and lays upon it a lock of his hair. Hearing the approach of the Libation Bearers, the young men withdraw, and listen in fascination as Electra, Orestes' brooding sister, comes with the women, stands over the grave, and calls upon Agamemnon's spirit to arouse Orestes to avenge him. Orestes reveals himself; and from her bitter heart she pours into his simple mind the thought that he must kill their mother. The youths, disguised as mer chants, proceed to the royal palace; Clytaemnestra softens them with hos pitality; but when Orestes tests her by saying that the boy she sent to Phocis is dead, he is shocked to see a secret joy hiding in her grief. She calls Aegisthus to share with him the news that the avenger whom they feared is no more. Orestes slays him, drives his mother into the palace, and comes out a moment later already half insane with the consciousness that he is a matricide.
While I am still not mad I here declare To all who love me, and confess, that I Have slain my mother.""
In the third play Orestes is pursued, in the poet's externalization of the boy's wild fancy, by the Erinnyes, or Furies, whose task it is to punish crime; and from their euphemistic, deprecatory title, the Eumenides, or Well-Wishers, the play derives its name. Orestes is an outcast, shunned by all men; wherever he goes the Furies hang over him as black ghosts crying out for his blood. He flings himself upon the altar of Apollo at Delphi, and Apollo comforts him; but the shade of Clytaemnestra rises from the earth to urge the Furies not to desist from torturing her son. Orestes goes to Athens, kneels before Athena's shrine, and cries out to her for de liverance. Athena hears him, and calls him "perfect by suffering." When the Erinnyes protest she summons them to try Orestes' case before the Council of the Areopagus; the concluding scene shows this strange trial, symbolical of the replacement of blood revenge with law. Athena, god dess of the city, presides; the Furies state the case for vengeance against Orestes, and Apollo defends him. The court divides evenly; Athena casts the deciding ballot in favor of Orestes, and declares him free. She solemnly establishes the Council of the Areopagus as henceforth the su preme court of Attica, whose swift condemnation of the murderer shall free the land from feuds, and whose wisdom will guide the state through the dangers that beset every people. The goddess by her fair speech ap peases the disappointed Furies, and so wins them that their leader says, "This day a new Order is born."
390	THE	LIFE  OF GREECE	(CHAP. XVII
After the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Oresteia is the highest achievement in Greek literature. Here is a breadth of conception, a unity of thought and execution, a power of dramatic development, an understanding of character, and a splendor of style which in their sum we shall not find again before Shakespeare. The trilogy is as closely knit as the three acts of a well-designed drama; each part foreshadows and requires the next with logical inevitability. As play succeeds play the terror of the theme grows until we begin dimly to realize how deeply this story must have moved the Greeks. It is true that there is too much talk, even for four murders; that the lyrics are often obscure, their metaphors exaggerated, their language sometimes heavy and rough and strained. Nevertheless these chorals are supreme in their kind, full of grandeur and tenderness, elo quent with their plea for a new religion of forgiveness, and for the virtues of a political order that was passing away.
For the Oresteia is as conservative as the Prometheus is radical, though only two years seem to have separated them in time. In 462 Ephialtes de prived the Areopagus of its powers; in 461 he was assassinated; in 458 Aeschylus offered in the Oresteia a defense of the Council of the Areopagus as the wisest body in the Athenian government. The poet was now full of years, and could understand the old more easily than the young; like Aristophanes he longed for the virtues of the men of Marathon. Athenaeus would have us believe that Aeschylus was a great drinker;"' but in the Oresteia he is a Puritan preaching a sermon in buskins on sin and its pun ishment, and the wisdom born of suffering. The law of bybris and nemesis is another doctrine of karma, or of original sin; every evil deed will be found out, and be avenged in one life or another. In this way Greek thought made its trial at reconciling evil with God: all suffering is due to sin, even if it is the sin of a generation that is dead. The author of Prome theus was no naive pietist; his plays, even in the Oresteia, are studded with heresies; he was attacked for revealing ritual secrets, and was saved only by the intercession of his brother Ameinias, who bared before the Assem bly the wounds he had received at Salamis... But Aeschylus was con vinced that morality, to hold its own against unsocial impulse, required supernatural sanctions; he hoped that
One there is who heareth on high Some Pan or Zeus, some seer Apollo-
And sendeth down, for the law _µ--ansgressed, The Wrath of the Feet that i<)llow.8'
/
CHAP.XVII) THE  LITERATURE  OF THE GOLDEN  AGE	391
-i.e., the Furies of conscience and retribution. Therefore he speaks with a solemn reverence for religion, and makes an effort to reach beyond poly theism to the conception of one God.
Zeus, Zeus, whate'er He be,
If this name He love to hear, This He shall be called of me. Searching earth and sea and air Refuge nowhere can I find Save Him only, if my mind Will cast off, before it die,
The burden of this vanity."'
He identifies Zeus with the personified Nature of Things, the Law or Rea son of the World; "The Law that is Fate and the Father and All-compre hending are here met together as one."06
Perhaps these concluding lines of his masterpiece were his last words as a poet. Two years after the Oresteia we find him again in Sicily. Some believe that the audience, being more radical than the judges, did not like the trilogy; but this hardly accords with the fact that the Athenians, a few years later, and directly contrary to custom, decreed that his plays might be repeated in the Theater of Dionysus, and that a chorus should be granted to anyone who offered to produce them. Many did, and Aeschylus con tinued to win prizes after his death. Meanwhile in Sicily, says an old story, an eagle had killed him by dropping a tortoise upon his bald head, mistak ing it for a stone... There he was buried over his own epitaph, so strangely silent about his plays, so humanly proud of his scars:
Beneath this stone lies Aeschylus;
Of his noble prowess the grove of Marathon can speak, Or the long-haired Persian, who knows it well.
SOPHOCLES
The first prize for tragedy was won from Aeschylus in 468 by a new comer, aged twenty-seven, and bearing a name that meant the Wise and Honored One. Sophocles was the most fortunate of men, and almost the darkest of pessimists. He came from Colonus, a suburb of Athens, and was the son of a sword manufacturer, so that the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars, which impoverished nearly all Athenians, left the dramatist a com fortable income." In addition to wealth he had genius, beauty, and good
392	THE	L IF E  OF	GREECE	( CHAP. XVII
health. He won the double prize for wrestling and music-a combination that would have pleased Plato; his skill as a ballplayer and a harpist enabled him to give public performances in both fields; and after the battle of Salamis it was he who was chosen by the city to lead the nude youths of Athens in a dance and song of victory.118 Even in later years he was hand some; the Lateran Museum statue shows him old and bearded and rounded, but still vigorous and tall. He grew up in the happiest age of Athens; he was the friend of Pericles, and held high offices under him; in 443 he was Imperial Treasurer; in 440 he was one of the generals who commanded the Athenian forces in Pericles' expedition against Samos-though it should be added that ericles preferred his poetry to his strategy. After the Athenian debacle in Syracuse he was appointed to the Committee of Public Safety;"" and in this capacity he voted for the oligarchical constitu tion of 411. His character pleased the people more than his politics; he was genial, witty, unassuming, pleasure-loving, and endowed with a charm that atoned for all his errors. He had a fancy for moneyeo and boys,.. but in his old age he turned his favor to courtesans.0 He was very pious, and pccasionally filled the office of priest.•
He wrote 113  plays; we have only seven, and do not know the order ln which they were produced. Eighteen times he won the first award at the Dionysian, twice at the Lenaean, festivals; he received his first prize at twenty-five, his last at eighty-five; for thirty years he ruled the Athenian stage more completely than Pericles contemporaneously ruled Athens. He increased the number of actors to three, and played a role himself until he lost his voice. He (and after him Euripides) abandoned the Aeschylean form of trilogy, preferring to compete with three independent plays. Aeschylus was interested in cosmic themes that overshadowed the persons of his drama; Sophocles was interested in character, and was almost mod ern in his flair for psychology. The Trachinitm Women is on its surface a sensational melodrama: Deianeira, jealous of her husband and Heracles' love for Iola, sends him unwittingly a poisoned robe, and, when it con sumes him, kills herself; what draws Sophocles here is not the punishment of Heracles, which would have seemed central to Aeschylus-nor even the passion of love, which would have attracted Euripides-but the psy chology of jealousy. So in the Ajax no attention is paid to the mighty deeds of the hero; what lures the author is the study of a man going mad. In the Philoctetes there is almost no action, but a frank analysis of injured simplicity and diplomatic dishonesty. In the Electra the story is as slight as it is old; Aeschylus was fascinated by the moral issues involved; Sopho-
CHAP. XVII) THE   LITERATURE  OF THE GOLD EN  AGE	393
des ahnost ignores them in his eagerness to study with psychoanalytic ruth lessness the young woman's hatred of her mother. The play has given its name to a neurosis once widely discussed, as Oedipus the King has pro vided a name for another.


-offices of state, made fonunes, lent money at usurious interest, and denied their faith at the first sign of danger.41 Eusebius mourned that priests quar reled violently in their competition for ecclesiastical preferment.42 While Christianity converted the world, the world convened Christianity, and displayed the natural paganism of mankind. Christian monasticism arose as a protest against this mutual adjustment of the spirit and the flesh. A minority wished to avoid any indulgence of human appetite, and to continue the early Christian absorption in thoughts of eternal life. Following the custom of the Cynics, some of these ascetics renounced all possessions, donned the ragged robe of the philosopher, and subsisted on alms. A few, like Paul the Hermit, went to live as solitaries in the Egyptian desen. About 275 an Egyptian monk, Anthony, began a quaner century of isolated existence first in a tomb, then in an abandoned mountain castle, then in a rock-hewn desen cell. There he struggled nightly with frightful visions and pleasant dreams, and overcame them all; until at last his reputation for sanctity filled all Christendom, and peopled the desert with emulating eremites. In 32 5 Pachomius, feeling that solitude was selfishness, gathered anchorites into an abbey at Tabenne in Egypt, and founded that cenobitic, or community, monasticism which was to have its most influential development in the West. The Church opposed the monastic movement for a time, and then accepted it as a necessary balance to its increasing preoccupation with government.
