History as past ethics; an introduction to the history of morals

by P. V. N. Myers

IV. The Moral Evolution under the Pagan Empire

The bad bequest

Roman society throughout the first century of the pagan Empire, as mirrored in the literature of the period, presents a picture of frightful moral degeneracy. This state of things was largely an inheritance from the Republic. It was the continuation of that moral decline which began in the second century B.C., and some of the contributing causes of which, such as slavery, the spectacles of the amphitheater, the free distribution of corn, together with contact with the dissolute civilizations of the Orient, were considered briefly in the preceding pages. Since all these causes of moral degradation were still at work in the society of the early Empire, and as fresh agencies of malign influence were added to them, it was inevitable that the moral anarchy should not only continue but should grow worse.

The definitive establishment of the Empire and the passing of the liberal institutions of the Republic changed wholly the atmosphere in which had been nourished the virtues of Republican Rome. Political liberty was dead, and all true civic activity, which had been the very breath of life to the citizen of the ancient city, had come to an end. In the new world that was forming there was no room for the exercise of those patriotic virtues which had made the early history of Rome so great, and had given her the rule of the world.[545]

One wholly fresh cause of moral debasement was the personal character of several of the occupants of the imperial throne during the first century of the Empire. The Oriental extravagancies and coarse debaucheries which disgraced the court of a Claudius, a Caligula, or a Nero, communicated their virus to every part of the social body. Never did the proverb, “As court, so people,” have such justification. At the same time the tyranny which marked the rule of more than one of the emperors instituted a demoralizing terror like that of the proscriptions of the Civil Wars. Under the influence of the frightful persecutions of their order, the senatorial aristocracy, with moral fiber now relaxed and corroded by effeminate luxury, lost seemingly all those virtues which earlier had characterized their class, and was transformed into a body at times sycophantic, cringing, and base almost beyond belief. But it is doubtful if any other aristocracy which history has known would have stood the test any better. The French nobility of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, excluded from participation in political affairs by the divine-right monarchy, and made servile dependents of the court, exhibited almost as depressing a spectacle of moral degeneracy as did the higher Roman classes under the more frightful tyranny of the early Cæsars.

The old and the new

But we may here profitably call to mind the words of Wedgwood to the effect that the phenomenon of moral decay, although the most striking, is not the most significant fact in the moral history of a race or of an age. “The fact that an old ideal is perishing,” remarks this writer, “must always be a stronger or at least a more obvious moral influence than the fact that a new one is coming into life.... A death is more impressive than a birth.”[546]

What in this reflection claims our attention here is the implied truth that the passing of the old means the coming of the new. At the base of the falling leaf there is always a new-forming bud. It is not otherwise in the moral world. Unless the forces of the moral life have become fatally impaired, the decay of an old ideal of excellence is ever accompanied by the growth of a new and better one. And it was so in the Rome of the early Cæsars. The Roman ancestral ideal of character, with its attractive civic and heroic virtues, was indeed falling into decay and passing away, but a new and better ideal of goodness was slowly forming and winning the allegiance of the select spirits of the age.

The three periods in the moral history of Rome

Lecky distinguishes in the moral history of pagan Rome three periods characterized “by the successive ascendancy of the Roman, the Greek, and the Egyptian spirit.” Up to near the end of the Republic the moral ideal was essentially Roman; during the first and second centuries of the Empire it was characterized by the dominance of the humanitarian and cosmopolitan spirit of Greece; while in the third and last century of the pagan Empire it was marked by the ascendency of the Egyptian spirit of religious reverence.[547] In the immediately following pages we shall consider the second of these periods.

Modifying influence on the Roman ideal of the Greek spirit

Already at the time of the establishment of the Empire the two great civilizations of classical antiquity had been in close contact for a hundred years and more. The elements of Greek culture which reacted most powerfully upon Roman society were the purely intellectual and the ethical. History has fully recognized the debt of Rome to Greek intellectualism, but it has not so fully recognized her ethical debt to Hellenism. Yet it was the contribution made by Greece to the new-forming moral ideal of the Roman world which was probably the most historically important element of the Hellenic bequest. This ethical inheritance of Rome from Greece was second only to her ethical heritage from Judea.

