purer and higher belief than mere anthropomorphism;—there were others who, though they rejected the ancient myths, accepted nothing in their place: and the Sophists seem to have encouraged this increasing tendency to atheism among the younger and more sceptical spirits of this age. Prodicus maintained that men in olden times had deified whatever was of use to them: thus wine was promoted into Bacchus, and bread was dignified with the name of Ceres. Critias, again, declared that the gods had been invented by some crafty statesman to secure the obedience of his subjects; and one daring sceptic of this school, Diagoras of Melos (subsequently banished from both Sparta and Athens for his impious theories), had thrown a wooden statue of Hercules into the fire, saying that he might go through his thirteenth labour in the flames.
In the tenth book of the "Laws"—written, as has been said, in his declining years Plato makes a bold stand against this growing impiety of his day. It springs, he says, from, one of three causes; from utter atheism; or, second, from Epicurean apathy—the feeling that the gods exist, but never trouble themselves about mankind; or, thirdly, from superstition—the gods both exist and care, but you can pacify their anger by sacrifice. Heretics, in his ideal city, are to be punished by solitary confinement or by death, and the heaviest vengeance of the law is to light on the wolf in sheep's clothing—the impious hypocrite who dares to use his priestly garb to further his own ambitious or criminal ends. And then he gravely takes the sceptic
