Footnote 8: Socrates, Epicurus, Cicero, and Plutarch always inculcated
a decent reverence for the religion of their own country, and of
mankind. The devotion of Epicurus was assiduous and exemplary. Diogen.
Laert. x. 10.]

It is not easy to conceive from what motives a spirit of persecution
could introduce itself into the Roman councils. The magistrates could
not be actuated by a blind, though honest bigotry, since the magistrates
were themselves philosophers; and the schools of Athens had given laws
to the senate. They could not be impelled by ambition or avarice, as the
temporal and ecclesiastical powers were united in the same hands. The
pontiffs were chosen among the most illustrious of the senators; and
the office of Supreme Pontiff was constantly exercised by the emperors
themselves. They knew and valued the advantages of religion, as it is
connected with civil government. They encouraged the public festivals
which humanize the manners of the people. They managed the arts of
divination as a convenient instrument of policy; and they respected, as
the firmest bond of society, the useful persuasion, that, either in this
or in a future life, the crime of perjury is most assuredly punished
by the avenging gods. [9] But whilst they acknowledged the general
advantages of religion, they were convinced that the various modes of
worship contributed alike to the same salutary purposes; and that, in
every country, the form of superstition, which had received the sanction
of time and experience, was the best adapted to the climate, and to its
inhabitants. Avarice and taste very frequently despoiled the vanquished
nations of the elegant statues of their gods, and the rich ornaments
of their temples; [10] but, in the exercise of the religion which they
derived from their ancestors, they uniformly experienced the indulgence,
and even protection, of the Roman conquerors. The province of Gaul
seems, and indeed only seems, an exception to this universal toleration.
Under the specious pretext of abolishing human sacrifices, the emperors
Tiberius and Claudius suppressed the dangerous power of the Druids: [11]
but the priests themselves, their gods and their altars, subsisted in
peaceful obscurity till the final destruction of Paganism. [12]

[Footnote 9: Polybius, l. vi. c. 53, 54. Juvenal, Sat. xiii. laments
that in his time this apprehension had lost much of its effect.]

[Footnote 10: See the fate of Syracuse, Tarentum, Ambracia,