The Historians' History of the World 04

Under the liberal and Philhellenic government of the dynasty that came to the throne with Nerva, the world prospered; in a material sense Asia has never been happier. The age could boast of orators who spoke like Demosthenes and Plato in one. A certain amount of philosophical training prevailed among educated men; lovable and able individuals are not lacking; such men as Plutarch, who paints that copy of real Hellenism which the heroes of the French revolution adopted instead of the original, and who transmits to Montaigne, for example, a large portion of the worldly wisdom of the Greeks. The work of compilation by which astronomy and geography are summed up by Ptolemy, grammar by Herodian, and medicine by Galen, is of the utmost value from the standpoint of history. A shallow Semitic pamphleteer like Lucian copies the graceful forms of antiquity with such skill, that in the Renaissance and the days of the Éclaircissement he passes for a leading representative of the Greek spirit. But the age is in its dotage for all that; there is natural science without experiment, abstract science without unbiassed examination, knowledge without philosophy. The deeper souls have reached a point at which their strength lies in resignation. Hope, the only treasure of all those in Pandora’s box to remain with man in the youth of the nation, has now fled. None have now a living faith save those who renounce the world. The Platonic Eros is no longer a force, and the Agape is known only to those to whom Paul has revealed it. Men’s souls are weary; presently their bodies too begin to sicken. Æsculapius is the only god of heaven whose worship flourishes side by side with that of the emperors, the gods of the empire; the feeble health of the individuals of whom we hear most becomes a disquieting factor; under Marcus Aurelius the first great wave of mortality sweeps over the empire. From this point the downward course is rapid, especially when, with Severus, the empire falls into the hands of barbarian generals. Nor must it be forgotten that Augustus greatly circumscribed the eastern half of the empire, which he permitted to remain Greek. He romanised the Danube provinces, Illyria, Africa, and even Sicily. Every year the East sent a strong contingent to the West, and though the fact contributed the largest share to the assimilation of Greek culture by the West (in Rome, for example, the language of the Christian congregations was Greek until some time after this), these emigrants were none the less permanently lost to the Greek nation. In the East the ancient nations were astir; as early as the second century an Aramaic literature begins, in Phrygia inscriptions appear in the vulgar tongue; in spite of Longinus, the Palmyra of Zenobia is not a Greek city any more; there is an alarming increase of spiritual force in barbarian religions; even in that which came across the frontier from the Parthians. In those circles into which Gnosis, so-called, leads us, which did not consist wholly of ignorant persons, the Greek element is only one of many. The imperial army becomes more and more a force that makes for barbarism. No wonder that civilisation collapses, with the empire out of joint, and the ravages of the Germans—whom the classicism of the age dubs Scythians, in the phrase of Herodotus—just beginning. By their misdeeds at this period the Goths and Vandals richly earned the secondary sense attached to their name, though it has been mistakenly associated with the devastation of Italy and Africa. They reduced Greece to a desert, they destroyed Olympia; worse still, they annihilated the prosperity of Asia. The athletic games which had taken the place of the gymnastic contests of antiquity, but had always retained something of the spirit of the latter, practically came to an end. All that peace had allowed to come into being—temples, monuments, and theatres—was destroyed to build inadequate walls. Far and wide the thin stratum of the educated classes that overlaid a people half estranged from civilisation perished entirely. Some sort of order was restored by Diocletian and Constantine, but the place of the Greek king had now been taken by the oriental sultan; the free man had died out. Then came the church, which presently forbade freedom of thought. Origen was a thinker and philological student almost without peer among his contemporaries. Eusebius had no equal among the scholars of his day. It was therefore not the fault of Christianity if these two men had no successors, but gave place to the purblind, and barely honest superstition of Athanasius and the vulgar abuse of Epiphanius. On the contrary, Christianity showed its affinity with Hellenic civilisation by the very fact that they withered together. Its earthly victory should dazzle the eyes of those least of all who believe in the kingdom of God that Jesus preached. Of this there is hardly a trace at the council of Nicæa.