The modern sophistry could only succeed where, as in Athens, clever volubility was indigenous, and where, moreover, the long series of philosophical systems that had come and gone had accumulated huge piles of intellectual rubbish.

Against the Epicurean quietism, in fine, everything revolted that was sound and honest in the Roman character so thoroughly addressing itself to action.

Yet it found more partisans than Euhemerism and the sophistic school, and this was probably the reason why the police continued to wage war against it longest and most seriously.

But this Roman Epicureanism was not so much a philosophic system as a sort of philosophic mask, under which--very much against the design of its strictly moral founder-- thoughtless sensual enjoyment disguised itself for good society; one of the earliest adherents of this sect, for instance, Titus Albucius, figures in the poems of Lucilius as the prototype of a Roman Hellenizing to bad purpose.
Roman Stoa Far different were the position and influence of the Stoic philosophy in Italy.

In direct contrast to these schools it attached itself to the religion of the land as closely as science can at all accommodate itself to faith.