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38
THE DECLINE AND FALL
CHAP. II.
----cious pretext of abolishing human sacrifices, the emperors Tiberius and Claudius suppressed the dangerous
power of the druids[1]: but the priests themselves, their gods and their altars, subsisted in peaceful obscurity till the final destruction of paganism[2].
- ↑ Sueton. in Claud. Plin. Hist. Nat. xxx. 1.
- ↑ Pelloutier, Histoire des Celtes, torn. vi. p. 230 — 252.
- ↑ Seneca, Consolat. ad Helviam, p. 74. edit. Lips.
- ↑ Dionysius Halicarn. Antiquitat. Roman. 1. ii.
- ↑ In the year of Rome 701, the temple of Isis and Serapis was demolished by the order of the senate, (Dion Cassius, 1. xl. p. 252.) and even by the hands of the consul Valerius Maximus, i. 3. After the death of Caesar, it was restored at the public expense, Dion, 1. xlvii. p. 501. When Augustus was in Egypt, he revered the majesty of Serapis, (Dion, 1. li. p. 647.) but in the Pomasrium of Rome, and a mile round it, he prohibited the worship of the Egyptian gods, Dion, 1. liii. p. 679 ; 1. liv. p. 735. They remained, however, very fashionable under his reign, (Ovid, de Art. Amand.l. i.) and that of his successor, till the justice of Tiberius was provoked to some acts of severity. See Tacit. Annal. ii. 85 ; Joseph. Antiquit. 1. xviii. c. 3.
- ↑ TertuUian, in Apologetic, c. 6. p. 74. edit. Havercamp. I am inclined to attribute their establishment to the devotion of the Flavian family.
- ↑ See Livy, 1. xi. and xxix.