The Old Roman World : the Grandeur and Failure of Its Civilization Part 35

[Sidenote: Successors of Theodosius.]

[Sidenote: Diocletian.]

Theodosius was equally fortunate in his conflicts with Maximus, who had usurped the provinces of Gaul, Spain, and Britain, and who meditated the conquest of Italy. At Aquileia the usurper was seized, after a succession of defeats, stripped of his imperial ornaments, and delivered to the executioner, and Theodosius reigned without a rival in the renovated empire, practicing the virtues of domestic life, rewarding eminent merit, and protecting the interests of the church. He restored the--authority of the laws, and corrected the abuses of the preceding reigns. Whatever rival or enemy, in those distracted times, raised himself up against the imperial authority, was easily subdued. Eugenius met the fate of Maximus, and Arbogastes turned his sword against his own breast. Theodosius reigned in peace and wisdom, the idol of the church, and the object of fear to the barbaric world. He had his defects and vices, and committed errors and crimes, but his reign was beneficent, and the Christian world hoped that the evils which threatened the empire were removed. Alas, the empire was doomed. The death of Theodosius was the signal for renewed hostilities. His sons, the feeble Arcadius and Honorius, were unequal to the task of governing the empire, and it fell into the hands of the barbarians, who ruthlessly marched over the crumblings ruins, regardless of the treasures of the cla.s.sic soil and of the guardians which Christianity presented in the presence of protesting bishops. The empire could not be saved by able emperors, however great their military genius. Absolutism, whether wielded by tyrants, or philosophers, or generals, was alike a failure. What hope for the empire when the Senate inculcated maxims of pa.s.sive obedience to tyrants; when such lawyers as Papinias and Paulus declared that emperors were freed from all restraints? What could Alexander Severus do when the most ill.u.s.trious man in the empire--the learned and immortal Ulpian--was murdered before his eyes by the guards, of which he was the prefect, and when such was the license of the soldiers, that the emperor could neither revenge his murdered friend, nor his insulted dignity; when his own life was sacrificed to the discontents of an army which had become the master of the emperors themselves? After the murder of this brave and enlightened prince, no emperor was safe upon his throne, or could do more than oppose a feeble barrier to the barbarians upon the frontiers.

External dangers may have raised up able commanders, like Decius, Aurelian, and Probus; but they could not prevent the inroads of the Goths, or heal the miseries of society. Of the nineteen tyrants who arose during the reign of Gallienus, not one died a natural death. And when, after a disgraceful period of calamities, Diocletian ascended the throne, the ablest perhaps of all the emperors after Augustus, no talents could sustain the weight of public administration, and even this emperor attempted to extinguish the only influence that had power to save. Absolutism had sowed seeds of ruin, which were destined to bear most wretched fruit.

[Sidenote: Roman jurisprudence.]

Jurisprudence was the science of which the Romans have the most to boast; and this was not perfected until the time of the emperors. It was closely connected with the const.i.tution, but was superior to it, since it was based upon the principles of natural justice or equity. This has lasted when all material greatness has vanished, and still forms the basis of the laws of European nations. This was a great element of civilization itself; it was part of the mechanism of social order; it pervaded all parts of the empire; it made the reign of tyrants endurable.

There is no doubt that the excellence of the laws formed one of the most powerful conservative influences of pagan antiquity. We glory in those laws as one of the proudest achievements of the human mind. But laws are rather an exponent of the state of society than a controlling force which modifies it. If a murderer is to be hung, or a thief imprisoned, the rigid law shows simply no mercy to murderers and thieves; it does not create a sentiment which prevents, though it may punish, iniquity.

The wise division of property among heirs may operate against injurious acc.u.mulations, but does not prevent disproportionate fortunes. The more complicated the jurisprudence, the more need it seems that society has of restraints and balances. The law cannot go higher than the fountain.

The more perfect the state of society, the less need there is of laws.