It was largely through the medium of Greek literature and Greek philosophy, particularly the Platonic and the Stoic, that the ethical Greek spirit, characterized by its humanitarian and cosmopolitan sympathies, exerted its modifying influence upon the Roman moral consciousness and gradually changed it into something very different from what it was at first. This influence can best be traced in Roman literature and the imperial legislation.

Evidences in literature of the softening of the moral feelings

The two great changes in the moral type consisted, as Lecky observes, in the greater prominence accorded the benevolent or amiable virtues, and in the broadening of the moral sympathies.[548] The effect of the action of the humanitarian Greek spirit upon the old Roman ideal of character was to soften its harsher features and to cause the heroic virtues to yield place, in a measure, to the benevolent qualities, that is to say, to those virtues which in the course of three centuries or more, largely under Hebrew-Christian influences, were destined to assume a dominant place in the accepted ideal of moral excellence.[549]

Cicero, Vergil, Juvenal, and Seneca may be considered the truest representatives of this new-forming social conscience. Cicero, writing just at the end of the Republic and after Rome for more than three generations had been under the influence of Greek culture and philosophy, exhibits unmistakably the effect upon the Roman character of the comparatively humane and gentle spirit of Hellas. In his treatise De Officiis, “concerning duties,” in which he interprets and enlarges for the benefit of his son Marcus the ethical work of the Greek philosopher Panætius, he gives his sanction to moral doctrines which could hardly have been approved by a Roman moralist before Rome had felt the influence of the ethical spirit of Greece. The work is a glorification of the virtues of pity, gentleness, and benevolence.

The softening movement finds another representative in Vergil. His great poem is in its ethical spirit more Greek than Roman. In the “transformation of the goddess of lawless self-pleasing love into a goddess of a maternal compassionate love,” Wedgwood would have us see summed up the change in moral feeling of the classical world during the centuries that separated the age of the Iliad from that of the Æneid.[550]

Juvenal,[551] too, applauds the moral qualities of pity and tenderness. “His moral tone appears to unite the spirit of two different ages.”[552] Seneca denounced the gladiatorial games as inhuman and degrading. He constantly lays emphasis upon those amiable virtues which belong rather to the Greek than to the Roman ideal of moral excellence.

Ethical theory finds embodiment in practice

Nor was this moral evolution confined to ethical theory; these precepts of the moralists found generous embodiment in practice. Especially was the age of the Antonines a benevolent age, one in which all kinds of charities abounded. Respecting private benefactions in this period Professor Samuel Dill asserts that we may well doubt whether they were less numerous and generous than at the present day, and that “there has probably seldom been a time when wealth was more generally regarded as a trust, a possession in which the community at large has a right to share.”[553] These numerous gifts and legacies assumed the form of baths, theaters, libraries, markets, colonnades, aqueducts, fountains, temples, basilicas, and other monuments of utility or adornment.

The motives which led to all this public giving were of course mixed, just as are the motives of givers of to-day, but we may without much hesitation assume with the historian Dill that they sprang largely from genuine altruistic feeling, from a recognition of the true uses of wealth, and from a sense of the duty of the rich to the poor and dependent—from the same motives, in a word, that a century or two later were to cover these same lands with churches and monasteries and oratories.[554]

The broadening movement: ethical universalism as the outcome of the world empire and of Stoicism

The second important ethical movement in the pre-Christian Roman world consisted, as we have seen, in the widening of the moral sympathies. The two most efficient causes of this movement were the establishment of the world empire and the ascendancy at Rome of Greek philosophy, particularly the philosophy of the Stoics.

