To break through the fast-bolted doors of Nature. Therefore his fervent energy of mind
Prevailed, and he passed onward, voyaging far Beyond the flaming ramparts of the world,
Ranging in mind and spirit far and wide Throughout the unmeasured universe; and thence A
conqueror he returns to us, bringing back Knowledge both of what can and what cannot Rise
into being, teaching us in fine Upon what principle each thing has its powers Limited, and its
deep-set boundary stone. Therefore now has Religion been cast down Beneath men's feet, and
trampled on in turn: Ourselves heaven-high his victory exalts.
The hatred of religion expressed by Epicurus and Lucretius is not altogether easy to understand,
if one accepts the conventional accounts of the cheerfulness of Greek religion and ritual. Keats
Ode on a Grecian Urn, for instance, celebrates a religious ceremony, but not one which could
fill men's minds with dark and gloomy terrors. I think popular beliefs were very largely not of
this cheerful kind. The worship of the Olympians had less of superstitious cruelty than the other
forms of Greek religion, but even the Olympian gods had demanded occasional human sacrifice
until the seventh or sixth century B.C., and this practice was recorded in myth and drama. *
Throughout the barbarian world, human sacrifice was still recognized in the time of Epicurus;
until the Roman conquest, it was practised in times of crisis, such as the Punic Wars, by even
the most civilized of barbarian populations.
As was shown most convincingly by Jane Harrison, the Greeks had, in addition to the official
cults of Zeus and his family, other more primitive beliefs associated with more or less
barbarous rites. These were to some extent incorporated in Orphism, which became the
prevalent belief among men of religious temperament. It is sometimes supposed that Hell was a
Christian invention, but this is a mistake. What Christianity did in this respect was only to
systematize earlier popular beliefs. From the beginning of Plato Republic it is
* Lucretius instances the sacrifice of Iphigenia as an example of the harm wrought by
religion. Bk. I, 85-100.