Nevertheless, Cluentius has done very well for a mere Prætor; and he will have to pay indemnity for about fourteen of his forty gladiators, a very fair average to get butchered. “It has been a pleasant enough holiday (say many) in a toiling and busy world, and the rumor goes that for the next Ides at the Consul’s games they have rounded up a whole gang of robbers who will all be fed to the lions!” CHAPTER XX THE ROMAN RELIGION: THE PRIESTHOODS, THE VESTAL VIRGINS =345. Religious Symbols Everywhere in Rome.=--The circus races and the amphitheater butcheries are nominally in honor of some god. It is perhaps Vulcan in whose name Cluentius has hired the gladiators to slaughter one another. Everywhere about Rome are imposing temples and lesser shrines, and there are almost more statues of gods and demigods than there are people in the swarming streets. The symbolic snakes for the Lares of the locality or of the household, are painted upon thousands of walls. All this would indicate that the Romans of the Empire are extraordinarily religious. How far does this outward seeming correspond to the actual facts? =346. Epicureanism and Agnosticism among the Upper Classes.=--If we penetrate the life of men like Publius Calvus and others of the upper circle, apparently we are dealing with persons who are almost, if not complete, agnostics. Some are cheerful Epicureans who formally deny that there are any deities that concern themselves with mortal affairs, and who for their own part look upon the world as a chance aggregation of atoms, and upon life as one physical sensation after another with nothing later awaiting a man but eternal slumber in the grave. Moral “laws” merely exist to adjust human relationships, so that you can win the maximum enjoyment from day to day. Theories like this can be justified in sonorous, noble language, as in the great poems of Lucretius, but the underlying philosophy remains the same. Cluentius, the Prætor, whose library is crammed with Epicurean writings, has, in fact, just been ordering chiseled on his ostentatious funeral monument, “_Eat, drink, enjoy yourself--the rest is nothing._”[219] [Illustration: MAISON CARRÉE, NÎMES, FRANCE: the best preserved temple of the Roman type in existence.]