FROM THALES TO LUCRETIUS. 



2 9 



handing over all things to the gods and supposing 

 all things to be guided by their nod." Then, in the 

 sixth and last book, the completion of which would 

 seem to have been arrested by his death, Lucretius 

 explains the " law of winds and storms," of earth- 

 quakes and volcanic outbursts, which men " foolishly 

 lay to the charge of the gods," who thereby make 

 known their anger. 



So, loath to suffer mute, 

 We, peopling the void air, 

 Make Gods to whom to impute 

 The ills we ought to bear ; 

 With God and Fate to rail at, suffering easily. 



And what a motley crowd of gods they were on 

 whose caprice or indifference he pours his vials of 

 anger and contempt! The tolerant pantheon of 

 Rome gave welcome to any foreign deity with re- 

 spectable credentials; to Cybele, the Great Mother, 

 imported in the shape of a rough-hewn stone with 

 pomp and rejoicings from Phrygia 204 B. c.; to Isis, 

 welcomed from Egypt; to Herakles, Demeter, As- 

 klepios, and many another god from Greece. But 

 these were dismissed from a man's thought when the 

 prayer or sacrifice to them had been offered at the 

 due season. They had less influence on the Roman's 

 life than the crowd of native godlings who were 

 thinly disguised fetiches, and who controlled every 

 action of the day. For the minor gods survive the 

 changes in the pantheon of every race. Of the Greek 

 peasant of to-day Mr. Rennel Rodd testifies, in his 



