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THE ENVIRONMENT OP EARLY
CHRISTIANITY

STUDIES IN THEOLOGY
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THE ENVIRONMENT OF
EARLY CHRISTIANITY

BY

S. ANGUS, M.A., PH.D.
professor op new testament and historical theology
st. Andrew's college, university of sydney

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
19*5

rotovSe po\6ov reppa pi] ti jrpoo"oo(ca,
irp\v av 8eS>v tis duido^os tqjv trajv novcop
<i>avfj, dtXrjtrn t> els dvavyrjrov po\elv
"AibrjV, Kvedjaid T> aprp'i Taprdpov jSddrj. — AESCHYLUS.
to yap irapd&eiypa 8ei virepixeiv. — Aristotle.

All rights reservtd

VXOBI DILEOTAE
HVNO LIBELLVLVM D D D
AVCTOR

PREFACE
The size of this volume has been determined by the series
to which it belongs. Scholars familiar with the period
under review will appreciate the constant difficulty
attending the selection and compression of the material.
It was impossible without unduly increasing the footnotes
to make sufficient acknowledgment of indebtedness to
modern authorities, or insert a tithe of the mass of
citations and references from ancient writers accumulated
during the preparation of the work. The author hopes
in a later volume to discuss more adequately several
themes here treated very succinctly, together with other
phases of this most interesting epoch. A fairly com
prehensive Bibliography has been added, which, it is
hoped, may enhance the value of the volume for students.
Some excellent authorities may be omitted, the list being
restricted to a selection of the books consulted.
The author is greatly indebted to Professor H. A. A.
Kennedy, D.D., D.Sc, of New College, Edinburgh, for
valuable assistance in revising the proofs. Thanks for
helpful criticism are due to Professor Alexander Souter,
D.Litt., of Aberdeen University. Grateful mention should
also be made of the late Professor James Orr, D.D., of
Glasgow, at whose suggestion the work was undertaken.
S. ANGUS.
Edinburgh, 8th Junt 1914.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAOI
i  vii

Preface

I. Introductory  1
II. The New Era beginning with Alexander the
Great : General Characteristics (300 b.c-
300 A.D.)  6
Philip — Alexander — His services to Humanity.
General Characteristics : Change and Upheaval
— Striking contrasts — A popularising Age — Modern
(in social habits, comforts, vices, sentiment, sorrow)
Education — Universalism, causes and extent of —
Intermixture of races — Syncretism — Individualism, its
causes and extent.
III. Social and Moral Conditions of the Graeco-
Boman World  30
(A) Social Conditions : Fall of Polis — Unintermittent
wars — Economic results of — Increasing number of Slaves
— Destruction of the Middle Classes — Drift to City-life.
(B) Moral Conditions : Disturbing circumstances —
(o) Dark side — Slavery — Stage — Amphitheatre —
Position of women — Children — Abortion — Exposition
and Infanticide — Vice — Paiderastia — (6) Better side
— Amelioration of slavery — Protests against gladia
torial shows — Domestic virtue — Care for children —
Protests against vice — Lack of moral enthusiasm in
Pagan Beligion — Man's moral consciousness — Practical
sense — Oneness of humanity — Humaner ideas — Kinship
with the Divine — Summary.

x THE ENVIBONMBNT OF EABLY OHEISTIANITY

CHAP.

PAOK
IV. Religious
Conditions
of
the
Graeco-Eoman
Period
68
L Religious Destitution : Fatalism — Need of religious
authority — Taedinm Vitae — Pessimism.
ii Religious Awakening : Preaching — Spiritual directors
— Inwardness — Examples demanded.
iii. Demand for a Universal Religion : Eastern and
Western modes of salvation — Imperial cult — Oriental
religions — Success of.
iv. Higher Ideas of God and Man : Monotheism — Good
ness and Providence of God — Moral government —
Dignity of man — Worth of the soul — Immortality —
The mysteries.
v. Change in the Religious Spirit : Emotionalism —
Personal religion — Character — Demand for Authority
— Nearness of the supernatural — Mysticism —
Intermediaries — Asceticism — Prayer — Resignation
— Suffering, and a new sensitiveness to— ¦Consolatio
literature — Sense of sin — Union of morality and
religion — Religion popularised — Demand for Be-
demption-religions — Expectancy and Messianic
hope.
V. The Jew  140
Character — Mind and genius — The Diaspora — Ubiquity
and power of — Organisation — Wealth — Jews in high
positions — Anti-Semitism — Services to ancient world and
contribution to the preparation for Christianity : Syna
gogue — Schools — Successful propaganda — Proselytes
— 'God-fearers'— The Greek Bible — Message of Israel
— Pathfinder for Christianity.
VL The Greek  164
Character — Genius — Place of the Greeks in history —
Greek thought — Early Schools — Sophists — Socrates-
Minor Socratics — Plato — Aristotle — Post- Aristotelian
philosophy : Stoicism — Epicureanism — Scepticism —
CONTENTS xi
CHAP. PiOl
Eclecticism — Neo - Pythagoreanism ¦ — Judaeo - Greek
philosophy — Neo-Platonism — Summary.
VII. The Boman  194
Character — Genius — Bise of Empire — Mission of Borne.
VIIL The Language of Christianity .... 209
First international tongues — The Koini — Importance of
Greek for Christianity — Spread of Greek — Greek in the
Diaspora — in Palestine — Language of Jesus — The Latin
West.
IX. In the Fulness of Time  222
Convergence of East and West — Greatest crisis in
history — Opportunity for Oriental worships — Christi
anity offered a synthesis in the Incarnation.
Bibliography  227
Index  236

THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY
CHRISTIANITY CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
ovtoi ot' ipX'JS T&VTa 6eoi Svriroia' iiiriSeiiav
dXXcb xp6"V fifroviiTtt ((pcvplo-Kovaiy &nuvov. Xenophanbs.1
' He (Messiah) is the end rather than the product of prior history j
does not so much get meaning from it as give meaning to it.'
— FAiRBArRN, Christ in Modern Theology, p. 373.
The purpose of this book is not to inquire into the nature
and success of Christianity, but to survey the ancient
world in which Christianity was first planted, reviewing
the conditions which would favour or retard the spread
of the Gospel, and to present a brief account of the genius
and achievements of the three great peoples to whom the
Gospel was first offered. We shall be convinced both of
the need and the preparedness of this old world for the
Evangel ; we shall see that, as God makes no mistakes in
history, Christianity came indeed 'in the fulness of the
time,' and that the Graeco-Roman world was socially,
politically, linguistically, morally and religiously in a
wonderful state of preparation for the Kingdom.
We cannot estimate aright the history of Christianity
if we are ignorant of its antecedents, nor can we appreciate
its success if we overlook the difficulties it had to encounter.
i Prag. 16 (Mullacn, i. p. 103),
A

2 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EABLY CHRISTIANITY [ch
Two extreme views about the condition of the ancient
world are prevalent. First, some — e.g., B. Bauer1 and
J. A. Farrer — represent the ancient world as producing
Christianity automatically. Christianity is merely a result
of evolution and human progress. It is simply the juxta
position of elements already to hand without supernatural
intervention. The founders of the new faith were astute
enough to put some good old things together to make a
brand new article. The united ideals of Jew, Greek, and
Roman gave to the world Christianity. This distorted
view contains a partial truth which deserves attention.
The same God who planned the Gospel prepared the soil.
Men were His servants and instruments then as now,
whether conscious of it or not. The Gospel could not
come without antecedents, and could not succeed if men's
hearts were not ready to receive it.
Others — and these the majority — would have it that
Christianity is wholly new and in absolute antithesis to
the world in which it appeared. The ancient world
laboured and brought forth nothing : the only contri
bution it made to the Gospel was entirely negative —
dire need. Everything excellent came only with the
Christian era, God having given the ancient peoples over
to their own carnal hearts. These scholars see only the
vices and immoralities of the worst classes of pre-Christian
society — such classes as still survive in our Christian
civilisation. This picture of the ancient world is painted
exclusively in the dark colours of the plays of Plautus,
the satires of Juvenal, the unworthy verses of Ovid and
Martial, the inanities of Petronius, the bitterness of Tacitus,
and the mystic sensuality of Apuleius. The worst side
of antiquity is deliberately compared with the best side of
Christianity. Moral monstrosities like a Caligula or a
Nero are placed beside a John or a Paul. The fact is over-
1 Ckristus u. d. Caaaren, p. 148 f. Bauer attributes more of Christianity
to Seneca than to Jesus.

I] INTRODUCTORY 3
looked that the same God was working in human history
before, as after, the Christian era, revealing Himself as
men felt their need of Him and were able to comprehend
Him. The best method of magnifying Christianity is
not the belittling of Heathenism. To secure the right
perspective Christianity must be viewed not only in
contrast but also in contact with its environment.
To appreciate Christianity or Paganism we must
approach them with an open mind, if not with sympathy.
We should contrast the ideals of Paganism with those of
Christianity. We may admit that God is the God of the
heathen as of the Christians without admitting that
Christianity is only on a par with all its predecessors.
We must remember, too, how easy it is, on the one hand,
to over-estimate past epochs by reading ideas of our own
period and religion into the records of the past ; as also,
on the other hand, to fail to do justice to old Gospels by
unfamiliarity with their language. Thus — out of scores
of examples — Seneca's thought that gifts given ' in succour
to infirmity, poverty, or shame, should be given silently,
with no other witness than the giver and the recipient,'
is more familiar to us as ' let not thy left hand know what
thy right hand doeth.' Or ' many are called but few
chosen,' is better known than ' many are the wand-bearers
but few the mystae.' It was at least as difficult for the
pre-Christian world, as it is for us, to put away the gods
which their fathers worshipped on the other side of the
flood. Likewise the mere use of old expressions does not
necessarily imply that those using them had not outgrown
them. Many pagan institutions are to us strange, but they
once represented the grasping of certain ideas by which
society found a means of cohesion. Many old formulae
seem empty, yet they were once the repositories of new
thoughts and truths crystallized into expression so as not
to be lost.
In our day we cannot dislocate history as was possible

4 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EABLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
a generation ago. The idea of evolution and progress has
too firmly laid hold of our minds. The unity of mankind
and the unity of history are articles of faith. History is
now viewed as an organism. The student cannot with
impunity dissever Christianity from the fabric of its age.
To do so is to read history with a bias, and to disregard
God's patience in the task of educating humanity and
drawing it to Himself. The Gospel of Jesus does not
disdain the many evangels which gladdened men and
brought joy, consolation, and spiritual support to thou
sands of the human race before the rise of our faith in
history. God has in all ages been listening to the still
sad music of humanity ; He has been walking with and
among men in their toil, error, and waywardness,1 stretch
ing out His hand in succour as men have in all ages
stretched forth hands to God for help.
' . . . Feeble hands and helpless
Groping blindly in the darkness,
Touch God's right hand in that darkness
And are lifted up and helped.'
The human soul has always been the ' lyre for the plectrum
of the Paraclete.' We, the heirs of all the ages, have
entered upon the rich inheritance of the toils and tears,
the victories and defeats, the experiments and fears of our
predecessors. ' Our fathers watered with their tears
The sea of time whereon we sail ;
Their voices were in all men's ears
Who passed within their puissant hail . . .
The sufPrers died — they left their pain :
The pangs which tortured them remain.'
We must therefore raise our hearts in gratitude to those
who were hewers of wood and drawers of water for a
1,.^.F?r ^JK perauventnre err. seeking g0Q an(j desirous to find him.'
— Wisd. of Sol. xiii. 6.

«•] INTRODUCTORY 6
period of enlightenment that they never saw and perhaps
never dreamed of — to those who desired to see our day
but whose eyes God closed. The history of man's religion
comes in ; many portions and in many manners.' The
efforts of many generations — not unaided by God —
prepared the way of the Lord.
The study of comparative religions has given rise to a
degree of tolerance, and enabled us to appreciate God's
gradual unfolding of His purpose and His self-revelation
to different ways of thinking. There is no violent caesura
in history. All portions of mankind do not move forward
with equal pace : the history of a period may reveal a
retrograde movement. Evolution does not always connote
progress. We must make allowance for the proneness to
degeneration in human nature.1 But because we believe
in God we believe His world has been, and is, progressing
toward the ' one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.'

1 Cf. Ramsay, Cities of St. Paul, pp. 10-78. On p. 17 he says, ' wherever
evidence exists, with the rarest exceptions, the history of religion among
men is a history of degeneration.'

6 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EABLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.

CHAPTER II
THE NEW EKA BEGINNING WITH ALEXANDER THE GREAT :
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS (300 B.C. -300 A.D.)
4XX4 koicos 6e69ev appjoarfc xai SiaWa/crfy tOsv S\oiv ropU£(iir, ok TV
\&ytp pA) o-vvrjye tois oVXois f3ia£6pevos, els to abrb oweveyKisv ra iravra-
XoSev, tbo-irep iv Kparijpi <j>CkoTi)alt#, pit-as toOs /3tovs Kal ret ijBrj, Kal rois
y&povs Kal Siairtas, irarplSa piv rrir olKOvpivrjv ir/>o<r£raf ev lYyeurBai iravTas
. . . <rvyyevas Si rois iyaBois, dXXo^iiXoui Si rois irovripotis. to Si 'EXXr;-
vixbv xai fiapfiapiKbv /nil xXa/u>ot /iT/Si iriXrig pi/Si aKip&Kri nqSi Kdvivt
Swplfeiv, dXXi to piv'E\\rpit.Kbv apeTrirb Si papfSapixbv Kaxta rex/mlpso-Bat.
Plutarch (?), De Fort. Alex., i. 6 (329 o.d.).
Gerade die reiohere und freiere Ausgestaltung der Lebensformen
und Kulturbedingungen, die Fiille geistiger Interessen, neben einander
gehender oder weehselnder Stromungen, die komplizierte Undurch-
siohtigkeit des Gefiihlslebens unterscheiden ihn von der f ruheren Zeit
und nahern ihn der modernen an. 'Die hellenistische Zeit ist ganz
und gar anders kompliziert im Aussen- und Innenleben. Ihre Seele
isttiberaus sensitiv, gleioh empf anglich fur die weiehste Sentimentalitat
und den harten Egoismus, fur romantische Schwarmerei und das
Trotzgefuhl einer neuen Welt. Sie ist mit einem Worte modern.'
' In dem geistigen Antlitz des Hellenismus sind zwei Hauptziige, die
mit einander unvereinbar scheinen. Das eine ist die Freude an der
Representation, dem Pomp und Schmuck, der erhabenen Pose : darin
liegt das, was wir an ihm barook nennen diirfen. Daneben aber steht
die intimste Freude an der weltverlorenen Stille, dem Frieden des
engen natiirliehen Kreises, am Feinen, Kleinen. ... In Wahrheit
wurzelt beides in der befreiten Individualitat, die sich je naoh den
Lebenszielen sehr verschieden aussert.' (Wendland and Wilamowitz,
in Wendland, HeUenist-rom. Kultur, pp. 23-4* )
There are no violent breaks in history ; yet it naturally
falls into eras. Each epoch is not disconnected with the
preceding ; it exhibits new phenomena, or old phenomena
in new prominence. As the mass of men do not think for
themselves, history revolves largely round outstanding

n.] GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 7
personalities. Never again have father and son 1 appeared
in two such great men as Philip and Alexander.
Philip by adroitly taking advantage of Greek quarrels
and lack of foresight, by flattery and bribery, first secured
his power at home and then entered Greece as arbiter of
Greek wranglings and champion of the Delphian god.
On the field of Chaeroneia (338 B.C.) Athens and Thebes
lost what Athens and Plataea had won at Marathon.
But Philip had much sympathy with Greece — especially
with Athens — and desired to be regarded as a Greek himself.
To compensate the Greeks for the loss of their autonomy
and to make them oblivious of their humiliation, he pro
posed an expedition against a common foe — Persia. For
this object he secured his appointment as generalissimo
at the convention of Corinth, 338 B.C. In the same year
his assassination thwarted the design.
Alexander — than whom no one has better merited the
title ' Great ' * — became heir to Philip's preparations and
ambitions. In 336 B.C. he was chosen generalissimo at
another conference of Corinth. After some successful
northern campaigns and the ruthless razing of Thebes
in 335, he set out in the spring of 334 with an army of
Greeks and Macedonians against Persia. With astonishing
rapidity he fought the battles of the Granicus, Issus, and
Arbela, and conquered Asia Minor, Phoenicia, and Egypt,
penetrating into Bactria, Sogdiana, and Northern India.
Only the exhaustion of his troops and their refusal to
advance farther arrested his course by the river Hyphasis.
Death overtook the great conqueror at Babylon, 323 B.C.,
before he had time to consolidate his dominions. But
his work could not be entirely undone in the strife of the
Diadochi and the conquests of the Koman Republic.
What did Alexander accomplish for humanity and
1 The nearest parallel is that of Frederick William I. and Frederick the
Great of Prussia.
2 One who equally merited the title has not been awarded it— Caesar.

8 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
for Christianity? Conquest, usually the synonym for
Alexander, forms the least of his achievements. Briefly
we may say that Alexander
(a) Shook the ancient world to its very foundations, and
did for it something like what Napoleon did for his and our
age. Men like Alexander, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon
render it impossible for mankind to loiter in the old ruts ;
they compel them to re-examine their dogmas, test their
traditions, and ask whether society can still be held
together by the accepted methods of cohesion. All great
events, like the conquests of Alexander, the rise of the
Roman Empire, the discovery of America, have given a
new impetus to the spirit. Alexander compelled the old
world to think afresh.
(6) He also, like the Greeks before him and the Romans
later, arrested the Oriental danger which threatened to
swamp Western civilization. Greece was exhausted, and
Rome had not yet grown to her might, so that, but for
Alexander, Persia might have overwhelmed Greece and
all that Greece stood for. Then the struggle between
Roman and Carthaginian would have been too late, and
Zama might have had a different issue1 (v. p. 173).
(c) Alexander not only arrested the 'Yellow peril'
and the Northern Barbarian peril of his day and protected
Greek civilization, but he greatly extended Greek culture,
opened an unbounded future for it, and inspired it with
new life. He did not destroy the Orient, but made it
easier for it to deliver its message, while he greatly
facilitated the growth of the Western spirit. We who have
sat at the feet of Hellas can better appreciate Alexander's
services to the Hellenes than they themselves.
(d) Alexander commenced the task of reconciliation
among the nations, and brought East and West into those
relations of interaction which have never since been
1 He also stayed the irruptions of northern barbarians into the Balkan
peniDSula.

n.] GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 9
broken, and which have benefited both. The Greeks
regarded Alexander's victories as an opportunity of
wiping out old scores : they viewed the Orient as their
spoil or as a field for their exploitation. Even Aristotle
advised Alexander to behave toward the Greeks as a leader
but toward the non-Greeks as a tyrant. But Alexander
had larger thoughts than either Greek or Macedonian could
appreciate : his object was not to avenge or to destroy.
He introduced a novel feature into war in treating the
conquered not as slaves without rights but as men.
He offended his countrymen and the Greeks by blotting
out the distinction between conquered and conquerors.1
As a means of amalgamation he tried the expedient
of intermarriages, himself marrying Persian princesses ;
at Susa, in 325 B.C., 100 of his officers and 10,000 soldiers
married Asiatic wives. He paved the way for a larger
humanity, and made it easier for men to believe in the
unity of mankind. The brotherhood of man could now
begin to be realised. National barriers were thrown down :
racial distinctions were disregarded.
(e) He inaugurated that comprehensive cosmopolitanism
which reached its apogee in the Roman Empire (v. p. 203).

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OE THE NEW ERA
(300 B.c-300 a.d.)
Change and Upheaval
This was an era of change and upheaval. The un
expected repeatedly happened. Events outstripped
theory. Old things had passed away and all things
had become new ; old systems were gone ; old pre
judices swept away. It is difficult for us looking back
through the long vista to estimate aright the perplexity
1 Mahaffy notices ' the studied equality of the three great races, Persian,
Greek, Macedonian' on the Sidonian sarcophagus (Swrvey, p. 237).

10 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
of thoughtful men who lived in the empire of Alexander,
who witnessed the rise and fall of the Greek kingdoms,
the spread of Greek culture, the rise of imperial Rome,
the collapse of the ancient faiths. Men were driven from
their old moorings and had not yet become accustomed
to the new order. They were cut loose from the city-
state and from Oriental despotism and thrown into an
empire which was too large for the individual. New
world-centres arose. The average man was perplexed
by the rapid march of history. In the social confusion
and the fall of long- established systems there was much
calculated to unsettle the firmest faith. Such transition
periods are always fraught with difficulty and danger.
Striking Contrasts
The Graeco-Roman world presents the greatest contrasts
and extremes. Every age may be so characterised, but
this holds true in a special manner of these centuries.
Monotony had dropped out of life. The homogeneousness
of nations was disturbed. The systems which had held
men together on a certain equality were broken down,
and the gorgon of undisciplined individualism had appeared
on the scene. The old and the new were consorting.
Some were gazing at the setting sun ; others expectantly
toward the rising sun. This age presents none of the
monotony of the lethargic Orient nor the homogeneity
of mediaevalism. Hence so many contrary and even
contradictory statements have been made about it and
supported by the citation of abundant authorities. There
appears a juxtaposition of several worlds : the world of
sensualism and luxury among the upper classes, as described
by Juvenal, Tacitus, Petronius ; that of despair and void,
but not without a ray of hope, as in the pages of Cicero,
Seneca, and Persius ; that of wholesome literary friendship
exemplified by the Plinies, Cicero, and Plutarch ; that of

n.] GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 11
the fervent religious brotherhoods of which we get glimpses
in ancient authors and inscriptions; that of the street-
preacher and moral lecturer as seen in the better class of
Cynics, in Dio Chrysostom, Musonius Rufus, Maximus
of Tyre ; that of superstition reflected in the remains of
books of magic, in tablets and inscriptions, and many
references in Suetonius, Plutarch, Aristides, Lucian, and
Philostratus ; that of the Nihilism of Lucretius ; that of
quiet resignation to the will of God, as in Epictetus and
Marcus Aurelius ; that of the great masses whose cares
and joys have been brought to light in the papyri.1
A Popularising Age
This age was essentially superficial. It was noted for
breadth rather than for depth : 2 it was not original,
creative, or imaginative, but imitative and encyclopaedic.
Religion, philosophy, art, letters, were all popularised.
The veneer of culture was widely spread but not always
accompanied by its essence. The art of the age is not
unworthy, but it does not exhibit the exquisite Peri-
clean perfection, and it betrays a more plebeian taste.
There was a widespread demand for objects of art, with
a proportionate lowering of the standard. It was an age
of art-collectors rather than of artists. The half-cultured
Roman carried off things which he understood to be of value
partly because they were prized by those whom he con
quered. The conduct of Mummius was typically Roman
and characteristic of the age, when, having consigned
Corinth to the flames, he stipulated with the shippers of
its precious treasures that if these were lost or damaged
on the way to Rome they should be replaced by others
' equally good.' Even the literature is not original. The
1 Cf. Deissmann, IAghtfrom the Ancient East, chap. iv. et passim.
* Fronde, in his essay on Julius Caesar, says: 'The age was saturated
with cant.'

12 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
glorious days of Greek literature lay behind ; the Roman
literature, not excepting the Ciceronian and Augustan
periods, was a re-working of Greek materials and repro
duction (of a high order) of Greek models. ' The rich
literary amateur, who should have been a Maecenas,
became an author himself.' 1 In politics the masses had
asserted themselves. They constituted a perpetual pro
blem and menace to statesmen of the Republic, and were
a large factor in setting up the Empire under which they
were fed, petted, and amused. Philosophy was popularised
as far as possible. Much of the highest thought of Plato
had filtered down among the masses, and a smattering of
philosophy was an essential part of an ordinary liberal
education. The post-Aristotelian philosophies tended to
become religious and to take their share in meeting the
general demand for moral guidance. But religion above
all else assumed a popular form. Philosophy was the
only religion of the educated, and the masses were no
longer interested in any state cult. Popular preachers and
lecturers were in demand — an ancient Salvation Army.
The people had recourse to the new gods brought in from
the Orient. The Roman state was constantly compelled
in religious matters to make concessions to popular
demands in introducing more emotional and individual
methods (e.g. supplicationes, lectistemia, ludi), and in
gradually recognising foreign cults to which the people
were devoted. Even the strong hand of Rome governed
by astutely yielding to the populace.
Its Modemness
This Graeco-Roman age must strike the student as very
modern. In reading its records we often forget we are
separated from these ancients by so many centuries. As
evidence of this modemness we feel ourselves more at home
1 Dill, Rom. Society, p. 95.

n.] GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 13
in the era commencing with Alexander, and can more readily
sympathise with the succeeding centuries than we can with
mediaevalism. There is much of the philosophy of Plato
and Aristotle that seems intended for another order of
things, whereas the philosophies that interpreted the
world to the Graeco-Roman age — though less original and
less interesting — deal with more familiar topics. Their
problems — philosophical, religious, economic, social and
political — touch us of a later era very closely.
The social habits are very modern : to travel for business,
pleasure, or education was quite usual. The nouveaux riches
were as objectionable then as now. The international ex
change of wares, manners, thought, and religion was, more
especially in the Roman Empire, as active as at the present
day. Facilities of communication were more abundant
than at any time prior to the invention of steam and the
era of railway construction. From the second Punic war
women became as prominent almost as in our suffragette
age. Their virtues and weaknesses were muoh the same.
They loved display and fine dresses ; they were susceptible
to flattery. Ovid tells how they came to be seen rather than
to see : ' spectatum veniunt : veniunt spectentur ut ipsae.'
The excavations at Pompeii show how ladies attempted
to escape with their jewels and valuables, and have un
earthed sad memorials of mother love. Programmes of
amusements, especially of the amphitheatre, were in regular
use. Gossip and slander formed part of society's daily food.
There was the same reverence then as now, even among
roues like Ovid, for the innocence of girlhood. Manages
de convenance were in vogue with similar results. Culti
vated men were alarmed at a degraded popular taste as
among ourselves, when an ephemeral musical comedy will
draw a packed house for a whole season while an excel
lent cast of Shakespeare is little appreciated. So with
the later Greeks and Romans mimes and farces and even
coarser amusements ousted drama possessing any moral

14 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
purpose. There were 'star' actors like Aesopus and
Roscius, and, in Pompeii, Actius. Fashions also came
and went. Shrews were not unknown, like Cicero's wife
Terentia, or his brother Quintus's wife Pomponia. Com
plaints come to us of the intractableness of the gentler
sex.1 The habits of sweethearts present no novelty : they
scribbled on walls, used endearing epithets, prized keep
sakes, became maddened with jealousy. Many were
cruel as the Lesbia of Catullus. Social life (apart from
political) was at least equally absorbing in the late
Republic and in the Empire. The dinner hour was
pushed later and later into the evening.
Comforts were generally more accessible in the Graeco-
Roman age than until the past half -century. There were
more accommodations for out-of-door life, and abundant
lounging places. Public baths with an amazing equip
ment (sometimes with a library) are found in every town,
however small. In Timgad one finds several public baths
in a remarkable state of preservation. The public con
veniences of Timgad are superior to those in some modern
European cities. ' Taking the cure ' at celebrated bathing-
places and natural springs was an ordinary occurrence;
we have still ample evidence from places like Hammam
R'lhra near the desert, Wiesbaden and Bath. As we read
in the train, travellers could read and write on their
journeys : the case of the Ethiopian eunuch is familiar.
In the better houses there was a bathroom, and sometimes
several. The hot-air system, re-discovered in America,
was known to the Romans in the first century B.C.
Dentistry was practised : Cicero tells us incidentally of
gold-filled teeth. 'Every highly educated man at this
1 Metellus Macedonicus said in a public speech : ' If we could do without
wives we should be rid of that nuisance ; but since nature has decreed
that we can neither live comfortably with them, nor live at all without
them, we must e'en look rather to our permanent interests than to a passing
pleasure' (Aul. Gel., A. N., i. 6). Plutarch has preserved the famous saying
of the elder Oato : ' All men rule over women ; we Romans rule over all men
and our wives rule over us.'

n.] GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 15
(Cicero's) time owned a library and wished to have the
latest book.' Men went to their friends' libraries to consult
books, as Cioero to that of Lucullus at Tusculum. It was
also an era of public libraries. On the way from the modern
museum in Timgad to the forum there stands on the left
hand the Timgad 'Carnegie' library, with a large slab
inscribed with the name of the donor and the cost. In
large cities like Alexandria there were university libraries.
Banking business was highly developed : one could deposit
at interest ; there were also current accounts with some
thing like our cheque system. Letters of credit and bills
of exchange were negotiated, so that a traveller was not
obliged to carry much money on his person.1
The vices of the age wear a modern garb : luxury,
extravagance, selfishness, gambling, the mad rush to
acquire wealth. Divorce was frightfully common in the
upper classes. Idleness was the favourite occupation of
the two extremes of society. There was a disinclination
on the part of society men and women towards marriage,
and race-suicide reached such proportions as to become
a grave concern to statesmen. The restlessness and fever
of our modern life invaded their lives, but they could plead
more extenuating circumstances than we.
In many other details the records astonish us. Many of
the papyri documents, if dates and names were changed,
would read as if of yesterday. There were comic artists
who anticipated Punch, and cartoonists. One has repre
sented Nero as a butterfly driving the fiery steeds of the
chariot of state. Men bet on their favourite horses. The
1 ' In such matters as transit, puhlic health, police, water supply, engineer
ing, building and so forth, Rome of the second century left off pretty much
where the reign of Queen Victoria was to resume. The modern city of Rome
is obtaining its drinking water out of about three of the nine great aqueducts
which ministered to the imperial city. The hot-air system which warms the
hotels of modern Europe and America was in general use in every comfortable
villa of the first century a.d. Education was more general and more access
ible to the poor in a.d. 200 than in a.d. 1850. The siege artillery employed
by Trajan was as effective, probably, as the cannon of Vauban ' (Stobart).

16 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
Romans seem to have anticipated Pitman in shorthand.
There was an imperial post, and there seem to have been
abundant private postal systems, so that news travelled
with astonishing rapidity. Among the Romans we find
the precursor of our daily newspaper without the editorials,
the acta diurna, giving the latest news and gossip.
Not only in external and accidental things but in senti
ment it hardly seems possible that we can be separated by
so many centuries. These ancients experienced wants simi
lar to ours, were disturbed by similar yearnings, and moved
by similar joys and sorrows. The Hellenistic literature,
but chiefly the Roman, often betrays a quite modern senti
ment. The opening of Cicero's De Legibus II. reveals a love
of native place with its familiar seats and charming walks.
The love of landscape and of nature was as pronounced
among the Romans as among ourselves. No ancients took
the same delight in flowers. The Roman could not rest in
his domus aeterna if no kindly hand strewed violets or roses
in spring. And in their small houses, as in Timgad, it is
pathetic to see with what care they surrounded themselves
with flowers. The enjoyment of nature, which became
prominent in the Alexandrine poetry, is still more pro
nounced in Roman poetry, as in Virgil, Lucretius, Horace,
and Catullus. ' The passion of love . . . became a very
powerful influence in actual life during the last years of
the Republic and the early years of the Empire. It is
in Latin literature that we are brought most near to the
power of this passion in the ancient world.' 1 The appetite
for friendship and companionship was keen.
It is in their sorrow that these ancients are most modern.
The tombstones in the Ceramicus tell the same tales as
those in our churchyards. We find in the heart of Asia
Minor the rustic stonemason burning with warm human
tears memorial letters into the cold stone. On not a few
tombs the broken-hearted parents yearn for the patter of
1 Sellar, Rom. Poets of the Repui., pp. 19, 376.

n.] GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 17
little feet, the widow longs for reunion, the dead plead for
the sympathy and remembrance of the living. It is not
the sorrow which is modern but the way in which it
expresses itself. Men were no longer willing to seek the
anodyne of their own grief in the common grief or welfare
of the community. A more atomistic and personal way
of looking at things had arisen : the individual heart
clamoured for what the individual heart had lost.

Education
Education was general ; more so than in some Conti
nental countries at the present day. There were facilities
for popular education in the Roman Empire to an extent
unknown in our land till the Victorian era. The papyri
show us how common writing was even among ordinary
folk. Greek tutors, professors, and private chaplains were
in extraordinary demand. The basis of Graeco-Roman
education was Greek culture. The Romans sent their sons
to the University of Athens to finish their education. The
young Cicero studied there, and received from his father
some of the letters which we read to-day. Horace was
also a student at Athens. Philo knew the city. There
philosophers of every school discussed their Weltan-
schauungen. Philo says that Athens was to Greece
what the pupil is to the eye or reason to the soul. It
was the mother of universities in Alexandria, Antioch,
Tarsus, and elsewhere. The Jews were alive to the
necessity of Jewish education amid the power and fasci
nation of Hellenism. In every city alongside the syna
gogue they had their schools and libraries.
Teaching was a recognised, honourable, and — in contrast
to our time — a lucrative profession. It is quite common
in the inscriptions of Asia Minor to read of teachers who,
having amassed fortunes, bestow princely gifts on their
native towns. Academic titles like philosopher, doctor,
B

18 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY ch.
sophist, analogous to our M.A. or D.D., were in vogue and
often inscribed on tombstones. Alexandria was the centre
of learning in the Roman Empire : it was not so much a
teaching university as a seat of research. The museum and
library of some 700,000 volumes attracted scholars from
all countries. Though libraries were known from the days
of Ashurbanipal (seventh century B.C.), it was only in the
Roman period that they were established in every city of im
portance. After the destruction of the Alexandrian library
in the siege under Caesar, the library of the Serapeum came
to have the foremost place there. The library of Pergamum,
founded by Attalus I. and enlarged by Eumenes n., of
200,000 rolls, was carried to Alexandria by Antony.
Pergamum and Alexandria created a demand for reading
facilities ; we may infer from Polybius that in the second
century B.C. libraries were fairly common. Asinius
Pollio and Augustus inaugurated the public library system
in Rome. We have already mentioned the library of
Timgad. Besides, private collections were quite usual,
such as those of Cicero, Aemilius Paullus, and Lucullus.
In Herculaneum an Epicurean collection has been dis
covered. Books were numerous and cheap because of
the use of convenient writing material and the facilities
of production by slave copyists. The two favourite
materials were papyrus and parchment or vellum, as dis
tinguished from leather. Parchment, according to Varro,
owes its origin to the rivalry between the Egyptian and
Attalid kings as regards their respective libraries. It was
first manufactured under Eumenes n., after Ptolemy had
prohibited the export of papyrus. Ostraca (potsherds) were
used by the poorer folk in Egypt. Wax notebooks were
carried for ordinary use. But the increasing numbers of
literary slaves was the chief reason of the enormous spread
of books. One slave read and others wrote to his dicta
tion. The demand for books gave rise to book-selling as a
separate trade. ' Atticus, the first person who is known to

n.] GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 19
have undertaken the multiplication and sale of books on
a large scale, had numerous rivals. Under Augustus at
the latest, the book-trade in Rome was a business by itself,
and soon after in the provinces.' l

Universalism
A very striking feature of this age was its ever-increasing
universalism, beginning under Alexander and culminating
in the Roman Empire. Various causes contributed toward
cosmopolitanism. (1) There was what we might call the moral necessity
of a reaction. This arose partly from the disgust engen
dered by the long tyrannical rule of exclusivism. Men
had missed the via media between a true nationalism and
an indifference to national interests. Exclusivism had
worked havoc in the Greek world ; a more excellent way
was now sought. In the Oriental world despotism, like
Russian absolutism, rendered men insensible to patriotism.
There is another side to this moral necessity : God has so
endowed the nations that each is the complement of the
other, and only in co-operation can they truly forward the
work of humanity. The ancient nations were left for a
time each in its exclusive school to develop its particular
aptitudes. Each worked, as it were, behind closed doors ;
then the doors of the workshops were thrown open and
inspection invited. Nations began to compare notes, to
teach their lessons, and to inquire into what others pro
fessed to teach. Life is many sided, and, for a rounded
life, attention must be drawn to all its phases.
(2) The relative superiority of the peoples blended in
the Graeco-Roman world. There were four competing
civilisations — Orientalism, Judaism, Hellenism, Romanism,
none of which could by itself claim an absolute empire over
man, none combining completely the elements necessary
' FriedlSnder, Rom. Life and Manners, Eng. trans., iii. 38.

20 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
for all. Had there been only one superior people among
inferior peoples there would have resulted a universalism
of uniformity; but these four types of mind being in
competition, a universalism to which each contributed its
best was inevitable.1
(3) The conquests of Alexander and his liberal policy of
rec _,nciliation, inherited by the Diadochi and consummated
by the Romans and by Christianity.
(4) Greek thought, especially post- Aristotelian (v. ch. vi.).
(5) The spread of the Greek language. Out of a babel
of dialects arose a Koini or lingua franca, which became
the medium of intercourse for all races {v. ch. viii..).
(6) Another — less potent — factor was the enormous
bodies of Greek mercenaries taking service in foreign
armies. They acted as a solvent of Greek nationalism,
and as quasi-intermediaries between East and West. They
learned tolerance in the ranks, and after their term of
service many settled among alien populations.
(7) Commerce is one of the strongest international bonds,
and in the post- Alexandrian world the facilities for commerce
were multiplied. Colossal sums hoarded up by Oriental
despots were released as productive wealth or as means
of luxury which calls forth trading. Larger fields were
opened for speculation. As nations come to know each
other they wish to procure the comforts and luxuries of
their neighbours. Soon luxuries become necessities. Before
Japan was entered by the West she was indifferent to
international trade : Western merchants have persuaded
China and Japan that they need many things which they
were once able to do without. Trade drove Jewish, Greek,
Roman and Syrian merchants to settle among alien popula-
1 An illustration may be given from the British Empire. When the British
rule among a people like the aborigines of New Zealand, the latter, without
literature or culture, produce no effect on the British settlers. Anglo-Saxon
civilisation spreads uniformly as at home. But when peoples like the British,
Brahmins, and Parsees live together, they learn from and teach each other, and
there results a new type which is neither British nor Indian but Eurasian.

n.] GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 21
tions. ' These merchants occupied themselves with the
affairs of heaven as well as of earth.' The spread of the
Greek tongue, the ever larger political unities into which
men were being fused, the ' majesty of the Roman peace,'
Roman roads and bridges, the gradual extension of the jus
gentium, gave an impetus to trade. Moreover, the trading
peoples lived on the shores of the Mediterranean, which
when cleared of pirates and ruled by one power became
a safer highway of commerce than it has been up to the
fourth decade of last century.
(8) Slaves and freedmen were among the most potent
missionaries of cosmopolitanism and human brotherhood.
(See ch. iii., p. 54.)
(9) Religious brotherhoods and guilds. (See ch. iv., p. 9.)
(10) Cosmopolitanism reached its acme in the conquests
of the Roman Republic and the administration of the
Empire. The foundation of the Empire was a protest
against the exclusivism and the all-Roman policy of the
oligarchy. The whole world united into a brotherhood
and under the rule of a single individual was the dream
of Julius Caesar. The Roman Empire bestowed peace on
a war- weary world, and energetically commenced the task
of consolidation. Intermixture of Races
Partly as a cause and partly as a consequence of uni
versalism, there was an astonishing intermixture of popula
tions, especially in the Empire. A homogeneous people
was hardly to be found except in secluded regions. All
races were daily touching shoulders. War, forcible de
portations, the slave trade, commerce, the liberal policy
of rulers contributed to this intermixture. Alexander in
augurated the scheme of establishing centres of amalgama
tion. As such his new foundations composed of Greeks,
Macedonians, and Persians must be regarded, as truly as

22 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
military colonies. Alexandria was the first of these centres
for the nations and for East and West. Such an experiment
was as difficult then as now, if we are to judge from the
bloody street riots in Alexandria and Antioch. Corinth,
after its foundation by Caesar 44 B.C., speedily fulfilled
the same function. There were the veterans of Caesar,
Hellenic elements from the surrounding districts, besides
the ever-present Greek adventurers. The New Testa
ment and inscriptions testify to an influential Jewish
element ; and the Oriental element was not small, judging
from the vogue of Oriental worships.1 This intermixture
was not confined to capital cities, trading and banking
centres, commercial seaports, university towns ; it ex
tended to the provinces and the islands of the Aegean.
Delos rose in prominence as Athens declined. In the
second century B.C., before ships plied direct between the
East and Italy, it was the stopping-place and distributing
centre for wholesale merchants ; it was also famous for its
slave market where as many as 10,000 slaves were sold
by auction daily. Deprived of its freedom after the
Macedonian war and deserted by the Greek population,
it was re-colonised by the Athenians and Romans who
have left a wealth of inscriptions. Josephus cites a decree
of the Delians exempting the Jews from military service,
and such favours were never conferred on Jews unless
under strong necessity. In the Mithridatic war Delos
and the neighbouring islands were ravaged and 20,000
Italians slain. In 141 B.C., the Jews of Gortyna (in Crete)
were numerous enough to secure from the consul Lucius
the promise of protection (1 Mace. xv. 23). Cyprus was
another blending-place, populated by Phoenicians, Greeks,
Persians, Egyptians, Romans and Jews. In the insur
rection under Trajan the Jews are said to have massacred
240,000 Gentiles. In Cyrene, Josephus says, one-fourth of
1 The Acropolis was crowned with a temple of Aphrodite (Astarte) in
whose service were one thousand female slaves.

n.] GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 23
the population was Jewish. Many other examples of the
blending of different races could be adduced. Under
Mithridates 80,000 Roman residents in Asia are said to
have been massacred. One of the Ptolemies deported
100,000 Jews to Libya. In the insurrection in Britain
under Boadicea 70,000 Roman colonists perished.
Syncretism
As corollaries to cosmopolitanism we find syncretism —
the bringing together of elements once thought irreconcil
able — and eclecticism — the selection by the individual from
every quarter of whatever he required for the practical
needs of his own life. These two forces invaded every
department — art, politics, culture, but chiefly philosophy,
morality, and religion. Such conditions were inevitable after
the collapse of exclusive systems, in the mixture of popula
tions (such as may be found in the United States), through
lively intercourse, and the demands of a practical and popu
larising age, and as the result of the competing Weltan-
schauungen of one people eminent for religion, another for
culture, and a third for power. The proconsul Gellius who
invited the rival philosophers of Athens to come to terms,
offering himself as arbiter, was typical of the age. Morality
and religion were peculiarly syncretistic. ' In the sphere of
religion a sort of assimilative or encyclopaedic frenzy was
abroad.' The conservative Jews did not escape ; they were
Greeks in almost everything but religion. There were fre
quent conversions from Heathenism to Judaism, and not
a few from Judaism to Heathenism.1 The Judaeo-Greek
literature of Alexandria blended East and West, acting as
i Schiirer, iii. 135, and oi trori 'lovSaioi of C. I. G. , 3148. The Hellen-
ising zeal of Jason and Menelaus in Jerusalem found much sympathy.
Nothing was more syncretistic than magic, in which the Jews excelled,
especially in exorcism. Cf. Schiirer, iii. 409 ff. The letter of Hadrian (?)
shows to what a dangerous extreme syncretism was carried : ' Nemo illic
archisynagogus ludaeorum, nemo Samarites, nemo Christianorum presbyter
non mathematicus, non haruspex, non aliptes.' Cf. Deissmann, Light from
the Ancient East, pp. 250 ff., 303 ff.

24 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
a solvent for both. Egypt has been termed by Kennedy
' the religious clearing-house of the Hellenistic world.' 1 In
the Diaspora the expansive tendency of Judaism gained
the upper hand over the exclusive, until the destruction
of Jerusalem and the rivalry of Christianity compelled
Judaism to retreat within itself. The ' God-fearing '
heathen were half heathen and half Jews, and mediated
between both. The Greeks, though maintaining their
intellectual and cultural supremacy, were influenced by
their Roman conquerors, while they assimilated the religious
thought of the East. The Romans were the greatest
borrowers and adapters, their genius being of a mosaic
order. Their religion was like Joseph's coat. Oriental
religions were pre-eminently syncretistic. Good fellowship
was maintained among the gods of various nations, the
gods keeping pace with every rapprochement among their
worshippers.2 Alexander attempted neither to exterminate
Oriental deities nor to compel his new subjects to acknow
ledge Greek deities. The conquered and the conquerors
in the Greek kingdoms and the Roman Empire proceeded
to identify their gods on the principle that their functions
are the same, the names alone being different in different
languages. The strong movement toward monotheism
gave an impetus to this practice. The list of the names
of the deities so assimilated or identified is a long one.
Eclecticism, which was prevalent in every system of
philosophy and in practically every writer, made its
standard what is common to ail men — the immediate
consciousness.3 After Aristotle no original system was
forthcoming, so that men fell back on those available to
cull from them what they considered appropriate, and to
form new schools with membra undique collata.* Syncretism
i St. Paul, p. 104. s Cf. TJsener, Gotternamen, p. 340.
» Zeller, Eclectics, p. 17.
* Christianity appearing in this syncretistic world could not escape the
contagion, but it would require a separate volume to trace to what extent
historic Christianity is syncretistic.

n.] GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 25
reached its apogee at the close of the second century a.d.,
and during the third.

Individualism
The last feature for which space permits mention is
perhaps the most striking — individualism ; on the one hand
the self-assertion of the individual in opposition to the
corporate body, and on the other the reflection of the
individual upon his own inner life. Individualism arose
from the ruins of nationalism and of the city-state.
Ancient patriotism was too tyrannical : it was an ex
aggerated form of the modern Teutonio theory that the
state is the end and the individual the means for its
aggrandisement, as opposed to that of English-speaking
nations that the individual is the end and the state the
means for his self-realisation. The result was a universal
strike against collectivism. Again, there was at that time
no via media between the exclusiveness of the polis and
atomistic individualism. Two important factors were lack
ing — a true nationalism, and that domain which we term
* society ' (in which we are influenced by our fellows, and in
turn put our impress upon them). Finally, there was the
emergence of a strong sense of individuality and person
ality : the inward problem had been presented and the
demands of selfhood grew clamant. We of a later age need
regret neither the apparent tyranny of the city-state nor
the individualism which wrecked it : both were attempts
of men as thoughtful as we are toward self-realisation.
Individualism, being the reverse side of universalism,
invaded Oriental, Jewish, Greek and Roman life. The
Orientals, whose chief bond of cohesion was the despot
ism destroyed by Alexander, when the central restraining
power was removed went each his own way. There is
a solitariness in Oriental life foreign to Western society.
The Orientals sought satisfaction in religions liberated

26 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
from national prejudices, into the fellowship of which
members were admitted irrespective of race.
Individualism is most unexpected among the Jews, with
whom Jahweh dealt as an aggregate and not as individuals.
But the advance of religious experience raised the question :
Can Jahweh leave a righteous Israelite unrewarded when
the nation forgets Him ? Can He permit a wicked
Israelite to escape because he belongs to a chosen nation ?
Is suffering always penal ? Must innocent children suffer
for the sins of the fathers ? The germs of the later indi-
vidualisation of religion are found in the great pre-exilic
prophets like Hosea and Amos, who shifted the emphasis
from ceremonial to ethics, anticipating the truth that
religion is communion with God. The excuse of the exiles
was an arraignment of an apparently undiscriminating
Providence — ' the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the
children's teeth are set on edge.' Individualism properly
so called came in with the Exile through the necessary
re-examination of the basis of religion and morality, and
the influence of Persia. In the crisis Jeremiah discovered
and rescued the individual. He perceived that the
proverb ' the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the chil
dren's teeth are set on edge' destroyed moral responsibility :
he proclaimed personal responsibility, ' every one shall die
for his own iniquity.' Religion as the communion of the
soul with God cannot be harmed by any national calamity.
Henceforth the individual is constituted the religious unit
in place of the nation which had hitherto been so regarded.
' Thus through Jeremiah the foundation of a true indi
vidualism was laid, and the law of individual retribu
tion proclaimed.' 1 Ezekiel carried this revolutionary truth
to the extreme. He proclaims, ' all souls are mine,' and
asserts man's moral freedom irrespective of his own past
and the wickedness of his family or nation : a man's will
shapes his destiny ; retribution is strictly individual, and
1 Charles, Eschatology, p. 61.

H.] GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 27
every soul receives its deserts here before the eyes of men.1
Ecclesiastes refuted the idea of Providence as discriminating
against the wicked. Job dissevered the idea of punish
ment from suffering, and expressed the yearning for indi
vidual immortality. Jewish history proved that the
individual does suffer for the sins of the fathers. In the
Psalms there is much individualism : at one time the
individual retribution of Ezekiel, at another those out
pourings of the heart so personal and universal that all
generations can use their language. The fifty-first Psalm
shows how the individual and the collective are inter
twined. In the Apocrypha and the Apocalyptic Hterature
there is a still larger growth of individualism, but also
the reconciliation of the individual with the corporate
spiritual life. The aspirations of Job have developed into
a resurrection for the individual righteous as well as for
the righteous nation : then came a resurrection of the
wicked individual for judgment. The synagogue fostered
the individualisation of religion as personal piety. Indi
vidualism as such never commended itself to the Jew :
he could not accept an individualistic immortality like the
Greek. The hopes of the individual and of the nation
were united in the faith in a resurrection and a Messianic
kingdom. Israel alone attained a true individualism —
at least in religion.
Greece and Rome suffered most from individualism. In
the fifth century B.C. Greece was overtaken by such an acute
attack of individualism as has never been equalled except in
the closing Roman Republic and in the age of Rousseau.2
Individualism was the projection of the Greek idea of
1 ' Whilst Ezekiel's undying merit in this respect was his assertion of the
independent worth of the individual, his defects lay in two misstatements :
(o) the individual does not suffer for the sins of his fathers, but only for
bis own ; (6) the individual is at present judged in perfect keeping w!t.h his
deserts. In other words, sin and suffering, righteousness and well-being,
are always connected : the outward lot of the individual is God's judgment
in concrete form. ' — Charles, p. 67.
2 Individualism was pronounced in Nominalism and in mediaeval art.

