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- Herausgeber: e-artnow
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
J. B. Bury's work is widely regarded as a foundational and definitive scholarly resource on the transformative period between the classical Roman world and medieval Byzantium, significantly influencing modern historiography. As one of the most esteemed historians of late antiquity, Bury's meticulous scholarship finds its fullest expression in this monumental masterpiece. Covering the dynamic era from Emperor Arcadius in 395 A.D. through the reign of Empress Irene ending in 800 A.D., this book meticulously narrates the epoch during which the Eastern Roman Empire evolved profoundly, witnessing crucial historical events and cultural shifts. Bury meticulously examines the dissolution of Roman unity following the death of Theodosius the Great and highlights pivotal figures such as Rufinus, Stilicho, and Alaric, whose actions precipitated monumental changes including the Gothic incursions and the dramatic sack of Rome in 410 A.D. The narrative progresses through the turbulent fifth century, marked by invasions of the Huns, the rise of influential generals like Aetius, and the interplay between barbarian incursions and Roman political instability. Attention is given to the shaping influence of Christianity, notably in societal transformations and theological controversies epitomized by figures such as John Chrysostom and the development of ecclesiastical power. The sixth century emerges prominently through Bury's detailed examination of Emperor Justinian and his ambitious military and administrative endeavors, including the reconquest of Africa and Italy, monumental legal reforms exemplified by the Corpus Juris Civilis, and the devastating Plague of Justinian. The subsequent collapse of Justinian's territorial gains, under pressure from Lombards, Avars, and Slavs, demonstrates the fragility of imperial unity. Bury further explores the profound crises of the seventh century under Heraclius, whose desperate yet victorious Persian war was overshadowed by rapid territorial losses to the ascendant Islamic Caliphate. The book also addresses the internal fragmentation and theological divisions epitomized by the controversies over Monotheletism and Iconoclasm, climaxing under the Isaurian dynasty, particularly Leo III and Constantine V. The eighth century is presented as a pivotal turning point with Empress Irene's controversial rule, the definitive repudiation of Iconoclasm, and significant geopolitical reorientations in Europe, including the establishment of the Bulgarian kingdom and the rising power of the Franks. Through meticulous scholarship, Bury offers a panoramic view of societal, administrative, religious, and cultural transformations, revealing the historical complexity of this transformative era with unmatched depth and insight.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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History of the Later Roman Empire
Table of Contents
PREFACE
There is no period of history which has been so much obscured by incorrect and misleading titles as the period of the later Roman Empire. It is, I believe, more due to improper names than one might at first be disposed to admit, that the import of that period is so constantly misunderstood and its character so often misrepresented. For the first step towards grasping the history of those centuries through which the ancient evolved into the modem world is the comprehension of the fact that the old Roman Empire did not cease to exist until the year 1453. The line of Roman Emperors continued in unbroken succession from Octavius Augustus to Constantine Palaeo-logus.
Now this essential fact is obscured as far as language is able to obscure it by applying the name “Byzantine” or the name “Greek” to the Empire in its later stages. Historians who use the phrase “Byzantine Empire” are not very consistent or very precise as to the date at which the “Roman Empire” ends and the “Byzantine Empire” begins. Sometimes the line is drawn at the foundation of Constantinople by Constantine the Great, sometimes at the death of Theodosius the Great, sometimes at the reign of Justinian, sometimes (as by Finlay) at the accession of Leo the Isaurian; and the historian who adopts one line of division cannot assert that the historian who adopts a different line is wrong. For all such lines are purely arbitrary. No “Byzantine Empire” ever began to exist; the Roman Empire did not come to an end until 1453.
But, it may be objected, is it not true that the Roman Empire in the days of Constantine VII, who reigned in the tenth century, was completely different from what it was in the days of Constantine I., who reigned in the fourth century? and having in view this great difference in character, is it not permissible for historians, as a mere matter of convenience, to distinguish the later period by some confessedly appropriate word like “Byzantine” or “Graeco-Roman”? Such a use may be of course convenient and harmless in conversation among those who are fully aware that it is only a phrase of convenience; and there is no objection to “Byzantine art” or “Graeco-Roman law.” But in writing or lecturing, such expressions as Byzantine, Greek, or Eomaic Empire are highly objectionable, because they tend to obscure an important fact and perpetuate a serious error.
It seems especially unfortunate to adopt one of these names as the title of a book, and thus help to stereotype as a separate unity what is really a part of a continuous series. Every century of the Roman Empire differed from the preceding and from the succeeding, but the development was continuous; the Empire was still the Roman Empire, and I am not aware that it is usual to give a man a new name when he enters upon a new decade of life. We designate a man as young and old; and so we may speak of the earlier and later ages of a kingdom or an empire. But Byzantine is a proper adjective, and is too apparently precise not to be misleading. Gibbon perhaps is almost the only modern historian who, in treating this subject, has not done injustice to the continuity of history by the title of his work; but unfortunately in reading the later chapters one is apt to forget what that title is.
