_De Orat_. ii. 61.)]
II. It was an age at once of atheism and superstition. Strange to say,
the two things usually go together. Just as Philippe Egalite, Duke of
Orleans, disbelieved in God, and yet tried to conjecture his fate from
the inspection of coffee-grounds at the bottom of a cup,--just as Louis
XI. shrank from no perjury and no crime, and yet retained a profound
reverence for a little leaden image which he carried in his cap,--so the
Romans under the Empire sneered at all the whole crowd of gods and
goddesses whom their fathers had worshipped, but gave an implicit
credence to sorcerers, astrologers, spirit-rappers, exorcists, and every
species of imposter and quack. The ceremonies of religion were performed
with ritualistic splendour, but all belief in religion was dead and
gone. "That there are such things as ghosts and subterranean realms not
even boys believe," says Juvenal, "except those who are still too young
to pay a farthing for a bath." [16] Nothing can exceed the cool
impertinence with which the poet Martial prefers the favour of Domitian
to that of the great Jupiter of the Capitol.
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