28 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
freedom in an inward direction, and was nursed by demo
cracy. Greek constitutions were wrecked tby the passions
of individuals. Sophistic reduced society to atoms,
annihilating the authority of the state, and making man,
the individual, the measure of all things. Socrates per
ceived the danger of this teaching : while he attempted to
save the state he further emphasised the worth of the
individual, and his teaching was more individualistic than
he was aware. Plato made a heroic effort to buttress
the tottering polis, subordinating the individual to the
universal. Aristotle, too, wished to preserve the state,
but saw the necessity of saving the individual from the
universal of Plato. The post-Aristotelian schools took
up the strictly individualistic standpoint.
The Romans were infected with individualism in the
second Punic war and amid the distribution of the spoils
of conquest. The Roman civil wars were the result of
individuaHsm ; the rise of the Empire was merely the
survival of the fittest in the struggle of individuals. As
Roman conquests spread, the happiness of the world was
dependent more and more on individuals. Men sought
office for personal aggrandisement ; the state was simply
to be exploited for personal advantage. In art the parti
cular and reaHstic made its appearance ; portrait-busts
were made. In society, selfishness was prevalent.
Individuals exercised an influence quite new.1 As Roman
Hterature was in its infancy when individuaHsm swept
over East and West we find more individuaHsm in it than in
any ancient Hterature. The genius of Roman writers is
personal and self-conscious compared with the more
1 ' The tendency to individualism was also the natural result of enlarged
experience and expanding intelligence among the upper classes. The second
century B.o. shows us many prominent men of strong individual character
who assert themselves in ways to which we have been unaccustomed in
Roman history . . . and among lesser and less honourable men we see the
tendency in the passionate desire for personal distinction in the way of
military commands, triumphs, and the giving of expensive games.'— Fowler,
Relig. Exper., p. 340.

n.] GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 29
impersonal Greek genius. Love assumed a more acute
form, Uke our modern sentiment. SeUar says, 'Roman
poetry is interesting as the revelation of personal experi
ence and character,' and ' in no other branch of ancient
Hterature is so much prominence given to the enjoyment
of nature, the passion of love, and the joys, sorrows, tastes
and pursuits of the individual.' * Biography was popula
rised in Greek by Plutarch ; autobiography is a native
form of Roman Hterature.2 In the records of the sorrow
of the age we see that men were no longer wilHng to find
solace for their private grief in the grief or welfare of
the corporate body. The statuesque patriotic sorrow of
Pericles' Funeral Oration was now an anachronism. The
desire for reunion was asserting itself that the heart
might find what the individual heart had lost. In reHgion
individuaHsm was most pronounced. Satisfaction for
personal needs was sought in universal reHgions divorced
from the state and offering their message to man as man :
men perfunctorily performed the rites of the state cult
which had no message for the destitute individual. The
interest had shifted from the outer to the inner world.
Space forbids to dweH upon the results, good and evil, of
ubiquitous individuaHsm. It was the portal to the study
of an infinite personaHty ; it was of immense importance
for Christianity, making men conscious of needs that only
Christianity could meet.
> Rom. Poets of the Repub., pp. 16-17.
• A. F. West, Rom. Autobiography, p. 1.

30 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [cm.

CHAPTER III
SOCIAL AND MORAL CONDITIONS OF THE GRAECO-
ROMAN WORLD
Lorsqu'on veut trouver la conscience d'un peuple, oe n'est pas
toujours dans ses mceurs aotuelles qu'il faut la eheroher: elle est
sou vent tout entiere dans ses vosux et dans ses regrets. — Denis,
vol. ii. p. 130.
It is impossible to understand the moral and reUgious
conditions of the ancient world without taking into
account the social conditions partly determined by and
partly determining the moral and religious. Many factors
must be considered which space permits us merely to
summarise.
A. Social Conditions
Fall of Polis
From the beginning of the fourth century B.C., society
had been in a state of constant flux. The weakening
and subsequent fall of the city-state involved a fearful
crisis. The ancient principle was one of the strict sub
ordination of the individual to the body poUtic. But
the passions of individuals overthrew this long-estabHshed
system. This had unfortunately been done before men
were clear as to what should take its place. Having
rejected a cramping authority they were in no haste to
acknowledge another. IndividuaHsm became regnant.
The West, which gave birth to the idea of equal Hberty

m.] SOCIAL CONDITIONS 31
regulated by self-made law, paid dearly for the boon in
the way of terrible social revolutions while the polis yet
stood, and, when it began to totter, by bloody conflicts
as to who should wield authority in the next regime.
From the Peloponnesian war onwards the decline of free
dom and the alarming growth of mercenaries and outlaws
is ' one of the most injurious phenomena of this age,' and
indicative of approaching miHtary despotism. The Greeks
tried monarchy, tyranny, oHgarchy, democracy, and
decided for democracy. Roman history presents a
curious and instructive development. Democracy steadily
advanced as in Greece, but with the extension of Roman
conquests, when great affairs of state and foreign poHcy
required professional and speciaHsed knowledge, the senate
so manipulated popular government as to establish the
most tyrannical oHgarchy the world has ever seen, and aU
under the farce of popular and representative government
— just as in our own Napoleonic wars the peasant and
middle classes, who gave their Hves by thousands, were
sacrificed for the benefit of a scanty nobiHty. The Orient
was not Hable to frequent and violent revolutions Uke
the West : it remained more sphinx-Hke.
Unintermittent Wars
For 400 years B.C. the nations had been engaged in unin
termittent wars. After the struggle of Greece against Persia
began the internecine strife of the Greek states which ended
in the exhaustion of aU ; then on the field of Chaeroneia
Greece came under the heel of Macedonia. Alexander's
world-conquests were foUowed by the struggles of the
Diadochi until the Romans made a universal conquest.
The Romans had carried on a long warfare to extend their
rule over Italy : they had also fought the Carthaginian
a outrance to convert the Mediterranean into a Roman
sea. Finally, the Roman civil wars deluged the whole

32 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
world in blood. Ancient historians have left us records
of the disastrous social and moral consequences of most
of these wars. Thucydides' recital of the results of the
Peloponnesian war is well known. The second Punic war
— though against a foreign foe — was the first serious dis
integrating force in Roman morals.1 It hastened the
advent of a commercial era in a society hitherto agri
cultural and miHtary. Economic Results
The many wars of this period told on society. The
material resources of many cities and individuals were
exhausted and comforts diminished, a fact which partly
explains the spirit of revolution and rebelHon, social dis
turbances being notoriously conditioned by economic con
siderations. When a large section of society have nothing
to lose they are ready to promote any revolution as Hkely
to benefit them, and certain not to render their circum
stances worse. Citizens were kept under arms for ever
longer periods, and were obfiged to remain years abroad
where the ties of home graduaUy relaxed and domestic
charities declined. They returned home unaccustomed to
the useful monotony of daily work which only brought a
bare Hving. Having been in the pay of the state, they
looked to the state still to provide for them. They alsc
looked for some substitute for excitement and blood-shed
ding. As their conquests had enriched their country, why
should the country not pamper them as they deserved ?
Again, many of these veterans had left home before a
marriageable age and returned indifferent to the soften
ing influences of domestic life: this naturaUy affected
the birth-rate. Of those who went out from their homes
tens of thousands never returned. Thus not only was a
vacuum created at home, but many widows were emanci-
> Cf. Lecky, Hist, of European Morals, ii. 302 ff.

ni.] SOCIAL CONDITIONS 33
pated from marital control, a condition which furthered
the prominence of women in the Roman Empire. MiHtar-
ism, never the nurse of social virtues, became increasingly
influential. The most hopeless feature was that in the
Roman RepubHc which ruled the world the civil power
lost control over the miHtary : this deluged Rome and
many of her provinces in bloodshed.
But the long wars gave rise to serious economic and
industrial questions. The lands which furnished the
battle-ground were exhausted. Colossal armies had been
biUeted upon the helpless populations. Bread-earners had
been pressed into service. Crops over large areas were
destroyed lest they should feed an enemy, or carried off
for the needs of the devastating army ; the very means of
their agriculture were removed — horses and aU draught
animals and farming implements. Conquered lands were
compeUed to pay large contributions in money or in kind,
which plunged them into debt to unprincipled specu
lators. Their country was also opened to the exploitation
of foreign capitaHsts. Many cities fell into bankruptcy,
Thousands of the former free population had been kiUed,
or sold as slaves, or drafted as auxiHaries into the Roman
armies. There was not, in the economic depression, employ
ment enough for those left, which necessitated migration
of populations.
One of the first consequences of Alexander's conquests
was to bring into circulation enormous sums of gold and
silver and to scatter treasures of precious stones — the
hordes of centuries of Oriental despotism. This circula
tion stimulated greed for a share of the spoils. It gave
rise to the desire of wealth for self-gratification, created a
demand for luxuries, and raised the prices so that Hving
became more difficult for the poor.
The same thing happened later, and to a stiU larger
extent, in Rome. The social trouble of the time of the
Gracchi arose from the division of the spoils. The members

34 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
of the oHgarchy secured most of the pubHc lands for them
selves, the state being only nominaUy landlord. When
the land-bills of Tiberius Gracchus proposed a redistribu
tion, the proprietors whom the landlords had settled on
the lands were threatened with starvation, and to save
themselves cast in their lot with the popular party who had
lost everything, or had nothing to lose. With every step
in Roman history we find the class struggles accompanied
with greater acrimony. As in our developing industrial and
imperial Hfe from the last quarter of the eighteenth century
until the era of recent social reforms, the rich grewricher and
the poor poorer. ' Trusts ' were formed, smaU proprietors
became fewer as the oHgarchy encroached. Matters grew
worse as Rome entered upon the conquest of the rich East.
Immense sums poured into the treasury to be disgorged into
private pockets ; the domains of the East were exploited
by the Roman speculator. Joint-stock companies were
floated tp coUect with enormous profits the revenues.
Large sums were needed by the exhausted lands to carry
out pub He works and to repair the damage of war. In a
thousand ways the speculator was able to make large returns,
having no scruples of conscience to hamper him. A taste
for luxuries spread from the East, and the demand created
a supply. The cost of Hving rose, and was met by a
decreasing marriage and birth rate. The stupid extrava
gance of the late RepubHc and the early Empire has rarely
been equalled. The tough Roman character soon deterio
rated amid self-indulgence. The unnatural and sudden
fashion in which Rome came to her wealth led to her ruin.
She had not the culture and education necessary to handle
it aright. There was more wealth than could in that age
be put to productive use. There was a field for investment
(chiefly in land and slaves) but not large enough, or rather
the banking system was not sufficiently developed. The
result was what we might anticipate if the many British
capitaHsts could not find aU over the world a rich field for

m.] SOCIAL CONDITIONS 35
their surplus capital, and were to withdraw it for self-
indulgence at home. Luxury among the plutocrats and
paternaHsm on the part of the administration put a
premium upon idleness in which no moraHty can thrive.
Increasing Number of Slaves
One of the evfl results of war was the augmentation of
the numbers of slaves. A cringing slave made an insolent
master. Experience has proved that slavery exerts a
deteriorating effect upon the character of the owners. It
affected also the free labouring population : forced labour,
considered cheaper than free, entered into competition
with it. But, strange to say, we hear of no complaints of
the free against the slave, nor any problem of unemploy
ment. The few freemen anxious to work apparently found
work, and the others preferred to be on the roU of state-fed.
Work for wages and the winning of daily bread was dis
tasteful, especiaUy to the Greek and to the later Roman.
The Greek ideal was a Hfe of leisure freed from toU and care.
The plunder of conquests inoculated the Roman with an
aversion to hard work : he loved otium, but it was no longer
the wen-earned rest. The Jew alone gave to toil an honour
able place. Unfortunately the Roman administration did
not encourage healthful labour, but rendered the situation
worse by doling out corn and oil to idle men.
Destruction of the Middle Classes
Perhaps the most deplorable feature of this period was
the destruction of the middle classes who form the back
bone of every nation. This set in first in the Greek world,
where the civil wars of the Greek states and the wars
between the Greek kingdoms after Alexander had exhausted
the free civic armies. In the East Rome completed the
disastrous work. In Italy Hannibal had traversed the

36 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
country exterminating the yeomanry. What Hannibal
spared Rome's own wars in Italy destroyed. The dis
appearance of the middle class created serious moral and
social difficulties. This class generaUy keeps any country
from rushing headlong to ruin ; they are the last strong
hold of a people's virtue ; they mediate between the ex
tremes of society. The absence of the middle class
deepened and widened the terrible social cleft in the ancient
world. An important reconciHng factor had dropped out.
Drift to City Life
There was a constant drift to the cities, partly because
of the decHne of agriculture and smaU proprietorship,
partly from ampler opportunities of making a fortune
when commerce became brisk, partly for the sake of
adventure, and other causes. The cities afforded ample
means of amusement and excitement, as much sought then
as now. In the first, and stiU more in the second century
of the Empire, the world was studded with more beautiful
cities than at the present day. The burdens feU on the
rich more than in our time. The stone records abound in
examples of private generosity for pubHc purposes.
B. Moral Conditions
In appraising the moraHty of the Graeco-Roman world we
must keep in view the many causes producing moral dis
order — centuries of poHtical confusion, devastating con
quests, the depopulation of fair regions, the diminutiou
of the free classes, the extermination of the middle classes,
the enormous increase of slavery whereby hundreds of
thousands of human beings were cut loose from the moral
restraints of their civiUsations, culture, and reHgion, and,
soured by their misfortunes, became the panders and pro
pagators of vice ; the social upheavals arising from the f aU

m.] MORAL CONDITIONS 37
of the city-state, the march of triumphant denocracy,
the mental void due to the faU of the national faiths, the
sudden irruption of unearned wealth, the rise of capitaHsm
and the growth of latifundia, the successful revolt of
individuaHsm, the world-shaking civil wars of Rome, the
grinding taxation and the noxious fiscal system of Rome.
The pagan world was moraUy depressed by the sense of a
continuous deterioration, as we are inspired by that of an
' increasing purpose ' in history. Also the Romans formed
the aristocracy, the ' society,' among peoples more cultured
than themselves, and thus prompted to what was often
imitation of the inferior. It would be a remarkable world
that such causes would not shake to the very foundations.
Yet in face of aU this, in the old world Hfe, as ever, was
rising from death.
It is much easier to depict the moral condition of one
class of ancient society than to form a balanced judgment
of its general moraUty. Hence exaggerations are current
in most books dealing with this period.
(a) Dark Side
It is an unpleasant task to draw aside the veil which
covers the vice and sin of the ancient world ; this is neces
sary, however, in order that our sketch may not be one
sided. There is a dark and lurid aspect. Paul, who knew
the HeUenistic age better than any modern writer, out-
Hnes an awful picture in his letter to the Romans i. 21 ff.,
though Paul knew another aspect also which he does not
here mention. Slavery
Ancient society rested upon the foundation of slavery,
which could not then be aboHshed without precipitating
society into chaos. It was the wisdom and policy of early
Christianity not to seek to exterminate slavery with one
blow, but first regulate it while estabUshing the principles

38 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [oa
which were sure to end it. Slavery was itself an advanced
stage of humanity in comparison with the time when aU
prisoners were put to the sword. The Greek and the
Roman saw no more wrong in having slaves than we see
in having domestic servants. The most fruitful source of
slavery was war ; next to that were piracy, kidnapping,
brigandage, slave-breeding and debt.1 The total number
of slaves in the Graeco-Roman world at any period is
variously estimated, as also their relative proportion to
the free. Le Maistre reckons 60,000,000 in the Empire.
In Pergamum there was one slave to every two freemen.
In the city of Rome the proportion was undoubtedly much
greater: Beloch reckons 280,000 slaves to 500,000 free,
Gibbon reckons as many slaves as free in the time of
Claudius, Blair guesses the number of slaves and of free
to be about equal up to the destruction of Carthage, and
after that the proportion to be 3 to 1, giving a population
of over 20,000,000 slaves in Italy. Zumpt reckons over
650,000 slaves in Rome in 5 B.C.
1 A few examples will show the numbers of slaves. Alexander sold
30,000 Thebans. In a census of Athens in the time of Demetrius Phalereus
there were 400,000 slaves to 20,000 freemen. In Corinth 460,000 were
found. Under the closing Roman Republic and the early Empire slavery
reached its acme. Aemilius Paullus at the close of the war with Perseus
sold 150,000 freemen of Epirus. After the victories of Marius 60,000 Cimbri
and 90,000 Teutons are said to have been sold. Before the second Punic
war, when Rome annexed Sardinia and Corsica, so many captives were sold
that there arose a proverb, Sardi venales, ' as cheap as Sardinians.' In the
slave wars of Sicily Eunus had 200,000 armed slaves. In the insurrection of
Spartacus the numbers vary from 40,000 to 100,000, of whom 10,000 were
executed by Crassus. Caesar sold 63,000 Gauls on a single occasion.
Augustus tells on the Monumentum Ancyranum that he delivered to their
masters for execution 30,000. Trajan caused 10,000 slaves to engage in
mutual slaughter to amuse the Roman people for four months. In the second
century b.o. as many as 10,000 were sold in the Delos market in one day.
Private Roman establishments possessed enormous numbers, amounting in
some cases to 20,000. Crassus had over 500 carpenters and architects alone.
Scaurus owned over 4000 urban slaves and as many country ones. A freedman
under Augustus left 4116. When Pedanius was murdered 400 slaves were
executed. Augustus forbad the liberation by testament of more than one-
fifth, or a maximum of 100, of one's slaves. The poorer freemen could not
afford to keep slaves, but the parsimonious Cato Uticensis kept twelve in
the distress of the civil wars, and ten does not seem an exorbitant number
from the point of view of a poor poet like Horace.

nx] MORAL CONDITIONS 39
In Greece, except at Athens, the condition of the slave
was wretched. In the Roman RepubHc it was on the whole
not so bad as in Greece, though not so favourable as in
Athens. The slave was a res not a persona, had no rights,
and enjoyed no protection from the brutaHty of his master.
There was no asylum as at Athens. The master could
inflict any punishment he pleased, could torture and maim,
could break up servile family connections, could crucify.
The worst slaves worked in the country in chains and slept
in the ergastulum. Runaway slaves met with frightful
punishment when caught. A slave's evidence could only
be given under torture. We read of masters crucifying
their slaves after previously cutting out their tongues ; for
a paltry offence cutting off their hands or throwing them
as food to the lampreys, or compelling them to fight in
the amphitheatre. If a master was murdered the whole
familia was executed. Even in the imperial period which
witnessed humaner treatment to slaves, we stiU find
terrible acts of caprice. Augustus is said to have crucified
Eros, his steward, for eating a quail. Roman ladies tore
their attendants' faces or drove pins into their flesh if a
curl was out of place. It is no wonder slaves sometimes
took vengeance, and there arose the saying, ' So many
slaves so many enemies.'
The increase in slaves produced important economic
and moral effects. Those from the West were employed
chiefly in farming the estates of the rich, and so contributed
to the revival of ItaHan agriculture in the first century
B.C. But slave labour being thought cheaper than free
diminished the demand for free work and lowered the
wages : this in turn sent the rural populations into the
vices and idleness of the cities. The slaves from the East
were more skilful and cultured than their masters : these
suppHed the demands of speciaHsed and skiUed labour,
for after the second Punic war labour, Hke poHtics, was
professionaHsed. But these slaves were mostly employed

40 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
on unproductive toil. The enormous demand for skiUed
labour caused by the expansion of Rome once met, the
Romans knew not how to put aU their slaves to productive
work. The moral asjpect of slavery is the most serious. Slavery
proved in the end one of the causes of the downfaU of Rome.
After the cessation of Roman conquests, slavery fostered
the cruel spirit bred by war and indifference to human
suffering. It furnished most of the material for the most
brutaHsing of aU amusements — the gladiatorial combats.
Slavery inoculated society with a moral poison from
which it never recovered. Men of culture superior to their
masters, brought up once in freedom, enslaved by capri
cious fortune and unjust aggression, cut loose from the
tempering traditions of home and the reHgion of their
fathers and made the menials of a people whom they
despised, were a dangerous element in society. Their re
venge was to corrupt their overlords. They pandered to
their vices, and sought new and exciting debaucheries for
jaded masters. It was forbidden them to exercise moral
discretion : nee turpe est quod dominus iubet. The plays
of Menander, Plautus, and Terence show us how slaves
helped their masters, young and old, in immoraHty. It
was no unusual thing for a master to have a sort of harem
among his younger female slaves, for the slave-girl had no
protection against his lust. Even Roman matrons were
known to stoop to shame with their slaves. The most
baneful influence was in the training of youth. Children
were brought up in an unhealthy atmosphere in which
they saw the reckless conduct of their parents, and were
committed to slave tutors whom they could not respect,
and who were indifferent to the morals and character of
their pupils. Among the younger slaves the sons of lihe
house found half-brothers.

m-1 MORAL CONDITIONS 41
The Stage
The amusements of this period were not elevating.
The stage proved a degrading factor. Drama had its
origin in Greece in reHgion, and Greek tragedy is stiU an
unspent moral force. None were found to take up the
mantle of an Aeschylus, a Sophocles, or a Euripides. The
old poHtical Comedy culminated in Aristophanes. Upon
the extinction of poHtical Hfe followed the Middle Comedy,
and finaUy the New Comedy, or Comedy of manners, re
presented by Philemon and Menander, of which Mahaffy
says, * a more mesquin and frivolous society has never been
brought upon the stage than Attic New Comedy.' Before
Rome lost her earnestness, tragedy appealed to her by
giving satisfaction to her ethical sympathies, and by its
didactic and oratorical quaHties. The taste for comedy
came in about the time of the second Punic war. The
comedies of Plautus and Terence, fabulae palliatae, were
translations or adaptations of the frivolous Attic New
Comedy. Here we are not concerned with the Hterary value,
but with the moral effects of these plays. Plautus in the
ease and security which succeeded the great war appealed
to the craving for unrestrained enjoyment of pleasure. He
Uked new ways, manners and luxury. He does not
inculcate nor encourage immoraHty, but at the best he
is moraUy indifferent. ' It is rather in the absence of
any virtuous ideal than in positive incitements to vice, that
the Plautine comedy may be caUed immoral.' 1 Terence
in his urbane style set before his audience a refined, good-
mannered, and cultivated society, in which the motto is
' to step aside is human.' Hence a kindly indulgence to
weakness, a Hght-hearted tolerance of vice, a pervading
sentimentaHty. In the fabulae palliatae gods and men
are alike degraded for amusement : scheming vice is
applauded ; the virtuous girl ensnared by the clever lover.
1 Sellar, Rom. Poets of the Repub., p. 194.

42 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
The stock characters are the meretrix blanda, the leno, the
parasite, the sensual old man, the unprincipled father and
son enamoured of the same courtesan, the cheating slave,
the braggadocio. After Terence a further decHne in drama
was caused by the exhaustion of the Greek materials, by
concession to the growing passion for coarseness, by the
loss of mutual sympathy between poet and people, by the
decay of healthy pubHc Hfe. The result was the rise
of the fabula togata in which the scene was transferred
from Athens to Rome, with a lowered moral tone and
more prominence given to women. A further degradation
was the displacement of comedy by the revival, in Hterary
form, in the time of SuUa, of the AteUan farce which
abounded in coarse jokes and obscene gesticulation.
Even this gave place in the closing RepubHc and early
Empire to worse — the Mimus — which came in as an after-
play, but in the Empire was put upon the stage by itself.
It gratified the basest propensities of the populace ; ' its
plots were in general of an obscene character, especiaUy
seduction, scenes of adultery, cheating of husbands or
fathers or persons easily imposed upon.' 1 The mimae
(female performers) were almost nude. The Mimus
received Hterary treatment from Laberius and Publilius
Syrus ; the latter's sententiae are celebrated. This rapid
decline of the stage corresponded with a general moral
decline. Amphitheatre
This debased stage was not sufficiently immoral and
reaHstic for the Romans. Their crass nature found an
outlet in the spectacles of the amphitheatre — the most
shocking form in which any race has ever found amusement.
While Rome has everywhere left witnesses of the blessings
she conferred upon the world, ruins of amphitheatres in
dead cities rise up in judgment against her. By a terrible
* Teuffel, Hist, of Rom. Ut, i. 9.

m-] • MORAL CONDITIONS 43
irony her greatest material monument extant is the
Colosseum. Rome lost her moral balance in successful
campaigns : bloodshed was congenial, and when it ceased
abroad she sought it in bloody civil wars. The Romans
were unfitted to settle down again to the tranquil affairs of
Hfe ; they sought excitement and recreation by witnessing
in cold blood the agonies of men and animals. Gladiatorial
games were introduced in 264 B.C. under the pretext of
reHgion : they were defended as a means of sustaining the
miUtary spirit, Hke duels in Germany. Gladiatorial shows
were given at the pubHc games and at the banquets of the
rich. The combatants were slaves, criminals or captives ;
later even freemen entered the arena, so great was the
glory of successful combat. Exhibitors vied with each
other in the numbers exposed to slaughter. Caesar put
320 pairs up at once ; Agrippa caused 700 pairs to fight in
one day in Berytus; under Augustus 10,000 fought;
Titus, ' the darling of the human race,' put up 3000 ;
Trajan amused Rome for 123 days by exhibiting 10,000
captives in mutual slaughter. Rome's hoHest, the vestals,
had seats of honour in the arena. Claudius Hked to
witness the contortions of dying gladiators. The faUen
gladiator was dragged by a hook through Death's Gate,
there stripped, and, if yet aHve, despatched. So keen was
the thirst for these shows that Augustus and Tiberius were
obHged to restrict the numbers exposed. The lanistae
who kept gladiatorial schools drove a thriving trade. To
witness the murder of men in cold blood grew monotonous,
and the Romans always loved novelty in their pleasures.
Pompey introduced combats of men with wild beasts : it
gave more excitement to witness an unarmed man, after
his strength was exhausted, torn to pieces by a Hon or
tiger. Every excess of cruelty and novelty was tried.
Sometimes animals were chained together to fight, or a
criminal dressed in a wild beast's skin was thrown to a
maddened buU. Under Titus 5000 animals perished in

44 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
a day in the Colosseum. Domitian discovered another
novelty in compeUing an army of dwarfs to fight. Even
female gladiators, especially under Nero and Domitian,
appeared on the arena. BHndfolded men fought to the
amusement of the crowd.
The passion spread in the provinces, especiaUy Spain,
Africa, the East and Gaul : gladiatorial shows were never
so popular in Greece, except in Corinth — a Roman colony.
Augustine testifies to their fatal fascination for Christian
converts. That the gladiatorial games ' continued for
centuries, with scarcely a protest, is one of the most
startling facts in moral history.' 1 The evil influence con
taminated aU existence. It unfitted men for the pursuits
of peaceful Hfe, encouraged cruel passions, created a
demand for excitement, destroyed the ideaHstic by foster
ing extreme reaHsm, exterminated aU sense of disgust,
rendered society caUous to the misery and discomforts of
their fellows, and so hindered the embryonic sense of
brotherhood and humanity. Position of Women
In domestic Hfe and the relations of the sexes we find
shocking irregularity. In Greece woman never occupied
the high place she was assigned among the Jews and the
Romans. Although the Greek beHeved in monogamy he
never held his wife in high honour. ' We have,' says
Demosthenes, 'hetairai for our pleasure, concubines for
the ordinary requirements of the body, wives for the
procreation of lawful issue and as confidential domestic
guardians.' The Greek was not attracted to home Hfe : he
preferred the company of men out of doors and that of
hetairai. These hetairai, unHke the modest and ignorant
Greek wife, were women of culture and refinement who
could talk intelligently on art and poHtics, could sing and
1 Lecky, i. 271.

m-] MORAL CONDITIONS 45
make pretty jokes. No shame attached to any connec
tion between married or single men and these courtesans.
Pericles was not ashamed of his Aspasia. Some of the
noblest creations of art, including statues of goddesses,
were copies of courtesan models. It is remembered
against Socrates how he visited Theodota in the company
of his disciples. Men would appear in the law-courts
to contest the possession of a heiaira, and we read of a
disputed hetaira being assigned to both claimants for a
day each. One orator obtained a favourable verdict by
exhibiting the nude charms of Phryne. PubHc opinion
regarded these alliances as a thing morally indifferent.
Statesmen were not ashamed to appear at the table of
the noted Phryne. The state was more haUowed to the
Greeks than the sanctities of love. The Hfe of the Greek
wife was one of seclusion, free from temptations, and pro
tected by pubHc opinion, while abundant provision was made
for the irregular passions of husbands. Thucydides con
siders that wife best who is least spoken about either for
her virtues or her vices by men. FideHty and i bedience,
with indulgence to men's infideHty, are their chief virtues.
The courtesan was sought on account of her physical
beauty, her easy manners, and as a companion to take the
place the Greek denied to his wife.1
In Rome the position of women was better. The
Roman wife was as much in her husband's power as in
Greece. But she was also his companion and could pre
side at his table. The Romans threw around marriage
aU the sanctities of reHgion. Woman graduaUy arose to
a position of equaHty with her husband. The old form of
marriage, ' in hand,' gave place to the free marriage of the
later RepubHc and Empire, whereby the wife became in
dependent of her husband. After the restraints of ages
1 Mahaffy attributes the Greek lack of moral sense chiefly to three causes :
(1) low condition of women, and absence of their moral influence ; (2) ex
position of children ; (3) slavery. — Survey of Greek Civilisation, 217 ff.

46 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
there supervened a gross laxity of morals. Divorce
became very common. Men could put away their wives
for the sHghtest cause, and women could as easily divorce
their husbands. Seneca teUs us of women who marked
their chronology by the names of their husbands rather
than by the consuls. Marriage lost its sanctity : it was
Ughtly entered upon because easily annuUed.1
Children
The estimation in which children are held is a fair index
of the moral standard of a community. Among the Greeks
and Romans children never were so precious as among the
Jews. They regarded children from the utiHtarian stand
point. While the polis stood children were essential to
keep up the population and to supply soldiers. Children
were a state rather than a private concern. The ancients,
especiaUy the Greeks, paid great attention to their educa
tion with a view to the service of the state : physical
training was particularly emphasised. So much care is
devoted in the systems of Plato and Aristotle to education
that one might easily get the impression of the worth of
children, but they are not esteemed for their own sake
but for the future of the state. With the decay of poHtical
life and the rise of individuaHsm, childlessness increased.
Greeks and Romans discovered that while large famiHes
may be advantageous to the state,, they are burdensome
to parents : the duties of parenthood were neglected.
The love of children for their own sake was not yet common.
Economic considerations suggested a restriction of the
population. The cost of Hving rose, and was partly met
1 Cato gave his wife to his friend Hortensius, and married her again after
his friend s death. Cicero divorced Terentia partly to get another dower, and
divorced his next wife because she was not sufficiently sorry for the death of
Tullia. Augustus took Livia from her husband when she was three months
pregnant. Divorce entailed no disadvantages. There are examples of men
lending their wives to friends, or borrowing their friend's wife for a period.

m-] MORAL CONDITIONS 47
then, as now, by a reduction in the family. The taste for
luxury could not be gratified with a large family to support.
The increasing childlessness and disincHnation to marriage
seriously disconcerted statesmen. Augustus in vain offered
considerable advantages to a father of three chUdren, show
ing that this number in a family was rare. When domestic
ties were relaxed, especiaUy in Rome, to have progeny
proved inconvenient to loose amours, to the support and
gratification of mistresses, or to frequent change of wives.
Several social considerations encouraged childlessness. An
unencumbered man could maintain higher social rank,
could bestow richer gifts, could walk the streets accom
panied by a larger host of cHents, and attract the parasites
who gave their services in order to be named in his will.
It is difficult to say how far paiderastia contributed to
childlessness.

Abortion
It was not tiU the coming of Christianity that the foetus
was regarded as a creature with rights. Abortion was
widespread in aU classes among the Greeks and Romans.
Among the Jews child-murder and voluntary abortion
were forbidden on pain of death. With the Greeks and
Romans it was a matter of discretion. Means of abortion,
apparently harmless to the mother, were in everyday use.
The motives for abortion were poverty in the lower classes,
and in the higher sensuaHty, and the desire for indulgence
or the avoidance of pain or fear of disfigurement. ' No
law in Greece or in the Roman RepubHc, or during the
greater part of the Empire, condemned it.' Plato and
Aristotle recommended it. Abortion was practised even
by parents who wished children, because they could easily
secure foundlings.

48 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
Exposition of Children and Infanticide
The general low esteem of children is further proved by
the almost general practice of infanticide and exposition
of newly-born children, and by the occasional sale of them
by poor parents. In Greece, where legislators aimed at
checking the growth of the population as at Rome they
aimed at increasing it, the kiUing of children, or their
exposure, was quite usual. The Greeks Hked smaU famiHes.
All weakling and deformed children were kiUed, or exposed
to death or to the mercies of the pubHc. Aristotle recom
mended this as a means, along with abortion, of restricting
the birthrate, and in Plato's Republic the children of old
or wicked parents, as also iUegitimate and deformed
children, are to be exposed. In Rome an ancient law
required fathers to bring up aU males and the first daughter,
but aUowed the exposure or destruction of misshapen births.
But this law was more honoured iu the breach than in the
observance, as we find exposition common especiaUy among
the poor, the upper classes having recourse to abortion.
Infanticide did not, however, grow so serious until the era
of the closing RepubHc and the early Empire ; at least our
sources of that date contain ampler reference to the practice.
It was sanctioned on the Roman stage. It has been
remarked that the same man, Chremes, who in the Heauton
timoroumenos uttered the words ' I am a man and regard
nothing human as aHen to me,' charged his wife to kill
her child if it was a girl. It was apparently quite usual
for a husband when starting on a journey and leaving a
pregnant wife to leave orders for her to destroy it if a girl.
The wife of Chremes was too womanly to kiU, and so
exposed her child — a worse fate. Apuleius tells of a father
giving this too common command on his departure, which
his wife secretly disobeyed. One of the most striking
documents of antiquity. is an autograph letter1 from
» Oxyrh. Pap., iv. 744 (or Witkowski, Ep. prim., No. 68, or Deissmann,

in-] MORAL CONDITIONS 49
Egypt addressed by Hilarion to his wife AHs, charging
her to destroy the chUd soon to be born if it proved to be
a girl. Seneca in De Ira says, ' we destroy monstrous
births ; infants also if weak or misshapen we drown. It
is not anger but reason to separate the useless from the
healthy.' TertulHan says, ' how many among you, even
in the magistracy, destroy your children : you drown them,
or expose them to die of cold or hunger, or to be eaten of
dogs.' Suetonius teUs that upon the death of Germanicus
mothers exposed their infants as a sign of grief.
Infanticide was in every way more merciful than exposi
tion by putting an end to the Httle one's sufferings and
sparing it later infamy. Exposition created a numerous
class of foundlings in whom there was a large traffic. Some
made a business of coUecting foundlings, some to maim
the Httle ones for purposes of mendicancy, some to rear
them as slaves, some to use the males for paiderastia
and the girls for prostitutes ; or witches picked them up
to use their brains or bones for magical purposes. Chremes,
above mentioned, reproached his wife for having exposed
instead of killing her baby-girl, thereby abandoning her
to some old witch or to become a slave or prostitute.

Vice
Vice found congenial soil in the Graeco-Roman world.
The more men were divorced from serious pubHc concerns,
the more room there was for self-indulgence : men having
not yet found their place as individuals, abused their new
Hberty as Hcence. Greece had a tremendous influence
on the morals of the age. The characteristic Greek virtue
was moderation in aU things — including vice. Greek
culture and refinement was for Greek gentlemen, not for
their wives. The low estate of Greek wives and the
Light, etc., p. 155, or Milligan, Greek Papyri, No. 12), iav iroXXA iroWwv
riKips iav 1p> ipatvov i(pcs, iav fy 6i)i\ea (tfia'Ke, 1. 8 ff.
D

50 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch,
blandishments of the hetairai could not conduce to sexual
purity. The easy philosophy of the Cyrenaics and
Epicurus was used as an excuse to gloss over sensuaHty,
for the Greeks and Romans were as skiUed as some modem
societies in inventing fair names for foul things. It was
the proud boast of a Roman writer that for 520 years no
divorce took place in Rome ; but here as ever corruptio
optimi pessima. Witty ladies of loose moraHty were an
essential of 'society.' InfideHty in married Hfe became
frightfuUy common and received but sHght condemnation.
It was hardly any disgrace to pay court to or support a
mistress. The loose amours of the gods were put forward
as justification of immoraHties. Society was indulgent —
' to step aside is human ' was its motto.
Paiderastia
The most shocking vice was paiderastia. Some of the
best names in Greek history are mentioned as addicted
to this unnatural love, e.g. Parmenides, Sophocles, Aristotle.
Socrates, though free from it, speaks Hghtly about it. And
when Plato speaks of Eros or Love he refers to the passion
for boy favourites ; he even ideaHsed this Eros in the
Symposium and the Phaedrus. Some philosophers had so
doubtful a reputation in this respect that parents would
not send their sons to them. Male prostitution became
as common in Greece as female. Formal contracts were
entered into between lovers. The state derived revenue
from a tax on this unnatural vice.
Paiderastia, at first unknown to the Romans, in the
second century B.C. seems to have become general. The
Roman poets — except the Hcentious Ovid — confess to
such love 'with a shamelessness beyond beHef.' Some
of the greatest Romans were guilty, as JuHus Caesar,
Antoninus, Hadrian and Trajan. ' On the whole this
vice exhibits a grosser aspect among the Romans than

m.] MORAL CONDITIONS 51
among the Greeks ; with the latter it had often a
dash of spirituaUsm mixed up with it ; the sin, so to
speak, was crowned and veUed with the flowers of senti
ment and of a devotion amounting to sacrifice. But in
the Romans it came out in its naked filth, so common
and so grossly disgusting as to defy and reject all excuse.' 1
This awful sin encouraged ceUbacy and made its dis
astrous contribution to the depopulation of the Empire.
Its moral effects who wiU dare to measure ?
There are yet other sombre colours that might be added
to this gloomy picture — the frequency of suicide, the evils
of chariot-racing, gambHng, stupid pubHc and private
extravagance, the audacious indecency of the pantomime,
the Hcence of the FloraHa with its races of nude courtesans,
the naumachiae (naval battles fought by gladiators and
criminals for the amusement of the pubHc), lewd piotures
and suggestive decorations. (6) Better Side
We turn with rehef from this sickening picture to view
a better side of ancient society, and note the rise and
spread of higher and purer moral ideas. The good and
true found advocates and received expression even in
this sinful age. The Graeco-Roman world was not as
corrupt as the Roman Court, else it had been a cesspool
of iniquity. There has never been a long truce in any
period in the conflict of good and evil. We have already
noted some powerful factors conducive to moral confusion.
Without exaggeration* the period before and after the
advent of Christianity was the greatest crisis in world-
history. Old landmarks were swept away ; a thousand
interests demanded allegiance from men in a state of
indecision. The purely objective phase of history was
waning, and the subjective had appeared with its pain
i Dollinger, The Gentile and the Jew, ii. 289.

52 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
and questioning. The ideals by which we condemn the
ancients were as yet in embryonic form. We must not
overlook what a blessing it is to be born into a society
with high ideals already estabHshed. Men form ideals
before they endeavour to reaHse them : they taste the
bitterness of sin before they thirst for righteousness.
The history of man is largely an inconstant striving to
reach ideals. Besides, if our middle and hard-working
classes were as silent in Hterature as those of Greece and
Rome, what a one-sided picture we should have of the
morals of this age. It might then appear as if our divorce
courts were as busy as churches, and society scandals as
common as the unrecorded virtues of toiUng thousands.
Some old vices have almost passed away, but new vices
have arrived. The Graeco-Roman age has one eternaUy
true lesson to teach, viz. that moraHty cannot long thrive
among any people without the sanctions and incentives
of reHgion. Amelioration of Slavery
There were many aUeviations of slavery, and brutal
masters were in the minority. At Athens abused slaves
could take refuge at an asylum or an altar. If Aristotle
justified slavery as necessary and natural, he recom
mended masters to treat their slaves Uke human beings.
All philosophers, in fact, inculcated humanity. But
Zeno and the Stoics struck at the root of slavery, declar
ing aU men are by nature equal, virtue alone making
any difference. In Xenophon's Economics the husband
charges the young wife to treat her slaves weU and care
for those that are iU. Epicurus was noted for his kindness
to slaves, admitting them into partnership in his studies.
In the Roman RepubHc protests were raised against in
humanity. Many masters Hved on terms of warm personal
friendship with their slaves. Cicero highly esteemed his
Tiro, as his brother did Alexis. The slave was aUowed

m.] MORAL CONDITIONS 53
to acquire a peculium, or private property, from which he
frequently purchased his freedom. For good conduct or
merit manumission was easy. A hard-working slave in
the days of Cicero might expect freedom in six years.
In the civil wars slaves rendered signal services to their
masters, and proved faithful in hopeless disaster. Many
slaves occupied high positions of trust as physicians,
tutors, private secretaries, philosophic advisers. Under
the Empire the position of slaves was very much improved
and the caprice of masters restrained. The lex Petronia of
Nero (or Augustus ?) forbade the seUing of slaves for com
bat with wild beasts except on the authority of a judge.
Claudius granted freedom to exposed sick slaves, and pro
nounced death by their masters' hands as murder. Nero
appointed a praetor to hear complaints of slaves against
their masters, to punish cruelty, and to see that slaves
had enough food. Probably in his reign (or in that of
Claudius) the emperor's statue became an asylum for
abused slaves. Domitian interdicted the mutilatioa of
slaves for immoral purposes. Hadrian put an end to the
ergastula. The Antonines aboHshed the right of killing
slaves, forbade their sale for the amphitheatre, appointed
officers in the provinces to hear their complaints, and in
other respects greatly ameHorated slavery.
A more potent factor than legislation was the extension
of a humaner pubHc opinion. Tacitus teUs of the popular
feeHng against the wholesale execution of the slaves of
Pedanius, which, though unavaiHng at that time, caused
that to be the last of such outrages. Pages could be filled
with citations from Seneca on the duty of kindness to
slaves, and advice to treat them as friends and not to
despise them. He teUs us that cruel masters were insulted
on the streets (De Clem., i. 18. 3). Dio of Prusa denounced
slavery as contrary to nature.
There were thus many ameliorations of slavery which
made it more humane than its modern counterpart. If a

54 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EABLY CHBISTIANITY [ch.
slave-marriage was not legaUy recognised it was sanctioned
by custom and accepted by Jurisconsults. The concession
of the peculium and easy enfranchisement took the bitter
ness out of slavery. Enfranchisement had been carried
to such a pitch that Augustus restricted it by legislation.
Several distinguished authors rose from the slave class.
If slavery proved a curse it was not an unmixed evil ;
in two important aspects it proved a great blessing. First,
from among its ranks were recruited the dwindfing ranks
of free society — that is, freedmen graduaUy took the place
of the ancient middle classes and so acted as a steadying
influence in society. True, many scoundrels must have
been freed, but also a vast number of worthy men who (in
slavery) had learned habits of industry and regularity.
The freedmen thus partly fiUed a vacuum. Secondly, as
the free classes were recruited from among slaves, and more
had servile blood in their veins, the way was opened to
the spread of humaner ideas and to the sense of human
brotherhood. This element did much to shatter ancient
prejudices. Protests against Gladiatorial Shows
One of the most curious facts about the amphitheatre
is the fascination it exerted upon aU classes for centuries,
and then the suddenness with which, after the death of
Telemachus, the combats ceased. But men had not
remained until then altogether unconscious of the wicked
ness of the arena. Augustus and Tiberius tried in vain
to restrain the passion for the amphitheatre. The Cynic,
Demonax, when it was proposed to introduce gladiatorial
shows into Athens, told the people ' you must first throw
down the altar of Pity.' Cicero testifies that some regarded
the amphitheatre as cruel and inhuman, but takes up a
hesitating position himself.1 Seneca most vehemently
1 ' Crudele gladiatorum spectaculum et inhumanum nonnullis videri solet,
haud scio an ita sit ut nunc fit.' — Tusc. Disp., ii. 17, 41.

m-] MORAL CONDITIONS 65
denounces the combats. Even Petronius condemned
them. Junius Mauricus, when the emperor remonstrated
with him for having denied to the people of Vienne the
right to celebrate the games, repHed, ' Would to Heaven
it were possible to aboHsh such spectacles even at Rome.'
AureHus offended the populace by requiring the comba
tants to fight with blunted swords. Plutarch went so
far as to condemn combats of animals. Only Christianity
was able finaUy to aboHsh gladiatorial shows.
Domestic Virtue
In spite of the corruption of the age, domestic virtue
was by no means rare. Woman has never found a better
advocate than Euripides. He introduced to the Greeks
a love with something of modern sentiment. He asks
why a man should demand a fideHty from his wife of which
he is himself incapable. Socrates and the Minor Socratics
contributed to the elevation of women, asserting their
capabiHty for equal virtue with men. Isocrates emphati-
caUy condemns the Hberties taken by husbands. The
principal progress made in both Greece and Rome was
the demand for the same continence on the part of the
man as the woman. The high Roman ideal of the mater-
familias never became obsolete. And no ancient history
can show so many noble women as that of Rome
— women who were the companions and compeers of their
husbands, their partners in their labours and cares, their
support in disgrace and death. Mutual love was quite
common, as we learn from Hterature and inscriptions.
Pliny's marriage with his third wife Calpumia was a real
love-match, as is proved by their love-letters. Even Ovid
writes in touching words to his absent wife, 'I address
thee absent ; my Hps name thee alone. Never night and
never day comes to me without [the thought of] thee.'
The inscription containing the so-called laudatio Turiae

56 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EABLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
(first century B.C.), is a valuable document. In it a Roman
husband who had Hved forty-one years with his Turia
teUs of her fideHty, her patience, her industry, and laments
as his greatest unhappiness his surviving her. The wife
of Seneca tried by suicide to depart with her husband, but
her wounds were dressed by friends and her wan face
ever after testified to her devotion. Best known is the
story told by PHny of Arria who braced her husband to
carry out the sentence of suicide by plunging the dagger
in her own breast, and handing it to him with the words,
' non dolet, Paete.' It would demand too much space to
dweU upon the virtues of Roman women as recorded in
Hterature and inscriptions. The latter source, especiaUy, is
convincing testimony that female virtue and chastity were
never higher. It was the virtue of men that needed improve
ment. The moraHsts and philosophers of the Empire were
unanimous in requiring equal virtue from men. Plutarch's
high ideal of marriage is weU known. The Stoics made
men and women equals in virtue. Seneca protests loudly
against the injustice of men rewarding woman's fideHty
with infideHty : ' You know it is injustice to demand fideHty
from your wife while you seduce another's wife : you
know that you ought no more to have relations with a
concubine than your wife with an adulterer.' Comic
poets, Hke Plautus, point out the absurdity of divorcing
a wife if she goes into town without her husband's know
ledge, while the husband enjoys impunity in relations with
a mistress, and asks : ' If an honourable woman is content
with one husband, why should a husband not be satisfied
with one wife ? If husbands were punished for maintain
ing mistresses as guilty wives are divorced, there would
be more wifeless husbands than there are now husbandless
wives.' Epictetus caUs that man an adulterer who, on
looking at a fair woman, cries, 'happy he who possesses
her ! happy her husband ! ' Thus the moraHsts con
demned aU indulgence outside wedlock, and called upon

m] MORAL CONDITIONS 67
the man to rise to the height of womanly virtue. Musonius
wrote a book on marriage in which he condemned all
indulgence except for procreation. Plutarch wrote a
book on the virtues of woman, and one on precepts for
the married life.
Virginity was held in high esteem. In Athens the
Parthenon, or Virgin temple, was the finest reUgious build
ing in the city. In Rome virgins were sometimes credited
with supernatural powers, and the vestals were granted
unusual privileges.
Women were now given a better education to fit them
to be companions to their husbands. They exercised
tremendous influence for good and for evil in pubHc affairs.
We read of them accompanying their husbands on missions
to the provinces, attending reviews of troops, giving advice
in poHtical matters. Many were notorious Hke Cleopatra,
Clodia, Messalina, Agrippina, Poppaea, QuadratiUa. Others
are examples of true womanhood, as Turia, the Cornelias,
Porcia, Seneca's mother Helvia and his wife PauHna,
Marcia, the two Arrias, Plotina, MaUonia, Calpurnia.
Care of Children
That children were loved in that age is abundantly proved
by inscriptions, the playthings found in their tombs, and
by notices in ancient authors. That the love for children
was extending seems evident from the numerous protests
against abortion, exposition, and infanticide, from the
greater care demanded by moraHsts in the matter of their
education, and the importance of example. The inherent
charm and worth of children were never forgotten. It was
only, however, with Christianity that children came to their
rights. Hippocrates in the oath to be taken by physicians
makes them swear not to assist at abortion. Musonius
condemns abortion and exposition : ' What more lovely
sight,' says he, ' than to see a father and mother sur-

58 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
rounded by numerous offspring. No solemn procession
in honour of the gods, no sacred dance presents such a
divine spectacle as a numerous choir of Httle ones gam-
bolUng with love and reverence around their parents.'
Tacitus, with a thrust at his countrymen, says the Germans
regard it as a crime to Hmit the population or destroy
their offspring. Epictetus observes that animals rear their
young with tender care. Seneca caUs it a crime and an
injustice to expose children to the doubtful mercies of the
pubHc, and maintains that parents are moraUy bound to rear
their offspring. Paulus, the jurist, regards it as assassina
tion to kiU or expose a child ' against the voice of nature
and of conscience.' Ovid employs his bitterest sarcasm
against mothers who give poison to creatures not yet
born in order to preserve their breast against premature
wrinkles. The theatre held up the horrors and dangers
of exposition.
A primary concern for moraHsts was the training of, and
example set to, children. Favorinus in an impassioned
passage requests mothers to suckle and train their own
children. ' What is this new kind of motherhood or
unnatural semi-motherhood which consists in committing
the fruit of one's womb to strangers to nourish ? ' The
value of a good education with competent and exemplary
teachers was not overlooked. Domestic example was,
however, regarded as the most potent factor. Seneca
requires the father to set a good example to his wife, his
sons and daughters, and aU the household. Juvenal
warns fathers not to permit any obscene sight or word in
a house where a child is ; let mistresses and loose songs
be prohibited; let the sight of your son stay you from
committing the sin you meditated — ' great respect is due
to infancy.' QuintiUan says ' we ourselves ruin the morals
of our children. . . . We like to hear them pronounce an
obscene word ; we approve by a smile or a kiss words
worthy of the shameful Alexandrine books : they see our

ni-] MORAL CONDITIONS 59
mistresses and dariings. Every meal resounds with
obscene songs ; children see only things one would blush
to speak of.' Tacitus and PUny likewise demand moral
education for children.
The tenderness with which the deaths of children are
treated on the monuments is very modern. In a classic
gem, Lucretius feels the sadness of separation when ' no
longer shaU joyful home receive thee, nor peerless wife,
nor shaU sweet chUdren run to snatch the first kiss.'

Protests against Vice
Prostitution was indirectly inveighed against by ancient
moraHsts as a pubHc menace and a danger to married Hfe.
It was also included in aU attacks upon slavery, for slave
owners there found most of their victims. In the comic
poets the trade of procurer is branded as loathsome. One
of the reasons given against exposition was that it suppHed
girls for prostitution. To Dio Chrysostom x belongs the
honour of being the first to attack prostitution as an
institution legaHsed by law. The passage (too long to
cite) is marked by an earnest moral tone, by a quite
modern spirit, and by a stern refusal to entertain any
reasons for the necessity of this ' devouring ulcer.'
The moral consciousness began to assert itself against
paiderastia. Plato tried to wean men away from it by
contrasting the beauty of the ideal heavenly Eros with
the crass Eros, and in his last book, the Laws, he sternly
condemns male lovers. Socrates had, at least by bis
example in keeping himself pure, condemned his country
men's worst vice. In the Symposium of Xenophon (?),
paiderastia appears as a disgraceful practice. Epicurus
denounced it, and Lucian removes the mask of sentimen-
taHty to expose its utterly sensual character. Plutarch
1 Or. vii. [Euboeah, or the Hunter) 133, o. Denis, Hist, des ihlories et del
idles morales, ii. 149.