Moved by these considerations, I have avoided speaking of a Byzantine, a Greek, or a Graeco-Roman Empire, and have carefully restricted myself to the only correct appellation. For the sake of distinction the word “later” has been added on the title-page; and no further distinction is required, at least till the year 800, which marks the termination of my work.
This brings us to another unfortunate use of words, which similarly tends to perpetuate an erroneous impression. A rival Roman Empire was founded in the West by the coronation of Charles the Great in 800; and it is evidently very convenient to distinguish the rival Empires by prefixing the adjectives Western and Eastern. And this nomenclature is not only convenient, but quite justifiable; for it suggests no historical error, while it expresses succinctly the European situation.
But unhappily the phrase Eastern Roman Empire is not confined to this legitimate use. We hear of an Eastern and a Western Roman Empire in the fifth century; we hear of the Fall of a Western Empire in 476. Such language, though it has the sanction of high names, is both incorrect in itself and leads to a further confusion. In the first place, it is incorrect. The Roman Empire was one and undivided in the fifth century; though there were generally more Emperors than one, there were never two Empires. To speak of two Empires in the fifth century—and if such speech applies to the fifth it applies also to the fourth—is to misrepresent in the grossest manner the theory of the imperial constitution. No one talks about two Roman Empires in the days of Constantius and Constans; yet the relation of Arcadius and Honorius, the relation of Theodosius II and Valentinian III, the relation of Leo I. and Anthemius, were exactly the same as the political relation which existed between the sons of Constantine. However independent one of another, or even hostile, the rulers from time to time may have been, theoretically the unity of the Empire which they ruled was unaffected. No Empire fell in 476; that year only marks a stage, and not even the most important stage, in the process of disintegration which was going on during the whole century. The resignation of Romulus Augustulus did not even shake the Roman Empire, far less did it cause an Empire to fall. It is unfortunate, therefore, that Gibbon spoke of the “Fall of the Western Empire,” and that many modern writers have given their sanction to the phrase. Notwithstanding all that Mr. Freeman has said on the matter in sundry places, it will be probably a long time yet before the inveterate error of assigning a wrong importance to the year 476 A.D. has been finally eradicated.
In the second place, this nomenclature leads to a further confusion. For if the erroneous expression Eastern Roman Empire be admitted into use for the fifth century, the inevitable tendency is to identify this false abstraction with the Eastern Roman Empire, rightly so called, of later days. And this identification unavoidably leads to the idea that a state called the Eastern Roman Empire came into being after the death of Theodosius the Great, in 395 A.D., and continued until 1453 A.D.
The simplicity of history is thus obscured. Nothing can be easier than to apprehend that the Roman Empire endured, one and undivided, however changed and dismembered, from the first century B.C. to the fifteenth century A.D.; and that from the year 800 forward we distinguish it as Eastern, on account of the foundation of a rival Empire, which also called itself Roman, in the West.
I have now explained my title, and I may add that by discarding the word Byzantine an additional advantage has been gained. So many prejudicial associations have grown up round this inauspicious word that it almost involves a petitio principii, like the phrase Bas-Empire in French. This is due to the unhistorical manner in which many eminent authors have treated the later Roman Empire. These writers knew very little about it, and they regarded it as a safe subject for derision. Voltaire, for instance, speaks of Byzantine history “as a worthless repertory of declamation and miracles, disgraceful to the human mind.” “With this remark,” says Finlay, “the records of an empire, which witnessed the rise and fall of the Caliphs and Carlovingians, are dismissed by one who exclaimed, ‘J’oterai aux nations le bandeau de l’erreur.’” Gibbon hurried over the history of the Emperors later than the seventh century with contemptuous celerity, and his great authority has much to answer for. The remarks of Hegel in his Philosophie cler Geschichte amount to much the same as the remark of Voltaire.
The sins of M. Guizot are of omission rather than of commission. His well-known Histoire de la civilisation en Europe is open to two criticisms. In the first place, it is not what it professes to be,—a history of European civilisation,—for it only deals with western Europe. But, waiving this, the author entirely ignores one of the most important and essential factors in the development of civilisation in western Europe —the influence of the later Roman Empire and New Rome. On this subject I may refer the reader to the concluding chapter of my second volume; I mention it here because M. Guizot’s extraordinary omission was clearly due to the inveterate prejudice that the “Byzantine Empire,” and all things appertaining thereto, may be safely neglected.
In his History of European Morals (ii. p. 13) Mr. Lecky writes: “Of that Byzantine Empire the universal verdict of history is that it constitutes, with scarcely an exception, the most thoroughly base and despicable form that civilisation has yet assumed.” I am not sure what Mr. Lecky means by “the universal verdict of history ”; in recent years, certainly, the Younger Rome has found some staunch and eminent champions. But I am sure that the statement fairly represents the notions generally prevalent on the subject.
