Page:Essay on Crimes and Punishments (1775).djvu/214

 Livy tell us the same thing. No people were more religious; but they were too wise, and too great, to descend to the punishment of idle language or philosophic opinions. They were incapable of inflicting barbarous punishments on those who, with Cicero, himself an augur, had no faith in auguries; or on those who, like Cæsar, asserted in full senate, that the gods do not punish men after death.

It hath often been remarked that the senate permitted the chorus in the Troad to sing, ''There is nothing after death, and death itself is nothing. You ask, what becomes of the dead? They are where they were ere they were born''.

Was ever profanation more flagrant than this? From Ennius to Ausonius all his profanation, notwithstanding the respect for divine worship. Why were these things disregarded by the senate? because they did not, in any wise, affect the government of the state; because they