60 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
lauds Agesilaus for refusing to gratify a passion for a boy
Megabetes — an act which Maximus of Tyre considers as
worthier of praise than the heroism of Leonidas at Ther
mopylae. Seneca describes in terms of contempt these
epicenes ; Cicero denies the presence of any ideal element
in such connections, affirming them to be altogether
carnal. Lack of Moral Enthusiasm in Pagan Religion
The student of pagan moraHty is impressed by the
failure of pagan refigions to exert any potent influence
upon morals. A man's religion did not elevate his con
duct. The truth is, that the moraHty of the gods was
lower than that of their worshippers. The gods were
gradually improved by their worshippers, but not vice
versa. MoraHty was thus heavily handicapped and
obHged to advance without the moral enthusiasm and
incentive derived by us from reHgion. A reHgious man
was not necessarily moral in his conduct — a fact not un
known stiU, but so rare as to arrest attention and appear
incongruous. Such incongruity would be felt in that era
by the Jews but not by the Greeks or Romans, who
possessed not the Jew's zeal for righteousness. Hence
some of the loftiest teachers of Greece Hved what would
seem to us immoral Hves. Yet such teachers did not appear
to their contemporaries moral monstrosities or hypocrites.
Caesar was chief pontiff of Rome, yet he rejected irnmor-
taHty, was notorious for his connections with women,
and reputed guilty of paiderastia. Some of the most
devout worshippers in the temples of Eastern cults were
the frail mistresses of Roman writers. The gods of the
Graeco-Roman world never offered a moral dynamic to
their devotees, and even smiled indulgently on human
weakness. SensuaHsts justified their conduct by citing
the examples of immorality among the denizens of heaven.

m] MORAL CONDITIONS 61
But man's innate moral sense can never be eradicated,
however lethargic it may become. The moral sense
was ever asserting itself among the Greeks and Romans.
The question arose, ' What about the conduct of our
deities ? ' Foucart has remarked of the Greeks, ' They
were better men than their gods : it was not the gods who
improved them, but they who improved and elevated their
gods.' The expanding moral sense was shown by throw
ing overboard the gods, or by offering apologies and excuses
for their conduct, or by branding the offensive stories of
mythology as Hes, or by explaining them as allegories of
high moral truths. AUegory was the favourite method.
Plato would banish Homer and Hesiod for telfing unedify-
ing Hes about the deities. What were once only natural
istic rites were explained as symbols of spiritual truth.

Man's Moral Consciousness
One of the features of this age is the expanding conscious
ness of man's innate moral sense as a guide to conduct that
imperiously calls for recognition. Greek philosophy spread
the teaching of Socrates' daimon, or inward monitor, who
presided as a restraining (but not initiating) power in his
daily life. Platonism filtered down among the masses, in
structing them that the soul in a previous state had seen
the things of God, and was so impressed with the love of
the true and the beautiful that, though enshrouded in the
muddy vesture of decay, it recognised and yearned for the
highest. It was universally recognised that virtue and
vice were not identical, and that each man could tell
which he ought to choose and which eschew. The Greek
dramatists saw that any theory of Destiny as thwarting
freewiU subverts moral responsibiHty, and the Stoics also
perceived that man to be responsible must be able to
assert bis freewill in moral choices in spite of their doctrine

62 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
of fate. Socrates had already recognised that ' for positive
truth there is no process : our knowledge of it is immediate
or instinctive,' coming by feeHng rather than by proof.
' His final test of the highest Truth is not dialectic : it is
unassailable conviction, so soon to appear as the final cri-
terium in Stoicism.' x This position was never henceforth
lost to Greek thought. AU schools rejected the uncertainty
of probabiHty offered by the sceptics. It was scarcely pos
sible that aU the world could be deceived as to a cleavage
between good and evil, but this consensus gentium was
only the register of the sense of right and wrong implanted
in man. Cicero was perhaps the first to give definite
expression to this inward consciousness in the famous
words ' sunt enim ingeniis nostris semina innata virtutum,
quae si adolescere Hceret ipsa nos ad beatam vitam natura
perduceret.' The truth of natural theology was not
hidden ; Paul could declare ' God is angry : because
what may be known about Him is plain to their inmost
consciousness ; for He Himself has made it plain to them.'

' Practical Sense
Another encouraging feature of this age is its earnest
practical sense. This arose chiefly from three causes:
(1) the impatience with further speculation for its own
sake. The pursuit of truth as an end in itself had offered
different solutions of the problem of the universe which
a practical age looked upon as contradictions. They
asked : what is the use of aU this pursuit of knowledge ?
Let us apply the knowledge we have acquired. (2) The
times were full of perplexity, and men demanded some
practical moral guide in the new order of things. (3) The
advent of the Roman who was eminently utiHtarian, and
had no patience with speculation except as appHed to
1 Bussell, School of Plato, pp. 87, 88.

m.] MORAL CONDITIONS 63
Hfe, who desired a firm hold of reaHties. With the decline
of the city-state, and from the days of Socrates, a new
moraHty was arising — an ethical instead of a poHtical.
The centre of gravity had shifted from the state to the
citadel of the heart, from poHtics to conduct. All the post-
AristoteHan schools abandoned speculation to offer guides
for conduct. This practical and personal tendency was
very favourable to the growth of moraHty.

Oneness of humanity
We note the growing conviction of the oneness of
humanity and the brotherhood of man. The Hebrew,
in spite of his exclusiveness, looked forward to the universal
kingdom of God upon earth. The Greek, although he
could conceive no perfect social Hfe apart from the polis
(and was opposed equaUy to federation and to empire),
proved by bis culture and language one of the greatest
universaHsing powers ; the Roman, who occupied a unique
poHtical position, best recognised the logic of events, and
by bis law and administration united and fused the races.
The Empire first made possible a philosophy of history,
and suggested the writing of universal history. Asiatic and
European were more reconcUed by HeUenism and by Roman
rule than they have ever been since, and racial antipathy
was at least no worse than at present. The Cynics were
harbingers of world-citizenship. Diogenes, asked to what
state he belonged, repHed he was a world-citizen. They
regarded banishment as no evil ; they would destroy all
states that men might Hve together without laws. The post-
AristoteHan schools, and especiaUy the Stoics, furthered
unity by severing moraHty from poHtics ; renouncing the
rights and the duties of nationaUty, they proclaimed a
citizenship of the world. After the faU of the polis the
universal city or repubHc became the ideal. Plutarch

64 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [oh.
thinks a good man can be at home anywhere because he
is nowhere a stranger. Exile is not an evfl,
' All places where the eye of heaven rests
Are to a wise man porta and happy havens.
Cicero loves to dilate upon the universal city or republic
to which all men as such belong. Universal lawis contrasted
with the law of convention and statute.1 Only the infinite
heaven is the boundary of our world : the same God
punishes transgressors according to the same universal
law. Before the laws of nature all men are equal, and all
are aUke humbled before death. Not nationaHty nor
race, but virtue alone makes any difference among men.
All had shared in the misery and poverty caused by the
Roman conquests. The large numbers of slaves and the
increasing influence of freedmen hastened the faith in
brotherhood. The many with servile blood in their
veins, or who had memories of bad treatment themselves,
favoured humaner ideas. The VirgiUan sentiment would
find many an echo in that day, ' non ignara maH miseris
succurrere disco.' Only under the Empire could the
oneness of humamty be f uUy realised, or become an article
of faith.2 Then practically the whole world was under
the rule of one man, and looked to one centre of govern
ment. Thus Statius could say ' terrarum leges, foedera
mundi,' and Ovid, ' the area of the Roman city and globe
is identical.' s The retreat from the civic to the inner
life of man was the discovery of common ground, as it is
» Cf. Cicero, De Leg., i. 15, 43. Nam haec nascuntur ex eo quod natura
propenii sumus ad diligendoa homines, quod fundamentum iuris eat.
' Haec est in gremium victos quae sola recepit,
Humanumque genus communi nomine fovit,
Matris non dominae ritu ; civesque vocavit
Quos domuit, nexuque pio longinqua revinxit.
(Claddian, cited by Merivai.e.)
• That Rome had converted orbis into urbs was a favourite thought : cf,
Rutilius (cited by Merivale).
Fecisti patriam diversis gentibus unam
Vrbem fecisti ouod prius orbis erat.

m.] MORAL CONDITIONS 65
externals that most sharply divide men. Paul echoed a
Stoic sentiment when he said, ' He made of one every
nation of men.'

Humaner Ideas
The practical fruits of this faith in human brotherhood
are of great interest. The cosmopoHtan spirit gave rise
in the Empire to gentler and humaner manners. Lecky 1
attributes this chiefly to (1) the humamty of the Greeks,
who first revealed the beauty of the gentler virtues.
When Greek thought seized Rome it was the thought of
a cultured people freed from local sentiments. (2) The
breaking down of aristocratic bigotry and tyranny. The
empire took a terrible vengeance on the nobiUty. The
Civil Wars caused a reversal of fortune, and wealth was
passing into new quarters where old prejudices were of
no account. (3) The colonial influence, especiaUy the con
course of strangers at Rome, the faciHties for travel, the
blending of populations. FinaUy, the coming of provincial
emperors Uke the Flavians and the Antonines. (4) The
brotherhood fostered by the populous slave world. The
bigoted pan-Roman poHcy disappeared ; Roman citizen
ship was graduaUy extended until under CaracaUa aU the
free were granted citizenship. The brotherhood of man
in a universal repubHc was more actuaUsed then than at
any time since. Only one bond was lacking — a universal
religion — which the imperial and the Oriental cults tried
in vain to supply. The universal reHgion was to come
from GaHlee. The responsibiHties and privileges of the
wonderful unity attained in the empire were not over
looked. A frequent thought is the equaUty of aU in
presence of death, and by natural right. Men are by
nature akin. ' We are members of a great body. Nature
brought us forth as relations when she produced us from
i i. pp. 227 ff.
E

66 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [oh.
the same beginnings and for the same ends. She it is
that has inspired us with mutual love,' says Seneca.
Kinship with the Divine
The pagans had some sense of a greater bond — kinship
with the Divine, or the Divine sonship of aU men. Aratus
and Cleanthes agreed in the sentiment approved by Paul,
'We are of His kinship.' Epictetus asks why a man
should not caU himself a son of God as weU as a citizen
of the world. Seneca speaks of the community of gods
and men as one. The kinship of man with deity was a
common tenet. Men were asked to be kind and tolerant
to each other, for we have all sinned. In condemning the
faults of others we should consider whether we are better
ourselves. ' Men were made for men ; correct them or
support them.' We should not do to others what we
resent at their hands. We should not revenge an injury,
but ' when one is angry with you provoke him in return
with kindness. Some one has struck you, withdraw.' Men
should mutuaUy support each other, and reach out a hand
to the perishing. Misfortune is itself a sufficient reason
for giving help. Almsgiving was quite common. For
several reasons to be mentioned in the next chapter there
arose a new sensitiveness to suffering.1 It is impossible
to measure the moral influence of the Jew Hving in the
midst of the Greeks and Romans. While he drank his
cup of odium his neighbours cannot have been indifferent
to the power of a moral Hfe. The ' God-fearers,' impressed
by the practical moraHty of Judaism, became examples of
moraHty to others.
Reviewing this period as a whole, we may discover some
general progress. If sin abounded it was not passed over
1 'La souffranceet les larmes avaient enfin instruit les maitres de la vie
humaine, et les tristes lecons de l'experience, sans abattre la fiertS de
leur courage, leur inspiraient cette compassion aux miseres d'antrui'
(Denis, op. eii., ii. 66).

m.] MORAL CONDITIONS 67
in silence. Despite many circumstances conducive to
moral anarchy there was a moral awakening. The
interest shifted from poUtics to ethics, from theory to
practice. MoraUsts in no smaU number came forward to
lash vice, to show it up as a disease, to hold up models
of virtue to men. MoraHty undertook to do for ruined
lives what reUgion does for us. Man's innate moral con
sciousness received clearer expression. MoraUsts began
to teach that a moraHty based on external laws and
traditions, and exercised from fear of the consequences
of wrong-doing, was an inferior moraHty to the conduct
of a pure heart that does right because of its love of right
irrespective of hope of reward or fear of punishment.
Personal responsibiUty became almost a dogma : the
rights and the dignity of man as man were converted into
motives of conduct. The attention to the personal Hfe,
to be mentioned in the next chapter, was sure to produce
moral results.

68 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.

CHAPTER IV
RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS OF THE GRAECO-ROMAN PERIOD
Tendebantque manus ripas ulterioris amore. — Vergil.
Res ipsa, quae nunc religio Christiana nuncupatur, erat apud anti-
quos, neo defuit ab initio generis humani, quousque Christus veniret
in carnem, unde vera religio, quae jam erat ooepit appellari Christiana.
Augustine.
L'humanit6 eherche l'ideal ; mais elle veut que l'ideal soit une
personne ; elle n'aime pas une abstraction. Un homme, incarnation
de l'ideal, et dont la biographie put servir de cadre a toutes les
aspirations du temps, voila oe que demandait l'opinion religieuse. Rbnan.
I. Religious Destitution
In studying the religious life of the Graeco-Roman period
one is first struck by its reUgious destitution and by the
earnest strivings after a new and universal reUgion. The
Gospel of Jesus could not have come at a better time to
find men in a serious mood . Men were Hving in a dangerous
transition stage — between collectivism and individuaHsm,
between a cramping polis and a universal state, between
a poHtical and a personal-ethical reUgion, between the
reUgion of nature and that of revelation. More Ught was
demanded than nature and reason could supply. A crisis
in reUgious Ufe occurred when the idea of a strictly local
god was shattered, and with it the traditional cult and
national faith. A universal deity could not be enthroned
in a day. The worships of Greece and Rome left men in
a helpless spiritual pHght : they had no message for the
individual heart, no strength to impart to the fainting
spirit, no response to make to the craving for salvation.

iv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 69
The gods who could not keep pace with the march of their
worshippers were abandoned and derided. It is perilous
when men turn to scorn what they have long revered.
The collapse of nationaHsm, the great social upheavals,
the rise of individuaUsm and therewith the emergence of
an anxious personaUty, the intermixture of nations and
races, the expansion of the human mind created new
reUgious conditions. The value of the individual as he
stood in the bewildering Hght of his personaUty suggested
new needs. The god whose cult was arranged by the
state for the state must give place to a God who could
hold personal intercourse with human hearts. When a
system that had given beauty and dignity to every phase
of social Hfe was overthrown, moraHty could not well
thrive. The reUgion of the fathers being dead, man
might for a time imagine it possible to Hve without a God,
but must soon become disiUusioned.
The Graeco-Roman world was heavy-laden. One recaUs
the epigram of Gibbon that to the poHtician aU reUgions
were equaUy useful, to the populace equaUy true, and to
the philosophers equaUy false.1 Greek RationaHsm arose
to explain away the gods and destroy their power. Some
discovered the origin of reUgion in the crafty wisdom of
statesmen. Euhemerism represented the ancient gods as
merely deified men. Others regarded them as only names
or personifications of natural processes. Scepticism as
serted for each the right to do what was pleasing in his
own eyes. Certainty was unattainable, and no better
Ught than probabiHty was offered.
Fatalism
As a result of nature-religions, blind necessity, known
as Fate or Destiny, occupied a high place and survived
J Cf. the dictum of the pontifex Scaevola, ' tria genera tradita deorum ;
unum a poetis, alterum a philosophis, tertium a principibus civitatis'
(Augustine, De C. D., iv. 27).

70 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHBISTIANITY [ch.
faith in the old gods. Men stood helpless before these
implacable forces. The gods were not able to overrule
Destiny : they must carry out its decrees. No power
was so inexorable as Fate which pursued a man's steps
from cradle to grave. The gods might be placated, but
Destiny had no ears. Dramatists and philosophers
wrestled with the problem of moral responsibiUty in face
of Fate until they graduaUy moraUsed the latter as the
avenger only of guilt, or they cut the Gordian knot by
practicaUy identifying Destiny with God. Stoicism, a
system of fataUsm, so handled necessity and freewiU that
what was in one respect Destiny was in another Providence.
The widespread astrological lore of the east was throughout
fataUstic. Among the Romans no deity was so fervently
adored as the capricious Fortuna.
Need of Religious Authority
The Greeks and Romans were left in dire need of an
authority for the human spirit. They had lost aU faith in
their state reUgion. Of the Greek oracles some were quite
silenced, others were stiU visited, but there* was a marked
diminution of inquirers. Roman augury and state divina
tion were abandoned for more private methods. Roman
ecclesiastics tried to retain the masses by introducing
popular and emotional rites. But the Greeks and Romans
never had gone to their priests for guidance. In the
Apology Plato represents Socrates as making inquiries
in regard to the response of the Delphic oracle from the
poUticians, the poets and the artisans, without mention
of theologians. Dio of Prusa reckons as the sources of
reUgious knowledge besides the consensus gentium, poets,
legislators, sculptors, painters, and philosophers, but not
priests. The priesthood of Greece and of Rome was
almost entirely secular ; at any rate nothing contributed
more to the reUgious destitution than the officials of

iv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 71
reUgion. The reUgious teachers of Greece and Rome were
laymen, somewhat on the analogy of the Hebrew prophets.
FormaUsm dominated in the maintenance of old reHgions.
The educated laughed at the popular gods. They saw
nothing wrong in attending reUgious ceremonies to gods
in whom they did not beUeve. The masses were still
pleased with the pomp of processions which reUeved
monotony ; but even the masses were not content with
the old deities or forms : they sought additional help in
foreign superstitions. Taedium Vitae
The Graeco-Roman world came slowly to itself, through
confusion and pain. Greece, in the Peloponnesian war,
lost her once joyful faith and cast off the last restraints
in the Alexandrian epoch. From the second Punic war
Rome found herself reUgiously destitute. Self-indulgence
foUowing upon restraint brought its inevitable fruits,
especiaUy among the Romans. We can detect from the
beginning of the first century B.C., until the end of the
first A.D., a widespread disgust with Ufe — a taedium vitae.
A rising sense of personaUty brought pain. Self-indulgence
was one of the many antecedents of satiety. While men
were healthUy occupied in pubHc and national affairs, the
cry of the individual was not heard. The misery and
poverty caused by the Roman conquests and civil wars
destroyed the basis of a regular social Ufe. Idleness
brought its concomitant — weariness. Amusements began
to paU, and means of excitement were exhausted.1 There
was frequent migratio to avoid being bored, but in vain.2
1 On a stone in the forum of Timgad one may still read — scratched upon the
design of a vase of flowers over which hovers a bird — the six words of six
letters each : Venari Lavari Ludcre Ridere Occest (hoc est) Vivere.
" Cf. Hor., Ep. 1, ii. 27:v
Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currant :
Strenua nos exercet inertia ; navibus atque
Quadrigis petimus bene vivere ;
and Seneca, Ep. 28.

72 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
The lords of the world who had less education and culture
than the majority of their subjects were most oppressed
with ennui. ' On that hard Pagan world disgust
And secret loathing fell :
Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell.
In his cool hall with haggard eyes
The Roman noble lay ;
He drove abroad in furious guise
Along the Appian way ;
He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,
And crowned his hair with flowers —
No easier nor no quicker passed
The impracticable hours.'
Pessimism
Side by side with this taedium we find a deep-seated
pessimism, from which only the Jew escaped. The gay
light-hearted Greek, just because he was so sensitive to
joy, was early overtaken by a melancholy which graduaUy
deepened into unreUeved gloom and ' the weariness of
living which proclaims itself in the graceful and fugitive
utterances of the Anthology.' The thought frequently
recurs that life is so fuU of trouble, so haunted by black
destiny, so brief and uncertain, that death is preferable
to life. ' Life and pain are akin,' says Menander. The
eternal hope that ever Ughted the path of the Hebrew
was but a faint and flickering gleam for the Greek. No
where do we find despair expressed so patheticaUy and so
subHmely as in Greek Hterature.
The Romans were infected by Greece with pessimism as
with rationalism and scepticism. We find among Roman
writers a large proportion of pessimists who are disgusted
with the present, and see no hope for the future. They
think that matters were never worse and cannot grow

iv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 73
worse. They contrast their own age with the good old
barbaric times. Historians and satirists dip their pens
in the blackest colours. Livy says ' we can neither cure
nor endure our vices.' Tacitus has no good to write of
his countrymen whom he compares with the Germans to
the disadvantage of the former. Pessimism finds expres
sion throughout aU the works of Seneca.1 He saw his own
age weary with indulgence, without any strong moral
dynamic, feeHng the ennui of satiety. ' Men complain
that the hours drag too slowly past,' he says. It would
demand too much space to speak of the pessimism of
Lucretius,8 Lucan, Persius, Juvenal, Marcus AureHus, and
other Romans.
The educated fled for refuge to philosophies that had
become reUgions. Some to Stoicism which sustained
countless souls and formed the loftiest characters. Some
to the lofty spirituahsm of Plato, not undiluted with
elements from other schools. Some adopted Scepticism
and professed to have no convictions. Some fled to the
cold nihiHsm of Epicurus and Lucretius. Some turned
to the east to find a reUgion with a satisfying message.
The masses still perfunctorily performed the rites of a
national cult, the reUgious spirit of which was dead.
But they too had recourse to old private and native
superstitions that revived as the pubUc reUgion died,
more especiaUy to those of the Orient which swept as a
flood over the Roman Empire.
II. Religious Awakening
On the other hand we find a reUgious awakening. Man's
reUgious nature was not dead. The practical tendencies
1 Cf. Omnis vita supplicium, Ad Polyb. 9. 6., tota flebilis vita, Ad
Marciam 11. 1.
2 Deinde animi ingratam naturam pascere semper,
Atque explere bonis rebus satiareque nunquam, . . .
Nee tamen explemur vitai fructibus unquam.— N. D. 3, 1003 ff.

74 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
of the age are especiaUy active in reUgious things. Purely
speculative theories were neglected because of the demand
for what was of practical value for the moral and spiritual
Hfe. The Graeco-Roman philosophies were converted into
reHgions: ethics claimed great attention. The age was
too serious to trifle with speculation except as bearing
on the spiritual questions of the day. Faith succeeded
scepticism. Preaching
The ancient world resorted to preaching.* PhUosophy,
which then covered the fields of moraHty and reUgion, led
the way ; Porphyry demands that the aim of philosophy
should be ' the salvation of the soul.' Free speech was
everywhere permitted. Oratory, of which antiquity
was more appreciative than we, foUowed this practical
trend. Philosophers avowed themselves to be physicians
of the soul, ambassadors of God, whose functions were to
cure diseased souls and produce conversions. These
missionary philosophers revived the spiritual truths of
reUgious teachers of the past, and condensed them into
a popular form to suit the age. Some philosophers, Uke
some theological professors nowadays, did not take the
field themselves but reduced their philosophy to a practical
training for those who were to carry the message farther
afield. Men went out from the lecture haUs to preach
self-examination and self-culture. They brought forth
things new and old. In the burden of their preaching
were many commonplaces — counsel to cultivate a good
i So prevalent was preaching that there was a recognised form of sermon.
Norden speaks of ' des festen Bestandes eines Typenschatzes religioser Rede,
zu dessen Pragung der Orient und Hellas in gleieher Weise beigetragen
haben, und den die synkretistischen Religionen der Kaiserzeit, einschliesslich
das Chriatentum ubernahm. Das hellenisierte Judentum hat bei dieser
Herubernahme von seiten des Christentums eine bedeutende Rolle gespielt ;
die eigentliche Vermittlerin aber sowohl fur Juden wie Christentum ist die
Orientalisierte Stoa — vor allem Poseidonius — und der an sie ankntipfende
Platonismus gewesen.' — Agnostos Theos, pp. 277-278 ; cf. pp. 129-134, also
Bultmann, Der Stil der Paulinischen Predigt.

iv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 75
conscience, to act as if conscious that God sees aU ; virtue
is its own reward, and is attainable by all ; sin is its own
punishment. They insisted on man's inherent dignity
and his abiHty to save himself by his wiU. They knew
no original sin. Life should be a contemplation of death,
so that men may die without fear.
This preaching was not confined to the upper circles.
One is more impressed by the enormous amount of popu
lar preaching. By putting together notices and hints
in ancient authors we must conclude that there was a
great demand for and a corresponding supply of ' itinerant
homiUsts ' and mendicant monks. Preachers, Uke em
perors, courted popularity with the masses. We read of
artisans forsaking their trade to join the ranks, as now
men join the Salvation Army.
The street-preaching and Salvation Army work was
started by the Cynics, who were exposed to as much
ridicule as any street-preachers have ever been. There
was a proportion of hypocrites among them; men too
lazy to work donned the philosophic garb as a congenial
means of livelihood. Others offered the ignorant charms
and cures for which they took up a coUection ; others
found in the profession a cloak for sensuaUty. These
very facts attest the popularity of Cynic preaching. The
caricatures of the Cynic were not undeserved, but the
counterfeit here as elsewhere points to the genuine. The
Cynic was mocked chiefly by cultured persons Uke the
witty Lucian, in whose eyes a Cynic was contemptible.
The Cynics deHvered their message, wrote nothing, and
left it to their enemies to immortaHse them. Again, there
is always a section of society who attribute to a cause only
the imperfections of its representatives : many can more
readUy detect the hypocrisy of one preacher than appreciate
the earnestness of ninety-nine. Also some people are more
irritated by the coUection necessary in a workaday world
than edified by the sermon. The Cynics and their kind

76 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [oh,
despised culture and left no volumes of sermons. We hold
no brief for the Cynics, as Bernays does ; but they, at any
rate, observed that the masses needed a gospel and shep
herds. They ' threw down the gauntlet to a materialised
age.' ' This was a kind of moral ministry . . . the
missionary movement of Cynicism was one of undoubted
power and range.' x Demonax and Demetrius are the
best representatives of the later Cynics. Both were noted
for their courageous independence and their healthy moral
influence, and they were both reverenced by their con
temporaries. As Demonax walked along the streets he
received tokens of affection from old and young. The
Athenians honoured him with a public funeral, and for
long decked with flowers a bench on which he used to sit.
Outside the Cynic school, but sharing some of their
spirit, were other missionaries and lecturers, such as
Plutarch, Musonius Rufus, Maximus of Tyre, Dio of
Prusa (Chrysostom), and Apollonius of Tyana. Philosophy
was to these men not a system of speculation but of
salvation, ' medicine of the soul,' ' soul-culture.' Some
of their sermons make dull reading for us, but their
discourses were not trite in that epoch. The Hfe of Apol
lonius by Philostratus is mainly a romance, but it is no
less valuable as reflecting the ideal of a heathen preacher:
' the preaching at least of Apollonius seems to belong to
the world of reaUty.' He is represented as in season and
out of season holding up to his hearers the unattractive
picture of their vices ; he settled pubHc quarrels, and taught
the people to pray as he conceived it : ' Thus I pray : Grant
me, 0 Gods, the things due me.' He is credited with
causing a reUgious revival in Rome in the time of Nero.
Another searching preacher was Musonius Rufus, of
whom we have too few fragments. According to Epictetus
he sifted would-be disciples, and ' he used to speak-in such
a manner that each of us who heard him supposed that
i Dill, p. 361.

rv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 77
some person had accused us to him : he so hit upon what
was done by us and placed the faults of every one before
bis eyes.' His object was to produce conversions. He
inculcated forgiveness, kindness, purity, and seU-
examination. Epictetus belongs partly to the class of pubUc preachers
and partly to that of private directors. He had a lofty
idea of his mission : ' the school of a philosopher is a
surgery. You ought not to go out of it with pleasure but
with pain, for you come there diseased.'
Brief mention should be made of the discourses of
Maximus of Tyre in which ' we have perhaps the nearest
approach in antiquity to our conception of the sermon.'
In reading him we are most impressed with a strange
blending of old and new, of spirituaUty and moral earnest
ness with a cult of the past. One of the most energetic
of ancient preachers was Dio of Prusa under Domitian and
Trajan. Converted in his exile he determined to reach
the needy masses. Every moral and spiritual idea that
he thought would elevate man above the life of the senses
he brought forward. He endeavoured to arouse men to
see their faults and to correct them, but, in Greek fashion,
he treated error as ignorance rather than rooted in the will,
hence, ' conversion must be effected, not by appeals to the
feeHngs, but by clarifying the mental vision.'
These, and such apostles, aimed at a moral and religious
revival ; they beUeved reformation of character possible,
and within the reach of aU. They gave clear expression to
certain great truths. Who can say how many conversions
they produced, or who can measure their influence for
rightepusness ? They claimed to be ambassadors of God,
and they executed their mission as weU as they could.
But their truth was too abstract : 1 they misplaced the
seat of authority ; they failed to realise the true nature
1 'Trusting too much to the intelligibleness of the Abstract,' like
J. S. Mill's father {Autobiography, p. 2 ¦)).

78 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
and extent of human sin. Nevertheless, they were voices
crying in the wflderness of Paganism, preparing the way
of the Lord. Spiritual Directors
Another phenomenon deserving attention was the custom
among the richer houses of the Roman world of retaining
philosophers as moral and spiritual directors corresponding
to our private chaplains, though apparently more practi
cal. This habit commenced in the second century B.C.,
when Rome came more intimately in contact with Greece,
and Roman generals carried Greek scholars with them to
their camps. As reUgious interests soon began to be affairs
of the greatest moment, the practical Romans looked to
these companions for help. The affairs of state and pubHc
Hfe were no longer so absorbing ; there was less scope for
personal ambition, ancient laws and institutions no longer
lent moral support ; the uncertainty and suffering caused
by the civU wars, and then the vengeance taken by the
court upon the nobiHty, made men caU for spiritual aid.
The post- AristoteUan philosophies had shifted the emphasis
from speculation to conduct, from poUtics to morality.
It is impossible to estimate the influence of these spiritual
directors to whom the anxious brought their difficulties.
In one respect it must have been powerful — in the forma
tion of the characters of the sons of the house. Roman
masters themselves were schooled by their private chaplains
in their duties (officio) ; they were given prescriptions for the
control of passions, and instructed as to the summum bonum.
They consulted the chaplains on aU the crises of Hfe, as on
the death of friends, the confiscation of their estates, or dis
favour at court. The directors aimed at imparting an ars
vivendi. They discussed the questions of Hfe, death, im-
mortaUty, and reunion: they supported their masters in
death, especiaUy at executions, dwelling on the examples of
men who had Uved and died bravely, expatiating on the

rv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 79
nature of the soul and the prospects of immortaHty. Many
a Roman received much consolation in Hfe, and departed with
a better hope, strengthened by these spiritual guides. It
was as usual to have a spiritual adviser attend the closing
scene as with ourselves, so that a historian thinks it worthy of
record when a man went to death ' without a philosopher.'
Canus, a victim of CaUgula, accompanied to execution by
bis philosopher, addressed his friends, ' Why this sorrow
and tears ? You are wondering if the soul is immortal,
whUe I am going to understand.' When Thrasea's death-
warrant arrived he prepared at once to die while discussing
with Demetrius the problem of immortaUty. The empress
Livia sought comfort on the death of Drusus from Augustus'
director, Areus.
In addition to these humble directors retained in rich
men's service, there were men Uke Plutarch, Seneca, and
Epictetus, who spent much time and pains in giving
spiritual advice to inquirers. Seneca is best known to us
as a director in his Letters to Lucilius, which wiU repay
reading by any one interested in this period.
Inwardness
The ancient world had turned to take the inward look.
This was partly the natural development of thought and
partly a necessity of moral progress. SeU-culture, upon
which interest centred, was impossible without setf-
knowledge. After a clear self-consciousness foUows its
exploration in self-examination. As the individual with
drew, or was forcibly dissevered from civic and racial
coUectivism and found himself a denizen of a universal
empire, the more the inner problem pressed for solution.
As peace was restored to society, and faith in the brother
hood of man gained ground, and men were reUeved from
the pubHc concerns that made such inroads upon their
time and energy, they became conscious of the heart's

80 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
unrest. Under the Empire we find an increasing ' tendency
to subjective emotion, to seU-analysis, a discovery of the
value and dignity of the individual, and of the separate
life which a free spirit could lead in a land of wonders,
quite apart from the turmoil of domestic or poHtical
strife.' 1
But though self-analysis was more commonly practised
from the first century B.C., and became more poignant with
the rise of the Christian consciousness, it was not unknown
at an earUer date. Pythagoras is credited with having
originated the practice and recommended it to his disciples.
With Socrates self-knowledge assumed a new prominence.
The appearance of Augustine's Confessions at the close
of the fourth century a.d. is an answer to the demand
urged by Socrates, 'Know thyself.' Socrates made philo
sophy a criticism of life with a view to moral improve
ment : ' A Hfe without examination should not be Uved
by man' (Plato, Apol. 38 a.). Here was return upon the
inner Ufe,2 and Socrates was the forerunner of the era of
subjectivity, which from about the time of Alexander dis
placed the previous era of objectivity. In the third century
B.C. the Golden Verses, attributed to Pythagoras, were
reduced to their present form to take their place among
volumes of moral precepts and to encourage reflection.
Self -analysis was fostered by the expansion of conscience
in the later Graeco-Roman period and the beUef in man's
innate moral nature. Plutarch says, ' If you Uke to study
the history of sin you will find plenty of material in your
selves,' and asks men to let their neighbours' faults alone
and turn their inquisitiveness upon themselves. The
Neo-Pythagoreans seem to have made an evening seU-
examination a part of their discipline. Horace says he
frequently took moral stock of his life. Titus considered
1 Bussell, p. 212.
8 Cf. words of Augustine : In te ipsum redi ; in interiors homine habitat
Veritas.

*v.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 81
each day whether he had done any good, and if not
exclaimed, ' diem perdidi.' Sextius, a teacher of Seneca,
practised self-examination and taught his disciples to do the
same. The locus classicus on this subject occurs in a passage
from Seneca (de Ira, in. 36) : ' Every day I plead my case
before myself. When the Ught is extinguished, and my
wife, who knows my habit, keeps silence, I examine the
past day, go over and weigh all my deeds and words. I
hide nothing, I omit nothing : why should I hesitate to
face my shortcomings when I can say " take care not
to repeat them, and so I forgive you to-day? " ' Epictetus
is Hkewise constantly turning the light upon himseff, and
in Marcus AureHus seff-analysis and introspection have
become the order for every day of a much-engaged Ufe.

Examples demanded
To the earnestness of this period abstract teaching was
not congenial. A more practical method was required.
As nowadays Christians find guidance in Bible texts, so at
that time men needed some simple directions aU the more
owing to the isolation of the individual. Personal character
and conduct were now of deeper concern. Definite pre
cepts were demanded, and demand creates supply. AU
the writings of the wise were ransacked by teachers to find
texts and precepts for their pupils. CoUections of oracles
were made. Definite prescriptions were dispensed to
meet individual cases. The pathology of the soul was
studied with a view to know its diseases and so to discover
remedies. These precepts were predominantly negative,
the object being to escape evil rather than attain righteous
ness; positive directions, however, are not wanting. It
was discovered that precepts are better clothed in ideals.
Every system had its ideal man, the picture of what a man
ought to be. Such ideals were creations of the imagina-
F

82 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
tion, dreams of man at his best. They were too elusive for
the majority. An ideal that had never been incarnated was
too cold and powerless. Accordingly the HeUenistic age was
emphatic in its demand for examples to supplement pre
cepts and ideals : we may doubt if ever, in any age, moraUty
and reUgion were more persistently taught by examples.
Earnest men wished to behold beings of flesh and blood
and see how they Uved, and from their examples to draw
inspiration. A real kind of spiritual hero-worship resulted.
All history and legend was explored for incarnate examples
to teach men how to Uve and die. Strangely enough the
Greeks and Romans never thought of looking to their gods
as examples ; Orpheus, Pythagoras,1 and others were held
up before men's gaze. Socrates, whose personaUty was
greater than his teaching, now came to his own as the very
ideal of humanity. He became a kind of pagan Christ.
He himself in his trial was strengthened by the example
of Palamedes. Readers of Plutarch remember how every
thing he says is buttressed, if not by a text, by an example
from history or mythology. His Lives of outstanding
Greeks and Romans were written with a moral and didactic
purpose : the ethical predominates over the historical
interest (cf. his own words, Timoleon, ad init.). Epictetus
constantly reinforces his teaching with historic examples,
especially that of Socrates. The practical Roman thought
that one of the best methods of educating his sons was by
an appeal to the great men of the past. Varro wrote fifteen
books of paraUel Lives of Greeks and Romans. Valerius
Maximus composed his history for educational purposes :
he iUustrates the gamut of virtues by examples from Roman
and Greek history. Seneca, in this, as in so many other
respects, reflects the need and practice of his day in the
famiUar direction given to Lucilius, to keep constantly
before his mind the picture of some upright man, and so
i Lives of Pythagoras were written by Porphyry, Iamblichus. and Diogenes
Laertius.

**.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 83
to Uve as if he were always in his presence. ReUgious
teachers felt the need of an upUf ting example.
III. Demand for a Universal Religion
The keynote of the day was universaHsm : the demand
was for a universal reUgion. The isolation of the individual
revealed common human needs. The growing sense of
the unity of mankind created a prejudice against any
enchoric or national reUgion. As man was one, his reUgion
must be one. There was a kindly tolerance in reUgious
matters. The practicaUy general beUef in Monotheism
led men more eagerly in search of the One. Men said,
with Plutarch, that aU worshipped the same god, his name
merely being different in different languages. In the days
of Cicero the universaUty of man's reUgious nature was as
common a tenet as when the study of comparative reUgions
began among us. That there was a demand for a cathoUc
reUgion is further shown by the interesting fact that every
Hving reUgion became missionary. And philosophy left
speculation to play its part in supplying reUgious guidance
on strictly human and universal Unes.
Eastern and Western Modes of Salvation
Evangels were offered from East and West, and men were
not satisfied as in our day to owe aUegiance to one sect or
form of reUgion : they tried all. We find a characteristic
contrast between Western and Eastern methods of salvation.
There were two coneurreht views of man which we may
term the Hebrew and the Greek : the former exalted
God, the latter man. Hebrew reUgion was, like aU true
reUgion, theocentric ; Greek culture anthropocentric Ex
cluding details, we may say that God was to the Hebrew
transcendent and far exalted above man, who was a
creature unworthy to appear on God's footstool : the lofty

84 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
thought of the eighth Psalm, ' Thou hast made him a Httle
lower than God,' did not permeate Hebrew as it did Greek
thought. To the Greek God was immanent and not far
away from any one of us ; He was, as it were, an exalted
man, or man raised to his highest power. The sense of
sin was congenial to the one temperament, as that of man's
native dignity to the other : the one needed grace, the
other beUeved in merit. To the Hebrew man's spiritual
constitution was weakened by pre-natal sin and poisoned
by actual guilt ; he is a helpless creature before Divine
justice, incapable of saving himseff. The Greek knew no
original sin ; he was almost unconscious of the ravages of
moral evil in his nature ; he beUeved he was his own
saviour by exercising, after the iUumination of wisdom,
his personal wiU-power.
Of the reUgions competing in the Empire, those of Greece
were philosophical, appeaHng primarily to the reason and
intellect ; that of Rome was wholly poUtieal ; those from
the Orient were most akin to Christianity, making their
appeal primarily to the heart.
The 'religion' of Greece, an anthropomorphic polytheism,
exerted its spiritual power chiefly in art. The Greek reUgion
of Beauty and Joy was such an interpretation of nature as
to make the Greek feel at home in a world conceived as beauti
ful and peopled with fairy deities ; but this reUgion had
no message when the element of trouble entered with an
enlarging spiritual experience. It never enabled the Greek
to embark upon the Infinite. It was to her philosophies
that Greece looked for her evangels : it was these that
endeavoured to meet the universal demand for support
(v. Ch. vi.).
Although Rome had, especiaUy since the second Punic
war, despaired of her own gods, she did not despair, in
her poHtical wisdom, of supplying her Empire with a
reUgion borrowed, adapted, or created for the purpose.
A revival, inaugurated by Augustus, swept over Rome

rv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 85
about the beginning of the Christian era. He reaHsed
the moral confusion resulting from the civil strife. His re
vival of the old reUgion was partly due to reUgious motives,
but mainly to poHtical. He claims to have repaired
eighty-two temples in Rome. Throughout Italy, and in
the provinces, new temples arose with astonishing rapidity,
and dilapidated temples were restored. The more reUgious
side of the revival is represented by Virgil, whose Aeneid is
a trumpet-caU to Rome to remember that it owes its great
ness to the goodwiU of the deity and to the reverence of
their fathers. The pius Aeneas was intended to be the
ideal Roman.

Imperial Cult
The universal reUgion which Rome offered the world was
a poHtical one, the cult of the emperors.1 It was Roman
poUcy to draw the attention of all to the centre of power,
and the imperial cult was one of the best means of giving
cohesion to a vast empire. This cult was never intended
to persecute or displace national or enchoric faiths, nor
to impose any reUgious dogma. It may seem very strange
to us, though with our remnants of mediaevaUsm and
feudaHsm we are not so far removed from it as we imagine.
Imperial apotheosis was the result of flattery, gratitude,
poHcy, and historic precedent. Several historic causes
prepared the way. The Roman worship of the Manes,
who occupied the place of saints in CathoHcism, was a
point of departure. Roman writers Uke Cicero (N. D. n.,
24, 62) admitted that mortals by merit could be deified.
For a time quasi-divine honours were paid to men Uke
Scipio and MeteUus Pius. Contact with Greece and the
East fostered this latent germ. In Egypt the Pharaohs
were adored as sons of Ra, the incarnation of God upon
1 In this section I am much indebted to the Abb6 Beurlier, Le cult rendu
zuz emplreurs romains.

86 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
earth, though not regarded as the equals of God. The
monotheism of Persia did not permit such excessive
worship, but aUowed prostration before despots. Egypt
and Persia transmitted to Alexander and the Diadochi
the adoration of kings in their lifetime. PhiHp associated
himself with the immortals. Alexander was adored as
an earthly deity by the Persians : he was proclaimed ' son
of Zeus ' by the oracle of Ammon, though his countrymen
reluctantly acknowledged his divinity. The Ptolemies
succeeded to the divinity of the Pharaohs, whereby double
allegiance was due them. The Seleucids styled themselves
' saviour and god,' and appointed one priest to honour the
dead kings, and another to honour the Hving kings who
would one day join the Celestials. The kings of Pergamum
and Commagene made themselves divine. The Greeks
had for long practised a hero-worship, in which men of
distinguished merit were regarded as quasi-divine after
death. Julius Caesar opened the door for himseU and subsequent
rulers into the Roman pantheon. After PharsaHa he was
acknowledged as ' semi-god,' and his statue was placed be
side that of the King of the Gods. He modestly refused the
position, until, seated securely in power, his scruples were
mitigated : a chair and his statue were placed in the circus
among the gods, and a statue placed to him in the temple
of Quirinus inscribed ' to the invincible God.' Later he be
came Jupiter JuUus : a temple was begun in honour of his
dementia. His acsassination and the appearance of the
comet secured his consecration. He was decreed dims,
which does not mean ' god,' but ' divine,' and the senate
gave authority ' to honour him as a god.' An epidemic of
divinity-seeking now broke out among the Romans : ' Etre
dieu, ou tout au moins fils de dieu, etait une condition
indispensable pour aspirer a 1' empire du monde.' Sextus
Pompey gave himseU out as son of Neptune ; Antony be
came the new Dionysus, whose worst quaUties he imitated.

iv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 87
His exploits and the battle of Actium quenched his divinity.
Octavian became Divi filius, son of the Divine ; but after
Actium flatterers and poets hailed him as a deity with the
attributes of ApoUo. Only a god could give the earth
such repose, according to Virgil, who, with Horace, pro
phesied his apotheosis as son of Venus. We find him
addressed on inscriptions as Zeus and son of Zeus. All
this was private adulation, but connived at by Octavian :
he refused the titles Lord and God, accepting that of
Augustus in 27 B.C. In Rome he refused shrines to him
self, but we find in Italy a cult addressed to him in his
Ufe time. In the provinces the cult spread most rapidly :
temples were raised to the divinity of the emperor ; in
these he insisted that the divinity of Roma should be
associated with himself. Soon after the provincial arose
the municipal cult : Caesarea and Augustea were erected
in every town of importance. Of aU the Caesars Augustus
received the most genuine adoration, partly because of
his unique position, it being the first time in human history
that one man was so necessary to aU, partly out of gratitude
for the pax Romana, partly because the cult had not yet
been suUied by the elevation of unworthy rulers, and the
honour was not yet lessened by a crowd of similar divinities.
Philo says that ' the whole world regarded Augustus as
equal to the Olympians.' On his death his apotheosis was
decreed by the senate. Tiberius refused divine honours
in Rome, but encouraged the provincial cult. CaUgula
was punctiUous about his divinity. Nero was the first
Hving emperor to wear the corona radiata symboHc of
descent from the sun-god. In the first and second centuries
the best emperors were content with the name of some
ancient deity, expecting full divine honours only after
death ; but in the third they were styled gods. Domitian
claimed the title dominus et deus in his Ufetime. Finally
from the East came prostration before emperors. The
most extravagant forms of the imperial cult belonged to

88 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
the East, where emperors were addressed by such terms
as fieyiirros dtZv, Oeioraros, sacratissimus, or ' God,' ' God
manifest,' o-mrfp (Saviour), ' God the Deliverer,' ' invincible
God,' etc.
GraduaUy the purely poUtical character of the cult be
came manifest to aU.1 Apotheosis was a civil honour — the
ratification of the acts of the dead emperor — and was in
the gift of the senate which usuaUy discriminated wisely,
rejecting Tiberius, CaUgula, Nero, Domitian, and yet admit
ting the infamous Commodus and CaracaUa. The admission
of the emperors' famiHes and the growing number of such
deifications lessened its glory. The claims of emperors Uke
CaUgula orNero completely destroyed the reUgious character
of the cult.
The imperial cult was Rome's endeavour to supply to her
empire a universal reUgion as poUtical as was her own
reUgion. It was intended as a bond of union and a sign
of the greatness and ubiquity of Rome. The trend since
the days of Alexander had been poUticaUy toward monarchy
and in reUgion toward monotheism. This cult was one
in which aU could unite and which represented a visible
unity. It strengthened Roman authority and helped to
unify the world. The Hving emperor was a visible god
dispensing justice. It discredited polytheism by admitting
mortals to the privileges of deity. Also ' prayers addressed
to the god Augustus were more surely answered than
those addressed to Jupiter.' *
Never possessed of any reUgious value, the imperial cult
betrays in a remarkable way the tendency of that age to
look for an incarnation of deity, and to prefer a praesens
deus to all the gods of polytheism. When Christ was
preached as Son of God who had tabernacled among
men, such an idea was not unfamiUar to the people of
that day, who recoiled less from it than some do now.
1 In the first two centuries the populace had a real belief in the divinity of
the Augusti.— Beurlier, p. 321. » Beurlier, p. 319.

rv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 89
There were plenty of nonconformists. The emperors
never insisted on strict conformity : in the provinces the
cult was a convenient means of detecting any disloyalty.
In its palmiest days the educated classes smiled at a
practice which was only an act of civil homage. Roman
emperors doubted their own divinity. Seneca's Apocolo-
cyntosis turns to ridicule Claudius's apotheosis. Vespasian
jested on his deathbed about bis becoming a god. The
chief nonconformists were RepubHcans, Jews, and
Christians. The first were foremost in the senate to oppose
apotheosis, as did Thrasea (Tac, Ann., xvi. 21) ; they even
refused to swear by the genius of the emperor. The Jews
were more stubborn, but too powerful to antagonise : they
were excused in this as in other acts of reUgious non
conformity. The relations of Christianity to the imperial
cult belong to church history.

Oriental Religions
It was toward the East that the Graeco-Roman world
turned to find spiritual support : the conquest of the
Empire by Oriental reUgions is one of the most striking
facts of reUgious history. The aesthetic reUgion of Greece
and the institutional reUgion of Rome lost their charm
before the emotional, mystic, salvation-reUgions of the
East. The Magna Mater was introduced from Pessinus,
the Syrian goddess and Baals came from Syria, Isis and
Serapis from Egypt, Mithra from Persia, Jupiter DoHchenus
from Commagene. It is difficult to explain the enthraUing
charm of these Eastern faiths which in the beginning were
gross and naturaUstic, but with the progressive moral
sense of man were purified into means of grace. ' In
times of moral renovation, and in face of powerful spiritual
rivalries, a reUgion may purge itself of the impurities of
youth. ReUgious systems may also be elevated by the
growing refinement of the society to which they minister.