Within a year after Constantine's conversion the Church was torn by a schism that might have ruined it in the very hour of victory. Donatus, Bishop of
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XXX
Canhage, supported by a priest of like name and temper, insisted that Christian bishops who had surrendered the Scriptures to the pagan police during the per secutions had forfeited their office and powers; that baptisms or ordinations performed by such bishops were null and void; and that the validity of sacra ments depended in part upon the spiritual state of the ministrant. When the Church refused to adopt this stringent creed, the Donatists set up rival bishops wherever the existing prelate failed to meet their tests. Constantine, who had thought of Christianity as a unifying force, was dismayed by the chaos and violence that ensued, and was presumably not unmoved by the occasional alliance of Donatists with radical movements among the African peasantry. He called a council of bishops at Aries (3 r4), confirmed its denunciation of the Donatists, ordered the schismatics to return to the Church, and decreed that recalcitrant congregations should lose their property and their civil rights (316). Five years later, in a momentary reminiscence of the Milan edict, he withdrew these measures, and gave the Donatists a scornful toleration. The schism continued till the Saracens overwhelmed orthodox and heretic alike in the conquest of Africa.
In those same years Alexandria saw the rise of the most challenging heresy in the history of the Church. About 318 a priest from the Egyptian town of Baucalis startled his bishop with strange opinions about the nature of Christ. A learned Catholic historian describes him generously:
Arius ...  was tall and thin, of melancholy look, and an aspect that showed traces of his austerities. He was known to be an ascetic, as could be seen from his costume-a short tunic without sleeves, under a scarf that served as a cloak. His manner of speaking was gentle; his addresses were persuasive. The consecrated virgins, who were nu merous in Alexandria, held him in great esteem; and he counted many stanch supporters among the higher clergy.43
Christ, said Arius, was not one with the Creator, he was rather the Logos, the first and highest of all created beings. Bishop Alexander protested, Arius persisted. If, he argued, the Son had been begotten of the Father, it must have been in time; the Son therefore could not be coeternal with the Father. Furthermore, if Christ was created, it must have been from nothing, not from the Father's substance; Christ was not "consubstantial" with the Father.44
The Holy Spirit was begotten by the Logos, and was still less God than the Logos. We see in these doctrines the continuity of ideas from Plato through the Stoics, Philo, Plotinus, and Origen to Arius; Platonism, which had so
deeply influenced Christian theology, was now in conflict with the Church. Bishop Alexander was shocked not only by these vie,vs but by their rapid spread even among the clergy. He called a council of Egyptian bishops at
CHAP. XXX)   THE  TRIUMPH  OF CHRISTIANITY
Alexandria, persuaded it to unfrock Arius and his followers, and sent an account of the proceedings to other bishops. Some of these objected; many priests sympathized with AriuS½ throughout the Asiatic provinces clergy as well as laity divided on the issue, and made the cities ring with such "tumult and disorder ... that the Christian religion," says Eusebius, "afforded a subject of profane merriment to the pagans, even in their theaters." 45 Con stantine, coming to Nicomedia after overthrowing Licinius, heard the story from its bishop. He sent both Alexander and Arius a personal appeal to imi tate the calm of philosophers, to reconcile their differences peaceably, or at least to keep their debates from the public ear. The letter, preserved by Eusebius, clearly reveals Constantine's lack of theology, and the political purpose of his religious policy.
I had proposed to lead back to a single form the ideas which all people conceive of the Deity; for I feel strongly that if I could induce men to unite on that subject, the conduct of public affairs would be considerably eased. But alas! I hear that there are more disputes among you than recently in Africa. The cause seems to be quite trifling, and unworthy of such fierce contests. You, Alexander, wished to know what your priests were thinking on a point of law, even on a portion only of a question in itself entirely devoid of importance; and you, Arius, if you had such thoughts, should have kept silence.   There
was no need to make these questions public	since they are prob
lems that idleness alone raises, and whose only use is to sharpen men's wits	these are silly actions worthy of inexperienced children, and
not of priests or reasonable man.46
The letter had no effect. To the Church the question of the "consubstan tiality" (homoousia) as against the mere similarity (homoiousia) of the Son and the Father was vital both theologically and politically. If Christ was not God, the whole structure of Christian doctrine would begin to crack; and if division were permitted on this question, chaos of belief might destroy the unity and authority of the Church, and therefore its value as an aide to the state. As the controversy spread, setting the Greek East aflame, Con stantine resolved to end it by calling the first ecumenical universal-council of the Church. He summoned all bishops to meet in3 2 5 at Bithynian Nicaea, near his capital Nicomedia, and provided funds for all their expenses. Not less than 318 bishops came, "attended" says one of them, "by a vast con course of the lower clergy": 47 the statement reveals the immense growth of the Church. l\1ost of the bishops were from the Eastern provinces; many
\Vestern dioceses ignored the controversy; and Pope Silvester I, detained by illness, was content to be represented by some priests.
660	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP.XXX
The Council met in the hall of an imperial palace. Constantine presided and opened the proceedings by a brief appeal to the bishops to restore the unity of the Church. He "listened patiently to the debates," repons Eusebius, "moderated the violence of the contending parties," 48 and himself joined in the argument. Arius reaffinned his view that Christ was a created being, not equal to the Father, but "divine only by; participation." Clever ques tioners forced him to admit that if Christ was a creature, and had had a beginning, he could change; and that if he could change he might pass from virtue to vice. The answers were logical, honest, and suicidal. Athanasius, the eloquent and pugnacious archdeacon whom Alexander had brought with him as a theological sword, made it clear that if Christ and the Holy Spirit were not of one substance with the Father, polytheism would triumph. He conceded the difficulty of picturing three distinct persons in one God, but argued that reason must bow to the mystery of the Trinity. All but seven teen of the bishops agreed with him, and signed a statement expressing his view. The supporters of Arius agreed to sign if they might add one iota, changing homoousion to homoiousion. The Council refused, and issued with the Emperor's approval the following creed: •
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things. visible or invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, be- gotten ...	not made, being of one essence (homoousion) with the Father ...	 who for us men and our salvation came down and was made flesh, was made man, suffered, rose again the third day, ascended into heaven, and comes to judge the quick and the dead	•49
Only five bishops, finally only two, refused to sign this formula. These two, with the unrepentant Arius, were anathematized by the Council and exiled by the Emperor. An imperial edict ordered that all books by Arius should
be burned, and made the concealment of such a book punishable with death.t
Constantine celebrated the conclusion of the Council with a royal dinner to all the assembled bishops, and then dismissed them with the request that they should not tear one another to pieces.51 He was mistaken in thinking that the controversy was ended, or that. he himself would not change his view of it, but he was right in believing that he had struck a great blow for the unity of the Church. The Council signalized the conviction of the eccle-
This di1fers from the "Nicene Creed" now in use, which is a revision made in 362.
t Th Council also decree? that all churches_ should c lebrate Easter on the same day, to be named m each year hf the Bishop of Alexandna accordmg to an astronomical rule, and to be promulgated by the Bishop of Rome. On the question of clerical celibacy the Council inclined to require continence of married priests; but Paphnutius, Bishop of Upper Thebes, persuaded his peers to leave unchanged the prevailing custom, which forbade marriage after ordinarion, but permitted a priest to cohabit with a wife whom he had married before ordination.50


CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XXIX
consumed by war and government, the poverty of the poor did not de crease.22 Wages were from six to eleven, prices some thirty-three, per cent of comparative wages and prices in the United States of the early twentieth century.23 The class struggle was becoming more violent, for the army, recruited from the provincial poor, often joined in the attack upon wealth, and felt that its services to the state justified confiscatory taxation for dona tives, or more direct pillaging of the well to do.24 Industry suffered as commerce declined. The export trade of Italy fell as the provinces graduated from customers to competitors; barbarian raids and piracy made trade routes as unsafe as before Pompey; depreciated currencies and uncertain prices discouraged long-term enterprise. The extension of the frontier having ceased, Italy could no longer prosper by supplying or exploiting an expand ing realm. Once Italy had collected the bullion of conquered lands and grown rich on the robbery; now money was migrating to the more indus trialized Hellenistic provinces, and Italy grew poorer while the rising wealth of Asia Minor forced the replacement of Rome with an Eastern capital. Italian industry was thrown back upon its domestic market, and found the people too poor to buy the goods they could make.25 Internal commerce was hampered by brigands, rising taxes, and the deterioration of roads through lack of slaves. The villas became more self-sufficient in industry, and barter competed with money trade. Large-scale production
gave way year by year to small shops supplying chiefly a local demand.
Financial difficulties entered. The precious metals were running low: the gold mines of Thrace and the silver mines of Spain had reduced their yield, and Dacia, with its gold, would soon be surrendered by Aurelian. Much gold and silver had been consumed in art and ornament. Faced with this dearth when war was almost continuous, the emperors from Septimius Severus onward repeatedly debased the currency to pay for state expenses and military supplies. Under Nero the alloy in the denarius was ten per cent, under Commodus thirty, under Septimius fifty. Caracalla replaced it with the antoni11iamts, containing fifty per cent silver; by 260 its silver content had sunk to five per cent.26 The government mints issued unprece dented quantities of cheap coin; in many instances the state compelled the acceptance of these at their face value instead of their actual worth, while it insisted that taxes should be paid in goods or gold.27 Prices rose rapidly; in Palestine they increased one thousand per cent between the first and third centuries; 28 in Egypt inflation ran out of control, so that a measure of wheat that had cost eight drachmas in the first century cost 120,000 drachmas at the end of the third.29 Other provinces suffered much less; but in most of them inflation ruined a large part of the middle class, nullified trust funds and charitable foundations, rendered all business discouragingly precarious,
CHAP. XXIX)   THE  COLLAPSE OF THE EMPIRE
and destroyed a considerable portion of the trading and investment capital upon.which the economic life of the Empire depended.
The- emperors after Pertinax were not displeased by this attrition of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. They felt the hostility of the Senatorial class and the great merchants to their alien origin, their martial despotism, and their exactions; the war of Senate and emperor, interrupted from Nerva to Aurelius, was renewed; and by donatives, public works, and doles, the rulers deliberately based their powers upon the favor of the anny, the proletariat, and the peasantry.
