CHAPTER IV
[1] The Farmer's Calendar, given in the accompanying Book of Readings (R. 14), illustrates very well the gods and sacrifices for one phase of Roman life. Petronius, in his Satires, says, "Our country is so full of divinities that it is much easier to find a god than a man."
[2] "The chief objects of pagan religion were to foretell the future, to explain the universe, to avert calamity, and to obtain the assistance of the gods. They contained no instruments of moral teaching analogous to our institution of preaching, or to the moral preparation for the reception of the sacrament, or to confession, or to the reading of the Bible, or to religious education, or to united prayer for spiritual benefits. To make men virtuous was no more the function of the priest than of the physician." (Lecky, W. E. H., History of European Morals, chap, iv.)
[3] Seneca (4-65 A.D.), the tutor of the Emperor Nero, and the Greek freedman Epictetus (d. 100 A.D.) both expounded Stoicism at Rome during the first Christian century, and the Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180 A.D.) represents one of the finest expositions of the application of this philosophy to the problems of human life.
[4] See Proverbs, xxxi, for a good statement of the ancient Hebrew ideal of womanhood.
[5] This collective term is applied to the first five books of the Old Testament, and includes Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These five books form a wonderful collection of the historical and legal material relating to the wanderings and experiences and practices of the people.
[6] Chapter 1 of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew gives, in detail (1-16), the genealogy of Jesus, concluding with the following verse:
"17. So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations."
[7] To many of these churches he wrote a series of epistles. These constitute a little more than one fourth of the New Testament. See accompanying Book of Readings (or Romans, I, 1-17) for the introductory part of Paul's Epistle to the Romans.
[8] "Its missionaries were Jews, a turbulent race, not to be assimilated, and as much despised and hated by pagan Rome as by the mediaeval Christians. Wherever it attracted any notice, therefore, it seems to have been regarded as some rebel faction of the Jews, gone mad upon some obscure point of the national superstition—an outcast sect of an outcast race." (Adams, G. B., Civilization during the Middle Ages, p. 39.)