Never before in the history of the world down to our own day were there so many forces and circumstances making for cosmopolitanism in life and thought as in the age of the early Cæsars. The growth of the little city state of Rome into a world state had made all freemen actually or potentially citizens of the world. The political unity of the world had awakened the consciousness of a moral unity. In thought and feeling many select souls recognized themselves as brothers of all other men. It was not merely the world-wide reach of the Roman rule that promoted the growth of this cosmopolitanism, but contributing largely to it were the policies of the imperial government, many of whose agencies and institutions made directly and powerfully for the development of a sentiment of universal human kinship. The unification of the world on its physical side, by the creation of the splendid Roman roads and the facilities thus provided for world-wide trade and travel, had the same broadening effect upon the moral feelings that modern railways, steamboats, and telegraphs have upon the ethical sympathies of our own day. Furthermore, the practically autocratic authority of the Emperor tended to destroy class distinctions by reducing all to the same level of servitude, to obliterate national boundaries, and to weaken race prejudices. Then also, as the capital of the world, Rome had become, as a center and creator of cosmopolitan life, a second Alexandria. The character, too, of the slaves, drawn now largely from the East, and often superior in culture to their masters, tended to blur the distinctions between classes based on outer conditions, and to suggest the doctrine of equality in the sphere of the spirit. The army, also, recruited from every race and land in the Empire, and from the outside barbarian world as well, with the legions raised in one country serving in another, was a liberalizing agency, and a most effective one in breaking down race barriers and in widening the mental outlook and the moral sympathies of the traveled legionaries.

The second great cause of the enlarging of the moral feelings was the influence of the Greek spirit. Indeed, this broadening movement was in large measure the effect of the action of the cosmopolitan spirit of the Stoic philosophy upon the originally narrow spirit of Rome.[555] Evidences in literature of this widening of the moral horizon multiply from Terence in the second century B.C. to the age of the Antonines. The familiar sentiment of the poet, “I am a man and nothing human is alien to me,”[556] although we know nothing as to the response this evoked in the readers of Terence, may fairly be accepted as evidence that the new spirit of cosmopolitanism was already at work in Roman society. But the first clear sustained note of universalistic morality comes from Cicero in his treatise De Officiis,[557] to which we have already referred. The author says much about the Law of Nature and of the society and community of the human race. One should, in imitation of Hercules, even at the cost of great labor and pain, give succor and aid to every one, whoever he may be, for this is consonant with nature.[558] In destroying Corinth Rome was guilty of a great crime.[559] The human race forms a universal society, by virtue of the bond of reason and speech; therefore we are to do good to all men—but liberality should begin at home.[560] “The love of humanity,” he says, “which has its beginnings in the love of parents for their offspring, binds together first the members of the family; then, gradually reaching out beyond the domestic circle, embraces successively relatives, friends, neighbors, fellow citizens; next broadens to include allied nations; and finally comes to embrace the whole human race.”[561]

Two generations later, in the reign of Nero, Seneca enjoined the same cosmopolitan morality. He declared all men to be citizens of a universal commonwealth, and inculcated the lofty sentiment, “Man should be sacred to his fellow man.” Epictetus in the same age preached a like doctrine of human fraternity, and taught that a man should regard himself not as a citizen of this or of that city, but as a citizen of the world.

But it is in the Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius that we find the most emphatic declaration of this Stoic doctrine of the unity of mankind and the universal reach of the moral law. As envisioned by the emperor-philosopher the whole world is a single state and all men are fellow citizens. “My city and country,” he says, “so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome, but so far as I am a man, it is the world.”[562] Again he muses: “The poet says, Dear city of Cecrops; and wilt not thou say, Dear city of Zeus?”[563] Every man, he declares, should remember that every rational being is his kinsman, and that “to care for all men is according to man’s nature;”[564] for “men exist for the sake of one another.”[565]

In what measure these moralists and philosophers whom we have quoted really represented their times it is of course impossible to say; but probably we would not be wrong in assuming that they appealed to a certain public sentiment, and that the doctrines they taught evoked consenting response from the moral consciousness of more than a few in every rank of Roman society.

