§ 89. So much for the influence of the highest and most serious forms of Greek thinking upon the religion of the Roman Empire. But even from the inferior developments of philosophy, its parodies of strength and its exaggerations of weakness, elements passed into this faith which is asserted to be wholly foreign to Hellenism. The Cynic ostentation of independence, of living apart from the world, free from all cares and responsibilities, found its echo in the Christian anchorite, who chose solitude and poverty from higher but
kindred motives. The sentimental display of personal affection, by which the Epicurean endeavoured to substitute the love of friends for the love of principle or devotion to the State, had its echo in those personal ties among early Christians which replaced their civic attachments and consoled them when outlawed by the State. Indeed, there is much in Epicureanism which has passed into Christianity,—an unsuspected fact till it was brought out by very recent writers[206:1].
The university of Athens.
What shall we say too of the culture of this age? Is not the eloquence of the early Christian Fathers, of John Chrysostom, of Basil, worthy of admiration; and was not all their culture derived from the old Greek schools and universities, which had lasted with unbroken though changing traditions from the earliest Hellenistic days? One must read Libanius, a writer of the fourth century after Christ, to understand how thoroughly Athens was still old Greek in temper, in tone, in type, and how it had become the university of the civilized world[206:2]. The traditions of this Hellenistic university life and system passed silently, but not less certainly, into the oldest mediæval Italian universities, and thence to Paris and to England,—just as the Greek tones
or scales passed into the chants of Saint Ambrose at Milan, and thence into the noble music of Palestrina and of Tallis, which our own degenerate age has laid aside for weaker and more sentimental measures.
Greece indestructible.
§ 90. It is indeed difficult to overrate the amount and the variety of the many hidden threads that unite our modern culture to that of ancient Greece, not to speak of the conscious return of our own century to the golden age of Hellenic life as the only human epoch in art, literature, and eloquence which ever approached perfection. As the Greek language has lasted in that wonderful country in spite of long domination by Romans, of huge invasion by Celts and Slavs, of feudal occupation by Frankish knights, of raid and rapine by Catalans and Venetians, ending with the cruel tyranny of the Turk, so the Greek spirit has lasted through all manner of metamorphose and modification, till the return wave has in our day made it the highest aspiration of our worldly perfection.
Greek political history almost the private property of the English writers,
§ 91. I said at the opening of this essay that I should endeavour to indicate the principal problems to be solved by future historians of Greece,—at least by those who have not the genius to recast the whole subject by the light of some great new idea; and in so doing, particular stress has been laid on the political side, not without deliberate intention. For, in the first place, this aspect of Greek affairs is the peculiar province of English historians.