The attitude of the cultured classes towards the national religion differed, of course, from that of the masses; the critical spirit and biting sarcasm of the philosophers, a great deal of which was wholly justified, had the effect of making it impossible for educated people to accept the old beliefs in the way in which this had been done hitherto. The religious ideas taught by the philosophers were, in the main, altogether subversive of those which tradition had handed down; nevertheless, to the cultured it would have come as a relief to be taught, as was done by the Epicuræans for example, that a man was not godless because he destroyed belief in the popular gods, but that the godless man was he who imputed to the gods the popular conceptions concerning them.[13] Not that the Epicuræans were irreligious; Epicurus[14] did not attack the belief in the gods as such; on the contrary, he believed in them himself, and regarded the universality of this belief as a proof that they actually existed. But he refused to share the general ideas about them in their relation to the world, and taught that their interference in the affairs of men was a thing not to be thought of since nothing could be worse for men than to feel that at every turn they might be hampered in their doings by the gods. That Epicurus strenuously combated the fatalistic theory of the Stoics can be readily understood. What he desired above all things to do was to free men from the fear of the gods; belief in them, he taught, was necessary for the fulness of happiness ultimately to be enjoyed in their presence; but there was nothing in them to be afraid of. One of the very important things which philosophy did for religion in this age was that it allegorized, and gave a new meaning to, the ancient myths,[15] and thereby made them of practical religious value at a time when the new mental outlook would otherwise have necessitated the discarding altogether of both the substance and form of the traditional beliefs. As it was, the time-honoured myths were not rejected in spite of the awakening to new methods of thought and of ever-increasing enlightenment; this clearer mental atmosphere had the effect of transforming the essence of those myths, while retaining their form. To give detailed examples of the way in which this transformation was carried out cannot be undertaken here, it would carry us too far afield; but reference may be made to Wendland’s work (pp. 115-127) already referred to, and Usener’s _Götternamen_, where much interesting information can be obtained; references to the original authorities are given in abundance, especially in the last-named book.