The cautious guards against fraud simply show that frauds are common and easy. The minute regulations in reference to the protection of property and contracts, show that the prevailing customs and habits of dealers were corrupt, and needed the strong arm of a protecting government. As a general thing, it will be found that the laws are best, and most rigidly enforced, when iniquity prevails. A man is safe in Paris when he is not in Boston, but we do not infer from this fact that society is higher, but that there is a sterner necessity on the part of government to restrain crime. The laws of the Romans give the impression of the necessity of a constant watchfulness and supervision to prevent the strong preying upon the weak. Other influences are more necessary than laws to keep men virtuous and orderly. Laws are necessary, indeed; but they are not the first conditions of social existence.

[Sidenote: Perversion of the laws.]

But what are we to think of laws when they are either evaded or perverted, when there is not wisdom to feel their justice or virtue to execute them? What are laws if judges are corrupt? The venality of the judges of Rome was proverbial. Even in the comparatively virtuous age of Cicero, a friend wrote to him not to recall a certain great functionary, since he himself was implicated in his robberies, and the request was granted. The empire was regarded as spoil, and the provinces were robbed of their most valuable treasures. Witness the extortions of Verres in Sicily, when a residence of two years was enough to make the fortune of a provincial governor. Nor was Roman law ever independent of political power. The praetors were politicians having ambitious aims beyond the exercise of judicial authority. Influential men could ever buy verdicts, and the government winked at the infamy. There _was_ justice in the _abstract_, but not in the _reality_. And when jurisprudence became complicated, judgments were made on technical points rather than on principles of equity. It was as ruinous to go to law at Rome as in London. Lawyers absorbed the money at issue by their tricks and delays.

They made the practice of their n.o.ble profession obscure and uncertain.

Clients danced attendance on eminent jurists, and received promises, smiles, and oyster-sh.e.l.ls. It was, too, often better to submit to an injury than seek to redress it. Cases were decided _against_ justice, if some technical form or ancient usage favored the more powerful party. Lawyers formed a large and powerful cla.s.s, and they had fortunes to make. Instead of protecting the innocent, they s.h.i.+elded the guilty. Those who paid the highest fees were most certain of favorable verdicts. The laws practically operated to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Between the venality of the court and the learned jugglery of advocates, there was little hope for the obscure and indigent. Says Merivale: "The occupation of the bench of justice was the great instrument by which powerful men protected their monopolies; for, by keeping this in their own hands, they could quash every attempt at revealing, by legal practice, the enormities of their administration.

And the means of seduction allowed by law, such as the covert bribery of shows and festivals, were used openly and boldly." What, then, could be hoped from the laws when they were made the channel of extortion and oppression? Law, the glory of Rome in the abstract, became the most dismal mockery of the rights of man. Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its savor it is good for nothing, not even for the dunghill. When the laws practically add to the evils they were intended to cure, what hope is there in their conservative influence? The practice of the law ever remained an honorable profession, and the sons of the great were trained to it; but we find such men as Cyprian, Chrysostom, and Augustine, who originally embarked in it, turning from it with disgust, as full of tricks and pedantries, in which success was only earned by a prost.i.tution of the moral powers. Laws perverted were worse than no laws at all, since they could be turned by cunning, and sharp lawyers against truth and innocence. It would be harsh and narrow to say that lawyers were not necessary; but they did very little to avert evils. A wicked generation pressed over the feeble barriers which the laws presented against iniquity. They were only cobwebs to catch the insignificant.

Unless good laws are enforced by virtue and intelligence, they prove a snare. It is the enforcement of laws, on the principles of justice, not the creation of them, that saves a state.

[Sidenote: Art among the later Romans.]

If a complicated system of laws and government, on which the reason and experience of ages were expended, did not prevent the empire from falling into the hands of barbarians, much less was to be expected of art, for which the Romans were also distinguished in common with the Greeks. Much is said of the enn.o.bling influence of those great creations which gave so great l.u.s.tre to ancient civilization. Founded on imperishable ideas, we naturally attribute to them a great element of national preservation, as they were of glory and pride.

