unsettling of belief which was encouraged by the negative criticism of the Academy. Even the teaching of the Stoics, though it set before the more educated classes an object which they could feel to be worthy of their veneration and worship, and thus effected for them a reconciliation between reason and religion; and though it confirmed the old Roman ideas as to the essential connexion between national prosperity and religion; yet, so far as it affected in any way the mass of the people, it can only have acted as a solvent of the popular belief. Religion is in danger of being degraded into a matter of political expediency, when it is left to the magistrates to determine what the people are to believe: indeed we find Cicero, when he writes as an Academic, appealing more than once to expediency as the sole or the chief ground for religious belief; and this was also, according to Dion Cassius, the avowed principle of the religious reforms carried out by Augustus and dutifully hymned by the Augustan poets'. But all experience, from the time of Augustus to that of Napoleon, shows that the attempt to retain religion simply as an instrument of police can never succeed; without belief it is too weak to be of service; with belief it is too powerful; and the mere suspicion that it is so used deprives it of its natural force, and arms against it the honesty and the conscience of the nation.

Passing out of the religious sphere we find two main applications of philosophy among the Romans, two advantages which they expected to gain from the study of

1 See Cic. Divin. II. 70 retinetur et ad opinionem vulgi et ad magnas utilitates reipublicae mos, religio, disciplina, jus augurium, collegii auctoritas, and Dion. Cass. LII. 36, where Maecenas recommends the maintenance of the national religion and the prohibition of strange rites as the best protection against political revolution or conspiracy.

philosophy. The one is subordinate and superficial, the training in oratory to which Cicero so often refers. The youthful aspirant to the honours of the forum and the senate may learn from the philosopher how to arrange the topics of his speech, how to marshal his arguments, how to work on the passions of his audience, and to give colour and elevation to his style by the purple patches borrowed from the great masters of Athenian eloquence and wisdom. Above all, the Academic school will teach him to see both sides of a question, to find arguments pro and con in regard to any subject which may be brought before him'. But the chief use of philosophy is to be the school of virtue, the guide of life, both the common life of the State and the private life of the individual, and to afford the only consolations in the hour of weakness and sorrow. How it was to answer this purpose, is shown by Cicero in his various practical treatises on 1 Cic. De Orat. I. 53, 60, 87, Tusc. 11. 9, Orator, § 12, Paradox. pref., De Fato 3.

2 Cicero often speaks of the benefits conferred by philosophy as a Christian might speak of the benefits conferred by religion: compare Tusc. V. 5, vitiorum peccatorumque nostrorum omnis a philosophia petenda correctio est,...O vitae philosophia dux! O virtutis indagatrix, expultrixque vitiorum! quid non modo nos, sed omnino vita hominum sine te esse potuisset!...Ad te confugimus; a te opem petimus...Est autem unus dies bene ex praeceptis tuis actus peccanti immortalitati anteponendus. See also Horace Ep. 1. 1. 36, laudis amore tumes? sunt certa piacula quae te ter pure lecto poterunt recreare libello, &c.; Varro ap. Gell. xv. 19, 'if you had bestowed on philosophy a tenth part of the pains that you have taken to get good bread, you would long ago have been a good man.' On the other hand Nepos (ap. Lact. III. 15 § 10) is so far from ascribing such good effects to philosophy, that he says none need to be reformed more than the philosophers themselves. See Juv. III. 116 Stoicus occidit Baream, &c.

Duty, on Friendship, on Old age, on Law, on the State, as well as, no doubt, in the lost Hortensius, which first inflamed St Augustine with the love of heavenly wisdom', and in the Consolatio, by the composition of which he vainly endeavoured to soothe the bitter sorrow caused by the death of his beloved Tullia.