The Stoic doctrine of the Law of Nature and its ethical influence

The doctrine of the Law of Nature, upon which such emphasis was laid by the Stoic philosophers, had such consequences for the evolution of Roman morals and so great an influence upon the moral philosophers of later times, particularly upon the speculations of the philosophers of the eighteenth century, that we must in the present connection endeavor to gain some idea of what the Stoics meant by this phrase, and the ethical value of the conception.[566]

The Law of Nature is merely the Stoic designation of a law which, under other names, all the ages have revered as the supreme law of the universe. It is practically the law of conscience, the inner law written on the hearts of men.[567] It is that law which is in the background of our consciousness when we say, “We must obey God rather than man.” It is that holy law which came to Hebrew prophet as the word of Jehovah. It is that inviolable law which Antigone feared to break, “a law not proclaimed by men, and which lives not for to-day nor yesterday, but evermore.”[568] It is what the Supreme Court of the United States in a recent decision calls “the rule of reason,” that inborn sense of what is reasonable and just.

This Law of Nature being thus the expression of what is most constituent and essential in man as man, it necessarily results that there is a large common element in the customs and the rules of conduct of all peoples who are in the same or nearly the same stage of culture; hence the substantial conformity between the Law of Nature and the Laws of Nations. The conformity, however, is not perfect. The moral task of humanity is to make it perfect.

It is of course the ethical imperative of the Law of Nature which has rendered it such a revolutionary and reconstructive force in history. During the medieval period it was seldom invoked because the Church and not the normal human reason was regarded as the supreme authority in the domain of morals. But after the Renaissance and the Reformation had proclaimed the autonomy of the individual spirit and the ultimate authority of the individual conscience in the realm of moral right and wrong, then came naturally an appeal from the rules and conventions of society to the unwritten Law of Nature; hence the prominence it assumed in the writings of the philosophers of the eighteenth century, who prepared the way for the French Revolution.

But what it concerns us now to notice is merely the influence of this conception of a Law of Nature on the moral development in the later period of the Roman Empire. A fundamental principle of the law, as apprehended by the Stoics, is that men are born free and equal. If this teaching be received as axiomatic, it is easy to understand its importance for morality. Tried by this touchstone, many social institutions, such for instance as slavery, are shown at once to be contrary to nature, and hence opposed to natural justice. The acceptance of this Stoic doctrine by the Roman jurists caused the Roman law, as we shall see immediately, to be molded in opposition to servitude and in the interest of freedom.[569]

Influence of Stoicism as an ethical force on Roman government and law

In its moral influence Stoicism worked in the Roman world more like a religion than a philosophy. In truth it was a missionary philosophy. It created in a remarkable measure moral enthusiasm. “In the Roman Empire,” declares Lecky, “almost every great character, almost every effort in the cause of liberty, emanated from the ranks of Stoicism.”[570]

In the first place it presented an ideal of monarchy which powerfully influenced Roman imperialism.[571] It made the prince “the shepherd of his people.” It taught that the sole aim of the ruler should be “the good of his subjects.” The effects of these teachings were evident in the rule of more than one of the pagan emperors. The blessings which the reigns of Pius and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and others of the “good emperors” brought to the Roman world are to be attributed in large measure to the influence upon these rulers of the doctrines and ideals of Stoicism. In the beneficent rule of these Stoic emperors the ideal of Plato and Dion was realized; the philosopher was upon the throne. Only in the effects of the teachings of the philosophers of the eighteenth century upon the Enlightened Despots of that period do we find a like illustration of the influence of philosophy upon the possessors of absolute power.

The enlightened and humane spirit of Stoicism was felt especially in the law.[572] It was the Stoic doctrine of the natural equality of all men that worked most effectively in this domain. Many of the disabilities placed upon woman by the earlier law were removed; children were emancipated in a measure from the now unreasonable authority of the father;[573] and the slave was placed under the protection of the law and safeguarded against the worst brutalities of a cruel master.

Amelioration of slavery under the pagan emperors

The mitigation of the lot of the slave constitutes so important a phase of the moral evolution of the pre-Christian period that we must consider it here apart and in some detail. The causes of this moral reform were various. Among the most efficient agencies were Stoicism and the other Greek philosophies.[574] Then the character of many of the slaves themselves, the equal or superior often of their master in intelligence and culture, won for the class respect and consideration. Furthermore, the great number of freedmen, who constituted a very large element of the free population of the Empire,[575] tended to create a public sentiment favorable to the slave. Having had, like Epictetus the Stoic, acquaintance with the bitterness of bondage, they knew how to pity the bondsman.

