True then, true today and true forever.

Religion was invented long before empires and clergy INCREASED the USEFULNESS of belief.....religion was invented to rape women and brainwash boys into violence against neighboring tribes....cults preceded culture ....blind devotion to the first shamans who spoke in mysteries of life death birth and bribery

I understand the reference and it does apply to todays
ARENA...

The more things change...

I guess most of us here are wise although I doubt that sometimes

Still the same

Just as true today as then.

The usual misappropriation of this quote!

We must look to Gibbon. The actual quotation, which is Gibbon's paraphrase in Decline and Fall is

*"The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful". — Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. I, Ch. II

Note that Seneca is referring to worship, which is not religion, as such a concept was not existent in the Roman world