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ing, with a smile of pity and indulgence, the various errors of the vulgar, they diligently practised the ceremonies of their fathers, devoutly frequented the temples of the gods; and sometimes condescending to act a part on the theatre of superstition, they concealed the sentiments of an atheist under the sacerdotal robes. Reasoners of such a temper were scarcely inclined to wrangle about their respective modes of faith, or of worship. It was indifferent to them what shape the folly of the multitude might choose to assume; and they approached with the same inward contempt, and the same external reverence, the altars of the Libyan, the Olympian, or the Capitoline Jupiter.8

It is not easy to conceive from what motives a spirit of per secution could introduce itself into the Roman councils. The magistrates could not be actuated by a blind, though honest bigotry, since the magistrates were themselves philosophers, and the schools of Athens had given laws to the senate. They could not be impelled by ambition or avarice, as the temporal and ecclesiastical powers were united in the same hands. The pontiffs were chosen among the most illustrious of the senators; and the office of Supreme Pontiff was constantly exercised by the emperors themselves. They knew and valued the advantages of religion, as it is connected with civil government. They encouraged the public festivals which humanize the manners of the people. They managed the arts of divination, as a convenient instrument of policy; and they respected, as the firmest bond of society, the useful persuasion, that, either in this or in a future life, the crime of perjury is most assuredly punished by the avenging gods.9 But whilst they acknowledged the general advantages of religion, they were convinced, that the various modes of worship contributed alike to the same salutary purposes; and that, in every country, the form of superstition, which had received the sanction of time and experience, was the best adapted to the climate, and to its inhabitants. Avarice and taste very frequently despoiled the vanquished nations of the elegant statues of their gods,

Socrates, Epicurus, Cicero, and Plutarch always inculcated a decent reverence for the religion of their own country, and of mankind. The devotion of Epicurus was assiduous and exemplary. Diogen. Laert. x. 10.

Polybius, 1. vi. c. 53, 54. Juvenal. Sat. xiii. laments that in his time this apprehension had lost much of ts effect.

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and the rich ornaments of their temples; 10 but, in the exercise of the religion which they derived from their ancestors, they uniformly experienced the indulgence, and even protection, of the Roman conquerors. The province of Gaul seems, and indeed only seems, an exception to this universal toleration. Under the specious pretext of abolishing human sacrifices, the emperors Tiberius and Claudius suppressed the dangerous power of the Druids: 11 but the priests themselves, their gods and their altars, subsisted in peaceful obscurity till the final destruction of Paganism.12

Rome, the capital of a great monarchy, was incessantly filled with subjects and strangers from every part of the world,13 who all introduced and enjoyed the favorite superstitions of their native country.14 Every city in the empire was justified in maintaining the purity of its ancient ceremonies and the Roman senate, using the common privilege, sometimes interposed, to check this inundation of foreign rites. The Egyptian superstition, of all the most contemptible and abject, was frequently prohibited; the temples of Serapis and Isis demolished, and their worshippers banished from Rome and Italy.15 But the zeal of fanaticism prevailed

"See the fate of Syracuse, Tarentum, Ambracia, Corinth, &c., the conduct of Verres, in Ciccro, (Actio ii. Orat. 4,) and the usual practice of governors, in the viiith Satire of Juvenal.

Sueton. in Claud. - Plin. Hist. Nat. xxx. 1.

12 Pelloutier, Histoire des Celtes, tom. vi. p. 230-252. 13 Seneca, Consolat. ad Helviam, p. 74. Edit. Lips.

14 Dionysius Halicarn. Antiquitat. Roman. L. ii. [vol. i. p. 275, edit. Reiske.]

15 In the year of Rome 701, the temple of Isis and Serapis was demolished by the order of the Senate, (Dion Cassius, 1. xl. p. 252,) and even by the hands of the consul, (Valerius Maximus, 1, 3.)†

* Yet the worship of foreign gods at Rome was only guarantied to the natives of those countries from whence they came. The Romans administered the priestly offices only to the gods of their fathers. Gibbon, throughout the whole preceding sketch of the opinions of the Romans and their subjects, has shown through what causes they were free from religious hatred and its consequences. But, on the other hand, the internal state of these religions, the infidelity and hypocrisy of the upper orders, the indifference towards all religion, in even the better part of the common people, during the last days of the republic, and under the Caesars, and the corrupting principles of the philosophers, had exercised a very pernicious influence on the manners, and even on the constitution. - WV.