The Empire suffered only less than Italy. Carthage and north Africa, farthest from the invaders, flourished; but Egypt decayed under destructive factionalism, Caracalla's massacre, Zenobia's conquest, high taxes, listless forced labor, and Rome's annual exaction of grain. Asia Minor and Syria had borne invasion and pillaging, but their ancient and patient industries had survived all tribulations. Greece, Macedonia, and Thrace had been devastated by the barbarians, and Byzantium had not recovered from Sep timius' siege. As war brought Roman garrisons and supplies to the German frontier new cities rose along the rivers-Vienna, Karlsburg, Strasbourg, Mainz. Gaul had been disordered and discouraged by German attacks; sixty of her cities had been sacked; most of her towns and cities were shrinking within new walls, and were abandoning the broad straight streets of Roman design for the more easily defended irregular alleys of early antiquity and
the Middle Ages. In Britain, too, the cities were becoming smaller, the villas
larger; 30 class war and high taxation had destroyed wealth or driven it into rural concealment. The Empire had begun with urbanization and civiliza tion; it was ending in reruralization and barbarism.
THE  TWILIGHT OF PAGANISM
The cultural graph of the third century follows loosely the curve of declining wealth and power. Nevertheless, in these tragic years we have the rise of notational algebra, the highest names in Roman jurisprudence, the finest example of ancient literary criticism, some of Rome's most majestic architecture, the oldest romantic novels, the greatest of mystic philosophers.
The Greek Anthology summarizes the life of Diophantus of Alexandria (A.D. 250) with algebraic humor: his boyhood lasted one sixth of his life, his beard grew after one twelfth more, he married after another seventh, his son was born five years later and lived to half his father's age, and the father died four years after his son-therefore at the age of eighty-four.31 Of his works the chief
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XXIX
survivor is the Arithmetica-a treatise on algebra. It solves determinate equations of the first degree, determinate quadratic equations, and indeterminate equa tions up to the sixth degree. For the unknown quantity which we denote by x, and which he called arithmos (the number)-he used a Greek sigma; and for the other powers he used the letters of the Greek alphabet. An algebra without symbols had existed before him: Plato had recommended, for training and amus ing the youthful mind, such problems as the distribution of apples in certain proportions among several persons; 32 Archimedes had propounded like puzzles in the third century B.c.; and both the Egyptians and the Greeks had solved geometrical problems by algebraic methods without algebraic notation. Prob ably Diophantus systematized methods already familiar to his contemporaries; 33 the accident of time has preserved him; and to him, through the Arabs, we trace that bold and esoteric symbolism which aspires to formulate all the quantitative relations of the world.
Papinian, Paulus, and Ulpian, the culminating trio of Roman law, all rose to power under Septimius Severus; all, as prefects of the Praetorian Guard, were the prime ministers of the realm; and all justified absolute monarchy on the ground that the people had delegated their sovereignty to the emperor. Papinian's Quaestiones and Responsa were so distinguished by clarity, humanity, and justice that Justinian's collections leaned heavily on these works. When Caracalla killed Geta, he bade Papinian ·write a legal defense of the act; Papinian refused, saying that it was "easier to commit fratricide than to justify it." Caracalla ordered him beheaded, and a soldier performed the deed with an ax in the presence of the Emperor. Domitius Ulpianus continued Papinian's labors as jurist and humani tarian. His legal opinions defended slaves as by nature free, and women as endowed with the same rights as men.34 Like most landmarks in the history of law, his writings were essentially a co-ordination of his predecessors' work; but his judgments were so definitive that nearly a third of them survive in the Digest of Justinian. "It was because Alexander Severus ruled chiefly in accord with Ulpian's advice," says Lampridius, "that he ,vas so excellent an emperor." 35 However, Ulpian had had some of his opponents put to death; and in 228 his enemies in the Guard killed him in turn, with less legality and equal effect. Diocletian encouraged and financed schools of law, and commissioned the codifi cation of post-Trajanic legislation in the Codex Gregorianus. Thereafter the science of jurisprudence hibernated till Justinian.
The third century continued the art of painting on Pompeian and Alex andrian lines; its meager remains are Oriental and crude, and almost effaced by time. Sculpture flourished, for many emperors had to be carved; it stiffened into a primitive frontality, but no later age has surpassed this one in portraits of startling veracity. It is a credit to Caracalla, or a testimony to his dullness, that he allowed a sculptor to transmit him to us as the curlyheaded scowling brute of the Naples Museum. Two sculptural colossi date from this period: the Farnese Bull and the Ftrmese Hercules, both of them exaggerated and un pleasantly tense, but showing undiminished technical mastery. That sculptors
CHAP. XXIX)   THE  COLLAPSE OF THE  EMPIRE
could still work in the classic style appears from the chaste reliefs on the sar cophagus of Alexander Severus, and on the Ludovisi Battle Sarcophagus. But the reliefs on the Arch of Septimius Severus at Rome frankly rejected Attic sim plicity and grace for a coarse and picturesque virility that almost foreshadowed the rebarbarization of Italy.
Architecture at Rome now carried to completion the Roman flair for sub limity through size. Septimius raised on the Palatine the last of its imperial palaces, with an eastern wing seven stories high-the "Septizonium." Julia Domna pro vided funds for the Atrium Vestae, and the pretty Temple of Vesta that still stands in the Forum. Caracalla built for Isis' consort Serapis an immense shrine of which some handsome fragments survive. The Baths of Caracalla, finished under Alexander Severus, are among the world's most impressive ruins. They added nothing to architectural science, following essentially the lines of Trajan's Baths; but their frowning mass well expressed the murderer of Geta and Papinian. The main block, of brick and concrete, covered 270,000 square feet-more than the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Hall combined. A winding stair way led to the top of the walls; perched there Shelley wrote Prometheus Un bound. The interior was garrisoned by a multitude of statues, and upheld by
200 columns of granite, alabaster, and porphyry; the marble floors and walls were inlaid with mosaic scenes; water poureo from massive mouths of silver into pools and basins where 1600 persons could bathe at once. Gallienus and Decius raised similar baths; in the latter case the Roman engineers rested a circular dome upon a decagonal edifice, and supported it with buttresses in the angles of the decagon-an expedient with little past and much future. In 295 Maximian began the most enormous of the eleven imperial thermae, and named it with singular modesty the Baths of Diocletian. Here were bathing facilities for 3600 persons at one time, gymnasiums, concert and lecture halls; out of one room, the tepidarium, Michelangelo fashioned Santa Maria degli Angeli-with the exception of St. Peter's the largest church in Rome. Structures only less monu mental rose in the provinces. Diocletian built extensively in Nicomedia, Alex andria, and Antioch; 1\1aximian adorned Milan, Galerius Sirmium, Constantius Treves.
Literature prospered less, for it could seldom tap the wealth that gathered in imperial hands. Libraries grew in number and size; a third-century physician had a collection of 62,000 volumes, and the Bibliotheca Ulpiana was renowned for its historical archives. Diocletian sent scholars to Alexandria to transcribe classi cal texts there and bring copies to the libraries of Rome. Scholars were plentiful and popular; Philostratus memorialized them well in his Lives of the Sophists. Porphyry continued Plotinus, attacked Christianity, and called the world to vegetarianism. Iamblichus tried to harmonize Platonism and pagan theology, and succeeded sufficiently to inspire the Emperor Julian. Diogenes Laertius put to gether the lives and opinions of the philosophers in fascinating excerpt and anecdote. Athenaeus of Naucratis, having consumed the libraries of Alexandria, poured his chyme into the Deipnosophists, or "Sophists of the Dinner Table"
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XXIX
-a dreary dialogue on foods, sauces, courtesans, philosophers, and words, bright ened here and there by some revelation of ancient custom or some reminiscence of great men. Longinus, perhaps of Palmyra, composed a polished essay Peri hypsus, "On the Sublime"; the peculiar pleasure given by literature (runs the argument) is due to the "lifting up" (ekstasis) of the reader by the eloquence that comes to a writer from strength of conviction and sincerity of character.* Dio Cassius Cocceianus of Bithynian Nicaea, after a life spent in the cursus bonorum, began at fifty-five to write his History of Rome ( 2 ro?); in his seventy fourth year he completed it, having carried the story down from Romulus to himself. Of its eighty "books" less than half remain, but they fill eight substan tial volumes. It is a work of noble scope rather than high quality. It has vivid narratives, revealing speeches, and philosophical asides that are not always plati tudinous and conservative. But, like Livy, it is disfigured with "portents"; like Tacitus it is a long brief for the Senatorial opposition; and like all Roman his tories it cleaves narrowly to the vicissitudes of politics and war-as if life for a thousand years had been nothing but taxes and death.
More significant than these honorable men for the historian of the mind is the appearance, in this century, of the romantic novel. It had had a long prepara tion in the Cyropaideia of Xenophon, the love poems of Callimachus, the legends that had accumulated about Alexander, and the "Milesian Tales" told by Aristides and others in the second century B.c. and afterward. These stories of adventure and love pleased an Ionian populace so classic in tradition but so Oriental in mood, perhaps now Oriental in blood. Petronius in Rome, Apuleius in Africa, Lucian in Greece, Iamblichus in Syria, developed the picaresque romance in varied ways, with no special accent on love. In the first Christian centuries, pos sibly responding to an increasing audience of women readers, the novel of ad venrure merged with the romance of love.


inhabitants of the Mediterranean states.