[Sidenote: Its inherent beauty.]

It cannot be denied that art, when in harmony with the exalted ideals of beauty and grace, which it seeks to perpetuate on canvas or in marble, does much to improve the taste, to promote refinement and aesthetic culture. And when art is pursued with a lofty end, seeking, like virtue, its own reward, there is much that is enn.o.bling in it. Even that literature is most prized and most enduring which is artistic, like the odes of Horace, the epics of Virgil, the condensed narrative of Tacitus; like the "Elegy in a Country Churchyard," or the "Deserted Village," or "Corinne," or "Waverley." Varro was the most learned writer whom Rome produced, and the most voluminous. Yet scarcely any thing remains of his productions. They were deficient in art, like German histories--very useful in their day, but only survive in the writings of those who made use of their materials. Hence science is not so enduring as poetry, when poetry is exalted, since it is superseded by new discoveries. Hence style in writing, when of great excellence, gives immortality to works which could not have lived without it, even had they been ever so profound. Voltaire's "Charles XII." is still a cla.s.sic, like the numbers of the "Spectator," although superficial, and, perhaps, unreliable. A great painting is like the history of Thucydides--it lives because it is a creation. Hence art, when severe and lofty, cannot be too highly praised or cherished. A man cannot write for bread as he writes for fame; and he cannot write for fame as he writes to satisfy his own ideal. The immortal poets are those who sing themselves away to the regions of bliss, in a divine ecstacy, from love of art, or to give expression to the feelings which fill the soul. Sir Walter Scott could write his "Ivanhoe" when inspired by the sentiments which warmed the chivalrous ages; he became a mere literary hack when he wrote to pay his debts.

[Sidenote: The true artist.]

The true artist is one of the favorites of Heaven, in a great measure exalted above mortal commiseration, even if his days are clouded with cares and sorrows. He lives in a different and purer atmosphere than ordinary men. He may not banquet on the pleasures of sense, but he revels in the joys of the soul. A Dante may be sad and sorrowful, as when, in his gloomy wanderings and isolations, he asked of Fra Ilario the rest and peace of his sacred monastery; but he was sad as a greater than he wept over Jerusalem, in the profound seriousness of superior knowledge, in the sublime solitariness of an inhabitant of another and grander sphere. Genius ever partakes of this sadness, and it is as shallow to mistake it for misery as it would be to pity the saint pa.s.sing through the tribulations of our worldly pilgrimage, in full view of the unending glories which are in store for him in the celestial city. The higher joys of the soul are foreign to frivolity, tumult, and the mirth of wine,--those pleasures most prized by the weak or sensual.

There is nothing more sublime in this world than the example of a lofty nature seeking the imperishable, the true, the beautiful, the good, amid discomfort, or reproach, or neglect.

Such are truly great artists. Sometimes they are munificently rewarded by their generation with praises and material goods, as was Apelles among the Greeks, and Raphael among the Italians. Sometimes their excellence was unappreciated, except by a few. But whether appreciated or not, the great artists of antiquity belong to the constellation of men of genius which shall s.h.i.+ne forever. They lived in their own glorious realm of thought and feeling, which the world can neither understand nor share. They did not live for utilities. They lived to realize their own exalted ideas of excellence.

[Sidenote: Decline of art.]

[Sidenote: Prost.i.tution of art.]

[Sidenote: The later Romans incapable of appreciating art.]

[Sidenote: The degradation of art.]

[Sidenote: utter failure of art as a conservative power.]

