ns began by destroying the temples at
Dium and Dodona, whereupon Philip retaliated by totally wrecking the
federal sanctuary of the Aetolians at Thermon. Of Philip's admiral
Dicaearchus we are told by Polybius that wherever he landed he erected
altars to "godlessness and lawlessness" and offered up sacrifice on them.
Judging by the way he was hated, his practice must have answered to his
theory.

One more phenomenon must be mentioned in this context, though it falls
outside the limits within which we have hitherto moved, and though its
connexion with free-thought and religious enlightenment will no doubt, on
closer examination, prove disputable. This is the decay of the established
worship of the Roman State in the later years of the Republic.

In the preceding pages there has been no occasion to include conditions in
Rome in our investigation, simply because nothing has come down to us
about atheism in the earlier days of Rome, and we may presume that it did
not exist. Of any religious thought at Rome corresponding to that of the
Greeks we hear nothing, nor did the Romans produce any philosophy.
Whatever knowledge of philosophy there was at Rome was simply borrowed
from the Greeks. The Greek influence was not seriously felt until the
second century B.C., even though as early as about the middle of the third
century the Romans, through the performance of plays translated from the
Greek, made acquaintance with Greek dramatic poetry and the religious
thought contained therein. Neither the latter, nor the heresies of the
philosophers, seem to have made any deep impression upon them. Ennius,
their most important poet of the second century, was no doubt strongly
influenced by Greek free-thinking, but this was evidently an isolated
phenomenon. Also, by birth Ennius was not a native of Rome but half a
Greek. The testimony of Polybius (from the close of the second century) to
Roman religious conservatism is emphatic enough. Its causes are doubtless
of a complex nature, but as one of them the peculiar character of the
Roman religion itself stands out prominently. However much it resembled
Greek religion in externals--a resemblance which was strengthened by
numerous loans both of religious rites and of deities--it is decidedly
distinct from it in being restricted still more to cultus and, above all,
in being entirely devoid of mythology. The Roman gods were powers about
the rites of whose worship the most accurate details were kn