,vomen were admitted to the congregations, and rose to some prominence
in minor roles; but the Church required them to shame the heathen by lives of modest submission and retirement. They were bidden to come to worship veiled, for their hair was considered especially seductive, and even angels might be distracted by it during the service;2 Saint Jerome thought it should be entirely cut off .3 Christian women were also to avoid cosmetics and jewelry, and particularly false hair; for the blessing of the priest, falling upon dead hair from another head, would hardly know which head to bless.4 Paul had instructed his communities sternly:
Women should keep quiet in church. They must take a subordi nate place. If they want to find out anything they should ask their husbands at home, for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in church. . . . A man ought not to wear anything on his head in church, for he is the image of God and reflects God's glory, while woman is a reflection of man's glory. For man was not made from
596
CHAP. XXVIII)   THE  GROWTH  OF  THE  CHURCH	597
woman, but woman from man; and man was not created for woman, but woman for man. That is why she ought to wear upon her head something to symbolize her subjection.5
This was the Judaic and Greek view of woman, not the Roman; perhaps it represented a reaction against the license into which some women had debased their growing liberty. We may believe, from these very fulmina tions, that despite the lack of jewels and scents, and with the help of veils, Christian women succeeded in being attractive, and exercised their ancient powers in their subtle ways. For unmarried or widowed women the Church found many useful tasks. They were organized as "sisters," performed works of administration or charity, and created in time the divers orders of those nuns whose cheerful kindliness is the noblest embodiment of Christianity.
Lucian, about 160, described "those imbeciles," the Christians, as "dis daining things terrestrial, and holding these as belonging to all in common." 6 A generation later Tertullian declared that "we" (Christians) "have all things in common except our wives," and added, with his characteristic bite: "at that point we dissolve our partnership, precisely where the rest of men make it effective." 7 We should not take these statements literally; as another passage in T errullian 8 suggests, this communism meant merely that each Christian would contribute according to his means to the congre gation's common fund. The expectation of an early end to the existing order of things doubtless facilitated giving; the richer members may have been persuaded that they must not let the Last Judgment surprise them in the arms of Mammon. Some early Christians agreed with the Essenes that the prosperous man who does not share his surplus is a thief.9 James, "brother of the Lord," attacked wealth with words of revolutionary bitterness:
Come, now, you rich people, weep aloud and howl over the mis eries that shall overtake you! Your wealth has rotted, your clothes are moth-eaten, your gold and silver are rusted    and their rust will
eat into your very flesh, for you have stored up fire for the last days. The wages you have withheld from the laborers who have reaped your harvests cry aloud, and their cries have reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts   Has not God chosen the world's poor to possess
the Kingdom? 10
In that Kingdom, he adds, the rich will wither like flowers under a scorching sun.11
An element of communism entered into the custom of the common meal. As the Greek and Roman associations had met on occasion to dine together, so the early Christians gathered frequently in the agape or love feast, usually
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XXVIII
on a Sabbath evening. The dinner began and ended with prayer and scrip tural readings, and the bread and wine were blessed by the priest. The faith ful appear to have believed that the bread and wine were, or represented, the body and blood of Christ; 12 the worshipers of Dionysus, Attis, and Mithras had entertained like beliefs at the banquets where they ate the magic embodi ments or symbols of their gods.13 The final ritual of the agape was the "kiss of love." In some congregations this was given only by men to men, and by women to women; in others this hard restriction was not enforced. Many participants discovered an untheological delight in the pleasant ceremony; and Tertullian and others denounced it as having led to sexual indulgences.14 The Church recommended that the lips should not be opened in kissing, and that the kiss should not be repeated if it gave pleasure.15 In the third century the agape gradually disappeared.
Despite such episodes, and the diatribes of preachers calling their con gregations to perfection, we may accept the old belief that the morals of the early Christians were a reproving example to the pagan world. After the weakening of the ancient faiths had removed their frail support from the moral life, and the attempt of Stoicism at an almost natural ethic had failed with all but the best of men, a new supernatural ethic accomplished, at whatever cost to the free and dissolvent intellect, the task of regulating the jungle instincts of man into a viable morality. The hope of the coming Kingdom carried with it belief in a Judge who saw every act, knew man's every thought, and could not be eluded or deceived. To this divine sur veillance was added mutual scrutiny: in these little groups sin could with difficulty find a hiding place; and the community publicly reprimanded those members who had violated the new moral code with insufficient secrecy. Abortion and infanticide, which were decimating pagan society, were forbidden to Christians as the equivalents of murder; 16 in many instances Christians rescued exposed infants, baptized them, and brought them up with the aid of the community fund.17 The Church forbade with less success the attendance of Christians at the theater or the public games, and their participation in the festivities of pagan holidays.18 In general, Christianity continued and exaggerated the moral sternness of the embattled Jews. Celi bacy and virginity were recommended as ideal; marriage was tolerated only as a check on promiscuity and as a ridiculous means of continuing the race, but husband and wife were encouraged to refrain from sexual relations.19 Divorce was allowed only when a pagan wished to annul a marriage with a convert. The remarriage of widows or widowers was discountenanced, and homosexual practices were condemned with an earnestness rare in antiquity. "So far as sex is concerned," said T ertullian, "the Christian is content with the woman." 20
CHAP.:xxvm)   THE  GROWTH  OF  THE  CHURCH	599
Much of this difficult code was predicated on the early return of Christ. As that hope faded, the voice of the flesh rose again, and Christian morals were relaxed; an anonymous pamphlet. Tbe Sbepherd of Hermas (ca. 110), inveighed against the reappearance, among Christians, of avarice, dishonesty, rouge, dyed hair, painted eyelids, drunkenness, and adultery.21 Nevertheless, the general picture of Christian morals in this period is one of piety, mutual loyalty, marital fidelity, and a quiet happiness in the possession of a confident faith. The younger Pliny was compelled to report to Trajan that the Chris tians led peaceful and_ exemplary lives.22 Galen described them as "so far advanced in self-discipline and   intense desire to attain moral excellence
that they are in no way inferior to true philosophers." 23 The sense of sin took on a new intensity with the belief that all mankind had been tainted by Adam's fall, and that soon the world would end in a judgment of eternal punishment or reward. Many Christians were absorbed in the effort to come clean to that dread assize; they saw a lure of Satan in every pleasure of the senses, denounced the "world and the flesh," and sought to subdue desire with fasts and varied chastisements. They looked with suspicion upon music, white bread, foreign wines, warm baths, or shaving the beard-which seemed to flout the evident will of God.24 Even for the ordinary Christian, life took on a more somber tint than paganism had ever given it except in the occa sional "apotropaic" appeasement of subterranean deities. The serious temper of the Jewish Sabbath was transferred to the Christian Sunday that replaced it in the second century.
On that dies Donnni, or Lord's Day, the Christians assembled for their weekly ritual. Their clergy read from the Scriptures, led them in prayer, and preached sermons of doctrinal instruction, moral exhortation, and sec tarian controversy. In the early days members of the congregation, especially women, were allowed to "prophesy"-i.e., to "speak fonh," in trance or ecstasy, words to which meaning could be given only by pious interpreta tion. When these performances conduced to ritual fever and theological chaos, the Church discouraged and finally suppressed them. At every step the clergy found itself obliged not to generate superstition, but to control it. By the close of the second century these weekly ceremonies had taken the form of the Christian Mass. Based partly on the Judaic Temple service, partly on Greek mystery rituals of purification, vicarious sacrifice, and participation, through communion, in the death-overcoming powers of the deity, the Mass grew slowly into a rich congeries of prayers, psalms, read ings, sermon, antiphonal recitations, and, above all, that symbolic atoning sacrifice of the "Lamb of God" which replaced, in Christianity, the bloody offerings of older faiths. The bread and wine ·which these cults had con sidered as gifts placed upon the altar before the god were now conceived as
'600	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XXVII]
changed by the priestly act of consecration into the body and blood of Christ, and were presented to God as a repetition of the self-immolation of Jesus on the cross. Then, in an intense and moving ceremony, the worshipers partook of the very life and substance of their Saviour. It was a conception long sanctified by time; the pagan mind needed no schooling to receive it; by embodying it in the "mystery of the Mass," Christianity became the last and greatest of the mystery religions. It was a custom lowly in origin 25 and beautiful in development; its adoption was part of the profound wisdom with which the Church adjusted itself to the symbols of the age and the needs of her people; no other ceremony could have so heartened the essen tially solitary soul, or so strengthened it to face a hostile world.*
The eucharist, or "blessing" of the bread and wine, was one of the seven Christian "sacraments"-sacred rituals believed to convey divine grace. Here, too, the Church used the poetry of symbols to console and dignify the life of man, to renew at each step in the human odyssey the fortifying touch of deity. In the first century we find only three ceremonies conceived of as sacraments-baptism, communion, and holy orders; but already, in the cus toms of the congregations, the germs of the rest were present. It was appar ently the practice of the early Christians to add to baptism an "imposition of hands," whereby the apostle or priest introduced the Holy Spirit into the believer;28 in the course of time this action was separated from baptism and became the sacrament of confirmation.29 As the baptism of adults was gradually replaced by the baptism of infants, men felt the need of some later spiritual cleansing; public acknowledgment of sin passed into private con£ession to the priest, who claimed to have received from the apostles or their episcopal successors the right to "bind and loose"-to impose penances and pardon sins.30 The sacrament of penance was an institution capable of abuse through the ease of forgiveness; but it gave the sinner strength to reform, and spared anxious souls the neuroses of remorse. In these centuries marriage was still a civil ceremony; but by adding and requiring her sanction the Church lifted it from the level of a passing contract to the sanctity of an inviolable vow. By the year 200 the laying on of hands took the added form of "holy orders," by which the bishops assumed the exclusive right to ordain priests capable of administering the sacraments validly. Finally the Church derived from the Epistle of James (v, 14) the sacrament of "extreme unction," or last blessing, by which the priest anointed the sense organs and extremities of a dying Christian, cleansed him again of sin, and prepared him to meet his God. It would be the shallowest folly to judge
In the mysteries of Mithras the worshipers were offered consecrated bread and water.26 The conquistadores were shocked to find similar .rites among the Indians of Mexico and Peru.27


Rome classed Egypt not as a province but as the property of the emperor, and ruled it through a prefect responsible only to him. Native Greek officials administered the three divisions-Lower, Middle, and Upper Egypt, and the thirty-six "nomes" or counties; and the official language remained Greek. No attempt was made to urbanize the population, for Egypt's imperial function was to be the granary of Rome. Large tracts of land were taken from the priests and turned over to Roman or Alexandrian capitalists to be worked as latifundia by fellaheen accustomed to merciless exploitation. The state capitalism of the Ptolemies was continued in reduced form. Every step in the agricultural process was planned and controlled by the state: proliferating bureaucrats determined what crops should be sown and in what quantities, annually allotted the requi site seed, received the product into government warehouses ( thesauroi, treas uries), exported Rome's quota, took out taxes in kind, and sold the rest to the market. Corn and flax were state monopolies from seed to sale; so, at least in the Fayum, was the production of bricks, perfumes, and sesame oil.2 Private enter prise was permitted in other fields, but under ubiquitous regulation. All mineral resources were owned by the state, and the quarrying of marble and precious stones was a governmental privilege.
