The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire

by T. R. Glover

In the first two centuries of our era a great change came over the ancient world. A despised and traditional religion, under the stimulus of new cults coming from the East, revived and re-asserted its power over the minds of men. Philosophy, grown practical in its old age, forsook its youthful enthusiasm for the quest of truth, and turned aside to the regulation of conduct, by means of maxims now instead of inspiration, and finally, as we have seen, to apology for the ancient faith of the fathers. Its business now was to reconcile its own monotheistic dogma with popular polytheistic practice. It was perhaps this very reconciliation that threw open the door for the glowing monotheism of the disciples of Jesus; but, whatever the cause, Christianity quickly spread over the whole Roman Empire. We are apt to wonder to-day at the great political and national developments that have altered the whole aspect of Europe since the French Revolution, and to reflect rather idly on their rapidity. Yet the past has its own stories of rapid change, and not the least striking of them is the disappearance of that world of thought which we call Classical. By 180 A.D. nearly every distinctive mark of classical antiquity is gone—the old political ideas, the old philosophies, the old literatures, and much else with them. Old forms and names remain—there are still consuls and archons, poets and philosophers, but the atmosphere is another, and the names have a new meaning, if they have any at all. But the mere survival of the names hid for many the fact that they were living in a new era.

Marcus Aurelius

In the reign of Marcus Aurelius, however, the signs of change became more evident, and men grew conscious that some transformation of the world was in progress. A great plague, the scanty records of which only allow us to speak in vague terms of an immense reduction in population[[1]]—barbarism active upon the frontier of an Empire not so well able as it had fancied to defend itself—superstitions, Egyptian and Jewish, diverting men from the ordinary ways of civic duty—such were some of the symptoms that men marked. Under the weight of absurdity, quietism and individualism, the state seemed to be sinking, and all that freedom of mind which was the distinctive boast of Hellenism was rapidly being lost.

It happens that, while the historical literature of the period has largely perished, a number of authors survive, who from their various points of view deal with what is our most immediate subject—the conflict of religions. Faith, doubt, irritation and fatalism are all represented. The most conspicuous men of letters of the age are undoubtedly the Emperor Marcus Aurelius himself and his two brilliant contemporaries, Lucian of Samosata, and Apuleius of Madaura.[[2]] Celsus, a man of mind as powerful as any of the three, survives in fragments, but fragments ample enough to permit of re-construction. Among the Christians too there was increased literary activity, but Tertullian and Clement will suffice for our purpose.

Though not in his day regarded as a man of letters, it is yet in virtue of his writing that Marcus Aurelius survives. His journal, with the title that tells its nature—"To Himself," is to-day perhaps the most popular book of antiquity with those whose first concern is not literature. It is translated again and again, and it is studied. The peculiar mind of the solitary Emperor has made him, as Mr F. W. H. Myers put it, "the saint and exemplar of Agnosticism." Meditative, tender and candid, yet hesitant and so far ineffectual, he is sensitive to so much that is positive and to so much that is negative, that the diary, in which his character is most intimately revealed, gives him a place of his own in the hearts of men perplext in the extreme. He is a man who neither believes, nor disbelieves,—"either gods or atoms"[[3]] seems to be the necessary antithesis, and there is so much to be said both for and against each of the alternatives that decision is impossible. He is attracted by the conception of Providence, but he hesitates to commit himself. There are arguments—at least of the kind that rest on probability—in favour of immortality, but they are insufficient to determine the matter. In his public capacity he became famous for the number and magnificence of his sacrifices to the gods of the state; he owns in his journal his debt to the gods for warnings given in dreams, but he suspects at times that they may not exist. Meanwhile he persecutes the Christians for their disloyalty to the state. Their stubborn convictions were so markedly in contrast with his own wavering mind that he could not understand them—perhaps their motive was bravado, he thought; they were too theatrical altogether; their pose recalled the tragedies composed by the pupils of the rhetoricians—large language with nothing behind it.[[4]]

In the absence of any possibility of intellectual certainty, Marcus fell back upon conduct. Here his want of originality and of spiritual force was less felt, for conduct has tolerably well-established rules of neighbourliness, purity, good temper, public duty and the like. His Stoic guides, too, might in this region help him to follow with more confidence the voice of his own pure and delicate conscience—the conscience of a saint and a quietist rather than that of a man of action. Yet even in the realm of conduct he is on the whole ineffectual. Pure, truthful, kind, and brave he is, but he does not believe enough to be great. He is called to be a statesman and an administrator; he does not expect much outcome from all his energies, and he preaches to himself the necessity of patience with his prospective failure to achieve anything beyond the infinitesimal. "Ever the same are the cycles of the universe, up and down, for ever and for ever. Either the intelligence of the Whole puts itself in motion for each separate effect—in which case accept the result it gives; or else it did so once for all, and everything is sequence, one thing in another ... [The text is doubtful for a line] ... In a word, either God, and all goes well; or all at random—live not thou at random.

"A moment, and earth will cover us all; then it too in its turn will change; and what it changes to, will change again and again for ever; and again change after change to infinity. The waves of change and transformation—if a man think of them and of their speed, he will despise everything mortal.

"The universal cause is like a winter torrent; it carries all before it. How cheap then these poor statesmen, these who carry philosophy into practical affairs, as they fancy—poor diminutive creatures. Drivellers. Man, what then? Do what now Nature demands. Start, if it be given thee, and look not round to see if any will know. Hope not for Plato's Republic;[[5]] but be content if the smallest thing advance; to compass that one issue count no little feat.

"Who shall change one of their dogmata [the regular word of Epictetus]? And without a change of dogmata, what is there but the slavery of men groaning and pretending to obey? Go now, and talk of Alexander, and Philip and Demetrius of Phalerum; whether they saw the will of Nature and schooled themselves, is their affair; if they played the tragic actor, no one has condemned me to copy them. Simplicity and modesty are the work of philosophy; do not lead me astray into vanity.

"Look down from above on the countless swarms of men, their countless initiations, and their varied voyage in storm and calm, their changing combinations, as they come into being, meet, and pass out of being. Think too of the life lived by others of old, of the life that shall be lived by others after thee, of the life now lived among the barbarian nations; and, of how many have never heard thy name, and how many will at once forget it, and how many may praise thee now perhaps but will very soon blame thee; and how neither memory is of any account, nor glory, nor anything else at all....