GRICE E CONTE: IL SACRIFICIO

 ROMAN RELIGION — STATE AND INDIVIDUAL   To undertake to set forth with any definiteness the  religious ideas of ''a Roman'' of a.d. 64 would be an  extremely difl5cult task. Those, ideas would differ  with the individual, being determined or varied by a  number of considerations and influences — by locaUty,  education, and temperament. Silius would not hold  the views of Seius and probably not those of Marcia.  We may speak of the ''State religion" of Rome, as  distinct from various other religions tolerated and  practised in different parts of the empire, but it is  scarcely possible to define the contents of that  ''State religion." There were certain special priests  and priestly bodies who saw to it that certain rites  and ceremonies should be performed scrupulously in a  prescribed manner and on prescribed dates ; but these  were officers of the state, whose knowledge and  functions were confined to the ritual observances with  which they had to deal. They were not persons  trained in a system of theology, nor were they  preachers of a code of doctrines or morals; they had  no "cure of souls," and belonged to no church; they  had no credo and no Bible or corresponding authority   361     Digitized by Google     362 LIFE IN THE ROMAN WORLD chap.     to which to refer. Though most well-informed  persons could have told the names of the prominent  deities in the calendar — such as Jupiter, Mars, Apollo,  and Ceres — perhaps scarcely any one but an encyclo-  paedist or antiquarian could have named one-half of  the total. It is not merely that the deities on the  list were so numerous. There were other reasons for  ignorance or vagueness. In the first place, the line  between the operations of one deity and those of an-  other was often too fine to draw, and deities originally  more or less distinct came to be confused or identified.  Secondly, it was often hard, if not impossible, to  make up one's mind whether a so-called deity — such  as Virtue, Peace, or Health — was supposed to have  a real existence, or whether it was simply the personifi-  cation of an abstract quality. Thirdly, many of the  ancient divinities had fallen out of fashion, and to a  large extent out of memory, while many new ones —  Isis and Serapis for example — had come, or were  coming, into vogue.   The state possessed its old-established calendar of *  days sacred to a number of deities, and its code of  ritual to be performed in their honour. There were  ancient prescriptions as to what certain priests should  wear, what they should do or avoid in their priestly  character, what victims — ox, sheep, or pig — they  should sacrifice, what instruments they should use for  the purpose, and in what formula of words they  should pray in particular connections. There was a  standing commission, with the Pontifex Maximus —  at this date that excellent religious authority, the     Digitized by Google     XIX ROMAN RELIGION 363   emperor Nero — at its head, to safeguard the state  religion, to see that its requirements were carried out,  and that no one ventured to commit an outrage  towards it. But the state could not have told you  with any precision that you must believe in just so  many deities and no others; it could not have told  you precisely what notions to entertain concerning  those deities whom it did officially recognise; it  dictated po theological doctrines ; neither did it dictate  any moral doctrines beyond those which you would  find in the secular law. It reserved the right to  prevent the introduction of foreign or new divinities  if it found sufficient cause; but so long as the  temples, the rites and ceremonies, the cardinal moral  axioms of the Roman ''religion,'' and the basic  principles of Roman society were respected, the state  practised no sort of inquisition into your beliefs or  non-beliefs, and in no way interfered with your  particular selection of favourite deities.   Polytheism in an advanced commimity is always  tolerant, because it is necessarily always indefinite.  What it does not readily endure is an organised attack  upon the entire system, whether openly avowed or  manifestly implied. Even undisguised unbelief in  any deity at all it is often willing to tolerate, so long  as the unbelief is rather a matter of dialectics than  anything else, and makes no attempt at a crusade.  When a state so disposed is found to interfere with a  novel religion, it will generally be easy to perceive  that the jealousy is not on behalf of the deities nor  of a creed, but on behalf of the community in its     Digitized by Google     364 LIFE IN THE ROMAN WORLD     political, economic, or social aspect. This, however,  is perhaps to anticipate. Let us endeavour to realise  as best we can the religious situation among the  Roman or romanized portion of the population.   