their conflicts had engendered were exchanged for universal
peace.

Not only as a token of the conquest she had made but also as a
gratification to her pride, the conquering republic brought the
gods of the vanquished peoples to Rome. With disdainful
toleration, she permitted the worship of them all. That paramount
authority exercised by each divinity in his original seat
disappeared at once in the crowd of gods and goddesses among whom
he had been brought. Already, as we have seen, through
geographical discoveries and philosophical criticism, faith in
the religion of the old days had been profoundly shaken. It was,
by this policy of Rome, brought to an end.

MONOTHEISM IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE. The kings of all the conquered
provinces had vanished; in their stead one emperor had come. The
gods also had disappeared. Considering the connection which in
all ages has existed between political and religious ideas, it
was then not at all strange that polytheism should manifest a
tendency to pass into monotheism. Accordingly, divine honors were
paid at first to the deceased and at length to the living
emperor.

The facility with which gods were thus called into existence had
a powerful moral effect. The manufacture of a new one cast
ridicule on the origin of the old Incarnation in the East and
apotheosis in the West were fast filling Olympus with divinities.
In the East, gods descended from heaven, and were made incarnate
in men; in the West, men ascended from earth, and took their seat
among the gods. It was not the importation of Greek skepticism