90 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
It is only thus that we can explain the undoubted fact
that the Phrygian and Egyptian worships, originaUy
tainted with the grossness of naturaHsm, became vehicles
of a warm reUgious emotion, and provided a stimulus to
a higher Hfe. The ideaUsm of humanity, by a strange
alchemy, can marveUously transform the most unpromis
ing materials.' 1 We may attribute the success of the
Oriental reUgions to three causes : (1) favouring circum
stances, (2) their organisation and methods, (3) their
intrinsic merits and abiUty to foster and partiaUy meet
spiritual wants.
(1) They entered the Empire at a time when national
reUgion was discredited, when men who had lost faith in
the reUgion of their fathers were wilUng to experiment
with any substitute. There were hosts of Eastern slaves
whose zeal for their gods seemed to grow more intense
when Hving among masters who had lost their reUgion.
Eastern merchants, retailers, and speculators carried their
ancestral faith over the Empire, as also did the hosts of
recruits from the East who served in the Roman armies.
The success attending Roman arms after the introduction of
the first Eastern deity, the Great Mother, gave her prestige
from the beginning. She became sponsor for later invaders
who sheltered themselves from persecution as her proteges.
From the days of Herodotus and Plato the eyes of the
West were turning toward the Morningland for enUghten-
ment in reUgion ; the first religious revival experienced in
Greece (in the sixth century) was due to Eastern influences.
The Oriental reUgions were the only reUgions that could
thrive outside the original territory of their god, and keep
pace with the tendencies of the day — they fostered syncre
tism, maintained the unity of mankind, helped to mono
theism through their henotheism ; they abounded in
mysticism, advocated asceticism, and satisfied emotional
and individualistic demands. (2) They invaded the West
Dill, p. 564.

iv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 91
encircled with the hoary authority of a venerable past,
with esoteric doctrines, estabUshed dogma, and a weU
organised priesthood. From the beginning they were
missionary and proselytising faiths, Uke Judaism ; as
such they were religions of enthusiasm. They beUeved
in themselves and in their mission. No Eastern slave or
trader ever forgot the god of his fathers. They were
universal reUgions. not enchoric, intended to embrace aU
nations. |The only reUgion of the West that spread east
ward was the official imperial cult backed by the might of
Rome, but as a reUgion it never became a competitor with
Eastern reUgionst whereas the cults from the East spread
to the ends of tne Empire and were as much at home at
York, on the Rhine, or on the borders of the Sahara, as
iii their native territory. No national or racial distinction
was maintained. These reUgions were brotherhoods in
which rich and poor, slave and master, were united. A
slave found there his lost Hberty ; he might be president
of the local brotherhood in which his master was only a
private member or an acolyte. In these reUgious guilds
men found that feUowship and sympathy which were
missed in a vast empire. Many a slave and soldier after
long hours of toil must have been refreshed by the com
panionship of a few initiated who met together to contem
plate the symbols of the deity, and to join in hymn and
ritual. It was a decidedly democratic era, and these reUgions
were democratic. Like Christianity, they began with the
lower classes and worked upward. Rank and birth did
not count. The populace was captivated by the impressive
pomp and ritual, by the excitement which appealed to
the senses : the eye and ear were pleased as well as the
heart. They were sacerdotal cults in the hands of a
professional priesthood which explained the meaning of
symboHc acts to the people, and claimed the authority
of a long tradition. These cults represented the ' free
churches,' into the membership of which a man did not

92 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
enter by birth, or as a matter of course. They were
not state-supported. Man values his spiritual wares pro
portionately to the price they cost him ; so these cults
were aU the more valuable in that they were supported on
the voluntary system. The contributions to the support
of the priesthood and to the treasury of the guilds must
often have called forth seff-denial. Oriental creeds at first
won their way because of the clamour of the populace, but
from the days of the Antonines through the sympathies
of emperors who found in them a doctrine akin to that
of the divine right of kings. With the exception of
Mithraism, women played a prominent part in aU Eastern
cults, which had a special attraction for their sex. (3) All
these considerations would have been ineffectual had not
Oriental reUgions met and partiaUy satisfied reUgious
needs. They confronted rationaUsm and scepticism with
faith in estabUshed dogma, whereas Greece and Rome had
no system of theology. They claimed to have a certain
authority over the spirit : they had a message for the
individual ; like Christianity they aimed at universaHsm
through individuaHsm. They were to a considerable
extent ethical : man could not in his natural state approach
a holy God. He must humble himself and purify himself
from sin. Rites of purification were characteristic of them
aU. Asceticism and self-denial were enforced on special
occasions. The soul must be cleansed from the impurities
of flesh and matter to enjoy the beatific vision. This was
accompUshed by mortifications and penances, by lustra
tions and ablutions in holy water — a ' veritable spiritual
disinfection.' The chief charm of these cults lay in their
appeal to the emotions, which also caused grave moral
aberrations. They aroused in the worshipper hope, fear,
pain, joy, ecstasy. The services were warm, interesting,
and enthraUing as compared with the formal prosaic state-
cult. The initiated could enter the Httle chapel with a
few comrades to gaze upon the sacred symbols, to hear the

iv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 93
priests explaining and applying the lesson to man's own
Ufe, to join in prayer and hymn and feel Ufted above the
earthly. There is in every true reUgion a large element
of mysticism, and these cults encouraged mysticism. We
trace this in the rites used to enable the worshipper to
rise above the sensible and material, and in the confessions
put into the Ups of the initiated whereby they claim to
have escaped from evil and attained the better. By
mortifications, by fasting, by exhilarating music, by seff-
mutilation, by drugs and stimulants they endeavoured
to rise into another state in which they were united with
the Deity. To surmount the ills of duaHsm in union
with the Deity or apotheosis was their aspiration.
The Deity was more human than those of Greece and
Rome ; the Eastern gods could die and rise again, could
suffer and enjoy. They understood better how to comfort.
In a remarkable passage in the prosaic treatise On Isis and
Osiris (27), Plutarch says that Isis has not grown obUvious
of her own toils and sufferings, and is present in the repre
sentations of these past sufferings to console humanity
in its trials — a mater dolorosa.1 These cults offered
strength and spiritual support by bringing men into union
with sympathetic gods. The priests, unHke the busy
secular priests of Greece and Rome, undertook spiritual
guidance, gave directions how men were to escape from
the evils of duaUsm, and prescriptions for quieting an
uneasy conscience. The chief means of sacramental
grace were the mysteries, and the chief promise was a
blessed immortality.
IV. Higher Ideas of God and Man
Higher ideas of God and of man prevailed in this period.
From the beginning of time the existence and necessity
of the Supernatural were felt. As the moral and spiritual
i Cf. also Apul., Met., xi. 25.

94 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
education of man advanced there was an expansion in
the conception of God. The Greek was working for man,
the Hebrew for God ; these met in the Graeco-Roman
world to carry on their simultaneous mission.
Monotheism
A beUef in the unity of God was one of the most marked
advances. Of this the Jews were the first missionaries,
who ' had a passion for monotheism in their blood.' A
movement set in toward monotheism from the earHest
days of Greek philosophy and in Greek tragedy. The
first problem that Greek thought set itself was to discover
the One amid the many, unity amid pluraUty. Xeno-
phanes said ' the best can only be One.' Many paths led
to monotheism. Philosophers first attacked polytheism :
only confusion could reign in the universe so long as it was
partitioned out among different and often hostile deities.
Antisthenes said ' there are many Gods according to law,
but only One according to nature,' and Xenophanes,
' there is one God, among gods and men the greatest,
unHke mortals in outer shape, unHke in mind and thought.'
Some rejected the popular gods, replacing them by an
abstract monotheism ; some regarded them as manifesta
tions or modes of the One ; a more usual method was to
elevate one and make the others his vassals, Hke Zeus among
the Greeks, and Jupiter among the Romans, or to choose
a trinity Uke the CapitoUne Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva.
As universaHsm and the idea of the unity of mankind
spread it was natural to suppose that all men stood in the
same relation to the same God. If one man could rule
the world, surely one God could rule the universe. The
syncretism of the age was in no respect so active as in its
blending of gods into one. Deities of different peoples
exerting the same functions were identified. It was
maintained, as by Plutarch, that the gods of aU nations

iv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 95
are the same, only caUed by different names in different
languages. Expressions like ' the gods ' were used by
force of habit without meaning pluraUty. It was only
natural that the old terminology should Hnger. Maximus
of Tyre says that the names of the gods are many but
their essence one, their names being due to our ignorance,
just as we speak of Ionian, Aegean, and Cretan seas, though
there is only one sea. Some of the Church fathers, Justin,
Clement of Alexandria, TertuUian, and Lactantius, admitted
that pagans beUeved in the unity of God. The philo
sophic monotheism of Plato, in which the idea of Good and
God coincided, was widely spread as Platonism became
a spiritual force in the Empire. Hatch says of the latter
portion of our period : ' It was an age in which men were
feeHng after God and not feeHng in vain, and that from
the domains of ethics, physics, metaphysics aUke, from
the depths of the moral consciousness, and from the cloud-
lands of poets' dreams, the ideas of men were trooping in
one vast host to proclaim with a united voice that there
are not many gods but only One, one First Cause by whom
aU things were made, one Moral Governor whose providence
was over aU His works, one Supreme Being "of infinite
power, wisdom, and goodness." ' x
Goodness and Providence of God
There was a practicaUy universal faith in the goodness
and love of God. Plato argues that God can be only the
author of good. Seneca holds that as God is our father
we may expect only good from Him. Celsus teUs Origen
that God is good and free from jealousy. A frequently
recurring thought in Epictetus, Plutarch, and Maximus
of Tyre is the goodness of God. As the idea spread
that man is made in the image of God, there went with
it the faith that God could maintain only a sympathetic
l Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages, p. 14.

96 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
attitude to His creatures. The ancient world of Judaism
and of Paganism had begun dimly to conceive the Father
hood of God, which was to be so fully revealed in Christ.
The Providence of God was a common conception.1
God was viewed as the one aU-seeing and aU-governing
power, the Creator who watches over all His works, and in
a special manner over men who are His ' relatives.' The
adoption of means to ends, the dependence of cause on
cause reaching back to God, was as famiUar then as
now. The universe was neither made nor governed at
random. Anaxagoras had long ago made Mind the
regulator and governor of aU. Socrates appeals to the
universal belief in the existence and Providence of God
as proof of its truth : as the soul manages the body so
Providence does the world ; the Divine sees, hears, and cares
for aU. Socrates reminds his judges that a good man's
interests are not neglected by the Deity, nor had his
trial and condemnation happened accidentaUy. Plato
recognises a reasoning Intelligence as ruHng the world.
Aristotle, it is true, rejected Providence, as did also the
Epicureans. In spite of these exceptions faith in God's
Providence steadily grew. The Stoics used many argu
ments to estabUsh their contention for Providence, appeal
ing to the generally accepted beUef , and to the argument
from God's perfection and foreknowledge. They desig
nated their universal law sometimes Nature and sometimes
Providence. Their Providence was concerned primarily
with the universal, and only secondarily with the individual
in his relation to the whole. The Providence and goodness
of God is an article of faith with Cicero, Plutarch, Seneca,
Epictetus, Aurelius. So firm was this faith that prayer
was regarded as unnecessary : God may be trusted to give
what is needed and good for us. This Providence was not
capricious — not that of a despot. Fate, Fortune, Necessity
i Friedlander, Roman Lift and Manners, iii. 145. Cf. Cic, de Legg.,
ii. 7, 16.

iv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 97
were identified with God, or otherwise brought under His
sway, or made His ministers in the education of good men.
Moral Government
To the Graeco-Roman world the mystery of the moral
government of the universe was perplexing. There was
much that apparently could not be easily reconciled with
faith in Providence. Only a limited number could accept the
comfortless theory of the Epicureans whose gods enjoyed
an immortaHty of repose, contemplating only their own
perfection, free from aU care for the sorrows of men. On
thoughtful minds the question pressed : Why so much
evil in the world of a beneficent Creator ? why do the
wicked profit equaUy with the good by the gifts of Provi
dence ? why do the wicked prosper while the righteous
suffer calamity ? why do God's judgments faU upon the
guUtless ? The old world stood sobered before such pro
blems ; they reaHsed that there are domains in which
only faith can say the last word. They offered tentative
answers : that a good and wise God would do all for the
best, that God could not in a general providence benefit
the good without conferring blessing on the evil. It was
better to benefit aU than aUow the righteous to suffer in
a general dearth : God could not make the sunshine faU
only on the good, neither could He make the same wind
advantageous to the good and disastrous to the bad, nor
cause the showers to f aU only on the fields of the righteous,
as Seneca remarks. But where apparent discrimination
comes in, as in the loss of children or wealth, the problem
was more acute. Faith suggested that calamity tries
the good man and makes him Uke God: Suffering may be
Uke the pain of a surgical operation, for lasting good and
health. The Stoics held that suffering is not penal.
Democritus remarked that he had never seen anything
more wretched than the man who had never suffered
G

98 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
calamity. Paganism believed that whom God loves He
chastens,1 that virtue can only live and grow under trial.
Or God sent suffering that mankind might have examples
of strength Uke Socrates, or He might by showing favour
to a good man's descendants elevate such a scoundrel as
CaUgula — the Roman form of the Judaic ' merits of the
fathers.' Another method of exonerating God was found
in the prevalent duaHsm of East and West, by presuming
that evil was the work of demons intermediary between
God and men. Evil and good were engaged in eternal
conflict, and evil is necessary to give scope and exercise
to good. Some, burdened with this thought, looked for
ward to an ultimate triumph of good over evfl, when
Ormuzd would exterminate Ahriman, or when in the
Messianic kingdom evil would disappear
There was another short cut as famiUar to the ancients
as to us — a simple denial of the existence of evil. Thus
the ancient world not only protested against what seemed
divine oppression, but it did all that the human spirit
could do to ' justify the ways of God to man,' and defend
God's moral character. Dignity of Man
Man is elevated in proportion to his conception of God :
the hoUer and purer God is, the more righteous must man
be. When God's love becomes equaUy prominent with
His power, man is the recipient of His goodness : the
nearer the approach to God the larger becomes man's
spiritual Ufe and outlook. We have already referred to
the two concurrent views of man, the Hebrew and the
Greek ; the former dwelUng rather on the weakness and
sinfulness of man, the latter on the inherent dignity of
human nature with a proud self-reUance. The former is
1 ' Hos itaque deus qnos probat, quos amat, indurat, recognoscit, exercet. ' —
Sen., De Prov., i, 7.

iv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 99
the more reUgious view. The dignity of man and his
kinship with the Divine was a common thought in
ancient Paganism : ' Through the course of Greek reUgious
thought a single thread may be traced, in the essential
unity of man and God.' x Paul had noticed this : ' As
certain also of your own poets (plural) have said, " for we
are His offspring." ' The guU between man and his im
manent God was never so wide as that between the Hebrew
and his transcendent God. Some gods were only deified
men raised to heaven for services to mankind. Pantheism
brought God within the reach of man. Greek anthropo
morphism at first conceived God as made in the image
of man, as when Xenophanes asserted (attacking anthro
pomorphic polytheism), that the negroes depict God as
black and flat-nosed, the Thracians as red-haired and with
blue eyes ; and if oxen, Hons, and horses could conceive
of God, they would represent him as an ox, a Hon, a horse.
Later Greek thought conceived man as made in the image
of God. Plato opened the way for that divine discontent
and boundless aspiration by which man seeks to escape
from the evils of duaHsm and from the prison and tomb of
the soul, to find scope for his higher nature in the contempla
tion of the Divine and Abiding : our souls seek to return
to God whence they came, for with God is our true home
and fatherland. We are a ' heavenly plant.' In the later
schools we find a growing conviction of the kinship of man
with the Divine : a conviction that
'L'homme est un dieu tombe^ qui se souvient des cieux.'
Cicero finds this thought congenial : we are the ' relatives '
of God. According to Seneca, God is our father; our
Divine origin calls us above. ' Between good men and the
gods is a friendship founded on virtue. Friendship, do
I say ? nay, rather an intimacy and Ukeness, for a good
man only differs in point of time from God whose disciple
1 Mrs. Adam, Greek Ideals of Righteousness, p. 67.

100 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
and imitator he is and His offspring.' We as part of God
contemplate our Parent, says Manilius. Epictetus was
foremost in using this idea in a practical way to elevate
the Hves of men. He asks why should not a rational
being caU himself ' a son of God ? . . . ShaU kinship
with Caesar, or any other great man, enable us to Uve
secure ? . . . And shaU not the fact that God is our
Maker, Father, Guardian, free us from aU sorrow and
anxiety ? ' 'Do you think that God would suffer His own
son to be enslaved ? ' SimpHcius in his famous prayer
requested his Father and Saviour to make us mindful of
the noble origin 'Thou hast deemed worthy to confer
upon us.' Worth of the Soul
Side by side with this conviction of the Divine in man,
with the increasing desire for immortaUty and the yearning
for salvation, the worth of the soul became more apparent.
From the days of Socrates and Plato, Paganism was
learning to ask, ' What shaU it profit a man if he shaU
gain the whole world and lose his own soul, or what shaU
a man give in exchange for his soul ? ' The exceeding
preciousness of the soul is prominent in aU the great works
of Plato, especially in the Phaedo, the noblest work ever
penned by a Pagan. The whole business of a worthy Ufe
is to disengage the Psyche from the poUution of the flesh,
maintain it in communion with the Good and Beautiful,
and after death restore it to God in a condition fit for the
fruition of endless felicity. There is not space here to
point out the difference between the Platonic inteUectuaUsm
of salvation and the Christian conception ; but never was
the higher Hfe of man more exalted above the Hfe of sense.
In the Graeco-Roman world the poHtical conditions that
in Plato's own day rendered men deaf to his lofty spiritu-
aHty were removed, and his great truths spread to larger

Jv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 101
audiences. In the moralists and preachers of the Empire
we find great emphasis upon the high origin and worth of
the soul, and the saving of it was a matter of engrossing
interest. The individuaHsm of the age brought men
face to face with their inner Ufe. Oriental reUgions
deepened the conviction of the worth of the soul and the
imperative need of its salvation. Men were wiUing to
practise asceticism, take lustral baths, undertake weary
and expensive pilgrimages, seek initiations in every
mystery, undergo or inflict self-mutilation, struggle with
demonic powers — aU for the health of the soul. In the
regnant dualism the soul was winning, while the body was
steadily losing. Immortality
Closely connected with a beUef in God and in the worth
of man is the doctrine of immortaUty. When we reflect
what a veil of mystery is drawn over the grave even for
the Christian, we shaU not be astonished to find that
the pagan world without a revelation was troubled by
uncertainty. As thought in Greece and Rome was free
from clerical sway, men could speculate as they pleased.
It is not so much the beUef in immortaUty that arrests
our attention in this period, as the interest which the
subject created even in those who probed it only to
flout. The yearning for continued existence was one
symptom of the individuaHsm of the age. As death
became more of a personal loss it was felt to be so intoler
ably oppressive that we can stiU hear the repeated desire
for reunion. Men were peering wistfuUy into the Beyond :
' They were stretching out their hands in longing for the
farther shore,' says Virgil. ' The inextinguishable instinct
of humanity craves for a voice of revelation to solve the
mystery of Hfe and death.'
So tenacious was the racial consciousness among the

102 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [oh.
Jews that it was only after the Exile they felt much need
of immortaUty, and it was apparently in the trying
Maccabean days that they demanded an individual immor
taUty for the righteous, and then for the wicked. Job
had long before expressed the yearning for another Hfe
(see p. 27).
The earUest Greek (Homeric) conception of the existence
beyond was that of a Hfe so thin and gloomy that it was
better to serve as a hireHng upon earth than to reign in
Hades : moreover, it did not possess any moral worth
except in the torment of a few egregious sinners. The
Hesiodic Islands of the Blest are reserved for a f ewfavourites
of the gods. The earUest promise of a happier lot such as
would render a continuance of Hfe desirable is made to the
initiated in the Hymn to Demeter. The Dionysiac and
Orphic reUgious brotherhoods, entering Greeoe at the close
of the seventh century, inculcated the doctrine of immor
taUty : their teachings were taken up and spread by the
Pythagoreans and Pindar, and later by Plato. In Pindar
existence beyond has taken on brighter colours, and has
been moraUsed. The next important epoch begins with
Plato, to whom we shaU return.
The Romans had, from the earUest times, a beUef in
continued existence on which later an ethical immortality
could be ingrafted. The cult of the dead, in its brighter
aspect, as the Manes who were propitious, and in its gloomier
aspect, the Lemures who were malevolent, is typicaUy
Roman. But here, too, Roman faith was driven by its
penury to Greece, whose eschatology she appropriated, and
through Greece that of Orphism and Pythagoreanism.
In the Graeco-Roman age the question of immortaUty
was much discussed. There were materiaHsts who denied
and sceptics who doubted. Among those who desired it
there were various grades of faith. As Socrates was to
this period a kind of pagan Christ, and Plato came to his
own, it is worth while to begin with them. The Socrates

rv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 103
of Xenophon says nothing upon the question : the argu
ments put into his mouth in the Phaedo are those of Plato.
Socrates argues that death is a boon : either it is a dream
less sleep or a journey to where are the true judges and the
renowned dead (Apol. 40, A. f.). He closes Ifis defence with
the words, ' Now it is the hour to depart, I to die, you to
Hve ; which of us enters into the better lot is bidden from
aU save God only.' The ' divine Plato ' was one of the
chief sources of the beUef to after ages. He inteUectuaHsed
the ritual and ceremonies of Orphism which brought
immortaUty to Greece, and imbibed from Pythagoreanism
aU the satisfaction it had to offer to a mystical world-
weary spirit. After much independent reflection and
enlarged spiritual experience, he completed — especiaUy in
the Phaedrus, Symposium, and Phaedo — the lofty structure
from which historic Christianity has borrowed so many
stones. He dweUs upon the divine origin of the soul, its
spiritual nature, its pre-existence, its longing to return to
its home, its defiance of aU diseases both of the body
and those which attack itself. His Ufe beyond is dis
tinguished by moral values, i.e. bis immortaUty is ethical.
Plato's labour of love is ' the noblest single offering that
human reason has yet laid upon the altar of human hope.' 1
Aristotle offered Httle hope. He defined the soul as the
enteleehy of the body ; only one part of the soul is immortal,
active reason, which persists as incorporeal spirit, but in
such a fashion as to render personal immortaUty very doubt
ful, if not impossible ; for the dead are not happy being
deprived of self -consciousness. The Peripatetics rejected
immortaUty. The Stoics usuaUy admitted that the soul
survived tiU the conflagration ; some Uke Panaetius denied
even this. The Epicureans were the apostles of annihila
tion. Lucretius — another Omar Khayyam — contemplates
blank nothingness and extinction of aU desire in the leti
i Geddes, Phaedo of Plato, p. xxvii., cited in Salmond, Christian Doctrine
of Immortality, p. 149.

104 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
secura quies. SaUust (Cat. 51-2) represents Caesar, the
high-priest of Roman reUgion, as opposing the simple
death penalty proposed for the CatiUnarian conspira
tors, because : death puts a period to all human iUs,
and beyond the grave there is no opportunity for either
anxiety or joy ' ; in this opinion Cato Uticensis con
curs. Cicero also refers to it (In Cat., iv. 4, 7), without
any contradiction. Thus this famous trio denied all
moral nexus between this Ufe and the next. Catullus —
the SheUey of antiquity — anticipates ' one perpetual
night' closing down on his love for Lesbia, and on
a sadder occasion, by bis brother's grave, he takes an
everlasting hopeless farewell. Horace in exquisite verse
commends a ' carpe diem ' existence before we pass into
'eternal exile,' where pulvis et umbra sumus. Pliny
(H. N., vii. 55, 188) maintains that death is an unbroken
sleep from which there is no awakening, the desire for
immortaUty arising from human vanity. The funeral
inscriptions are for the most part hopeless. They repre
sent largely the scenes of this Ufe and of past happiness ;
they are not concerned with the future. Some are frivolous
and even immoral : ' I was not, I became ; I am not and
I care not.' ' While I Hved I drank as I pleased, you
who Hve drink.' ' Baths, wine, indulgence, corrupt our
bodies, but they constitute Hfe.' ' Eat, drink, enjoy
yourself, then join us.' ' What I have eaten and drunk,
that I take with me ; what I have left behind I have
forfeited.' ' While I Hved I Uved well ; now my Httle
play is ended, soon shaU yours be ; good-bye and applaud.'
' Hold all a mockery, reader ; nothing is our own.' The
poems of the Greek Anthology — especiaUy the later ones
— are without a ray of hope. Death brings the peace of
nothingness, and takes us away from the ills of Hfe. The
burden of these pieces is ' vanity of vanities, aU is vanity.'
As death may snatch us away at any moment let us quaff
the cup of pleasure now ; the only regret at the end is

w0 RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 105
that of having lost any opportunity of enjoyment ; for the
rest ' all is laughter, aU is dust, all is nothing.' ' All Ufe
is a stage and a game ; learn to play it without seriousness
or bear the consequence.'
There is another side. The question of immortality
was being approached with increasing earnestness. Men
were asking, ' If a man die shall he live again ? ' Amid the
uncertainty and misery of the present, many were crying
with the author of Obermann, ' Eternite, deviens mon asile.'
The demand for continued existence and for remembrance
asserted itself strongly. Even Lucretius reaUsed the sad
ness for the human heart of parting with loved ones without
hope of a reunion. Roman tombs were erected near the
roadside so that the Hving might not grudge the time to
read the epitaph. ' The wish to maintain ... a bond
of communion between the Hving and the departed was
one of the most imperious instincts of the Latin race.' 1
The dead demand that loving hands scatter roses and
violets with a prayer over the grave : they dreaded loneU-
ness. A few learned sceptics and materiaHsts could not
stem the rising aspirations of the people. Some men of
eminence would not deny this hope : others fostered it
tiU it became a faith. The work of Orphism, Pytha-
goreanism, and above all Platonism, could not be in vain ;
their spirituaUty filtered down among the masses. Tacitus
concludes his Ufe of Agricola with the faint hope that such
noble souls may be granted a Ufe beyond. Sulpicius
Severus consoles Cicero on the death of TulHa with a
hesitating ' if the dead retain consciousness.' The demand
for Consolations, characteristic of this period, promoted
the eternal hope. It is strange that while beHef in the old
fables of punishment in Tartarus waned, the hope of im
mortaUty increased. The future was increasingly ethicised
from the days of Orphism and especiaUy of Plato. Plu
tarch is an advocate of immortality, to which he thinks
i Dill, p. 487.

106 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
the innate desire for a perpetuity of life points.1 At the
end of his Consolation to his wife he considers it harder to
doubt than to beUeve. He also consoles her with this faith
which they learned in their initiation into the mysteries.
In his (?) Consolation to Apollonius the same hope is
present, but sometimes faint. The cases of Cicero and
Seneca are interesting as giving some insight into ancient
reUgious experience. In the day of prosperity both paid
Httle attention to the subject, but in the face of bereave
ment and misfortune they feU back on the eternal hope.
Cicero, acknowledging Sulpicius' consolatory letter (Fam.,
iv. 5), admits that his friend had offered all possible
consolation, though the highest he could offer was a
continuation of consciousness in TuUia (si qui etiam inferis
sensus est). Writing to Torquatus (lb., vi. 4, 4), a few
months later, he views death as bringing insensibiUty (sine
vMo sensu). On the other hand, in the beautiful Dream of
Scipio, pubUshed 51 B.C., a blessed immortaUty is promised
to those who have served their country and Uved virtuously,
in contrast with which * what you caU Hfe is death.' In
the year of TuUia's death he addressed a Consolatio to
himseU, in the extant fragment of which he dwells upon the
divine and spiritual nature of the soul. In the same or
the foUowing year he began the Tusculan Disputations
(' a work of despair'), in the first of which he reviews the
Platonic arguments for the immortaUty of the soul, but
arrives at no certainty. Death is no evil, but it is not a
blessing : we shaU either ' return to our eternal home or
become unconscious and free from anxiety.' Again he
boasts that if the hope of immortaUty is a delusion it is
one in which he wishes to persist. Seneca wavered. At
one time he viewed immortaUty as a ' beautiful dream '
(bellum somnium), but after the bitter experiences of his
Ufe he came to depict the blessedness of heaven in terms
1 In De sera Num. Vind., 18, he says a belief in continued existence must
follow from that in God's providence. Cf. also Non posse suaviter vivi, 26 f.

^•1 RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 107
akin to the Christian. Death is not penal but a boon to
tired mortaUty ; this mortal Ufe is a ' prelude to a better
and longer Hfe.' Stoic as he was he preferred the Platonic
spiritual view of the soul. The day of death is the ' birth
day of eternity ' (aeterni natalis) : ' our soul wiU then
have cause to rejoice when, sent forth from these shades
in which it is immersed, it shall see things no longer dimly,
but with the Hght of perfect day, and shall have been
restored to its heaven and shaU have reached the place
which is its birthplace.' Maximus of Tyre regards death
as the entrance upon a new immortal Ufe.
Some of the most earnest souls were in doubt. This
is the attitude of QuintiUan. Epictetus is very faltering
in his utterances about things beyond : though he asserted
the divine kinship of the soul and the joy of communion
with God here, he never felt the need of a personal existence
beyond. Marcus AureHus, conscious of the inveterate
longing of man for continued existence, crushed it out
in his absolute submission to the wiU of God, whatever
that might be : he felt no need of another Ufe to com
plement this.
Thus some of the best men were indifferent to the hope
of man ; others clung to it as a frail raft. So far as we
can gather, the masses had more faith in immortaUty than
their leaders, and that because of the spread of the Oriental
reUgions. The chief sources of faith in a continued moral
Ufe in the Graeco-Roman age were three : Platonism, which
took up and spirituaUsed Orphism and Pythagoreanism ;
the Greek mysteries, and, above all, the mysteries of the
Oriental cults. Speaking of Athens, Cicero says she pro
duced 'nothing more exceUent and nothing better than
those mysteries, by which from a wild and savage Ufe we
have been trained and raised to a higher humanity. They
are truly caUed initio, for it is through them we have
learned to know the beginnings of life. And we have
received from them not only good reason why we should

108 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
live with joy, but also why we should die with a better hope.'
A continued existence of some kind was almost universaUy
admitted : it was the mysteries that cast Ught upon the
gloom and promised a different position to the initiated.
The Mysteries
Although we distinguish Greek and Oriental mysteries,
the Greek mysteries were probably introduced fxaHLthe_East
by the cult brotherhoods after the spiritual upheavals
and reUgious revivals that swept over the North Semitic
world in the seventh century B,c\ The mysteries were
at first private and conducted by religious guilds. They
introduced into Greece the revolutionary idea of a
reUgion detached from the tribe or polis and open to all
men : membership was free and spontaneous. In the sixth
century1 one Greek state, Athens, took over the Eleusinian
mysteries as part of the state reUgion, thus partly adopting
the new principle of membership in a divine community
by initiation instead of by birthright. Side by side stiU
persisted many private mysteries. The introduction of
these foreign mysteries into the Greek world was epoch-
making : they lent to men a moral inspiration by making
the future Ufe worthy of high endeavour, and by introducing
into it moral distinctions quaUfied by man's conduct
here. The gloomy non-moral after-existence of Homer
gave way to a hereafter of bHss for the initiated. Both
the state-acknowledged and the private mysteries offered
to men a hope through the symboHsm of nature. The
Hymn to Demeter says, ' Happy is he among deathly men
who hath beheld these things. And he that is uninitiate
and hath no lot in them, hath never equal lot in death
beneath the murky gloom.' Pindar speaks to the same
purpose. Better known are the words of Sophocles,
'thrice blessed they of mortals who descend into Hades
> Cf. Jevons; Introd. to the History of Religion (1896), pp. 358-9.

iv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 109
having seen these mysteries.' Mysteries, like everything
else, were abused. Plato speaks of them with disapproba
tion, first, because they tended to give the idea that
ceremonial expiation for sin in this Hfe was enough — an
idea subversive of righteousness ; and secondly, because
they offered rewards, including an ' eternity of drunken
ness,' for virtue, which to Plato was its own reward.
The new Oriental cults that began in the second century
B.C. to invade the Empire suppUed the masses with the
most fascinating ritual and mysteries. The cults of the
Great Mother, Isis, and Mithra, taught immortaUty and
attached to it grave moral responsibility. Men were pre
pared for the Hfe beyond by penances, fasting, abstinence,
baptism and purification. In the yearly return of Ufe
in nature they recognised a symbol of the hope of man.
The emotional rites of a naturaUstic reUgion were not in
the first case elevating, but with the developing moral
experience of man were translated into symbols of higher
truth. They saw in the alternate grief and joy of a mother
of sorrows joy born of grief and Ufe issuing from death.
Life was a probation for eternity, and after death there
foUowed another Hfe and a great judgment.
The TauroboHum (not found in the West till the second
century a.d., attaching to the Great Mother cult, and pro
bably also to Mithraism) was the most impressive of sacra
ments. The worshipper knelt in a trench over which was a
platform on which was slain a buU ; the blood ran down
upon the devotee, thus cleansing him of sin and causing him
to be ' born again for eternity' (in aeternum renatus). The
votaries of Isis had inscribed on their tombs ' be of good
cheer,' or ' may Osiris give thee the refreshing water.'
V. Change in the Religious Spout
The more one studies this era the more will he be per
suaded that the Christ came in the fulness of time ; that

110 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
all its activities, poHtical, social, moral and reUgious,
were converging toward His appearing. The natural joy of
Hfe (Weltfreudigkeit) was gone: men had become serious.
The problems that agitated them most were those of
ethics and reUgion, above aU, the problems of the individual
soul, or those universal enigmas that concern man as
man everywhere and always — the issues of Ufe and death.
We have noticed a demand on aU hands for a universal
reUgion. Toward the beginning of the Christian era the
reUgious instinct asserted itseU in a surprising degree :
'men were thirsty to beUeve and worship,' says Denis.
The God of the city-state passed away with the city-state
which finaUy expired under Caesar and Augustus ; state
reUgions were maintained by custom not by faith. The
world had come to beUeve in the unity of God which
suggested one reUgion. If one man could rule the world,
surely one God could rule the universe. Social, poUtical,
and legislative unity had been impressed upon the Empire
by Rome ; philosophical and, to some extent, ethical unity
had been emphasised by Greek thought; only reUgious
unity was needed. As men were persuaded of the unity
of God, the unity of man and the divine kinship, no parti
cularistic reUgion could satisfy. If sin abounded, it was
also an age of intense reUgious activity. Greek thought
made as noble an effort to supply a reUgion of humanity as
was possible for philosophy. The era of the subjective had
arrived which is speciaUy favourable to devotion. Rome
offered her subjects a universal reUgion in the imperial
cult to impress the world with her own majesty rather
than that of God. Her subjects accepted it with good will
as a form of civil homage, while they went their own way
to find satisfaction for the Hfe of the soul : the praesens
deus of the emperor might appeal to the imagination but
not to the emotions. The throne of the human heart was
declared vacant and there were abundant candidates ;
in this department Greece and Rome retired before the

iv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 111
religions of the East. IndividuaHsm is in no department
so pronounced as in the reUgious. Personal access to the
Deity was offered through the Oriental priesthoods. The
world was convinced that the two great reaHties in the
universe were God and the soul. The worshipper was no
longer content to remain a silent and passive observer : he
wished to take part himself in the worship. ReUgion was
regarded as an individual concern, and not as a province of
poUtics. The mysteries and the Eastern faiths suppUed the
place with the ancients which the Church occupies with us.
Membership in these and state citizenship were separate :
man selected his reUgion, he did not any longer enter it by
birthright. Emotionalism
We observe a rising tide of emotionaUsm. It is easy
to understand how this was restrained in the severe
but necessary discipHne of the old regime.1 When the
individual is detached from the collective unity there is
more play for the emotions. ReUgion is rooted in the
emotional.2 Jerome says Plato placed the soul of man
in the head, Christ placed it in the heart. EmotionaUsm
entered the Graeco-Roman world by a twofold path, first,
in the consciousness of deep reUgious needs disclosed by
individuaHsm, which reacted upon men Uke the discovery
of a new sense; and secondly, in the Eastern reUgions which
professed to meet while fostering these wants. Emotional
ism betrayed itself negatively in the depreciation of the
state cults, and positively, in the efforts made by the
Roman reUgious authorities to make the worship more
congenial by introducing emotional and individual elements.
Fowler 8 speaks of ' the first lectisternia in 399 b.c. as
1 Contrast the statuesque sorrow of Pericles' Funeral Oration with that of
Cicero over the loss of Tullia.
2 M. Arnold's definition of religion as morality touched with emotion
contains a half truth.
' Rdig. Exper., p. 261.

112 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [cH.
the earUest authentic example of the emotional tendency
of the Roman plebs.' While this emotional element is
necessary for reUgion, it does not constitute reUgion, nor
does it necessarily conduce to it. It may issue in true
reUgious enthusiasm and mysticism, or sink to moral
anarchy.1 Hence too the Oriental reUgions have been so
differently estimated in antiquity and now. In one sense
men find in a reUgion what they bring to it, and derive from
it what they most desire. Those who approached these
reUgions in earnest to find spiritual support discovered
in them means of grace ; others sought in them paUiatives
of and even incentives to immoraHty. Ceremonial purity
was required rather than spiritual : the emotional mis
tresses of men Uke Catullus, Propertius, and TibuUus were
eager devotees of these cults. The sensual romance of
Apuleius is another instance. A further evidence of
emotionalism is the prominence of women in the Oriental
cults, including Judaism and Christianity. We have
already referred to the prominence of the passion of
love in the later, and especiaUy in Roman, Uterature.
The very reaUsm, characteristic of the age, is evidence
of the emotional. Personal Religion
There was a considerable advance in the recognition
of the inwardness and personal nature of man's higher
Hfe.a This was in Une with the general drift toward
individualism. Man had turned from the investigation
of the problems of the external world to probe the secret of
his own nature. Although the ancient world did not arrive
at any adequate conception of personality (the depths
of which have not even yet been plumbed), there was
a developing sense of personality with its pain and respond-
1 Many of the greatest musicians led immoral lives.
' Cf. Seneca, Ep. 28.

iv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 113
biUty. The city-state had presented only the external
and coUective side of reUgion ; the personal and inward
aspect now overshadowed the other. Man turned aside
from poUtical Ufe to regulate his own, and find satisfaction
for SeU in reUgion. Amid the terrible social strife and
devastation in which the Empire was founded, men were
compeUed to think about themselves in a new way. It
seemed as if God had set the emperors to keep guard
in order to give men time to reflect about themselves.
In the stillness of the pax Romana, the need for inward
peace grew aU the more clamant. The coUective covenant
with God had been broken, and as men cannot Hve without
the supernatural, the personal bond was sought. The
external sanctions and authority of moraUty being
threatened, another sanction was discovered in the innate
moral nature of man and in a God-implanted conscience
which demanded obedience while states rise and fall.
There was acknowledged an objective and eternal law of
righteousness to which the God within bears testimony.
The worthiest rewards of righteousness and the acutest
penalties of sin are enacted in the theatre of the inner Hfe.
Socrates maintains that the worst consequences of our
conduct are the disastrous effects upon our own spiritual
nature. The famous Une of Virgil represents the same
truth : quisque suos patimur Manes, ' each of us suffers
in his own spiritual being.' The caU of the heathen
preacher was for introspection and seff-examination : this
era dated from the ' Know thyseU,' by which Socrates
produced one of the most momentous epochs in the higher
Ufe. The later schools without exception aimed at
bestowing upon man independence in his inward Ufe.
Stoicism took the lead in asking men to retire to the
citadel of their own being where external things could
not ruffle : the only worthy Ufe was amid the secret
triumphs and agonies of one's soul. ' Retire within
yourself ' was the motto of AureHus. Peace may be
H

114 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
found within when it is denied without. There are many
pagan texts, especiaUy in Seneca, Epictetus, and AureUus,
paraUel to ' the Kingdom of God is within you.'

Character
Closely connected with this inwardness is the importance
attached to character, though the old world was even
fuUer of inconsistencies between a man's ideals and his
conduct than the modern. Ovid could say ' I see the
better and approve it, but I pursue the worse.' Men had
begun, in the words of Emerson, to test the passion of
the moment by the verdict of the centuries. The Apology
of Xenophon, prosaic compared with that of Plato, con
tains one memorable passage. Socrates, seeing Anytus
leaving the court in triumph, exclaimed, ' How wretched
is this feUow not to reflect that whichever of us has done
that which is the best and noblest for all time, he is the
victor.' A Stoic, asked if he had lost anything in the sack
of his native city, repUed, ' I carry aU my goods with me.'
More attention was paid to moral education and the forma
tion of character ; precepts and examples were in demand.
The whole mission of Stoicism was to form strong and
fearless characters that could bid defiance to any calamity,
and it admittedly achieved great success. AU the attention
that used to be paid to poUtics was now centred upon
moraHty. That what a man is, is of more importance
than what a man has, is a doctrine quite famiUar to Seneca,
Epictetus, and AureHus. Probably the most impressive
testimony of early Christianity was the upright Hves of
its adherents. Demand for Authority
The ancient world was anxiously searching for an
authority, especially about the time of the appearance of

rv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 115
Christianity. The Orient, relying less on the capacities
of man, looked to God for knowledge given by revelation
and embodied in the lore of priesthoods. The Greeks
looked to man himseU for knowledge ; they considered
it no irreverence to pry into the secrets of the Almighty.
As the Greeks sought salvation by wisdom, the question
of a criterion to distinguish truth from falsehood was a
matter of supreme importance. The question arose,
What and wherein is the authority of Thought ? Socrates
vindicated the vaUdity of thought and the existence of
objective and universal truth : he beUeved in the possibiUty
of knowledge through concepts arrived at by dialectic.
He was the first Greek to enthrone conscience as an authority
above law and the state. He asserted that man's moral
nature is not a He, and that we have a conscience which
must be obeyed at aU costs, even at that of Hfe itseU.
He beUeved he had an inner guide — his daemon. He also
gave the first utterance in the Western world to the need
of a revelation — a heaven-sent guide to teach us our
reUgious duties. Plato found the authority for the moral
Hfe of man in innate ideas, in the recoUection of the
Good and the Lovely which our souls contemplated with
God in their pre-natal condition. The Cyrenaics despaired
of knowledge. Aristotle gave prominence to empiric
knowledge, defending sensuous perception on the ground
that the senses never deceive us. The Stoics were sheer
empirics. The Epicureans theoreticaUy accepted sensu
ous perception and the resulting concepts as criteria of
truth, but in practice they held to the personal feeHng of
pleasure and pain as the basis of moral conduct. The
Academics rejected both the evidence of the senses and
the inteUect as guides ; they also repudiated knowledge
by concepts because these bore no hall-mark of veracity,
and the same object generated different concepts in different
minds. Man must rest in suspension of judgment, and the
highest criterion for moral conduct is probabiUty. Man

116 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch,
grew weary of uncertainty, and as attention centred more
upon the ethics of the individual, he demanded a working
criterion. The Eclectics were the most practical thinkers
of a practical age. They placed the standard for decision
between true and false, right and wrong, in each man's
seU-consciousness where truth is given immediately ; the
ordinary seU-consciousness gives the final decision in
philosophic questions. ' Thus innate knowledge forms
the transition to that form of philosophy which only goes
back to seU-consciousness, in order to receive in it the
revelation of God.' 1 Eclecticism opened the way for,
and went hand in hand with, the philosophy of Revelation.
External Revelation is complementary to internal.8 This
is the position taken so strongly by Cicero and Seneca.
The Greeks, the first to doubt, were not yet satisfied. A
higher authority was needed to regulate the Hberty of
independence secured by individuaHsm. The Greeks
had trusted themselves to Reason, which had carried them
as far as Reason can ; they were now conscious that there
is a domain into which the inteUect by itseU cannot enter,
that there is in life a mysterious region where only faith
can say the last word. Denis3 observes that, 'grown old
in logic, wearied of uncertainty and scepticism, they were
less conscious of the need of arriving by any path at the
emancipation of the spirit, than of discovering a rule to
terminate their discussions and their doubts. They would
view the letter of a formal and holy text rather as an
aUeviation than as a subjection and a restraint.' Justin
Martyr says, ' It is impossible to know either by nature,
i Zeller, Eclectics, p. 20.
s ' These two currents [an urgent demand for knowledge in the practical
interests of religion, and a disbelief in the truths of existing knowledge and
knowledge generally] coalescing, we arrive at the thought that truth, which
could not be attained in the form of intellectual knowledge, exists outside of
it, and is partly to be sought in the religious traditions of the early days of
Greece and the East, partly by immediate divine revelation.'— Zeller, Stoics,
Epic., and Seep., p. 30.
3 ii. 321.

Iv0 RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 117
or the sheer power of thought, thing;? so sublime as the
divine : that can only come by the gracious gUt of Him
who knows aU.' Pilate was unconsciously voicing the
demand of his age when he asked in the presence of ' the
Way, the Truth, and the Life,' ' What is Truth ? ' without
recognising the Revelation of Truth. From whatever
causes — the discordant voices of spiritual directors, the
mistrust in man's capacity for knowledge, the shattering
of external restraints, the isolation of the individual soul,
the weariness that overtook Greek thinking, the contact
with the Revelation philosophy of the East— there spread
a deep sense of the need of a Revelation,1 which was
intensified by the contact of East and West in Alexandria ;
in the Hermetic Hterature Revelation has become the
source of knowledge.2 ' The last motive in this specula
tion (which ended in Neo-Platonism), was the yearning
after a higher revelation of truth ; its metaphysical pre
supposition was an opposition of God and the world . . .
its practical consequence was a combination of ethics with
reUgion.' 3 Neo-Pythagoreanism, later Platonism, and
finaUy Neo-Platonism trusted rather to a revelation than
to logic. They sought the knowledge of God in communion
with Him, in rising in ecstasy from the sensuous to the
supersensuous. The idea of Revelation was encouraged
by the Oriental reUgions to which people thronged. The
contact of Judaism with the West, and the tremendous
influence of the world-historic Septuagint version, pro
mulgated this faith. In addition, Messianic ideas were
widely diffused (p. 136). The ecclesiastical councils were
not isolated phenomena ; they were the result of an age
long search for an authority for the spirit.
1 Cf. Neander, Ch. Hist., Eng. Tr., i. 43.
• This Revelation is granted either immediately by a God (Hermes, That,
Asclepius) or mediately by an inspired prophet.
3 Zeller, Outlines, p. 305.

118 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [oh.
Nearness of the Supernatural
A consciousness of the supernatural was keener with
the ancients than with some modern Christians. They
knew no reUgion without miracles. The supernatural
was in .close propinquity to them, and their whole Ufe was
filled with its influence. What to us would seem miraculous
and incredible was to them of ordinary occurrence —
miracles of heaUng, visions, apocalypses, resuscitation of
the dead. There was an evil side to this beHef in the
supernatural : reUgion was debased to superstition.1 The
divine was feared lest it should hurt, not loved for its
beneficence. The gods could be threatened, cajoled,
bribed. All means were used to deflect their wUls from
evil designs. Astrology, witchcraft, necromancy, thau-
maturgy were rife. Some of the most degrading practices
were performed under the name of reUgion. We reaUse
the force of ignorant superstition in reading the great
poem of Lucretius ; his whole effort is to weed the fear
of the gods out of human Hfe, for 'to so many evils
could religio prompt men.' The ancients beUeved that the
Deity revealed himself in trifling accidents and in preter
natural fashion. Sober historians Uke Livy and Tacitus
pause to relate miraculous events, and Suetonius revels in
the miraculous. With the spread of duaUsm the whole
world was portioned out to a hierarchy of beneficent and
malefic spirits ; the Ufe of man was the theatre of a truce-
less conflict for his soul between the opposing spiritual
forces. Paul was not a stranger to the earnestness of this
perpetual struggle. Mysticism
A strong flood of mysticism was sweeping over the world.
Mysticism has been often asserted to be aUen to the leading
1 De Jong (Das antike Mysterienwesen, p. 198) speaks of the mysteries as
official magic.

"¦•] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 119
peoples of the Empire. It was undoubtedly uncongenial
to the Romans, to whom the material was so real. Inge 1
maintains that the ' Jewish mind and character in spite
of its deeply reUgious bent was aUen to mysticism,' but in
the Psalms and the Prophets we often find a genuine
reUgious mysticism, and another type in the Apocalyptic
visions and the Cabbala. To the Greek mind in its heyday
the mystic temperament was foreign.2 Mysticism entered the
Greek world in the religious revival of the sixth century B.C.,
in Orphism and Pythagoreanism ; it was too individuaUstic
to lay hold on a civilisation entrenched in the polis. It
laid hold on Plato and became prominent in the subjective-
ness which prevailed from the third, but particularly from
the first century B.C. onwards 3 — in Neo-Pythagoreanism,
Neo-Platonism, in Philo, and in Paul and John. Wherever
we find reUgion, we find mysticism as one of the channels
connecting with the Invisible. There was a demand for
the experimental knowledge of God * and a unio mystica.
In one respect, mysticism is the cultivation of the last
element discovered in probing personality — the emotional.
Socrates was as much a mystic as a true sceptic. Plato
is the father of Greek and Christian mysticism. He
silences his doubts by faith ; he beUeves that in 'the body
we are exiled from home ; his whole effort is to rise from
the finite to union with the Infinite. No one was ever i
more oppressed with the sense of the duaUsm of man's j
nature. The ' truly mystical sense of salvation — the
return of the prodigal to his father's home from the far
country,. where this high affinity had been almost forfeited
in " vagrancy among the manifold " — will appear again
1 Christian Mysticism, p. 39.
3 Rohde, Relig. d. Gr., p. 338. ' Mystik war ein fremder Blutstropfen im
griechischen Blute.'
3 Cf. Kennedy, St. Paul and the Mystery-Religions, index, Mysticism ;
Lehmann, Mystik im Heid. u. Christentum, chaps, 5-8 ; Norden, Agnostos
Theos, 97 f., 109, 222.
4 ' yvQois 6eov wird aas Losungswort im Konkurrenzkampfe derReligionen,'
Norden, ib. 109.