But this was not the case in imperial Rome. All writers speak of a most signal decline in the arts from Augustus to Diocletian. Even architecture became corrupted. It was without taste, or a mere copy, like the arch of Constantine, from the older models. There were no original edifices erected, and such as were built were in defiance of all the principles that were established by the Greek architects. Least of all did art encourage grand sentiments. It did not paint ethereal beauty. It did not chisel the marble to elevate or instruct. Statues were made to please the degraded taste of rich but vulgar families, to give pomp to luxury, to pander wicked pa.s.sions. Painting was absolutely disgraceful; and we veil our eyes and hide our blushes as we survey the decorations of Pompeii. How degrading the pictures which are found amid the ruins of ancient baths! Art was sensualized, perverted, corrupting.

Paintings appealed either to perverted tastes, or fostered a senseless pride, or stimulated unholy pa.s.sions, or flattered the vanity of the rich--brought angels down to earth, not raised mortals to heaven. They commemorated the regime of tyrants, or amused the wealthy cla.s.ses, whose wealth had bought alike the muse of the poets and the visions of the sculptor. Art was venal. She sold her glories, which ought to be as unbought as the graces of life and the smiles of beauty; and she became a painted Haetera, drunk with the wine-cups of Babylon, and fantastic with the sorceries of Egypt. How could she, thus prost.i.tuted, elevate the people, or arrest degeneracy, or consecrate the ancient superst.i.tions? She facilitated rather than r.e.t.a.r.ded the ruin. It is marvelous how soon art degenerated with the progress of luxury, reproducing evil more rapidly than good, and obscuring even truth itself. Pleasures that appeal to the intellect will ever be in accordance with prevailing tastes, and the more exquisite the art the more fatally will it lead astray by the insidious entrance of a form as an angel of light. We cannot extinguish art without destroying one of the n.o.blest developments of civilization; but we cannot have civilization without multiplying the dangers and temptations of human society. And even granting that the arts of the pagan world had a refining influence on the few, what is this unless accompanied with the virtues which grow out of self-sacrifice? I am not speaking of those glories which art ought to represent, but of those attractions which it presents when degraded. What conservative influence can result from the Venus of t.i.tian? Why did not art reform morals, as morals elevated art?

And why did art degenerate? Why did it not keep its own? The truth is, that art is esoteric, and not popular. The imagination of the vulgar is not sufficiently cultivated to see, in the emblems which art typifies, those pa.s.sions or sentiments which have moved generations with enthusiasm. A Gothic cathedral is infinitely more interesting to a man of sentiment or learning than to an unlettered boor. The ignorant cannot appreciate the historical fidelity and marvelous study of races which appear in such a statue as the African Sybil. We must comprehend the character of Moses before we can kindle with admiration at the dignity and majesty which Michael Angelo impersonated in his statue. When Phidias, Praxiteles, and Lysippus moulded their clay models, they had a Pericles, a Plato, or a Demosthenes for their critics and admirers. It was for them they worked, and by them they were stimulated--not the rabble crowd of slaves and sycophants. But when, at Rome, there was no Cicero, no Octavius, no Mecaenas, no Horace, the artists toiled to please imperial gluttons, pretentious freedmen, ignorant generals, drunken senators, and venal judges. Their sublime art became the handmaid of effeminacy, of vanity, of sensuality. It could not rise above the level of those who dedicated themselves to its service. It did not make men better. Was Leo X. a wiser Pope because he delighted in pictures? Did art make the Medici at Florence more susceptible to religious impressions? Does art sanctify Dresden or Florence? Does it make modern capitals stronger, or more self-sacrificing, better fitted to contend with violence, or guard against the follies which undermine a state?

