Christianity.
With the fourth century the Christian faith began to assert itself as never before. Its persecution, off and on, for three centuries, and its triumph need a little study. Why was it that the Roman system could tolerate the excesses of the licentious Eleusinian and Bacchic orgies and the foul superstitions of Egypt, but could find no charity for a pure and gentle faith? Because Christianity was itself righteously intolerant. Very early in the history of the empire it became the fashion and then the law that the genius of the emperor should be adored. To the already polytheistic citizen of the empire this was no added hardship. One god more made no difference to him, and the cynical Roman magistrate could not understand why the wretched Christian was so stubborn about a pinch of incense in honor of the emperor. It meant so little to him religiously—but everything to the Christian. And so the Christians died by thousands. Yet the persecuted faith spread apace, drawing into its fold of hope and inward peace the wayworn travelers upon the cruel road of life in those weary years. Then came the conversion of Constantine and the gradual disintegration of paganism. For a study of the brighter side of pagan life and a proof that the whole Roman world, as so often taught, was not thoroughly rotten, read Pater’s “Marius, the Epicurean,” and Dill’s “Roman life in the Fourth Century.”