120 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
as a special type of Platonic thought ... an overpower
ing conception of Unity ; and of some scarce compre
hensible form of Being, to which the longing aspiration
of the awakened soul ever tends, rising through images
and figures and types of the sensible world to the perfect
vision of Beauty beyond.' 1 When reUgion turned inward,
and philosophy was converted into reUgion, the mystical
elements of ecstasy and passivity were emphasised. When
the inteUect grew weary of long-sustained activity, when
knowledge seemed exhausted or men were overtaken by
despair in man's capacity for knowledge,2 when they became
more sensitive to the pain of isolation8 and more con
vinced that our moral nature is not a lie, when »7 y avait
dans les dmes un vide immense, they cried out for Revela
tion ; ' the gulf of mysticism invites the hardy speculator
to its profound repose, and constrains and fascinates him,
until he is overcome by dizziness, and falls as if drawn
by some irresistible influence into the abyss.' The effort
was made, as in Philo and Neo-Platonism, to rise above
conscious thought into immediate union with God.
Mysticism also betrays itseU in the frequent other-
worldHness, in the prevalent world-weariness, in the
asceticism which aimed at detaching the soul from the
attractions of earth, in the rebelUon against formaHty in
reUgion and idle speculation in philosophy, in the increas
ing power of Platonic ideaUsm, in the demand for salvation-
reUgions, in the fresh emotional elements in Hfe, in the
quest after the deification of man, in the spread of indefi
nite Messianic expectations. These elements find their
practical iUustration in the spread of ascetic brotherhoods
Uke the Therapeutae and Essenes, and in the purifications
1 Bussell, pp. 241-2.
2 ' So tritt Glauben und erleuchtetes Schauen an die Stelle von Wissen und
Begreifeu, ein tief innerliches Erlebnis an die Stelle der Reflexion ; fromme
Hingabe an das Unfassbare ersetzt den etolzen sich selbst die Grenzen
vorschreibenden Forschersinn. '—Norden, p. -127-. °t ^\ V «
3 ' Mystik kann, ihrem Wesen nach, nicht wohl Religion einer Gemeinds
warden. '— Rohde, ib., p. 336.

iv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 121
and the mortifications required by the Oriental cults.
Such principles were the tenets of Neo-Pythagoreanism,
the school of Philo, and finaUy of Neo-Platonism. If
the spread of duaUsm did not foster mysticism, it at least
caused men to take refuge in mysticism as the means of
escape. God and the world, spirit and matter, were set
over against each other in antagonism. Greek thought
wrestled for centuries to discover a reconciHng principle,
a larger synthesis in which aU antagonisms are harmonised ;
but Greek thought never found the synthesis. It beUeved
from the first in Unity, but could not discover the terms or
principle or mode. At last in despair, in Neo-Platonism,
it surrendered logic, and, seeking to rise above conscious
thought, made a leap for unity in the ecstasy of the Vision
Beatific. At length it found that ' nothing worthy proving
can be proven nor yet disproven.' Mysticism has been v
denned as ' an attempt to solve, by love and emotion,
the duaUsm of the world ; and especiaUy to reconcile the
constant struggles and defiance of the individual wiU
with universal law.' And mysticism was the last word of
Greek philosophy. Theory was abandoned for immediate
experience, just as in Christianity we appeal to the
Christian consciousness. Intermediaries
God became more transcendent, and intermediaries
were needed between man and God. Several causes
contributed to this — the greater hold which duaUsm
gained, the rising sense of sin, the influence of the Oriental
idea of an exalted transcendent Deity, monotheism, the
consciousness of the limits of knowledge. God was
consequently removed far above the realm of sense and
placed beyond reach of the world. An impassable gulf
yawned between God and Nature : matter is inherently
evil, so that God cannot come into contact with it. The

122 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [oh.
highest principle being spirit it became difficult to account
for the Creation at aU. That a pure spirit could suUy
itseU by finding expression in the material, and that a
good Creator could produce a universe with so much evil,
was impossible. The activity of God in the world would
invade that serenity of the only worthy activity of the
Highest — seU-contemplation. Through intermediaries
God created and governs His creation. The whole universe
was peopled with demons or semi-divine beings, of whom
some were beneficent and some malevolent. The idea
of a medium between God and man is very old. In the
Timaeus Plato puts an immanent World-Soul between a
transcendent God and the world : this World-Soul is the
image of God, His steward, or even another God. ' The
maker and father of this universe is difficult to discover ;
when discovered he cannot be revealed to aU men,' says
Plato. This World-Soul is therefore one of Plato's most
important Unks between the finite and the infinite. By
a singular coincidence, both East and West were converging
to a beUef in a medium which at first was an abstraction,
but was gradually personified and finaUy regarded as
personal or an incarnation. In the Old Testament we
find a quasi-personification of the Word of God, some
times of His Name, and more especiaUy of Wisdom ;
' Hebrew thought tended to represent God's seU-manifesta-
tion as mediated by an agent, more or less conceived as
personal and yet blending with the divine personaUty
itseU.' 1 In the West the doctrine of the Logos or Word
goes back to HeracUtus of Ephesus. His doctrine has
occasioned much discussion, but an exceUent authority
sums it up in three propositions : (1) ' The Logos is eternal,
both pre-existent and everlasting.' (2) 'AU things
happen through the Logos. Its authority is not confined
to the sphere of human activities ; it is a cosmic principle,
" common " or " universal." ' (3) ' The duty of man is to
1 Purves, art. 'Logos' in Hastings' D. B.

rv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 123
obey this universal Logos,' though most men refuse to
see or hear it.1 To the Stoics is due the honour of popu
larising this doctrine of the Word as medium. Zeno took
over the HeracHtean Word, regarded it as the manifestation
of God, the aU-pervading principle, even identified it with
Fate, with Providence, and finally with God. It was an
immanent Logos. Cleanthes transformed the fire of
HeracUtus and Zeno into spirit and then made the Logos
spirit. The Logos became the principle of all unity. I
Posidonius upheld the Logos doctrine, passing it on to
Roman Stoicism and perhaps to Philo and the Jewish j
Christians. In Alexandria, where East and West first i
blended, this important theological doctrine gained fresh j
impetus, especiaUy from Philo. The medium is personified l\
tiU it becomes almost personal. Philo became the vehicle *
of expression for a greater truth than he was conscious of.
His theism separated the Word from the highest God.
He designates his Logos as the ' image of God,' the ' eldest
son.' the 'first-bom,' the 'prophet' or 'interpreter,'
the ' consul ' or ' vicegerent ' of God, the ' mediator,' the
' intercessor,' the ' paraclete,' the ' high-priest of the
universe.' He is also the ' impress ' of God, the instru
ment of creation, the ' lower God,' the ' second God,'
partaking of the nature of God and man. Thus in the
Word as ever assuming a more personal character, Eastern
and Western anticipations converged and met : ' Hebrew
thought tended to conceive of the medium of revelation
as personal,' 2 and one mark of post-AristoteHan philosophy
was ' its ever-increasing disposition to personify the ethical
ideal.' 8 FinaUy, ' the Word became flesh and tabernacled
in our midst.' Asceticism
As an evidence of the seriousness of the age, the growth
of asceticism is noteworthy. To the Western spirit
i Adam, Relig. Teachers of Or., p. 219, and chap. iii. of his Vitality of
Platonism. * Purves, ibid. • Adam, p. 240.

124 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
asceticism was aHen, as opposed to its conception of seU-
expansion as contrasted with Eastern seU-repression. It
entered the West with the reUgious revival of the sixth
century B.C. ; it does not seem to have gained much
ground until the age of the subjective schools. It was partly
a result of ethical dualism. The Orphics had introduced
the conception that ' the body is a tomb ' and prison
of the soul. Throughout his works Plato caUs for setf-
renunciation, the subjugation and even contempt of the
body in order to preserve the soul unsulUed. The Stoics
summoned men not to regulate but to extirpate their
passions. Ascetic brotherhoods like the Neo-Pythagoreans,
Essenes, and Therapeutae were formed to foster moraHty.
As the moraUsts raised their voices against the vices of
their age, these men advocated the renunciation of even
the lawful pleasures of Hfe. The worth of the soul and the
value of character were regarded as justifying any sacrifices
in the way of abstinence, penance, or seU-mortification.
Juvenal laughs at the devotees of Isis breaking the ice to
take their ceremonial bath and crawling on their knees
on the Campus Martius. The unhealthy growth of
asceticism in early Christianity was fostered by the spirit
of the preceding age. It was a moral protest against the
self-indulgence of the times. It provided a refuge also
for numerous world-weary spirits : the ennui of the age
sweUed the numbers of the ascetic guilds which repudi
ated marriage and were dependent on converts for their
continuance. Prayer
In the records of this period no subject was discussed
more frequently than that of Prayer, which may be re
garded as an index of its importance. Treatises were
written on prayer, as by Aristotle, the author of Alci-
biadesll., Persius (Sat. 2), Juvenal (Sat. x.), and Maximus
of Tyre (Dis. xi.), and the subject receives attention from

iv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 125
all moraUsts, as from Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, Lucian,
etc. Prayer was universal : it is the efficacy, the quaUty
and content of prayer on which interest is focused. Pagan
preachers protested loudly against all prayers for immoral
objects, against asking the Deity for something which
their own conduct renders impossible. Prayer for seU-
aggrandisement, for wealth, for ambition, for revenge
is forbidden. Men should pray as if aU men could hear
them ; ' it is an impiety to say to the Gods what could
not be uttered without shame to man.' Seneca directs
LuciHus to ask for health of mind first, and then for health
of body : ' so Hve with men as if God saw you, so converse
with God as if men heard you.' In another epistle,1 he
directs LuciHus not to ask heaven for what is in his own
power ; he need not gain access to the ear of the statue
because ' God is nigh thee, with thee, in thee : a holy
spirit dweUs within us the superintendent and guardian
of aU our good and evU.' As now, men were not unani
mous about prayer. The Epicureans viewed it as futile to
address Gods that dare not be disturbed by the troubles
of men. Maximus of Tyre said that God cannot be
changed by prayer as it is inconsistent with Providence ;
a man is worthier by not being importunate ; the wise
man's prayer is not a request for something he has not,
but a communion and conversation with God (Porphyry and
Maximus of Tyre). Plato had said that God hears only the
good and refuses to accept the gifts of the wicked. The Hves
of Socrates and of Pythagoras were regarded as a continuous
prayer, not for gifts but as a means of strength ; they and
all other wise men left to God to choose for them what
was best. The wicked do not know what to ask, and the
wise can trust God to give the best. There was a general
conviction that God cares less for cult and sacrifices
than for the worship of a sincere heart.2 The quality of
i 41, which the Bipontine edition hails as '0 pulchram altamque epistolam.'
1 Cf. Cic, N. D., ii. 28, ' ut eos semper pura integra incorrupta et mente et
voce veneremur ' ; and Publilius Syrus, ' Puras Deus non plenas aspicit manus.'

126 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
prayer was elevated by the abundant protests against aU
unworthy praying. Prayer entered more the spiritual Hfe
rather as a ' conversation with God.' As spiritual wants
increased and men stood in perplexity in the greatest
moral crisis of history, their undefined cry was ' Teach us
to pray.' The emotional tendency of the age, the spread
of Oriental worships with their regular services of prayer,
the demand for spiritual support, the increasing inward
ness of reUgion, contributed to the practice of prayer.
The ubiquitous Jew, always a man of prayer, with his
synagogue and its services and its influential foUowing of
' God-fearing ' heathen, was a Hving example of the power
of prayer. Merivale J suggests that the Jew taught the
pagan world to pray, but the pagans were wilhng to learn.
The frequent treatises on prayer by early Christian writers
are an answer to the pagan interest in prayer, and a con
tinuation of the Jewish practice.
It is impossible here to give any idea of the — often
conflicting — opinions2 of heathen writers on prayer, or
specimens of extant prayers.3
1 Conversion, p. 114.
2 On which cf., e.g., H. Schmidt, Veteres philosophi quomodo iudicaverint
deprecibus (Giessen, 1907).
3 We may perhaps insert a fragment from Cleanthes :—
' Lead me, 0 Zeus, and lead me, Destiny,
What way soe'er ye have appointed me.
I follow unafraid : yea, though the will
Turn recreant, I needs must follow still.'
(G. H. Rekdall's tr.).
And two selections from his Hymn to Zeus : —
' Hail ! for 'tis meet that men should call on thee
Whose seed we are ; and ours the destiny
Alone of all that lives and moves on earth,
A mirror of thy deity to be. . . .
But skill to make the crooked straight is thine,
To turn disorder to a fair design ;
Ungracious things are gracious in thy sight,
For ill and good thy power doth so combine
That out of all appears in unity
Eternal reason, which the wicked flee
And disregard, who long for happiness,
Yet God's great law can neither hear nor see.'
(Poetbb's tr.).

iv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 127
Resignation
Not only in prayer did men seek support and solace,
but in calm resignation to the wiU of God. After the
rebeUion of the individual and his seff-seeking, this
resignation is all the more remarkable. No age has
surpassed this period in cheerful acceptance of the experi
ences of Ufe. Oppressed by fataUsm, ejected from a
system that had given scope for long to their best activities,
standing in isolation amid the wreck of the old and con
fronted by the confusion and suffering of the present, men
turned to God and sought their Hberty in acquiescence in
His purposes. Fate was identified with God or put under
His control. The Stoics were foremost in teaching
resignation to what they spoke of as Fate, or Universal
Law, or Providence, or the wiU of God. One of the most
frequently recurring notes in the Hterature of the age
is that of acquiescence. Seneca's famous expression is
characteristic, ' I do not obey God, I assent with Him.'
Pagans were slowly learning to say ' Thy wiU be done.'
Suffering, and a new sensitiveness to Suffering
Suffering was performing its perfect work among the
peoples of the Empire. To the Jew in his early history
suffering was penal, an evidence of divine displeasure.
This explanation would not work in aU cases, especially
where righteous and wicked IsraeHtes were associated
in calamity. Israel in the light of her own history and
the teachings of her prophets, began to view suffering and
disappointment in another Ught. The suffering Servant
of Jehovah — the incarnation of Israel — is the grandest
spiritual interpretation of suffering : the suffering is
undeserved, but redemptive and vicarious. Israel almost
came to reaHse that her mission was to suffer for the
world.

128 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
To the joyful spirit of Greece suffering was a dread
visitation. The Prometheus Vinctus of Aeschylus protests
against suffering which seemed divine oppression. When the
element of trouble entered, the Greeks first fled to pessim
ism. But Greek pessimism was not the last word. Their
religious teachers wrestled with the question. Socrates
and Plato asserted that no real misfortune can overtake
a good man, and that he is never neglected by the Deity.
The Stoics denied that all suffering is penal, as Job had
done for Israel. Suffering must be good for man, for the
Deity knows best what to give. It is only in suffering
that men come to their fullest self-consciousness, and that
virtue can be put to the test to produce examples of
spiritual strength. In Roman Hterature the subject is
frequently touched upon, but Cicero and Seneca are the
^classical instances. Overtaken by sorrow they became
stronger and better men, and learned to strengthen
their brethren. The disciplinary mission of suffering was
acknowledged. ' Whom God loves He tries,' says Seneca.
There was a new sensitiveness to suffering brought about
through the displacement of coUectivism by individuaHsm
and the scope now allowed to the emotions, and by the
prominence of private over public Hfe. Kaerst x says, ' the
pecuUar character of the reUgious Ufe in the HeUenistic
period is clearly expressed in the characteristic form of
private associations or cult-brotherhoods (Thiasoi),' and this
phenomenon is due largely to demand for sympathy. The
Empire was founded in suffering.2 Neither the conquests
of Islam, nor the reUgious wars of the sixteenth century,
nor the Napoleonic wars were fraught with such suffering
as the terrible period, say, from the destruction of Carthage
and Corinth, 146 B.C., or from the era of the Gracchi, 133 B.C.,
to the estabUshment of the Empire in 31 B.C. The ruth-
1 Gesch. d. hellenistischen Zeitalters, vol. ii., i. 280.
1 Hegel sees in the tremendous misery and universal suffering produced by
the Roman spirit of power a sorrow which was to be the ' birth-throe of the
religion of truth ' (Phil. ofRelig., Eng. Tr., ii. 322, and Phil, of Hist., p. 330).

iv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 129
lessness of Roman conquests, the savagery of her civil
wars, her proscriptions, the increase of slavery, the cruel
slave insurrections, the rise of capitaUsm, complete economic
disorganisation, the tyranny of the miUtary over the civil
power, these and similar causes produced an untold amount
of suffering. The gods of Greece and Rome had no message
for men in such agony.1 It was the opportunity for Oriental
deities who were more human and sympathetic,2 who
alternately suffered and rejoiced, who died and rose again.
Their whole worship was instinct with human sympathy ;
they offered what men most needed. It was the oppor
tunity also for Judaism which had so often drained a bitter
cup, but never without hope. The message of her prophets,
her undying Messianic hope, the influence of her synagogue
and her faith in prayer, made their appeal to many an
earnest heathen. Consolation Literature
This keen sensitiveness to suffering and demand for
sympathy gave rise to a most curious Uterary phenomenon
— a Consolation Hterature in the closing RepubUc and
early Empire. We infer from Dio Chrysostom (Dis. 27)
that it was quite usual to call in a philosopher to administer
consolations in misfortune. Crantor was the father of this
Hterature ; he wrote a book to a bereaved father so helpful,
that Cicero speaks of it as a ' golden book, to be learned
by heart.' Crantor had catalogued and expounded aU that
the wisdom of Greece could offer as solace in calamity.
Consolations being in demand, there arose a profession of
consolers. Cicero on the death of his daughter wrote a
i Except Aesculapius, who was known as 'greatest lover of men'
(ACKavSpioirbraTOs). ,
2 Lucius in his prayer to Isis says, 'thou tendest the mischances of
miserable men with a sweet mother's love . . . alway by land and sea thou
guardeat men, thou drivest from them the storms of life and stretchest out
to them thy saving hand, wherewith thou unbindest even the inextricabls
weft of Pate' (Apul. Met., 11. 25, Butler's tr.).
I

130 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
Gonsolatio addressed to himseU; his Tusculan Disputa
tions is really a consolation — at least, he seeks to gather
comfort from every part of the compass of philosophy and
experience. Plutarch wrote a book to prove that exile
could be tolerable ; he also wrote a Consolation to his wife
in which he commends her courage in grief over the loss
of their two-year-old daughter, and holds out a faint
hope of immortaUty. His Consolation to Apollonius is less
hopeful, or rather despairing. Some of Ovid's letters to
his wife in the Tristia are consolatory, and a spurious
Gonsolatio ad Liviam Augustam has been attributed to him.
Seneca is the classic of extant consolers : he addressed a
Consolation to Marcia on the death of her Bon, one to
Polybius on the death of his brother, while the Consolation
to his mother Helvia was intended to console himseU rather
than her on the hardships of his exile. We know the name
of a lost work of his On premature Death, and we have
fragments of his De Remediis Fortuitorum. ApoUonius
(Ep. 58) consoled Valerius on the death of his son. Con
solatory formulae were discovered for every calamity, for
exile, old age, loss of health, physical suffering, confiscation
of property, and chiefly for the death of friends. Some
of the ingredients are to us trite and commonplace, but
when they first were offered to a sorrowing world they
were apparently efficacious. It was recognised by con
solers, especially by Seneca, that in order to benefit those
in distress one must study the psychology of each individual
case ; different remedies must be appUed to different
cases. Sense of Sin
One of the characteristics of Greek and Roman paganism
was the absence of a sense of sin and a proud reUance on
human nature. But with a growing spiritual experience
this self-sufficiency of man was shattered, and a sense of

iv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 131
sin appeared.1 Man is more sensitive to sin in proportion
to his progress in spirituaUty. Several causes contributed
to inoculate the peoples of the Empire with something
akin to the Hebrew sense of sinfulness : the contact with
the East, the extension of reUgious duaUsm, the accumu
lated results of seU-examination, the influence of the Jew
with his zeal for righteousness and his abhorrence of sin,
the individuaHsing of reUgion, the new emphasis on will.
Stoicism had no high idea of the general mass of mankind,
who were regarded as fools ; only the wise man could be a
saint. Cleanthes complains that men wiU not hearken to
the Logos, preferring to Uve in wickedness. Numerous
voices were raised against vice, hypocrisy, formaHty :
there were more protests against sin than positive caUs to
righteousness. This need not surprise us ; the destruc
tive precedes the constructive. Livy complains ' we can
neither endure nor mend our faults.' The abundant
protests against the corruption and sins of the age were
a healthful sign. Moral directors and preachers are per
suaded that men are moral invaUds with sick souls in need
of heaUng.2 The writers who most clearly reveal a sense
of the sinfulness of man are Virgil and Seneca. The mystic
reUgious spirit of Virgil, which has fascinated centuries,
was pecuUarly sensitive to the enormity of human guilt ;
he was painfuUy conscious of the world's need. Those
who read carefully the Georgics and more especiaUy the
Aeneid, wiU detect many a passage in which this prophet
dares to take a view of the status of man and the sinfulness
of his actions different from that of the majority. The
greatness of the Empire and its evident blessings did not
blind him to the sin in which it was founded. Conway
l 'The complaint raised by Hebrew conscience in the dawn of history
becomes the evening invocation of Hellenic philosophy.'— Hausrath, Apostles,
i. 42. s ' Throughout the world of St. Paul we see a mighty wandering of pilgrims
desirous to wash away their sins at the great shrines and to be delivered of
their need.'— Deissmann, St. Paul, p. 44.

132 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
asks, ' What is the tremendous machinery of punishment
after death which the Sixth Book describes in the most
majestic passage of all epic poetry (Aen., vi. 548-627),
but the measure of Virgil's sense of human guilt ? ' x Seneca
is painfuUy conscious of the weakness and sinfulness of
human nature.2 With Paul he exclaims, 'we have aU
sinned. As our fathers complained of the moral degenera
tion of their days, so must we lament our corruption, and
posterity wiU point to us as a sinful age. The fashion in
vices may change, its reign is as powerful as ever : we are
wicked, have been wicked, and shaU continue to be wicked.
After the restoration of aU things, men wiU abandon
innocence and relapse into sin.' In spite of his faith in
the kinship of man with the Divine, he is forced to recognise
the presence of an irrational element in his nature connected
chiefly with the body, the^caA as he caUs it, and this wars
against the higher Hfe ; and in spite of his Stoicism he
confesses that man cannot help himseU, God must stretch
forth his hand to him : adscendentibus di manum porrigunt.
Union of Morality and Religion
We note a gradual convergence of moraHty and reUgion,3
the inseparable union of which was consummated under
Christianity. PoHtical reUgion had perished, and personal
reUgion was of supreme importance : the question was
how to please God best. The prophets of Israel and the
dramatists and philosophers of Greece had not laboured
in vain in calling men to serve God with pure hearts and
upright Uves. The oft-repeated precept to foUow God or
imitate God signified a moral Hfe.* The dividing fines
1 Virgil's Messianic Eel., p. 37.
> Cf. De Bene/., i. 10, de Clem., i. 6, Ep. 29.
s L. Campbell says that after Plato's day ' religion amongst thoughtful men
could not longer be divorced from an elevated morality' (p. 367). Cf.
Theaetetus, 176 B., where the upright man is said to have the truest
likeness to God.
4 Cf. Seneca, Ep. xv. 3. ' Vis deos propitiare ? Bonus esto : satis illos
coluit quisquis imitatus est.'

iv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 133
among humanity were no longer racial or national, but
moral : men were either good or wicked ; virtue and
vice were the criteria. The wicked were thus deprived
of the protection of tradition and custom. There was an
ever-deepening sense of the worth of the soul and the value
of character as the inalienable possession of man. The
desire for moral guidance and the need of spiritual support
went together. Men were wilfing to practise renunciation,
to mortify the body for the health of the soul. Even the
Ufe beyond was bound to this in a moral nexus. Thus
ethics succeeded to the large place vacated by poHtics.
The Uves of men were standardised by the noblest examples
of incarnate virtue. ReUgion had turned inward, and after
having prompted to seU-examination reacted upon conduct.
Religion Popularised
As noted already (p. 11), the epoch of the advent of
Christianity was a democratic era. Jewish worship had
in the Synagogue grown more popular, and this character
was emphasised in the Diaspora. In Greece philosophy
had left the study to make an attempt to reach the masses.
It was the masses — often with leaders from the aristocracy
— that put an end to the most powerful oHgarchy of
history, and set up the Empire. The emperors were
dependent for the stabiHty of their power on the favour
of the populace. The reUgions of the Orient gained their
victory over the West primarily by the patronage of the
masses and in the face of long-continued official opposition.
Popular preachers and lecturers, and a kind of ancient
Salvation-army workers, found abundant scope and
encouragement. Philosophers, reUgious teachers, poH-
ticians and statesmen were looking with as much anxiety
upon the masses then, as the Church and the State are
now. Among the masses was the greatest religious
activity, and more faith than among their leaders ; the

134 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
people went their own way, leaving their aristocratic and
literary brethren to their inteUectuaHsm. If the inner
history of the pagan masses of Greece and Rome were
written we should find many phenomena analogous to
those which meet us in early Christianity— immense re
Ugious activity, the people taking the initiative and in
augurating movements that conquered the upper classes.
Constantine merely passed approval on what the masses
had done. Deissmann 1 has shown how Christianity
started with the masses, working from beneath upwards,
Uke the sap of the tree in spring, until graduaUy the
authorities were brought under the spiritual power accepted
by the poor and needy. At first not many rich or noble
were counted in the Christian ranks : Christianity made its
most successful propaganda among the lower strata of
society. It would seem as if in the victory attending the
movements (especiaUy Christianity) originating among,
or accepted and furthered by, the masses of the Roman
Empire, history has written for us a warning that whatever
makes its appeal to the hearts of the lower orders of
society in one century — however opposed to the authority
of state or church, however contemned by the cultured —
shall in a later century be crowned with success.
Demand for Religions of Redemption
The yearning for poHtical and social rest and stabiHty,
for certainty and authority in philosophy and reUgion,
was paraUel to a universal demand for salvation — salvation
from the confusion and isolation of the individual, from the
almost universal sense of decay and degeneration,2 from
1 Das Urchristentum u. d. unteren Schichten (1908), and Light from the
Ancient East (passim), but cf. Harnack, Der proletarische Char. d. Vrchrist.
(Reden u. Avfsatze, ii. 175), and Orr, Neglected Factors, ch. ii.
a The ancients — with the exception of the Jews — had almost no sense of
evolution or an 'increasing purpose' in world-history. Their view was
diametrically the opposite of ours. They regarded human history as a
steady degeneration, a progress to decay ; their Golden Age lay in the past.

iv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 135
the oppression of fataUsm and astral worship, from the
evils of duaUsm, the inherent evil of matter and the body,
the hindrances that prevent the soul from returning to
its ' dear fatherland,' the sense of estrangement from the
Deity, from the darkness of death, and emphaticaUy from
the power of the demons. The term Saviour 1 was appUed
to several gods, to Zeus, Apollo, and Asclepius 2 ; it was
lent as a surname to other deities — Hermes, Poseidon,
Serapis, the Dioscuri. Finally, as the partition between
divine and human was broken down, the term Saviour
was appUed to men, even in their Ufetime, as by the
Athenians to Antigonus and Demetrius PoHorcetes.
Antiochus the Great was also a Saviour. The Athenians
addressed JuUus as their ' Saviour and Benefactor ' ; the
Ephesians addressed him as ' God manifest, the common
Saviour of human Hfe.' In the HaHcarnassus inscription
Augustus is ' the Saviour of the whole human race.' These
examples of emperors addressed as Saviour, DeHverer,
Benefactor might be greatly multipUed. Much of this
was flattery ; but it reflects therein the universal demand
for someone to interfere when the times were out of joint,
and restore security and bestow rest upon the world.
Men were everywhere longing for a reign of peace. The
salvation they sighed for was sometimes rather poHtical
and physical than moral and spiritual. But with the
restoration of outward peace the demand for inner peace
grew more imperious. Men wished to see a God incarnate.
' No one could be a god any longer unless he was also a
saviour.' The Septuagint had doubtless accustomed the
Greeks, and through them the Romans, to the conception
of God as a Saviour. Men would tolerate no reUgion that
This is one cause of the despair of this age when the props of ancient systems
were removed. Cf. Ramsay, Expositor, June 1907.
i Cf. art. Swttjp by Wendland in Zeitsch f. neutest. Wiss., v. 335-53 ;
Weiss, Heiland in Relig. in Gesch. u. Gegenwart, and Kaerst, ii. i.
378 ff.
2 The extension of the cult of this HealiDg-God is very characteristic of
the period.

136 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
did not undertake to raise them above the weight of the
finite, to remove the sense of estrangement, to bring them
in the ecstasy of the Vision Beatific into mystic communion
with the Divine, to bestow charismatic grace in the
vicissitudes of Hfe, to hold out a revelation and the hope
of bHss beyond. Wendland remarks : ' Redemption is
concerned not so much with guilt and sin as with corporeity
and matter, finiteness and transitoriness. Guilt and sin
themselves appear as physical defilement, since they are
grounded in man's material nature. Therefore redemption
is conceived of as essentiaUy "physical' (naturhaft), and
is determined by the duaUsm both of man's nature and of
the two worlds. These conceptions and motives, first
recognisable in Posidonius, dominate subsequent philoso
phical and reUgious development. In the time of Augustus
the feeUng of guilt and longing for communion and renewal
emerge prominently.' 1 Only redemptive reUgions were
in demand. This accounts for the popularity of the
Oriental cults, for the success of Jewish propaganda, and
for the attraction which Christianity exercised upon the
masses. Expectancy
The ancient world was persuaded that it would not look
in vain for salvation. There was an attitude of expectancy
in East and West about the time of the appearance of
Christianity. Messianic ideas were in the air. The story
of the Magi is evidence of a beUef in a Saviour-King to
be born : this story may connect us with the Eastern
(Babylonian) settlements of the Jews, or with the Persian
religion which beUeved in the coming of a supernatural
person to assure the victory of Ormudz over Ahriman.
In Judaea and Galilee such expectancy was most intense.
i 'Hellenistic Ideas of Salvation,' Amer. Journal of Thiol., July 1913,
p. 346.

*v-] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 137
The first two chapters in Luke portray with local colouring
some types of those who were waiting for the Consolation
of Israel. The DeUverer was expected soon. Any one
who proclaimed himseU Messiah found an enthusiastic
foUowing. The salvation expected from this coming
Messiah was often, Uke that looked for by Greek and
Roman, more poUtical and social than spiritual. The
prophetic and highly-strung spirit of the Baptist was
sensitive to this hope of the age, which drove him out into
the wilderness to preach repentance before the judgment
of the Coming One.
The West was not a stranger to some vague Messianic
expectation. With the estabUshment of the Empire, it
seemed as if the great cycle had run its course and the
golden age was about to return, when kindly Saturn was
to reign once more and Justice return to earth to inaugurate
a reign of peace and harmony. The JuUan comet in 44 B.C.
marked the last month but one of the magnus annus, after
which the world would begin its course anew. Horace in his
Carmen Saeculare hails a new epoch of peace and justice.
The reUgious spirit of Virgil was most sensitive to such
a hope. His Messianic Eclogue (Eel. iv.) 1 prophesies the
birth of a wonderful child destined to usher in a new and
happy epoch. In its sublimity and form of expression this
Eclogue so resembles the Messianic portions of Isaiah that
for many centuries it passed as an inspired prophecy of
the Christ. One of the latest writers on the Messianic
idea in Virgil, Professor Conway, says, ' it can hardly, I
think, be denied, that in both the Georgics and the Aeneid
we continuaUy meet with a conception which in many ways
is paraUel to the Jewish expectation of a Messiah ; that is
to say, the conception of a national hero and ruler, divinely
inspired, and sent to deHver not his own nation only, but
1 Probably in reply to Horace, Epode xvi., in which for Suis et ipsa
Roma viribus ruit Horace has no hope except the fantastic Arm, beata
Petamus area, divites et vnsulas. Cf. Ramsay, Expositor, June 1907.

138 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [on.
mankind, raising them to a new and ethicaUy higher
existence.' 1
He finds in Virgil the * conscious possession ' of these
ideas : (1) ' That the guilt of mankind had grown to be
unendurable, so that the world was pitiably in need of
regeneration. (2) That the estabHshment of the Empire
was an epoch strangely favourable to some such ethical
movement, and intended by Providence to introduce it.
(3) That it was part of the duty of Rome to attempt the
task. (4) That one special deUverer would be sent by
Providence (or, in the Aeneid, that a deUverer had already
been sent) to begin the work. (5) That the work would
involve suffering and disappointment ; and that its essence
lay in a new spirit, a new and more humane ideal' (pp. 31-2).
Mayor 2 and Ramsay 3 show that there was no difficulty
for Virgil to have derived these beUefs from an Eastern
(Jewish) source, either a Greek version of Isaiah (Ramsay),
or the Jewish SibylUne books (Mayor) . The Romans could
hardly have so much to do with Syria from the second
century B.C., without learning Messianic ideas. In the
first century B.C. in Egypt the Romans might easily come
to know the LXX or other Greek versions of Hebrew
writings. Surely through the heathen adherents of the
Synagogue, this ' finest optimism in the ancient world '
must have spread among the heathen to a large extent.
It was certain to attract attention as the grand exception
to the prevalent hopelessness of the age. Philo, whose works
were so largely intended for Greek readers, refers to this
coming age (cf. On Rewards and Punishments, 16). At
the time of the Jewish war the Romans knew of this hope
of the Jew. Tacitus * says that ' the majority (of the Jews)
were persuaded that according to their ancient sacred
scriptures at that very time the Orient should get the
upper hand, and that from Judaea should come the rulers
1 Op. eit., p. 31. s Virgil's Mess. Eel., iii.
* Expositor, June and August 1907. * Hist., v. 13.

iv.] RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 139
of the world.' Suetonius 1 reports that ' an ancient and per
sistent idea was circulated throughout the whole East, that
it was fated that at that time the rulers of the world should
arise from Judaea.' Schiirer 2 thinks that these two authors
drew from Josephus,3 but this is not necessary ; the
Synagogue with its ' God-fearers,' the LXX and the
Sibylline Oracles had made the idea of a Messianic age
familiar enough.4
The ancient world had turned its eyes to the East for
help : it was expecting Him who is ' the Desire of all
Nations.' 1 Vesp. ,4. Mi. 604, where other references are given.
3 Jos. B. J., 6. 5. 4, politically refers it to Vespasian.
* ' Das jiidische Messiasthum ist im ganzen Orient und auch im Occident
¦ . . ein gelaufiger Begriff.' — Keim, Rom u. d. Ghristcntum, p. 109.

140 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [oh.

CHAPTER V
THE JEW
Thus the sharp contrasts of the Sculptor's plan
Showed the two primal paths our raoe has trod :—
Hellas, the nurse of man complete as man,
Judaea, pregnant with the living God. — S. H. Butchib..1
And as long as the world lasts all who want to make progress in
righteousness will come to Israel for inspiration, as to the people who
have had the sense for righteousness most glowing and strongest, and
in hearing and reading the words Israel has uttered for us, carers for
conduot will find a glow and a force they could find nowhere else. —
M. Arnold.
Vioti viotoribus leges dederunt. — Seneca (in Augustine).
We come now to consider briefly the character, genius, and
merits of the three great peoples who prepared the way of
the Lord and to whom Christianity was first preached, and
in whose languages was written the superscription on the
Cross. Character
Hebrew character 2 is more simple and monotonous than
the Greek. The Hebrew was a man of few interests, his
one absorbing interest being his relation to his God.
Though oppressed by a sense of their inherent weakness and
sinfulness, no people ever had a grander conception of their
high calling and purpose in history ; they were possessed of
a proud seU-consciousness which raised them above all their
1 Harvard Lectures on Greek Subjects, p. 42.
s This section and the next are condensed from the writer's articles,
Hebrew, Greek, and Roman,' in Review and Expositor, April and July 1913.

v-] THE JEW 141
conquerors. They beUeved that in them all the nations
of the earth should be blessed. There was a puzzUng
duaUsm or strange contradiction in their character ; in
spite of his deep yearnings after God the Jew manifested
a strange hankering after the baser and more material ; his
spiritual history is one of ebb and flow — sin, repentance,
joy. He had a conscience more sensitive than that of any
other ancient people. He was a stranger to some of the
worst perplexities and contradictions of Ufe ; he was con
tent, Uke a child, not to pry too much into the secrets of
the Almighty ; he left a large margin for the mysterious.
Jewish character is marked by its impressive soUtariness.
The Jew dwelt apart. ' The two Hving reaUties, God and
the Soul, are face to face engaged in everlasting coUoquy ' ; x
there is much room for the thought of God and the con
templation of the Infinite. This soUtariness of character
is aU the more striking in a people that developed the most
tenacious social consciousness of antiquity. Akin to this
loneliness is the Hebrew sadness (not pessimism, which
was the form so usual to Greek sadness) ; his reUgion was
of a sombre cast though his ideal was joy. In his litera
ture we find the rerum lacrymae, but ' we have not the
laughter as weU as the tears of humanity'2 from 'this
grimly earnest people.' We note also the Hebrew way
of looking at things sub specie aeternitatis — the everlast
ing and infinite in his character : ' He hath set Eternity
in their hearts.' Hope was the keynote of Hebrew char
acter ; no people ever hoped so long and so patiently.
They had firm faith that the Judge of aU the earth
would do right, and they were wiUing to wait for Him.
They beUeved that Jahweh heard prayer and that He
would not forsake His inheritance. However distress
ing the vicissitudes of their national Ufe, however dark
the present, the future was theirs. ' The Best is yet to
l Butcher, Harvard Lectures, p. 15.
' Ibid., p. 16.

142 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
be.' Their Golden Age lay always in front. Its most
characteristic expression was the Messianic hope — the
subUmest optimism in the old world — which, as a Jewish
rabbi says, ' has become the driving-wheel of aU civiUsed
humanity.' * ' Though He slay me, yet wiU I trust in Him,'
was faith which allowed God plenty of scope to work out
His purposes while His servants waited in patience. They
were the only ancient people that grasped firmly the thought
of a purpose in history. No race was ever so patient with
its God. One of the most striking traits in Jewish char
acter was its attitude to suffering. The Jew was a man
of sorrows, and the world owes him the highest and most
spiritual interpretation of human suffering. The Suffering
Servant of the Deutero-Isaiah has appealed to the hearts
of aU ages as a prophecy of the Man of Sorrows. The Jew
has shown us how to bear the heaviest burden of sorrow :
he has convinced mankind that sorrow has not a negative
but a positive value in human character and destiny. The
steadfastness of Jewish character and the loftiness of his
ideals have made him a lasting force in the world. A fitting
symbol of this unconquerable people is the burning bush —
burning but not consumed. Mind and Genius
The Jewish mind and genius were also one-sided. The
Jews had no genius for art, poUtics, or speculation. They
did not dwell upon nature to ideaUse it but soared immedi
ately to God. The only form of art cultivated among them
was reUgious lyrical poetry, in which they have never been
surpassed. Their thoughts were constantly projected be
yond into the infinite which eludes aU art (except, perhaps,
music). Their mind was dominated by one idea; — the
reUgious ; it was calm and contemplative, unquestioning,
unmetaphysical ; concrete, or at least reaUstic, it dealt in
• Kohler, Grundriss einer system. Theologie d. Judentums, p. 283.

v-] THE JEW 143
symbols rather than ideas : the power of grasping a com
plex subject with due subordination of the parts to the
whole was not theirs. They had no sense of organic unity.
The Jew had not the restless inquisitive intellect of the
Greek, but he had a hungry heart that yearned after
righteousness and communion with God. Not artists them
selves, ' they have left that new creative life of the soul
which makes art possible ; they produced that which
produced art.' *¦ The unique, if one-sided, genius of the
Jew made for spirituaUty. He speciaHsed in reUgion;
we expect the merits and defects of a speciaUst. Romanes
says, ' if it had not been for the Jews the human race
would not have had any reUgion worth our serious atten
tion as such.' It is where we feel noblest and most divine
that the Hebrew speaks to us — in our spiritual and reUgious
being, where sweet memories, purest motives, and deepest,
most imperious needs have their arena . He has bequeathed
to us priceless reUgious classics. In our prayers we can
often, Uke the ancient Hebrew, find no language but a cry,
or if we translate the cry into language we often cannot
do better than use the words which rose to Jahweh from
IsraeUtish hearts many centuries since.
The Diaspora
Like other ancient peoples the Jew at first Hved and
worked behind closed doors, forming his character and
maturing his pecuUar aptitudes. The dispersion (Diaspora)
of the Jews among the nations was probably the largest
single factor in the preparation for Christianity, and one
main reason for its remarkable success. The dispersion
of Israel was as necessary for her own world-mission and
for Christianity as was previously her seclusion. Several
causes contributed to drive this people forth on their
world-mission : forcible deportations, voluntary emigration,
* Forsyth, Christ on Parnassus, p. 72.

144 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [cH.
the inducements held out by friendly governments, the
promise of special privileges, the aUurements of trade, the
disintegrating power of HeUenism. The Eastern Diaspora
to Assyria, Media, Babylonia commenced some centuries
before the Western, and was mostly due to compulsion ; the
Western was chiefly voluntary. Tiglath-Pileser of Assyria,
who inaugurated ' the first experiment in poHtical central
isation,' deported in 739 B.C. the northern portion of the
northern kingdom ; in 722 B.C. Sargon captured Samaria
(which had been invested by Shalmaneser rv. in 725) and
carried into Assyria 27,200 persons, which was apparently
the greatest of these early deportations (2 Kings xvii. 6).
A portion of these northern exiles may have drifted into
heathenism ; at any rate, the Ten Tribes never returned,
and have been variously conjectured to be the ancestors
of the Nestorians, western Chinese, Afghans, and even of
the Anglo-Saxons. But a great number, if not the majority,
retained their nationaHty : Josephus says, ' the ten tribes
remain to this day beyond the Euphrates, countless
myriads whose numbers cannot be told.' Sennacherib
began the deportation of the southern kingdom, carry
ing away 200,150 people from Judaea. Esar-haddon and
Assur-banipal probably continued the poUcy of deporta
tions. Israel was so depopulated that, from the time of
Esar-haddon, the Assyrian kings sent colonies of heathen
to occupy the empty territory. The Chaldean Nebuchad
rezzar finally uprooted Judah. When he defeated Egypt
at Carchemish, 605 B.C., he carried away hostages from
Judah, among whom were Daniel and his companions.
Again, in the reign of Jehoiachin, he deported 10,000 of
the principal inhabitants who might cause unrest. FinaUy,
in 586 B.C., he captured Jerusalem and deported the
remainder of the leading citizens, leaving only the poorest
sort. These exiles were the founders of the powerful
Babylonian colony which was a centre of Jewish fife and
thought for over 1000 years. Zealous of their traditions

v.] THE JEW 141
and law, they boasted that only the chaff returned to
Judah under the Persian, and the finest of the wheal
remained at Babylon. There was another eastern deporta
tion (to Hyrcania), under Artaxerxes Ochus (cir. 350 B.C.).
Egypt was from an early period a place of refuge for thos6
in disgrace or trouble in Israel, as in the emigration aftel
the murder of GedaHah (Jer. xU. 16 ff.). The Tel-el-
Amarna tablets mention Habiri (supposedly Hebrews),
but not as residents. The Assouan (Aramaic) papyri
testify to the existence of Jewish colonies under Persian
domination. Pseudo-Aristeas refers to a deportation
under Psammetichus.
In the Greek period the Diaspora spread apace both in
East and West owing to the blending of nations, the
enormous intermixture of diverse populations, the recast
ing of poHtical constitutions, voluntary migrations, the
opportunities for adventure and the favour of rulers.
Alexander and the most of the Diadochi were weU-disposed
toward the Jews, and offered them special privileges. In
new foundations Hke Alexandria and Antioch Jews were
admitted as citizens. Ubiquity and Power of Diaspora
For the spread of Christianity, the ubiquity and numbers
of the Diaspora are of importance. We have evidence of
their presence East and West, in Mesopotamia and other
inner regions of Asia Minor, on the shores of the Black
Sea, in the Crimea, Syria, Egypt, Greece and the islands
of the Aegean, Macedonia, Crete, Cyprus, the Cyrenaica,
Numidia, the Province of Africa, Mauretania, Rome, Italy,
and, in the later Empire, in Spain, Gaul, and Germany.
EspeciaUy from the second century B.C., the Diaspora
assumed tremendous proportions. Josephus speaks ol
the ' countless myriads ' of the descendants of the Tea
Tribes in Mesopotamia, and Philo refers to all this region,
K

146 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ca
including Babylon, as having a Jewish population. The
SibyUine Oracles declare ' every land and every sea is full
of them ' (second century B.C.). Josephus says, ' there is
no people on the earth that has not a portion of us,' and
he cites Strabo as declaring that they had ' entered every
city, and no place in the world can be found that has not
received this race and been possessed by it.' Philo cites
from the letter of Agrippa to CaUgula that ' Jerusalem is
the capital not of Judaea only, but of most countries,'
and then foUows a Hst of the widely scattered Jewish
colonies. According to Philo, two-fifths of the populous
city of Alexandria were Jewish in his day, and Philo
reckons the Jews in Egypt alone as about 1,000,000.
They were present in sufficient numbers in Alexandria,
Antioch, Sardis, and elsewhere to be thoroughly hated, and
to make reprisals in bloody frays. Josephus speaks of
2,700,000 as present at a festival in Jerusalem. Strabo says
that one-fourth of Cyrene was Jewish. Their numbers in
the Roman Empire are variously estimated from 8,000,000
and upwards, which with their social tenacity and splendid
organisation rendered them formidable even to Rome.
Their power in theEmpire is attested by the fact thatRome,
so intolerant of any imperium in imperio, endeavoured
to pacify them and hesitated to provoke them. Rome
curtailed none of the privileges they had secured under
the Diadochi, but even protected and extended them.
The Roman Emperors, with few exceptions, were favour
able to the Jews. In the Roman civil wars both sides
courted them. Caesar became their patron, and they
lamented his assassination for days. Augustus continued
the philo-Judaic poUcy, securing to the Jews free and
undisturbed exercise of their worship throughout the
Empire. Josephus mentions long lists of special legisla
tion on behalf of the Jews. The law against private
associations was relaxed in their favour ; Roman governors
were required to secure Jewish subjects the unrestricted

v.] THE JEW 147
freedom of their rights ; their reUgion was acknowledged as
a religio licita ; they were excused from participation in the
imperial cult, for refusing to comply with which Christians
suffered so crueUy, and from miUtary service. Augustus
enacted that they could not be summoned before a court
on the Sabbath ; if a distribution of money or corn fell
on a Sabbath the Jews were to receive their portion next
day, and for the distribution of oil they received a com
mutation in money. Their existence as a church in
the state was recognised by Rome. For civil processes
between Jews they were allowed to use their own law
and hold their own courts ; even Jews possessing Roman
citizenship preferred their own courts. A measure of
independence was also accorded them in criminal cases
among themselves. They were allowed to collect and
administer their own funds. Even after the faU of
Jerusalem the Roman authorities scarcely curtailed their
privileges, except by the diversion of the tax of two drach
mae to the CapitoHne temple. When some Greek cities,
taking advantage of the Jewish disasters, requested the
rescinding of Jewish privileges, the government peremp
torily refused. Students of Roman history know that
Rome would not have granted such an exceptional place
to a hated people except on grounds of necessity. The
hostiHty of the Jew was the greatest menace to the peace
of the Empire. Organisation
Their power was not due to their formidable numbers
only, but to their splendid organisation. Though without
any poUtical genius they reared an organisation that defied
Rome. The Jew never amalgamated with other races so as
to lose his religion or racial consciousness. He met the scorn
and hate of the world with the pride of a superior people.
Wherever the Jew emigrated he sought out his brethren
and formed a community. They had one law, one holy

148 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
book, one God of covenant promises ; they looked to one
spiritual centre while it stood, they had one hope for the
future. In every town where ten adults were found was
a synagogue, or house of prayer. The synagogue supported
Israel spirituaUy and strengthened her sociaUy. These
synagogues, Uke the Christian churches, were united by
an indissoluble bond maintained by constant intercourse,
frequent letters, and traveUing members. The Jew, Uke
the Celt, was one everywhere ; if one Jew, Uke one Irish
man, was injured, all were injured. The terrible uprisings
under Vespasian, Trajan, and Hadrian bear ample testi
mony to their power to shake the Empire.
Wealth
Jewish wealth was considerable if we are to judge from
the immense treasures which accumulated in the temple.
The contributions were so large that sometimes as many
as a thousand Jews were deputed to bring them to Jeru
salem. We have a coUection of Jewish bank-books from
Babylonia from about the time of Xerxes. It would
seem as if they had become bankers to their conquerors.
Mithridates appropriated an immense sum, 800 talents,
from the Jewish treasury in Cos. Cicero teUs us of the
enormous contributions for the temple from Asia confis
cated by Flaccus, 62 B.C. It would seem as if the effect
of these contributions on the exchange became one cause
of anti-Semitism. Josephus teUs of 2,700,000 people as
present in Jerusalem at a festival ; if we make a Uberal
deduction for the residents and for exaggeration, we have
an enormous number of traveUers from every quarter who
had money and leisure to travel. Many other examples
of Jewish wealth might be cited, as the presence in the
principal synagogue in Alexandria of seventy-one golden
seats. The finest buildings in Alexandria and Antioch were
the leading synagogues. The corn-export business of

v.] THE JEW 149
Egypt was largely in Jewish hands, as was also the rich
traffic of Mesopotamia. Jews in high position
Many Jews rose to positions of eminence and influence.
Inscriptions show that the ' chief physicians ' of the cities
of Ephesus and Venosa were Jews. At the time of the
Jewish war some Jews were Roman knights. AUtyrus,
a Jewish actor, was in favour at Nero's court. In Egypt
the Jews rose to the highest positions : the position of
alabarch was frequently held by a Jew, as by Alexander,
PhUo's brother. Several Jewish names are found among
the tax-coUectors of the Thebaid. Apparently under the
Ptolemies and the Romans the Jews were entrusted with
the gathering of the NUe customs. Ptolemy Philometor
is said to have entrusted the administration of the whole
kingdom to Jews, and appointed two Jewish generals,
Onias and Dositheus, over the army : his daughter,
Cleopatra m., also put two Jews, Chelkias and Annanias,
at the head of her army. The Jews were moreover suc
cessful in securing powerful patrons, especiaUy among the
Ptolemaic and the Roman rulers.
Anti-Semitism
The Jews first drank the cup of odium generis humani.
The outbursts of anti-Semitism in Greek communities
and in Greek and Roman writers are an index of the power,
success, and wealth of the Jews. The Ionian cities com
plained before Agrippa that, while citizens, the Jews did
not worship the city gods. Bloody anti-Jewish feuds
were often carried on in Alexandria, Antioch, and other
Greek cities. The petition of the Antiochians and Alexan
drians after the war of 70 a.d. to the Roman authorities
to deprive the Jews of citizenship and other privileges
was refused. The fact that the wealthy island of Rhodes

150 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
produced two anti-Semitic writers, Apollonius Molon and
Posidonius, speaks for their wealth and power, as does anti-
Semitism in Germany at the present time. A papyrus
letter- writer warns his correspondent, 'look out for the
Jews.' 1 Many Roman writers speak disparagingly of the
Jews. Horace writes in mockery of their circumcision
and Sabbaths; Seneca calls them 'a most accursed race';
Tacitus accuses them of hatred to aU men, of immoraHty,
of worshipping an ass ; if the 4000 sent by Claudius to
Sardinia perished it would be a vile damnum. Petronius
represents them as worshipping a pig. Cicero, Quin
tiUan, Juvenal, and Martial pour scorn upon them. The
fact that Roman writers are so much more anti- Jewish
than the Greek bears testimony to the increased prominence
of the Jew. He is only hated where he is present in force
and where successful. FinaUy, anti-Semitism found a fruit
ful soil in the Christian Church.

Services to the Ancient World, and Contribution
to the Preparation for Christianity
We come now to chronicle briefly what the Jews contri
buted to the upUfting of the ancient world and to the
preparation for Christianity. Synagogue
The synagogue was the focus of Judaism, and has re
mained such ; it made Israel a spiritual power in the world.
Tradition assigned its origin to the earUest times, even to
the days of Moses. Its origin is wrapped in obscurity ;
it seems to have arisen in the needs of the Babylonian
exile. Though there is no mention of it in the Old Testa
ment or the Apocrypha, we find the institution of the
1 Kal ab BXiire o-arbv iirb rdv 'XovSalon, ; Griech. Urhunden (Berlin), iv.
No. 1079.

v.] THE JEW 151
synagogue everywhere in New Testament times. The
exile was a critical period in the history of Judah and of
the world. The question at issue was : Can the God of
a Semitic people benefit his people in a foreign land and
away from the sacrificial cultus of the temple ? Israel
answered in the affirmative. If the Exile tore them away
from their homes it brought them nearer to their God.
The loss of their ancestral sanctuary, the cessation of
sacrifice, the need of a bond of union to maintain their
soHdarity amid powerful disintegrating influences, the
possibiUty of a spiritual worship, resulted in the rise of
the synagogue. The returning exiles estabUshed the insti
tution in Palestine alongside the temple cultus. The
synagogue was at once the source of Israel's spiritual
strength, the expression of her corporate Ufe, the guardian
of her traditions and revelation, and the point d'appui for
her eminently successful propaganda. The synagogue be
came to each town what Judaea was to the world. It was
to the heathen a school of morals and reUgion ; it became
the cradle of Christianity. As the temple service passed
more definitely under control of the aristocracy, the syna
gogue grew in influence with the masses ; it was the
meeting-place of the people with their religious teachers.
There they heard the Law and the Prophets ; there the
Hope of Israel was kept green. When the temple was
finaUy destroyed, the synagogue became all in aU to
Israel. Wherever ten adult males were found in a town
a synagogue was formed. In the time of Augustus there
were many synagogues in Rome. In Antioch and Alex
andria the two leading synagogues were among the grand
est buildings in the city, and in each of these cities there
were many others. At the time of the Jewish war the
number of synagogues in Jerusalem is estimated at 394
or 480. In the New Testament we read of synagogues
in Gafilee, Judaea, Asia Minor, Macedonia and Greece.
Inscriptions and ruins testify further to this widespread

152 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
institution. In Acts xv. 21 James speaks of synagogues
' in every city.' The Jew, Uke the modern Roman Catholic,
tried where possible to rear his reUgious edifice on the
most conspicuous piece of ground in the city. A Midrash
declares that in early times the synagogue was built on
' the height of the city,' and a third - century teacher
declares the city whose roofs overtop the synagogue to
be given over to destruction. Sometimes the synagogue
was situated outside the city, by a river or by the sea. The
serviceswere simple but impressive; theyconsistedregularly
of the Shema, congregational prayer, and the reading of the
Law and the Prophets, usually foUowed by a sermon and
the benediction. They were held every Sabbath and on fast
days : wherever ten men of leisure were found there was
a daily service. Women were regular attendants at the
services. The constant reading of the moral law and the
spirituaUty of the prophets could not be in vain ; not only
Jews but many earnest heathen were influenced. The
importance attached to prayer was a great attraction for
an age seeking support. Schools
Inseparably connected with the synagogue were the
school and Ubrary.1 As in Roman Catholicism church
and school are united, and the latter is a support and means
of feeding the former, so it was in Judaism. The synagogue
was primarily a teaching institution : school and syna
gogue are thus often mentioned together. The Jews were
foremost in recognising the importance of early education.
Philo says that in every city were SiSao-KaXda, schools to
teach reUgion and virtue. Thus the Jews were the first
Sabbath-school teachers. We may reasonably conjecture
that these schools proved to many children the gate to
1 In Safed and Tiberias— and probably elsewhere — at the present day the
synagogue is the Jews' reading-room.

v.] THE JEW 153
the synagogue, attracting more than Jewish children.
The analogy of the school system in modern missions
as a feeder to the Christian Church strengthens the
probabiUty.