What are the true conservative forces of our world? On what did Luther and Cranmer build the hopes of regeneration? The cant of dilettanti would be laughed at by the old apostles and martyrs. Art amuses, and may refine when it is itself pure. It does not brace up the soul to conflict. It does not teach how to resist temptation. It presents temptations rather. It gilds the fascinations of earth. It does not point to duties, or the life to come. That which is conservative is what saves, not what adorns. We want ideas, invisible agencies, that which exalts the mind above the material. So far as art can do this it is well. It is a great element of civilization. So far as gardens and flowers and villas and groves can do this, let us have them. Let us make a paradise out of a desert. Man was put into Eden to dress and to keep it. The material, rightly directed and used, is part of our just inheritance. Man is physical as well as intellectual. It is monkish and erratic to spurn the outward blessings of Providence. An inheritance in Middles.e.x is worth more than one in Utopia. Give us beauty and grace-- they are invaluable. But let us remember, also, that it is chiefly from moral truth that the soul expands--the recognition of responsibilities and duties. No matter how splendid we make the triumphs of art in its aesthetic influence, the question returns, Did these, in their best estate, in Greece and Rome, lead to patriotism, to sacrifice, to an elevated social home? And if these did not arrest corruption, how could art, when perverted, save a falling empire? All profound inquiries as to the progress of the race centre in moral truths,--those which have reference to the spiritual rather than the material, the future rather than the present. Art failed because it did not propound grand ideas which pertain to spiritual and future interests. It especially failed when it pandered to perverted tastes, when it was the mere pastime of the rich, and diverted the mind from what is greatest and holiest. St.

Paul, when he wandered through the Grecian cities, said very little of the sculptures and the temples which met his eye at every turn. He was not insensible to beauty and grandeur. But he felt that all renovating forces came from the ideas which he was sent to preach. He did not condemn art; he probably admired it; but this he saw was a poor foundation of national happiness and strength. If the severe morality of the Stoics was a feeble barrier against corruption, how much more feeble were temples to Minerva, and statues to Jupiter, and pictures of Venus?

Great was Diana of the Ephesians, but not as an influence to stem degeneracy. Exalt art as highly as we can, it is not a renovating power, and it is this of which we speak.

[Sidenote: Attempts of literature.]

[Sidenote: Degradation of literature.]

Literature attempted something higher than art; nor need we expatiate on its transcendent excellence in the cla.s.sical ages. This itself was art, art in the highest and most enduring form, and will live when marbles moulder away. Virgil, Cicero, Horace, Tacitus, Livy, Ovid, were great artists, and civilization will perpetuate their fame. They cannot die.

What more immortal than the artistic delineations of man and of nature which the poets and historians wrought out with so much labor and genius? When did men, uninspired by Christianity, utter sentiments more tender, or thoughts more profound, or aspirations more lofty? They are our perpetual study and marvel--prodigies of genius, such as appear only at great intervals. All that is most valuable in the ancient civilization is perpetuated in its literature, and survives empires and changes. The men who were amused and instructed by these great masterpieces _have_ pa.s.sed away, as well as their empire, but these will interest remotest generations. These live by their own vitality. If the unaided intellect of man could soar so high under the withering influence of paganism and political slavery and social degradation, we cannot but feel that Christianity has higher missions to accomplish than to stimulate the intellectual faculties of man; and, while we remember that, in our own times, some of the highest creations of genius have been made by those who have repudiated the spirit of Christianity, we cannot but feel that conservative influences do not come from literature, in its best estate, unless its ideas are inspired by the Gospel. The great writers of the Augustan age did not arrest degeneracy, any more than Goethe and Bulwer and Byron and Hugo have in our own day.

They amused, they cultivated, they adorned; they did not save. Nor is it probable that the great masterpieces of antiquity were favorite subjects of study, except with a cultivated few, any more than Milton, Bacon, and Pascal are read in our times by the people. They enriched libraries; they were venerated and preserved in costly bindings; but they were not familiar guides. The people read nothing. The great writers of antiquity complain of the frivolity of the public taste. Moreover, the troubles of the empire and the corruptions of society were unfavorable to lofty creations of genius. Men were absorbed in pa.s.sing events; and literary men generally pandered to the vile taste of the people, or stooped to adulate the monsters whom they feared. Hunting and hawking furnished subjects for the muse of the poets. History was reduced to dull and dry abridgments, and still drier commentaries. The people sought scandalous anecdotes, or demoralizing sketches, or frothy poetry. The decline in letters, like the decline in art, kept pace with the public misfortunes.

