““The explosion of grotesque immorality we associate with imperial Rome—open prostitution and perversion, the bloody gladiatorial combats, and so forth—is best understood as a response to this religious collapse: a mass of hopeless, worn-out cynics trying to shock themselves awake whether with pleasure or pain. Yet deep inside, they were hungering for something higher. What the Romans needed, and in the worst way, was a religion worthy of them—something they had always had to do without.””