Successful Propaganda
It was around the synagogue that the Jews carried on
their proselytising work. They were the first missionaries
and preachers. Befieving that in Abraham and his seed
aU the nations of the earth should be blessed, that the
God of Israel should be caUed the God of the whole earth,
that Israel should have a premier place as the medium of
better things for the race, Israel was more or less con
scientious in the fulfilment of her mission. The influence
of the synagogue was not in vain. The enormous numbers
of Jews in the Empire cannot be accounted for by natural
increase ; conversions to Judaism were frequent tiU about
the time of the edict of Pius forbidding the circumcision
of proselytes. Apart from conversions, the influence
upon heathen who refused to take the decisive step was
very great. Who may venture to estimate the effect of the
Sabbath sermons and the reading of a holy book upon
earnest hearers ? In the synagogue was proclaimed a
lofty spiritual monotheism to which Greek thought was
tending. God was not only One, but He was just to mark
and punish iniquity, yet He was a Father with whom there
was mercy for the penitent. Israel made the largest
contribution toward that union of moraHty and reUgion
which was consummated in Christianity. However hated
and despised the Jew was, no serious heathen could be
indifferent to the attraction of a moral Ufe. We can
scarcely imagine how refreshing these services of prayer
and exhortation must have been to heathen who Uved in
a world that felt the burden of age and on whom were set
tling an ennui and a weariness, whose golden age lay behind

154 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
them. They came into contact with a people who were
continuaUy renewing their youth, and whose golden age and
brightest hope lay in the future. In an age when Oriental
and Western reUgions were trying to purify themselves from
the remnants of naturaHsm and making gross and vulgar
things symbols of higher truth, a people was to be found
whose symbols were of the simplest kind and yet more
pregnant with spiritual truth than those of any rivals. In
an age when ' man's unconquerable mind ' had in Greece
been overtaken with lassitude and began to demand a
criterion for truth, a sure guide in morals and an authority
for man's spirit, this was a people who offered the authority
of a holy book containing what was then the fuUest revela
tion. Amid the isolation of individuaHsm the synagogue
offered the communion of saints. Merivale asserts that
the Jew taught the ancient world to pray, and in this way
hastened the conversion of the Empire. The Jew through
the synagogue taught the heathen to pray both by example
and precept : the persistent heroic example in prayer of
a people conspicuous in so many ways proved an untold
blessing. In the synagogue of Nazareth, and in the God
fearing home fostered by the ideals of the synagogue, He
who taught us to pray learned' to pray. The synagogue
taught the Christian Church the power and example of
prayer. In our reUgion we are almost whoUy Jews, but
at no time are we more Jews than when we approach the
Mercy Seat.
It is universaUy acknowledged that Judaism owes part
of its numbers to conversions from heathenism. It may
be asked how a people so despised and hated, and so
exclusive, could have carried on a successful propaganda
and become the first great missionary people. There
were, and still are, in Judaism two opposite tendencies —
an expansive and an exclusive. The latter is largely
Palestinian, the former of the Diaspora. The influence of
Deutero-Isaiah and the great prophets, together with the

v.] THE JEW 155
experiences of the Exile and the Diaspora, gave the upper
hand to universaHsm. As Israel recognised only one God
He must also be the God of the whole world, and she
recognised her mission as 'leaders of Hfe to aU.' The
legislation of Ezra and Nehemiah opened the way for the
incorporation of men of other races.
We have abundant evidence that this exclusive people
were most successful missionaries. Schiirer x attributes
the success of their propaganda to three causes : (1)
Judaism presented its best aspect to the pagan world.
They dropped aU that might be offensive, or threw into the
background what was unimportant or exclusive ; they
laid the emphasis on what was calculated to receive a
sympathetic hearing, such as their lofty idea of God and
the authority of a reUgion of revelation. (2) Their practical
aim after a moral and happy Ufe. (3) The trend of the age
was toward Oriental reUgions which offered three attrac
tions : (a) a monotheistic tendency, (6) a practical purpose
in offering remission of sin and moral cleansing (often formal
and external), (c) the promise of a happy Ufe beyond. In
aU these points Judaism far excelled aU its Oriental com
petitors. AU were missionary religions and seized of an
enthusiasm to produce converts. The Judaism of the
Diaspora regarded it as its bounden duty to be a Hght to
the heathen. They not only laboured among the masses,
but estabUshed a Hterature, especiaUy in Alexandria, to
commend their faith to the cultured. They manipulated
the SibyUine Oracles to acquaint the Greek world with
the hopes of Israel.
They laboured with extraordinary success. Josephus
boasts, 'Many of the heathen have come over to our law;
some have remained, others unable to tolerate its strict
ness have faUen off,' and 'among the masses there has long
been a great zeal for our mode of worship ; there is no
Greek nor barbarian city nor any nation in which our
i iii. p. 155 ff.

156 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
custom of keeping the Sabbath, fasting, the lighting of
lamps, and many regulations in regard to food, are not
observed.' Horace and Juvenal testify to the prevalence
of Jewish customs among the Romans. Dio Cassius speaks
of the zeal of people of other races for Jewish customs.
Josephus says that a great multitude of Greeks had been
received, and made as it were part of the Jews in the
Syrian Antioch. Seneca declares that this accursed race,
' though conquered, have given laws to their conquerors.'
Paul, on his preaching tours, found the synagogue attend
ance composed of Jews and God-fearing heathen. Women
were particularly attracted by Judaism ; it was easier
for them to become converts, and women are more sensitive
to the emotional element in reUgion. Sometimes influential
converts were secured, like the prime minister of Queen
Candace, or a lady of rank like Fulvia, or Poppaea, the
mistress of Nero, or Izates and the royal house of Adiabene.
Sometimes the Jews forcibly proselytised, as when Hyr canus
compeUed the Idumaeans, and Aristobulus the Ituraeans
(or people of GaHlee), to become Jews.
Proselytes
There were many degrees among those influenced by
Judaism, from the prpselyte who became a fuU Jew, to all
the different grades of the ' God-fearers ' attached to the
synagogue. There was only one class of regular proselytes, those who
broke entirely with their heathen past, accepted circum
cision and a purificatory bath, and made an offering to
the temple. Such were counted as fuU members of the
Jewish community, and were debtors to do the whole law
(Gal. v. 3). These converts were more zealous Jews than
the Jews by race,1 and were comparatively few in number.
\ i "Proselytism was a sort of conquest or subjugation, for the benefit ot
• the conquerors, not of the conquered, and it is fair to say that the Jewish

v.] THE JEW 167
' God-fearers '
The most direct way in which the synagogue prepared
a people for the Lord was as teacher of the numerous
God-fearing1 heathen. Vast numbers of interested
inquirers came to Judaism. Many heathen, in accord
ance with the prevalent syncretism, were wilUng to
make experiments among the competing reUgions, and
when Judaism was once tried it retained those who were
in earnest. They found a fellowship of kindred spirits,
and were strengthened by prayer, by regular divine
services with their aesthetic power, and by stimulating
sermons urging men to Uve a moral life, promising a better
social era under a Messiah, and holding out the hope of
immortaUty. No serious heathen could be indifferent
to a reUgion the Uves of whose adherents commended
their creed as much (or as Httle) as Christian lives com
mend our faith. Besides, no rival faith could so fully
satisfy the general demand for redemptive or salvation
religions. The Jew occupied a unique position as regards
that which aU men were seeking. Many inquirers were
not persuaded of the necessity of giving up other cults,
or were deterred from becoming Jews by the odium attach
ing to the race, by social or poHtical considerations, or per
haps because they disUked the unique racial privileges
claimed by the Jew. The Jews in their missionary zeal,
and from a desire to strengthen their position, encouraged
the approach of aU serious heathen. If these heathen
proselyte did not form a link between the Jews and the Gentiles, but
emphasised and widened the difference. Nor did the proselyte prepare the
way for Christianity.'— Art. ' Proselyte' in Hastings' D.B.
1 Some identify the ' God-fearing ' with the proselytes, but with less justifi
cation. When Paul decided to turn to the Gentiles he went to the house of
Titius Justus, one of the aeBbpevot. who was not a Jew, as he would have
been if he had been circumcised. As there was a time when the term ' God
fearing' was applied to the pious Israelite, it was in all probability later
applied to proselytes, and finally in the Greek period the term was used to
designate the pious heathen who found consolation in the ministrations of
the synagogue. Their vastly increasing numbers called for a designation.

158 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
were unwiUing to submit to circumcision and keep the
whole law they accepted the Jewish method of worshipping
God as One, and without images; they observed the Sab
bath and festivals, accepted baptism, and observed certain
regulations about food. Some even went to Jerusalem
to worship (John xii. 20). Paul found these God-fearing
heathen in aU the synagogues. These, of whom Israel
was tutor, were the first to accept a gospel in which there
was no racial privilege. When a Christian ecclesia was
formed beside the synagogue, these heathen flocked to it,
not only because it was the latest reUgious association,
but because it proclaimed a larger message than could be
heard in the synagogue. The Greek Bible
The Septuagint version of the Old Testament is, next
to the New Testament, the most world-historic book.
We are not here concerned with its scientific value for
philology and its importance for the study of the Hebrew
Old Testament and the Greek New Testament, nor with
the legends of its origin. Three theories are put forward
to account for its origin : (1) the command of the bibfio-
phile and philo-Judaic Ptolemy Philadelphus, who sent to
Jerusalem for a Hebrew version (of the Law) and scholars
to translate it, wishing perhaps to have the Law, by which
the Jews were judged, in a Greek version ; (2) the needs
of the Diaspora Jewish communities, the language of whose
synagogue was Greek ; (3) the desire to have Greek
scriptures for purposes of proselytising and for theological
discussion. AU three reasons doubtless contributed. The
Law was first translated before the middle of the third
century B.C., and the whole Bible was finished, at the
latest, in the second haU of the second century B.C.
For our purpose it is enough to notice three important
services rendered by this version : (1) It was an inestimable

v.] THE JEW 159
boon to the Greek-speaking Diaspora to have a version
of their Bible in a language ' understanded of the people.'
The LXX did for the reUgious Hfe of the Diaspora what
the Authorised Version did for Britain and America,
and what that of Luther did for Germany. It became
the Bible of HeUenistic Judaism in Asia and in Europe,
and a unique bond of cohesion.1 The LXX nourished the
democratic spirit of piety of the synagogue, and prevented
reUgion from becoming whoUy dependent on a priesthood
having the monopoly of a dead holy tongue. This version
was also the necessary counterpoise to the disintegrating
forces of HeUenism. (2) The LXX became to the Jew a
powerful missionary organ, and to HeUenistic heathenism
a reUgious authority at a time when Greek thought was
veering toward the necessity of a Revelation. Such
translations were not in vogue in antiquity, particularly
in the rich Greek language : the appearance of the LXX
in the meeting-place of East and West, in the language
of the mediating Judaeo-HeUenistic philosophy, could
not faU to attract wide attention. The hosts of ' God
fearing ' heathen heard in Greek a message of salvation,
and many heathen making trial of different mysteries and
looking for some ' strong boat,' or ' sure word of God,' in
oracles or in Oriental reUgions, discovered in the LXX
what claimed to be an authoritative God-inspired guide.
Phfio teUs us that the translators before commencing work
prayed to God for help, and ' He heard their prayers that
the majority, or rather the whole human race, might be
benefited by giving heed for reformation of Hfe to wise
and noble ordinances.' History has given the verdict
that their prayer was answered. (3) The LXX became the
first, and for a considerable time the only, Bible of early
Christianity, and a potent aUy of the Gospel.2 It was the
i The LXX 'kept millions in the old faith, to win fresh millions for whom
the Hebrew text would have remained a buried treasure.' — Hausrath.
1 ' Greek Judaism with the Septuagint had ploughed the furrows for the
gospel seed in the western world.' — Deissmann, New Light on N. T., p. 95.

160 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
Bible of Paul and Luke and the early missionaries who
carried Christ's evangel to * aU the world.' It was, next
to the words of Jesus, their only recognised authority.
Before Christian writings were made, preachers had already
a Bible to hand. From it they cuUed their Messianic texts,
and by it proved Jesus to be the promised Messiah. The
LXX furnished them with a ready-made vocabulary and
terminology, with forms of prayer and praise, with many
terms which were as yet Hke empty vessels waiting to be
filled with the new meaning of a fuller Revelation.1 This
LXX proved so useful to the Christians, that the Jews by
the time of Jerome repudiated it as inferior to the 'Hebrew
verity,' thus vindicating the Rabbinic description of the
day on which the Law was translated as a ' feast of dark
ness,' a calamity 'Uke the day on which the golden calf
was made.' FinaUy, the LXX helped to suggest to the
Christian Church the formation of a Christian canon to
be used alongside the LXX. As we study our New
Testament we may gratefuUy remember the earnest effort
of the Jew to procure a lamp for his feet and a Ught for
his path. Message of Israel
Thus Israel prepared the way for, and contributed to
the estabHshment and organisation of, Christianity.2 Her
message, Hke her own character, may have been one-sided
1 ' It created a language of religion which lent itself easily to the service
of Christianity, and became one of the most important allies of the gospel.'
Hastings' D.B., iv. 4374.
2 'To the Jewish mission which preceded it the Christian mission was
indebted, in the first place, for a field tilled all over the Empire ; in the
second place, for religious communities already formed everywhere in the
towns ; thirdly, for what Axenfeld calls ' the help of materials ' furnished by
the preliminary knowledge of the Old Testament, in addition to catechetical
and liturgical materials which could be employed without much alteration ;
fourthly, for the habit of regular worship and the control of private life ;
fifthly, for an impressive apologetic on behalf of monotheism, historical teleo
logy, and ethics ; and finally, for the feeling that self-diffusion was a duty. The
amount of this debt is so large that one might venture to claim the Christian
mission as a continuation of the Jewish propaganda.' — Haraack, Mission,
i. 15.

v.] THE JEW 161
and partial, but it was the necessary complement to the
labours of the other peoples. Israel held a premier place
in aU that pertained to the higher spiritual life of man.
She herseU cared Httle for culture, but she produced that
which has produced the best modern culture. Before
the appearance of Christianity, Israel carried on a preach
ing activity which elevated her own Ufe and leavened
heathenism. She brought earnest heathen to the very
threshold of the kingdom of Christ. She heralded the
most perfect salvation offered to the old world. Her
conception of God, though far short of the Christian, was
a worthy and attractive one : He was a personal seU-
reveaUng God, even a Father, a God of strict justice, yet
wining to receive and pardon the penitent. Israel declared
that God's righteousness demands moral Hving on the
part of man : reUgion must go hand in hand with moraHty.
She taught men to pray. She gave new youth to a weary
world : having suffered herseU, she taught men the mean
ing of suffering. She spoke of hope, looking for a kingdom
of righteousness upon earth and a Messiah from Heaven
to reign among men. In an age seeking consolations, no
reUgion could compete with Israel's : even we ourselves
in adversity become Jews that we may share in Jewish
consolations. Pathfinder for Christianity
In many respects Israel was the pathfinder for the
senior of her daughter reUgions. She put into the hands
of Christianity a holy book with the dogma of inspiration,
the receptacle of an authoritative Revelation. She taught
Christians the practice and much of the forms of prayer.
She imparted to them her own steadfastness of character
and her zeal to please God with an upright life. She
bequeathed to the Church her missionary zeal and
enthusiasm, her expectancy of a brighter future, her
passion for monotheism. Many of the weapons employed

162 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [oh.
by Christianity against Jew and heathen were appropriated
from the armory of Judaism. The Jewish canon was the
forerunner of a Christian canon. The Christian Church
took over not only the entire Jewish Bible and doctrine
of inspiration, but also Jewish methods of handHng
scripture such as the citing of proof-texts, the use
of allegory in one place and the strictest HteraHsm
in another. From Judaism Christianity borrowed that
intolerance which was at first necessary to preserve
her integrity. It was from Judaism that Christi
anity, caught the idea of writing apologies and pseu
donymous books in the interests of faith. Heathenism
was never until its dying years laid hold of by the
missionary idea. It was the Jew who discovered
the plan of voicing his protests and dissatisfaction with
the present under assumed names from heathen or Jewish
history. Christianity found Jewish apocalypses in such
a shape, that by changing the wording slightly, or inter
polating a paragraph here and there, she had ready-
made Christian apocalypses.
Judaism furnished the Christian Church with many useful
hints toward the establishment of that compact ecclesi
astical organisation which defied Rome. She taught the
Church the necessity of a spirit of universal brotherhood
and co-operation, whereby the strong were to help the
weak, and the communities were kept in close contact
with each other.
Early Christianity benefited by the most staggering
calamity that ever befeU the Jews — the destruction of
Jerusalem. This put an end to Jerusalem with its temple
cult as the reUgious centre of Judaism ; it subverted the
hopes of Jews who were looking for a restoration and
hurried them over into Christianity. Jerusalem could not
now become the centre of Christianity, a fact which, if
reaUsed, would have given the predominance to a narrow
Palestinian Christianity ; the fall of Jerusalem weakened

v.] THE JEW 163
the hands of the Judaisers as it strengthened the Gentile
Christian section.
Lastly, the Jew of the Diaspora served as mediator \
between East and West : he was Oriental in his reUgion
and Western in his culture, philosophy, language and enter
prise. Through him an Oriental reUgion conquered the
West. Such are some of the leading characteristics and services
of a race in whom all the nations of the earth have been
blest, ' whose is the Sonship and the Glory and the Covenants
and the giving of the Law and the Service of God and the
Promises, whose are the Fathers, from whom, in respect
of his human descent, comes the Christ who is exalted
above aU, God blessed throughout the ages.'

164 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.

CHAPTER VI
THE GREEK
'Hirac Si 'H\\ip>h rives ix r&v avaBaivivroiv tva TrpoffKvvJi<ronnv ev rg
«oprj7-o8roi . . . ¦fipibroiv . . . Kipie, BiXo/iev rbv 'lijo-ovv ISelv.
As the Hebrews in alUance with the Orientals exercised
the religious hegemony, and the Romans the poHtical, so
the Greeks were unchaUenged in their inteUectual supre
macy. The world that most eagerly accepted the Gospel
had a Greek education. It is important to know the
character and genius of the people in whose language
Christianity has been transmitted to us, who were its
first metaphysicians and philosophers, Who later waked
Christian Europe from barbarism, and who have not yet
come to their own among us.
The Greeks are the most interesting and human of ancient
peoples. Their environment was quite different from that
of the Hebrew. Their fatherland was beautiful and varied
as their own matchless genius. Bright sky, peUucid air,
mountain ranges and passes, innumerable bays and fiords,
island-studded seas — everything the Greek looked upon
was beautiful. Yet the Greek was never as susceptible
to the beauty of a landscape as the Roman ; his beauty
was that of form, harmony, and proportion. Aristotle
characteristically finds the truest beauty in mathematics.
Greek Character
Greek character is more variegated and many-sided than
either Hebrew or Roman : there are more numerous elements

vi.] THE GREEK 165
in its composition. No nation had such a passion for the
beautiful, which was the form in which they worshipped
goodness. Their word koAov means both beautiful and good.
The Greek was enamoured of material beauty. He loved
this world and aU its rational activities, and looked naturally
on the brighter side of things ; death, that called him
away from the joyousness of life, was a dread evil.1 The
Greek was keenly sensitive to the joys of Hfe. They
represent more than any other people the youth of the
world, hence succeeding ages of aegri mortales have gone
back to Greece to re-Hve their youth. Plato makes an
Egyptian say, ' No HeUene is ever old ; in mind you are aU
young.' The spirit of Greece was 'youth, I do adore
thee,' and no Hterature contains sadder laments over
vanished youth. They were an active folk, loving athletics,
Uvely and excitable, energetic and restless, early seized
by the Wanderlust. Their history is fuU of revolutions.
They were Uable to fits of popular emotion : they could
sentence the male population of an island to death, and
immediately, overcome with remorse, rescind the decision ;
they could condemn a Socrates and repent too late. Herein
they were unlike the Romans, who never repented of an
unrighteous national act. In proportion to his keen
sensitiveness to joy the Greek was readily overtaken by
melancholy, which later deepened into pessimism. No
other Hterature contains such eloquent laments over the
misery of our mortal lot, the brevity of Ufe, the caprice
of fortune, the ruthlessness of death. Over aU Greek
happiness hangs a Damocles' sword. The Greek was
actuated by unbounded aspirations, he was conscious of
the possession of powers for the fuU fruition of which Ufe
refused sufficient scope. As the element of trouble
1 Cf. Matthew Arnold on the death of Sohrab :
' and from his limbs
Unwillingly the spirit fled away,
Regretting the warm mansion which it left,
And youth and bloom and this delightful world.'

166 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [oh.
increased in his chequered history his melancholy grows
more oppressive, until in the Anthology death is better
than Hfe. Here we must note a pecuHar trait of Greek
character : his abiding sense of the frailty of man, and the
presence of death, snatching away love and joyand ambition,
never unmanned him or impaired his energy ; these things
rather stimulated him to high endeavour, to turn Hfe to
most account as his only portion, to do something to be
remembered. For the Greek loved praise, 'that last
infirmity of noble minds.' For him
' Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
To scorn delights and live laborious days.'
To win the crown of parsley and have his name inscribed
in marble was to the Greek what a consulship was to the
Roman. The Greek aimed at seU-culture as the Hebrew
at seU-repression ; his character is more rounded and
complete than that of any of his contemporaries. He
beUeved in the development of the whole man, the pursuit
of everything that is ' proper to man ' :
'Hellas the nurse of man complete as man.'
Moderation is a prominent trait of the Greeks ; they are
distinguished by a serenity and urbanity, the acme of
culture. The Greeks were intensely social. Perhaps
friendship was more prominent among the Romans, but
comradeship and esprit de corps were more prevalent with
the Greeks. They Uked the company of their feUow-
citizens, gossiping in the theatre and the market, and using
their homes only for shelter at night. What 's the news 1
was their regular expression : they were always seeking
some new thing. They were city-dweUers, not farmers
nor shepherds. A Greek would pine in a lonely Ufe ; his
wits were sharpened in Uvely intercourse with his feUows.
Greece was the cradle of liberty and autonomy ; they were
the first people who believed in home rule. They strove

vx] THE GREEK 167
to erect a poHtical system based on rational freedom.1
The Orientals bowed low before an authority the wisdom,
origin, or reason of which they did not question : the
Greeks could do nothing without questioning. Authority
must justify itseU to reason ; law is only written reason.
The bickerings of Greek history were the price the Greeks
had to pay for their whoUy new experiment of seU-govern-
ment with its conflicting theories, for Hberty regulated
by law. Greek Genius
The first trait of Greek genius is its striking originaHty.2
They were fearless mariners on the hitherto uncharted
ocean of thought : ' they were the first that ever burst
into that silent sea.' They had no bibUography. If they
borrowed anything from Oriental neighbours they so
thoroughly assimilated it that it became genuinely Greek.
A patchwork system such as might please the mosaic
genius of Rome would have been an abomination to them.
The Greeks invented instruments of precise thinking, and
set themselves the task of reducing chaotic thought to
a system. They discovered terms to use in the investiga
tion of truth, and then formulae to hold the truths attained.
They were original in their way of thinking, in the results
they secured, and in the way in which they stated them.
They were the first to trust themselves impHcitly to
thought, to ask the Why of things, and to dare to doubt.
The Greek mind was rationaUstic. They not only dared to
ask questions and doubt, but beUeved they ought to find
an explanation. They were not endowed with unques
tioning faith and meek submission to authority : they
were not reverential. There was no holy of holies
into which man endowed, with reason was forbidden to
1 Avoiding the rudeness of the tribal system on one hand, and despotism
ou the other.
2 Cf. Odys., xxii. 347, avroSlSaKros 8" elu.1, 8ebs Si pot iv ippealv olpas |
iravrolas evitpvcev.

168 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
penetrate. Knowledge was laic and not the monopoly of
a priesthood. Neither was theirs the Supreme Creator
who simply appointed things as they are for man, but not
for man to ask questions about or explain. They could
not, Uke the Hebrews or the modern Arabs, roU over aU
difficulties to God with ' God has wiUed it.' They built
theory after theory as steps to cUmb to truth : they
were convinced of the connection of cause and effect.
Like children they were always asking questions, and one
question led on to another until they came to a barrier
they could not surmount.
The Greek mind was essentiaUy speculative : the
exercise of reason upon every department was man's
prerogative. Oriental knowledge was given by revelation
or intuition ; nothing interested the Greek so much as
the pursuit of knowledge. Leibnitz had the Greek spirit
when he said that if an angel offered him knowledge in
the one hand, and the pursuit of knowledge in the other,
he would choose the latter. The Greek alone pursued
and loved truth for itseU ; he sought knowledge not for
any ulterior motive but to satisfy a rational curiosity.
Greek genius was nothing if not systematic. The Greek
could not carry two thoughts without systematising,
correlating, or subordinating. No haU-knowledge, no
confused piHng of ideas, no chaotic learning, but ordered
mastered learning. He arranged, scheduled, labeUed.
Epistemology was born with the Greek. He laid down
the canons to which thought must conform to be vaUd,
discovered the categories with a view to precise thinking.
He put his inteUectual house in order. He felt the need
of harmony, and sought unity in diversity and diversity in
unity. The Greeks were the first real philosophers. They
took great pains in reclaiming the domain of knowledge and
mapping it out. They converted everything into an art. They
found the confusion of Oriental warfare, and they evolved
tactics; they found the Egyptians measuring fields, and

vi.] THE GREEK 169
they built up geometry and mathematics ; they learned
writing from the Phoenicians, but they wrote ; they found
men piUng chronicles, and they made it history; out of
conflicting methods of social cohesion, they made poUtics ;
from theories of conduct and undefined right and wrong,
they made ethics ; they found men arriving at conclusions,
and they invented logic ; lastly, they turned the content
of the Gospel into a theology.1
Another feature of the Greek mind was what we may
caU conceit. They had confidence in their own abiUties ;
they were clever and they knew it. Their vice was
inteUectuaHsm and a tendency to over-subtlety. EquaUy
characteristic was an infinite capacity for taking pains.
Outspoken criticism of pubUc opinion and a splendid lay
education demanded work which could defy criticism in
every detail. They were Hke the Germans in their syste
matic methods and attention to details. Their architecture
shows the acutest observation of Hnes and the elaboration
of sUght details which have made it inimitable. They
moulded their language into the most perfect vehicle of
human thought. If Demosthenes is the prince of orators
he took the greatest pains in preparation. Isocrates is
said to have spent ten years on his Panegyric. After
Plato's death a tablet was found on which the eight opening
1 'The Greek mind is essentially discursive, analytical, and systematic,
governing itself even in its highest flights by the ideas of measure and
symmetry, of logical sequence and connexion. . . . The Muse of Greece, to
use an expression of Goethe, is the companion of the poet and not his
guide. The same mental characteristics are shown in the political life of the
Greeks, in their historical literature, and, above all, in their philosophy.
They are never satisfied to leave anything obscure or undefined, or to let any
element stand by itself without being carefully distinguished from and related
to the rest. The Homeric hero who cried for light, even if it were hut light
to die in, was a genuine representative of the Greek spirit. Hence, in spite '
of their great aesthetic capacity, their love of the beautiful and their power
of creating it, there never was a nation less disposed to rest in the con
templation of a beautiful symbol, without trying to analyse it into its
elements and discover its exact meaning. The Greek, again, was essentially
reflective ; he was never content to wield the weapons of thought without
examining them ; rather he sought to realise the precise value of every
category or general term which he found himself using.' — Caird, Evolution,
ii. 188-9.

170 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
words of the Republic were copied out in every possible
order. It is only after years of sympathetic study of
Greek work that one can detect the thousand Httle touches
that contribute to the perfection of, say, the Agamemnon
or the Oedipus Coloneus. The Greek never accompHshed
anything by happy chance as schoolboys imagine, but
always with strenuous effort, though he understood that
ars est artem celare. Thucydides was a true Greek when he
tells us that he wrote his history to be ' a possession for
all time.' A Greek proverb runs : ' The gods seU all things
at the price of toil (or effort),' and the Greeks were wining
to pay the price.
The moderation so striking in their character is even
more striking in their genius. ' Nothing too much,' was
their motto. They understood the secret of * the haU is
greater than the whole ' : they always knew where to stop.
They beUeved with Aristotle that a thing ought to have
beginning, middle, and end in due proportion. Another
feature is the seU-forgetf ulness of Greek genius compared
with the Roman seU-consciousness. The Greek concen
trated all his attention on the work and not on the worker.
In Roman work the personaUty and character of the author
are revealed so that we know more about Roman writers
from their own works than we know of any other ancient
writers. The Greek always stands so far in the background
as not to attract attention away from his work. He wiU
give no hints of his own idiosyncrasies : if you wish to
know him better, put the amount of careful study into
his masterpieces which he did. When a schoolboy reads
Thucydides for the first time, especially the seventh book,
he is provoked at the seU-restraint and silence of the author
amid the tragedy of his country. Again, the Greek
genius was ideaUstic as compared with the symboUsm of
the Orient and the reaUsm of Rome. All our idealism
takes its rise in Greece, chiefly in the works of Plato.
They had a happy faculty of seeing things not as they are,

**•] THE GREEK 171
but as they ought to be : they brought the alchemy of
mind to bear upon matter and upon the common things
of Hfe.
Greek thought and genius were essentiaUy anthropo-
centric as opposed to the theocentric nature of Oriental
genius. The Greeks began with man ; they could regard
God as only an enlarged edition of man. Man is of supreme
interest to the Greeks, first in his harmony with, and then
in his opposition to, nature ; in his duaUsm and the con
tradictions of his being, in his unconquerable mind, his
kinship with the Divine. Hamlet was a Greek when he
said : ' What a piece of work is man ! How noble in
reason ! how infinite in faculties ! in form and moving,
how express and admirable ! in action how Uke an angel !
in apprehension how like a god ! the beauty of the world !
the paragon of animals ! ' 1 Here we must stop, for at
this point he drifts into Oriental mysticism.
Place of the Greeks in History
The Greeks have been of enormous significance in history.
They were the first Westerners who definitely left the ruts
of the past and cast aside convention. They ushered in
a new era.
We are indebted to them for political and social experi
ments in which they anticipated aU our modern theories.
The efforts they made to escape despotism on the one hand,
and anarchy on the other, remain of permanent value.
They brought to perfection the city-state which can never
be recreated. They are our schoolmasters in art, science,
architecture, sculpture, music, Hterature, mathematics, and
medicine. To them was committed the secular education
of the ancient world for Christianity, in the preparation
for which their language and philosophy were mighty
factors. They introduced a new type of man, ' totus, teres
1 Act n. sc. 2. Noted also by Jebb, A ttic Orators, I. xcv-vi.

172 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
atque rotundus,' complete as man, to correct and supple*-
ment the one-sidedness of Hebrew and Roman. In
respect of perfect manhood they have stiU a message
for aU the ages. They strove after the perfection and
harmony of our whole being, ' aU that is proper to man.'
They were the most successful colonisers of antiquity,
and in this respect played an important role. At least
two Greek colonies decided the course of world-history —
Syracuse and Byzantium. Another Greek (Macedonian)
colony, Alexandria, became the first and chief centre for
welding the nations for Christianity ; in it the philosophy
of the West and the Revelation of the East united to bless
humanity. During the eighth and fifth centuries B.C. the
Greeks planted colonies on aU the shores of the Mediter
ranean and adjacent seas, as far west as MarseiUes and as
far east as the Black Sea. From the last quarter of the
fourth century B.C., Greek colonies were founded inland
in Asia and Egypt. Greek colonies played a prominent
part in early Christianity.
Greece rendered signal service to both the ancient
and the modern world in educating the two conquering
peoples — the Macedonians and the Romans. Had it
not been for the influence of Greece, these peoples would
have brought wholesale devastation with their conquests.
When Macedon became her apt pupil and with her aid
conquered the East, there was opened a boundless future
for Greek culture, enterprise, language and phUosophy.
The Greeks went forth to civiUse and educate. Had it
not been for the speU of Greek culture, the Roman would
have proved the Tamerlane of antiquity : he would have
ruthlessly wiped out the East with the thoroughness
with which he wiped out Carthage, Etruria, and Corinth.
Rome came to Greece a barbaric conquering people, but
went home with an endowment of culture, refinement,
and humanity, though she often better reproduced Greek
vices than Greek virtues.

VI.] THE GREEK 173
Greece gave to early Christianity a world unified in
language and culture. It is a striking fact which speaks
volumes for HeUenism that the Hellenised world most
eagerly accepted Christianity, and that our Oriental
Gospel has never taken root in its own soil as it did
first in the Greek, and through the Greek, in the Roman
world. There was plainly some strong affinity between
HeUenism and Christianity. The dispersion of Greek
scholars and Greek books after the fall of a Greek colony,
Byzantium, helped to arouse Christian Europe from the
darkness of mediaevafism and usher in the Renaissance
which made the Reformation possible. Men cannot sleep
where the spirit of Greece enters. And ' to the modern
world, too, Greece has been the great civiUser, the ecumenical
teacher, the disturber and regenerator of slumbering
societies. She is the source of most of the quickening
ideas which re-make nations and renovate Hterature and
art. If we reckon up our secular possessions, the wealth
and heritage of the past, the larger share may be traced
back to Greece. One-haU of Ufe she has made her domain —
aU, or weU-nigh aU, that belongs to the present order of
things and to the visible world.' 1
Greece not only introduced the Western spirit but she
defended it against the encroachments of the East (Persia),
until the Macedonian and the Roman undertook the task.
For this alone she has deserved weU of history. Superior
as the East was to the West in reUgion, if Marathon and
Salamis had gone against Greece it would have been more
disastrous for the world than if Hannibal had conquered
at Zama. ' In those earUer ages, the victory of the East
over Greece would have been the triumph of nature over
man, of necessity over moral freedom, of a caste system
or of despotism over free organisation and intelligence,
of stagnation over progress, of symboUsm over beauty,
of the arid plain over the mountain and the sea. The
l Butcher, Aspects of Greek Genius, p. 43.

174 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
actual victory of East and West, which took place at the
triumph of Christianity, had in it no such sinister meaning.
Greece had already won freedom in aU its branches —
freedom for society, freedom for the individual, freedom for
thought. She had written her spirit in books and on
tables of stone . . . which record the supremacy of mind
over sense, of spirit over matter. She had shown how the
love of beauty might be united with the love of truth, art
with science, how reason might be made imaginative. . . .
Henceforth it is in the confluence of the HeUenic stream
of thought with the waters that flow from Hebrew sources
that the main direction of the world's progress is to be
sought.' 2 Greek Thought
The most perennial contribution of Greece to aU time
is Greek thought. Greek philosophy is the most profound
and comprehensive ever produced by one people, the
rich result of 1200 years' indefatigable endeavour after
reaUty. Her philosophy, directed to every point of the
compass of thought, is of fascinating interest. We have
its whole history before us : we can trace the steps by which
men sought to reduce chaos to cosmos, how they offered
one solution of the problem of man and the universe after
another, and finaUy how philosophy raised questions
which only religion could answer, how its last voice was
a caU to men to seek the synthesis of Ufe in revelation and
reUgion. They followed the natural order of man's
progress, taking first the outward look, then the inner,
and then the upward ; 2 or, nature, man, God. Their first
philosophy was that of the object and the impersonal until
the time of Socrates ; their next concern was with the sub
jective or personal ; their last was the search for a synthesis
> Butcher, ib., p. 45.
Cf. Caird, Evolution of Religion (3rd ed.), vol. i. p. 77.

vi.] THE GREEK 175
which Greek philosophy did not find because no philosophy
can. The atmosphere of free civic Greece provided many
incentives to thought. There was boundless pubHcity
and outspoken criticism intolerant of anything but the
best. Each Greek was a member of the body poUtic and
required to think. The right to vote led him to acquaint
himseU with the issues of pubUc Hfe, and to seek the best
method of obtaining a hearing. Their thinking was not
chained to the past nor hampered by tradition, nor under
the censorship of a priesthood : no silencing authority
forbade rerum cognoscere causas. AU knowledge was lay.
They had no text-books either to guide or hamper. With
naive seU-confidence, 'Uke Httle wanton boys that swim
on bladders,' they launched forth, dreaming not of the
abysmal deeps, the shaUows, and the starless nights.
Early Schools
The four earUest schools were (1) the Ionic, which
inquired into the origin of the world, of what it is composed,
which discovered the apx1? or substantial cause of things
in some one material principle. (2) The Pythagoreans, who,
viewing the world as a cosmos, sought the essence of things
in number and proportion. They saw unity in multipU-
city. This was the first practical school of morality in
Greece, the first which united reUgion and moraUty. They
introduced mysticism into Greek thought, and were the
precursors of Platonic spirituaUsm ; they proclaimed the
unity of God, the idea' of future retribution and reward,
the transmigration of souls, the duty of a pure Hfe and the
need of seU-examination. (3) The Eleatics, who denied the
possibiHty of absolute genesis and decay and so the pluraUty
of things. Only essences are real and aU essences are one :
the best can only be one. The universe is a unity, pluraUty
and variety being only appearance to senses that are not

176 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
to be trusted. The Eleatics rose to God by the d priori or
metaphysical method, as Anaxagoras by the teleological.
They ' externaUsed the conclusions of the pure reason
itself,' and ' formally created the metaphysical system of
the universe.' l They presented a monism, which could lead
either to monotheism or pantheism.2 Their motto might
have been, ' the One remains, the Many change and pass.'
(4) The Physicists. HeracHtus formed the transition stage
from matter to mind. He was so impressed with the reign
of change that he saw no law except that of ceaseless
change^— 'aU things are in a state of flux, nothing continues,'
or, in the words of Tennyson, ' Nothing was born, nothing
will die ; aU things wiU change.' So he demanded an
explanation of genesis and decay, and thus stated the
problem which the Atomists answered by the combination
and separation of atoms. Anaxagoras who closes this
period definitely separates spirit from sense : he made
the epoch-making declaration that nature is inteUigible
only as the work of an Ordering Mind. He saw order in
nature and became the first of Greek theists. As con
trasted with the materiaUstic monism of his predecessors
he bequeathed to Greek thought that duaUsm which it
never surmounted.
In this early period we note a steady growth from
concrete to abstract, from a natural to a spiritual principle,
from chance and chaos to inteUigence. Greek philosophy
was in this period ' in respect to its object a philosophy of
nature ; ... in respect to its procedure, a dogmatism ;
i.e. it seeks to obtain a theory of the objective world before
it has given account to itseU of the problem and conditions
of scientific knowledge ... in its results it is realistic,
and even materiaUstic ; not tiU the end of this period was
the difference between spiritual and corporeal brought to
consciousness by Anaxagoras.' 8
i Butler, i. 346. s Pfleiderer, Vorbereitung, p. 7.
» Zeller, Outlines, p. 28.

vi.] THE GREEK 177
The most important truth propounded in this period,
that of Anaxagoras, must wait for a Socrates and Plato
to take it up. A new spirit passed over the Greek world
about the middle of the fifth century B.C. Scepticism had
been introduced. How was the truth of the many theories
to be tested ? Suspicion feU upon scientific theorising as
idle and aimless : the interest was already shifting from
the outer world of nature to the inner of spirit. Already
some of the Physicists and Eleatics had chaUenged the
cognisabifity of objects by sensible perception. Where
and what was the criterion ? Greek love of praise con
spired to corrupt phuosophy. Knowledge fetched applause,
and philosophy had a market value. In the absence of
printing the philosopher must be an orator or even a
demagogue to reach the pubUc ear. Add to this ' the
tendency of Greek genius to dweU upon form rather than
inner reaUty.' With the march of triumphant democracy
and the awakening after the Persian wars each wanted an
education to fit him for practical Hfe. Here set in the
demand for the practical that asserted itseU prominently
in the post-AristoteUan period. Sophists
The Sophists appeared for good or evil in Greek history.
Indifferent to city patriotism, their object was to train
men for practical Ufe in a manner remunerative to them
selves. They were thoroughgoing sceptics, maintaining
that knowledge is impossible, and cannot lead to reaUty,
and, if attained, could not be communicated. They
doubted everything : they neither formed a school nor do
their theories form a system. They were subjectivists :
truth is relative to each man in each of his moods ; there is
no absolute, objective, universal truth ; no standard to
which to appeal. Laws are mere convention entaiUng no
moral obUgation. What is lawful in Megara may be
M

178 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
unlawful in Athens. They were individuaUsts : each may
do what is right in his own eyes. Protagoras laid down the
principle of the movement : ' Man is the measure of all
things ; of those that are how they are ; of those that are
not how they are not.' Their method, eristic, was calcu
lated not to reach conviction but ' to make the worse
appear the better reason.' They are blamed by Socrates,
Plato, and many moderns for corrupting Greek society.
They were rather the keen observers and spokesmen of
their day : they merely put into words what Greek states
practised, ' might is right.'
The Sophists were the educators of the Greek spirit and
harbingers of the Greek EnUghtenment. The net result
of Sophisticism was to raise the question, What is truth ?
and where is the criterion ? They broke down convention
by setting natural right against it ; they weakened popular
superstition; they made thought supreme over external
authority ; they demonstrated that science is as helpless
to give a moral basis for man's life as to give an explana
tion of the universe ; they gave voice to the failure of the
guesses of earHer schools and made scepticism henceforth
a power in Greek thought. Sweeping away the moraHty
of tradition, civic and legal, they compeUed thoughtful
men to inquire if man has a moral nature and on what it
rests. Bringing science and moraHty equaUy into con
fusion, they ushered in an era of moral (Socrates and Plato)
and scientific (Aristotle) investigation. They made
philosophy anthropological.1 Socrates
Socrates, ' almost the ideal of humanity itseU,' inaugu
rated a new era in the higher Ufe. He caUed philosophy
1 'Their merit is that they claimed on behalf of man that the principle
which is to explain experience must be in harmony with his self-conscious
ness. Their defect is that they have construed man too poorly, and have
regarded self-consciousness as little more than individual opinion or feeling.'
— Kilpatrick, Ph ilosophy, in Hastings' D. B.

vi-] THE GREEK 179
from physics and sophistry to logic and morality, from
nature to man. He completed the work of Sophisticism
in making thought anthropological. His position was 'the
proper study of mankind is man.' He sought knowledge
for the practical purposes of moral reformation. To the
dogmatism of the early schools and the scepticism of
Sophisticism he opposed ' humble inquiry.' In answer to
the attack of the Sophists upon the possibiUty of knowledge
he maintained that knowledge is attainable through the
fixing of concepts by the dialectic method : this gives the
ultimate reaUty, things in themselves. He asserted the
existence of objective, universal truth: the criterion is the
harmony of our notions and conceptions with the thing
in itseU. That universal True and Right is the standard
for our notions and conduct. He thus vindicated the
vaHdity of thought. Correct thinking meant correct
action, for he identified virtue with knowledge ; hence
salvation is by wisdom, for no man who knows right wiU
do wrong. Socrates was obUvious of man's perverted wiU.
He has been weU termed the ' father of moral science ' :
he estabUshed moraUty upon a new and firm basis, finding
its sanction not in custom, tradition, law, or even the
authority of state, but in man's innate moral consciousness.
' Conscious moraHty in the ancient classical world begins
with him, because he is the first to substitute the authority
of the individual for that of the state.' 1 He advocated
the freedom of man's wiU and the right of private judg
ment : ' I must obey God rather than you,' he said to
his judges. He made the first Greek appeal to man's
conscience, ' the wife from which one can never be divorced.'
He beUeved that he possessed a daemon, or divine voice
restraining him from evil, and that aU have an intuitive
sense of right and wrong. When the organism of the
state was threatening to break up, he came forward to
resoue and guide the individual, calfing upon him to
l Wenley, Preparation for Christianity, p. 35.

180 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [oh.
reflect upon the inestimable worth of his soul. He elevated
Anaxagoras' ordering Mind into a supreme God to be
worshipped in purity of heart. About the immortaUty
of the soul he was uncertain. His emphasis upon Know
Thyself proved epoch-making : ' a Ufe without seU-
examination is not worthy of man.' He became the
herald of man's personaUty, the prophet of seU-conscious-
ness, opening up a vast unexplored continent wherein so
many f oUowers from Augustine to our day have experienced
the pain and immensity of personaUty. His mission was
that of a soul-curer and reformer; but he was conscious of
the inabiUty of abstract truth to elevate man. He uncon
sciously felt the need for an Incarnation and a Revelation.
He longed for illumination from heaven, some super
natural guide, god or demon. If the Heavenly Love were
only to take bodily form. ' Oh, if virtue had only a body
and men could see her with their eyes, how they should
run to embrace her.' Add to this the wealth of his per
sonaUty,1 and the unfading impressiveness of his dying
moments. Minor Socratics
Of the Minor Socratics the Megarians took up the
speculative side of Socrates' teaching, the Cynics and
Cyrenaics its subjective, individual, negative and practical
aspects. The Megarians held that the senses give but the
changing appearances, and only thought the reaUty. They
identified the Good with the unchanging One of Parmenides.
All Being is a Unity whether termed Deity, InteUigence, or
Reason. Only the actual is possible, and only the unchange
able is actual. The world of multipHcity is iUusory, reaUty
belonging to the Universal.
i * Eine Personlichkeit, die in ihrer inneren Selbstgewissheit und religios
begriindeten Uberzeugungstreue als eine eigentumlich neue Erscheinung in
der antiken Welt, als ein Vorlaufer und Prophet des Christentums zn
betrachten ist. ' — Pfleiderer, p. 16.

vi.] THE GREEK 181
The Cynics and Cyrenaics — the precursors of the Stoics
and Epicureans — derived their doctrines each from a
distortion of Socrates' teaching. Socrates had inseparably
connected virtue and happiness, which Antisthenes (founder
of the Cynic school) distorted into ' virtue is happiness,'
identifying virtue with pain, and Aristippus (founder of the
Cyrenaic) into * happiness is virtue,' which led to licence.
The aim of both was to render man independent — the one
by training the wiU to suppress the desires, the other by
compelling nature to gratify them.

Plato
Plato continued the work of Socrates in the search after
ultimate reaUty and a deeper spiritual unity. Commenc
ing with the Socratic form of the Anaxagorean Nous and
the concept philosophy of his master, he examined the
eternal One of Parmenides and the Being of HeracUtus,
to find both unsatisfactory. We must by induction rise
from the individual to the universal, for only the Universal
is real and seU-existent, not existing merely in our or God's
thought of it. The purpose of knowledge is practical —
to make men better citizens and to elevate them above
sense. The central point of Plato's philosophy is his
theory of Ideas, which was his solution of the problem of
reaUty. The things we see here are not real ; they are
mere shadows, faint copies of the archetype in the spiritual
world. This eidos or idea is the essence of things. Ideas
and things are related as the pattern and the copy. Plato's
system is monistic in so far as the copies or things are
immanent in the idea ; it is monism by means of pure ideal
ism. But as Plato gave a metaphysical existence to ideas,
separating things from ideas and ideas from things, there
resulted a duaUsm. He sets in irreconcilable antithesis
sense and spirit, body and soul, transient and permanent.

i

182 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
At the apex of the ideas stands that of the Good towards
which all is striving. He solved the problem of knowledge
by saying that all learning is only remembering what we have
known in a previous existence. The only use of things is
that they suggest to us their eternal ideas or archetypes, as
a photograph reminds us of an absent friend. To Plato the
soul is of tremendous value. It is akin to the Divine, and
in a previous existence has consorted with the highest ideas
of Beauty and Goodness, of which it is enamoured. Salva
tion consists in education and knowledge, for ' we needs
must love the highest when we see it ' ; Plato could not
imagine the will of man deUberately choosing evil to its
own hurt. The soul yearns to return to its true father
land to contemplate the Good. Man's chief end is
to rise above the perishing, soar to God by Love, 'the
wing of the soul,' and imitate God so as to become as
Hke Him as possible. Virtue is the only path to happi
ness, which is found in the pursuit of the highest until
we see God.
Plato was keenly aHve to the duaUsm of our nature;
its complexity tortured him. How could such a spiritual
being hanker after the transient ? How grow forgetful
of its true home ? ; Plato's answer was, Because of the
flesh, which we must put off to see God ; it is the answer
of Paul, ' The carnal mind is enmity against God, is not
subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.' The
soul is Uke a charioteer driving two spirited horses, a white
one which strives upward, and a black one which pulls in the
contrary direction. The body is a burden which cannot
come into the scheme of salvation. But the soul is infinitely
precious: Plato seems often to anticipate 'What shall it
profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own
soul ? ' The grandest day in Greek thought was the day on
which Plato approached the subject of the immortaUty of
the soul. Every student is famiUar with his references to
this doctrine in the Apology, the Timaeus, and Republic,

vi.] THE GREEK 183
more especially in the Symposium and Phaedrus, and with
its treatment in the Phaedo. We unconsciously associate
ourselves with the Hsteners in reading the Phaedo, feel
the force of the objections, share in the alarm at the
exquisite dramatic crises as Socrates unfolds the five
arguments for immortaUty which to us are antiquated.
But Plato also anticipated our chief reasons — apart from
the Resurrection of Christ — for this faith, the kinship of
the soul with the Divine, the moral argument, and the
longing for continued Ufe. Plato had entered the kingdom
of the spirit.
It was no smaU boon to humanity to have his lofty
spirituaUty diffusing its influence 400 years B.C. One of
the world's greatest reUgious teachers, he taught in inimit
able prose-poetry that man doth not Hve by bread alone,
that only the things of the spirit are of absolute and
eternal worth. His Love was a passion for the Eternal,
the regret for a better world. No one understood more
profoundly the unutterable yearnings of the soul. The
words of Augustine are truly Platonic, ' Thou hast made
us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they rest in
Thee.' He felt
' Those first affections, those shadowy recollections
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet the master-light of all our seeing,
Uphold us, cherish and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of an eternal silence.'
He reaUsed that if man knew himseU, his craving is not
to satisfy one part of his nature, or one passion, but to find
satisfaction for an infinite spirit. Any student can point
out flaws in Plato. With all his flaws he stands, and shall
stand, one of the great upUfters of man. No wonder he
was the schoolmaster of so many Christian Fathers.

