rrupting principles of the philosophers,
had exercised a very pernicious influence on the manners, and even on
the constitution.--W.]

[Footnote 15: In the year of Rome 701, the temple of Isis and Serapis
was demolished by the order of the Senate, (Dion Cassius, l. xl. p.
252,) and even by the hands of the consul, (Valerius Maximus, l. 3.)
After the death of Caesar it was restored at the public expense, (Dion.
l. xlvii. p. 501.) When Augustus was in Egypt, he revered the majesty of
Serapis, (Dion, l. li. p. 647;) but in the Pomaerium of Rome, and a
mile round it, he prohibited the worship of the Egyptian gods, (Dion, l.
liii. p. 679; l. liv. p. 735.) They remained, however, very fashionable
under his reign (Ovid. de Art. Amand. l. i.) and that of his successor,
till the justice of Tiberius was provoked to some acts of severity. (See
Tacit. Annal. ii. 85. Joseph. Antiquit. l. xviii. c. 3.) * Note: See, in
the pictures from the walls of Pompeii, the representation of an Isiac
temple and worship. Vestiges of Egyptian worship have been traced in
Gaul, and, I am informed, recently in Britain, in excavations at York.--
M.]

[Footnote 151: Gibbon here blends into one, two events, distant a hundred
and sixty-six years from each other. It was in the year of Rome 535,
that the senate having ordered the destruction of the temples of Isis
and Serapis, the workman would lend his hand; and the consul, L. Paulus
himself (Valer. Max. 1, 3) seized the axe, to give the first blow.
Gibbon attribute this circumstance to the second demolition, which took
place in the year 701 and which he considers as the first.--W.]

[Footnote 16: Tertullian in Apologetic. c. 6, p. 74. Edit. Havercamp.
I am inclined to attribute their establishment to the devotion of the
Flavian family.]

[Footnote 17: See Livy, l. xi. [Suppl.] and xxix.]

[Footnote 18: Macrob. Saturnalia, l. iii. c. 9. He gives us a form of
evocation.]

[Footnote 19: Minutius Faelix in Octavio, p. 54. Arnobius, l. vi. p.
115.]

II. The narrow policy of preserving, without any foreign mixture,
the pure blood of the ancient citizens, had checked the fortune, and
hastened the ruin, of Athens and Sparta. The aspiring genius of Rome
sacrificed vanity to ambition, and deemed it more prudent, as well as
honorable, to adopt virtue and merit for her own wheresoever they were
found, among slaves or strangers, enemies or barbarians. [20] During
the most flourishing aera of the Athenian co