CHAPTER IX. ROMAN WRITERS. THE Numa, it is well known, founded his civil ordinances on those of religion, and professed to derive the latter, not from speculation, but from some Divine intercourse. Numa, § 4. "And indeed it is reasonable to suppose," says Plutarch, "that God should shew a regard to men rather than to the lower animals, and that he should in a special degree be disposed to hold converse with good men, and that he should have held intercourse with a man of Divine virtue and wisdom...." 66 And if this be so, there is no reason for doubting that the Deity held intercourse with such as Taleucus, Minos, Zoroaster, Numa, Lycurgus, in their government of a kingdom and framing a commonwealth. For if to poets and men of genius merely this favour has been granted, it is much more likely that the gods should hold serious intercourse with good men who needed instruction and advice in matters of the highest importance." Plutarch states also, "The laws which he $8. laid down with regard to images of the gods, are entirely akin to those of Pythagoreans. For Pythagoras taught that the original of all things was not an object of the senses, but invisible, incorruptible, and an object only of thought; and accordingly Numa forbad to the Romans the use of any image of the Deity of animal or human form. Nor in those primitive times was there any pictured or sculptured representation of God; but for the first 170 years, although they formed temples and wooden chapels, they had no image whatever, in the belief that it was impious to represent that which is superior by inferior objects, and that the Deity could only be perceived by the mind." Although it is generally allowed that Pythagoras did not appear in Italy till several generations after the time of Numa, Cic. Nat. Deo, Bk. III. 2. it is also admitted that the institutions of Numa were comparatively ineffective till long after the time of this monarch; from which it appears likely that they were engrafted on the institutions of Pythagoras, as being in some degree congenial with them, and then first obtained an established importance. This religion then, connected with a large amount of pure superstition—a real decidamovía -which gave an awful importance to auguries and other mysteries of that kind, became the inheritance of the Romans, which they guarded with jealous care against any profane assaults of poets or philosophers, as long as the genuine Roman character was retained. The Roman feeling on this subject is well expressed by the Stoic Balbus; "You appeal to me as a Balbus and as Pontifex, by which I suppose you mean that those sentiments which we have derived from our forefathers respecting the immortal gods, their sacred rites, and our religious observances, should have me for a defender. I have always defended them and always will; and no discourse, whether of the learned or unlearned, shall ever shake me in my opinion about the worship of the immortal gods which I have received from my ancestors." The Romans, however, as a people, up to a short time before the Christian æra, had no such knowledge of the East as to make them acquainted with its religion, and when by their conquest of Greece they possessed themselves of the philosophy of that nation, they had in a great degree lost their Roman character; and under the influence of fashion rather than of philosophy, adopted in general the worst parts of the most divergent sects of Grecian doctrine. They either revelled in the luxury of Epicureanism, or were hardened into the moral congestion of Stoicism, without its diviner and more humane elements. Cicero was one of a small class of Romans belonging to what was called the New Academy. He has eloquently exhibited the doctrines of Greek writers on Divine and moral subjects, but there is no trace in his writings of any new light derived from an acquaintance with Revelation, except that the now widely-diffused light of Divine truth on the subject of morals, and the nature and destiny of the soul of man, had been collected in his writings. In his treatise De Natura Deorum, we have really nothing more than is to be found in his Greek authorities, and in the study of these it is obvious his mind had become more unsettled than established. "If," says he, "it is no easy thing to Bk. 1. 5. master any single discipline, how much more to comprehend them all! This however must be done by those who set themselves to form a right judgment of all philosophers, for the sake of discovering truth. That I have succeded in doing this I do not pretend, but I profess to have made it my object; and it is impossible that those who philosophise in this way should not reap some benefit. For I am not of those who think there is nothing true, but of those who find that the false is so mingled with the true, and is so like it, that there is no mark of certainty from which to form a settled judgment. And the result is, that there are many things which are probable, and these, although they be not thoroughly understood, are yet so eminent and illustrious in their practical use, that they serve to regulate the life of a wise man." After impartially stating the views of Epicurus, which contain some excellent arguments for the being of a God, and a forcible reply to the inconsistencies of his doctrine, he comes in the person of Cotta to state his own positive views: "You ask me what God is, or what he is like,—quid aut quale sit Deus,-I shall answer with Simonides, who, when Hiero asked him the same question, required a day to deliberate; when questioned the next day, he asked for two; and as he often thus doubled the number of days, and Hiero wondered |