When lofty and contemplative characters were saddened and discouraged, in view of public and private corruption, and saw ruin approaching, they had no spirit to make great exertions--and exertions which would not be appreciated. They sought retreats. There was no life, no enthusiasm in literature. It was conventional--to suit fas.h.i.+onable coteries, with whom strength was unpalatable and dignity a rebuke. Sound was preferred to sense. Rhetoric supplanted thought. A sentimental flow of words pa.s.sed current for poetry. Literary men united into mutual admiration societies, and exalted their own frivolous productions. As the penny-a- liners of our day enumerate in their catalogue of great men chiefly those who have written romances and poetry for magazines, and pa.s.s unnoticed the stern thinkers of the age, so the literary gossips of Rome made the city ring, like gra.s.shoppers, with their importunate c.h.i.n.k.

Unfortunately they were the only inhabitants of the field, for "no great cattle" kept silence under the shadow of the protecting oak. Nero suppressed the writings of Lucan, because he painted, in his "Pharsalia," the follies of the time. Lucian gave vent to his bitter sarcasms, and raised the veil of hypocrisy in which his generation had wrapped itself; but his mockery, like that of Voltaire, demolished, without seeking to subst.i.tute any thing better instead. Petronius laughed at the vices he did not wish to remove, and in which he himself shared. Juvenal and Martial both flattered the tyrants they detested.

The n.o.bles may have laughed at their bitter sarcasms, but they pursued their pleasures. Literature, under Augustus, did but little to elevate the Roman mind. What could be expected when it was coa.r.s.e, feeble, and frivolous? If intellectual strength will not keep men from vices, what can be expected when intellect panders to pa.s.sions and interests? There is no more absurd cant than that the culture of the mind favors the culture of the heart. What do operas and theatres for the elevation of society? Does a sentimental novel prompt to duty? Education seldom keeps people from follies when the will is not influenced by virtues. If Socrates sought the society of Aspasia, if Seneca ama.s.sed a gigantic fortune in the discharge of great public trusts, if Cicero languished in his exile because deprived of his accustomed pleasures, if Marcus Aurelius was blind to the rights and virtues of Christians, what could be hoped of the literary sensualists of the fourth century? If knowledge did not restrain the pa.s.sions of philosophers, how could pa.s.sions be restrained when every influence tended to excite them? Athens fell when her arts and schools were in the zenith of their glory, how could Rome stand when arts and schools undermined the moral health? Neither poets, nor historians, nor critics had in view the regeneration of society.

They wrote, as poets and novelists write now, for bread, for fame, for social position. If such a man as Racine, so lofty and severe, was killed by a frown from Louis XIV., how could such an elaborate voluptuary as Petronius live out of the smiles of Nero and the flatteries of the court? If literature is feeble to arrest degeneracy when it is lofty, inasmuch as it reaches only the cultivated few, how inadequate it is when it is itself corrupted! The taste of our times, with all our glorious Christian literature, and our public libraries, our lecturers, our preachers, our professors, and our standard cla.s.sical authorities, is scarcely kept from being perverted by the flimsy literature which has inundated us, and the newspaper plat.i.tudes which we devour with our breakfast. With every effort of true and Christian philanthropists, it is questionable whether there is any moral progress among us. There is a material growth; but does the moral correspond, with all our immense machinery for the elevation of society? What, then, could be expected at Rome, where there were no public libraries, no newspapers, no lyceums, no pulpits, no printing-presses, and where books were the solace of a few aristocrats, and where these aristocrats could only be amused by scandalous anecdotes and frivolous poetry. Literature did not even hold its own. It steadily declined from the Augustan age.

It declined in proportion as the people had leisure to read it. Instead of elevating society, society corrupted literature. The same may be said of literature as was said of art. It did not fulfill its mission, if it was intended to save. It could reach only a small part of the population, and those whom it did reach were simply amused.

