[21] He quotes it in the Tusculans, i, 68. [22] _Ad. Att._ xii. 18; it is curious that in this very letter he still reverts when speaking of himself, to his old agnosticism in longum illud tempus _cum non ero_. [23] Quoted by Lactantius, _Inst. Div._ i, 16. [24] For Cicero’s attitude on _Jus gentium_, see _De Off._ iii. 17; i. 23. CHAPTER VIII LUCRETIUS AND HIS READERS In the third century B.C. we find evidence that some of the Romans had begun to doubt the current religious beliefs. During the Second Punic War, the exaggerated superstition among the lower classes, induced apparently by a series of military disasters, led to a pronounced revolt against religion among the more enlightened element.[1] Ennius, though he reveals a strain of Pythagorean mysticism, natural enough in one educated at Tarentum, aided this movement by translating Euhemerus, whose work seems to have been a utopian romance that incidentally interpreted the gods of Greek myths as human beings honored after death. If we may judge from later quotations from this work it was the incidental element which especially attracted the attention of the Romans. Of course, the Euripidean plays presented by Ennius and Pacuvius familiarized the audiences with the phrases of skepticism, and some of the later Greek comedies, written when faith in the Olympians had virtually gone, were shockingly disrespectful of religion. The _Amphitruo_ of Plautus is a case in point. It could hardly have been produced except in Greek dress, but for all that such plays tended to undermine respect for the state cults. The actor’s garb was, to be sure, Greek, but the deity ridiculed was called by his Latin name, Jupiter, not Zeus.