[36] Cf. BOISSIER: _De la Religion Romaine_, vol. i. p. 17.—“Nonseulement la religion romaine n’encourage pas la dévotion, mais on peut dire qu’elle s’en méfie. C’est un peuple fait pour agir; la rêverie, la contemplation mystique lui sont étrangères et suspectes. Il est avant tout ami du calme, de l’ordre, de la regularité; tout ce qui excite et trouble les âmes lui déplaît.” Boissier quotes as the remark of Servius on _Georgics_, 3. 456, the words, “_Majores religionem totam in experientia collocabant_;” but what Servius really wrote was, “_Majores enim expugnantes religionem, totum in experientia collocabant_,” and he gives an apt reference to Cato’s speech on the Catilinarian conspiracy as reported by Sallust:—“Non votis neque suppliciis muliebribus auxilia deorum parantur: vigilando, agendo, _bene consulendo_, prospere omnia cedunt.” Propertius (iii. 22) boasts that Rome is free from the more extravagantly emotional legends of Greek mythology. [37] CICERO: _De Nat. Deor._ lib. iii.—Cf. the “theory of Twofold Truth,” which was “accepted without hesitation by all the foremost teachers in Italy during the sixteenth century,” who “were careful to point out, they were philosophers, and not theologians.”—_The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance_, by John Owen (p. 186, second edition). [38] CICERO: _Tusc. Disp._ i. 1.—“Iam illa quæ natura, non literis, adsecuti sunt, neque cum Græcia neque ulla cum gente sunt conferenda; quæ enim tanta gravitas, quæ tanta constantia, magnitudo animi, probitas, fides, quæ tam excellens in omni genere virtus in ullis fuit, ut sit cum majoribus nostris comparanda?” [39] A situation forecast in the well-known passage of Plato’s _Republic_, 619 C, in reference to the soul who has chosen for his lot in life “the most absolute despotism he could find.”—“He was one of those who had lived during his former life under a well-ordered constitution, and hence a measure of virtue had fallen to his share, _through the influence of habit, unaided by philosophy_.” (Davis and Vaughan’s translation.) What could more accurately describe the character of early Roman morality than these words? [40] It was inability to grasp this truth that explained the “patriotic” opposition of the Elder Cato to the lectures of Carneades, Critolaus, and Diogenes. He was “unwilling that the public policy of Rome, which for the Roman youth was the supreme norm of judgment and action, and was possessed of unconditional authority, should, through the influence of foreign philosophers, become subordinated, in the consciousness of these youths, to a more universal ethical norm.” UEBERWEG: _Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie_ (Morris and Porter’s translation, p. 189, vol. i.). (Cf. M. MARTHA: _Le Philosophe Carnéade à Rome_.)