In practical ethics the Epicureans did not differ much from the other systems of their time. They taught that happiness must be found in the avoidance of pain, and that inasmuch as some pleasures have painful results they were to be rejected, as some pains were to be accepted, for they were followed by pleasure; and they held that in self-control and choice lay the means by which man could attain to his goal, which was ἀταραξία, complete repose of the mind. So the Epicurean tried to reach an end similar to that of the Stoic, although his premises were somewhat different. Epicureanism made a natural appeal to men in a time like the last century and a half of the Republic, when the ancient confidence in the state religion was gone, when the simplicity of the earlier centuries had been replaced by a more elaborate method of living, made possible through the rapid increase of wealth, and when in every department of Roman life rapid changes were taking place. Yet for various reasons Epicureanism gradually lost its hold. It may be that the passivity which it engendered failed to make a lasting appeal to the Roman mind, or more probably other philosophies may have offered more attractive means of attaining the same goal of happiness. At any rate, as I pointed out in an earlier lecture, the Roman temperament had an especial leaning towards Stoicism. I there spoke of the introduction of Stoicism at Rome by Panaetius during the second century B.C., and I sketched the tendencies of his system so far as popular religion was concerned. It was probably Panaetius who was responsible for that threefold theology which was set forth by the famous Scaevola, who declared that there were three classes of gods—those of the poets, those of the statesmen, and those of the philosophers. The mythical theology of the poets, he said, was full of absurd and degrading stories unworthy of the attention of men; the religion of the state was nothing but a wise device, a useful convention adopted by statesmen as suited to the necessities of the political organism; but the theology of the intelligent man, the philosopher, was alone true, yet naturally it was beyond the power of the common man to grasp. Such was the attitude of the most famous jurist and the head of the state religion at the beginning of the last century before our era.[273] A little later Varro, the famous polyhistor, in writing of the gods and religion in his great Encyclopedia of Roman Antiquities, made a similar distinction between theologies and showed throughout his treatment the pantheistic influence of the Stoic philosophy. In his works he was the first fully to combine the mythological traditions with the philosophic doctrines which the Romans had been learning for over a century.