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]