[Sidenote: Failure of literature.]

It would be too sweeping to affirm that the better forms of Roman literature did not refine and elevate, but unfortunately they reached only a few minds, and not always those who had political and social power. Literature was not powerful enough, was not sufficiently circulated, and the greater part of it was demoralizing, thus proving a savor of death rather than a savor of life. When a civilization reproduces evil more rapidly than good, there is not much hope for society, except from some signal interposition of Almighty power.

Society is infinitely gloomy to a contemplative man, when there are no antidotes to the poison which is rapidly consuming the vitality of states. We contemplate approaching death, and death amid the array of physical glories. It is like a rich man laid on the bed from which he will never rise, surrounded with every comfort and every pleasure that men seek. Literature was a feeble medicine to the dying patient. Had all cla.s.ses banqueted on the rich treasure of the mind, and been content, then there might have been some hope. But this was not the fact. Only a few reveled in the glories of thought. And these scorned the people.

[Sidenote: Ancient philosophy.]

But philosophy attempted something higher and n.o.bler--even to reform morals, especially at Rome. The Romans had but little taste for abstract speculations. And hence they did not extend the boundaries of thought and reason beyond the limits which the Greeks arrived at. But they adopted what was most practical in the Grecian philosophy, and applied it to common life.

If there is any thing lofty in paganism, it is philosophy. It proposed to seek the beautiful, the true, the good; to divert men from degrading pursuits; to set a low estimate on money, and material gains, and empty pleasures. It was calm, fearless, and inquiring. All sects of philosophers despised the pursuits of the vulgar, and affected wisdom.

Minerva, not Venus, not Diana, was the G.o.ddess of their idolatry. It deified reason, and sought to control the pa.s.sions. It longed for the realms of truth and love. It believed in the divine, and detested the gross. Hence the philosophers were not eager for outward rewards, and kept aloof from the demoralizing pleasures of the people. They attired themselves in a different garb, lived retired, and studied the welfare of the soul. Mind was adored, and matter depreciated. They were esoteric men who abhorred vice, and sought the higher good. Morally, they were in general superior to other men, as they were in intellectual gifts and attainments. And they opposed the popular current of opinions, and stemmed popular vices. They were the reformers of the ancient world, the sages--earnest men, advocating the great cert.i.tudes of love and friends.h.i.+p and patriotism--the lofty spirits of their time, preoccupied and rapt in their n.o.ble inquiries into nature and G.o.d. Look at Socrates, so careless of dress, walking barefooted, giving what he had away, courting mortification, and disdaining popular favor, if he could only persuade his pupils of the greatness of the infinite and imperishable.

Look at Pythagoras, refusing political office, and consecrating himself to teaching. Look to Xenophanes, wandering over Sicily in the holy enthusiasm of a rhapsodist of truth. Look at Parmenides, forsaking patrimonial wealth, that he might teach the distinction between ideas obtained through the reason, and ideas obtained through the senses. Look at Herac.l.i.tus, refusing the splendid offers of Darius, and retiring to solitudes, that he might explore the depths of his own nature. See Anaxagoras, allowing his fortune to melt away, that he might discover the many faces of nature. See Empedocles, giving away his fortune to poor girls, that he might attack the Anthropomorphism of his day; or Democritus declining the sovereignty of Abdera, that he might have leisure to speculate on the distinction between reflection and sensation; or Diogenes living in a tub; or Plato in his garden; or Aristotle in the shady side of the Lyceum; or Zeno guarding the keys of the citadel. See the good Aurelius, in later and more corrupt ages, forsaking the pleasures of an imperial throne, that he might meditate on his soul's welfare, or the slave Epictetus, unfolding the richest lessons of moral wisdom to a corrupt and listless generation.

[Sidenote: The Romans fail to appreciate philosophy.]