Though we are not here directly concerned with  the steps by which the Roman religion had come to  be what it was, we can scarcely hope to understand  the position without some comprehension of that  development. The Romans were a conservative  people, and many of the peculiarities of their worship  were due to the retention of old forms which had lost  such spirit as they once possessed.   In the infant days of the nation there had been no  such things as gods in human shape, or in recognisable  shape at all. There were only ''powers" or "in-  fluences'' superior to mankind, by whose aid or con-  ciurence man must work out his existence. The early  Romans and such Italian tribes - as they became  blended with were, as they still are, extremely super-  stitions. In a pre-scientific age they, like other  peoples, were at a loss to understand what produced  thunder and lightning, rain, the fertility or failure of  crops, the changes of the seasons, the flow or cessation  of springs and streams, the intoxication or exhilara-  tion proceeding from wine, and a multitude of other  phenomena. Fire was a perplexing thing; so was  wind : the woods were full of mysterious soimds and  movements. They could comprehend neither birth  nor death, nor the fructification of plants. The  consequence was a feeling that these things were due     Digitized by Google     XIX     ROMAN RELIGION     365     to unseen agencies; and the attempt was made to  bring those powers into some sort of relation with  mankind, either by the compulsion of magical opera-  tions and magical formulae, or by sacrifices and offer-  ings of propitiation, or by promises. A superhuman  power might be placed under a spell, or placated with  food and drink, or persuaded by a vow. Such  "powers" were exceedingly numerous. Greatest of  all, and recognised equally by all, was the power  working in the sky with the thunder and the rain.  Its presence was everywhere alike, and its bperations  most palpable at every season. Countless others were  concerned with particular localities or with particular  functions. Every wood, if not every tree, and also  every fountain, was controlled by some such higher  ''power''; every manifestation or operation of nature  came from such an 'influence.'' There was no kind of  action or undertaking, no new stage of life or change  of condition, which did not depend for help or hin-  drance upon a similar power. At first "the ''powers"  bore no distinctive names, and were conceived in no  definite shapes. They were not yet gods. The  human being who sought to work upon them to  favour him could only do, say, and offer such things  as he thought likely to move them. But in process of  time it became inevitable that these superhuman  agencies should be referred to under some sort of  title, and the title literally expressed the conception.  Hence a multitude of names. Not only was there  the ever-prominent Jupiter or sky-father " ; there  was a veritable multitude^ of powers with provinces     Digitized by Google     366 LIFE IN THE ROMAN WORLD     great and small. Among the larger conceptions the  power concerned with the sowing of seed was Saturn,  that with the growth of crops was Ceres, that with  the blazing of fire was Vesta. Among the smaller,  the power which taught a babe to eat was Edulia,  that which attended the bringing home of a bride was  Domiduca. The ability to speak or to walk was  supposed to be imparted by separate agencies named  accordingly. Flowers depended on Flora and fruits  on Pomona.   But to assign a name is a great step towards  creating a ''power'' into a ''god,'' and such agencies  began to take shape in the mind of those who named  them. This was the second stage. Jupiter, Ceres,  Satmn, and almost all the rest became "gods." The  powers in the woodlands — a Silvanus or Faunus —  became embodied, like the more modem gnomes and  kobbolds. Once imagine a shape, and the tendency  is to give it visible form in an image "like unto man,*'  and to honour it with an abode — a temple or shrine.  The earliest Romans known to us erected no images  or temples, but they were not long in creating them.  Particularly rapid was the reducing of a god to  human form when they came into close contact with  the Etruscans and the Greeks. For all the important  deities poetry and art combined to evolve an  appropriate bodily form, which gradually became  conventional, so that the ordinary notion of a Jupiter,  a Juno, a Mercury, or a Ceres was approximately that  which had been gathered from the statue thus  developed. This trouble was not taken with all the     Digitized by Google     XDC     ROMAN RELIGION     367     most ancient divinities. Many of the old rural and  local deities, and many of those with quite minor  provinces, were left vague and unrealised. They  were represented in no temples and by no statues.      