Already in the first century of the Empire all the chief leaders of moral reform taught that the slave is the equal of his master in capacity for virtue.[576] Dion Chrysostom condemned hereditary slavery as contrary to the Law of Nature and hence wrong. He is thought to have been the earliest writer in the Roman Empire to take this advanced moral ground.[577] Seneca proclaimed the obligations of the higher law: “Although our laws,” he says, “permit a master to treat his slave with every degree of cruelty, still there are some things that the common law of life forbids being done to a human being.”[578] Cruel masters, he adds, are hated and detested.

The growing sentiment of tenderness for the slave found significant popular expression in the reign of Nero. A certain prefect of the city having been murdered by a slave, the Senate, in accordance with ancient usage, adjudged to death the entire household of slaves, four hundred in number. Sentiment in the Senate itself was divided, some of the senators voting against the proposal, while the people gathering in seditious crowds threatened to prevent by force the carrying out of the edict. A body of soldiers was necessary to overawe the populace and secure the execution of the slaves.[579]

A little later we see these growing humanitarian feelings reflected in the imperial legislation. Hadrian took away from masters the ancient right willfully to kill their slaves; and Antoninus Pius made the killing of a slave, sine causa, murder. The edicts of other emperors effected further mitigations of the law, so that the slave code of the later pagan Empire is characterized by a humaneness of spirit that places it in strong contrast with the callousness of the code of earlier times.

Additional evidence of the increased humanity of the age is afforded by the numerous manumissions of slaves.[580] The motives that prompted such action were undoubtedly mixed, one self-regarding motive being the ambition to have a great retinue of clients;[581] but the dominant motive is unquestionably to be sought in the growing humanity of the age.

It is noteworthy that the greatest alleviations of slavery were effected before the influence of Christianity was felt. The Christian emperors added almost nothing to the laws of the pagan Empire ameliorating the lot of the slave, and the Christian bishops in general fell behind Seneca in advocacy of the cause of the bondsman. The emphasis laid by the Church upon a future life where the poor and the oppressed of this world should receive compensation for their wrongs and sufferings here, caused the Christian teachers to regard earthly rank and outer conditions of life as of little moment.[582]

Ethics of the persecution of the Christians by the pagan emperors

While considering the steady expansion of the moral sympathies and the growth of humanitarian sentiment in the pagan Empire, we are confronted by the startling fact that the best of the emperors, those most closely identified with the legislation embodying the new spirit of humanity and justice, were among the most severe and persistent persecutors of the Christians.

This apparent moral paradox is the same as will again confront us in the medieval age in connection with the Inquisition and the cruel persecution of heretics and dissenters by a Church which was based on the principle of universal love, and which exalted to the highest place in its ideal of goodness the qualities of gentleness and pity.

The paradox in each case is, however, such only in seeming. The persecution of Christians by pagans, and of heretics by Christians, was practically the inevitable issue of certain ideas and beliefs which became the premises of moral conclusions. In neither case does the act of the persecutor necessarily imply moral turpitude.[583] The persecution of the Christians by the pagan emperors sprang in the main from the belief—in connection with the idea of corporate responsibility—that the welfare of the state was bound up with the careful observance of the rites of the temple.[584] It was thought that the neglect of the temple service by any single member of the community awakened the resentment of the gods toward all the members alike. If the Tiber overflowed its banks, the people were ready to believe that the calamity had been brought upon the city by the neglect of the new sect to offer the customary sacrifices to the gods, and the cry arose, “The Christians to the lions!” In a word, the refusal of the Christians to participate in the common worship was looked upon as a crime, as a species of treason against the state, and was punished as such.[585]

Stoic teachings Christian in tone and sentiment

As we are now approaching the time when a new moral ideal, that of Christianity, is to displace the old classical ideal of character, it will be both instructive and interesting to note to what degree this ideal which was passing away had, in theory if not in practice, under the varied influences to which it had been subjected through the centuries, become assimilated to this new ideal of excellence.[586]