To turn now from the taught to the teacher, it is easy to understand that the change from a class of keen-witted but somewhat frivolous Greeks,-who looked upon philosophy as an intellectual amusement, and thought of eloquence merely as an exhibition of skill in the use of the technicalities of rhetoric, by means of which to win the applause of the theatre or the lecture-room,—to the proud and serious Roman, who sought for eloquence as a mighty engine by which to mould the destinies of Rome and of the nations which she held in subjection, and listened eagerly to the words of the professor in the expectation of hearing something which would make him a wiser and a better man, show him what his duty was and give him strength to do it,—it is easy to see that this could not but react upon the teacher himself, and, if it did not waken a corresponding earnestness in his own mind, yet would at least make it clear to him that speculative subtleties and controversial minutiae* would be thrown away,

1 Confess. III. 4, ille liber mutavit affectum meum, et ad te ipsum, Domine, mutavit preces meas. Viluit repente mihi omnis vana spes, et immortalitatem sapientiae concupiscebam aestu cordis incredibili; et surgere cœperam ut ad te redirem.

2

Compare the amusing story told of the proconsul Gellius (Cic. Leg. 1. 53). On his arrival in Athens he called together the philosophers and urged them at last to put an end to their disputes, offering his assistance as umpire, if they were unable to settle matters peaceably without him.

and that the plainer his teaching was, and the less he deviated from common sense and common morality, the more likely he was to recommend himself to the pupils, from whom he had most to gain in the shape of honours and emoluments.

So.

We have seen that the Stoic Panaetius was the first teacher who obtained any influence over the Romans: can we find in him any trace of the re-action of which we have spoken? If the Romans had made their acquaintance with Stoicism through Cleanthes, who was genuinely Roman in character, they might have been satisfied to accept his doctrine in its integrity; but since then the system had undergone the manipulation of that subtle doctor of the Schools, the learned and ingenious Chrysippus, inventor of those thorny syllogisms of which Cicero so often complains. Comparing him with Panaetius, we find the latter softening down the severity of the Stoics in many particulars. Thus he adopted a more easy and natural style of writing, and spoke with warm admiration of philosophers belonging to other schools, especially of Plato, whom he called the Homer of philosophers. He abandoned the Stoic belief in a cyclical conflagration, for the Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity of the world, and mitigated the austerity of the old view on the adiaφορα and the necessity of ἀπάθεια. In his treatise on Duty, which formed the model of Cicero's De officiis,

1 Cic. Tusc. I. 79, cf. Fin. IV. 79 (Stoicorum) tristitiam atque asperitatem fugiens Panaetius nec acerbitatem sententiarum nec disserendi spinas probavit, fuitque in altero genere mitior, in altero illustrior, semperque habuit in ore Platonem, Aristotelem, Xenocratem, Theophrastum, Dicaearchum, ut ipsius scripta declarant ; also Off. II. 35 and Acad. II. 135.

he addressed himself not to the wise, but to those who were seeking wisdom; and spoke not of perfect duties (KαTоρlúμатα) but of the officia media (κańκovтa) which ordinary people need not despair of fulfilling. Lastly in respect to Divination he forsook the tradition of his school, which had always been disposed to regard this as an important evidence of divine agency, and followed the sceptical line of the Academy.

The eclectic character imprinted on the Porch by Panaetius was never obliterated, but rather became more marked in later writers such as Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. Our limits however do not permit us to speak of more than his immediate pupil Posidonius the Syrian, a man of great and varied learning, much esteemed by the Romans, many of whom attended his lectures at Rhodes. Among the number were Pompeius and Cicero, who calls him the greatest of the Stoics'. In regard to divination and the eternity of the world Posidonius went back to the old Stoic view, but in his unsectarian tone he is a faithful follower of Panaetius. He endeavoured to show that the opposition between the different systems of philosophy, far from justifying the sceptical conclusion, was not inconsistent with a real harmony upon the most important points. In regard to psychology his views were more in accordance with Plato and Aristotle than with Chrysippus. Finding it impossible to explain the passions as morbid conditions of the reason, he fell back on the old division into the rational and irrational parts of the soul, and was followed in this by the later Stoics.

1 Hortens. Frag. 36 (Orelli); so Seneca Ep. XC. 20 Posidonius, ut mea fert opinio, ex his qui plurimum philosophiae contulerunt.