it and its gods. But the Vestals have no parallel in Greek life.
Asiatic rites and devotions, it is true, from an early period obtained
a foothold among the populace; but they were either discountenanced,
or by being made part of the civic ritual were disarmed of their
mystic or monastic elements. An epitaph in the Anthology commemorates
two aged priestesses as having been happy in their love for their
husbands and children;[2] nothing could be further from the Eastern or
the medieval sentiment of a consecrated life. Thus, if Greek religion
did not strike deep, it spread wide; and any one, as he thought fit,
might treat his whole life, or any part of it, as a religious act. And
there was a strong feeling that the observance of such duties in a
reasonable manner was proper in itself, besides being probably useful
in its results; no gentleman, if we may so translate the idea into
modern terms, would fail in due courtesy to the gods. That piety
sometimes met with strange returns was an undoubted fact, but that it
should be so inexplicable and indeed shocking even to the least
superstitious and most dispassionate minds.[3]

With the diffusion of a popularised philosophy religious feeling
became fainter among the educated classes, and correspondingly more
uncontrolled in the lower orders. The immense mass of dedicatory
epigrams written in the Alexandrian and Roman periods are in the main
literary exercises, though they were also the supply of a real and
living demand. The fashion outlived the belief; even after the
suppression of pagan worship scholars continued to turn out imitations
of the old models. One book of the Anthology of Agathias[4] consisted
entirely of contemporary epigrams of this sort, "as though dedicated
to former gods." But of epigrams dealing with religion in its more
intimate sense there are, as one would expect, very few in the
Anthology until we come to collections of Christian poetry. This light