shuddered at the terrors
of an underworld, and fifty years after it the satirist asserts the
same of children. But both writers are speaking somewhat
hyperbolically. Doubtless it had been wondered how two augurs could
look at each other without a smile, but there is nothing to show that
even a minority of augurs were acutely conscious of anything to smile
at.

[Illustration: FIG. 111.--ISIS WORSHIP. (Wall-Painting.)]

In the multiplicity of deities the ordinary people were prepared to
accept as many more as you chose to offer them, especially if the
worship attaching to them contained mystic or orgiastic ceremonies. By
this date the populace had become exceedingly mixed, especially in the
capital, and the cool hard-headed Roman stock had been largely
replaced or leavened by foreign elements, especially from the East.
The official worship of the state was formal and frigid; it offered
nothing to the emotions or the hopes. Many among the people felt an
instinct for something more sacramental, and especially attractive was
any form of worship which promised a continued existence, and probably
a happier existence, after death. Even the mere mysteriousness of a
form of worship had its allurements. Hence a tendency to Judaism,
still more to the Egyptian worship of Isis and Osiris. The latter made
many proselytes, particularly among the women, and contained ideas
which are by no means ignoble but to our modern minds far more truly
"religious" than anything to be found in the native Roman cults. To
pass through purification, to practise asceticism, to feel that there
was a life beyond the grave apportioned to your deserts, to go through
an impressive form of worship held every day, and to have the emotions
thus worked upon--all this supplied something to the moral nature
which was lacking in the chill sacrifices and prayers to Jupiter and
the other national divinities. In vain had the authorities, in their
doubt as to the moral effects, tried on several occasions to suppress
this foreign worship; it always revived, and it now held its
established place both in the imperial city and in the provinces,
particularly near the sea, for it was especially a sailors' religion.
Rome, like Pompeii, had its temple of Isis and her daily celebrations.
There was, however, no necessary conflict between this worship and the
official religion. It was quite possible to accept Isis while
accepting Jupiter. Nor, though this particular cult has re