-out one; they had no idea that relief in this respect was so
close at hand; unless, perhaps, it might have been Plato, who,
profoundly recognizing that, though it is a hard and tedious process to
change radically the ideas of common men, yet that it is easy to
persuade them to accept new names if they are permitted to retain old
things, proposed that a regenerated system should be introduced, with
ideas and forms suited to the existing social state, prophetically
asserting that the world would very soon become accustomed to it, and
give to it an implicit adhesion.

[Sidenote: The Greek movement has been repeated on a greater scale by
all Europe.]

In this description of the origin and decline of Greek religion I have
endeavoured to bring its essential features into strong relief. Its fall
was not sudden, as many have supposed, neither was it accomplished by
extraneous violence. There was a slow, and, it must be emphatically
added, a spontaneous decline.