All this shows that Byzantine is a dangerous word, when it is used in a political sense. It is convenient and harmless to talk about Byzantine art or even “la vie byzantine,” but it is dangerous to talk about a Byzantine Empire; for if we do so we run the risk of provoking universal verdicts of history. It might therefore be advisable, even if this were the only ground for doing so, to abandon the name and elude hard sentences by leading the accused forth under a different appellation. But it is not the only or the most important ground; as we have already seen, the name is improper, and it is therefore not only advisable but necessary to discard it.
I have been obliged to dwell at some length on a matter of nomenclature. I must add a few words on the scope of these two volumes, which, I venture to hope, may have some value as a very modest contribution to the study of a period which is too little known. They cover the four centuries during which the transition from the ancient world to the medieval world may be said to have taken place. Ancient and medieval are vague terms, but, whatever latitude we give them, we can hardly apply the term medieval to the fourth century or the term ancient to the eighth. In the year 395 A.D. the Empire was intact, but with the fifth century its dismemberment began; and 395 A.D. is consequently a convenient date to adopt as a starting-point. I propose to trace briefly the history of its dismemberment by the Germans, then more fully its recovery under Justinian, its decline after Justinian, and its redintegration in the eighth century; making the fall of Irene in 802 A.D. my point of termination, because it happens to be conveniently close in time to the foundation of the rival Roman Empire in 800 A.D. The coronation of Charles the Great marks a new departure in European history, and it therefore forms, as Arnold recognised, a suitable end as well as a suitable beginning. After 800 there are two Roman Empires; and the history of the successors of Irene would naturally occupy a separate book, entitled A History of the Eastern Homan Empire.
The history of the fifth century is better known, and has been more thoroughly worked up than that of its successors. I have therefore treated it with comparative brevity, and omitted many of the details, which the reader may find in the works of Gibbon and Mr. Hodgkin. In fact, I originally intended to treat the dismemberment of the Empire by the Germans and the fortunes of the houses of Theodosius and Leo I. as a mere introduction to a history of the subsequent period. But I was carried further than I intended, and the result considerably exceeds the limits of an introduction, while it is something less than a co-ordinate part of the work. The dismemberment of the Empire by the Germans brings us into contact with the nations who dismembered it, and tempts a writer to stray into the domains which have been so fully surveyed by Dahn in his Könige cler Germanen. I have been careful not to yield to this temptation; I have avoided episodes and digressions; and have not concerned myself with tracing the doubtful antecedents of the various nations who settled in the Roman provinces. In fact, I have tried to trespass as little as possible on the field occupied by Dahn in Germany and by Mr. Hodgkin in England.
Coming to the sixth century, my account of the reconquest of Italy by Belisarius and Narses is compressed; while I have narrated fully the Persian wars on the Euphrates and in Colchis. As far as I am aware, no complete account of the latter has ever been published in an English form, Gibbon’s treatment being nothing more than a sketch; while as to the former, after the brilliant fourth volume of Mr. Hodgkin’s Italy and her Invaders, one could not think of rewriting all the details. But, notwithstanding, a critic may charge me with want of proportion, and ask why I occupy considerable space with the details of wars, which, even for special historians, have been almost buried in oblivion, and at the same time content myself with only a general account of the famous Italian campaigns of Belisarius. My reply is that I am concerned with the history of the Roman Empire, and not with the history of Italy or of the West; and the events on the Persian frontier were of vital consequence for the very existence of the Roman Empire, while the events in Italy were, for it, of only secondary importance. Of course Italy was a part of the Empire; but it was outlying—its loss or recovery affected the Roman Republic (strange to say) in a far less degree than other losses or gains. And just as the historian of modern England may leave the details of Indian affairs to the special historian of India, so a general historian of the Roman Empire may, after the fifth century, leave the details of Italian affairs to the special historian of Italy. It seemed to me that the real want of proportion would have been to reproduce at length the Gothica of Procopius and neglect his Persica.
On the same principle I have given a detailed narrative (I believe for the first time) of the somewhat tedious wars in the Balkan peninsula at the end of the sixth century, described by Theophylactus. Eanke deplored the want of an essay concerning the invasions of Avars and Slaves in the reign of Maurice; the learned and patient Hopf went hopelessly astray over the curious sentences of an “Attic” euphuist; and these facts induce me to hope that some future historian, repelled equally by an ancient language and an affected style, may applaud a predecessor for having reproduced most of the details in bald English.
The Church was so closely connected with the State that the ecclesiastical element cannot be ignored in histories that are not ecclesiastical; but I have endeavoured to encroach on this ground as little as possible. As time went on, the influence of the Greek Church became stronger, and consequently, with each succeeding century, church affairs claim a larger measure of a historian’s attention. Hence in the latter part of this work the reader may expect to find more information on ecclesiastical matters than in the earlier.
The short chapters on life and manners consist of jottings, which could not be conveniently introduced into the narrative, and were too characteristic to be omitted; they do not aim at any standard of completeness.