184 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
Aristotle
Aristotle, 'the master of them that know,' was the
subtlest thinker of Greece.1 Plato had denaturaHsed man
into pure spirit. To Aristotle this was repugnant : he
would not call men away from earth, but to duty and
activity. Happiness is the end of Ufe, but does not consist
in the satisfaction of momentary caprices but in the poise
of all the faculties, pleasure being not the aim but the
concomitant of right action. Conduct is not to be judged
by general laws but by the interpretation each has made
to himself of those laws. Plato held appetites to be evil
in themselves ; Aristotle as neither good nor bad in them
selves ; they become good by subserving good, evil by
subserving evil ends. All depends on the purpose or end.
The things of earth are not to be rejected for other-worldU-
ness ; all things are materials of conduct, instruments to
work out ends, the raw material of virtue or vice. Plato
had led men up the mount to be entranced by the loveUness
of Goodness, to see the Uttleness of the transient ; Aristotle
led men down to the plain to develop what is ' proper to
man.' Plato's doctrine would lead to asceticism and
other- worldUness ; Aristotle insisted on workaday goodness
and a rounded Ufe. Man must observe the golden mean by
which to choose the amount of pleasure or pain good for
our moral constitution. Man's chief end is the activity
of his multifold nature toward a rational purpose. For
Plato the love of God was the cause of the world's creation.
In Aristotle there is an unbridged chasm between his
Absolute of Pure Thought and inert Matter. His God is
so seU-sufficient that he has no need of man or the universe.
The prime Mover, activity cannot proceed from hfm except
1 He is the father of the analytic method, as Plato of the synthetic, also
the creator of zoology and botany. He assigned its place to empiricism,
rescued the individual from Plato's universal, rejected the entity of ideas
apart from things, substituted for the Platonic dualism of ideas and
things that of Form and Matter.

vi.] THE GREEK 185
in so far as he is the object of the world's striving. ' God
does not love the world, but the world loves God.'
Aristotle suppUed the wholesome corrective to Platonism.
Plato made philosophy a religion ; Aristotle a science. He
set scientific knowledge to balance transcendentaUsm and
mysticism ; enthroned the head beside the heart. He set
Greek thought on its course of another six hundred years
which Plato would have overleapt. Aristotle's philosophy
is that of sweet moderation ; he is no extremist Hke
Plato, but the sanest thinker of Greece ; he is the enemy
of the ascetic ideal as against the social and energetic.
The individual is of too great worth to be swamped in the
Universal, but the individual can function wholesomely
only in society. If his works are cold, scientific, prosaic
compared with the reUgious glow and imagination of Plato,
they are none the less essential to the world's education.
It is easy to see how the spirituaUty and idealism of Plato
appealed to the Christian Fathers who were not untouched
by Wettschmerz ; but the essence of AristoteHanism is as
necessary to bring in the kingdom of God upon earth.
Platonism has affinities with the temperament of the
dreamer and futurist, but only the sober earnest Christian
worker can practise AristoteHanism, which places happiness
not in dreaming but in activity. If Plato is the interpreter
of reUgion, Aristotle is the world's moraUst.
Post-Aristotelian Philosophy
A new stage in Greek thought commences after Aristotle.
A great change has set in. The world is growing one
commonwealth as the polis faUs ; as pubUc and civic Ufe
are crushed out, ethics displaces poUtics. The old moral
restraints and bases of conduct are undermined. Indi
viduaHsm is rampant. Speculation must give place to
practice, as the bewildered individual imperiously demands
moral guidance. The search is now not so much for

186 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
knowledge, as how to use that aUeady acquired. Only
practical questions can secure a hearing. In the desire to
find a moral guide men are wiUing to try any and every
system ; hence there is a strong tendency to syncretism.
Philosophy becomes less Greek and more cosmopoHtan, less
philosophy and more reUgion.
The chief phases of post-AristoteHan thought are
Stoicism, Epicureanism, Scepticism, Eclecticism, Neo-
Pythagoreanism, Graeco-Judaic philosophy, and Neo-
Platonism. Stoicism
Stoicism was a splendid discipHne and preparation of
the Empire for Christianity : it has remained the aUy of
Christianity and an inspiration to our best poets, Hke
Browning. Stoicism was not a pure Greek product, much
of its spirit and many of its teachers coming from the East.
Its message was that not things but our thought of things
matters : ' The mind is its own place, and in itseU
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.'
Health, disease, pain, poverty, wealth are in themselves
neither goods nor iUs : only when we take them up into our
inner Hfe do they have any meaning. The Stoics pro
claimed the supremacy of virtue as man's chief end, and
the duty of seU-control. Reason was appointed guardian
or exterminator of the affections, and duty took the place
of interest, for the Stoics were the first pagan preachers
who enthroned duty in its high place ; they put a supreme
value on character. They were pantheists, beUeving in
a Spirit diffused throughout all, and operative in a universal
law. Salvation is anthropocentric, man being potentiaUy
his own saviour. It consists in the eradication of the
passions, the suppression of the emotions, and the cultiva
tion of the will. While they held to the reign of a universal

vi.] THE GREEK 187
law, they equally maintained the freedom of the wiU, in
the exercise of which, according to reason, consists the
dignity of man. No sympathy or help is demanded from
God or men. Inward peace arises from resignation to the
will of God. Virtue is seU-sufficing : we ought to do good
though neither Gods nor men behold our action. The
Stoics took up the Platonic idea — to imitate or foUow
God. Seneca says, ' I do not obey God : I consent with
Him.' The reward of seU-denial is an approving conscience
and seU-complacency. The hope of immortaUty is not
necessary. Thus man's reason and will are the instruments
of salvation, seU-control and duty the law of Hfe, and
imperturbabiUty the crown :
' Si f ractus illabatur orbis
Impavidum ferient ruinae.'
In knowledge the Stoics were empirics. Their system was
a blend of materiaUsm and pantheism. The soul is
material and immortal only to the end of the aeon. Stoicism
advanced personaUty by putting a new emphasis on wiU
and duty. It proclaimed the brotherhood of man, the
Providence of God, the reign of moral law, and an inter
pretation of suffering.
Other Greek schools were uttering their voices. The
Peripatetics took practicaUy no part in reUgious affairs :
they were occupied with commenting on their master's
works and with natural science. They had no spiritual
gospel to offer to a weary world.
Epicureanism
Epicureanism, the first reasoned system of happiness,
was atheistic or deistic in reUgion and utiUtarian in morals.
' FoUow nature,' but nature prompts to eschew pain and
pursue pleasure ; therefore pleasure is the summum bonum.
The criterion in knowledge and conduct is sensuous per-

188 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
ception. The world is the result of the fortuitous concourse
of atoms ; the deity leads a life of tranquilUty undisturbed
by the travail of humanity. Even this system was a gospel
for its day; it freed men from the tyranny of fataUsm, from
the fear of the gods, of death and future punishment, and
aU the burdens of superstition. Salvation was negative
and individuaUstic ; no rewards were proposed, no terrors
threatened ; there was no God suffering with and for man.
Salvation is confined to this Ufe ; there is no place of
repentance, no room for hope. The soul is a composite
of the rarer and finer atoms which are dissipated at death.
Beyond the flammantia moenia mundi there awaits us only
leti secura quies. Such is the gospel whose motto is dux
vitae dia voluptas. This very philosophy which claimed
to Uberate man is guilty of what it charged against super
stition, Omnia suffundens mortis nigrore. Natural hesitancy
in leaving ' the warm precincts of the cheerful day ' is over
come by such consolations as that the longing for immor
taUty arises from man's pride ; with life are extinguished
all bitter regrets, aU yearning after happiness ; ' when we
are death is not, when death is we are not ' ; greater than
we have died, and we should be resigned to a universal law.
Epicureanism did not inculcate sensuaUsm, though it easily
conduced to it. Epicurus distinguished higher and lower
pleasures ; sometimes pain should be endured in order to
lasting pleasure. He tried to regulate the abounding
passion of his age for pleasure by applying AristoteUan
moderation to crude Hedonism. Epicureanism furthered
personaUty (1) by asserting man's freedom ; (2) man does
not really want the gratification of isolated desires but
peace and pleasure for his whole being.
Sceptics
The Sceptics Ukewise invited men to retire to the
impregnable fortress of their inner being and rest in self.

vi.] THE GREEK 189
They negatived the possibiUty of knowledge ; conviction is
unattainable. Every proposition may be equally well sup
ported or refuted. They cast aside aU dogma except that
of the impossibiHty of certainty. Man must rest in suspense
of judgment about objective reaUty, and content himseU
with his subjective consciousness. Objective consciousness
is iUusory. They forgot that the ' consciousness of seU is
reaUsed only with, and in relation to, the consciousness
of the not-seU to which it is opposed, and that if we could
altogether cancel the latter, the former would disappear
with it.' 1 The Sceptics, like Bishop Butler, made
ProbabiHty the guid^ of Ufe, as anciUaries to which they
offered the practical wisdom of ancestors, or the verdict
of the majority embodied in custom and law. As the
schools mitigated their extreme positions, Scepticism toned
down its dogma of the impossibiHty of knowledge, admitting
degrees of probabiHty, and interposing a kind of knowledge
haU-way between probabiHty and certainty, as did Philo
of Larissa. Antiochus, the teacher of Cicero, saw that
probabiHty impHes truth as a standard, and that certainty
is necessary to conduct. He found truth in the tenets
common to the different schools, and thus conducted
Scepticism over to Eclecticism. The school was revived
under Aenesidemus and his pupils, who offered two addi
tional guides of conduct, feeUngs and experience.
Eclecticism
Eclecticism, ' the creed of weary minds,' was not a
school but a mode of thought running through aU the
later schools. It was due to the cosmopoHtanism of
the age, the lack of any original system, the penetrating
criticism of Carneades and the Sceptics, the practical
demand for a guide of conduct, the reUgious tendency
of all serious schools, and lastly, the supremacy of the
1 Caird, Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, ii. 125.

190 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
practical Romans. We find this syncretism first among
the Greek schools, and then in the blending of Greek thought
with Oriental mysticism. Its motto was the Horatian
nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri. The result of
Eclecticism was a general acknowledgment of man's in
nate moral consciousness as confirmed by the consensus
gentium. This is the basis of conduct and responsibiUty :
man is born for virtue, with ideas of right and wrong, apart
from education and beyond demonstration. Eclecticism
diffused a craving for reUgious truth and certainty which
Christianity was to meet. Men were hesitating on the
brink of knowledge before plunging into mysticism : the
weary spirit was incUned to ask for a revelation.1 ' The
era of subjective and individual philosophy was brought
to an end, and the era of reUgious philosophy inaugurated.'
Neo-Pythagoreanism
The Neo-Pythagoreans were the precursors of Neo-
Platonism. They disseminated higher ideas of God, the
immortaUty of the soul, and mysticism ; they held that sense
and reason are not the only fountains of knowledge. They
made philosophy a Hfe, and inculcated ascetic moraHty.
Their object was to supply a reUgious need. They looked
to Revelation for truth and to sacramental grace for help.
Judaeo-Greek Philosophy
The chief representative of Judaeo-Greek thought is
Philo, in whom more than in any other East and West
1 ' Only a slight impulse was needed in order to lead the spirit in its search
for truth beyond the limits of natural knowledge to a supposed higher
fountain. This impulse Greek thought appears to have received through
that contact with Oriental views of which Alexandria was the centre. The
main part on the Oriental side was played by Judaism. . . . The last motive
in this speculation was the yearning after a higher revelation of truth ; its
metaphysical supposition was an opposition of God and the world, of spirit
and matter, as intermediaries between which men took refuge in demons
and divine powers. Its practical consequence was a combination of ethics
and religion which led partly to asceticism and partly to the demand for a
direct intuition of the Deity.'— Zeller, Outlines, p. 305.

vi.] THE GREEK 191
are blended. His God is transcendent, including aU reaUty
and perfection, self-sufficient, the source of Good only.
We know He exists, but not what He is : no definite
predicate can be used of Him ; He is simply the I AM.
Philo, as a Jew, adhered to the personality and moral
attributes of God, even if the metaphysical attributes
landed him in seU-contradiction. Over against God in
sharpest contrast stands a second principle — matter, the
work of a subordinate deity. To bridge the chasm Philo
posits a galaxy of intermediaries — powers, servants, angels,
ideas, the highest of which is the Logos, who gives God
certainty as to His universe and man hope as to God's
goodness. He is the ambassador, the image of God, the
first-born son of God, a second God. It is doubtful whether
Philo endowed the Logos with personaUty. Man, as in
Plato and the Old Testament, is a f aUen creature ; the
body is evil and the affections are to be eradicated. Reason
must be set over against sense. Evil consists in escaping
from God to seU ; good is the escape from self to God to
whom man is akin. Faith and Love are the helps of the
soul. Salvation is the rising above sense and inteUigence,
even above the Logos, in seU- unconscious ecstasy to behold
the pure reaUty of God. ' The attempt to go beyond con
scious thought had as yet been unknown in Greek philo
sophy. Even after Philo two centuries elapsed before it
was an accepted dogma.' x ' Reason,' says Philo, ' departs
when the spirit of God enters the soul, and returns when
the spirit departs.' Man's chief end is not the reaUsation
of man as man, but absorption in the Divine. Philo
stated the problem 2 which Plotinus professed to solve.
i Zeller, Outlines, p. 325.
* 'If he has not solved the great problem of his time, we may fairly say
that he first stated it in aU its fulness. . . . He first gave utterance to both of
the two great requirements of the religious consciousness, the need for rising
from the finite and relative to the Absolute, and the need of seeing the
Absolute as manifested in the finite and relative ; although he could find no
other reconciliation of these two needs except externally to subordinate the
latter to the former.'— Caird, ii. 208.

192 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [oh.
Neo-Platonism
The founder of Neo-Platonism was the Egyptian
Plotinus. This system is Greek thought tinged with
Oriental mysticism ; it draws from Aristotle, Stoicism,
Philo, but its largest element is Platonism. The whole
system centres round the idea of God. God is to Plotinus
even more transcendent than to Philo. He has no need
of the world or man, is endowed with no external
motion or love. He is apparently not endowed with
personaUty; He is abstract Thought, pure Subject, the
negation of aU that is finite, unknowable. The world
of the phenomenal is the shadow of a shadow ; it is not
the work of God, and indeed God takes no notice of
it. How then account for the world at all ? Plotinus
could surmount this difficulty only by metaphors : the
world is the overflow of the plenitude of the One or the
effluence of the infinite, as heat is of a fire ; it exists
because of the ' necessity of nature,' that ' Being should
produce an image of itseU.' Plotinus closes his eyes to
the unbridged duaUsm, though he too posits intermediaries
such as Pure InteUigence, the Soul of man, or the Soul of
the world. Man is, as to Plato and Philo, a faUen creature
who remembers his native land in a supersensuous world,
and is tortured by his finiteness. Escape consists in rising
above seU-consciousness to complete absorption in the
Infinite. The Ught of reason is extinguished, says Plotinus,
when the soul sees God, and returns when the vision is lost ;
in the Vision Beatific the ' soul forgets its Ufe in the flesh
and forgets even itseU.' Personality, which dawned with
Socrates, surrenders its pain and flees from its perplexity
to a Nirvana. Its cry is ' Oh, that this too too soUd flesh
would melt.' If the soul is not lost in the senses, it is
absorbed in the Infinite. There is no room for any thought
except the thought of God : the soul empties itseU to go
to God empty, but never to be filled ; it is ' the flight of

vi.] THE GREEK 193
the Alone to the Alone.' Plato and Philo had set finite
and infinite in irreconcilable antithesis : ' Plotinus throws
down the bar between finite and infinite.' He never
dreams of the reconciUation of subject and object in a
higher ideal unity. Man is nothing because God is
everything.
Summary
Neo-Platonism is the necessary outcome of Greek
thought : it is the result (and the failure) of Greek (and
Oriental) duaUsm, for which it finds no solution except
the absorption of the lower in the higher. The problem of
knowledge had for over a thousand years agitated the Greek
mind ; here is the despair of knowledge and seU-despair.
The trend of Greek philosophy was from concrete to
abstract, from phenomenal to reaUty, from form to essence ;
here aU things are deprived of essence except the Absolute.
Philosophy had raised problems which only reUgious
experience could solve ; Greek thought recognises that
there is a world beyond knowledge and reason. Know
ledge must give place to Revelation ; the heart requires
satisfaction as weU as the head. Greek thought had not
laboured in vain ; it had victoriously finished its course.
Its failure was its success by assuring men that there must
be a principle of harmony, a synthesis of life, which has to
be sought in spiritual experience. Neo-Platonism was
the last determined effort of Greek thought to overcome
duaUsm by making a leap toward unity. It demanded
the reUgious solution.

N

194 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.

CHAPTER VII
THE ROMAN
Ut inenarrabilis gratiae per totum mundum diffunderetur effectus
Romanum regnum divina providentia praeparavit. — Pope Leo the
Great. The Roman world forms the supremely important point of tran
sition to the Christian religion, the indispensable middle term. —
Hegel (Philosophy of Religion).
Early Christian writers were much impressed with the
fact that the estabUshment of the Roman Empire and the
advent of Christianity were synchronous. Christianity
came in the heyday of ' the grandeur that was Rome.'
We must note briefly the character and genius of those
who finished the preparation of the world for Christ and
who made possible the spread of a universal reUgion.
Roman Character
The Romans have often been compared with the
modern EngUsh, as the Greeks with the French, but
this comparison goes only a short way. There was a
fierce directness and intensity in the Romans, which made
their character, Uke the Hebrew, one-sided. A large
element in it was what we may caU ' common sense,' a
calculating worldly wisdom without any tinge of ideaUsm
or mysticism. They were distinguished for gravitas — a
combination of dignity and self-confidence — and by con-
stantia — a doggedness and steadfastness of character which
made them more akin to the Hebrew than to the Greek.

vn.] THE ROMAN 195
Not original in genius but prosaic,1 they were essentiaUy
conservatives in their outlook upon the world. They were
an official people, and surely the originators of aU ' red-
tape ' systems. Nothing strikes a reader of their constitu
tional history so much as their immense respect, not only
for law, but for forms and formulae : the masses were
often checked in revolutionary schemes by being reminded
of prescribed forms. The Greeks marked their chronology
by the Olympiads; the Romans, an official people, by
consulates. They prided themselves on being a reUgious
people — religiosissimi mortales, says Sallust ; many Roman
and Greek writers attributed the greatness of Rome to
her scrupulous piety. The pius Aeneas was supposed to
be a type of the Latin race. Their reUgion was poUtical :
Hegel treats it as the historic example of a reUgion of
utiUty. They were born soldiers, more patriotic than
any ancient people, and zealous of miUtary honour : dulce
est pro patria mori is a constant sentiment in their Hterature.
The individual Roman was but a link with a glorious past ;
hence the worship of the Manes is genuinely Roman. On
a thousand battlefields, and for a longer period than
any other people, the Romans poured out ungrudgingly
treasures of blood for the Senatus Populusque Romanus or
the Imperium Romanum. The Roman had no fear of
death. The Hebrew could die because he Hved in his race,
and later because of faith in a resurrection. The Greek,
brave in battle, regretted death as taking him away from
this deUghtful world. The Roman with innate Stoicism
of character could die without emotion for the good of
Rome : ' the martyr's ecstasy had no place in his dying
hour.' He had a keen sense of duty. The Roman sentinels
whose remains were found at the gates of Pompeii were
types of their race. Like most peoples who have made
the world debtors, the Romans were self-conscious and
i 'Among the Romans the prose of life makes its appearance — the self-
consciousness of finiteness.'— Hegel, Phil. ofRelig., p. 299.

196 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [en.
self-assertive. Indomitable pride was a large ingredient
in their character. Closely connected with this was their
aggressiveness : the Roman was the John BuU of antiquity.
Many of their wars were pure aggression, but the Roman
never repented. The circumstances of his early history
taught him seU-control and seU-reHance : he prized dis-
cipline ; one of the stones found in the Roman waU
between England and Scotland reads 'To the Discipline
of Augustus.' The habits that the Roman formed as an
agriculturist never entirely left him. In the city he
longed for his country villa or seaside residence to enjoy
his weU-earned otium. The Roman was a domestic man,
attached to home and wUe and children. The Penates
guarded the sanctity of marriage, while the Vestals stood
for the purity of virginity : no ancient history supplies
us with so many noble matrons. There are other elements
less worthy in Roman character. They were materiaUsts ;
they set their heart on power, and to gain the world they
lost their soul. They cared less for the things of the spirit
than did Hebrews and Greeks. Rapacity and greed in
the acquisition of wealth and vulgar ostentation in the use
of it was a common feature of Roman society. IU-gotten
gain undermined character ; power engendered over
weening pride and insolence. There was also an ingrained
coarseness in their nature which the culture of Hellas
could not eradicate. They were indifferent to culture
until they came to Greece, and never assimilated its
essence: the Roman soldier who killed Archimedes was
a type of Rome. The most repulsive feature of the
Romans was their cold-blooded caUousness to suffering ;
hence their dehght in the amphitheatre where the groans
of dying men were music to their ears. The ruins of
amphitheatres rise up against them in judgment. In the
Colosseum, the most majestic material monument of Rome,
thousands of men died to make a Roman hoUday. They
were indifferent even to their own Uves, so that — especially

vii.] THE ROMAN 197
in the closing RepubUc and early Empire — suicide was
frightfuUy common. The Roman always reserved the
right of giving his own quietus — patet exitus.

Genius
The genius 1 of the Romans was not original but of high
mediocrity (though Rome produced perhaps the most
wonderful man in history — Caesar) ; it was massive,
consequently its most characteristic expression was
architecture, which combines art and size. The Roman
mind was not subtle, speculative,2 and metaphysical Uke
the Greek, nor intuitive Uke the Oriental, but docile and
concrete. They were essentiaUy imitative, and good
paymasters, always wiUing to borrow or steal anything
they could find better from other peoples, be it gods,
art, or philosophy. They proved themselves exceUent
organisers. Order was their first law. And this made
them unequalled in legislation. As the Greeks turned
everything into an art, the Romans turned what interested
them into an institution ; they made their reUgion institu
tional as the Roman Church has done with Christianity.
They were intensely practical, rebus natus agendis; they were
master utiUtarians especiaUy in their reUgion. They were
thorough in their work. Cato was a true Roman when he
closed every debate with censeo delendam esse Carthaginem,
and it was destroyed. In their devastations they were very
drastic ; they blotted out almost without a trace the civiUsa-
tions of Etruria and Carthage, annihilated the Samnites,
burned Corinth and Jerusalem to the ground. Their build
ings were built for aU time. Some of the streets of London
are old Roman roads, many of their bridges are stiU stand-
• ' Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento,
Hae tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem,
Parcere subjectis et debcllare superbos.' — Virg., Aen., vi. 851 ff.
2 Cic. (Tusc, ii. 1. 1), cites Ennius as saying, ' philosophari sibi necesse
esse, sed paucis : nam omnino baud placere ' — a genuine Roman sentiment.

198 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
ing, the sewage system of Timgad is in wonderful pre
servation. The Cloaca Maxima (sewer) in Rome is stiU
working after 2500 years.
Rise of the Empire
The people of the toga extended their sway until the
boundary of their dominion was the Euphrates on the East,
the African sands on the South, the Rhine, Danube, and
Scottish Highlands on the North, the Atlantic on the West.
The RepubUc conquered almost all that was permanent
Roman territory. The task of the RepubHcwas to conquer;
that of the Empire to civiUse, conciHate, and unify. The
Mediterranean was converted into one great inland Roman
lake, and for the first time aU the progressive peoples of
the world lived for a considerable period under one flag.
Of course, the extent of Roman dominion varied from time
to time, especiaUy on the Southern Rhine and in North
Britain, on the Danube (Dacia was not permanently
Roman) and the Euphrates. But it will help the reader
more clearly to reaUse its extent around the beginning of
the Christian era to say that it covered the territory of
modern Spain, Portugal, France, south of England, Hol
land, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, South-western Austria,
Southern Germany, Montenegro, Servia, Bulgaria, part of
Roumania, Greece, Turkey in Europe, and nearly aU
Turkey in Asia, Egypt, TripoH, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco,
or a territory, roughly speaking, of 3000 miles long by
2000 broad. The population in the early Empire is usuaUy
estimated at about 100,000,000, and under the Antonines
probably rose to 150,000,000.
The estabHshment of the Roman Empire was the
grandest poUtical achievement of any era ; x it was the
work of Rome's greatest man, Caesar, and bis worthy
1 This section is condensed from the writer's article, ' Roman Empire and
Christianity,' in International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia (Chicago, 1914).

vn.] THE ROMAN 199
successor, Augustus. The Empire was the slow result
of a long process. The social conflicts of Rome could
find no solution except in supreme power raised above
aU classes. The yoke of a narrow, selfish oHgarchy, who
endeavoured to control poUtics, reUgion, social interests,
and justice itseU, grew intolerable to the commons.
Internal dissensions were settled by compromise while
external dangers threatened the RepubHc. The inevitable
colUsion came in the days of the Gracchi over the division
of the spoils of Attalus, King of Pergamus (133 B.C.).
Henceforth, the nobles and the people, oHgarchy and
democracy, are engaged in bloody conflict until, with the
election of the first princeps, democracy secured the
upper hand, and in the hour of victory surrendered its
rights to despotic rule. The ancient traditions and
institutions had been undermined ; the nobiHty were too
effete and selfish to administer, the people too corrupt
to elect and control administration. In the prevalent
corruption resulting from Roman conquests and idleness,
the rich had become richer and the poor poorer ; a sober
middle class was wanting to mediate between the extremes
of society. The whole social equiUbrium was upset.
Justice was impossible before tribunals in the hands of a
privileged class accessible to bribes and jealous to protect
their own order. Elections were impossible because of
bribery and faction ; nomination by a supreme power was
needed. The poHtical machinery of the free state refused
to work because each authority checkmated the other. Em
pire or one-man rule was the triumph of the individuaHsm
which set in during the second Punic war ; the struggle
of individuals could only result in the survival of the fittest.
PoHtical parties degenerated into factions led by ambitious
leaders whose aim was seU-aggrandisement : they nomi
nated their Ueutenants and dictated poHcy. The whole
trend was toward monarchy. In the Republic Cicero
makes Scipio declare for monarchy. There was a universal

200 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
thirst for power. The Senate sought a succession of
extraordinary commissions for its members : the tribunate
of C. Gracchus was autocratic enough. When Pompey
received a command in Spain he, in regal fashion, remained
in Italy and operated through legates. There was a general
reluctance to lay down commands ; office was extended to
long periods or repeatedly conferred ; Marius was consul
seven times, SuUa five, and Cinna three. Prolonged miHtary
commands accustomed armies to their generals, to whom
they transferred the allegiance due to the state. The
secret of empire had already been discovered in the adher
ence of strong armies. Too often civil power was surren
dered into the hands of a dictator, as to Sulla and Caesar.
When one man could not have his own way he combined
with coUeagues, as in the triumvirates, which each manipu
lated for his own interest. The most hopeless feature
of this period was that miHtary authority secured the
ascendency over civil. AU classes and parties were
exhausted and prepared to welcome supreme power.
True patriots acclaimed a solution that promised peace
and stabiUty to society : the large numbers of traders
and smaU merchants and freedmen desired peace at any
cost. The oppressed provincials were more accustomed
to despotic power, and, besides, they could not be worse
harassed under any other form of government ; they
sought a master to whom they could appeal against
injustice. Add to this the influence of the Oriental idea
of power over the minds of Roman rulers ; the emperors
graduaUy extended their autocracy until Diocletian con
verted the monarchy into an Oriental despotism. The
conquests of the RepubUc had rendered imperial power
a necessity. An oligarchy engaged in perpetual class
conflict at home was not fitted to rule a widely scattered
and diverse dominion. The variety of people and nations
under the Roman eagle could be better governed under
monarchical rule, just as the Austro-Hungarian and the

vn.] THE ROMAN 201
British Empires are perhaps better held together under
monarchy than under any other form of government.

Mission of Rome
If the Empire was founded in aggression and bloodshed,
it can hardly be disputed that it proved the greatest
blessing to its subjects ; its estabfishment was hailed
with an outburst of universal applause. Many of the
Caesars were vicious men, but they were unconsciously
the instruments of God's purpose in history. Rome,
especiaUy the Empire, executed a large mission for the
ancient world. Its rulers are an iUustration of the saying
of CromweU that we never rise so high as when we are
unconscious of what we do. The mission of Rome may be
thus summarised : —
1. Rome first protected the West against the East, and
then kept guard in both West and East while Western cul
ture and Eastern reUgions,especiaUyChristianity, conquered
her Empire. The student of Greek and Roman history is
famiUar with the constant Oriental peril. Greece in her
day stayed it ; with a poUtical or miHtary predominance
of the East the centuries would have passed noiselessly
over us, as over the East, without setting up any great
landmarks of progress. Carthage was the first Oriental
power with which Rome came in conflict. Every school
boy is distressed that his hero did not conquer Scipio at
Zama, until he later comes to reaUse what the spread of
Carthaginian civiHsation over the Mediterranean shores
would have meant : Zama settled the future of the
Mediterranean and of Western Europe. The Orient
found again no mean champion in Mithridates of Pontus,
who was finaUy driven back by Pompey. The question
decided in the Roman civil wars at Actium was whether
the Eastern or Western haU of the Empire should hold
the sword ; Actium was a second Zama. Another strong

202 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
Eastern power Rome held in check for long, Parthia, until
it revived as a Persian power under the Sassanides.
The East had always exercised a curious fascination
over Roman minds. From the days of Hadrian it was
quite evident that the centre of gravity was shifting
eastwards. With the removal of the capital to Con
stantinople, that became an accompUshed fact. Roman
emperors had previously" become Eastern monarchs.
When East did secure the ascendency over West, Rome
was able to surrender her educating and civiHsing mission
to an Eastern reUgion.
2. Rome protected and extended Greek culture.
HeUenism was so closely alHed to Christianity that what
Rome did for HeUenism she did for Christianity. It was
from the Greeks that the Romans acquired a taste for the
things of the spirit. It gave new vigour to exhausted
Greece to find the mighty Romans sitting at her feet as
pupils and imitators. The respect with which Rome
treated Greek culture raised its value over the Empire,
and Rome opened the whole world to the intellectual
conquests of Greece.
3. Rome continued and forwarded most of the social
and poUtical work of Greece. The Greek ideal was equal
liberty under law for all. Roman statesmen acquainted
themselves with the poUtical speculations and institutions
of Greece. Rome showed how men could Uve in large
national unities and in one Empire under justly admini
stered laws. They learned to f oUow the logic of facts better
than the Greeks could ever have done. They contributed
toward the solution of many social problems which agitated
Greece : they slowly extended the franchise and made
conquered people and even slaves Romans. They fought
out to the bitter end the strife of classes versus masses
until an overlord led the latter to victory. But the
Romans were not so democratic as the Greeks, because
they were not so well educated and were more content

vn.] THE ROMAN 203
with formulae. The Roman constitution was theoreticaUy
democratic but practicaUy oHgarchical. OUgarchy main
tained a tyranny through RepubHcan history, and in
the Empire gave place to despotism. These poUtical
considerations are of importance for the democratic
organisation of early Christianity.
4. The more immediate mission of the Empire was to
consoUdate and civiHse, to caU order out of social chaos,
to restore peace and security to society. Rome had a
genius for order and organisation. Had the civil strife
been protracted much longer, the whole fabric of ancient
society must have f aUen hopelessly to pieces and the newly
conquered provinces lapsed into anarchy. For centuries
Rome had been engaged in ruthless conquests. She had
puUed down ; now she must build up. The Empire gave
a weary world a period of rest and recuperation from
untold suffering and social upheavals. She first removed
the causes of quarrelling by wiping out old prejudices, by
preventing class from making reprisal upon class ; she
forbade nations to go to war, and removed diversity of
governments ; she put an end to the bitterness of city
rivalry and extended means of communication.
The justly celebrated Roman peace — pads Romanae
majestas — was the first world-peace, lasting for more than
two hundred years. The whole civifised world was prac
ticaUy at rest when Christianity appeared. After centuries
of commotion, Hfe could resume its normal course and
men could devote themselves to the works of peace and to
the demands of their inner Ufe. The Romans were the
harbingers of the ' peace on earth, good will to men,' of
the Evangel. The temple of Janus was closed three times
during the reign of the first emperor, and an Ara Pacis
was erected in Rome 13 B.C. This peace was ' settled
peace, too, such as never came again tiU after Waterloo,'
and an inestimable boon to that exhausted world. Had
a lasting peace not been restored, ancient society would

204 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
have been enguUed before it had fulfiUed its historic
function.1 AU who represented the traditions of the past
would have been wiped out, and thus a steadying principle
lost. But for this peace, that bankruptcy which overtook
the later Empire would have come three centuries too
early. The provinces were exhausted by the armies
biUeted on them, by compulsory contributions, huge im
posts for revenue, by the decimating and shifting of the
population; their lands were untiUed, their implements
removed, their buildings in ruins, their sons drafted into
the AuxiUaries or kiUed in Roman quarrels. Roman
peace at least postponed threatening calamity. Agriculture
revived ; the wilderness was reclaimed, for the Roman
could turn the desert into a garden. The second century
a.d. was probably the happiest era of the old world. In
peace enormous cash came again into circulation ; buUion
and coin concealed in civil commotion now furnished
employment. This money was sent back to the provinces
to pay Roman troops or to meet vast orders of luxuries.
All, except those needed for garrison duty, returned to
the productive labours of peace : the Romans, Hke the
British, governed by prestige and authority and not by
large garrisons : an army of about 300,000 men guarded
a territory now guarded by miUions. Commerce revived
under the aegis of peace. The Mediterranean, cleared of
pirates, was a safer highway of trade and travel than at
1 Virgil could well say, « Deus nobis haec otia fecit.' The Halicarnassus
inscription hails Augustus as 'Saviour of the whole human race whose
providence fulfilled and surpassed the prayers of all' (ourr/pa tov
koikov rwv ai>0p<!nro>v yivovs oS ¦>) rpbvoia ras it&vtwv ei\as oix iirMipwae
dXXa /cal virepjjpev). Another inscription says of the same emperor, 'he
gave a new aspect to the world that would gladly have perished ' (iripav re
ijiajKev iravrl rip K6<riup ijSurTa iv Sega/ttvip (pOophv). Cf. Origen citing
Melito (c. Celsum, ii. 30). ' In the days of Jesus righteousness arose and
fulness of peace ; it began with his birth. God prepared the nations for his
teaching by causing the Roman emperor to rule over all the world ; there
was no longer to be a plurality of kingdoms, else would the nations have
been strangers to one another, and so the Apostles would have found it
harder to carry out the task laid on them by Jesus when he said, ' ' Go and
teach all nations " ' (cited in Harnack, Mission, i. 20).

vn.] THE ROMAN 205
any time up to the middle of last century. Peace gave an
impetus to inteUectual and' moral Ufe. Men exchanged
not only material but spiritual wares. In the period of
turmoil man's interest centred upon his very existence,
iUicit paths to seU-aggrandisement were many, and every
man's hand was against his brother ; but now that the
laws of society were again vindicated, men had leisure to
direct attention to the needs of the inner life. Under
Augustus there was a reUgious revival.
5. Rome not only restored order but she unified the
world and blended the nations in preparation for the
Gospel : x aU Uved together under her roof. It was a dis
covery to find that men of every race and nation, of every
degree of culture, and of social distinction, could Uve to
gether in peace. AU civiUsed peoples practicaUy Hved under
one rule. Augustus erected a golden milestone in the Forum
as the world's centre. Never had the happiness or misery
of humanity so depended on the decisions of a single will
in one centre. CosmopoHtanism reached its acme in the
Empire : the world was one commonwealth. The Romans,
though they refused home rule to the provinces, were
tolerant of their traditions, customs, reUgion, and a certain
degree of local autonomy. With few exceptions, and those
in the interest of good government, Rome left every man to
his gods and maintained the tolerant poHcy inaugurated
by Alexander. The RepubHcan poHcy conceded no rights
to the conquered. Caesar inaugurated a conciUatory
poUcy toward the conquered, and was the first Roman to
dream of extending Roman rights and citizenship to all.
Under the Empire the more Hberal policy was carried out.
The guU between Romans and provincials was graduaUy
bridged until CaracaUa granted citizenship to all the free
inhabitants. The Empire and the Church were simul-
1 W. T. Arnold notes that the two centrifugal forces in the Empire were
(1) the essential difference between East and West, and (2) the new religion-
Christianity.

206 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
taneously aiming at universaHsm. The place of Rome as
the centre of the world to which aU roads led, the presence
of the ubiquitous Roman authorities, the Uving symbol
of power in the emperor, the imperial cult, the elevation
of provincial and non-Roman emperors, the increasing
numbers of Romanised freedmen, Roman law and language,
the extension of Roman citizenship — aU worked for the
unification of mankind.
The Roman did not — could not — complete the work
of unification which is stiU a dream. It behoves us,
trammeUed by the traditions of feudaUsm, to criticise
leniently Roman efforts to make the world a good place
to Uve in. After Rome's work of pacification there still
remained the antithesis of bond and free. The poor and
hungry masses are with us as they were with the Romans.
6. Rome protected what is now modern civiUsation
against the irruptions of the Northern barbarians, until
they, educated by her law and language and impressed
with her greatness, became docile pupils of the Christian
Church, and with their unspent energies took up the inherit
ance of Rome to pass it on to later generations. But for
Rome, the Parthians, Saracens, and Ottomans on the East,
and the barbarians on the North might have blotted out
modern civiUsation. Rome thus proved the Unk between
the old and the new, and passed on to us ' the long results
of time.' Augustine says of the Roman Empire sua se
magnitudine fregit, but from its ruins arose modern
civiUsation. 7. Rome not only rescued the West, but she civiHsed
and prepared it for Christianity as Greece had done
the East. Though Rome conquered the East she was
HeUenised there. In the West she came in contact with
inferior civiUsations which she Romanised by impressing
upon them her language, laws, and institutions. What
Greece had done for her she in turn did for the West.
Her language Uves in the Romance tongues, her laws in

vn.] THE ROMAN 207
aU Western codes. While Christianity was spreading in
the riper Eastern section, Rome was preparing the West
for the Gospel, teaching barbarians respect for authority,
imparting a taste for inteUectual and spiritual things,
building bridges and roads, and supplying Christianity
with a unUorm language. It should not be forgotten that
Christianity came to the West — to Rome and South Gaul
— in Greek and to Greek communities, but after this initial
stage the Christian preachers were able to penetrate the
West on the tracks of Roman civiUsation.
8. To catalogue the material benefits conferred on the
world by Rome is beyond the purpose of this book. Rome's
spiritual weapon was her law : she kept order and acted
as poUceman whUe the emissaries of the Cross preached.
Rome did much in commonplace and material things.
She kept untiring watch on the Nile, Euphrates, Danube,
and Rhine. She built roads and erected bridges for the
heralds of the Cross ; she spared no toil in building aque
ducts to carry an abundant supply of fresh water to cities ;
she introduced sanitary arrangements which — as Timgad
shows — are thoroughly modern. If Rome could ruthlessly
destroy she could also turn the desert into a garden.
TraveUing through North Africa, one finds abundant proof
that Rome was a blessing to those provinces which have,
until recently, lain waste. Remains of Roman villas
and baths with mosaics are found in regions where for
miles there are now only nomad tents. The same is true
of Syria and Asia Minor.
9. The Roman Empire formed the poHtical framework
for Christianity. Here was a universal Empire crying out
for a universal reUgion. The Judaic section of the early
Church would have rendered Christianity merely a reformed
Judaism. It was a Roman citizen, who appreciated the
Empire, that enthusiasticaUy supported in a Greek city the
mission to the nations. The Empire was a standing
challenge to Christianity: it enlarged the horizon of

208 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
Christian missionaries. Surely Christ must reign over a
dominion as wide as that of Caesar. If the Empire em
braced aU men, why should Christianity aim at less ? With
but few faint and uncertain traditions (as that of Thomas
and Bartholomew in India, and of Thomas in Parthia),
the activity of Christian preachers lay whoUy within the
Empire, because the Empire was practically synonymous
with humanitas — the genus humanum. There were three
determining factors in the spread of early Christianity:
(a) the Jewish settlements of the Diaspora ; (b) the area
in which Greek was spoken, and (c) the centres of popula
tion and Roman administration on the great Roman roads ;
these three usuaUy coincided. Christianity gained its
first foothold in Europe in two Roman colonies — Philippi,
which was so Roman that it had no Jewish synagogue,
and Corinth, refounded by Caesar.

vin.] THE LANGUAGE OF CHRISTIANITY 209

CHAPTER VIII
THE LANGUAGE OF CHRISTIANITY
Die Bihel, deren Gott Jahveh heisst, ist die Bibel eines Volkes ;
die Bibel deren Gott Kipios heisst, ist die Weltbibel. — Deissmaun.
First International Tongues
A universal Empire and a universal religion demanded
a universal language. NationaUties were so mixed and
blended that a common linguistic medium was a necessity.
The question of a universal language, natural or artificial,
did not at first concern the ancients. Yet we know of
early international languages. Egypt and Assyria seem
to have been the first to need such a medium. In the
Tel-el-Amarna tablets (about 1400 B.C.), we have the
diplomatic correspondence in old Babylonian of the
Pharaohs Amenophis m. and iv. with the kings of Assyria,
Babylonia, Mitani (Mesopotamia), and Cyprus, and the
Egyptian officials and vassals in Canaan.
The Persian Empire stretching from the Indus to the Nile
was without a uruform language for its dominions : the
old Babylonian stiU maintained a place in the centre of
the former Babylonian Empire. Old Persian was made
the court language — the language in which the Behistun
rock memorials are carved. But westwards from the
Euphrates Aramaic was adopted as the official language,
and became the first international tongue. It dislodged
the sacred language in Palestine, was spoken by the Eastern
Diaspora, was used by Egyptian officials, and is found in
O

210 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
the Jewish papyri of Elephantine. Aramaic, however,
never spread beyond the Orient, and never took root in
Indo-Germanic soil. It is to the Greeks we owe the
language that was not only the international bond of the
Orient but the first medium for East and West.
But the tongue spoken by the people caUing themselves
HeUenes was for long by no means a unity. It was broken
up into dialects as distinct from one another as are the
present Romance tongues. How did a world-speech arise
out of these dialects ? The Eoini
Several causes contributed toward a common Greek
language. The increasing cosmopoUtanism defied dialects ;
the breaking up of Greek autonomy and exclusiveness ren
dered men more interested in other Greek clans. The Greek
genius for commerce, the hosts of mercenaries, the stan
dardising of Attic, all pointed to a common tongue. But
the mightiest factor was the campaigns of Alexander. He
united Greece, then amalgamated Greek and Macedonian,
with them conquered the East and opened it up to Greek
language and culture. In his army Greeks from all parts
met : they no longer regarded themselves as Athenians,
Spartans, or Boeotians, but HeUenes. And Greek was the
only Unguistic medium which Alexander found available
to govern his vast territory. He planted Greek colonies
everywhere, in which Greek clans and Macedonians side by
side with Orientals needed a common language. As unity
was thus impressed on Greece from without, and the world
opened to her culture and enterprise, the dialects which
represented her exclusiveness gave way to a Koini from
the fourth century B.C. onwards. Thus arose that Greek
language known as the Koini, i.e. ' common language,'
or Hellenistic Greek — the language in which the New
Testament is written and in which the Gospel was first

vm.] THE LANGUAGE OF CHRISTIANITY 211
carried to the nations. This Koini is built on the basis
of Attic with contributions from the various other dialects.1
The language of the New Testament 2 and of early Chris
tianity is predominantly the vernacular spoken language
as distinguished from the Hterary Koini of writers Hke
Josephus and Polybius.
Greek was the lingua franca of the eastern part of
the Roman Empire, the language of culture, commerce,
diplomacy and administration. The spread of the Greek
language was a very favourable circumstance for the
preaching of the Gospel. Under Alexander and the
Diadochi, Greek not only strengthened its position on the
sea-coast, but penetrated inland in Egypt and in Asia
Minor. Every new Greek foundation was a centre of
HeUenism. The Greeks, Hke the modern EngUsh-speaking
peoples, did not take the trouble to learn foreign languages:
they obUged foreigners to learn Greek. When the Roman
appeared in the East, Greek was too firmly rooted to be
dislodged : though Roman pride could recognise only
Latin as the official speech, they found in Greek a useful
bond and aUy of their administration. A Greek transla
tion appeared along with Latin official documents : the
Latin was always the original, as Roman officials would
not deign to issue Greek documents and then make transla
tions from them. Importance of Greek
It was not by accident that Christianity appeared at
the one time in history when Greek was the sole interna
tional medium for all the civiHsed peoples of the Empire.
It was the first moment in history when all men could easily
exchange thought. The spread of Greek neutraUsed the
1 Cf. Thumb, D. griech. Sprache, ch. iii.
s Cf. the writer's article, ' The Koine, the Language of the New Testa-
ment,' in Princeton Theological Review, Jan. 1910.

212 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
confusion of Babel. And Greek was the language in which
an Aramaic Gospel became a world-evangel : all the
missionary activity of early Christianity was practicaUy
confined to Greek-speaking people. The early missionaries
did not leam the enchoric vernaculars, and apparently
attempted no peasant mission : they probably regarded
the Parousia as too imminent, or recognised that if the
Greek-speaking peoples were Christianised the Kingdom
would soon come among the rest. Further, it was in Greek
soil that Christianity took at first its firmest root, and on
Greek territory it carried on its most active propaganda,
and by means of Greek secured its first footing in the
West. Such considerations show us how important and
indeed necessary for the success of Christianity was the
spread of Greek. It would hardly be fair to attribute the
rapid spread of Christianity merely to the fact that aU
spoke Greek. As Mahaffy remarks, wherever Greek was
spoken or known it was accompanied by a certain amount
of Greek culture and Greek thought, the needs and the
ideals of the Greek spirit. That the Gospel was so
successful on Greek territory proves therefore that not
only the Greek tongue but the indefatigable efforts of the
Greek spirit prepared the way for Christ — if in no other
way than by raising problems which only Christianity could
solve, and by giving clear expression to needs that only
Christianity could satisfy. It is worth while to dwell
briefly on the expansion of Greek and the influence which
it exercised. Spread of Greek
It is significant that the most Hellenistic book in the
New Testament — the Fourth Gospel — teUs us that when
Jesus learned that some Greeks had expressed the wish ' we
would see Jesus,' He answered, ' the hour is come that the
Son of Man should be glorified.' This was tantamount to
a confession that if the Greek world accepted Him the whole

vm.] THE LANGUAGE OF CHRISTIANITY 213
world would foUow. Cicero in 62 b.c says, 'if anyone
thinks he wiU reap less fruit of glory from Greek verses
than from Latin he is totaUy mistaken ; for Greek is read
by practicaUy the whole world, while Latin is confined to
its own territory, which is narrow indeed.' Throughout
the East Greek was so weU known that the Romans were
obUged and even glad to accept it as a means of administra
tion. An encycHcal letter (1 Peter), addressed to Jewish
Christians of the Diaspora 'in Pontus, Galatia, Cappa-
docia, Asia and Bithynia,' was written in Greek. Paul
addressed Roman Christians in Greek, and the author of
the Epistle to the Hebrews uses the world-language. The
Jerusalem mob expected Paul to address them in Greek
(Acts xxi.). Justin Martyr of Shechem knew no Hebrew
or Aramaic, and uses only the Septuagint. An Ethiopian
eunuch read a Hebrew prophet in a language that PhiHp,
a HeUenist, easily recognised ; he was reading the fifty-
third chapter of Isaiah. In the grammar-schools of the
West Greek was taught beside Latin, while in the East
apparently Latin was not taught beside Greek.
In Rome and Italy Greek was weU-known. Horace
complains that ' captive Greece led captive babarous
Rome.' From the second century B.C. Rome feU more and
more under the speU of Greece. Romans sent their sons
to Greek universities, or retained Greek tutors for their
children, and private Greek chaplains as moral directors
in their homes. Greek Hterary slaves fetched large prices.
Greek artists, architects, and less honourable professions
found abundant employment in Rome. The medical
profession was almost entirely Greek. Roman Hbraries
consisted largely of Greek books. The Roman theatre
imitated Greek models in its best days. Latin was forged
into a Hterary language on Greek models. The earUest
historians of Rome, Fabius Pictor and AUmentus, wrote in
Greek. Cicero testifies that about the beginning of the
first century B.C. Italy was full of Greek arts and learning.