Domestic industry, already old in Egypt, nmv expanded in the tmvns Ptolemais, Memphis, Thebes, O:Yrhynchus: Sais, Bubastis, Naucratis, Heliopolis; in Alexandria it was half the fe_ of the vibrant capital. Apparently the paper industry had reached the capitalist stage, for Strabo tells how the owners of the papyrus plant:itions limited production to lift the price.3 Priests used the temple precincts as factories and turned out fine linens for their own use and
498
CHAP, XXIV)	THE   HELLENISTIC  REVIVAL	499
for the market. Slaves outside of domestic service were few in Egypt, since "free" workers were paid only a notch above nudity and starvation. Sometimes the workers went on strike (anachoresis, secession )-they left their tasks and took sanctuary on temple grounds, whence they were coaxed by hunger or fair words. Occasionally wages were raised, prices went up, and all was as before. Guilds were permitted, but they were mostly of tradesmen and managers; the government used them as agents for the collection of taxes and for the organiza tion of forced labor on dikes, canals, and other public works.
Internal trade was active but slow. Roads were poor, and land transport moved on men, donkeys, or camels-which now replaced horses as draft animals in Africa. Much traffic went by inland waterways. A great canal, 150 feet wide, completed in Trajan's reign, bound the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean through the Nile and the Red Sea, from whose ports at Arsinoe, Myos Hormos, and Berenice ships left daily for Africa or India. The banking system that financed production and trade was under full governmental control. Each nome capital had a state bank, which acted as a receiver of taxes and repository of public funds. Loans were made to farmers, industry, and business by the gov ernment, by priests from temple treasuries, and by private lending associations.4 Taxes were laid upon every product, process, sale, export, or import, even upon graves and burials; and additional assessments were levied from time to time, in kind from the poor, in liturgies from the rich. From Augustus to Trajan the country-or its masters-prospered; after that zenith it succumbed to the dis couragement and exhaustion of endless tribute and taxation and the lethargy of a regimented economy.
Outside of Alexandria and Naucratis Egypt remained sullenly, silently Egyptian; Romanization hardly touched it beyond the mouths of the Nile; and even Alexandria, which had been the greatest of Greek cities, was assum ing in our second century the character, languages, and odor of an Oriental metropolis. Of Egypt's 8,500,000 population its capital had now some 800,- 000 5 (in1930, 573,000), second only to Rome; in industry and commerce it was first. Everyone in Alexandria is busy, says a letter questionably Hadrian's; everyone has a trade; even the lame and the blind find work to do.6 Here, among a thousand other articles, glass, paper, and linen were pro duced on a large scale. Alexandria was the clothing and fashion center of the age, setting the styles and making the goods. Its great harbor had nine miles of wharves, from which its merchant fleet wove a web of commerce over many seas. It was also a tourist center, equipped with hotels, guides, and interpreters for visitors coming to see the Pyramids and the majestic temples of Thebes. The main avenue, sixty-seven feet wide, was lined for three miles with colonnades, arcades, and alluring shops displaying the fanci est products of ancient crafts. At many intersections there were spacious squares or circles named plateai, "broad" (ways)-whence the Italian piazza
500	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XXIV
and our plaza and place. lmposing structures adorned the central thorough fares-a large theater, an Emporium or exchange, temples to Poseidon, Caesar, and Saturn, a celebrated Serapeum or Temple of Serapis, and a group of university buildings known over the world as the Museum, or Home of the Muses. Of the five sections into which the city was divided, one was almost wholly given to the palaces, gardens, and administrative buildings of the Ptolemies, now used by the Roman prefect. Here, in a pretty mausoleum, lay the city's founder, Alexander the Great, preserved in honey and encased in glass.
Greeks, Egyptians, Jews, Italians, Arabs, Phoenicians, Persians, Ethiopi ans, Syrians, Libyans, Cilicians, Scythians, Indians, Nubians-nearly every Mediterranean people had its quota in Alexandria. They made a volatile and in.flammable mixture, quarrelsome and disorderly, intellectually clever and irreverently witty, shameless in speech, skeptical and superstitious, loose in morals and gay in mood, fanatically fond of the theater, music, and public games. Dio Chrysostom describes life there as "a continuous revel . . . of dancers, whistlers, and murderers." 8 The canals were alive with merry makers in gondolas at night on their five-mile sail to the amusement suburb at Canopus. There were musical contests that rivaled the horse races in raising excitement and claques.
If we may believe Philo,9 forty per cent of the city's population was Jewish. Most Alexandrian Jews were employed in industry and trade, and lived in great poverty;10 many were merchants, a few were moneylenders, some were rich enough to win enviable places in the government. Originally confined to one fifth of the city, they had now over.flowed to occupy two fifths. They were governed by their own laws and elders, and Rome con firmed the privileges that the Ptolemies had given them to ignore any ordi nance that conflicted with their religion. They gloried in their magnificent central synagogue, a colonnaded basilica so vast that a system of signals had to be used to secure proper response at proper times from worshipers too distant from the sanctuary to hear the words of the priest.11 According to Josephus the moral life of the Alexandrian Jews was exemplary compared with the sexual looseness of the "pagan" population.12 They had an active intellectual culture and contributed substantially to philosophy, historioo raphy, and science. Racial hostility agitated the city at various times; ;e
find in Josephus' tract Against.Apion (an anti-Semitic leader) all the causes arguments, and legends that_ disturb the relations of Jew and gentile today.
!n A.D. 38 a mob of Greeks mv ded the synagogues and insisted on placing m each of them a statue of Caligula as a god. The Roman prefect, Avillius Flaccus, annulled the Alexandrian citizenship of the Jews and ordered those of them who lived outside the original Jewish section to return to it within
CHAP.XXIV)	THE	HELLENISTIC   REVIVAL	501
a few days. When these had elapsed the Greek populace burned down 400 Jewish homes, and killed or clubbed Jews, outside the ghetto; and thirty eight members of the Jewish gerousia or senate were arrested and publicly scourged in a theater. Thousands of Jews lost their homes, their businesses, or their savings. Flaccus' successor submitted the matter to the Emperor, and two separate delegations-five Greeks and five Jews-went to Rome (A.D. 40) to plead their causes before Caligula. He died before he could judge. Claudius restored the rights of the Jews in Alexandria, confirmed them in their municipal citizenship, and sternly bade both factions keep the peace.
PHILO
The leader of the Jewish delegation to Caligula was the philosopher Philo, brother of the arabarch, or manager of the Jewish export trade in Alexandria. Eusebius describes him as belonging to an ancient priestly family.13 We know hardly anything else of his life; but his pious and gener ous character stands out in the many works that he wrote to expound Judaism to the Greek world. Brought up in a sacerdotal atmosphere, in tensely loyal to his people, and yet fascinated by Greek philosophy, he made it the aim of his life to reconcile the Scriptures and customs of the Jews with Greek ideas and above all with the philosophy of "the most holy" Plato. He adopted for his purpose the principle that all events, characters, doc trines, and laws in the Old Testament have an allegorical as well as a literal meaning and symbolize certain moral or psychological truths; by this method he was able to prove anything. He wrote indifferently in He rew, but so well in Greek that his admirers said, "Plato writes like Philo." 14  •
He was a theologian rather than a philosopher, a mystic whose intense piety presaged Plotinus and the medieval mind. God, in Philo, is the essential being of the world, incorporeal, eternal, indescribable; reason can know his existence, but can ascribe no quality to him, since every quality is a limita tion. To conceive him as having human form is a concession to the sensuous imagination of men. God is everywhere; "what place can a man find where God is not?" 15 But he is not everything: matter is also eternal and increate; however, it has no life, motion, or form until infused with the divine force. To create the world by giving form to matter, and to establish relations with man, God used a host of intermediary beings, called angels by the Jews, daimones by the Greeks, and Ideas by Plato. These, says Philo, may popu larly be conceived as persons, though really they exist only in the Di\<ine Mind, as the thoughts and powers of God.16 Together these powers con stitute what the Stoics called the Logos, or Divine Reason creating and
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. XXIV
guiding the world. Fluctuating between philosophy and theology, between ideas and personifications, Philo sometimes thinks of the Logos as a person; in a poetic moment he calls the Logos "the first-begotten of God," 17 son of God by the virgin Wisdom,18 and says that through the Logos God has revealed himself to man. Since the soul is part of God, it can through reason rise to a mystic vision not quite of God, but of the Logos. Perhaps, if we could free ourselves from the taint of matter and sense, and by ascetic exer cises and long contemplation become for a moment pure spirit, we might for an ecstatic moment see God himself.19
Philo's Logos was one of the most influential ideas in the history of thought. Its antecedents in Heracleitus, Plato, and the Stoics are obvious; presumably he knew the recent Jewish literature that had made a distinct person of the Wisdom of God as creator of the world; and he must have been impressed by those lines in Proverbs (vm, 22) where Wisdom says, "The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting ...  or ever the earth was." Philo was a contemporary of Christ; he apparently never heard of him; but he shared unknowingly in forming Christian theology. The rabbis frowned upon his allegorical interpretations as likely to be used as an excuse for neglecting literal obedience to the Law; they suspected the Logos doctrine as a retreat from monotheism; and they saw in Philo's passion for Greek philosophy a threat of cultural assimilation, racial dilution, and consequent disappearance, of the dispersed Jews. But the Fathers of the Church admired the Jew's con templative devotion, made abundant use of his allegorical principles to answer the critics of the Hebrew Scriptures, and joined with Gnostics and Neo-Platonists in accepting the mystical vision of God as the crown of human enterprise. Philo had tried to mediate between Hellenism and Judaism. From the Judaic point of view he had failed; from the historical point of view he had succeeded; and the result was the first chapter of the Gospel of John.	!
THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE
In science Alexandria was the unchallenged head of the Hellenistic world. Claudius Ptolemy must be ranked among the most influential astronomers of antiquity, for _despite Coeernicus the w?rld is still Ptolemaic in its speech. Born at Ptolema1s on the Nile (whence his name), he lived most of his life at Alexandria, where he made observations from A.D. 127 to 151. The world remembers him chiefly for his_rejection of Aristarchus' theory that the earth revolves around the sun. This immortal error was enshrined in Ptolemy's Mathematike Syntaxis, or " lathematical Arrangement" of the stars. The
CHAP. xxrv)	THE   HELLENISTIC  REVIVAL
Arabs referred to the work with a Greek superlative as Al-nzegiste, "The Greatest"; and the Middle Ages corrupted the phrase into Almagest, by which the book is known to history. It ruled the skies till Copernicus upset the world. And yet Ptolemy did not claim to do more than systematize the work and observation of previous astronomers, Hipparchus above all. He pictured the universe as spherical and as daily revolving around a spherical, motionless earth. Strange as this view seems to us (though there is no telling what some future Copernicus will do to our present Ptolemies), the geo centric hypothesis made it possible to compute the position of the stars and planets more accurately than the heliocentric conception could do in the state of astronomic knowledge at the time.20 Ptolemy suggested further a theory of eccentrics to explain the orbits of the planets, and discovered the evection, or orbital aberration, of the moon. He measured the moon's dis tance from the earth by the parallax method still in use, and calculated it as fifty-nine times the earth's radius. This is approximately our current reckon ing; but Ptolemy followed Poseidonius in underestimating the diameter of the earth.


schools, spreading the use of Latin, and encouraging cities and rich men to build temples, basilicas, and public baths. "By degrees," says the caustic historian, "the charms of vice gained admission to British hearts; baths, porticoes, and elegant banquets grew into vogue; and the new annei:5, which in reality only served to sweeten slavery, were by the unsuspecnng Britons called the arts of polished humanity." 47 In swift campaigns Agricola carried these arts, and Roman rule, to the Clyde and the Forth, defeated an army of 30,000 Scots, and wished to go farther when Domitian recalled him. Hadrian built a wall (1zz-27) seventy miles across the island from Solway Firth to the mouth of the Tyne as a defense against not-unsuspecting Scots; and twenty years later Lollius raised farther north the thirty-three-mile \Vall of Antoninus between the firths of Clyde and Forth. For over two centuries these fortifications kept Britain safe for Rome.
As Rome's rule achieved stability it became more lenient. The cities were man aged by native se_nates, sse°:blies, and magistrates, and the_ countryside was left, as in Gaul, to tnbal chieftains amenable to Roman sun·e1llance. It was not so urban a civilization as Italy's, nor so rich as Gaul's; but it was under Roman stimulus and protection that most British cities now took form. Four of them were Roman "colonies," whose freemen enJoyed Roman citizenship: Camulo dunum (Colchester), the first Roman capital of Britain, and the seat of the
CHAP. xxu)	CIVILIZING  THE  WEST	477
provincial council; Lindum, whose modem name Lincoln declares its ancient privilege; Eboracum (York), an important military post; and Glevum, whose name Gloucester merges Glevum with chester, the Anglo-Saxon word for tow·n."" Chester, Winchester, Dorchester, Chichester, Leicester, Silchester, and Man chester appear to have had their beginnings in the first two centuries of Roman rule. These were small towns, each with some 6000 souls; but they had paved and drained streets, forums, basilicas, temples, and houses with stone foundations and tiled roofs. Viroconium (Wroxeter) had a basilica accommodating 6000 persons, and public baths ,vhere hundreds could bathe at once. The hot springs of Aquae Salis ("Salt Waters"), now Bath, made it a fashionable resort in ancient davs, as its surviving thermae show. Londinium rose to economic and military importance because of its position on the Thames and its radiating roads. It grew to a popu lation of 60,000 and soon replaced Camulodunum as Britain's capital.49
l\1ost of the homes in Roman London were of brick and stucco, in smaller towns, of wood. Climate determined their architecture: a gable roof to shed rain and snow, and many windows to let in whatever sun might shine; for even "on clear days," said Strabo, "the sun is to be seen only for three or four hours." 50 But interiors followed the Roman style-mosaic floors, large bathrooms, muraled walls, and (far more than in Italian homes) central heating by hot-air conduits in walls and floors. Coal-mined from surface veins-was used not only for warm ing houses but for industrial processes like smelting lead. Apparently the mines of ancient Britain were owned by the state, but were leased to private entrepre neurs.51 There was a factory (fabrica) at Bath for the manufacture of iron
,veapons,52 and probably the making of pottery, bricks, and tiles had reached the factory stage; but most industries were carried on in homes, small shops, and villas. Five thousand miles of Roman roads, and innumerable waterways, were the arteries of a brisk internal trade. A modest foreign commerce, inverting the custom of Britain today, exported raw materials for manufactured goods.
How deeply did Roman civilization, in its four centuries of domination, penetr:1te the life and soul of Britain? Latin became the language of politics, law, literature, and the educated minority, but in the countryside and among many workers in the towns the Celtic tongue survived; even now, in ,Vales and the Isle of Man, it holds its own. Roman schools in Britain spread literacy and determined the Roman form of the English alphabet; and a stream of Latin words poured into English speech.Temples were built to Roman gods, but the common man cherished his Celtic deities and feasts. Even in the cities Rome sank no lasting roots. The people submitted apathetically to a rule that brought them a fructifying peace and such prosperity as the island would not experience again until the Industrial Revolution.
So Haverfield;48 the more widely accepted derivation is from the Latin castmm, fortress, or castra, camp. Most Roman-British towns were designed on the cheS5board plan of a Roman camp.
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP.XXII
THE  BARBARIANS
The decisions of Augustus and Tiberius not to attempt the conquest of Ger many were among the pivotal events of European history. Had Germany been conquered and Romanized like Gaul, nearly all Europe west of Russia would have had one organization, one government, one classic culture, perhaps one tongue; and central Europe might have served as a buffer against those eastern hordes whose pressure upon the Germans caused the Germanic invasions of Italy. vVe call them Germans, but they themselves have never used this name, and no one knows when it came.• They were in classic days a medley of independent tribes occupying Europe between the Rhine and the Vistula, between the Danube and the North and Baltic Seas. Gradually, in the two centuries from Augustus to Aurelius, they passed from migratory hunting and herding to agriculture and village life; but they were still so far nomadic that they rapidly exhausted the land they tilled and then moved on to conquer new acres by the sword. If we may
believe Tacitus, war was the German's meat and drink:
To cultivate the earth, and wait the regular produce of the seasons, is not the maxim of a German; you will more readily persuade him to attack the enemy and provoke honorable wounds on the field of battle. To earn by the sweat of your brow what you might gain at the price of your blood is in the opinion of a German a sluggish prin ciple, unworthy of a soldier.53
The Roman historian, lamenting the deterioration of his own people under luxury and peace, described with the exaggeration of a moralist the martial quali ties of the Germans, and the ardor with which the women spurred them into battle, often fighti:-1g by their side. Flight from the enemy meant lifelong disgrace, in many cases suicide. Strabo described the Germans as "wilder and taller than the Gauls," 54 and Seneca, as if he had read Tacitus, drew ominous conclusions: "To those vigorous bodies, to those souls unwitting of pleasures, luxury, and wealth, add but a little more tactical skill and discipline-I say no more; vou [Romans] will only be able to hold your own against them by returning to- the
virtues of your sires." 55
In peace, Tacitus reports, these warriors were correspondingly indolent. The men spent their time (presumably after hunting or harvesting) in eating heavy meals of meat and drinking rivers of beer, while the women and children did the work of the home.56 The German bought his wife from her father by a o-ift of cattle or weapons; he had the power of life and death over her and their children, subject to the approval of the tribal assembly; nevertheless, women were held in
Rome used the adjective germanus (from germen, offspring) to mean born of the same parents; and in app yin it to the Germans they may have had in mind the kinship organiza tion of the Teutomc tnbes.
CHAP. XXII)	CIVILIZING  THE  WEST	479
high honor, were often asked to decide tribal disputes, and were as free to divorce their husbands as these were to divorce them.57 Some chieftains had several wives, but the usual German family was monogamous and maintained (we are assured) a lofty level of marital morality. Adultery was "seldom heard of" and was pun ished in the woman by cutting off her hair and driving her naked through the streets to be flogged as she fled. The wife was allowed to practice abortion if she wished/8 but normally she bore many children. A man without children was so rare that wills were not made; it was assumed that the property of the family would go down from father to son, generation after generation.59
Four classes composed the population: ( 1) bondsmen, some of them slaves, most of them serfs bound to the soil and obliged to pay the landowner in prod uce; ( 2) freedmcn-unfranchised renters; ( 3) freemen-landowners and warriors; and (4) nobles-landowners who traced their pedigrees to the gods, but based their power upon substantial patrimonies and armed bodyguards (cmnites, com panions, "counts"). The tribal assembly ,t,as composed of nobles, guards, and freemen; they came in arms, chose the chief or king, approved the proposals sub mitted to them by clashing their spears, or rejected them by a majority of grunts. The second and third classes were partly engaged in handicrafts and the metal lurgical industries, in which the Germans excelled; the fourth provided the lords and knights and chivalry of feudal Germany.
Very little cultural superstructure was added to this simple social organiza
tion. Religion had at this time barely emerged from nature worship into the cult of anthropomorphic deities. Tacitus calls them Mars, Mercury, and Hercules probably Tiu (Tyr), Wodin (Odin), and Donar (Tor); we still unwittingly commemorate them, and Freya, the goddess of love, on four days of every week. There was a virgin goddess Hertha (l\fother Earth), impregnated by a sky-god; and every imagination and need was supplied by a varied population of fairies, elves, cobolds, nixes, giants, and dwarfs. Human sacrifice was offered to \Vodin, perhaps tastier animals to other gods. Worship was conducted in the open air in forests and groves, for the Germans thought it absurd to confine a nature spirit in an abode built by human hands. There was no powerful sacerdotal class like the Druids of Gaul or Britain, but there were priests and priestesses who presided over religious ceremonies, sat as judges in criminal cases, and divined the future by studying the motions and neighings of white horses. As in Gaul, there were bards who sang in rude verse the legends and history of their tribes. A small minority could read and write, and adapted the Greek alphabet to form the runes from which the Gothic letters of modem Germany evolved. Art was primitive, but skillful work was done in gold.