Both historians and classical scholars are divided on the question of the transliteration of Greek names. To be thoroughly consistent in the “new” spelling, one would have to speak not only of Athenai, but of Konstantinupolis and Rhodos. Such apparitions on the pages of a book are intolerable to plain readers; and special difficulties arise in the case of Roman names of Greek-speaking individuals. I determined finally to be consistently Roman rather than either consistently or inconsistently Greek, and use, except in a few cases, the Latin forms, which, justified by the custom of many centuries, are more familiar to the eye. In some obvious cases, of course, it would be pedantic not to use forms which are neither Greek nor Latin, such as Constantine, Rhodes, or Rome. I confess that I was at first tempted to adopt the plausible compromise of Mr. Freeman; but an admirable article in the Fortnightly Review for January 1888, by Mr. E. Y. Tyrrell, confirmed me in the course which I have pursued. On the other hand, I have adopted Mr. Freeman’s way of spelling Slave (for Slav). Speaking of Mr. Freeman, I am impelled to add that his brilliant and stimulating essays first taught me in all its bearings the truth that the Roman Empire is the key to European history.
In conclusion, I have to record my thanks to my wife, who contributes a chapter on “Byzantine Art” (vol. p. 40 sqq.), and to Professor Mahaffy for his assistance in revising the proof-sheets and for valuable suggestions and corrections.
J. B. BURY.
24th June 1889.
BOOK I. INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I. CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM
In the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. a great change came over the face of Europe; the political order of things was broken up. This movement ushered in the Middle Ages, and it presents a noteworthy parallel to that other great European movement which ushered out the Middle Ages, the movement of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by which the spiritual order of things was broken up. The atmosphere of the age in which the Empire of Rome was dismembered was the Christian religion; the atmosphere of the age in which the Church of Rome was ruptured was the Renaissance of culture. The formation of independent Teutonic kingdoms in the earlier period corresponds to the Reformation in the later; in both cases the German spirit produced a mighty revolution, and in both cases the result was a compromise or division between the old and the new. The Roman Empire lived on in southeastern Europe, even as the Catholic Church lived on, confined to a limited extent of territory; and there was a remarkable revival of strength, or reaction, in the fifth and sixth centuries at Constantinople, which, following out the parallel, we may compare to the Counter-reformation. And this analogy is not a mere superficial or fanciful resemblance; the same historical principle is involved. Christianity and the Renaissance performed the same functions; each meant the transformation of the spirit of the European world, and such a transformation was a necessary precursor of the disintegration of European unity, whether political or ecclesiastical. In the strength of ancient ideas lay the strength of the Roman Empire; Christianity was the solvent of. these ideas, and so dissolved also the political unity of Europe. In the strength of medieval ideas lay the strength of the Roman Church; the spirit of the Renaissance was the solvent of medieval ideas, and therefore it dissolved the ecclesiastical unity of western and northern Europe.
For the philosopher who looks upon the march of ideas over the heads of men the view of history is calm, unlike that of the troubled waters of events below, in which the mystic procession is often but dimly discerned. For him the spirit of old paganism departs before the approach of Christianity as quietly as the sun sinks before the sweeping train of night; and the dark glimmerings of the medieval world yield to the approach of the modern spirit as the stars “touched to death by diviner eyes” pass away before the rising sun. But to the historian who investigates the details of the process a spectacle is presented of contrast, struggle, and confusion; and its contemplation has a peculiar pleasure. For both the great periods, of which we have been speaking, were long seasons of twilight—the evening twilight and the morning twilight,— during which light and darkness mingled, and thus each period may be viewed in two aspects, as the end of an old, or as the beginning of a new, world. Now this doublesidedness produces a variety of contrasts, which lends to the study of such a period a peculiar interest, or we might say an aesthetic pleasure. We see a number of heterogeneous elements struggling to adjust themselves into a new order— ingredients of divers perfumes and colours turning swiftly round and blending in the cup of the disturbed spirit. The grand contrast of the old and the new in the fourth and fifth centuries stands out vividly; old and new nations as well as old and new religions are brought face to face. "We see civilised Greeks and Romans, semi-civilised or wholly civilised Germans, Germans uncivilised but possessing potentialities for civilisation, Huns and Alans totally beyond the pale, moving to and fro in contact with one another. In the lives of individuals too we see the multiplicity of colours curiously reflected. St. Helena, the mother of an Emperor, makes a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, since Hadrian’s time usually called Aelia Capitolina, and finds the relics of the true cross with a thrill of overpowering delight, something like the delight that was felt by Renaissance scholars when an old Roman corpse was disentombed. Or we see Julian, a pagan philosopher, a noble man and an enlightened Emperor, trying to dislodge Christianity from the position it had won, and yet unable to avoid borrowing hints from it for his own system; just as in the writings of Ids friend, the anti-christian professor Libanius, we occasionally find an unconscious echo of the new religion. While the pagan Neoplatonist Hypatia is lecturing in the Museum at Alexandria, her semi-pagan pupil Synesius is a bishop at Cyrene. At Athens, now a fossilised provincial town, but still the headquarters of learning, paganism has its last stronghold; and even from this camp of heathenism the most Christian Emperor, Theodosius II, obtains the daughter of a philosopher as his consort, and she, after her conversion to Christianity, writes religious poems composed of scraps of Homeric lines. St. Augustine, the poet Sidonius Apollinaris, and the poet Nonnus were, like Synesius, remarkable examples of persons who, born and reared pagans, turned in later life to the new faith; and the writings of these men illustrate the contrasts of the age.
