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The Historians' History of the World 06 [The Early Roman Empire]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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Do not these associates, these collegiati of a new species, whose secret designs and whose nearest hopes are unknown, but are in any case manifestly in accordance with hatred of the morals, the customs, and the institutions of the empire, form the beginning of a state within a state? Are they not a menace to the public class, that which at all times is reported inseparable from the preservation of existing institutions? These are enemies; the more so that community of faith, hatred of the state, and the bond of a common fear in the presence of danger and of proscription holds them together.
Pertinax, on attaining to the imperial dignity, gave this for the first watchword: “Let us fight”—a virile watchword, and one suited also to the reign of Marcus Aurelius. In fact, on the frontiers the barbarians are hastening to arm. Of the thirty legions of which he has the disposal, the emperor is forced to muster twenty with numerous auxiliaries to drive them beyond the Danube, and hold them in awe. During this time, other peaceful barbarians, as they are called, profess contempt for their country, enervate their minds by an unnerving mysticism, detaching themselves from masculine duties and the rough obligations of civil and military life, and by their attacks and their counsels noiselessly lay the mine which will engulf the fortunes of Rome.
They respect, they say, the established powers, and offer up prayers to their gods on behalf of the emperor; but they are heard to say that marriage is a corruption, and a Christian slave dares to reply to the judge that Christ has freed him, and amongst the foundations on which the state and society, decency, family ties, and religion rest, there is not one institution which finds favour in their sight.
The state has need of the devotion of all. It is a critical moment. A war, which all good citizens must consider as a holy war, is added to the scourge which devastates the empire. The stake is, perhaps, civilisation itself. The Christians are reluctant to serve the country at home or abroad. They wish to be neither soldiers nor magistrates. They glory in being citizens of heaven. They wrap themselves up in meditation, controversy, and the exercises of their piety. The community is threatened. In every town they have made for themselves a city of their own choosing, a society separate and apart, of which, they say, God himself is the founder, which they call their church, and to which they dedicate all their attention and their zeal. The service of their church is the sole thing which moves them. The duties it imposes are, in their eyes, the only essential and necessary duties.
The prince, their country, the public good, civilisation, Roman splendour, are to them merely resounding names or vain idols. The church is their country, their city, and their camp. This doubtless is the meaning of the accusation, “enemies of the public,” which is applied to the Christians. Doubtless neither the princes nor the magistrates saw it in precisely that light. The Christian prophets foretold the end of the world in the year 195. They did not foresee Constantine and Theodosius, the old religion persecuted in its turn, and forced to hide from the revenge of the Christians, the apologists returned, Libanius imploring in the name of art that the temples and statues of the gods might be spared, and Simmachus in the name of Roman splendour asking mercy for the threatened altar of victory.
The danger was neither so urgent nor so clear in the second century. Melito of Sardis was wont to say with the gravity of conviction that the power and splendour of the empire had augmented with Christianity. Others, with equal sincerity, protested that the Christians did not think of agitating the state, that they had never been found amongst those who stirred up seditious and military revolutions; that, on the contrary, they kept themselves aloof from all parties, and rendered unto Cæsar that which was his due—neither adoration nor incense, but civil submission and obedience. Several times since the destruction of their temple in the year 70, the Jews had risen in arms to shake off the Roman despotism, to save or avenge their independence. The Christians could not be reproached with any revolt; it is true that, sprung from every race, and for the greater part from pagan families, they had no nationality to vindicate or re-establish. None of them, moreover, had asserted a mission to revolutionise society.
Saving the spiritual jurisdiction, they freely abandoned all other matters, or held them of small account. During the first two centuries despised, maltreated, spat upon, under the ban of opinion and of the law, and often put to death, they were everywhere seen to be patient and resigned, speaking less of the world than of heaven, and full of confidence in a master who does no wrong and who can repair injustice.
Thus no precise explanation can be advanced to account for their being styled public enemies. They were the seeds of a new society; one of their doctors stated that their presence deferred the terrestrial judgment and preserved the empire from ruin and corruption.
The true and philosophical significance of the persecutions is thus the defence of the empire and its institutions, threatened by a new and incomprehensible spirit. The emperors during the second century did not see this public danger clearly; they felt it instinctively, and on its account they strove to fortify or to awaken religion and patriotism.d
FOOTNOTES
[34] The history of Christianity, in its earliest stage, is only to be found in the Acts of the Apostles; from no other source can we learn the first persecutions inflicted on the Christians. Limited to a few individuals and a narrow space, these persecutions interested none but those who were exposed to them, and have had no other chroniclers.—Guizot.
[35] In Cyrene they massacred 220,000 Greeks; in Cyprus, 240,000; in Egypt, a very great multitude. Many of these unhappy victims were sawed asunder, according to a precedent to which David had given the sanction of his example. The victorious Jews devoured the flesh, licked up the blood, and twisted the entrails, like a girdle, round their bodies.e
Roman Metal Worker
CHAPTER XXXVIII. ASPECTS OF CIVILISATION OF THE FIRST TWO CENTURIES OF THE EMPIRE
THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES
In the first century of the empire the political circumstances of the world were in a deplorable condition. Power was entirely concentrated in Rome and the legions, and there the most shameful and degrading scenes occurred. The Roman aristocracy which had conquered the world, and which, in fact, alone had a share in the government under the rule of the Cæsars, gave themselves up to saturnalian crimes of the most unbridled kind ever witnessed.
Cæsar and Augustus, when instituting the imperial office, had clearly discerned the needs of their times. The world was politically so corrupt that no other form of government would have been possible. Since Rome had conquered numberless provinces, the ancient constitution, founded on the privileges of the patrician families, who were a species of obstinate and malevolent Tories, could no longer continue. But Augustus in leaving the future to chance had entirely neglected his political duty. Without legitimate heirs, without laws of election, without proper rules of adoption, without constitutional limits, Cæsarism was like an enormous weight on the deck of a ship without ballast. The most terrible upheavals were inevitable.