\Vhen Rome withdrew ht;r legions from Germany she retained control of the Rhine from source to mouths and divided the majestic valley into two provinces Upper and Lower Germany. The latter included Holland and the Rhineland south to Cologne. This once lovely city, known to the Romans as Colonia Agrip pinensis, had been made a colony (A.D. 50) in honor of Nero's mother, who had been born there; half a century later it was the most opulent settlement on the
CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP.XXII
Rhine. The province of Upper Germany followed the Rhine southward through 1\foguntiacum (Mayence), Aquae Aureliae (Baden-Baden), Argentoratum (Strasbourg), and Augusta Rauricorum (Augst) to Vindonissa (Windisch). Nearly all these towns had the usual array of temples, basilicas, theaters, baths, and public statuary. Many of the legionaries sent by Rome to guard the Rhine lived outside their camps, married German girls, and remained as citizens when their term of service was complete. The Rhineland was probably as thickly settled and affiuent in Roman days as at any time before the nineteenth century.


CHAP.II)	THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  DE1\1 0 CR ACY	25
and provincial exploitation, and commissions to collect taxes for the state. The Assembly of the Centuries, whose method of voti g gave the aristocracy full control, continued to choose the magistrates, and therefore the Senate. The tribunes, dependent upon the support of rich plebeians, used their office as a con servative force. Every consul, even if chosen by the plebs, became by contagion a zealous conservative when, at the close of his year of office, he was received into the Senate for life. The Senate took the initiative in legislation, and custom sanctioned its authority far beyond the letter of the law. As foreign affairs became more important, the Senate's firm administration of them raised its prestige and power. When, in 264, Rome entered upon a century of war with Carthage for the mastery of the Mediterranean, it was the Senate that led the nation through every trial to victory; and an imperiled and desperate people yielded without protest to its leadership and domination.
THE  CONSTITUTION OF THE REPUBLIC
The Lawmakers
Let us try to picture to ourselves this complex state, so formed after five centuries of development. By common consent it ,vas one of the ablest and most successful governments that the world has yet seen; Polybius, indeed, considered it an almost literal realization of Aristotle's ideal constitution. It provided the framework, sometimes the battleground, of Roman history. Who, among this people, were the citizens? Technically, those who had
been born or adopted into one of the three original tribes of Rome. In prac
tice this meant all males above fifteen years of age who were neither slaves nor aliens, and all aliens who had received a grant of Roman citizenship. Never before or since has citizenship been so jealously guarded or so highly prized. It meant membership in the relatively small group that was soon to rule the whole Mediterranean area; it brought immunity from legal torture or duress, and the right of appeal from any official in the Empire to the Assembly-or, later, the emperor-at Rome.
Obligations went with these privileges. The citizen, unless quite poor, was liable to military service at call from his sixteenth to his sixtieth year; and he could not hold political office until he had served ten years in the anny. His political rights were so bound up with his military duties that his most important voting was done as a member of his regiment, or "century."
In the da.ys of the kino.:-:,s he had voted also in the conziti,1 curiata; i.e., he and other heads of families had come together (cum-ire) in a gathering of the
thirty curiae, or wards, into which the three tribes had been divided; and to the end of the Republic it was this Curial Assembly that conferred upon the
26	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. II
elected magistrates the imperium, or authority to govern. After the fall of the monarchy the Curial Assembly rapidly lost its other powers to the comitia centuriata-the soldiers assembled in "centuries" originally of one hundred men. It was this Centuria! Assembly that chose the magistrates, passed or rejected the measures proposed to it by officials or the Senate, heard appeals from the judgments of magistrates, tried all cases of capital crime charged to Roman citizens, and decided upon war or peace. It was the broad base of both the Roman army and the Roman government. Nevenheless, its powers were narrowly constrained. It could convene only at the call of a consul or a tribune. It could vote only upon such measures as were presented to it by the magistrates orthe Senate. It could not discuss or amend these pro posals; it could only vote Yes or No.
The conservative character of its decisions was guaranteed by the class arrangement of its members. At the top were eighteen centuries of patricians and businessmen (equites). Then came the "first class"-men owning 100,000 asses' worth of property;* these had eighty centuries, or 8000 men, in the Assembly. The second class embraced citizens owning between 75,000 and 100,000 asses; the third, between 50,000 and 75,000 asses; the founh, between 25,000 and 50,000 asses; and each of these classes had twenty centuries. The fifth class included citizens owning between 11,000 and 25,000 asses, and had thirty centuries. All citizens possessing under 11,000 asses were formed into one century.10 Each century cast one vote, determined by a majority of its members; a small majority in one century could cancel a large majority in another, and give the victory to a numerical minority. Since each century voted in the order of its financial rank, and its vote ,vas announced as soon as taken, the agreement of the first two groups gave at once ninety-eight votes, a majority of the whole, so that the lower classes seldom voted at all. Voting was direct: citizens who could not come to Rome for the meeting had no representation in the Assembly. All this was no mere device to disfranchise the peasants and the plebs. The classification of centuries had been made by the census to distinguish men for taxation as well as for war; the Romans thought it just that the right to vote should be proportioned to taxes paid and military duties required. Citizens with less than 1 r,ooo asses of property had altogether only one centurial vote; but correspondingly they paid a negligible tax and were in normal times exempt from military service.11 Of the proletariat, till .Marius' day, nothing was asked except prolific parentage. Despite some later changes, the Centuria! Assembly remained a frankly conservative and aristocratic institution.
Doubtless as ar{ offset to this, the plebs had from the beginning of the Re
public held its own assemblies, the concilia plebis. Out of these councils, prob ably, came the cornitia populi tributa which we find exercising legislative power
An as would now be equivalent in purchasing power to approximately six cents of United States currency in 1942. Cf. p. 78.
CHAP. II)	THE  STRUGGLE  FOR DEMOCRACY	27
as early as 357 B.c. In this Tribal Assembly of the People the voters were ar ranged according to tribe and residence, on the basis of the Servian census; each tribe had one vote, and the rich counted for no more than the poor. After the recognition of its legislative authority by the Senate in 287, the power of the Tribal Assembly grew until by 200 it had become the chief source of private law in Rome. It chose the tribunes (i.e., tribal representatives) of the people (tribuni plebis) as distinct from the tribuni militares elected by the centuries. Here, too, however, there was no discussion by the people; a magistrate pro posed a law and defended it, another magistrate might speak against it; the Assembly listened, and voted Yes or No. Though by its constitution it was more progressive than the Centuria! Assembly, it was far from radical. Thirty-one of its thirty-five tribes were rural, and their members, mostly owners of land, were cautious men. The urban proletariat, confined to four tribes, was politically powerless before Marius, and after Caesar.
The Senate remained supreme. Its original membership of clan heads was recruited by the regular admission of ex-consuls and ex-censors, and the censors were authorized to keep its numbers up to 300 by nominating to it men of patrician or equestrian rank. Membership was for life, but the Senate or a censor could dismiss any member detected in crime or serious moral offense. The august body convened at the call of any major magistrate in the curia, or senate house, facing the Forum. By a pleasant custom the mem bers brought their sons with them to attend in silence, and to learn statesman ship and chicanery at first hand. Theoretically the Senate might discuss and decide only such issues as were presented to it by a magistrate, and its deci sions were merely advice (senatus consulta), without the force of law. Actually its prestige was so great that the magistrates nearly always accepted its recommendations, and seldom submitted to the assemblies any measure not already sanctioned by the Senate. Its decisions were subject to veto by any tribune, and a defeated minority of the Senate might appeal to the assemblies; 12 but these procedures were rare except in revolution. The magistrates held power for a year only, while the senators were chosen for life; inevitably this deathless monarch dominated the bearers of a brief authority. The conduct of foreign relations, the making of alliances and treaties, the waging of war, the government of the colonies and provinces, the management and distribution of the public lands, the control of the treasury and its disbursements-all these were exclusive functions of the Senate, and gave it immense power. It was legislature, executive, and judici ary in one. It acted as judge in crimes like treason, conspiracy, or assassina tion, and appointed from its membership the judges in most major civil trials. When a crisis came it could issue its most formidable decree, the senatus consultum ultinmm, "that the consuls should see to it that no harm should
28	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. Il
come to the state"-a decree that established martial law and gave the consuls absolute command of all persons and property.
The Senate of the Republic* often abused its authority, defended cor
rupt officials, waged war ruthlessly, exploited conquered provinces greedily, and suppressed the aspirations of the people for a larger share in the pros perity of Rome. But never elsewhere, except from Trajan to Aurelius, have so much energy, wisdom, and skill been applied to statesmanship; and never elsewhere has the idea of service to the state so dominated a government or a people. These senators were not supermen; they made serious mistakes, sometimes vacillated in their policies, often lost the vision of empire in the lust for personal gain. But most of them had been magistrates, administrators, and commanders; some of them, as proconsuls, had ruled provinces as large as kingdoms; many of them came of families that had given statesmen or generals to Rome for hundreds of years; it was impossible that a body made up of such men should escape some measure of excellence. The Senate was at its worst in victory, at its best in defeat. It could carry forward policies that spanned generations and centuries; it could begin a war in 264 and end it in 146 B.c. \\1hen Cineas, the philosopher who had come to Rome as envoy of Pyrrhus (280), had heard the Senate's deliberations and observed its men, he reported to the new Alexander that here was no mere gathering of venal politicians, no haphazard council of mediocre minds, but in dignity and statesmanship veritably "an assemblage of kings." 18
The  Alagistrates
The major officials were elected by the Centurial, the minor by the Tribal, Assembly. Each office was held by a collegiznn of two or more colleagues, equal in power. All offices except the censorship ran for only a year. The same office could be held by the same person only cnce in ten years; a year had to elapse between leaving one office and taking another; and in the interval the ex-official could be prosecuted for malfeasance. The aspirant to a political career, if he survived a decade in the army, might seek election as one of the quaestors who, under the Senate and the consuls, managed the expenditure of state funcs, and assisted the praetors in preventing and in vestigating crime. If he ple:.sed his electors or his influential supporters, he might later be chosen one of the four aediles charged with the care of build ings, aqueducts, streets, markets, theaters, brothels, saloons. police courts,


TheGreek  Conquest
201-146  B.C.
