Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/101

 oo OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Si rejected with contempt by every man of a liberal edu- CIlyi'. cation and understanding'^. -^V'. Since therefore the most sublime efforts of philoso- among the phy can extend no farther than feebly to point out the 'Treecrand desire, the hope, or, at most, the probability, of a fu- '<on'e; ture state, there is nothing, except a divine revelation, that can ascertain the existence, and describe the con- dition, of the invisible country which is destined to re- ceive the souls of men after their separation from the body. But we may perceive several defects inherent to the popular religions of Greece and Rome, which rendered them very unequal to so arduous a task. 1. The general system of their mythology was unsup- ported by any solid proofs; and the wisest among the pagans had already disclaimed its usurped authority. 2. The description of the infernal regions had been abandoned to the fancy of painters and of poets, who peopled them with so many phantoms and monsters, who dispensed their rewards and punishments M'ith so little equity, that a solemn truth, the most congenial to the human heart, was oppressed and disgraced by the absurd mixture of the wildest fictions''. 3. The doc- trine of a future state was scarcely considered among the devout polytheists of Greece and Rome as a fun- damental article of faitli. The providence of the gods, as it related to public communities, rather than to pri- vate individuals, was principally displayed on the visi- ble theatre of the present world. The petitions which were offered on the altars of Jupiter or Apollo, ex- pressed the anxiety of their worshippers for temporal happiness, and their ignorance or indifference concern- ing a future life'. The important truth of the immor- s See Cicero pro Cluent. c. 61 ; Caesar ap. Sallust. de Bell. Catilin. c. 50; Juvenal. Satir. ii. 149, Esse aliquos manes, et subterranea regna, Nee pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum aeie lavantur. '' The eleventh book of the Odyssey gives a very dreary and incoherent account of the infernal shades. Pindar and Virgil have embellished the picture ; but even those poets, though more correct than their great model, are guilty of very strange inconsistencies. See Bayle, Responses aux Questions d'un Provincial, part iii. c. 22. ' See the sixteenth epistle of the first book of Horace, the thirteenth g2