He looked upon the right of the magistrate to "observe the heaven" as a part of an excellent constitution,[537] and could not forgive Caesar for refusing in 59 B.C.to have his legislation paralysed by the fanatical declarations of his colleague that he was going to "look for lightning." He firmly believed in the value of the _ius divinum_ of the State.

In his treatise on the constitution (_de Legibus_) he devotes a whole book to this religious side of constitutional law, and gives a sketch of it in quasi-legal language from which it appears that he entirely accepted the duty of the State to keep the citizen in right relation to the gods, on whose good-will his welfare depended.

He seems never to have noticed that the State was neglecting this duty, and that, as we saw just now, temples and cults were falling into decay, strange forms of religion pressing in.

Such things did not interest him; in public life the State religion was to him a piece of the constitution, to be maintained where it was clearly essential; in his own study it was a matter of philosophical discussion.

In his young days he was intimate with the famous Pontifex Maximus, Mucius Scaevola, who held that there were three religions,--that of the poets, that of the philosophers, and that of the statesman, of which the last must be accepted and acted on, whether it be true or not.[538] Cicero could hardly have complained if this saying had been attributed to himself.
This attitude of mind, the combination of perfect freedom of thought with full recognition of the legal obligations of the State and its citizens in matters of religion, is not difficult for any one to understand who is acquainted with the nature of the ius divinum and the priesthood administering it.