have something
answering to it in the objective world. Ancient philosophy never got clear
of this dilemma; hence Plato's open recognition of the absurdity; hence
Aristotle's delight at being able to meet the popular faith half-way in
his assumption of the divinity of the heavenly bodies; hence Xenocrates's
demons, the allegories of the Stoics, the ideal Epicureans of Epicurus,
Euhemerus's early benefactors of mankind. And we may say that the more the
Greeks got to know of the world about them the more they were confirmed in
their view, for in the varied multiplicity of polytheism they found the
same principle everywhere, the same belief in a multitude of beings of a
higher order than man.

Euhemerus's theory is no doubt the last serious attempt in the old pagan
world to give an explanation of the popular faith which may be called
genuine atheism. We will not, however, leave the Hellenistic period
without casting a glance at some personalities about whom we have
information enough to form an idea at first hand of their religious
standpoint, and whose attitude towards popular belief at any rate comes
very near to atheism pure and simple.

One of them is Polybius. In the above-cited passage referring to the
decline of the popular faith in the Hellenistic period, Polybius also
gives his own theory of the origin of men's notions regarding the gods. It
is not new. It is the theory known from the Critias fragment, what may be
called the political theory. In the fragment it appears as atheism pure
and simple, and it seems obvious to understand it in the same way in
Polybius. That he shows a leaning towards Euhemerism in another passage
where he speaks about the origin of religious ideas, is in itself not
against this--the two theories are closely related and might very well be
combined. But we have a series of passages in which Polybius expressed
himself in a way that seems quite irreconcilable with a purely atheistic
standpoint. He expressly acknowledged divination and worship as justified;
in several places he refers to disasters that have befallen individuals or
a whole people as being sent by the gods, or even as a punishment for
impiety; and towards the close of his work he actually, in marked contrast
to the tone of its beginning, offers up a prayer to the gods to grant him
a happy ending to his long life. It would seem as if Polybius at a certain
period of his life came under the influence of Stoicism and in consequence