The nobility of forgiveness was taught by many of the pagan philosophers with Christian insistence. Cicero regarded repentance as perhaps sufficient to stay the hand of chastisement, and declares that nothing is more laudable than clemency and willingness to forgive.[587] Marcus Aurelius would repress even the first risings of resentment for injury: “When one is trying to do thee harm, continue to be of a kind disposition toward him, gently admonish him, and calmly correct his error, saying, ‘Not so, my child; we are constituted by nature for something else; I shall certainly not be injured, but thou art injuring thyself, my child,’—and show him by gentle tact and by general principles that this is so.”[588]

And again: “It is royal to do good and to be abused”[589]; “be gentle toward those who try to hinder or otherwise trouble thee.”[590] “The best way of avenging thyself is not to become like [the wrongdoer].”[591] Epictetus quotes with approval Pittacus, one of the Seven Wise Men, in these words: “Forgiveness is better than revenge, for forgiveness is the sign of a gentle nature, but revenge the sign of a savage nature.”[592]

Purity and sincerity of thought is inculcated by Marcus Aurelius. “A man should,” he says, “accustom himself to think of those things only about which if one should suddenly ask, What hast thou now in thy thought? with perfect openness thou mightest immediately answer, This or that; so that from thy word it should be plain that everything in thee is simple and benevolent.”[593]

Seneca taught that adversity has moral uses: “God does not pamper the good man; he puts him to the test to prove him, he hardens him, and thus prepares him for himself.”[594] Trust in Providence and resignation is inculcated by Marcus Aurelius in many passages in which he teaches that one should accept with all his soul everything which happens to him as his portion assigned by God. He trusts in Him who governs; he says to the universe, “I love as thou lovest.”[595] He accepts death with perfect resignation whether it be extinction, or birth into another life: “To go away from among men is not a thing to be afraid of, for the gods, if there be gods, will not involve thee in evil.”[596] But death may be extinction. If so, well; for “if it ought to have been otherwise, the gods would have ordered it so.”[597]

Strangely Christian in tone are the reflections of Marcus Aurelius on the transitoriness of earthly life: “What belongs to the soul is a dream and vapor, and life is a warfare and a stranger’s sojourn.”[598]

The duty of godlikeness is enjoined by Epictetus: “He who seeks to please the gods must labor as far as in him lies to resemble them. He must be faithful as God is faithful, free as He is free, beneficent as He is beneficent, magnanimous as He is magnanimous.”[599] Marcus Aurelius sums up the duty of man in love to his fellows and in following God;[600] and Plutarch declares that “man can enjoy no greater blessing from God than to attain to virtue by the earnest imitation of the noblest qualities of the divine nature.”[601]

Some divergences between Roman and Christian ethics

But while in many of the teachings of the leaders of moral thought in the later Roman Empire, as shown by the above quotations, we find a near approach to Christian ethics, or a perfect accordance therewith, still it is a fact that must not be overlooked or minimized that in other of their teachings in which they represented more truly the popular conceptions of right and wrong, they as conspicuously diverged from the Christian ideal.

We have heard some of the moralists, particularly the Stoic Marcus Aurelius, condemning the spirit of revenge and extolling forgiveness as a virtue; but in general the Stoics as well as the followers of other schools had not advanced beyond the common conscience of the time in regard to the permissibility and even duty of returning injury for injury. Cicero unequivocally approved the taking of revenge for injuries received;[602] only the person injured should avenge himself equitably and humanely.[603] Again he says that justice requires that no one should do harm to another, “unless in requital of some injury received.”[604] Even the gentle Plutarch, who may be regarded as representing the composite ideal of character which was forming in the first century of the Empire through the union of Greek and Roman ethical ideas and feelings, declares it to be a virtue to make one’s self disagreeable to one’s enemies.

