"a morass of ignorance and superstition"

Carroll Quigley, The Evolution of Civilizations, page 277:

In other words, the Classical culture we so esteem was the culture of a small minority of city dwellers except for a brief period of a century and a half (480-330 B.C.) in Athens. In this brief period it may be that the majority of the inhabitants of that city had some idea of what we call Classical culture. Otherwise, in other cities generally, and in rural areas always, the masses of the people lived in a morass of ignorance and superstition that is difficult for us to imagine. To them life was an irrational chaos of conflicting powers and forces of which the chief were a myriad of local gods and spirits.