of Augustus; that would be the moral food on which was nurtured that crowd of nations which acknowledged Cæsar’s sway; that the conception of divine things wrought into the minds of the hundred millions of men who formed the Roman empire. Was it surprising that all worshippers of the gods should look for their example rather in Jupiter’s actions than in Plato’s teaching or the moral judgments of Cato?(21) A nature subject in itself to the sway of passion was stimulated by an authority supposed to be divine to the commission of every criminal excess; and herein lay a strong proof of the malignant and impure character of these gods. On the other hand, the same eye-witness challenges the defenders of the pagan gods to produce a single instance wherein moral precepts of living were delivered to their worshippers upon divine authority. True, indeed, there were here and there whispers of secret rites in which a pure and chaste life was recommended, but where were the buildings dedicated to the public preaching of such truths? Places there were in abundance consecrated to the celebration of infamous games, rightly termed “Fugalia,” since they put modesty and decency to flight, but none where the people might listen to divine commands repressing avarice, ambition, or unchaste desire. Thus with the positive inculcation of all evil, under cover of their own example, was united the negative absence of all moral teaching.(22) For even the prayers which accompanied these sacrifices and this ceremonial, and this lavish exhibition of every human wickedness under divine names, were not addressed for moral goods, but for wealth, bodily strength, temporal prosperity. Horace but expresses the general mind when he says: “Sed satis est orare Jovem quæ donat et anfert; Det vitam, det opes, æquum mi animum ipse parabo.” (_Epist._ i. 18, 111.) They were moreover viewed as carrying with them a sort of physical force, not as prevailing through purity of intention in those who offered them. In fact, the gods to whom they were addressed were powers of nature, or malignant and impure powers, but in neither case beings who looked for a moral service from rational creatures.