FlO. 109. JUPITBR.     Natiu'ally as the Roman state grew from a set of  neighbouring farms into a great city, and from a small  settlement into a vast empire, the little local gods fell  into the background. The deities which concerned  the state, and to which it erected temples, were those  with the more far-reaching operations — such as the     Digitized by Google     368 LIFE IN THE ROMAN WORLD chap.     gods identified with the sky and its thunders, with  war, with fertility, with the sea, with the hearth-fire  of all Rome. The rest might well be left to localities  or to domestic worship.   From the early days of Rome there existed a  calendar for festivals to certain divinities important  to the little growing town, and a code of ceremonies  to be performed in their honour, and of formulae of  prayer to be offered to them. The later Romans, in  their characteristic conservatism, adhered to those  festivals, to that ritual, and to those formulae, even  when some of the deities had ceased to be of appreci-  able account, and when neither the meaning of the  ritual nor the sense of the old words was any longer  imderstood by the very priests who used them.   Reflect a moment on this situation. First, we  have a number of deities of the first rank, housed in  temples, embodied in statues, and recognised in all  the Roman world; next a number of minor divinities  whose operations and worship may be remotely rural  or otherwise local, and whose functions are by no  means always distinguishable from those of the  greater gods; then a series of more or less un-  intelligible ceremonials carried out by ancient rule  in honoiu" of divinities often practically forgotten ;  outside these a number of vague powers presiding  over small domestic and other actions; finally, a  peculiar Roman tendency — in keeping with the last  — to erect into divinities, and to symbolise in statues  housed in temples, all manner of abstract qualities     Digitized by Google     XIX     ROMAN RELIGION     369     and states, such as Hope, Harmony, Peace, Wealth,  Health, Fame, and Youth.   Reflect agam that, when the Romans, as they  spread, came into contact with Greeks, Egyptians, or  other foreigners, they met with deities whose provinces  were necessarily often identical with or closely akin      Fio. 110. — A Sacrifice.     to their own. Then remember that there is no  church and no official document to define the complete  list of Roman gods. Does it not follow, as a matter  of course, on the one hand, that the importation of  new gods was an easy matter, and on the other, that  no individual Roman could draw the line as to the  number of even the old-established deities in whom  he should or should not believe?   2 B     Digitized by Google     LIFE IN THE ROMAN WORLD     The guardians of the public reUgion were satisfied  if the due rites were paid by the state to those deities,  on those. dates, and precisely in that manner, which  happened to be prescribed in the official religious  books. For the rest they left matters to the  individual.   So much it has been necessary to say in order to  account for existing attitudes. We must use the  plural, since the attitude of the state officials is but  one of several, and, inasmuch as the state officials  themselves were not a theological caste but only  secular servants of the community administering  the regulations for external worship as laid down in  the records, it often happened that their official  attitude had nothing to do with their individual  beliefs. Often they did not know or care whether  there was a real religious efficacy in the acts which  they performed ; sometimes all that they knew was  that they were doing what the state required to be  done properly by some one.   Cicero quotes a dictum of a Pontifex Maximus  that there was one religion of the poet, another of  the philosopher, and another of the statesman. This  is true, but it is hardly adequate. We must at least  add that of the common people. A well-known  statement of more modern birth puts the case — rather  too strongly — that at our period all religions were  regarded by the people as equally true, by the phi-  losopher as equally false and by the statesman as  equally useful. We may begin with the ordinary  people of whatever station, who were not poets     Digitized by Google     XIX     ROMAN RELIGION     nor thinkers nor magistrates. It is an error to  suppose that such Romans of the first eentiu'y were  either atheistic or indifferent to religion. Their fault  was rather that they were too superstitious, ready to  believe too much rather than too Uttle, but to beUeve  without relating their beUef to conduct. They did  not question the existence of the traditional gods,  nor the characters attributed to them; they were  ready to perform their dues of worship and to make  their due offerings, but all this had no bearing  upon their own morality. They believed with the  terror of the superstitious in omens and portents, and  in rites of expiation and purification to avert the  threatened evil. They were alarmed by thunder and  lightning, earthquakes, bad dreams, ravens seen on  the wrong side of the road, and other evil tokens.  