A very important question arises in the story of the early struggles between Christianity and Paganism which presses for an answer. The religion of Jesus very soon, we have seen, made a firm lodgment outside the numerous class of freedmen, petty traders, and slaves. In the first century we find already persons connected with the Imperial court converts to Christianity, which had even made its way among members of the Imperial family. Early in the second century men of high culture, such as Aristides, and later in the same century Justin, Minucius Felix, Melito of Sardis, and many others wrote elaborate treatises in defense of the new faith. In Rome, in Ephesus, in Smyrna, in Athens, and in countless other important centers, the Christians evidently formed at an early date no inconsiderable portion of the population. At the end of the second century the Christian people were so numerous that Tertullian of Carthage wrote, somewhat rhetorically perhaps, as follows: "If we Christians were to separate ourselves from you, you would be affrighted at your solitude, you would be alarmed at the silence which would, in a way, resemble the paralysis of a dead world." How, then, came it to pass that Paganism, as it is commonly understood, was enabled to hold its own and even to make head against the steady progress of such a religion as Christianity—Paganism with its silly and monstrous fables, with its immoral Deities; fables which the learned and cultured of the first quarter of the first century utterly disbelieved, Deities that at the same period were openly derided by a large majority of all classes and orders of the civilized Roman world?
And yet it did. The serious opposition of Paganism revived and increased steadily as the years of the Empire rolled on. Something must have happened to account for the striking change in the position which Paganism had come to occupy in the minds and hearts of men at the end of the second century; a change which took place, roughly, between the beginning of the first century and the last years of the second, in other words, in the period which lay between the accession of Augustus and the death of Commodus, the son and successor of the good and great Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.
The Pagan religion of Rome, reawakened from what seemed the torpor of a rapidly advancing death, was inextricably mixed up with the Imperial Government; and the highest positions in religion were filled by the occupants of the powerful civil posts. The strange deification of the Emperors, of which we shall speak presently, made the profession of Christianity, which abhorred all idol-worship, treason against the State.
The reawakened ancient cult appealed to all classes, cultured and ignorant alike. It was seriously supported by the whole weight of Imperial authority, and by the powerful aid of men of letters, including historians, poets, and philosophers.
The full name of the great Emperor after his adoption in 44 B. C. by Julius Caesar was Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus. We have in the present study used the title Augustus which he assumed and by which he is commonly known, when we speak of him. "Augustus" was a name no one had borne before.
It appealed, with its revival of the ancient traditions and ritual, to the Roman patriot who looked back with regret to the far period when men lived their comparatively simple, even austere, work-a-day lives; the men who were the real makers of Rome. It appealed with its mysteries, its oracles, its dreams, to the superstitious—a very large class in the Rome of the Empire, often including the Emperor himself. By its readiness to associate with the gods of old Rome other and strange national deities, it appealed to the Asiatics, the Africans, and the provincials of Gaul alike. Rome and Ephesus, Carthage and Alexandria, Edessa in the far East, Lyons in the far West, were all equally interested in the Pagan system of religion as it was understood and practised at the end of the second century after Christ. We must therefore bear in mind that when Christianity, in the middle of the second century, was confronted with Paganism in the form adopted by the Roman Empire under the Antonines, it was confronted with an adversary by no means discredited or generally disbelieved.
In the period of the Antonines, Pius and Marcus, A. D. 188-80, the religion of Jesus was no longer confined to an obscure and comparatively small sect. From A. D. 64 onwards, it had been neither unknown to the Government nor set aside as of no importance. The action of Nero when he fixed upon the Christians as the object of his terrible persecution, the behavior of Vespasian, the correspondence of Pliny and Trajan, the successive rescripts of Trajan and Hadrian regulating the action of the Governors in the case of accused Christians, the persecution in the later days of Hadrian, all serve to remind us that the Roman Government between A. D. 64 and A. D. 161, the date of the accession of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, was well aware that there existed in Rome and in most of the provinces of the Empire a strange and earnest community who chose to live outside the pale of the religion of Rome. This society, owing to its peculiar tenets, which in a way separated its members from the ordinary citizens and subjects of Rome, was evidently a source of grave anxiety to the Emperor and his lieutenants.
