Further, too much is made of the conflict between the official cults of paganism and Christian public worship. It is forgotten how completely, in Hellenistic times, religion and philosophy were fused. Without under-estimating the simple piety which, especially in country districts, still attached itself to the temples and their ritual, we may say confidently that the vital religion of the empire was associated with the mystery-religions and with the discipline of the 'philosophic life'. It is in this region that the continuity of Catholicism with Hellenism is mainly to be found. The philosophers at this time were preachers, confessors, chaplains, and missionaries. The clerical profession, in nearly all its activities, is directly descended from the Hellenistic philosophers. This claim of continuity may seem paradoxical when we remember the savage persecutions of the Christians by the imperial government. Of these persecutions there were several causes. The empire, like all empires of the same type, rested partly on religious support. Augustus encouraged his court poets to advocate a revival of piety and sound morals. A government cannot inquire into religious conviction, but it can enforce conformity and outward respect for the forms of worship as 'by law established'. The Christians and Epicureans were held guilty of the same political offence--'atheism'. The State had no quarrel with the mystery-religions, which were a private matter, but open disrespect to the national deities was flat disloyalty. The pagans could not understand why the Church would make no terms with the fusion of religions (θεοκρασια {theokrasia}) which seemed to them the natural result of the fusion of nationalities. Apuleius makes Isis say, when she reveals herself to Lucius, 'cuius numen unicum multiformi specie, ritu vario, nomine multiiugo totus veneratur orbis'; and she then recounts her various names. This more than tolerant hospitality of the spirit seemed to the mixed population of the empire the logical recognition of the actual political situation, and those who deliberately stood outside it were at least potentially enemies of society. This was the real quarrel between the Church and the empire. It is the old State religion which Augustine attacks, ridiculing the innumerable Roman godlings whose names he perhaps found in Varro. It is true that Plato, Euripides, and Xenophanes had attacked the official mythology with hardly less asperity; but they did not escape censure, and the Christian alienation from the Olympians was far more fundamental.