This is the only way in which we can satisfactorily account for the
systematic efforts of Augustus to renovate the old religious rites and
priesthoods, and we can fairly argue back from it to the tendencies of
the generation immediately before him. He knew that the proletariate
of Rome and Italy still believed, as their ancestors had always
believed, that state and individual would alike suffer unless the gods
were properly propitiated; and that in order to keep them quiet and
comfortable the sense of duty to the gods must be kept alive even
among those who had long ceased to believe in them. It was fortunate
indeed for Augustus that he found in the great poet of Mantua one who
was in some sense a prophet as well as a poet, who could urge the
Roman by an imaginative example to return to a living pietas,--not
merely to the old religious forms, but to the intelligent sense of
duty to God and man which had built up his character and his empire.
In Cicero's day there was also a great poet, he too in some sense a
prophet; but Lucretius could only appeal to the Roman to shake off the
slough of his old religion, and such an appeal was at the time both
futile and dangerous.
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