=2.= Great achievements are born of strong convictions; and Roman statesmen, jurists, soldiers, and engineers did not learn to ‘scorn delights and live laborious days’ without some strong impulse from within. These inner convictions do not come to the surface everywhere in the Latin literature with which we are most familiar. The Roman orator or poet is generally content to express a conventional view of religion and morals, whilst he conceals his real thoughts in a spirit of reticence and almost of shame. Yet here and there every attentive reader will catch the accent of sincerity, sometimes in the less restrained conversation of the lower classes, sometimes in flights of poetic imagination, or again in instruction designed for the young. In this way we learn that the Romans of the last century of the republic and of the first century of the principate were profoundly concerned, not so much with questions connected with the safety of their empire or the justice of their form of government, as with problems in which all mankind has a common interest. What is truth, and how can it be ascertained? What is this universe in which we dwell, and by whom and how was it made? What are the beings called gods, and do they concern themselves with the affairs of men? What is man’s nature, his duty, and his destiny? These the Romans called the problems of philosophy, and they eagerly sought for definite and practical solutions to them[1]. Such solutions when embodied in theoretical systems we still call ‘philosophies’; but when such systems are developed in a practical form and claim the obedience of large bodies of men they become religions. Stoicism is in the first instance a philosophy, and amongst its many competitors that one which appealed most successfully to the judgment of men who played a leading part in the Roman world; but as its acceptance becomes more general, it begins to assume all the features of a religion. All Latin literature is thickly strewn with allusions to Stoicism and the systems which were its rivals, and thus bears witness to the widespread interest which they excited. [Sidenote: Origin of Philosophy.]