The Historians' History of the World 05

But if religion had given way, superstition was busy at work. Men in general cannot entirely throw aside those sentiments which are unfolded with more or less of strength in every mind and in every state of social existence. There will still be cravings after spiritual things and the invisible world. The ancient oracles had fallen into disrepute, and soon after the fall of the republic (as is well known to Christian students) shrank into ignoble silence. But behind the Hellenic, a new world was now opened to Rome. She became familiar with the mystic speculation and the more spiritual creeds of the East. The fanatical worship of the Egyptian divinities, Isis and Serapis, became common even in Rome, notwithstanding the old feeling against Cleopatra, and notwithstanding many attempts to crush this worship. It became a common practice to seek for revelations of the future by means of the stars. The grim Marius carried about with him a Syrian soothsayer. To consult Babylonian star readers was familiar to the friends of Horace. Magi were the companions of Roman magistrates. One of Juvenal’s most striking pictures is that of the gloomy voluptuary Tiberius sitting in his island palace surrounded by a host of Chaldean astrologers. Nor could the purer and sublimer images of the Hebrew scriptures be unknown. Jews abounded in every populous city of the empire long before they were scattered by the fall of their Holy City, and wherever they went they must soon have made their influence felt. Others sought the presence of God in nature, and confounded the divinity with his works. Man seemed to them such a mass of contradictory meannesses, that they tried to solve the riddle of evil by supposing that he, like the animals and the whole creation, was but a machine animated by the universal and pervading spirit of the deity. Such was the idea of the elder Pliny, who forfeited a life spent in the study of nature to the curiosity which led him to brave the fires of Vesuvius.

Out of this seething mass of doubts and fears, uncertain belief and troubling disbelief, rose an eagerness to find and a readiness to receive the principles of that religion which took root a few years later in Galilee and Judea, and which extended itself with marvellous rapidity over every province of the empire. The purity of its morality attracted those whose hearts were still craving for something better than could be found in the religions or philosophies of the day. Its aspirations offered great attractions to those who were looking with doubt and fear upon all that lay before or behind. The breaking up of national distinctions, the union of all the Mediterranean shore under one strong and central government, the roads and canals which connected countries and provinces under the magnificent rule of the first Cæsars, were potent instruments in assisting the rapid march of the new religion. All things, moral and physical, internal and external, concurred to promote the greatest, but most silent, revolution that has ever passed over the mind of the civilised portion of the world.c

FOOTNOTES

[136] It is a marked feature of the representation of the struggle between patricians and plebeians as given by Livy and Dionysius, that the writers constantly waver in their own conception of the plebeians and their leaders,—at times even flatly contradicting themselves,—exhibiting them now as men demanding only right and justice, now as passionate and unscrupulous agitators and partisans; while in the same way the defenders of patrician rights appear now as the supporters of law and order, now as the selfish and arrogant champions of usurped privileges.

[137] [According to Herzog,d however, the government of Augustus was by no means an absolute monarchy; it became a despotism by the development of the power of the prince during the period from Augustus to Diocletian.]

[138] Legati or præfecti Cæsaris.

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter a is reserved for Editorial Matter.]

Chapter I. Land and People

b Henry G. Liddell, A History of Rome from the Earliest Times to the Establishment of the Empire.

c Theodor Mommsen, Römische Geschichte.

d E. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums.

Chapter II. Early Legends of Rome—Æneas and Romulus

b Thomas Arnold, History of Rome.

c Titus Livius, The History of Rome (translated from the Latin by D. Spillan, C. Edmonds, and W. A. M’Devitte).

d Albert Schwegler, Römische Geschichte.

e B. G. Niebuhr, Lectures on the History of Rome.

f P. Virgilius Maro, Æneidos.

Chapter III. Legendary History of the Kings

b Thomas Arnold, History of Rome.