The Christian Church itself, it may be added, was full of contrasts just then; for the Christian doctrine had not yet sunk, or risen, to the monotony of a formula. There were still many open questions, even for orthodox Athanasians; there was still room for the play of individuality. It has been noticed how heterogeneous in spirit were the writings of the Greek Church; we have “the zelotic dogmatism of Epiphanius, the poetic speculation of Synesius, the philosophy of religion of Aeneas of Gaza and Nemesius, the sobriety of Theodoret, the mysticism of Pseudodionysios.” Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus had been fellow-students of the pagan Julian at Athens; Chrysostom was a pupil of Libanius.
Thus the general impression we receive is one of contrast, and it is in the battle of conflicting elements that the keenness and quickness of life consist. But the conflict was carried on, and the quick life breathed in a gray, often murky, atmosphere, different from the brightness that lit up those other conflicts in Athens during the fifth century B.C., and in Italy during the fifteenth century A.D. There was a general feeling of misfortune; the world-sadness pressed on the souls of all; and books were written to account for the woes that had come upon the human race. Nature too seemed to have prepared a dark background for the enactment of the miseries involved in the break-up of society and the incursions of the barbarians; plagues and earthquakes seemed to be signs of the times—like the tempest in King Lear, a suitable setting for the tragedy. The pagans of course were fain to attribute the misfortunes of the time to the new religion, and the “pale cast” of the spirit to the victory of the “pale Galilean.” But in history what men superficially connect as cause and effect are really both effects of some deeper cause. The world had grown gray independently of Christianity, and if it had not grown gray, Christianity would hardly have been possible—would not have had much meaning; it met the need of the world at the time.
For there are two ways in which we may intuite the world and avoid quarrelling with life. We can regard our experience as destiny—fortune and misfortune as alike determined for us by conditions beyond our control. It was in this objective way that the old Greeks regarded their experience, and in this way they were content; for it never occurred to them to exalt subjective wishes of their own in opposition to the course of destiny, and grieve because such wishes remained in-achievable.
Otherwise we may feel our own subjective aims more keenly, and be unable to see them sacrificed without experiencing sorrow or even despair. In this case we shall need something in their stead to make us contented with life, we shall require a consolation. If circumstances render a man’s life joyless and hopeless, it becomes endurable for him through the belief that another existence awaits him; the world is thereby rendered less unintelligible, or there is a hope of understanding it in due time; the heavy and weary weight seems less weary and heavy to bear; his belief is a consolation. The old Greeks needed no repentance and no consolation. The centuries from Alexander the Great to Marcus Aurelius were the time in which the thorns were penetrating. The ancient Greek spirit could indeed exclaim, Oh, how full of briars is the working-day world!” but they were only burs thrown upon it in holiday foolery, burs upon the coat that could be shaken off. The spirit of the later ages said, “These burs are in my heart.” When Anaxagoras was informed that his son had died, he said, “I never supposed him to be immortal ”; but a Christian hermit, on receiving similar news in regard to his father, rebuked the messenger, “Blaspheme not, my father is immortal.” The Christian had a compensation for death which the heathen did not require.
Christianity provided the needed consolation.1 But we must apprehend clearly the fact that the need had at one time not existed, and also the fact that it had come into existence in the regular course of the spiritual development of man. We are hereby reminded that if in one respect Christianity forms a new start in history, from another aspect it stands in close historical connection with the old Greek and Roman worlds; its philosophical doctrines are the logical end of the ancient Greek philosophy and the direct continuation of Stoicism and Epicureanism.
We may then first consider the connection of the new religion with the past, and its points of resemblance and contrast with the last form of pagan philosophy; and then, in another chapter, glance at the new departure made by Christianity and its most obvious influences on society.
The post-Aristotelian individualistic philosophies of Zeno, Epicurus, and the Sceptics were all characterised by the same motive. Their object was, not to understand the universe, but to secure for the individual the summum donum; the end of philosophy was personal, no longer objective. It is from a similar cause that 'philosopher and philosophical in colloquial English are used in a degraded sense; we talk of “bearing pain like a philosopher.”2 We may contrast the apathy of Zeno, the freedom from affections which make us dependent on external things, with the metriopathy of Aristotle, who therein reflected the general spirit of the ancient Greeks. Epicurus placed the highest good in a deep haven of rest, where no waves wash and no sound is heard; his ideal too was mainly negative, freedom from bodily pain and mental trouble. These philosophies were over against the world rather than above it; the note of them was dissatisfaction with life and estrangement from the world.
