Note 84 — Chapter VI · FREETHOUGHT IN ANCIENT ROME

There was, in fact, no spirit left for a Lucretian polemic against false beliefs. Everything in the nature of a searching criticism of life was menaced by the autocracy; Nero decreeing that no man should philosophize at Rome,84 after slaying or banishing a series of philosophers;85 Domitian crucifying the very scribes who copied the work of Hermogenes of Tarsus, in which he was obliquely criticized.86 When men in the mass crouched before such tyranny, helplessly beholding emperor after emperor overtaken by the madness that accrues to absolute power, they were disabled for any disinterested warfare on behalf of truth. All serious impeachment of religion proceeds upon an ethical motive; and in imperial Rome there was no room for any nobility of ethic save such as upbore the Stoics in their austere pursuit of self-control, in a world too full of evil to be delighted in.