They commonly accepted the existence of maUgn  spirits, including ghosts. They were prepared to  believe that on occasion a statue had bled or turned  round on its base; that an ox had spoken in  human language; or that there had been a rain of  blood. There were doubtless exceptions, and super-  stition was less dire and oppressive than once it  was. More than fifty years before our date Cicero  had said that even old women no longer shuddered  at the terrors of an underworld, and fifty years  after it the satirist asserts the same of children.  But both writers are speaking somewhat hyper-  bolically. Doubtless it had been wondered how  two augurs could look at each other without a  smile, but there is nothing to show that even a     Digitized by Google     372 LIFE IN THE ROMAN WORLD chap.   minority of augurs were acutely conscious of any-  thing to smile at.   In the multiplicity of deities the ordinary people  were prepared to accept as many more as you chose  to offer them, especially if the worship attaching to  them contained mystic or orgiastic ceremonies. By  this date the populace had become exceedingly mixed,  especially in the capital, and the cool hard-headed  Roman stock had been largely replaced or leavened  by foreign elements, especially from the East. The  official worship of the state was formal and frigid ; it  offered nothing to the emotions or the hopes. Many  among the people felt an instinct for something more  sacramental, and especially attractive was any form  of worship which promised a continued existence,  and probably a happier existence, after death. Even  the mere mysteriousness of a form of worship had its  allurements. Hence a tendency to Judaism, still  more to the Egyptian worship of Isis and Osiris.  The latter made many proselytes, particularly among  the women, and contained ideas which are by no  means ignoble but to our modern minds far more  truly ''religious'' than anything to be found in the  native Roman cults. To pass through purification,  to practise asceticism, to feel that there was a life  beyond the grave apportioned to your deserts, to go  through an impressive form of worship held every  day, and to have the emotion^-thus worked upon —  all this supplied something to the moral nature which  was lacking in the chill sacrifices and prayers to  Jupiter and the other national divinities. In vain     Digitized by Google     XIX ROMAN RELIGION 373   had the authorities, in their doubt as to the moral  effects, tried on several occasions to suppress this  foreign worship; it always revived, and it now held  its established place both in the imperial city and in      Fig. 111. — Isis Worship. (Wall-Painting.)     the provinces, particularly near the sea, for it was  especially a sailors' religion. Rome, like Pompeii,  had its temple of Isis and her daily celebrations.  There was, however, no necessary conflict between  this worship and the oflScial religion. It was quite  possible to accept Isis while accepting Jupiter. Nor,     Digitized by Google     LIFE IN THE ROMAN WORLD chap.xix     though this particular cult has required mention,  must it be taken as belonging to more than a section  of the Roman population. Most Romans would look  upon it and other deviations with acquiescence, some  with contempt, and perhaps some with a shake of the  head, while themselves satisfied with an indifferent  conformity to the more estabUshed customs of the  state.   Setting aside the devotees of the mystic, the more  ordinary point of view was that between Romans and  the established gods of Rome there is an understanding.  The gods will support Rome so long as Rome pays to  them their dues of formal recognition. Their ritual  must not be neglected by the authorities; it is not  necessary for an individual member of the community  to concern himself further in the matter. The  state, through its appointed ministers, will make the  necessary sacrifices and say the necessary words;  the citizen need not put in an appearance or take  any part. He will not do or say anything dis-  respectful towards the deities in question, and he will  enjoy the festivals belonging to them. If remarkable  portents and disasters occur, he will agree that there  is something wrong in the behavioiu* of the state,  and that there must be some public purification or  other placation of the gods. If the state orders such  a proceeding, he will perform whatever may be his  share in it. So far he is loyal to the ''religion of  the state.''   