vey of
the conditions in Imperial Rome. Atheists of this period are not found in
our lists; but a good deal of old Pagan free-thinking survives in the
first centuries of our era, and also the epithet _atheoi_ was bestowed
generally on the Christians and sometimes on the Jews, and if only for
this reason they cannot be altogether passed by in this survey.

CHAPTER II

The paganism of antiquity is based on a primitive religion, _i.e._ it is
originally in the main homogeneous with the religions nowadays met with in
the so-called primitive peoples. It underwent, however, a long process of
evolution parallel with and conditioned by the development of Greek and
later Roman civilisation. This evolution carried ancient religion far away
from its primitive starting-point; it produced numerous new formations,
above all a huge system of anthropomorphic gods, each with a definite
character and personality of his own. This development is the result of an
interplay of numerous factors: changing social and economical conditions
evoked the desire for new religious ideas; the influence of other peoples
made itself felt; poetry and the fine arts contributed largely to the
moulding of these ideas; conscious reflection, too, arose early and
modified original simplicity. But what is characteristic of the whole
process is the fact that it went on continuously without breaks or sudden
bounds. Nowhere in ancient religion, as far as we can trace it, did a
powerful religious personality strike in with a radical transformation,
with a direct rejection of old ideas and dogmatic accentuation of new
ones. The result of this quiet growth was an exceedingly heterogeneous
organism, in which remains of ancient, highly primitive customs and ideas
were retained along with other elements of a far more advanced character.

Such a state of things need not in itself trouble the general
consciousness; it is a well-established fact that in religion the most
divergent elements are not incompatible. Nevertheless, among the Greeks,
with their strong proclivity to reflective thought, criticism early arose
against the traditional conceptions of the gods. The typical method of
this criticism is that the higher conceptions of the gods are used against
the lower. From the earliest times the Greek religious sense favoured
absoluteness of definition where the gods are concerned; even in Homer
they are not only eternal and happy, but also all-powerful and
all-