§ 4
One element of betterment there was in the life of declining Rome, until the Roman ideals were superseded by oriental. Even the Augustan poets, Horace and Ovid, had protested like the Hebrew prophets, and like Plato and like Cicero, against the idea that rich sacrifices availed with the Gods above a pure heart; and such doctrine, while paganism lasted, prevailed more and more.[92] At the same time, Horace rejects the Judæo-Stoic doctrine, adopted in the gospels, that all sins are equal, and lays down the rational moral test of utility—Utilitas justi propè mater et aequi.[93] The better and more thoughtful men who grew up under the autocracy, though inevitably feebler and more credulous in their thinking than those of the later commonwealth, developed at length a concern for conduct, public and private, which lends dignity to the later philosophic literature, and lustre to the imperial rule of the Antonines. This concern it was that, linking Greek theory to Roman practice, produced a code of rational law which could serve Europe for a thousand years. This concern too it was, joined with the relatively high moral quality of their theism, that ennobled the writing of Seneca[94] and Epictetus and Maximus of Tyre; and irradiates the words as well as the rule of Marcus Aurelius. In them was anticipated all that was good[95] in the later Christian ethic, even as the popular faiths anticipated the Christian dogmas; and they cherished a temper of serenity that the Fathers fell far short of. To compare their pages with those of the subsequent Christian Fathers—Seneca with Lactantius, “the Christian Cicero”; Maximus with Arnobius; Epictetus with Tertullian; the admirable Marcus, and his ideal of the “dear city of Zeus,” with the shrill polemic of Augustine’s City of God and the hysteria of the Confessions—is to prove a rapid descent in magnanimity, sanity, self-command, sweetness of spirit, and tolerance. What figures as religious intolerance in the Cæsars was, as we have seen, always a political, never a religious, animosity. Any prosecution of Christians under the Antonines was certainly on the score of breach of law, turbulence, or real or supposed malpractices, not on that of heresy—a crime created only by the Christians themselves, in their own conflicts.
The scientific account of the repellent characteristics of the Fathers, of course, is not that their faith made them what they were, but that the ever-worsening social and intellectual conditions assorted such types into their ecclesiastical places, and secured for them their influence over the types now prevailing among the people. They too stand for the intellectual dissolution wrought by imperialism. When all the higher forms of intellectual efficiency were at an end, it was impossible that on any religious impulse whatever there should be generated either a higher code of life or a saner body of thought than those of the higher paganism of the past. Their very arguments against paganism are largely drawn from old “pagan” sources. Those who still speak of the rise of Christianity in the ancient world as a process of “regeneration” are merely turning historical science out of doors. The Christian Fathers had all the opportunity that a life of quasi-intellectual specialism could supply; and their liberty of criticism as regarded the moribund pagan creeds was a further gymnastic; but nothing could countervail the insanity of their intellectual presuppositions, which they could not transcend.
Inheriting the Judaic hypnotism of the Sacred Book, they could reason only as do railers; and the moral readjustment which put them in revolt against the erotic element in pagan mythology was a mere substitution of an ascetic neurosis for the old disease of imagination. Strictly speaking, their asceticism, being never rationalized, never rose to the level of ethic as distinguished from mere taboo or sacrosanct custom. As we shall see, they could not wholly escape the insurgence of the spirit of reason; but they collectively scouted it with a success attained by no other ostensibly educated priesthood of antiquity. They intellectually represent, in fact, the consummation of the general Mediterranean decadence.
For the rest, the “triumph” of the new faith was simply the survival of the forms of thought, and, above all, of the form of religious community, best fitted to the political and intellectual environment. The new Church organization was above all things a great economic endowment for a class of preachers, polemists, and propagandists; and between the closing of the old spheres of public life and the opening of the new,[96] the new faith was established as much by political and economic conditions as by its intellectual adaptation to an age of mental twilight.