In his private capacity he has his own wants,  fears, and hopes. He therefore betakes himself to     Digitized by Google      Digitized by Google     376 LIFE IN THE ROMAN WORLD     whatever divinity he considers most likely to help  him; he makes his own prayers and vows an offering  if his request is granted. Reduced to plain commercial  language his ordinary attitude is — no success, no  payment. A cardinal difference between the religion  of the Romans and our own is to be seen in the nature  of their prayers. They always ask for some definite  advantage — prosperity, safety, health, or the like.  They never pray for a clean heart or for some moral  improvement. Of more importance than the man's  moral condition will be his scrupulous observance  of the right external practices. Unlike the Greek,  he will cover his head when he prays. He will raise  his hand to his lips before the statue, or, if he is  appealing to the celestial deities, he will stretch his  palms upwards above his head ; if to the infernal  powers, he will hold them downwards. These are  the things that matter.   At home, if he belongs to the better type of  representative citizen, our Roman has his household  shrine and his household divinities, whom he never  neglects. If he is very pious, he may pray to them  every morning, or at least before every enterprise.  In any case he will remember them with a small  offering when he dines. There are the ''gods of the  stores" — his ''penates'' — certain deities whom he  has selected as guardians of his belongings, and who  have their little images by the hearth in the  kitchen. There is the household ''protector," or  more commonly there are two, who may be painted  under the form of Ughtly-stepping youths in a     Digitized by Google     XIX     ROMAN RELIGION     377     little niche or shrine above a small altar. To these  he will offer fruits, flowers, incense, and cakes.  And there is the ''Genius'' of the master of the  house, who is also painted on the wall, or who  may be represented by his own portrait bust or by  the pictxu-e of a snake. That "Genius" means the  power presiding over his vitality and health and well-  being. If he is an artisan and belongs to a guild, he  will pay special worship to the patron god or goddess  of that, guild — to Vesta, if he is a baker, to Minerva,  if he is a fuller. Out of doors he will find a street  shrine in the wall at a crossing, pertaining to the  tutelary god of what may be called his ''parish,'' and  this he will not neglect. Like all other orthodox  Romans he will not undertake any new enterprise —  betrothal, marriage, journey, or important business —  without ascertaining that the auspices are favourable.   In a general way he has a notion that the gods  are displeased at certain forms of crime, and that  they approve of justice and the carrying out of  compacts. The gods overlook the state, because the  state engages them so to do, and therefore to break  the laws of the state is to anger the gods of the state.  But this is rather subtle for the common man, and  there is generally no understood immediate relation  between these gods and his moral conduct, unless he has  sworn an oath by one or other of them. The purpose  of calling a god to witness is to bring upon a perjurer  the anger of the offended deity. But he entertains  no such conception as the modem one of "sin" or of  "remorse for sin." "Sin" is either a breach of the     Digitized by Google     378 LIFE IN THE ROMAN WORLD chap.   secular law or breach of a contract with a deity,  and ''remorse'' is but fear of or regret for the  consequences.   His morality is determined by the laws of the state,  family discipUne, and social custom. For that reason  his vices on the positive side will mostly be those of  his appetites, and on the negative side a want of  charity and compassion. He may be guiltless of lying  and stealing, murder and violence; he may be honest  and law-abiding ; but there .is nothing to make him  temperate, continent, or gentle. His avowed code is  ''duty,'' and duty is defined by law and tradition.   