In his young days he was intimate with the
famous Pontifex Maximus, Mucius Scaevola, who held that there were
three religions,--that of the poets, that of the philosophers, and
that of the statesman, of which the last must be accepted and
acted on, whether it be true or not.[538] Cicero could hardly have
complained if this saying had been attributed to himself.
This attitude of mind, the combination of perfect freedom of thought
with full recognition of the legal obligations of the State and its
citizens in matters of religion, is not difficult for any one to
understand who is acquainted with the nature of the ius divinum and
the priesthood administering it. That ius divinum was a part of the
ius civile, the law of the Roman city-state; as the ius civile,
exclusive of the ius divinum, regulated the relations of citizen to
citizen, so did the ius divinum regulate the relations of the citizen
to the deities of the community. The priesthoods administering this
law consisted not of sacrificing priests, attached to the cult of a
particular god and temple, but of lay officials in charge of that part
of the law of the State; it was no concern of theirs (so indeed they
might quite well argue) whether the gods really existed or not,
provided the law were maintained.
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