This spirit, which set in as old Greek life was falling asunder, increased and became universal under the cold hand of Roman rule, which assorted well with the cold Stoic idea of φύσις, nature. It has been said that the early Empire, up to the middle of the second century at least, was a golden age of felicity, and we may admit that in some respects it did approach more than other ages to the ideal of utilitarians; but for thinkers it Was not an age of felicity or brightness, heaviness was hanging over the spirit and canker was beginning to gnaw. The heavy cloud soon burst, and after the reign of Marcus Aurelius, Europe was a scene of general misfortune.
The philosophical attitude of the Stoics, whose tenets were more widely spread than those of any other school, could not be final; it naturally led to an absolute philosophy. For it disparaged the world and isolated the soul; but the world thus disparaged was a fact which had to be explained, and reason was constrained to complete its dialectic by advancing to repose itself in the Absolute or the One, just as in the eighteenth century the system of Kant necessitated the absolute philosophies of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.
Or, to put it from a religious point of view, the individual’s own soul was not found a sufficiently strong refuge. Some stronger and surer resting-place was needed, something above the world and not over against it. And so the spirit endeavoured to grasp itself anew. The new idea was the Logos; the new world was the kingdom of the Son. A need was felt for mediation—for a place or mansion as it were for the soul to be near God. This was the positive idea that animated the age of the Roman Empire and tended to supersede Stoicism; it was common to the system of Philo, to Gnosticism, to Christianity, and to Neoplatonism. And in Christianity, especially, approach to God seemed a sort of refuge, and the negative tendency, derived from the apathy of the Stoics and the unsociability of the Cynics, to flee from the environments of life, was very strong, and found its expression in monastic ideals.
Thus these philosophies of the Infinite were the sphere to which the Stoic, Epicurean, and Pyrrhonic systems naturally led, by their own inherent defect. But we must now turn to the historical side and see how these late Greek thinkers prepared the way for the reception and spread of Christianity. It may be pointed out in a few words. In the first place, Epicureanism and Scepticism were atheistic and tended to discredit the popular beliefs in the pagan gods. In the second place, Epicureanism discredited devotion to one’s country, and so, by uprooting patriotism, made the ground ready for the theory of universal brotherhood. In the third place, Stoicism, by its positive pantheistic theory and the surrender of the individual to the pulse of the universe, made a step towards the dependence of man on God’s will or the doctrine of obedience, which is so cardinal in Christianity. And in the fourth place, the Stoic cosmopolitanism, combined with the Stoic theory of the law of nature, supplemented the non-patriotic sentiments of the Epicureans, and thus anticipated the Christian embrace of all humanity. The fact that this Stoic theory affected the theory and practice of the Roman lawyers, and transformed the meaning of the phrase jus gentium, was an advance of the greatest importance in the same direction.
The resemblance between Christianity and Stoicism, which is in many points so striking, is sometimes unduly dwelt on. For if the Stoic and the Epicurean systems correspond to two different types of human nature, if some men are naturally stoical and others naturally epicurean, Christianity contained elements which attracted men of both these natures; as well as a stoical it had an epicurean side, and the second side should not be lost sight of.
For one of the most important elements in Christianity was the weight it gave to the tender affections, and one of the most attractive incidents in a Christian life was the formation of a spiritual friendship or brotherhood. Now friendship and comradeship were regarded as most important elements in life by the Epicureans, beginning with the founder of the sect, who collected around himself a friendly society, while his disciples used to meet solemnly every month, and once a year in commemoration of his birth, in a manner which reminds us of the Christian apostles meeting to commemorate their master. Friendship was a feature among the Epicureans as it was among the Christians, but not so in the system of the independent and lonely Stoics.
And then we may say that the joint life of brethren in a monastery, which, in the western lands of the Empire, ultimately acquired in many cases a certain brightness and cheerfulness, corresponded to the Epicurean spirit; while the solitary life of hermits who fled from their fellows and mortified their bodies was derived from the spirit of Stoicism, tinctured with oriental asceticism, and sometimes degenerating into the life of Cynics, who were a sort of caricature of the Stoics.
A noteworthy difference between the two philosophies was that the Stoics looked back, while the Epicureans looked forward. The great poem of Lucretius is permeated with optimism, not indeed with the optimism which holds that there is more pleasure than pain in the world, but with an optimistic belief in human progress. The human race is represented as progressing, gradually freeing itself from the fetters of superstition and opening its eyes to a clearer view of truth. The Stoics, on the other hand, prefer to dwell on the glories and the heroes of the past, and care little to look forward; their pantheism did not lead them to an idea of progress. Now Christianity involved optimism in two ways. It not only involved happiness for believers in another life; it also involved the theory that the course of history had been one of progress, designed and directed by the Deity, and that the revelation of Christ had introduced a new era of advance for the world,3 just as the teaching of Epicurus was hailed by followers like Lucretius as ushering in a new age. It was believed indeed that at any time the end of the world might come, and that a great change might take place; but, allowing for all differences, we cannot help perceiving that in the idea of the world’s progress Christianity approaches more nigh to Epicureanism than to Stoicism.
