not to criticize your poem, but one of the things i always admired about the ancient polytheistic religions is that they were very syncretistic and, to my knowledge (and i was a classical studies major), almost never made any kind of holy war on each other.  they usually had no problem accepting and appropriating each other's gods, which they reasoned were just different names for the same things. 

they did often become violent went threatened by the rise of monotheism, as in the case of the egyptian priesthood against akhenaten, the israelite monarchs against the prophets, or the meccans against muhammad, but even cursory research will usually reveal the violence was chiefly motivated by politics and/or economics, since monotheism claimed exclusivity and that meant no more temple revenues if it should take hold.  apollo felt much more threatened by socrates than by horus.

Of course Socrates was more of a threat because he was one of their own and therefore the public was more likely to listen to him.

Having said that, the ancients of any culture, be it Egyptians, or Greeks or Romans, they believed in their gods, as zealously as modern humans do today.

Do not equate the ancient's "progressiveness" as being the same as our modern pluralistic secularism in the west today. "Outsiders" in any ancient culture, polytheist, or monotheist, were tolerated at best, as long as they "knew their place", and dissent was just as squashed.

They were much more barbaric to minorities than the west is today and every culture was like that.

The ancient attitude of "progressiveness" was, "We will let you live, as long as you don't rock the boat".

Our secular governments today protect rocking the boat.

"Secular" doesn't mean "godless", and Christianity did not promote pluralism, the secular "age of enlightenment" bucked the theocratic rule of Europe of the time. The idea that your mind, and what you believed, was up to you, not to be favored by, or discriminated by the government.

Our government has gotten involved in things it shouldn't have. But, that has happend far more under right wingers, than the pluralist "left". Puritans on the right are the ones are far too ready to "save" the world.

You   need to stop watching FAUX and O'Crappy's talking points.

Do you think Thomas Jefferson was a conservative? Economic? I cant argue that, never studied his money policies. BUT, socially, if he were alive today, he would be for gay marriage and atheists running for office.

1."Question with boldness even the existence of a god, for if there be one, surely he would pay more homage to reason than to that of blindfolded fear".

2."Because religious belief, or NON-BELIEF, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights."

3."If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such thing exists."

4."Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law."

5. "The priests of the different religious sects ... dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live."

6. "Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."

7. "The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."

TO NAME A FEW.

Now, if you ask me why I did not quote sources, is because I ALREADY HAVE DONE MY HOMEWORK!

I did not take the initial sources or websites I found these at, at their word. All these quotes are widely available and cross referenced.

END................

You do not have to believe me, just do your own homework.

Would you call him a "liberal"? He only wrote the prototype in the "Virgina religious freedom act", that was the prototype for the First Amendment.

whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa.

whoa.

hold on there, hoss.  it wasn't as monolithic as that, not by a looooong shot.

first of all, i take issue with your lumping together "greeks and romans," as if you were talking about red and green apples.  that's a common convention, but an ignorant one.  italians and greeks were about as different back then as they are today, if not more so because of the isolation.

of course, in those days there was neither a united greece nor a united italy.  the hellenic people lived in independent poli, each with its own form of government.  the most common form was oligarchy, in which a council of elders ruled (not exactly an elected senate--usually members of elite families).  there are examples of strong individual leaders coming to the fore, like pericles in athens, but this was not the rule.  there was no great unifying hellenistic monarch until the alexandrian empire.

as for rome, your terminology is all messed up.  you lump together three entirely different ideas as though they were similes: caesar, dictator, and king.  let's start with king.

the last roman king was tarquinius superbus, an etruscan, who was overthrown by lucius junius brutus in 509 b.c.e.  the roman revolt established the roman republic, and for at least the next two or three hundred years, we have no evidence that shows us it was anything other than that: a republic, with a senate, two consuls, and various other elected officials.  of course it was hardly a liberal democracy in the modern sense: the patrician elite held most of the power until a series of plebeian revolts around the second century b.c.e. established the very powerful office of tribunes of the people, who held veto power in the government and represented the interests of the plebs.  this unrest culminated in the revolt of the gracchi, who were two such tribunes, and the attempt to establish land reform.

now for dictator.  rome had many dictators.  the idea of dictator was enshrined in the constitution.  a dictatorship could be established in times of national emergency, usually war, similar to martial law.  after the emergency had passed, the dictator was to relinquish his power, which is exactly what happened with dictators like sulla, for example.  in the first century, however, as the republic approached an unbearable level of decadence and political corruption, julius caesar refused to give up his dictatorial powers and seized the city of rome by force.

caesar was not a king.  he never referred to himself as such.  he was not a member of a dynasty, nor did he establish a dynasty.  in fact, even in the highest stages of imperial roman autocracy, dynasties never lasted long.  and, contrary to popular belief, he was never emperor either.  nor did he hold power in any totalitarian sense, though he was certainly very powerful.  nor was the name "caesar" at this point anything more than a name.

the first emperor was his nephew and adopted son, gaius julius caesar octavianus, who came to be known as augustus.  augustus was a very shrewd politician.  he became the first imperator, which was a designation granted him by the senate, as someone with extraordinary executive power.  he also never referred to himself as a king, nor was he a king in any proper sense, but he was the primus inter pares, the "first among equals."  he held almost all the political offices at one time or another: senator, consul, tribune, etc., but for much of his reign he was officially nothing more than a private citizen.

decades and fleeting dynasties went by: the original caesars, the flavians, the antonines, etc., until the office of emperor was constantly changing hands from one general to another in a dizzying series of revolts.  then, in the third century c.e., from dalmatia, came another genius, diocletian.  diocletian united the empire under two emperors, both called "augustus," and two sub-emperors, both called "caesar."  this is when the name caesar officially became a political office, and it did not denote a king or even an emperor, but rather his deputy.  diocletian established his capital in byzantium and was the first roman ruler in at least 700 years to take on the trappings of a monarchy.  he proclaimed himself basileus, the greek word for king, as well as dominus et deus.

so, as you can see, one can't distill the ancient world into one big "puppet" regime from start to finish.

as for your assertion that the ancients believed in their polytheistic gods as fervently as modern monotheists believe in jesus or allah, well, i just think that's nonsense.  after four years of studying the original sources in college, i can safely say that the anthropomorphic gods of homer and hesiod were generally ridiculed and often criticized by the time of plato and almost all the roman literature i've read, from the late republic to constantine, is very cynical where the gods are concerned.  the only thing approaching devotional literature from the classical world is usually neoplatonic, e.g., plotinus, who could hardly be accused of believing in any sort of personal god.  even the exclusivist yahweh of deutero-isaiah looks like zeus next to plotinus and the neoplatonists.

but, hey, even a degree doesn't guarantee one has been exposed to everything.  if you can show me evidence that the average roman or dalmatian or illyrican believed in apollo as wholeheartedly as the average shiite believes in allah and the mahdi, i'll certainly take it into account. 

In all seriousness, I did fall for some of the myths. Thanks for clearing up some of those for me. BUT, without a doubt they were not anywhere close to the same level of pluralism or tollerence the way the west has today.