Of the religion of the educated pagans in its last forms, then, it is finally to be said that it was markedly rationalistic as compared with the Christianity which followed, and has been on that ground stigmatized by Christian orthodoxy down till our own day. The religion of Marcus Aurelius is self-reverence, self-study, self-rule, plus faith in Deity; and it is not to be gainsaid that, next to his adoptive father Antoninus Pius, he remains the noblest monarch in ancient history; the nearest parallel being the more superstitious but still noble Julian, the last of the great pagan rulers. In such rulers the antique philosophy was in a measure justified of its children; and if it never taught them to grapple with the vast sociological problem set up by the Empire, and so failed to preserve the antique civilization, it at least did as much for them in that regard as the new faith did for its followers.
[1] Mommsen, History of Rome, bk. i, ch. 14 (Eng. tr. 1894, vol. i, pp. 282–83). Mommsen’s view of the antiquity of writing among the Latins (p. 280) is highly speculative. He places its introduction about or before 1000 B.C.; yet he admits that they got their alphabet from the Greeks, and he can show no Greek contacts for that period. Cp. pp. 167–68 (ch. x). Schwegler (Römische Geschichte, 1853, i, 36) more reasonably places the period after that of the Etruscan domination, while recognizing the Greek origin of the script. Cp. Ettore Pais, Ancient Legends of Roman History, Eng. tr. 1906, pp. 26–28; Pelham, Outlines of Roman History, 1893, p. 32. [↑]
[2] Schwegler, i, ch. i, § 12; Teuffel, Hist. of Roman Lit. ed. Schwabe, Eng. tr. 1900, i, 100–101, 104–10. [↑]
[4] Mommsen, bk. ii, ch. 8. Eng. tr. ii, 70. Such creation of deities by mere abstraction of things and functions had been the rule in the popular as distinguished from the civic religion. Cp. Augustine, De civitate Dei, iv, 16, 23; vi, 9, etc. It was the concomitant of the tendency noted by Livy: adeo minimis etiam rebus prava religio inserit deos (xxvii, 23). But the practice was not peculiar to the Romans, for among the Greeks were Gods or Goddesses of Wealth, Peace, Mercy, Shame, Fortune, Rumour, Energy, Action, Persuasion, Consolation, Desire, Yearning, Necessity, Force, etc. See Pausanias passim. The inference is that the more specific deities in all religions, with personal names, are the product of sacerdotal institutions or of poetic or other art. M. Boissier (i, 5), like Ihne, takes it for granted that the multitude of deified abstractions had no legends; but this is unwarranted. They may have had many; but there were no poets to sing, or priests to preserve and ritualize them. [↑]
[5] De natura Deorum, i, 42. [↑]
[6] Mr. Schuckburgh (History of Rome, 1894, p. 401, note) cites a translated passage in his fragments (Cicero, De Div. ii, 50; De nat. Deorum, iii, 32), putting the Epicurean view that the Gods clearly did not govern human affairs, “which he probably would have softened if he had not agreed with it.” Cp. Mommsen, iii, 113 (bk. ii, ch. 13). [↑]
[7] Fragmenta, ed. Hesselius, p. 226; Cicero, De Divinatione, i, 58. [↑]
[8] Mommsen, i, 301; ii, 71; iii, 117 (bk. i, ch. 15; bk. ii, ch. 8; bk. iii, ch. 13). Cicero, De Div. i, 41. [↑]
[9] Livy, xxix, 18. Dr. Warde Fowler (Religious Experience of the Roman People, p. 346) censures Mr. Heitland for calling Livy’s story “an interesting romance” (Hist. of Rom. Rep. ii, 229 note); remarking that “it is the fashion now to reject as false whatever is surprising,” and adding (p. 347): “It is certain, from the steps taken by the government ... that it is in the main a true account.” It may suffice to ask whether Dr. Fowler believes in all or any of the prodigia mentioned by Livy because the government “took steps” about them. [↑]