Tyrannicide, which in general is condemned by the modern conscience, was given by the Roman moralist, as by the Greek teachers, a place among the greatest of the virtues. Cicero deems it a meritorious act to slay a tyrant on the ground that he is but a “ferocious beast in the guise of a man,”[605] and declares that of all illustrious deeds the Roman people regard tyrannicide the most laudable.[606] Consistently he extols the killing of the Gracchi.[607]

Pity or compassion for suffering, which is assigned such a high place in the Christian type of character, was regarded by the Roman moralists as a weakness, even a vice; not but that they extolled clemency in the ruler, but they distinguished between this sentiment and that of pity. Seneca declared pity to be a vice incident to weak minds. “The wise man,” he said, “will dry the tears of others but will not add his to theirs. He will not pity those in distress, but will relieve and aid them.”[608]

Suicide, which to the modern conscience appears a censurable act, was by most of the Roman moralists regarded with unqualified approval,[609] provided the person committing the act had a strong motive for doing so. Epictetus said, “The door is open”; but added this admonition, “Do not depart without a reason.”[610] But almost any circumstance which made life hard or a burden would justify the act; “The house is smoky, and I quit it,” calmly remarks the Stoic Emperor Aurelius.[611] Seneca says, “The eternal law has decreed nothing better than this, that life should have but one entrance and many exits.”[612] He thinks the gods must have looked on with great joy when Cato, with the world fallen into Cæsar’s power, drove the sword into his own breast. That in his view was “a glorious and memorable departure.” By such an act a man raises himself to the level of the gods.[613]

Suicide was at its height in the early Empire. This is to be explained by the teachings of the Stoics—among whom suicides were numerous[614]—and the unbearable tyranny of the imperial régime. Not till Christianity came with its teachings regarding the sacredness of human life and the duty of resignation was there any essential change in the general attitude of the ancient world toward the act of self-destruction.[615]

The insufficiency of Stoicism as a moral guide for the masses

The composite Greco-Roman ideal, in which Stoicism had united the best elements of the Greek and the Roman type of character, while it did serve as a guide to the moral strivings of select souls, was wholly unfitted to give support to the moral life of the masses or to awaken in them moral enthusiasm. There were in Stoicism two serious defects which made it impossible for it to become the guide and rule of life for the multitude. First, it was too intellectually exalted and cold to make appeal to the common people. The Stoics, in the suppression of the feelings and emotions,—“they made solitude in the heart and called it peace,”[616]—cut themselves off from all sympathy with the masses, with whom feeling is ever the larger part of life. Second, Stoicism failed to give due place to the religious sentiment. Belief in the ancestral Roman gods had, it is true, been undermined, but the religious feeling of awe and mystery in the presence of the Unseen was deeper and more universal than ever before. Man, in the fine phrase of Sabatier, is incurably religious.

The ideal of character which shall appeal to the masses must be an ideal whose requirements make full recognition of the rightful claims of human affections and of the religious instinct of mankind. The mystical and religious East contributes to the ideal created by the interaction of the Greek and the Roman spirit those elements which neither of the classical cultures could supply.

The Orient contributes new elements to the moral life of the West

From the first century of our era, Rome was in close contact with the Orient, as long before she had been in contact with Greece. And just as the Greek spirit had profoundly influenced the moral ideal of Rome, so now was the spirit of the Orient to effect even greater changes in her ancestral standard of character.

As philosophy mediated between Rome and Greece, so did religion mediate between Rome and the Orient. It was through the religions or cults of Egypt, Persia, and Judea that the ethical forces of the ancient cultures of the East were brought to bear on Roman life and thought and conduct. In the present connection we shall speak only of the influences which went forth from Egypt and Persia, and point out in what way they gave an added impulse to that ethical movement going on in the Roman world which finally culminated in the triumph of the creed and moral ideal of Judea.

The contribution of Egypt; the worship of Isis

And first we note the relation to this ethical evolution of the worship of Isis and Serapis, the chief imported and modified cults of the ancient civilization of the Valley of the Nile. In this worship religion and morality were joined in a way practically unknown to the priestly colleges of Rome. “The Egyptian,” says Lecky, “... bowed low before the divine presence. He veiled his eyes, he humbled his reason, he represented the introduction of a new element into the moral life of Europe, the spirit of religious reverence and awe.”[617]

Forming an important part of the body of ideas which constituted the basis of this religious feeling, was the doctrine of a life after death. This was a doctrine which was common to all the Oriental religions with which we have here to do,—the Isiac, the Mithraic, and the Christian,—but a doctrine which, aside from the initiates of the Orphic, the Eleusinian, and like Mysteries, was practically new to the classical world. It was this doctrine which helped greatly to secure for these religions or cults such wide acceptance in the Roman world,—for the Roman world, old, worn, and weary, was yearning for assurance of another and better life,—and which largely explains the moral influence they exerted upon the nations of the West.[618]