+ Gibbon here blends into one, two events, distant a hundred and sixty six years from each other. It was in the year of Rome 535, that the sen ate having ordered the destruction of the temples of Isis and berapis, no

uver the cold and feeble efforts of policy. The exnes returned, the proselytes multiplied, the temples were restored with increasing splendor, and Isis and Serapis at length assumed their place among the Roman Deities.16 Nor was this indulgence a departure from the ola maxims of government. In the purest ages of the commonwealth, Cybele and Æsculapius had been invited by solemn embassies; 17 and it was customary to tempt the protectors of besieged cities, by the promise of more distinguished honors than they possessed in their native country.18 Rome gradually became the common temple of her subjects; and the freedom of the city was bestowed on all the gods of mankind.19

II. The narrow policy of preserving, without any foreign mixture, the pure blood of the ancient citizens, had checked the fortune, and hastened the ruin, of Athens and Sparta. The aspiring genius of Rome sacrificed vanity to ambition. and deemed it more prudent, as well as honorable, to adopt virtue and merit for her own wheresoever they were found, among slaves or strangers, enemies or barbarians.20 During After the death of Cæsar, it was restored at the public expense, (Dion, 1. xlvii. p. 501.) When Augustus was in Egypt, he revered the majesty of Serapis, (Dion, 1. li. p. 647;) but in the Pomarium of Rome, and a mile round it, he prohibited the worship of the Egyptian gods, (Dion, 1. liii. p. 679; 1. liv. p. 735.) They remained, however, very fashionable under his reign (Ovid. de Art. Amand. 1. i.) and that of his successor, till the justice of Tiberius was provoked to some acts of severity. (See Tacit. Annal. ii. 85. Joseph. Antiquit. 1. xviii. c. 3.)*

16 Tertullian in Apologetic. c. 6, p. 74. Edit. Havercamp. I am inclined to attribute their establishment to the devotion of the Flavian family.

17 See Livy, 1. xi. [Suppl.] and xxix. 18 Macrob. Saturnalia, I. iii. c. 9.

tion.

He gives us a form of evoca

19 Minutius Fælix in Octavio, p. 54. Arnobius, 1. vi. p. 115.

20 Tacit. Annal. xi. 24. The Orbis Romanus of the learned Spanheim is a complete history of the progressive admission of Latium, Italy, and the provinces, to the freedom of Rome.t

workman would lend his hand; and the consul, L. Æmilius Paulus himself (Valer. Max. 1, 3) seized the axe, to give the first blow. Gibbon attributes this circumstance to the second demolition, which took place in the year 701, and which he considers as the first. -W.

See, in the pictures from the walls of Pompeii, the representation of an Isiac temple and worship. Vestiges of Egyptian worship have been traced in Gaul, and, I am informed, recently in Britain, in excavations al York.-M.

+ Democratic states, observes Denina, (delle Revoluz. d' Italia, l. 1. c. 1,)

the most flourishing æra of the Athenian commonwealth, the number of citizens gradually decreased from about thirty 21 to wenty-one thousand.22 If, on the contrary, we study the growth of the Roman republic, we may discover, that, notwithstanding the incessant demands of wars and colonies, the citizens, who, in the first census of Servius Tullius, amounted to no more than eighty-three thousand, were multiplied, before the commencement of the social war, to the number of four hundred and sixty-three thousand men, able to bear arms in the service of their country.23 When the allies of Rome claimed an equal share of honors and privileges, the senate indeed preferred the chance of arms to an ignominious concession. The Samnites and the Lucanians paid the severe penalty of their rashness; but the rest of the Italian states, as they successively returned to their duty, were admitted into the bosom of the republic,24 and soon contributed to the ruin of public freedom. Under a democratical government, the citizens exercise the powers of sovereignty; and those powers will be first abused, and afterwards lost, if they are committed o an unwieldy multitude. But when the popular assemblies had been suppressed by the administration of the emperors, the conquerors were distinguished from the vanquished naLions, only as the first and most honorable order of subjects, and their increase, however rapid, was no longer exposed to he same dangers. Yet the wisest princes, who adopted the maxims of Augustus, guarded with the strictest care the