[10] Cp. Boissier, La religion romaine, i, 39, 346. [↑]
[12] Aulus Gellius (xv, 11) says the edict was de philosophis et de rhetoribus Latinis, but the senatus-consultum, as given by him, does not contain the adjective; and he goes on to tell that aliquot deinde annis post—really sixty-nine years later—the censors fulminated against homines qui NOVUM genus disciplinæ instituerunt ... eos sibi nomen imposuisse Latinas rhetoras. The former victims, then, were presumably Greek. Cp. Shuckburgh, p. 520; and Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, 1866, ii, 146. Professor Pelham (Outlines of Roman History, 1893, p. 179, note) mistakenly cites the senatus-consultum as containing the word “Latini.” The reading Latinis in Gellius’s own phrase has long been suspected. See ed. Frederic and Gronov, 1706. [↑]
[13] Plutarch, Cato, c. 22. [↑]
[14] Cicero, De. Repub., passim, ed. Halm. [↑]
[16] Suetonius, De claris rhetoribus. [↑]
[17] See in Cicero, De Oratore, iii, 24, the account by the censor Crassus of his reasons for preferring the Greek rhetors. [↑]
[18] Valerius Maximus, i, 3, 1. [↑]
[19] The culture history of the republican period, as partially recovered by recent archæology, shows a process of dissolution and replacement from a remote period. Cp. Ettore Pais, Ancient Legends of Roman History, Eng. tr. 1906, ch. ii, notably p. 18. [↑]
[20] De rerum natura, i, 50–135; cp. v, 1166. [↑]
[21] ii, 646–50 (the passage cited by Mr. Gladstone in the House of Commons in one of the Bradlaugh debates, with a confession of its noble beauty); and again ii, 1090–1105, and iii, 18–22. [↑]
[22] See Christianity and Mythology, pp. 52–57. [↑]
[23] See the account of the doctrine of the high-priest Scaevola, preserved by Augustine, De civ. Dei, iv, 27. He and Varro (id. iv, 31; vi, 5–7) agreed in rejecting the current myths, but insisted on the continued civic acceptance of them. On the whole question compare Boissier, La religion romaine, i, 47–63. [↑]
[24] Thus the satirist Lucilius, who ridiculed the popular beliefs, was capable, in his capacity of patriot, of crying out against the lack of respect shown to religion and the Gods (Boissier, pp. 51–52). The purposive insincerity set up in their thinking by such men must, of course, have been injurious to character. [↑]
[25] Cp. the De Divinatione, i, 2. [↑]
[26] E.g., Mr. A. J. Balfour’s Foundations of Belief. [↑]
[28] De Divinatione, ii, 33, 34, cp. ii, 12; and De nat. Deorum, i, 22. It is not surprising that in a later age, when the remaining pagans had no dialectic faculty left, the Christian Fathers, by using Cicero as a weapon against the cults, could provoke them into calling him impious (Arnobius, Adv. Gentes, iii, 6, 7). [↑]
[29] De Divinatione, ii, 22. [↑]
[31] De nat. Deorum, ii, 1. [↑]
[33] “It seems to me that, on the whole, among the educated and the rich, the indifferent must have been in the majority” (Boissier, p. 61). [↑]
[35] Cp. Long, Decline of Roman Republic, i, 438; ii, 38–40. Long remarks that Domitius, the accuser of Scaurus (who had prevented his election to the college of augurs), “used the name of religion for the purpose of damaging a political enemy; and the trick has been repeated, and is repeated, up to the present day. The Romans must have kept records of many of these trials. They were the great events of the times ...; and so we learn that three tribes voted against Scaurus, and thirty-two voted for him; but in each of these thirty-two tribes there was only a small majority of votes (pauca puncta) in favour of Scaurus.” [↑]
