Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers

Seneca: His Character and Environment
The Roman gods were, in a far larger measure than
those of the Greeks, personifications of abstract
qualities. There was thus a wide scope for project
ing
into their character the salient traits of the
.
worshiper
The gods, then, being an abstraction, and the state
being the mightiest visible representation of human
power, it required no great effort of the imagination
to regard its head as divine, in the sense which the
Romans attached to the term. The unthinking multi
tude naturally fell in with the ideas
of their leaders,
and even the better class of men rarely protested
because they considered the ceremony
of little mo
ment, or because protests would have been unavailing.
Strangely, too, the belief in fate, in an inevitable
destiny, did much to paralize the free action of many
of the bravest men. The fate of the republic, the
destiny of the Roman people, regarded as an immut
able law of nature, the utter insignificance
individual either expressed or implied, are
of the
ideas that
figure prominently in the literature of ancient Rome.
It has been truly said that Rome attained its great
ness without great men. Almost from its remotest
beginnings it was like an organism
in which each
separate cell, though incapable of life by itself, per
forms its function as part of a whole and contributes
to its life and growth. In this case the cell, as we
may designate each individual moral entity, though
conscious in a sense of a life apart, was powerless to
modify the whole organism.
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