to the admission of a real divinity in the gods adored by foreign peoples. The famous formula of Roman Religion, which appealed to the protecting gods of Carthage and its people to leave that city to its fate, is an early anticipation of that hospitable tolerance, so strange to modern sects, which welcomed Greek and barbarian deities to the Roman Pantheon, and never persecuted from religious motives.[1] This spirit had its apotheosis in the endeavours of the reformers of the age of Plutarch to establish the triumph of Reason in a general recognition of the Unity of God beneath the different names which expressed Him to different peoples.[2]
Although we cannot accept as actual history the particulars given by Dionysius Halicarnassensis respecting the manner in which Romulus established the principles of Roman religious and political administration, considerable value may be conceded to such an account, because it is calculated to explain, from the writer's point of view, the existence of certain actual characteristics of Roman civic and sacred polity.[3] Romulus is*
- ↑ Macrobius: Saturnalia, iii. 9.—"Si deus, si dea est, cui populus civitasque Carthaginiensis est in tutela, teque maxime ille," etc.
- ↑ Plutarch: De Iside et Osiride. (Passages subsequently quoted.) Cf. Dion Chrysostom: De Cognitione Dei. (Vol. i. p. 225, Dindorf's Text.)
- ↑ Dionysius of Halicarnassus: De Antiquitatibus Romanorum, ii. 18.—Though Livy's account of the administrative measures of Numa is written in a totally different spirit from that of Dionysius, it may be noted that Numa is depicted as introducing religion as an aid to political stability.—"Ne luxuriarentur otio animi, quos metus hostium disciplinaque militaris continuerat, omnium primum, rem ad multitudinem imperitam et illis sæculis rudem efficacissimam