[36] See Long, i, 56, for a cynical estimate of the mode of manipulation of the Sibylline and other sacred books. [↑]
[37] Sallust, Bellum Catilin. c. 51. [↑]
[38] Suetonius, Julius, cc. 59, 77; Cicero, De Divinatione, ii, 24. Cp. Merivale, History of the Romans under the Empire, ed. 1865, ii, 424. [↑]
[39] Plutarch, Sulla, c. 29; Marius, c. 16. Long (Decline of Roman Republic, ii, 369) says of Sulla that, “though he could rob a temple when he wanted money, he believed in the religion of his time. We should call him superstitious; and a man who is superstitious is capable of any crime, for he believes that the Gods can be conciliated by prayers and presents.” [↑]
[40] Compare the fears which grew upon Cromwell in his last days. [↑]
[41] Pompeius, on the other hand, had many seers in his camp; but after his overthrow expressed natural doubts about Providence. Cicero, De Div. ii, 24, 47; Plutarch, Pompeius, c. 75. [↑]
[43] See Augustine’s citation from Varro, De civ. Dei, vi, 2. Cp. Sueton. Aug. 29. [↑]
[44] The only record to the contrary is the worthless scandal as to his “suppers of the Twelve Gods” (Sueton. Aug. 70). The statement of W. A. Schmidt that “none of the Julians was orthodox” (Geschichte der Denk- und Glaubensfreiheit im ersten Jahrhundert, 1847, p. 175) is somewhat overstrained. [↑]
[45] Dio Cassius, lii, 36. [↑]
[46] E.g., his encouragement of a new college of priests founded in his honour. Dio, xliv, 6. [↑]
[47] Sueton. Julius, 44, 56. The first public library actually opened in Rome was founded by Asinius Pollio under Augustus, and was placed in the forecourt of the temple of Liberty: Augustus founded two others; Tiberius a fourth, in his palace; Vespasian a fifth, in the temple of Peace; Domitian a sixth, on the Capitol. W. A. Schmidt, Gesch. der Denk- und Glaubensfreiheit, pp. 151–52, and refs. [↑]
[48] Boissier, pp. 67–108; Suetonius, Aug. xxix–xxxi. [↑]
[49] L’Abbé Beurlier, Le Culte Impérial, 1891, introd. and ch. 1; Boissier, ch. 2. Cp. p. 185, note, above. [↑]
[50] It would seem that the occasion on which he enraged the Senate by not rising to receive them (Sueton. Jul. 78) was that on which they came to announce that they had made him a God, Jupiter Julius, with a special temple and a special priest. See Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, v, 418. He might very well have intended to rebuke their baseness. But cp. Boissier, i, 122, citing Dio, xlvi, 6. [↑]
[51] iii, 46; x, 40; xliii, 13. [↑]
[53] As to the conflict between Horace’s bias and his policy, cp. Boissier, i. 193–201. [↑]
[57] Fasti, iv, 204. The preceding phrase, pro magno teste vetustas creditur, certainly has an ironic ring. [↑]
[59] Cp. Boissier, i, 228–29. [↑]
[60] Georgics, ii, 490, 493. Diderot originated the idea that the first of these lines and the two which follow it in Virgil had reference to Lucretius. Grimm, Correspondance Littéraire, ed. 1829–30, vi, 21–25. It is acquiesced in by W. Warde Fowler, Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero, 1909, p. 327. Sellar (Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil, 1877. p. 201) is doubtful on the point. [↑]
[61] Cp. Boissier, i, 193. [↑]
[65] The same note occurs in Virgil, Æneid, vi, 719–21. [↑]
[66] Hist. Nat. ii, 1, 5 (7). Pliny identifies nature and deity: “Per quæ declaratur haud dubie naturæ potentia, idque esse quod Deum vocamus” (last cit., end). [↑]
[67] Hist. nat. vii, 55 (56). Cp. Boissier, i, 300. [↑]
[69] See the praiseworthy treatise of Mr. J. A. Farrer, Paganism and Christianity, 1891, chs. 5, 6, and 7. [↑]
[70] “... vires religionis, ad quas maxime etiamnum caligat humanum genus.” Hist. nat. xxx, 1. [↑]
