Aurelius had, indeed, ordained that there should be no more than a hundred and thirty-five festival days in the year; but in other respects he had followed in the steps of his predecessor, Antoninus Pius--commended especially for his "religion," his conspicuous devotion to its public ceremonies--and whose coins are remarkable for their reference to the oldest and most hieratic types of Roman mythology.

Aurelius had succeeded in more than healing the old feud between philosophy and religion, displaying himself, in singular combination, as at once the most zealous of philosophers and the most devout of polytheists, and lending himself, with an air of conviction, to all the pageantries of public worship.

To his pious recognition of that one orderly spirit, which, according to the doctrine of the Stoics, diffuses itself through the world, and animates it--a recognition taking the form, with him, of a constant effort towards inward likeness thereto, in the harmonious order of his own soul--he had added a warm personal devotion towards the whole multitude of the old national gods, and a great many new foreign ones besides, by him, at least, not ignobly conceived.

If the comparison may be reverently made, there was something here of the method by which the catholic church has added the cultus of the saints to its worship of the one Divine Being.
[183] And to the view of the majority, though the emperor, as the personal centre of religion, entertained the hope of converting his people to philosophic faith, and had even pronounced certain public discourses for their instruction in it, that polytheistic devotion was his most striking feature.

Philosophers, indeed, had, for the most part, thought with Seneca, "that a man need not lift his hands to heaven, nor ask the sacristan's leave to put his mouth to the ear of an image, that his prayers might be heard the better."-- Marcus Aurelius, "a master in Israel," knew all that well enough.