Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/39

 as dangerous to the stability of the Republic; the State could brook no rival in her affections: the devotion of Regulus and the suppression of the Bacchanalia bear equal witness to a firm insistence on the control of personal emotion as a cardinal principle of Roman administration. The apparently paradoxical and casuistical position assigned in the "De Natura Deorum" to Cotta, who believes in the national religion as a Roman while denying it as a philosopher, is sufficiently lucid and rational when regarded in the light