214 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
The grandest characters of Rome were moulded and con
soled by a Greek reUgious philosophy, Stoicism ; the less
spiritual had recourse to the Hcence and negations of
another Greek philosophy, Epicureanism. Cato Uticensis
died by his own hand after reading the Phaedo. The elder
Cato, an opponent of everything un-Roman, learned Greek
in his old age lest the god of the lower world should not
understand Latin. Marius's ignorance of Greek is noted
as exceptional by Plutarch. A Roman emperor penned his
seU-analysis in Greek. Juvenal speaks of the Greeks as
a gens acceptissima to the wealthy Romans, and com
plains "non possum ferre, Quirites, | Graecam Urbem.'
He vents his spleen on the Graecula wUe who does not
care to know Latin, but expresses her fears, wrath, joys,
cares, and aU the secrets of the heart in Greek (Sat. vi.,
184 ff.). Greek love- terms were in vogue among the
Romans, and Roman lovers often employed Greek to
set forth their lady's charms. Roman statesmen and
generals often carried to the field a Greek phUosopher as
a war correspondent. Foreign lecturers Hke the Egyptian
Plotinus would lecture in Greek at Rome. The Greek
towns throughout southern Italy created a Greek atmo
sphere. It was not Italy but Africa or Syria 1 that first
demanded a Latin Bible.
Greek in the Diaspora
The attitude of the Jews toward Greek culture and
language is important for the history of Christianity.
Here we must distinguish those of the Diaspora from those
of Palestine! Those of the extreme eastern Dispersion
in Babylonia and the Euphrates region spoke an eastern
Aramaic, and there up to late times rabbinic schools
flourished. In the countries of Asia Minor as far as
i A good case for Syria (Antioch) is made by H. A. A. Kennedy in The Old
Latin Versions, Hastings' D. B., iii. 54 ff.

vtn.] THE LANGUAGE OF CHRISTIANITY 215
Mesopotamia, inscriptions prove that the Jews spoke
Greek : we have similar evidence for the Crimea. In
Egypt where the LXX was caUed for, and where Jewish
writers used Greek, the common language of the Jews was
Greek, as also in Cyrene and Crete. In the Aegean islands
their language was also Greek, as we infer from the Rheneia
and other inscriptions. Their tombstones in Rome prove
that there they spoke Greek. Hebrew is not found on
Jewish tombstones, and we may be sure that if the sacred
language had been at aU famiUar we should find it there.
The language of the Jewish Dispersion was the universal
language. AU the reHcs of Diaspora writing from the last
centuries B.C. are in Greek. Greek was the language of
their commerce, tombstones, propaganda, Scriptures, even
of their prayers and synagogue worship. That Greek was
the language of their synagogue and worship is most
striking, for men are most conservative in holy things.
Yet this may be accepted as an estabUshed fact in opposi
tion to Lightfoot and others. ' The language of the
worship (in the synagogue) was, as a rule, without doubt
Greek,' says Schiirer. The very fact of the enormous
success of the Jewish propaganda compels us to suppose
that it was carried on in Greek. We find Paul addressing
in the synagogues IsraeUtes and God-fearing heathen
whose common language was Greek. Besides, the Jews
in their proselytising zeal would not be Hkely to use an
unknown tongue in the synagogue, the fulcrum of their
proselytising. That the LXX was the Diaspora Bible and
used in the synagogue services is testified by several
Church Fathers. The two inscriptions from Rheneia,
the island burying-place of Delos, show that the LXX
was the Bible of the Diaspora there as early as 100 B.C.
If the Hebrew text was used in the synagogue it was
paraphrased into Greek. It is also altogether unUkely
that the scattered Jews surrounded by those speaking the
universal language, and always ready to learn from the

216 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [oh.
Greeks in everything that did not touch upon religion,
should desire or be able to maintain their home language
in which they could not communicate with outsiders.
Paul, though educated at Jerusalem, is famiUar with the
Old Testament only in the LXX. Zahn is surely mis
taken in arguing from the word Abba that Aramaic was
the language of his prayers ; the word was used Uke Pater
noster among us, and Paul foUows it up immediately with
the Greek equivalent. Cleomedes refers to the bad Greek
used in the synagogue. The translating of the Hebrew
text into Greek was universally aUowed. One exclusive
authority forbids the Torah to be translated into any
language except that of the Javanim, i.e. Greeks.
Greek in Palestine
The home-keeping Palestinian Jew was more conserva
tive. But Palestine forming, as it were, the pivot of East
and West, could not effectuaUy exclude Greek influence.
Greek customs were known, Greek names for articles of
common use were employed, but the vernacular language
of Palestine and Syria was western Aramaic. The people
of the land were famiUar only with Aramaic. In the
synagogues of Palestine as of Babylon the Hebrew text
was paraphrased into Aramaic. Josephus confesses he had
a poor mastery of Greek pronunciation : he also says that
the Jews (of Palestine) did not encourage the knowledge
of Greek (Ant., xx. 11, 2). Even in Jerusalem the people
understood Aramaic better than Greek, as we infer from
Acts xxi. 40 ; xxii. 2. Titus summoned the people of
Jerusalem to surrender in Aramaic. In the Christian
church of ScythopoUs, in the time of Diocletian, it was
necessary to have an official to translate Greek into
Aramaic, and in Jerusalem as late as the end of the fourth
century Greek was so Httle understood that the bishop
required somebody to translate his sermons into Syrian,

vm.] THE LANGUAGE OF CHRISTIANITY 217
i.e. Aramaic : ' For the mass of the people the knowledge
of Greek is not proved. In reaUty one must suppose that
the lower classes in Palestine had either no acquaintance,
or only a scant acquaintance, with Greek,' x but Schiirer
admits that this scanty knowledge was very widespread.
On the other hand, Palestine was not only surrounded by
HeUenism, but HeUenism penetrated even into the Holy
Land and spread in its capital. Palestine was hemmed
in by Greek towns on the west coast, on the north and the
east. It contained Greek centres like Samaria, Scytho
poUs, Tiberias, and Caesarea Phihppi on the borders.
Great commercial highways traversed the country.
Palestine both before and after the Hasmoneans was
governed by rulers of Greek culture. The Hellenising
process under the Seleucids was carried on successfuUy,
and was stayed only by the mad efforts of Antiochus
Epiphanes to hasten it. Even then it was not arrested
by the higher classes but by the common folk. The
Herodians again took up the work of Hellenising, but the
native opposition to them, and hostiUty to the Roman
government, rendered the people by this time exclusive.
The higher classes spoke Greek and were famiUar with
Greek culture. The Hasmoneans employed Greek and
Aramaic on their coins, the Herodians and Romans only
Greek on the Judaean coinage. In the capital Greek
must have been more or less famiUar owing to the sym
pathy of the leaders, and especiaUy owing to the enormous
numbers of HeUenistic Jews visiting the festivals, and
thousands of them returned to spend their last days under
the shadow of the temple. We read (Acts vi. 9) of the
synagogue of ' the Libertines, and of the Cyrenians, and
of the Alexandrians, and of them of CiUcia and Asia,'
where a synagogue of each is probably impHed. Also
vast numbers of Greek proselytes and God-fearers visited
the Holy City. These Hellenistic Jews and proselytes
1 Schiirer, ii. 84.

218 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
spoke Greek and must have been people of some substance,
which in itseU would encourage others to learn their
language, and, as before remarked, Greek-speaking people
obUged others to leam their language. In GaUlee of the
nations a portion of the city populations was undoubtedly
Greek. When Jerome was looking for a copy of Aquila
he could not find one except in a Gafilean synagogue. At
the trading centres Uke Capernaum we must suppose that
Greek was famiUar. When PhiHp went down into Samaria
to preach Christ, he presumably did so in Greek. Zahn
says that the inhabitants of the towns were famiUar with
Greek, and Palestine at the Christian era had numerous
flourishing towns. In the war of Quietus (al. Titus) the
reUgious authorities forbade parents to give their children
a Greek education, from which we infer that such education
had been common. Language of Jesus
What language did our Lord speak? The question is
rather not whether He could speak Aramaic or Greek, but
which language did He habituaUy speak ? While it is
impossible to dogmatise, there can be Httle doubt that
Jesus habituaUy used Aramaic in daily intercourse with
His disciples and in His pubUc teaching and prayers.
Jesus was counted * unlearned ' : He was one of the
people, and His message was primarily to the peasant
class and to the poor and the Httle ones. He was trained
in the seclusion of Nazareth, where there is no reason to
suppose any appreciable foreign influence. A few of His
original expressions are preserved to us : His cry on the
Cross was in the language of His childhood. At such a
crisis one uses the language that comes nearest the heart.
Besides, the Synoptic differences are often expHcable on
an Aramaic original : this argument in recent years has
gained considerably in cogency.

vm.] THE LANGUAGE OF CHRISTIANITY 219
Jesus knew and could use Greek when occasion required.
Some of His pubUc utterances may have been made in
Greek. When Jesus Journeyed into a Greek region out
side Galilee we read of no interpreter being necessary;
the Syro-Phoenician woman, a Greek, understood Him,
and He understood her. She seems also to have under
stood His conversation with His disciples which was pro
bably in Greek. A great part of Jesus' pubHc ministry
was in GaUlee, where a considerable proportion of the town
populations must have been Greek, especiaUy at a customs-
centre Hke Capernaum. When certain Greeks desired to
see Jesus He apparently required no intermediaries. One
whose Gospel was intended for all nations could hardly be
indifferent to what He must have known to be the universal
language. His trial before Pilate must have been conducted
in Greek. We shaU not be far wrong in saying that Jesus
habituaUy used His native Aramaic in His private devo
tions and pubHc teaching, but could command Greek
when it was necessary, or when He could secure a better
hearing. Greek was the language used at the earUest conversion of
Gentiles (Ethiopian eunuch and CorneHus) , in Greek the first
mission was carried beyond Jerusalem to Samaria, in Greek
the Gospel outgrew Palestinian Judaism and started on its
world-mission in Syria and Asia, in Greek the Gospel was
transferred from Asia to Europe (PhiUppi, Thessalonica,
and Corinth), in Greek the Gospel was domiciled in Rome
and the West; the correspondence, Hterature, and Hturgy of
the Roman Church for two centuries was Greek, its bishops
bore Greek names until towards the end of the second
century ; the majority of the catacomb inscriptions until
the middle of the third century are in Greek, not Latin ;
in Greek the Gospel first migrated westwards from Rome
to South Gaul. The Greek language was in some way
alfied with the Gospel : it was a promise of the universal
ism of the Gospel that it adopted the universal language

220 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [oa
¦ — the language which all races and creeds spoke or under
stood, and in which the first putHnes of universal history
were recorded.
The Gospel went first where the greatest need was felt
— to the eastern Greek-speaking haU of the Empire.
This soil was most fuUy prepared. The East had been
educated by centuries of culture and had been offered
the best that Orientalism, Judaism, and Hellenism could
afford. Its moral and spiritual capacities were greater;
it was waiting for deHverance in a way unknown to the
barbaric West. It had been penetrating the secrets of
its own nature ; knowledge had brought disquietude ; the
heart was crying for sympathy and longing to find a
harmony above aU discord. The mysteries of the East
had nourished longings they could never satisfy; the voice
of philosophy was uncertain. Where was a Revelation to
be found ? The Latin West
While the Gospel was being preached in Greek in the East,
the Romans were preparing the way for its extension to the
West. The peoples of the Danube and the Rhine, North
western Spain and Britain, were not yet haU civiUsed. It
was the task of Rome to make these peoples ready for
the Gospel, to furnish Christianity with another universal
language, to unify, to civiHse and educate by her law and
discipUne for the discipHne of the Gospel. Hers it was,
too, in Her own seniHty to hand over the great tasks in
which she had so signally succeeded, and that in which she
had so egregiously failed, to the sera atque idea inexhausta
juventas of the North. She conserved what was best and
most essential in the old to bequeath to her historic
successors. She finaUy surrendered her sceptre to the
Church to which she had given a language and a poUty
and a world-outlook. The Vulgate proved to the West

vm.] THE LANGUAGE OF CHRISTIANITY 221
what the LXX had been to the East ; it was for hundreds
of years the only universal Bible of Europe ; it became
directly or indirectly the parent of aU the vernacular
versions of Western Europe (except the Gothic).
Thus the Greeks and the Romans translated an Aramaic
Gospel into universal languages for the peoples of the
earth.

222 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.

CHAPTER IX
IN THE FULNESS OF TIME
When the fulness of the time oame God sent forth His son ; . . .
to sum up all things in Christ.
The ' fulness of the time ' for the Gospel came when Greek con
quered Jew and Jew conquered Greek, and the world inherited the
legacy of their struggle through Roman hands. — Mablamt.
How were Pity understood,
Unless by Pain J Bbownqto.
East and West converging
Christ appeared at the time when aU the striving and hopes
of aU peoples were converging to a focus, when the vast
majority of mankind were hungering for reUgious support,1
when East and West had been wedded, when men were
expecting a new era, when the philosophy of Greece and
the reUgious consciousness of the Hebrew were pointing
toward a new Revelation. Christ came at the one time
in history when aU civiUsed nations Hved, as it were,
under one roof, when the happiness of mankind depended
on the wiU of one, when all were able to communicate in
l 'To raise religious need to such a level that the quickening impulse
necessarily awakens in unsatisfied aspirations, and the mind becomes creative,
was the task of those last two centuries B.C., which were granted such scant
measure of earthly happiness. '— Hausrath (N. T. Times— Apostles, i. 34). ' It
was into no unspiritual world that the Christian religion came, but
a world rather of seething hopes and dreams and premonitory glimpses.
These hopes the Gospel was to realise. But it realised them, we may
believe, not by borrowing ideas, or decking itself out in aneient symbols,
but by the exhibition of a fact within the field of history in which were
more than fulfilled the inextinguishable yearnings of the world's desire.'—
Mackintosh, Person of Jesus Christ, p. 533.

ix.] IN THE FULNESS OF TIME 223
one language, when men were unanimous as to the perils
and needs of the world, when there was peace on earth,
when there was ' one empire, one universal language, one
civiUsation, a common development toward monotheism,
and a common yearning for saviours.'

Greatest Crisis in History
Theadvent of Christ synchronised with what is admittedly
the greatest crisis in aU history, ' the coming of age of the
human race,' x when aU that men had struggled for during
long centuries seemed Ukely to disappear from earth,
when chaos threatened to reassert its primeval reign.
Never before or since has the world been so utterly
exhausted 2 as at this Wendezeit, after the internecine
Greek strife, the incessant conflicts of the Diadochi, the
rebellion of Oriental nationalism, the bloody riots of the
HeUenistic cities, the increase of mercenaries and outlaws
(almost as unprincipled as the Crusaders), the ruthless
conquests and yet more ruthless civil wars of Rome, the
reign of terror under the emperors who executed the
judgment of Heaven upon the oUgarchy that had wrought
more havoc than any other single institution, the decima
tion of populations, the fearful increase of slavery. The
cry of the whole world was
euoeno S' ap.tr pov ko.k6v,
/ieTou/?oA.ia Se ns <j>avtCrj, Ztv irartp, tK atOtv.
Many other causes, poHtical, economic, social, were sapping
public and private moraHty and undermining reUgion.
1 Deissmann, New Light, p. 78.
2 If we could imagine the exhaustion of Germany after the Thirty Years'
War extending over the rest of Europe we should have an analogy to the
state of affairs in the closing Republic. ' The general impression we receive
from the records of the New Testament is assuredly that they were written
under a prevailin <r sense of human misery. ' — Merivale, Conversion, p. 88.

224 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY [ch.
The Greek city-states and Greek kingdoms had pursued
one poHcy — might is right. Violence had at length in Rome
seated itseU on the throne of the world. Thoughtful men
must have been overwhelmed at first with the idea of
world-empire passing into the hands of a mifitary people
without education, culture, or reUgion. It seemed a worse
prospect than if modem Europe were to pass under
Russian absolutism. The masses having secured the upper-
hand over their oppressors surrendered their rights to
absolute power in return for panem et circenses. The
cessation of healthy public and poHtical life which had
engrossed the time and inspired the best efforts of men
created a perilous vacuum. UndiscipUned individuaHsm
asserted itself. Forced labour, considered cheaper than
free, created less demand for free labour ; there was an
abnormal influx of free paupers into the cities to Uve by
casual labour and on the doles of imperial paternaHsm.
All nations had failed to bear the test of prosperity ; the
subjects of Rome observed that to gain the world she
had lost her soul. The middle classes — the last strong
hold of a nation's virtue — had disappeared. In the
social upheavals wealth passed from those long used
to it into new spendthrift hands. There was a mass
of paupers and a few plutocrats. Latifundia perdidere
Italiam, says PUny, and the statement holds good for most
of the Empire. Property was insecure because of the
discontent of the masses and confiscation. Bankruptcy
arising from stupid finance early threatened the Empire.
The provincials were oppressed under the RepubUc by the
iniquitous exactions of the Roman oligarchy and its
creatures, and under the Empire by grinding taxation.
Terrible visitations of earthquake in Asia, as in Antioch,
Philadelphia, Rhodes, caused much suffering and financial
insecurity. The quiet and prosperity of the Flavian and
Antonine eras — the happiest period for the old world —
were the lull before the final disastrous storm.

ix.] IN THE FULNESS OF TIME 225
Opportunity for Oriental Worships
National faiths had coUapsed. The West was looking
to the East for gospels. This was the opportunity for the
Oriental cults, for the Great Mother and Attis, for Isis and
Serapis, for the Syrian Goddess, for Mithras, for Judaism,
and finaUy for Christianity. In the isolation and suffering
of the age personal and reUgious concerns were of supreme
moment. Men were earnestly seeking a guide for their
moral Ufe and an authority for the spirit. Logic was not
the only path to knowledge ; there is a region to be entered
only by faith, and rationaUsm was yielding to faith. The
elements of man's personaUty were becoming more promi
nent ; the search inaugurated by Know Thyself had issued
in pain. Precepts were too Hfeless : ' It requires a new
dogma, a great revelation, a startHng reform, to carry with
it the weak and wavering masses of humanity, who have
not the strength or the patience to work out their own
salvation.' x Examples of flesh and blood were demanded
as incentives to teach men to Hve and die. There was
in Greek phUosophy, especiaUy the post-AristoteHan, ' an
ever-growing tendency to personify the ethical ideal.'
Christianity offered a Synthesis in the Incarnation
Christianity brought a harmony for the burdensome
antinomies of that age. Revelation confirmed the truth
of natural reUgion and reason, and added something
indispensable. Christianity was the synthesis of and the
authority for the truths proclaimed by aU systems. It
elevated the abstract monotheism of Greece, the heno-
theistic monotheism of Oriental cults, the deistic mono
theism of Judaism into a universal spiritual Fatherhood ;
it corrected abstract monotheism by the truth of poly
theism that the Godhead is not simple and Jejune but
1 Mahaffy, Silver Age, p. 399.
P

226 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY
has in itseU a rich and manifold Hfe ; it blended the
immanence of pantheism with the transcendence of
scepticism, mysticism, and Hebrew thought; it glorified
the human sympathy of Oriental cults through the historic
Hfe and death of a Man of sorrows.
Christianity gave what the world most needed — the
driving power of personaUty. The Incarnation of the
' Desire of all nations ' answered the universal question
of Seneca : Ubi enim istum invenies quern tot saeculis
quaerimus ? ' Where shaU He be found whom we have
been seeking for so many centuries ? '

BIBLIOGRAPHY
(Restricted to a selection of the works consulted)
I. ANCIENT AUTHORS
The chief ancient authors of importance for the period here
covered are— Plato, Aristotle (esp. Nic. Ethics and PoHtics),
Plutarch, Polybius, Dio Chrysostom (Dindorf in Teubner, 2 vols.,
Leipzig, 1857), Maximus of Tyre (Didot, Paris, 1840), Epictetus,
Aristides Rhetor (Dindorf in Teubner, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1829),
Musonius Rufus (Teubner, 1905), Josephus, Philo, Sibylline Oracles,
Justin Martyr, Origen (con. CefoMm),Clement of Alexandria, Menander,
Philostratus, Lucian, Athenaeus, Eusebius, Diogenes Laertius,
Cicero, Horace, Virgil, Persius, Lucan, Seneca the Younger,
Petronius, Tacitus, Suetonius, Martial, Lucretius, Caesar (5. Civ.),
Apuleius, Plautus, Terence, Sallust, Pliny the Younger, Minuoius
Felix, Marcus Aurelius, JuvenaL
Charles, R. H. Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testa
ment (Eng. tr., 2 vols., Oxford, 1913).
Kautszoh, E. Die Apohryphen u. PseudepigrapAen des A.T.
(German tr., 2 vols., Tub., 1900).
Hestnecke, E. Neutest. Apohryphen (German tr., Tub. and
Leipzig, 1904).
Pret/SCHEN, E. Antilegomena (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1905).
H. INSCRIPTIONS, PAPYRI, FRAGMENTS, Etc.
Boeckh, A. Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, 1828-77.
Inscripiiones Graecae, in course of publication by the Berlin Academy
since 1873.
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, by Mommsen and others since
1863.
Orelli-Henzen. Inscriptionum Latinarum ampUssima collectio
(3 vols., Ziir., 1828-56).
Bormann-Henzen-Rossi. Inscr. urbis Bomae Lot. (vol. vi. pt. 1
and 2 of C. I. L., 1876). 227

228 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY
Le Bas-Waddington. Voyage archeologique en Greet et Asie
Mineure (Paris, 1847-76).
Hicks-Hill. Manual of Greek Hist. Inscriptions (2nd ed., Oxford,
1901).
Lindsay, W. M. Handbook of Lat. Insc. (London and Boston,
1897).
Michel, C. Becueil aV inscriptions grecques (Brussels, 1900).
Dittenberger, W. SyUoge inscriptionum Graec. (2nd ed., 3 vols.,
Leipzig, 1898-1901); Orientis Graeci Inscr. sekctae (2 vols.,
Leipzig, 1903-5).
Reinach, Th. Becueil des inscript. juridiques grecques (Paris,
1895-8).
Kaibel, G. Epigrammata graeca ex lapidibus coUecta (Berlin,
1878).
BircHELER, Fr. Anthologia Latina (metrical inscr.) (Leipzig, 1895-7).
Rossi, G. B. de. Inscr. Christianae Urbis Bomae (2 vols., Rome,
1857-88).
Lattschev. Inscr. antiquae orae septentrionalis Ponti Euxini, gr.
et Lat., i. and ii. (St. Petersburg, 1885).
Mommsen. Res Gestae divi Augusli (Berlin, 1883).
Audoixent, A. Defixionum TdbeUae (Paris, 1904).
Paton and Hicks. Inscr. of Cos (Oxford, 1891).
Kern, O. Inschr. von Magnesia am Maeander (Berlin, 1900).
FrXnkel. Inschr. v. Pergamon (2 vols., Berlin, 1890-5).
Cagnat, R. Inscr. graecae ad res romanas pertinentes (Paris,
1901- ).
Newton, Hicks, Hirschfeld. Anc. Gr. inscr. in the Brit. Mus.
(i-iv., Oxford, 1874-93).
Letronne, M. Becueil des inscr. grecques et latines de VEgypte (2 vols.,
Paris, 1842-8).
Dessau, H. Inscr. Latinae seleclae (2 vols., Berlin, 1892-1906- ).
Arnim, H. v. Stoicorum veterum fragmenta (3 vols., Leipzig, 1903-5).
Diels, H Doxographi Graeci (Berlin, 1879).
Hercher, R. Epistolographi Graeci (Paris, 1873).
Mullaoh, F. G. A Fragmenta phihsophorum graecorum (3 vols.,
Paris, 1881-3).
Peter, H. Scriptores Hist. Augustae (2 vols., Leipzig, 1865).
Ritter, H. — Preller, L. Hist, philosophiae Graeco-romanae
(9th ed., Gotha, 1913).

BIBLIOGRAPHY 229
Preger, Th. lnscriplion.es gr. metricae ex. script, praeier anthologiam
collectae (Leipzig, 1891).
Usener, H. Epicurea (Leipzig, 1887).
Griechische Urkunden from the Berlin Museum (4 vols., Berlin,
1895-1912).
Elephantine-Papyri (Rubensohn, Sonderhefb of above, Berlin,
1907).
Mtlligan, G. Selections from the Greek Papyri (Cambridge, 1910).
Witkowski, S. Epistulae privatae graecae quae in papyris Lagi-
darum servaniur (Leipzig, 1906).
Scott, W. Fragmenta Herculanensia (Oxford, 1885).
Wilcken, U. Griech. Oslraka (Leipzig, 1900).
Sayoe, A. BL Aramaic Papyri discovered at Assuan (London, 1906,
p. 35, Eng. tr.).
Garrucci, R. Graffiti de Pompei (2nd ed., 1856).
Grentell and Hunt. Amherst Papyri (2 vols., London, 1901) ;
OxyrAynchus Papyri (10 parts, London, 1898-1914) ; Hibeh
Papyri (part 1, London, 1906) ; New Classical Fragments, and
other Greek and Latin Papyri (Oxford, 1897).
Grentell, Hunt, Smyly. Tebtunis Papyri (part 1, London,
1902).
Grentell, Hunt, Hogarth. Fayum Towns and their Papyri
(London, 1900).
Mitteis and Wilcken. Grundziige u. Chrestomathie d. Papyrus-
kunde (2 vols., Leipzig and Berlin, 1912).
CrAnert, W. Memoria Graeca Herculanensia (Leipzig, 1903).
Mahatty-Smyly. The Flinders Petrie Papyri (3 vols., Dublin,
1891-1905). m. MODERN AUTHORITIES
(a) History
Arnold, W. T. Boman System of Provincial Administration
(new ed., rev., Oxford, 1906).
Baub, F. C. Church History of the first three Centuries (Eng. tr.,
2 vols., London, 1878-9).
Bevan, E. R. House of Seleucus (2 vols., London, 1902).
Bouche-Leclercq, A. Histoire des Lagides (4 vols., Paris,
1903-7).
Bury, J. B. History of the Boman Empire (27 B.O.-180 a.d.)
(London, 1893).

230 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY
Droysen, J. G. Gesch. d. Hettenismus (2nd ed., Gotha, 1877).
Ewald, H. History of Israel (Eng. tr., 8 vols., l-3rd ed., London,
1876-86).
Ferbebo, G. Greatness and Decline of Borne (Eng. tr., 5 vols.,
London, 1907-9).
Findlay, G. Greece under the Bomans (2nd ed., Edinburgh and
London, 1857).
Grote. History of Greece (12 vols., new ed., London, 1869).
Hardy, E. G. Christianity and the Boman Government (London,
1894).
Harnack, A. Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the first
three Centuries (Eng. tr., 2 vols., London and New York,
1908).
Hausrath, A. New Testament Times (Times of Jesus, 2 vols.,
Eng. tr., London, 1878-80 ; Apostles, 4 vols., London, 1895).
Kaerst, J. Gesch. d. hellenistischen ZeitaUers (2 vols., Leipzig,
1901-9).
Long, G. Decline of the Boman Bepublic (5 vols., Lond., 1864-74).
Mahaffy, J. P. Empire of the Ptolemies (London, 1895) ; History
of Egypt under the Ptolemaic Dynasty (London, 1899).
Mertvale, C. FaU of the Boman Bepublic (London, 1856) ; History
of the Bomans under the Empire (new ed., 8 vols., London,
1865-8).
Milne, J. G. History of Egypt under Boman Bute (London, 1898).
Mommsen, Th. The History of Borne (Eng. tr., rev. ed., 5 vols.,
New York, 1894) ; The Provinces of the Boman Empire from Caesar
to Diocletian (Eng. tr., 2nd ed., rev., 2 vols., New York, 1909).
Orr, J. Neglected Factors in the Study of the Early Progress of
Christianity (London, 1899).
Ramsay, W. M. The Church in the Boman Empire (New York
and London, 1893).
Schaff, P. History of Christian Church (Apostolic Christianity,
2 vols., New York, 1883).
SCHffRER, E. Gesch. d. judischen Volkes (4th ed., 3 vols., Leipzie
1901-11). r 6'
(6) Religion and Morality
Adah, J. Religious Teachers of Greece (Aberdeen, 1908).
Anrich, G. Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einkuss auf das
Christentum (Got., 1894).
Bauer, B. Chrislus u. d. Caesaren (2nd ed., Berlin, 1879).

BIBLIOGRAPHY 231
Beurlier, E. Le cult rendu aux empireurs romains (Paris,
1891).
Biqg, C. The Church's Task under the Boman Empire (Oxford,
1905).
Boissier, G. La religion rom. d" Augusts aux Antonins (2 vols.,
Paris, 1874).
Bousset, W. Die Religion des Judentums im neatest. Zeitalter (2nd
ed., Berlin, 1906).
Caird, E. The Evolution of Religion (3rd ed., 2 vols., Glasgow,
1899).
Campbell, L. Religion in Greek Literature (London, 1898).
Carter, J. B. Religious Life of Ancient Borne (London, 1912).
Charles, R. H. Eschatology, Hebrew, Jewish and Christian (2nd
ed., London, 1913).
Cumont, F. Religions orient, dans le paganisme remain (Paris, 1906) ;
Mysteries of Mithra (Eng. tr., Chicago, 1903) ; Textes et Monu
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1896-9) ; Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans
(New York and London, 1912).
Denis, J. Hist, des Theories et des Idies morales dans VantiquiU
(2nd ed., Paris, n.d.).
Dieterich, A. Eine Mithrasliturgie (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1910) ;
Nekyia (Leipzig, 1893) ; Abraxas (Leipzig, 1891).
DSlltnger, J. J. I. The Gentile and the Jew (Eng. tr., 2 vols.,
London, 1906).
Drummond, J. The Jewish Messiah (London, 1877).
Fairweather, W. Background of the Gospels (Edinburgh, 1908).
Farnell, L. R. Higher Aspects of Greek Religion (London,
1912).
Farrer, J. A. Paganism and Christianity (London and Edinburgh,
1891).
Fowler, W. W. Religious Experience of the Roman People (London,
1911); Roman Ideas of Deity in the last Century before the
Christian Era (London, 1914).
Friedlander, L. Roman Life and Manners (Eng. tr., 4 vols.,
London and New York, 1908-13).
Friedlander, M. D. relig. Bewegungen innerhalb d. Judentums im
Zeitalter Jesu (Berlin, 1905); Synagoge u. Kirche (Berlin,
1908).
Glover, T. R. Conflict of Religions in early Roman Empire
(London, 1909).
Harrison, J. E. Proleg. to the Study of the Greek Religion (Cam-
bridge, 1903).

232 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY
Hatch, E. Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon (he Christian
Church (New York, 1890).
Hegel, C. W. F. Philosophy of History (Eng. tr., London, 1857).
Jong, De, K. H. E. Das antike Mysterienwesen (Leiden, 1909).
Ketm, Th. Bom «. d. Chrislenlum (Berlin, 1881).
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1913).
King, C. W. Gnostics (2nd ed., London, 1887).
Lecky, W. E. H. History of European Morals (2 vols, in 1, London,
1911).
Lobeck, C. A. Aglmphamus (2 vols., Konigsberg, 1829).
Maass, E. Orpheus (Munich, 1895).
Martha, C. Moralisles sous Vempire rom. (8th ed., Paris, 1907) ;
fitudes morales sur Vantiquite (Paris, 1883).
Mead, G. R. S. Thrice-Greatest Hermes (3 vols., London and
Benares, 1906).
Merivale, C. Conversion of the Roman Empire (2nd ed., London,
1865).
Norden, E. Agnostos Theos (Leipzig and Berlin, 1913).
Otto, W. Priester u. Tempel im hellenist. Agypten (2 vole., Leipzig
and Berlin, 1905-8).
Petbie, W. M. F. Personal Religion in Egypt before Christianity
(London and New York, 1909).
Reitzenstein, R. Poimandres (Leipzig, 1904) ; D. hellenist.
Mysterienreligionen (Leipzig, 1910), Hellenist. Wundererzdh-
lungen (Leipzig, 1906).
Ren an, E. Harc-Aurele et la fin du tnonde antique (Paris, 1882).
Rohde, Eb. Relig. der Griechen (in Kl. Schriften, ii. (1901), p.
314-39); Psyche, Seelenculi u. Unsterblichkeitsglaube der
Griechen (2nd ed., 2 vols., Freiburg-i.-B., 1898).
Schmidt, H. Veteres philosophi quomodo iudicaverint de precious
(Giessen, 1907).
Uhlhorn, G. Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism (Eng. tr.,
New York, 1879).
Walton, A. Cult of Asklepios (Ithaca, 1894).
Wenley, R. M. Preparation for Christianity (Edinburgh and
London, 1898).
Westermarok, E. Origin and Development of (he Moral Ideas
(2 vols., London, 1906-8).
Wissowa, G. Dt'e Religion u. Mythologie der Romer (2nd ed., Munich,
1912).

BIBLIOGRAPHY 233
(c) Philosophy
Arnold, E. V. Roman Stoicism (Cambridge, 1911).
Bigg, C. Neoplatonism (London, 1895).
Bonhoffer, A. Epictet u. d. Stoa (Stuttgart, 1890).
Bussell, F. W. School of Plato (London, 1896).
Butler, W. A. History of Ancient Philosophy (2 vols., London,
1856).
Catrd, E. Evolution of Theology in (he Greek Philosophers (2 vols.,
Glasgow, 1904).
Drummond, J. PMlo-Judaeus or Jewish-Alexandrian Philosophy
(2 vols., London and Edinburgh, 1888).
Eucken, R. Lebensanschauungen d. grossen Denker (Leipzig,
1890).
Ferrier, J. F. Lectures on Greek Philosophy (Edinburgh and
London, 1888).
Hegel, C. W. F. Philosophy of Religion (Eng. tr., 3 vols., London,
1895).
Pfletderer, O. Vorbereitung d. Christentums in d. griech. Phil.
(Tiib., 1906).
WrNDELBAND, W. History of Ancient Philosophy (Eng. tr., London,
1900).
Zeller, E. Outlines of (he History of Greek Philosophy (Eng. tr.,
new ed., London, 1895) ; Pre-Socratic Philosophy (Eng. tr.,
2 vols., London, 1881) ; Plato and the Older Academy (Eng. tr.,
London, 1876) ; Aristotle and the Earlier Peripatetics (Eng. tr.,
2 vols., London, 1897) ; Socrates and the Socratic Schools (Eng.
tr., 2nd ed., London, 1877) ; Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics
(Eng. tr., new ed., London, 1880) ; History of Eclecticism in
Greek Philosophy (Eng. tr., London, 1883) ; Relig. u. Phil, bei
den Romern (in Vortrage u. Abhandl., 2nd series, pp. 93-135).

(d) Culture, Society, Antiquities
Abbott, F. F. Common People of Ancient Rome (London, 1912).
Ballu, A. Timgad, une cite africaine (Paris, 1904).
Bultmann, R. Der Stil der Paulinischen Predigt u. die Kynisch-
stoische Diatribe (Got., 1910).
Butcher, S. H. Some Aspects of Greek Genius (3rd ed., London,
1904) ; Harvard Lectures on Greek Subjects (London, 1904).
Coulanges, F. de. La cits' antique (2nd ed., Paris, 1866).

234 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY
Deissmann, A. Light from tile Ancient East (Eng. tr., London,
1910); Das Urchristenlum u. d. unteren Schichten (2nd ed.,
Gottingen, 1908).
Dill, S. Roman Society from Nero to M. Aurelius (London, 1904).
Fowler, W. W. Social! Life at Borne in the Age of Cicero (London,
1908); The City-State of the Greeks and Romans (2nd ed.,
London, 1895).
Graham, A. Roman Africa (London, 1902).
Hahn, L. Rom u. Romanismus im griech.- rSm. Often, etc. (Leipzig,
1906).
Livingstone, R. W. Greek Genius and its meaning to us {Oxford,
1912).
Mahaffy, J. P. Hellenism in Alexander's Empire (Chicago, 1905) ;
Silver Age of the Greek World (Chicago and London, 1906) ;
Survey of Greek Civilization (Meadville, Pa., 1896) ; What have
(he Greeks done for Modern Civilization ? (New York and London,
1909).
Marquardt, J. Das Privatleben der Bbmer (Leipzig, 1878) ; Bom.
StaatsverwaUung (3 vols., Leipzig, 1873-8).
Marucchi, O. Boma sotterranea cristiana (Rome, - 1909) ; Le
Cataeombe romane (Rome, 1903).
Mau-Kelsey. Pompeii : Its Life and Art (new ed., New York,
1902).
Mommsen, Th. Bom. Staatsrecht (3 vols., Leipzig, 1871-88).
Putnam, G. H. Authors and their Public in Ancient Times (2nd
ed., New York, 1894).
Ramsay, W. M. Cities of St. Paul (London, 1907) ; Cities and
Bishoprics of Phrygia (2 parts, Oxford, 1895-97).
Stobart, J. C. The Glory that was Greece (London, 1911); The
Grandeur that was Borne (London, 1912).
Tucker, T. G. Life in (he Boman World of Nero and St. Paul
(London, 1910).
Wallon, H. Hist, de TEsclavage (3 vols., Paris, 1847).
Wendland, P. Hellenistisch-rbm. Kultur (2-3rd ed., Tiib., 1912) ;
Philo u. die Kynisch-stoische Diatribe (pp. 1-75: Wendland-
Kern, Beitr. z. Gesch. der griech. Phil. u. Relig., Berlin, 1895).
(e) Literature and Language
Christ, W. Gesch. d. griech. Lit. (4th ed., Munich, 1905).
Croiset, A. and M. Abridged History of Greek Literature (Eng. tr.,
New York, 1904).

BIBLIOGRAPHY 235
Deissmann, A. Bible Studies (Eng. tr., Edinburgh, 1901); art.
Hellenist 'isches Griechisch, in Herzog-Hauck s.
Harnack, A. Gesch. der altchrist. Lit. (2 vols., Leipzig, 1893-
1904). 6
Jordan, H. Gesch. d. altchrist. Lit. (Leipzig, 1911).
Mackatl, J. W. Latin Literature (London, 1902).
Moulton, J. H. Grammar of New Testament Greek (3rd ed.,
i. Proleg., New York, 1908).
Norden, E. Antike Kunstprosa (2 vols., Leipzig, 1898).
Robertson, A. T. Grammar of the Greek New Testament (New York
and London, 1914).
Schwyzer, E. Die Weltsprachen des Altertums (Berlin, 1902).
Sellar, W. Y. Boman Poets of the Republic (3rd ed., Oxford,
1889) ; Roman Poets of the Augustan Age (Oxford, 1892).
Susemthl, F. Gesch. d. griech. Lit. in d. Alexandrinerzeit (2 vols.,
Leipzig, 1891-2).
Teuttel-Schwabe. History of Boman Literature: i. Republican
Period ; n. Imperial Period (Eng. tr. by Warr, London,
1891-2).
Thomson, J. E. H. Books which influenced our Lord (Edinburgh,
1891).
Thumb, A. Die Griech. Sprache im Zeitalter d. Hellenismus (Strass-
burg, 1901).
Zahn, Th. Greek Language among (he Jews, pp. 34-73, vol. I. of
Introduction to New Testament.
The student need not be reminded of general works of reference :
as Roscheb, Ausfuhr. Lexicon d. griech. u. rdm. Mythologie
(Leipzig, 1884-1913) ; Gruffe, Griech. Mythologie (Munich, 1906) ;
Jewish Encyclopaedia ; Hastings' Dictionary of Bible ; Encyclo
paedia of Religion and Ethics ; Daremberg et Saglio, Diet.
des Antiquites; Herzog-Hauck, Real-Encyc.3 ; Pauly-Wissowa,
Real-Encyc. d. klas. Altertumswiss. (1892- ) ; Religion in Geschichte
u. Gegenwart (ed. by Schiele),

INDEX

Abortion, 47.
Adam, J., 123.
 Mrs. J., 99.
Alabarch, 149.
Alexander the Great, 7 ff., 13, 22, 33,
86.
Amphitheatre, 42.
Anaxagoras, 96, 176, 180.
Angus, S., 140, 198, 211.
Anti-Semitism, 148 ff.
Apollonius of Tyana, 76, 130.
Apotbeosis, 85 ff.
Apuleius, 2, 93, 112.
Aramaic, 209 f., 214, 216, 218.
Aratus, 66.
Aristides, 11.
Aristotle, 47, 48, 52, 96, 103, 115,
124, 164, 170, 184 f.
Art, 11, 28.
Arnold, M., 72, 111, 140, 165.
 W. T., 205.
Asceticism, 90 ff., 123 f.
Atellan farce, 42.
Augustine, 44, 68, 69, 80, 140, 183,
216.
Augustus, 18, 43, 46 f., 54, 84, 87, 135,
147, 196, 199.
Aulus Oellius, 14.
Aurelius, Marcus, 11, 55, 73, 81, 107,
113 f.
Authority, 70, 114 ff., 154.
Autobiography, 29.
Bath, 14.
Baths, 14.
Bauer, B., 2.

Beloch, 38.
Beurlier, E., 85, 88.
Bible, v. Septuagint.
Biography, 29, 82.
Birth-rate, 32, 34, 46
Books, 18.
Book-selling, 18.
Browning, 186, 222.
Bultmann, B., 74.
Bussell, F. W., 61, 80, 119.
Butcher, S. H., 140 f., 173 f.
Butler, W. A., 176.
Caesar, Juijt/s, 7 f., 21, 43, 50, 60,
86, 104, 135, 197 f.
Caird, E.,169, 174, 189, 191.
Campbell, L., 132.
Caligula, 2, 79.
Catullus, 14, 16, 104, 112.
Character, 114.
Charles, R. H.,26f.
Children, 40, 46 f., 67 f.
Cicero, 10, 14, 16, 52, 64, 60 f., 64,
85, 99, 104, 106 f., 116, 125, 128 ff.,
148, 19/, 199, 213.
City-state (polis), 25, 30, 63, 110,
113, 171.
Claudian, 64.
Claudius, 43, 53, 150.
Cleanthes, 66, 126, 131.
Comedy, 41.
Comforts, 14.
Commerce, 20.
Conway, Professor, 131, 137 f.
ConsoUUio literature, 105 f., 129 ff.
Cosmopolitanism, v. Universalism.

INDEX

237

Crisis in history, 61, 223.
Cult, imperial, 85 f.
Cynics, 11,63, 75 ff., 180 f.
Cyrenaics, 181.

Dbissmann, A, 11, 23, 48, 131, 134,
159, 209, 223.
Delos, 22.
Demetrius, 76, 79.
Democracy, 31, 91, 133, 202 f.
Demosthenes, 44, 169.
Denis, J., 30, 66, 110, 116.
Dentistry, 14.
Deterioration, 5, 134.
Diadochi, 20, 31.
Diaspora, 24, 143 ff., 154, 168 f.,
214.
Dill, S., 12, 90, 105.
Dio Cassius, 166.
Dio Chrysostom, 11, 53, 59, 70, 76 f.,
129.
Directors, moral, 78 f.
Divorce, 15, 46.
Ddllinger, J. J. I., 61.
Domitian, 44, 77, 87.
DuaUsm, 93, 98, 101, 118 f., 121, 176,
181 ff., 184,191, 192 f.

Eclectics, Eclecticism, 116, 189 f.
Economic conditions, 32 ff., 39 f.
Ecstasy, 119 ff., 191 ff.
Education, 17, 162 f., 164, 172.
Egypt, 7, 24, 85.
Eleatics, 175 f.
Emerson, 114.
Emotionalism, 111.
Epicurus, Epicureanism, 60, 52, 59,
73,96f., 103, 115, 125, 187 f.
Epictetus, 11, 56, 58, 66, 76 f., 81,
82, 100, 107, 114, 125.
Euripides, 55.
Evolntion, 4.
Examples, moral, 81 f.
Exposition (of children), 48.

Faibbairn, A. M., 1.
Faith, 97.
Farrar, J. A., 2.
Fate, 69 f., 96, 127.
Favorinus, 68.
Forsyth, P. T., 143.
Foucart, 61.
Foundlings, 47, 49.
Fowler, W. W., 28, 111.
Frederick the Great, 7.
Friedlander, L., 96.
Froude, J. A., 11.
Geddes, 103.
Gibbon, 38, 69.
God, 83, 94 ff, 121, 191 f.
'God-fearers,' 157 f.
Gladiators, 40, 42 f., 54 f.
Gracchi, 33 f.
Greeks, v. ch. vi. and viii. passim.
Harnace, A., 134, 160, 204.
Hatch, E., 95.
Hausrath, A., 131, 169, 222.
Hebrew, v. Jew.
Hegel, 128, 194 f.
Hellenistic literature, 16.
HeUenism, 17, 63, 173, 202, 217.
Herculaneum, 18.
Hermetic Uterature, 117.
Hetairai, 44 f., 50.
Hippocrates, 57.
Horace, 16, 71, 80, 87, 104, 137, 160,
156, 187, 190, 213.
Hot-air system, 14 f.
Idleness, 35.
Immortality, 101 ff, 108 l, 182.
Incarnation, 88, 225 f.
Individualism, 10, 17, 25, 30, 101,
111, 116, 178, 199.
Infanticide, 48 f.
Inge, W. B., 119.
Inscriptions, 71, 104, 135, 149, 196,
204, 215.

238 THE ENVIRONMENT OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY

Intermediaries, 121 ff., 191, 192.
Inwardness, 79, 113.
Ionic school, 175.
Isis, 89, 93, 169.
Isocrates, 55, 109.
Israel, v. Jew.
Jbbb, R. C.j 171.
Jerome, 111, 218.
Jesus, language of, 218.
Jevons, F. B., 108.
Jew, v. ch. v. passim ; also 63, 83 f.,
89, 101, 126 f., 129.
Jong, de, E. H. E., 118.
Josephus, 22, 139, 144, 146, 155 f.,
216.
Judaeo-Greek philosophy, 190 f.
Justin Martyr, 116, 213.
Juvenal, 2, 10, 124, 150, 156, 214.
Kaebst, J.,128, 135.
Keim, Th., 139.
Kennedy, H. A. A, 24, 119, 214.
Kilpatrick, T. B.,178.
. Kohler, Rabbi, 142.
Komi, 210 f.
Lanouage, v. ch. viii.
Latin, 211, 220.
Lecky, W. E. H., 32, 44, 65.
Lehmann, E., 119.
Leibnitz, 168.
Leo, Pope, 184.
Libraries, 14 f., 17 f.
Livy, 73, 118, 131.
Logos, 122 f., 191.
Love, 55.
Lucian, 11, 59.
Lucretius, 11, 16, 73, 103, 105,
188,
Luxuries, 34.
Mackintosh, H. R., 222.
Magic, 23, 118.
Magna Mater, 89, 109.

Mahaffy, J. P., 9, 41, 45, 212, 222,
225.
Manilius, 100.
Marriage, 15; ». Women.
Martial, 150.
Maximus of Tyre, 11, 60, 76, 95, 107,
124 f.
Mayor, J. B., 138.
Menander, 40, 72.
Mercenaries, 20.
Merivale, C, 64, 126, 154, 223.
Messianic hope, 117, 136 ff., 142.
Middle classes, 35, 54, 199.
Mill, J. S., 77. ,
Milligau, G., 49.
Mimes, 13.
Mimus, 42.
Mithra, 89, 109.
Missionary activity, 83, 91, 153 f ,
159.
Modemness, 12 ff.
Monism, 176, 181.
Monotheism, 83, 94 f., 225.
Morality, 36 ff., 52, 60 f., 63,
67, 114, 132, 153 f., and ch. iii.
passim.
Musonius Rufus, 11, 57, 76.
Mysteries, 107, 108 f.
Mysticism, 93, 112, 118 ff., 175,
190.
Napoleon, 8.
Neander, 117.
Neo-Platonism, 117, 119, 192 f.
Neo-Pythagoreanism, 117, 119, 190.
Nero, 2, 15, 44, 53, 76, 87.
Nonconformists, 89.
Norden, E., 74, 119 f.
Obekmann, 105.
Oligarchy, 31, 34, 133, 199 f., 203.
Oriental peril, 8, 173, 201.
Orphism, 82, 102 ff., 119 ff., 124.
Orr, J., 134.
Ovid, 55, 114, 130.
Ostraca, 18.

INDEX

239

Paiderastia, 47, 49 f., 59.
Papyri, 11, 15, 17, 48, 150.
Paul, 62, 65 f., 99, 156, 160> 213,
216.
Persius, 10, 73, 124.
Pessimism, 72, 165 f.
Petronius, 10, 54, 150.
Pfleiderer, 0., 176, 180.
Philip (of Macedon), 7.
Philo, 17, 119 f., 123, 138, 146, 152,
159.
PhUosophy, v. ch. vi
Philostratus, 11.
Physicists, 176.
Pindar, 102.
Plato, 48, 59, 61, 70, 80, 96, 99 f.,
102 ff, 111, 115, 119 f., 124 f., 161,
165, 181 ff., 192 f.
Plautus, 40 f.
Pliny (senior), 104, 224.
 (junior), 55, 56.
Plotinus, 191, 192 f.
Plutarch, 6, 14, 55, 57, 59, 63, 76,
80, 82 f., 93, 105 f., 130, 214.
Polis, v. City-state.
Polybius, 18.
Pompeii, 13 f., 195.
Popular activity, 74 ff., 91, 138.
Porphyry, 74.
Prayer, 124 ff., 152, 164.
Preaching, 74 ff.
Programmes, 13.
Proselytes, 156 f.
Prostitution, 59.
Providence. 95 ff.
Publihus Syrus, 42, 125.
Purves, G. T., 122 f.
Quietus, 218.
QuintiUan, 58, 107, 150.
Ramsay, W. M., 5, 135, 137 f.
Redemption, v. Salvation.
Religion, v. ch. iv. passim.
Renan, E., 68.
Resignation, 127.

Revelation, 115 ff., 120, 154, 159,
190, 222 ff.
Roman(s), v. ch. vii. ; 16, 21, 28, 63,
84 f., 89.
Romanes, J. G., 143.
Rohde, E.,119f.
Sallust, 104, 195.
Salmond, S. D. F., 103.
Salvation, 83 f., 100 f., 134 ff., 179,
182, 186, 188, 191.
Saviours, 135, 223.
Scepticism, 177, 188 f.
Schmidt, H., 126.
Schiirer, E., 139, 155, 215, 217.
Self-analysis, 80 f.
SeUar, E. Y., 16, 29, 41.
Seneca, 3, 46, 49, 53 f., 56, 58, 60,
66, 73. 79, 81, 89, 97 f., 99, 106,
112, 116, 125, 127 f., 130, 131 f.,
140, 150, 156, 226.
Septuagint, 117, 136, 138 f., 158 ff,
215.
Serapis, 89.
Sextius, 81.
Sibylline Books, 138 f., 146, 155.
Simplicius, 100.
Sin, 84, 130 ff.
Slavery, 35, 37 ff., 52 ff.
Society, 13 ff., 28, 30 ff., 32.
Socrates, 44, 59, 61, 80, 82, 102 f.,
113, 115, 178 f., 180 f.
Sophists, 28, 176 f.
Sophocles, 50.
Soul, 100 f., 182, 187 f.
Stage, 41, 48.
Statius, 64.
Stobart, J. C, 15.
Stoicism, 62, 61, 63, 96, 97, 103,
113 f., 124, 186 f.
Street-preachers, 11.
Suetonius, 49, 118, 139.
Suicide, 51, 197.
Suffering, 17, 29, 66, 71, 97, 127 ff.,
142, 223 f.
Supernatural, 118.

240 THE ENVIRONMENT OP EARLY CHRISTIANITY

Synagogue, 27, 148, 150 ft, 153 ft,
215.
Syncretism, 23 f., 90, 94, 190.
Taoitus, 10, 63, 58, 105, 118, 138,
150.
TauroboUum, 109.
Teachers, 17.
Tennyson, 121, 176.
Terence, 40 f.
Tertullian, 49.
Teuffel, W. S., 42.
Thucydides, 170.
Thumb, A., 211.
Tiberius, 43, 54, 87.
Timgad, 14. 15, 18, 71, 198.
Titus, 43, 216.
Trajan, 15, 77, 148.
'Trusts,' 34.
Turia, 55.

Universalism, 19 f., 25, 81, 83, 91,
110, 205.

Valerius Maximus, 82.
Varro, 82.
Vespasian, 89, 148.
Vice, 15, 49, 59 f.
Virgil, 16, 64, 68, 85, 87, 101, 113,
131 f., 137 f., 197, 204.
Vulgate, 220.
War, 31.
Weiss, J., 135.
Wendland, P., 6, 135 f.
Wenley, R. M., 179.
West, A. F., 29.
Women, 13 f., 32 f., 44, 49, 65,
112.
Wordsworth, 183.
Xenophanes, 1, 94, 99,.
Xenophon, 52, 59, 103, 114.
Zahic, Th., 216, 218.
Zeller, E., 24, 116, 117, 176, 190,
191.
Zumpt, 38.

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