forth, and numberless victims bled at the altars of Neptune and Mars. The Pontifex ascended with supreme dominion to the loftiest shrine; while beneath, the Pantheon, and the temple of Apollo of the Palatine, and of Diana of the Janiculum, and the glorious house of Victory, were redolent with Sabæan incense. All worldly wisdom, wealth, and art, waited on the mistress of the world. Popularly considered, the ancestral deities of Rome had invested her children with such glory, that they lived in their worship, throve by their favor, and as long as they served them they were invincible. The pagan religion had a powerful control over unreflecting devotees. Its temples, priests, mysteries, sacrifices, and magnificent processions, which called to their aid the varied attractions of sculpture, painting, and music, awakened a variety of entrancing emotions, and conspired to work the most effective delusion. Moreover, the more enlightened took especial pains to cherish the prejudice that, to the deep popular respect for the gods of the Republic, the unexampled success of the national arms was to be attributed. The piety of Romulus and of Numa was believed to have laid the foundations of their greatness. To use their own language, "It was by exercising religious discipline in the camp, and by fortifying the city with sacred rites, with vestal virgins, and the various degrees of a numerous priesthood, that they had stretched their dominion beyond the paths of the sun and the limits of the ocean." So strongly were the Romans attached to their religion, that Æmilius Paulus, in his consulship, ordered the temples of Isis and Serapis, gods not legally recognized, to be destroyed, and, observing the religious fear which checked the people, he himself seized an axe, and struck the first blow against the portals of the sacred edifice. On several occasions the senate exerted its power to prevent religious innovations. Augustus directed his state-policy and energy to the restoring of the ancient laws, and the maintenance of the primitive belief. The effort was, however, too late; the impossibility of success in such an endeavor lay in the fact that old things were passing away, and all was soon to become new. The emperor strove to effect the closest union of divine worship with the state; but when a Nero was clothed with the highest priestly dignity, when a Divus Tiberius, or a Divus Caligula received divine honors after death, surely redemption, rather than restoration, was what the world most required. Roman society was rapidly decaying through excessive vice and the outrageous inequality of conditions. The palaces of the rich were more like luxurious cities, while the middle class had totally disappeared, and the great mass of the population was composed of slaves. Immense speculations were made upon human beings. Atticus, the friend of Cicero, had slaves taught and trained, to sell at a higher price. Many citizens possessed from ten to twenty thousand vassals.