The loftier forms of the ancient philosophy were never popular, even at Athens. The popular teachers were sophists and rhetoricians, who, as men of fas.h.i.+on and ambition, despised the sublime speculations of Socrates and Plato. The Platonic philosophy had a hold only of a few, and these were men of powerful minds, but stood aloof from the prevailing tastes and pleasures. It had still less influence on the Roman mind, which was practical and worldly. Platonism opposed the sensualism and materialism of the times, believed in eternal ideas, sought the knowledge of G.o.d as the great end of life--a sublime realism which was hardly more appreciated than Christianity itself. Platonism was doubtless the highest effort of uninspired men, under the influence of pagan ideas and inst.i.tutions, to attain a knowledge of G.o.d and the soul. It gloried in immortality, and claimed for man a nature akin to the deity, and destined to a higher development after death. It endeavored to understand our complex nature, and trace a connection between earth and heaven. It sought to distinguish between forms and essence, the spiritual and the sensual. It spiritualized the popular mythology, and insisted on the unity on which it fundamentally rests. It did not sneer at religious earnestness, and looked upon the beat.i.tudes of the soul as the highest good of earth.

[Sidenote: Platonism.]

But such knowledge was too wonderful for the Romans. It was high, and they could not attain unto it. Its ends were too spiritual and elevated.

There was scarcely an eminent Roman who adopted the system. Cicero came the nearest to understand its spiritual import, but it was too lofty even for him. He composed a republic and a treatise of laws, in which reason and the rule of right should be made the guide of states and empires. In this way Platonism, as a sublime hypothesis, entered into jurisprudence. It affected the thinking of master minds, even as it entered into Christianity at a later period, and formed an alliance with it. But, practically, it did not have much effect on life and manners.

It was regarded as a system of mysticism, cherished by a very small esoteric body of believers, who were spurned as dreamers. They were looked upon very much as the transcendentalists of our own day are regarded, with whom the great body of even thinkers had but little sympathy. There was no more respect for Plato at Rome than there is for Kant among the merchants of London. His name may have been p.r.o.nounced with an oracular admiration, but there was no profound appreciation of him, no general knowledge of his writings, no sympathy for his doctrines. They were to the Romans foolishness, somewhat after the sense that Christianity was to the Greeks. They transcended their experience, went beyond the limits of their thoughts, and sought spiritual cert.i.tudes which they disdained.

[Sidenote: The Aristotelian philosophy.]

[Sidenote: Its failure.]

The philosophy of Aristotle was nearly as distasteful to the Romans as that of Plato, and it was less lofty. It had a skeptical tendency, and excluded scientific light from the sphere of activity, and inculcated a proud and self-reliant spirit. The academics denied the possibility of arriving at truth with certainty; and, therefore, held it uncertain whether the G.o.ds existed or not, whether the soul is mortal or survives the body, whether virtue is preferable to vice, or the contrary. They sneered at religious earnestness, and tacitly encouraged influences greatly to be dreaded. They held in supreme contempt the popular religion, and made a mockery of religious ceremonies. They undermined superst.i.tion, but weakened religion also by subst.i.tuting nothing instead of the absurdities they brushed away. Lucian was a type of these philosophers, and his bitter sarcasms were more powerful than the logic of Cicero to destroy what could not be proved. The academics may be said to have been the rationalists of antiquity. The old religions could not maintain their ground before the inquiring skepticism and sarcastic wit of these irreligious philosophers, who contented themselves with a lifeless deism--a system which did not, indeed, deny the existence and providence of G.o.d, but which attributed to the Deity an indifference respecting the affairs of men. Dr. Neander, in the first volume of the "History of the Church," has shown the effects of the unbelief of the academics on the state of society at Rome, especially on the men of rank and fas.h.i.+on. Infidelity, in any form, can have no conservative influence. It is designed to pull down, and not to build up.

Superst.i.tion, with all its puerilities, is better than a scornful and proud philosophy which takes no cognizance of popular wants and aspirations.

[Sidenote: The Stoical philosophy.]