If this is the religious condition of the conunon-  place man or woman — a blend of superstition,  formalism, and tolerance — it is by no means that of  the educated thinker. Such persons were for the  most part freethinkers. Many of them, finding no  better guide to conduct, conform to the "religion" of  the state without any real belief in its gods or  attaching any importance to its ceremonies. They  do not feel called upon to propagate any other views,  and they probably think the current notions are at  least as good fqr the ignorant as any others. If they  are poets, like Horace or Lucan, they will dress up  the mythology, mostly from Greek models, and write  fluently about Jupiter and Juno, Venus and Mercury,  either attributing to them the recognised characters  and legends, or varying them so as to make them  more picturesque and interesting — perhaps even im-  proving them — but all the time believing no more in     Digitized by Google     XDC     ROMAN RELIGION     379     the stories they are telling^ or in the deities them-  selves,* than Tennyson need have beUeved in King  Arthur and Guinevere. The gods are good poetic  material and are sure to afford popular, or at least in-  offensive, reading. The poets doubtless do something  to hiunanise and beautify the popular conception of  a deity, but they seldom deUberately set out with any  such purpose. If the educated are not poets, but  pubUc men of affairs, they may beUeve just as Uttle,  and yet regard the established cult of the gods as an  excellent discipline for the vulgar and the best known  means of upholding the national principle of ''duty.''  If they are philosophers they may not, and the  Epicureans in reality do not, beUeve in the gods at all  — certainly not as they are generally conceived — and  will openly discuss in speech and in writing the ques-  tion of their existence or non-existence, and of their  character and nature if they do exist. They will  endeavour to substitute for the barren formalism of  rites and ceremonies, or the inconsistent or incomplete  traditional morality of duty, another set of principles  as a sounder guide to life and conduct. Some are  monotheists, some are simply in doubt. Says Nero's  own tutor, Seneca, ''Do you want to propitiate the  gods? Then be good. The true worshipper of the  gods is he who acts like them." "Better," remarks  Plutarch, "not believe in a God at all than cringe  before a god who is worse than the worst of men."  In the actual worship of images none of them believe.  One conspicuous writer of the time says : "To look for  a form and shape to a god, I consider to be a mark of     Digitized by Google     38o LIFE IN THE ROMAN WORLD chap.     human feebleness of mind." Concerning the schools  of thought and in particular the tenets of those Stoics  and Epicureans whom St. Paul met at Athens, and  whom he could meet in educated circles all over the  Roman Empire, we shall have to speak in a following  chapter, when sununing up the intellectual and moral  condition of the time. Meanwhile it should be under-  stood that, though a profound or anything approach-  ing a professional study of philosophy was discouraged  among the true Romans — more than once the profes-  sional philosophers were banished from the capital —  there were few cultivated persons who did not to  some extent dabble in it, and even go so far as  to profess an adherence to one school or another.  None of these men believed in the "Roman religion"  as administered by the state, although many of  them were administering it themselves. The same  man could one day freely discuss the gods in con-  versation or a treatise, and the next he might be  clad in priestly garb and officially seeing that the  rites of sacrifice were being religiously carried out in  terms of the books, or that the auspices were being  properly taken.   It does not, however, follow at all that because  poet or public man cared nothing for the pantheon  and all its mythology, he was therefore without his  superstitions. He might still tremble at signs and  portents, at comets, at dreams, and at the un-  propitious behaviom* of birds and beasts. He might  believe in astrology and resort to its professors, called  the ''Chaldaeans." On the other hand he might ^     Digitized by Google     XDC     ROMAN RELIGION     381      laugh at such things. It was all a matter of tempera-  ment. It certainly was not every man who dared to  act like one of the Roman admirals. When it was  reported that the omens were unpropitious to an  inuninent battle because the sacred chickens ''would  not eat," he ordered them to be thrown into the sea  so that at least they might drink. The freethinkers  were in advance of their times. "Science" in the  modern sense hardly existed, and until phenomena  are explained it is hard to avoid a perplexity or  astonishment which is equivalent to superstition.     Consider now these various states of mind — that  of the people, ready to add almost any deity to the  large and vague number aheady recognised ; that of  the poet, who finds the deities such useful literary  material ; that of the magistrate or public man, who,  without enthusiasm or necessary belief, regards  reUgion as a thing useful to society; and that  of the philosopher, who thinks all the current re-  Ugious conceptions unsound, if not absurd, and  morally almost useless.   