=347. Stoicism: Revival of Religion under the Empire.=--Calvus himself, a decidedly practical man not too fond of nice speculations, takes greater pleasure in the theories of the Stoics. The stern teaching that “duty” is the be-all and end-all of life, and that true freedom and happiness come only by a scrupulous discharge of every obligation, appeals strongly to many hard-headed Romans. It fits in well with their old native religion, and they accept it without much abstract philosophizing. But the “God” discussed by Zeno, Cleanthes, and the later Stoics is only a hard, impersonal, resistless force,--“Eternal Law” under another name. He is in nowise a merciful Heavenly Father, any more than he is a youthful, beauteous, and very human Apollo. Calvus, in short, is hardly more convinced than his friend Cluentius, the Epicurean, that there really exists any personal deity.[220] However, religion as an outward institution, has been steadily gaining under the Roman Empire. Probably never were there ever more unabashed atheists than such personages as Sulla and Julius Cæsar in the last decades of the Republic,--men not without pet superstitions perhaps and a belief in their “stars,” but who were almost cynical in their expressions of disbelief in any ruling Providence, and to whom temples and worship were only convenient political engines for befooling the mob. Augustus nevertheless was probably somewhat more of a believing man himself, and he grasped the enormous value of reinvigorating the old cults, rebuilding the crumbling shrines, and finally of rekindling the conviction that there existed a stabilizing and avenging host of deities as a means for getting moral sanction and support for his new imperial régime. Since the battle of Actium, temples have multiplied, priesthoods have been carefully maintained, and solemn religious ceremonies and sacrifices have been promoted by the government; in short, a great and partially successful effort has been put forth to galvanize into a kind of life that early “Religion of Numa,” which once molded the ideals of the little city by the Tiber. =348. Foreign Cults Intruded upon the “Religion of Numa.”=--Religious beliefs and institutions at Rome, however, are only in part derived from the cults and forms of old Italy, whether Etruscan or Latin. The Greek mythology has been so taken over by the poets that often it is hard to sift out the indigenous Italian stories from the great mass of imported legends in which Jupiter and Juno manifestly are merely the Latin names for Hellenic Zeus and Hera. Furthermore, there has come a perfect influx of oriental gods: Egyptian Isis, Syrian Baal, Phrygian Cybele, Persian Mithras--these are merely some of the more important.