[72] Primus in orbe deos fecit timor. Frag. 22, ed. Burmanni. The whole passage is noteworthy. See also his Satyricon, c. 137, as to his estimate of sacerdotal sincerity. [↑]
[74] Porphyry, Epistle to Anebo (with Jamblichus). Chaeremon, however, is said to have regarded comets as divine portents. Origen, Ag. Celsus, bk. i, ch. 59. [↑]
[75] Prof. C. Martha, Les moralistes sous l’empire romain, ed. 1881, p. 341. [↑]
[76] W. A. Schmidt, who cites this act (Geschichte der Denk- und Glaubensfreiheit, pp. 31–33) as the beginning of the end of free speech in Rome, does not mention the detail given by Dio (xliv, 10), that Cæsar suspected the tribunes of having set on some of the people to hail him as king. But the unproved suspicion does not justify his course, which was a bad lapse of judgment, even if the suspicion were just. From this point a conspiracy against his life was natural. Cp. Long, Decline of the Roman Republic, v, 432–33. as to the facts. [↑]
[77] See W. A. Schmidt, pp. 34–108, for a careful analysis of the evolution. As to the book-censure, see pp. 101–104. [↑]
[78] Suetonius, Tiberius, c. 28. [↑]
[80] Annals, i, 73. That such a phrase should have been written by an emperor in an official letter, and yet pass unnoticed through antiquity save in one historical work, recovered only in the Renaissance, is one of the minor improbabilities that give colour to the denial of the genuineness of the Annals. [↑]
[82] Petronius, Satyricon, ad init. [↑]
[83] In the Annals (xiv, 50) it is stated that the book attacked senators and pontiffs; that it was condemned to be burned, and Vejento to be exiled; and that the book was much sought and read while forbidden; but that it fell into oblivion when all were free to read it. Here, again, there is no other ancient testimony. Vejento is heard of, however, in Juvenal, iv, 113, 123–29. [↑]
[84] Philostratus, Life of Apollonius, iv. 47. [↑]
[85] Cp. Schmidt, pp. 346–47. [↑]
[86] Suetonius, Domitian, c. 10. [↑]
[88] Suetonius, Tiberius, c. 36; Josephus, Antiquities, xviii, 3, §§ 4, 5. Josephus specifies isolated pretexts, which Suetonius does not mention. They are not very probable. [↑]
[89] Who destroyed 2,000 copies of prophetical books. Suetonius, Aug. c. 31. [↑]
[90] See, in the next chapter, as to the rationalistic mythology of Macrobius. [↑]
[91] Cp. Propertius, ii, 14, 27 sqq.; iii, 23, 19–20; iv, 3, 38; Tibullus, iv, 1, 18–23; Juvenal, as before cited, and xv, 133, 142–46. [↑]
[92] Plato, 2 Alcib.; Cicero, Pro Cluentio, c. 68; Horace, Carm. iii, 23, 17; Ovid, Heroides, Acont. Cydipp. 191–92; Persius, Sat. ii, 69; Seneca, De Beneficiis, i, 6. Cp. Diod. Sic. xii, 20; Varro, in Arnobius, Adv. Gentes, vii, 1. [↑]
[93] 1 Sat. iii, 96–98. Cp. Cicero, De Finibus, iv, 19, 27, 28; [Matt. v. 19–28]; [James, ii, 10]. Lactantius, again (Div. Inst. iii, 23). denounces the doctrine of the equality of offences as laid down by Zeno, giving no sign of knowing that it is also set forth in his own sacred books. [↑]
[94] On Seneca’s moral teaching, cp. Martha, Les Moralistes sous l’empire romain, pp. 57–66; Boissier, La religion romaine, ii, 80–82. M. Boissier further examines fully the exploded theory that Seneca received Christian teaching. On this compare Bishop Lightfoot, Dissertations on the Apostolic Age, pp. 237–92. [↑]
[95] Seneca was so advanced in his theoretic ethic as to consider all war on a level with homicide. Epist. xcv, 30. [↑]
[96] It is to be noted that preaching had begun among the moralists of Rome in the first century, and was carried on by the priests of Isis in the second; and that in Egypt monasticism had long been established. Martha, as cited, p. 67; Boissier, i, 356–59. Cp. Mosheim, 2 Cent. pt. ii, c. iii, §§ 13, 14, as to monasticism. [↑]