And, in general, the heroism of the Stoics, even of the later and milder Stoics, was not a Christian virtue; and man’s dignity, which for Christians depended on his having a soul, was reduced by the feeling of his abasement before God. On the other hand, Christianity exalted the feminine un-Roman side of man’s nature, the side that naturally loves pleasure and shrinks from pain and feels quick sympathy,·—in fact, the Epicurean side; and thus Mr. Walter Pater makes Marius, a natural Epicurean, or rather a refined Cyrenaic, turn by the force of that very nature, anima naturaliter Christiana in Tertullian’s words, to the new religion. This is the human, and to most men attractive, side of Christianity4; it had another, an inhuman, side, of which I shall have to speak hereafter.
After the victory of Christianity, paganism was dying out, but even in the sixth century it was not yet dead. Towards the end of the fourth century Gratian gave up the title of Pontifex Maximus; the altar of Victory in the Senate House at Rome was removed, though Symmachus and the senators made an affecting appeal to spare it; the Olympic games were abolished, and the oracle of Apollo became silent. The effort of Julian, the last effort of the benighted faith, lured the exiled gods of Greece back for a moment to their ancient habitations. But the verses—είπατε τώ βασιλ-rjt χαμαί πέσε δαι'δαλο? αύλά, etc.—in which the Hellenic spirit uttered its latest breath, expressed the consciousness that the old things had passed away,—the laurel, the spring, and the emblems of paganism. “Tell the king, on earth has fallen the glorious dwelling”—the words have a dying fall; and with the song of Greece the gods of Greece also retreated down the vast and dreary edges of the world, which was no longer a meet habitation for the deities of Olympus. But the schools at Athens still flourished in the fifth century, and the pagans who taught there—as Leontius, Plutarch the philosopher, Proclus—were in no danger of suffering the fate of Hypatia at Alexandria. They were quietistic; they did not attempt to oppose the new faith, and the government wisely left them in peace.
The Christians themselves were not quite emancipated from the charm, or, as some thought, the evil glamour, of classical antiquity. The pagan rhetoric, with all its ornaments, was not dispensed with by the most learned Christian divines. It was as dear to the heart of Chrysostom as to that of Libanius, and Eusebius, the historian of Constantine, succeeded by its means in producing some effective passages. Similarly, Latin divines like Augustine and Salvian did not despise the science of style. But the art of the ancients had more than this external influence. Christians who had really a taste for art were, by embracing the new religion, placed in a spiritual difficulty. The new religion created a repugnance to the old fabulous mythology, as a sort of emanation from Tartarean powers, and to the old philosophies and modes of thought. There were not many like Synesius who could be both a Platonist and a Christian. There were not many even like Tertullian, who would admit that the best of the ancients possessed “a soul naturally Christian.” And yet in spite of themselves they could not put away a hankering after the classical art whose subject-matter was pagan myth and pagan history, now to be replaced by the truths of the Old Testament. St. Augustine felt a thrill, and deemed the thrill wicked, at such lines as—
infelix simulacrum atque ipsius umbra Creusae.
Jerome could not resist the fascination of Cicero. One Germanus, a friend of Cassian, had to confess with many tears that often, while he was engaged in prayer, the old heroes and heroines would pass into his soul, and the remembrance of the ancient gods disarrange his thoughts of God. Such asceticism as this was more common in the West than among the Greek-speaking Christians. It may be added that pagan symbols and mottoes were used on Christian tombs, and pagan ideas adapted in Christian art.
There is a legend which made its appearance about the fourth century, remarkable both in itself and as having been versified by the Empress Eudocia, the legend of Cyprian and Justina. It illustrates the thaumaturgy and the asceticism of the age as well as the conflict of Christianity and paganism, and is also interesting as presenting us with a prototype of Faust. Justina was a beautiful Christian maiden of Antioch, passionately loved by a pagan youth Aglaides, who, unable to win her affections which were given to Christ, determined to move Acheron. For this purpose he engaged the services of Cyprian, a powerful magician, learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and in the magic of the Chaldeans. But the demons of temptation that the wizard’s art raised against Justina were repulsed by the sign of the cross. Whereupon Cyprian, moved by the firmness and power of her faith, became enamoured of her, abjured his magic arts, and was baptized a Christian. Both he and Justina suffered martyrdom in the persecution of Diocletian. The vanity of all his arts and lore is described by Cyprian in a manner which reminds us of the opening lines of Faust’s soliloquy in Goethe’s drama. Pagan learning is associated with magic and powers of evil, and opposed to the light of Christianity. Another point in the contrast is the conception of a purified spiritual love opposed to the love of the carnal man which enlists the powers of darkness.