For more than five hundred years the worship of Isis particularly found ardent devotees in the West. The general effect of the cult upon its followers was to cause the active, heroic qualities in the old Roman ideal of character to be overshadowed by the passive contemplative virtues, and to impart a religious, ritual character to the moral code. Expiatory and purification rites formed a large part of the duties of the worshiper of the Egyptian goddess.[619]

The contribution of Persia: Mithraism

The influence of Egypt upon the religious-ethical life of the West was reënforced by a like influence from Persia, which came through the cult of Mithra.[620] This worship came into Europe by the way of Asia Minor. Its missionaries were seemingly Oriental recruits in the Roman legions. It came bearing many accretions gathered in its passage through the west Asian lands, and yet with all the characteristics which marked the old Persian religion as a religion of combat and strenuousness, of moral striving and moral achievement.[621] During the last three centuries of the Empire the cult spread widely in the Western lands, taking deep root especially in the frontier regions of the Danube and the Rhine, and in the remote province of Britain.

This incoming of Mithraism had special significance for the reason that Mithra, as the god of light, was invested with certain moral qualities symbolized by his physical attributes. He was the god of truth and purity. It was this moral element in the cult, in connection with its doctrine of a future life,—the promise and hope of which was dependent upon purification, inward as well as ceremonial, from all earthly stains and impurities,—which in a measure met and satisfied the yearnings of the age, and which, in the great religious and ethical propaganda that marked the later centuries of the Roman Empire, rendered the religion of Mithra the most formidable rival of Christianity in its great competition with the various Oriental religions and cults for supremacy in the hearts and consciences of men.[622]

Relation of the Egyptian and Persian propaganda to that of Christianity

But the pagan priest no more than the pagan philosopher could effect the moral renovation of ancient society. Like the moral propaganda carried on by Cynic, Stoic, and Neoplatonist missionaries and preachers, these efforts of paganism to effect its own moral regeneration failed, perhaps because these pagan cults lacked what Christianity possessed—“the dynamic of a great personality.” Yet these efforts were not without influence upon the ethical development of the Western nations. In two ways the Egyptian and Persian propaganda was a preparation for the moral revolution effected by Christianity: first, it helped to give morality a religious basis, which it did not have in classical antiquity; and second, it taught men to seek in deity and not in themselves the pattern of moral excellence.[623] Thus did Egypt and Persia, through the mediation of religion, contribute important ethical elements to Greco-Roman civilization, and thereby help to give a fresh impulse and a new trend to the moral evolution of the Western world.

CHAPTER XII
THE ETHICS OF DOCTRINAL CHRISTIANITY: AN IDEAL OF RIGHT BELIEF

Ethical import of the Christianization of Rome

The establishment of Christianity, in its Greco-Judaic form, as the favored religion of the Roman Empire by the edict of the Emperor Constantine is rightly regarded as one of the most important events not only in the history of the Empire but also in that of the Western world. What made this act, or rather the religious revolution it registered, of such transcendent importance was the fact that the ascendancy of the new religion meant the ascendancy of a new moral ideal; for Christianity, unlike Stoicism, did not merely act upon the old classical ideal of excellence to modify and remold it, but superseded it by another made up largely of a wholly different set of virtues.

It was this new ethical element thus introduced into Greco-Roman civilization which was the most dynamic of the forces active in the transformation of the ancient into the medieval world. The new ideal re-created ethically the Roman world and made Europe for a thousand years and more—until the Renaissance of the fifteenth century called forth again the ethical thought and feeling of classical antiquity—in moral conviction and striving an extension of Asia.

A prerequisite to an intelligent study of the history of this new moral ideal is a knowledge of the beliefs and theological doctrines out of which it arose; for this ideal has through the centuries followed the fortune of these beliefs and teachings. In the immediately following pages we shall indicate what were some of the most influential of these ideas and doctrines.