antagonists during the present period was carried on in the field of faith, of manners, and of art and literature. … If Italy still possessed—what had long been a mere antiquarian curiosity in Hellas—a national religion, it was already visibly beginning to be ossified into theology. The torpor creeping over faith is nowhere perhaps so distinctly apparent as in the alterations in the economy of divine service and of the priesthood. The public service of the gods became not only more tedious, but above all more and more costly. … An augur like Lucius Paullus, who regarded the priesthood as a science and not as a mere title, was already a rare exception; and could not but be so, when the government more and more openly and unhesitatingly employed the auspices for the accomplishment of its political designs, or, in other words, treated the national religion in accordance with the view of Polybius as a superstition useful for imposing on the public at large. Where the way was thus paved, the Hellenistic irreligious spirit found free course. In connection with the incipient taste for art the sacred images of the gods began even in Cato's time to be employed, like other furniture, to embellish the chambers of the rich. More dangerous wounds were inflicted on religion by the rising literature. … Thus the old national religion was visibly on the decline; and, as the great trees of the primeval forest were uprooted, the soil became covered with a rank growth of thorns and briars and with weeds that had never been seen before. Native superstitions and foreign impostures of the most various hues mingled, competed and conflicted with each other. … The Hellenism of that epoch, already denationalized and pervaded by Oriental mysticism, introduced not only unbelief but also superstition in its most offensive and dangerous forms to Italy; and these vagaries, moreover, had a special charm, precisely because they were foreign. … Rites of the most abominable character came to the knowledge of the Roman authorities: a secret nocturnal festival in honour of the god Bacchus had been first introduced into Etruria by a Greek priest, and spreading like a cancer, had rapidly reached Rome and propagated itself over all Italy, everywhere corrupting families and giving rise to the most heinous crimes, unparalleled unchastity, falsifying of testaments, and murdering by poison. More than 7,000 men were sentenced to punishment, most of them to death, on this account, and rigorous enactments were issued as to the future. … The ties of family life became relaxed with fearful rapidity. The evil of grisettes and boy-favourites spread like a pestilence. … Luxury prevailed more and more in dress, ornaments and furniture, in the buildings and on the tables. Especially after the expedition to Asia Minor, which took place in 564, [B. C.