own or could
be ascertained if need were, but they had little personality, and about
their personal relations people knew little and cared less. This was,
aesthetically, a great defect. The Roman gods afforded no good theme for
poetry and art, and when they were to be used as such they were invariably
replaced by loans from the Greeks. But, as in the face of Greek
free-thought and Greek criticism of religion, they had the advantage that
the vital point for attack was lacking. All the objectionable tales of the
exploits of the gods and the associated ideas about their nature which had
prompted the Greek attack on the popular faith simply did not exist in
Roman religion. On the other hand, its rites were in many points more
primitive than the Greek ones, but Greek philosophy had been very reserved
in its criticism of ritual. We may thus no doubt take it for granted,
though we have no direct evidence to that effect, that even Romans with a
Greek education long regarded the Greek criticism of religion as something
foreign which was none of their concern.

That a time came when all this was changed; that towards the end of the
Republic great scepticism concerning the established religion of Rome was
found among the upper classes, is beyond doubt, and we shall subsequently
find occasion to consider this more closely. In this connexion another
circumstance demands attention, one which, moreover, has by some been
associated with Greek influence among the upper classes, namely, the decay
of the established worship of the Roman State during the last years of the
Republic. Of the actual facts there can hardly be any doubt, though we
know very little about them. The decisive symptoms are: that Augustus,
after having taken over the government, had to repair some eighty
dilapidated temples in Rome and reinstitute a series of religious rites
and priesthoods which had ceased to function. Among them was one of the
most important, that of the priest of Jupiter, an office which had been
vacant for more than seventy-five years (87-11 B.C.), because it excluded
the holder from a political career. Further, that complaints were made of
private persons encroaching on places that were reserved for religious
worship; and that Varro, when writing his great work on the Roman
religion, in many cases was unable to discover what god was the object of
an existing cult; and generally, according to his own statement he wrote
his work, among other things,