THE MULTITUDE & CONTROL

Romulus, Tatius and Numa enslaved the gods to politics, and made religion for the state! THIS AND THOSE RESPONSIBLE DISPLEASE ME THE MOST! Classic scholars know that the heathen hell was early copied by the Catholic church, and that almost its entire details afterwards entered into the creeds of Catholic and Protestant churches up to a century ago. And not only this, but heathen writers declare that the doctrine was invented to awe and control the multitude. Polybius writes: Since the multitude is ever fickle * * * there is no other way to keep them in order but by fear of the invisible world! on which account our ancestors seem to me to have acted judiciously when they contrived to bring into the popular belief these notions of the gods and the infernal regions. Seneca says: Those things which make the infernal regions terrible, the darkness, the prison, the river of flaming fire, the judgment seat, etc, are all a fable. Livy declares that Numa invented the doctrine, a most efficacious means of governing an ignorant and barbarous populace! Starbo writes: The multitude are restrained from vice by the punishments the gods are said to inflict upon offenders, * * * for it is impossible to govern the crowd of women and all the common rabble by philosophical reasoning: these things the legislators used as scarecrows to terrify the childish multitude!