THE  CONQUEST OF GREECE
HEN Philip V of Macedon made an alliance ,vith Hannibal against Rome (214) he hoped that all Greece would unite behind him
to slay the growing young giant of the west. But rumors were about that he was planning, if Carthage won, to conquer all Greece with Carthage's aid. As a result, the Aetolian League signed a pact to help Rome against Philip, and the clever Senate, before dispatching Scipio to Africa, used Philip's discouragement by persuading him to a separate peace (205). The victory of Zama had hardly been won when the Senate, which never for gave an injury, began to plot revenge upon i\'Iacedon. Rome, the Senate felt, could never be secure with so strong a power at her back across a narrow sea. When the Senate moved for war, the Assembly demurred, and a tribune accused the patricians of seeking to divert attention from domestic ills.1 The opponents of war were easily silenced by charges of cowardice and lack of patriotism; and in 200 B.c. T. Quinctius Flamininus sailed against Macedon.
He was a youth of thirty, one of that liberal Hellenizing circle which was gathering about the Scipios in Rome. After some careful maneuvering he met Philip at Cynoscephalae and overwhelmed him ( 197). Then he sur prised all the Mediterranean nations, and perhaps Rome, by restoring the chastened Philip to a bankrupt and weakened throne, and offering freedom to all Greece. The imperialists in the Senate protested; but for a moment the liberals predominated, and in 196 the herald of Flamininus announced to a vast assemblage at the Isthmian games that Greece was to be free from Rome, from Macedon, from tribute, even from garrisons. So great a cheer rose from the multitude, says Plutarch, that crows flying over the stadium fell dead.2 When a cynical world questioned the sincerity of the Roman general he answered by withdrawing his army to Italy. It was a bright page in the history of war.
But one war always invites another. The Aetolian League resented Rome's emancipation of Greek cities formerly subject to the League, and appealed
85
86	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP. V
to Antiochus III, the Seleucid king, to reliberate liberated Greece. Inflated with some easy Yictories in the East, Antiochus thought of extending his power over all western Asia. Pergamum, fearing him, called to Rome for help. The Senate sent Scipio Africanus and his brother Lucius with the first Roman army to touch Asiatic soil; the hostile forces met at Magnesia ( 1 89), and Rome's victory inaugurated her conquest of the Hellenistic East. The Romans marched north, drove back into Galatia (Anatolia) the Gauls who had threatened Pergamum, and earned the gratitude of all Ionian Greeks. The Greeks of Europe were not so pleased. Roman armies had spared Greek soil, but they now encompassed Greece on east and west. Rome had freed the Greeks, but on condition that both war and class war should end. Freedom without war was a novel and irksome life for the city-states that made up Hellas; the upper classes yearned to play power politics against neigh boring cities, and the poor complained that Rome everywhere buttressed
the rich against the poor. In 171 Perseus, son and successor of Philip Vas
King of Macedon, having arranged an alliance with Seleucus IV and Rhodes, called upon Greece to rise with him against Rome. Three years later Lucius Aemilius Paulus, son of the consul who had fallen at Cannae, defeated Perseus at Pydna, razed seventy Macedonian towns, and led Perseus captive to grace a magnificent triumph at Rome.* Rhodes was punished by the emancipation of her tributary cities in Asia, and by the establishment of a competitive port at Delos. A thousand Greek leaders, including the historian Polybius, were taken as hostages to Italy, where, in sixteen years of exile, 700 of them died.
During the ne;.t decade the relations between Greece and Rome moved even nearer to open enmity. The rival cities, factions, and classes of Hellas appealed to the Sen::te for support, and gave cause for interferences that made Greece actually subject though nominally free. The partisans of the Scipios in the Senate were overruled by realists who felt that there would be no lasting peace or order in Greece until it was completely under Roman rule. In 146 the cities of the Achaean League, while Rome was in conflict with Carth:1ge and Spain, announced a war of liberation. Leaders of the poor seized control of the movement, freed and armed the slaves, declared a moratorium on debts, promised a redistribution of land, and added revolu-
It was on leaving for this campaign that Paulus paid his classic compliments to amateur strategists: "In all public places, and in pri\·ate panies, there are men who know where the armies should be put in Macedonia, what strategical positions ought to be occupied.... They nor only lay down what should be done, but when anything is decided contrary co cheir judgment they arraign the consul as though he were being impeached	This·seriously
interferes with the successful prosecution of a war .... [Iafnyone l feels confidentth.::t he can give me good advice, let him go with me to i\1acedonia	If he thinks this is too much
trouble, lee him not try to act as a pilot while he is oa hnd." 3
CHAP.V)	THE  GREEK  CONQUEST	87
tion to war. When the Romans under Mummius entered Greece they found a divided people and easily overcame the undisciplined Greek troops. Mummius burned Corinth, slew its males, sold its women and children into bondage, and carried nearly all its movable wealth and art to Rome. Greece and Macedon were made into a Roman province under a Roman governor; only Athens and Sparta were allowed to remain under their own laws. Greece disappeared from political history for two thousand years.
THE	TRANSFORMATION" OF  ROME
Step by step the Roman Empire grew, not so much through conscious design as through the compulsions of circumstance and the ever receding frontiers of security. In bloody battles at Cremona ( 200) and Mutina ( 193) the legions again subdued Cisalpine Gaul and pushed the boundaries of Italy to the Alps. Spain, rewon from Carthage, had to be kept under control lest Carthage should win it again; besides, it was rich in iron, silver, and gold. The Senate exacted from it a heavy annual tribute in the form of bullion and coin, and the Roman governors reimbursed themselves liberally for spending a year away from home; so Quintus Minucius, after a brief pro consulate in Spain, brought to Rome 34,800 pounds of silver and 35,ooo silver denarii. Spaniards were conscripted into the Roman army; Scipio Aemilianus had 40,000 of them in the force with which he took Spanish Numantia. In 195 B.c. the tribes broke out in wild revolt, which Marcus Cato put down with a hard integrity that recalled the proud virtues of a vanishing Roman breed. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (179) adjusted his rule sympathetically to the character and civilization of the native popu lation, made friends of the tribal chieftains, and distributed land among the poor. But one of his successors, Lucius Lucullus (151), vielated the treaties made by Gracchus, attacked without cause any tribe that could yield plunder, and slaughtered or enslaved thousands of Spaniards without bother ing to invent a pretext. Sulpicius Galba ( 1 50) lured 7000 natives to his camp by a treaty promising them land; when they arrived he had them sur rounded and enslaved or mass1cred. In 154 the tribes of Lusitania (Portugal) began a sixteen-year war against Rome. An able leader, Viriathus, appeared among them, heroic in stature, endurance, courage, and nobility; for eight years he defeated every army sent against him, until ::t last the Romans purchased his assassination. The rebellious Celti!:>erians cf central Spain bore a siege of fifteen months in Numantia, living on their dead; at last ( 133) Scipio Aemilianus starved them into surrender. In general the policy of the
88	CAESAR  AND  CHRIST	(CHAP.V
Roman Republic in Spain was so brutal and dishonest that it cost more than it paid. "Never," said Mommsen, "had war been waged with so much perfidy, cruelty, and avarice."4
The plunder from the provinces provided the funds for that orgy of corrupt and selfish wealth which was to consume the Republic in revolu tion. The indemnities paid by Carthage, Macedon, and Syria, the slaves that poured into Rome from every field of glory, the precious metals captured in the conquest of Cisalpine Gaul and Spain, the 400,000,000 sesterces ($60,000,000) taken from Antiochus and Perseus, the 4503 pounds of gold and 220,000 pounds of silver seized by Manlius Vulso in his Asiatic cam paigns5-these and other windfalls turned the propertied classes in Rome in half a century (202-146 B.c.) from men of means into persons of such opulence as hitherto only monarchs had known. Soldiers returned from these gigantic raids with their pouches full of coins and spoils. As currency multiplied in Italy faster than building, the owners of realty in the capital tripled their fortunes without stirring a muscle or a nerve. Industry lagged while commerce flourished; Rome did not have to produce goods; it took the world's money and paid with that for the world's goods. Public works were expanded beyond precedent and enriched the "publicans" who lived on state contracts; any Roman who had a little money bought shares in their corporations.0 Bankers proliferated and prospered; they paid interest on deposits, cashed checks (praescriptiones), met bills for their clients, lent and borrowed money, made or man ged investments, and fattened on such relentless usury that cutthroat (sector) and moneylender became one word.7 Rome was becoming not the industrial or commercial, but the financial and political, center of the white man's world.
Equipped with such means, the Roman patriciate and upper middle class passed with impressive speed from stoic simplicity to reckless luxury; the lifetime of Cato (234-149) saw the transformation almost completed. Houses became larger as families became smaller; furniture grew lavish in a race for conspicuous expense; great sums ·were paid for Babylonian rugs, for couches inlaid with ivory, silver, or gold; precious stones and metals shone on tables and chairs, on the bodies of women, on the harness of horses. As physical exertion diminished and wealth expanded, the old simple diet gave way to long and heavy meals of meat, game, delicacies, and condi ments. Exotic foods ,vcre indispensable to social position or pretense; one magnate paid a th::msand sesterces for the oysters sen,ed at a meal; another imported anchovies at 1600 sest.:rces a cask; another paid 1200 for a jar of caviar.8 Good chefs fetched enormous prices on the slave auction block. Drinking increased; goblets had to be lar3e and preferably of gold; wine
CHAP. V)	THE   GREEK  CONQUEST