The ancient Roman Religion, revolving round the State in this way, and moulding the life of every individual citizen into rigid external conformity with the official ideal, showed its strength in the production of a type of moral character which was perfect within the iron limits fixed by the civic authority.[38] It was dignified, austere, self-controlled, self-reverent. In the absence of great temptations, such as assail the secret strongholds of the human heart and lie beyond the influence of any external power, the ancient _Virtus Romana_ was equal to all the demands which a somewhat restricted code of ethics made upon it. But, when a wider knowledge of the world brought with it a weakening of the chain which bound the citizen to the central power; when, at the same time, a wider possession of the world and a richer enjoyment of its pleasures increased to an enormous extent the temptations directed against the purity and completeness of the moral character:[39] then it became alarmingly clear to thoughtful men that, unless the moral life was to run to seed in vicious weeds of self-indulgence, it was necessary to invoke the aid of a subtler and stronger influence than that of the State, an influence capable of varying its appeal in accordance with the infinitely varying moral needs of individual men.[40] It was with the hope of finding inspiration of this character that Lucretius and Cicero turned the attention of their countrymen to Greek Philosophy; it was there that they wished to find an ampler and more direct sanction in reason for cultivating a life of virtue. Reason, which had not been devoid of effect in the narrow sphere of Roman Religion, was now to be made the basis of morality in general; but it was reason directed to the purification and enlargement of the springs of personal conduct, and calling into play qualities which had lain dormant, or had been restricted, during the long dominance of the State over the individual citizen. To Regulus, his religion was the State; to Cicero, the State and its demands form but a small fraction of the moral life. A revival of Religion was to Cicero a revival of Philosophy; Reason, the parent of Philosophy, was also to be the parent of Conduct; the first of all virtues is the virtue of Knowledge, of intelligent discrimination between the things that make for morality and happiness and the things that make for immorality and misery.[41] Starting from this standpoint, Cicero, though approaching Greek Philosophy more in the spirit of the student than in that of the religious reformer, though participating, as his Letters show, in that general carelessness on religious matters which marked Roman Society during the later years of the Republic, was, nevertheless, the means of giving a powerful stimulus to that movement in the direction of deliberate personal morality, which became conspicuous in the Græco-Roman world of the Early Empire, and culminated under the