Manifestly a society so composed will be one of  unusual tolerance. The Romans had no disposition  to force their religion on the subject provinces of the  empire. Their religion was the Roman religion; the  rehgion of the Greeks might be left Greek, the Jewish  religion Jewish, and the Egyptian religion Egyptian.  Any nation had a right to the religion of its fathers.  Nay, the Jews had such peculiar notions about a  Sabbath day and other matters that a Jew was      Digitized by Google     382 LIFE IN THE ROMAN WORLD     exempted from the military service which would  have compelled him to break his national laws. All  religions were permitted, so long as they were national  religions. Also all religious views were permitted to  the individual, so long as they were not considered  dangerous to the empire or imperial rule, or so long as  they threatened no appreciable harm to the social  order. If a Jew came to Rome and practised Judaism,  well and good. It was, in the eyes of the Romans, a  narrow-minded and uncharitable religion, marked by  many strange and absurd practices and superstitions,  but if a misguided oriental people liked to indulge in  it, well and good. Even if a Roman became a  proselyte to Judaism, well and good, so long as he did  not flout the official reUgion of his own country. If  the Egyptians chose to worship cats, ibises, and  crocodiles, that was theii^ affair, so long as they let  other people alone. In Gaul, it is true, the emperor  Claudius, predecessor of Nero, had put down the Druids.  Earlier still the Druids had already been interfered  with ; but that was because the Druids — those weird  old white-sheeted men with their long beards and  strange magic — were performing human sacrifices —  burning men alive in wicker frames — and such  conduct was not pnly contrary to the secular law of  Rome, but even to natural law. And when Claudius  finally suppressed them, or drove the remnant out of  Gaul into Britain, it was not simply because they  worshipped non-Roman gods and performed non-  Roman rites, but because they were, as they had  always notoriously been, a dangerous political in-     Digitized by Google     XIX     THE CHRISTIANS     383     fluence interfering with the proper canying out of  the Roman government.   And when we come to Christianity it must be  remarked that, so long as that nascent religion was  regarded as merely a variety of Judaism, it was actu-  ally protected by the Roman power, and owes no  little of its original progress to the fact. In the  Acts of the Apostles it is always from the Roman  governor that St. Paul receives, not only the fairest,  but the most courteous treatment. It is the Jews  who persecute him and work up difficulties against  him, because to them he is a renegade and is weaning  away their people. To the philosophers at Athens he  appears as the preacher of a new philosophy, and  they think him a "smatterer" in such subjects. To  the Roman he is a man charged by a certain com-  munity with being dangerous to social order, to wit,  causing factious disturbances and profaning the  temple; and since he refuses to let the local author-  ities judge his case, and has exercised his citizen  privilege by appealing to Caesar, to Caesar he is  sent. And, when a prisoner in somewhat free  custody at Rome, note that he is permitted to speak  ''with all freedom,'' and that in the first instance he  is acquitted.   True, but the fact remains that Nero bimit  Christians in his gardens after the great fire of Rome,  and that certain later emperors are found punishing  Christians merely for avowing themselves such. Why  was Christianity thus singled out? It was not  through what can be reasonably called ''religious     Digitized by Google     384 LIFE IN THE ROMAN WORLD     intolerance/' for, as has been said, the Romans did  not seek to force Roman religion on other peoples,  nor did they make any inquisition into the beUefs of  Romans themselves. The reasons for singling out  Christianity for special treatment are obvious enough.  The question is not whether the reasons were sound,  whether the Romans properly understood or tried to  understand, whether they could be as wise before the  event as we are after it, but whether the motive was  what we should call a religious" one. To allow  Epicureans to deny the existence of gods at all, and  to make scornful concessions to the peculiar tenets of  Jews, could not be the action of a people which was  bigoted. If there was bigotry and intolerance, it was  political or social bigotry and intolerance, not reUgious.  