Excerpt from The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, Vol. 59: January-June, 1894 The object of most ancient religions was not to make men moral, but to oh tain from powerful supernatural beings, by performing acts (good or bad) which pleased them, safety and succor for citi zens and their city. Morality was not the business of religion, but of philoso phy, and it was the special subject of the dominant philosophy of Rome. Re ligion was not moral, save that there was necessarily a certain goodness in practices performed, not for any pleas ure in them, but to obtain advantag from fellow-citizens. The Roman sys tem was, in early days, a strict school of discipline, and co-existed with great simplicity of life. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.