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قراءة كتاب The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire

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The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire

The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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THE
CONFLICT OF RELIGIONS
IN THE
EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE



BY

T. R. GLOVER

FELLOW AND CLASSICAL LECTURER OF
ST JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
HON. LL.D., QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY, CANADA




FOURTH EDITION




METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON




First Published . . March 18th, 1909
Second Edition . . June 1909
Third Edition . . August 1909
Fourth Edition . . October 1910




BY THE SAME AUTHOR

LIFE AND LETTERS IN THE FOURTH CENTURY
STUDIES IN VIRGIL


PREFACE

A large part of this book formed the course of Dale Lectures delivered in Mansfield College, Oxford, in the Spring of 1907. For the lecture-room the chapters had to be considerably abridged; they are now restored to their full length, while revision and addition have further changed their character. They are published in accordance with the terms of the Dale foundation.

To see the Founder of the Christian movement and some of his followers as they appeared among their contemporaries; to represent Christian and pagan with equal goodwill and equal honesty, and in one perspective; to recapture something of the colour and movement of life, using imagination to interpret the data, and controlling it by them; to follow the conflict of ideals, not in the abstract, but as they show themselves in character and personality; and in this way to discover where lay the living force that changed the thoughts and lives of men, and what it was; these have been the aims of the writer,—impossible, but worth attempting. So far as they have been achieved, the book is relevant to the reader.

The work of others has made the task lighter. German scholars, such as Bousset, von Dobschütz, Harnack, Pfleiderer and Wernle; Professor F. C. Burkitt and others nearer home who have written of the beginnings of Christianity; Boissier, Martha and Professor Samuel Dill; Edward Caird, Lecky, and Zeller; with the authors of monographs, Croiset, de Faye, Gréard, Koziol, Oakesmith, Volkmann; these and others have been laid under contribution. In another way Dr Wilhelm Herrmann, of Marburg, and Thomas Carlyle have helped the book. The references to ancient authorities are mostly of the writer's own gathering, and they have been verified.

Lastly, there are friends to thank, at Cambridge and at Woodbrooke, for the services that only friends can render—suggestion, criticism, approval, correction, and all the other kindly forms of encouragement and enlightenment.

ST JOHN'S COLLEGE,
    CAMBRIDGE,
        February 1909.



CONTENTS

CHAP.                                             PAGE

    I. ROMAN RELIGION  . . . . . . . . . . . . .     1
   II. THE STOICS  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    33
  III. PLUTARCH  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    75
   IV. JESUS OF NAZARETH . . . . . . . . . . . .   113
    V. THE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS  . . . . . . . . .   141
   VI. THE CONFLICT OF CHRISTIAN AND JEW . . . .   167
  VII. "GODS OR ATOMS?"  . . . . . . . . . . . .   196
VIII. CELSUS  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   239
   IX. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA . . . . . . . . . .   262
    X. TERTULLIAN  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   305
       INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   349




THE CONFLICT OF RELIGIONS
IN THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE


CHAPTER I

ROMAN RELIGION

On the Ides of March in the year 44 B.C. Julius Cæsar lay dead at the foot of Pompey's statue. His body had twenty three wounds. So far the conspirators had done their work thoroughly, and no farther. They had made no preparation for the government of the Roman world. They had not realized that they were removing the great organizing intelligence which stood between the world and chaos, and back into chaos the world swiftly rolled. They had hated personal government; they were to learn that the only alternative was no government at all. "Be your own Senate yourself"[1] wrote Cicero to Plancus in despair. There was war, there were faction fights, massacres, confiscations, conscriptions. The enemies of Rome came over her borders, and brigandage flourished within them.

At the end of his first Georgic Virgil prays for the triumph of the one hope which the world saw—for the preservation and the rule of the young Cæsar, and he sums up in a few lines the horror from which mankind seeks to be delivered. "Right and wrong are confounded; so many wars the world over, so many forms of wrong; no worthy honour is left to the plough; the husbandmen are marched away and the fields grow dirty; the hook has its curve straightened into the sword-blade. In the East, Euphrates is stirring up war, in the West, Germany: nay, close-neighbouring cities break their mutual league and draw the sword, and the war-god's unnatural fury rages over the whole world; even as when in the Circus the chariots burst from their floodgates, they dash into the course, and pulling desperately at the reins the driver lets the horses drive him, and the car is deaf to the curb."[2]

Virgil's hope that Octavian might be spared to give peace to the world was realized. The foreign enemies were driven over their frontiers and thoroughly cowed;

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