Foreign Influence.—The two chief notes of the next period were superstition and scepticism: both the populace and the edu cated classes lost faith in the old religion, but they supplied its place in different ways. The disasters of the early part of the second Punic War revealed an unparalleled religious nervousness: portents and prodigies were announced from all quarters, it was felt that the divine anger was on the State, yet there was no belief in the efficacy of the old methods for restoring the pax deum. Accordingly recourse was had, under the direction of the Sibyl line books, to new forms of appeal for the divine help, the general vowing of the first fruits (Tier sacrum) and the elaborate Greek lectisternium after Trasimene in 217 B.C., and the human sacri fice in the forum after Cannae in the following year. The same spirit continues to show itself in the introduction of Greek deities and their ready identification with gods of the old religion. Thus we hear of temples dedicated to Iuventas = Hebe (191 B.c.), Diana = Artemis (179 B.c.), Mars = Ares (138 B.c.), and find even the Bona Dea (q.v.) identified with a Greek goddess of women, Damia. At the same time cult statues are made in which the identified Greek type is usually adopted without change, with such curious results as the representation of the Lares under the form of the Dioscuri. But more far-reaching still was the order of the Sibylline books in 206 s.c. for the introduction of the wor ship of the Magna Mater (see GREAT MOTHER OF THE GODS) from Pessinus and her installation on the Palatine in 101 B.C.: the door was thus opened to the wilder and more orgiastic cults of Greece and the Orient.
Oriental Deities.—Af ter Magna Mater came the secret cult of Bacchus, which had to be suppressed by decree of the senate in 186 s.c., and later on the cults of Ma of Phrygia, and the Egyp tian Isis were established. In all these more emotional rituals, the populace sought expression for religious feelings which were not satisfied by the formal worship of the older deities. Mean while a corresponding change was taking place in the attitude of the educated classes owing to the spread of Greek literature. The knowledge of Greek legends set poets and antiquarians at work on the task of creating a Roman anthropomorphic mythology. In this way grew up the "religion of the poets," whose falseness and shallowness was patent even to contemporary thinkers. But more important was the influence of philosophy, which led soon enough to a general scepticism among the upper classes.
Scepticism.—In the last century of the Republic the two later Greek schools of Epicureanism and Stoicism laid hold on Roman society. The influence of Epicureanism was wholly destructive to religion, but not perhaps very widespread: Stoicism became the creed of the educated classes and produced attempts at a reconciliation of popular religion with philosophy. Since, how ever, the former was regarded as untrue in itself, but a presenta tion of truth suited to the popular mind, the way was opened for statecraft to use religion as its tool.
The result was twofold. Worship passed into formalism and formalism into disuse. Some of the old cults passed away alto gether, others survived in name but were wholly devoid of inner meaning. The old priesthoods came to be regarded as tiresome restrictions on political life and were neglected: from 87 to 11 B.C. the office of flamen Dialis was vacant. On the other hand
religion passed into the hands of the politicians : cults were en couraged or suppressed from political motives, the membership of the colleges of pontifices and augurs was sought for its social and political advantages, and augury was debased till it became the mere tool of the politician. Little survived but the household cult, protected by its own genuineness and vitality.
Imperial Religion.—The Augustan revival was largely politi cal, a part of his plan for the general renaissance of Roman life focused no longer on the abstract notion of the State, but on the persons of an imperial house. He saw, however, that no revival could be effective which did not appeal to the religious sentiments of the populace. It was thus his business to revitalize the old forms with a new and more vigorous content. His new palace on the Palatine was to be the centre of the new popular religion. With this object he consecrated there his new temple of Apollo (28 B.c.), whom he had adopted as his special patron at Actium, and transferred to its keeping the Sibylline books, thus marking the new headquarters of the Graeco-Roman religion.
Similar in purpose was his institution of the Secular Games (eudi saeculares) in 17 B.0 Horace's hymn written for the festi val is a good epitome of Augustus's religious intentions. Further he established a new shrine of Vesta Augusta within the palace. Still more marked was the building of a great temple at the end of his new forum to Mars Ultor—Mars, the ancestor of the Julian family now to be worshipped as the avenger of Caesar's mur derers. He also erected on the spot where Caesar's body had been cremated in the Forum a permanent temple to his adopted father, under the definitely religious title of dims Julius. No doubt he also did much generally to revive the ancient cults; he rebuilt, as he tells us himself, 82 temples which had fallen into disrepair, he re-established the old priesthoods and filled once more the office of flamen Dialis. But religious feeling was now to be mainly diverted to the reigning house, and this project was aided by the natural prominence in the palace of the cult of the genius of the emperor himself. As the palace cults became national, the worship of the genius was bound to spread, and ultimately Augustus sanctioned its celebration at the compita (crossways) together with the worship of the old lares. But here he and the wiser of his successors drew the line, and though under oriental influence divine honours were paid to the living emperor outside Italy, they were never permitted officially in Rome.
With this last period the story of the genuine Roman religion draws to a close. For, though the form of the old cults was long preserved, the vital spirit was almost gone. In the popular mind the many exciting oriental cults held undisputed sway; and with the more educated a semi-religious philosophy gave men a clearer monotheistic conception and an idea of individual relations with the divine in prayer. It was with these elements (fiercely antago nistic because so closely allied in character) that the battle of Christianity was really fought, and though, after its official adop tion, the old religion lingered on as "paganism" and died hard at the end, it was really doomed from the moment when the Augus tan revival had taken its irrecoverable bias in the direction of the emperor-worship.