In the middle of the second century the Christians, ever increasing in number, became so numerous and conspicuous a body that the Government was forced to consider them a distinct power in the Empire, absolutely opposed to the State religion, which was closely bound up with well-nigh all the offices and official dignities of the Empire, and was apparently firmly believed in by the Emperor and more or less by the leading men of Rome.
This Paganism—the religion of Rome as professed in the days of Marcus Aurelius—was not that seemingly childish and discredited cult of which Cicero speaks in the last days of the Republic. A great change had passed over Rome in the period which had elapsed since Cicero wrote. We will, therefore, briefly review what had happened during this period, roughly comprehending a century and three-quarters, in the Pagan religious world.
In Cicero's letters there is, comparatively speaking, little mention of religion. It is true that some of the sacerdotal functions were still attached to, and were performed by holders of, certain offices of the State. But these office-holders were generally skeptics, and absolutely indifferent to the ancient worship, in which they continued to perform a leading official part. Great men became augurs and pontiffs at the same time that they were praetors or consuls. But the religious functions which they had to discharge were to them of comparatively little interest. Cicero in his writings admirably represents the spirit of his age and time. In some of his works—speaking as a statesman—he appears as though he believed in the reality of the cult in which he shared. In others, as, for instance, in his treatise on the " Nature of the Gods," he speaks with undisguised contempt of the deities of Rome. But in his letters, of which we have so ample a collection, we see what was in the heart of the great orator and statesman. In his moments of sorrow and sadness, when he mourned the loss of a dear daughter, or grieved over his country's fortunes, never a whisper of eternal life, never a word of trust in those Beings he professed to believe in, appears to lighten the sombre narrative. And when the end was in sight, all he could say was, "If we are among the happy ones, we ought to despise death; if among the sad ones, we ought to look forward to it." The blessed hopes of immortality which here and there illumine his writings seem to have brought him no solid comfort in his dark hour. His expressions of respect for the gods of Rome were evidently written for the public eye; they could scarcely have been the outcome of his own convictions.
And Cicero's contemporaries were like him; we find among the best and noblest the same contradictory statements, outward professions of belief inward utter indifference.
When we take up the letters of the Emperor Marcus to his friend and master, Fronto, the thought of the gods and the hope of the gods meet us in every page. The Sovereign and his friend can hardly suggest a project without adding: "If the gods please." When Fronto, for instance, hears that Verus, the Emperor's adopted brother, has recovered from a serious sickness, he writes the following, evidently speaking from his heart: "At the good news I went at once to the chapel and knelt at every altar. . . I was in the country at the time, and I used to go and pray at the foot of every tree sacred to the gods."
Sentences like these occur and recur in his writings: "Every morning I pray for Faustina." Anxiety for the wife of Marcus, the result of the sickness of the dear one, wells up in such words as "We must trust her with the gods."
In the time of Cicero, the philosopher was well-nigh always a skeptic. In the middle of the second century, the philosopher or man of culture as a rule was apparently a firm believer in the gods of Rome; not a few of them were superstitious in their beliefs. For instance, we find the philosopher Emperor Marcus in his "Meditations" gratefully thanking the gods for having suggested in dreams remedies for his malady.
What now had brought about this changed state of things? What had happened, since the day when Julius Caesar had assumed sovereign power in the old Republic, so completely to change the state of religious belief in Rome? For contemptuous unbelief had evidently given place to a real, even a superstitious devotion in the case of many, to the gods of the old worship.
To answer this question we must rapidly glance over the past story of the old belief Religion during the earlier times of the Kings and of the Republic had had great weight among men, and really influenced the customs of Italy and Rome. It was a creed which adored all forces of Nature; fear of these deities rather than love characterized the old Italian devotion. Tullus Hostilius, for instance, erected a temple dedicated to "Fear." The Roman peasant, deeply superstitious, as he came to his little hut after his day's toil, dreaded lest he should meet some faun or other supernatural being in the gloaming. It was a simple ritual which was practised in early times, and the gods were long represented by symbols rather than by images; Varro speaks regretfully of the days when there were no temples and no images in Rome, when the gods were adored under symbols, such as a lance planted firmly in the earth or a stone anointed with oil, or a noble tree in the forest. But this primitive devotion was something real, and it powerfully influenced the people. Very early were religious functions associated with the State official positions, and, as we have mentioned, when a Roman became praetor or consul at the same time he became augur or pontiff. This union of sacred and political offices always continued a characteristic feature of Roman government under the Empire.