21 Herodotus, v. 97. It should seem, however, that he followed a arge and popular estimation.

22 Athenæus, Deipnosophist. 1. vi. p. 272. Edit. Casaubon. Meursius de Fortunâ Atticâ, c. 4.*

23 See a very accurate collection of the numbers of each Lustrum in M. de Beaufort, Republique Romaine, 1. iv. c. 4.t

24 Appian. de Bell. Civil. 1. i. Velleius l'aterculus, 1. ii. c. 15, 16, 17.

are most jealous of communciating the privileges of citizenship; monarchies or oligarchies willingly multiply the numbers of their free subjects. The most remarkable accessions to the strength of Rome, by the aggre gation of conquered and foreign nations, took place under the regal and patrician- -we may add, the Imperial government. - M.

On the number of citizens in Athens, compare Backh, Public Economy of Athens, (English Tr.,) p. 45, et seq. Fynes Clinton, Essay in Fasti Hellenici, vol. I. 381.-M.

All these questions are placed in an entirely new point of view by Niebuhr, (Römische Geschichte, vol. i. p. 464.) He rejects the census of Servius Tullius as unhistoric, (vol. ii. p. 78, et seq.,) and he establishes the principle that the census comprehended all the confederate cities which had the right of Isopolity.-M.

dignity of the Roman name, and diffused the freedom of the city with a prudent liberality.25

Till the privileges of Romans had been progressively ex tended to all the inhabitants of the empire, an important dis tinction was preserved between Italy and the provinces. The former was esteemed the centre of public unity, and the firm basis of the constitution. Italy claimed the birth, or at least the residence, of the emperors and the senate.26 The estates of the Italians were exempt from taxes, their persons from the arbitrary jurisdiction of governors. Their municipal corpor tions, formed after the perfect model of the capital,* were intrusted, under the immediate eye of the supreme power, with the execution of the laws. From the foot of the Alps to the extremity of Calabria, all the natives of Italy were born citizens of Rome. Their partial distinctions were obliterated, and they insensibly coalesced into one great nation, united by language, manners, and civil institutions, and equal to the weight of a powerful empire. The republic gloried in her generous policy, and was frequently rewarded by the merit and services of her adopted sons. Had she always confined the distinction of Romans to the ancient families within the walls of the city, that immortal name would have been de prived of some of its noblest ornaments. Virgil was a native of Mantua; Horace was inclined to doubt whether he should call himself an Apulian or a Lucanian; it was in Padua that an historian was found worthy to record the majestic series of Roman victories. The patriot family of the Catos emerged from Tusculum; and the little town of Arpinum claimed the double honor of producing Marius and Cicero, the former of whom deserved, after Romulus and Camillus, to be styled the Third Founder of Rome; and the latter, after saving his

25 Mæcenas had advised him to declare, by one edict, all his subjects citizens. But we may justly suspect that the historian Dion was the author of a counsel so much adapted to the practice of his own age, and so little to that of Augustus.

26 The senators were obliged to have one third of their own landed property in Italy. See Plin. 1. vi. ep. 19. The qualification was reduced by Marcus to one fourth. Since the reign of Trajan, Italy had sunk nearer to the level of the provinces.

It may be doubted whether the municipal government of the cities was not the old Italian constitution, rather than a transcript from that of Rome. The free government of the cities, observes Savigny, was the leading characteristic of Italy. Geschichte des Römischen Rechts, i. p. 16.-M.

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