To prevent any possible misconception let the present  writer say here that he considers the principles of  Christianity, as laid down by its Founder and as spread  by St. Paul, to have been the most humanizing and  civilising influence ever brought to bear upon society.  But that is not the point. The early Christians were  treated as they were, not because they held non-  Roman views, but because they held anti-Roman  views ; not because they did not believe in Jupiter  and Venus, but because they refused to let any one  else believe in them; not because they threatened to  weaken Roman faith, but because they threatened to  weaken and even to wreck the whole fabric of Roman  society ; not because they were known to be heretics,  but because they were supposed to be disloyal; not  because they converted men, but because they     Digitized by Google     xix THE CHRISTIANS 385   appeared to convert them into dangerous characters.  As it has been put, the Christians were regarded as  the ''Nihilists" of the period. We are apt to judge  the Romans from the standpoint of Christianity  dominant and understood; it is fairer to judge them  from the standpoint of a dominant pagan empire  looking on at a strange new phenomenon altogether  misunderstood and often deliberately misrepresented.  Moreover — and the point is worth more attention  than it commonly receives — we have only to read the  Epistles to the Corinthians, to perceive that the early  Christian gatherings were by no means always such  meek, pure, and model assemblages as they are almost  always assumed to have been. Some of the members,  for instance, quarrelled and ''were drunken.". There  were evidently many unworthy members of the new  communion, and of course there were also many  manifestations of insulting bigotry on their part. The  class of society to which the Christians belonged was  closely associated in the Roman mind with the rabble  and the slave, if not with criminals. What the pagan  observer saw in the new religion was "a pestilent super-  -^tition," "hatred of the human race," "a malevolent  superstition." He thought its practices to be connected  with magic. The intransigeant Christian refused to  take the customary oath in the law courts, and there-  fore appeared to menace a trustworthy administration  of the law. He took no interest in the affairs of the  empire, but talked of another king and his coming  kingdom, and he appeared to be an enemy to the  Roman power. He held what appeared to be secret   2C     Digitized by Google     386 LIFE IN THE ROMAN WORLD     meetings, although the empire rigidly suppressed all  secret societies. He weakened the martial spirit of  the soldier. He divided f amiUes — the basis of Roman  society— against themselves. He was a socialist  leveller. He threatened with ruin all the trades  connected with either the established worship — as  amongst the silversmiths at Ephesus — or with the  luxuries and amusements of Ufe. Those amusements  in circus or amphitheatre he hated, and therefore  appeared misanthropic. He not only stood aloof  from the religious observances of the state and the  household, but treated them with contempt or  abhorrence.   Moreover, at this date, he refused to acknowledge  the one great symbol of the imperial authority. This  was the statue of the emperor. When that statue  was set up in every town it was not understood by  any intelUgent man that the emperor was actually a  god, or that, when incense was burnt before the statue,  it was being burned to the emperor himself as deity.  But just as every householder had his attendant  Genius'' — the power determining his vital functions  and well-being — which was often represented as a  bust with the man's own features, so the statue of  the Augustus, ''His Highness," represented the Genius  of that Head of the State, and the offering of incense  was meant as an appeal to the Genius to keep the  emperor and the imperial power ''in health and  wealth long to live." The man who refused to make  such an offering was necessarily considered to be ill-  disposed to the majesty and welfare of the Head of the     Digitized by Google     XIX     THE CHRISTIANS     387     State, and therefore of the state itself. The Roman  attitude towards the early Christians was partly that  of a modern government towards Nihilists, and partly  that of a generation or two ago to a blend of extreme  Radical with extreme atheist.   We are not here concerned with the whole story of  the persecution of the Christians, but only with the  situation at and immediately after the date we have  chosen. It is at least quite cer ain that when Nero  burned the Christians in the year 64 he was treating  them, not as the adherents of a religion, but as social  criminals or nuisances. How far his notions of  Christianity may have been influenced by Poppaea  we do not know. At least he believed he was  pleasing the populace.