Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/471

Rh stirred men to ask fundamental questions about life. In his "Hippolytus" he shows his chaste hero brought to death because he will not yield to the goddess of love, and thus the poet belittles the sacred tradition; in "The Bacchæ" he exalts enthusiasm and inspiration above reason, not, however, without a certain cynicism at the end.

From the close of the fifth century philosophy began to take the place of the traditional religion for thinking men; yet philosophy did not break with the religious sentiment of the time. Eventually the spirit of individualism and cosmopolitanism destroyed men’s faith in the state religions, and although the ancient rituals continued to the end of antiquity, they never regained the position which they had in the sixth and fifth centuries B. C.