its parts. The creed of the philosophers, however, was never openly avowed in the popular religion, but was concealed in the parables of which the old theology was composed. For the old priests never scrupled to believe, that history and philosophy "sufficed but for the chosen few," while the populace were carefully instigated to the practice of morality by being instructed in that kind of fiction which, in this country, emanates from Exeter Hall. Strabo admirably expresses the attitude of an educated man to the religion of his day. He says, "The great mass of women and common people cannot be induced by mere force of reason to devote themselves to piety, virtue, and honesty; superstition must therefore be employed, and even this is insufficient without the aid of the marvellous and the terrible. For what are the thunderbolts, the ægis, the trident, the torches, the dragons, the barbed thyrses, the arms of the gods, and all the paraphernalia of antique theology, but fables employed by the founders of states as bugbears to frighten timorous minds?" (Strabo's "Geography," bk. i., ch. ii, § 8).[1] Again, the difference between Moses, and Linus, Musæus, Orpheus, and Pherecydes, is well defined by Origen, who says, that the Greek poets "display little concern for those readers who are to peruse them at once unaided, but have composed their philosophy (as you term it) for those who are unable to comprehend its metaphorical and allegorical signification. Whereas Moses, like a distinguished orator, who meditates some figure of rhetoric, and who carefully introduces in every part a language of twofold meaning, has done this in his five books; neither affording,
- ↑ Cicero, who was an Augur as well as an Advocate, did not seem to have taken his duties very seriously, for he is reported to have said that he could never understand how two Augurs could look each other in the face without laughing.
