In this way the internal conditions of Roman society impelled men to the alien forms of religion. And external impulses were not lacking. There were present professional and well-equipped missionaries. Our information about them is fullest with reference to the philosophic schools, which consciously bid for the support of educated Romans. These groups of philosophers were nearly all completely organized, and formed an international fraternity as real as the great International Actors Association and the similar Athletic Union.[255] It was scarcely feasible to stand neutral. A man was either an Academic, or Stoic, or Epicurean, or Neopythagorean, and so on. So skilful a trimmer as Cicero’s friend, the astoundingly shrewd Atticus, was enrolled as an Epicurean.[256] Even skepticism classified a man as an Academic, as Cicero himself was classed despite occasional exhibitions of sympathy for the Stoa. And the combat was as intense and as dogmatic as that between competing religious sects. That is precisely what they were, and they bandied their shibboleths with the utmost zeal and unction. Some of these philosophic sects, the Cynics and Stoics, reached classes of lower intellectual level. And there they came in conflict with astrologer and thaumaturg, with Isis and with Atthis devotees, and with Jews. The popular sermon, the diatribe, was an institution of the Cynics, and was directed to the crowd. Indeed the chief object of Cynic jibes was the pretension of philosophers to possess a wisdom that was in any way superior to the mother-wit of the rudest boor.[257] The Stoics too used the diatribe with success. It must not, however, be supposed that either Stoic or Cynic was a serious rival of the dramatic and sensationally attractive rites of the Eastern cults. The latter counted their adherents by the hundreds where the preaching philosopher might pick up an occasional adherent. The importance of the philosophers for the spread of non-Roman beliefs lies chiefly in the fact that they reached all classes of society, and, different as they seem from the cult-associations of the various foreign deities, they really represented the same emotional need as the latter. These had literary support as well. We have recently had restored to us some astrological pamphlets, such as that of Vettius Valens,[258] and we can only guess from what arsenal Isiac or Mithraist drew those arguments with which he boasted of confuting even Stoics and Epicureans. But we may safely assume that tracts existed of this sort. As far as the Jews are concerned, their propaganda may have begun with their first settlement in Rome. Cicero does not mention it, but Cicero was not interested in what went on among the strata of society in which the Jews then moved. In the next generation their propaganda was so wide and successful that it must have been established for a considerable time.