For a long time these high dignities were the especial prerogative of the ruling patrician class. In them the plebeian had no share.
The time came when a change passed over the old simple religion of Rome. It may be dated from the period of the conquest of Greece, and Greece soon avenged herself on her conquerors by largely superseding the ancient Roman ways with Greek culture, habits, thought, literature. Greek thinkers seem, however, to have been much struck and impressed with the spirit of order, purity, and morality in Roman private life; of obedience, discipline, and patriotism in Roman public life. The Romans attributed the spirit which the Greeks wondered at and admired, in great part to their religion, to their fear of the gods. Great Roman writers and thinkers like Cicero, even after the old belief had become worn out, repeat this, and tell us that the Romans surpassed other people in their devotion to the gods, that Rome vanquished the world owing to her earnest religious belief, that when Greece first came into close contact with Rome, Rome was the most religious city of the world, and that to her deep and simple piety she owed her greatness and her conquests.
It was largely owing to the revival of this ancient spirit of devotion and piety, a revival that commenced in the days of Augustus, reaching perhaps its highest development in the days of Marcus Aurelius, that the Paganism of the Empire was enabled for some two centuries and a half to carry on its war with that Christianity to which in the end it succumbed.
Greece in due course avenged herself for her conquest in various ways; among others, she corrupted the old simplicity of the religion of the conquering people, while teaching them her own fables, some beautiful, some monstrous and childish. There were very few of these legends or fables treating of the gods current in Rome before Greek culture was introduced; and for a time these new fables struck the older, simpler cult a fatal blow.
Other causes, too, were at work which served to sap and to impair the power of the ancient Roman belief. Strangely enough, this old religion had been specially the religion of the privileged class—the patricians. To these alone, as we have said, belonged for a lengthened period the exclusive right of filling the various offices connected with the priesthood; and in very early days the plebeians were even excluded from sharing at all in the public religious rites. Gradually the influence and power of the plebeians of Rome increased, religious equality quickly followed civil equality, and when the priestly offices were no longer confined to the best and noblest in Rome, a marked deterioration was soon visible among the pontiffs and augurs. The old ceremonies were altered, even neglected. As time went on, the Greek influence above referred to became more and more marked. The Greek drama, when introduced among the Romans, contributed largely to weaken the power of the old religion among all classes and orders of the people. We find Plautus, perhaps the oldest of the Roman-Greek school of playwrights, openly parodying the most venerable formularies of the ancient faith. Ennius still more openly mocked at the gods and their votaries. To Ennius Rome owes a popular translation of the sacred history of Euhemerus, the object of whose work was to demonstrate that all the gods in the first instance had been heroic men, kings or warriors, who had been exalted after their death by their grateful and admiring contemporaries and descendants into the position of deities.
All these and other more subtle causes had well-nigh destroyed the old reverence for and belief in the objects of the primitive Roman worship, and so it came to pass that, in the last days of the Republic, Cicero, who so well voices the opinions of his day and time, often writes almost as a skeptic in all matters of religion. The cold respect and formal reverence which such men as he still inculcated for the ancient beliefs and rites, belonged rather to State policy, to what they believed was necessary to the well-being of the Republic, than, as we have pointed out above, to any deep feeling of real conviction.
When the Republic gave place to the Empire, it is not too much to say that in Rome religion was fast dying out. Many of the temples of the most august among the gods were even falling into ruin. The sacred possessions attached to them were being rapidly alienated. The hallowed woods and groves were often confiscated by individuals for private purposes; not a few of the ancient festivals were neglected; the chief sacerdotal dignities were frequently unclaimed; and Varro did not hesitate to affirm that the religion of Rome was even perishing, not owing to the attacks of its foes, but because of the neglect of its votaries.