Regarding the dealings of holy men with demons, a curious tale is told of St. Macarius of Alexandria. He conceived the idea of visiting the garden and sepulchre (kepotaphion) of Jannes and Jambros, magicians who had lived in the time of Pharaoh, that he might meet and make inquiries of the demons who had been lodged there by the art of the magicians. They had planted the garden with all sorts of trees, and surrounded it with a wall of square stones; they had built a tomb in it, wherein they placed rich treasure of gold, and had dug a great well—in hopes that after death they might luxuriate in this paradise. Macarius made his way, like a mariner at sea, by the guidance of the stars, and as he traversed the desert he stuck reeds in the ground at certain intervals to mark the way home. For nine days he crossed the desert, and as it was night when he reached the garden, he lay down and slept. But meanwhile the “wild demon” collected all the reeds, and when the saint awoke he found them lying in a bundle at his head. As he approached the garden seventy demons met him, shouting and gesticulating, leaping, and gnashing with their teeth : flying like crows in his face they asked him, “What want you, Macarius? why have you come to us?” He replied that he merely wished to see the garden and would leave it when he had seen it; whereupon the demons vanished. In the garden there was little to see; a bronze cask hung in the well by an iron chain worn by time, and a few dry pomegranates. Having satisfied his curiosity, Macarius returned to his cell.5
As there were two sides to the old Greek religion—the ridiculous side which Lucian brought out so humorously, and the ideal but human side which made it lovely—there were two sides also to the Christian religion. There was the ugly, inhuman side, from which the humanism of the fourteenth and fifteenth century revolted, manifested in extreme and grotesque asceticism, a sort of war with the instincts of humanity; and there was the consolatory side, the hopes which it offered to mankind, at that time almost weary of living. But in spite of the dismalness, as far as the world is concerned, of the Christianity of the time, when men even looked forward to a very speedy end of a universe which seemed a theatre of misery, we can see traces of cheerfulness and traits of human feeling in the Church, which had now outgrown the hopeful freshness that gave it such a charm in the first and second centuries. Christian women with gracious faces move before us, Olympias, Melania, Eudocia, though a lighter atmosphere seems to linger round the pagan ladies, Hypatia, Asclepigeneia, and Athenais.
It might be asked, was no middle course open? could not the attractions of paganism6 be combined with the attractions of Christianity, and a new theory of life, combining the requisite consolation with the antique grace, be constructed? Xeoplatonism might seem at first something of this kind. With a theology generically similar to the Christian theology, it taught a high ideal of ethics, the practical aim being to purify the soul from the thraldom of matter by an ascending series of cleansing processes, so that it might finally, by a sort of henosis or at-one-ment, become conscious of the Absolute. But it is clear that Neoplatonism involved the same essential opposition which was involved in Christianity, the opposition of soul and body, and therefore must logically lead to the same cast of inhumanity, tinctured with cynicism. Theoretically, indeed, soul and body were two terms in a descending series, but practically they were opposed. And so, although the new philosophers, who studied Plato and Pythagoras and Aristotle and old Orphic mysteries, might invest their doctrine with an antique borrowed charm, they were really as much children of the gray time they lived in as the Christians. But they were recognised opponents; in such a spirit Augustine speaks of Plotinus and Porphyrius, and the massacre of Hypatia at Alexandria was a manifestation of the antagonism.
Proclus, the last original Greek philosopher, lived at Athens throughout the greater part of the fifth century (410-485). Born in Lycia, he was dedicated by his parents to Apollo, for it behoved (as we are told by his biographer Marinus, whose work is full of interesting incidents and traits) that one who was to lead all sciences should be reared and educated under the god who leads the Muses. He studied rhetoric at Alexandria and philosophy at Athens, where, under the guidance of the old philosopher Plutarchus and his daughter Asclepigeneia, he was initiated in the mysteries of Platonism. We must glance at the system of Proclus, the last term in the history or chain of Greek philosophy. In a general history we cannot go into its difficult details, but we must take note of its leading features; for a historian of any particular state of the world is concerned with the way in which a thinker placed therein approaches metaphysical problems. It might even be said that we must go to the philosophers, as to mystics, in order to understand the real forces that underlie the history of a time, and determine even events like a war or a revolution. The men who act in history, the men who “make history,” have only to do with this treasure, or this kingdom, or this woman7; the philosopher has not to do with this and that, but lias to become a witness of the processes of the spirit in which this and that are nothing more than this and that. So in reading a philosophy we are getting at the secret of the age, and learning the manner in which the spirit contemplated itself at the time.
Proclus understood Plato more thoroughly and worked more in his spirit than his great predecessor Plotinus, on whom he made a marked advance in many respects. If Plotinus is the Schelling of Neoplatonism, Proclus is its Hegel. There was an unreduced surd in Plotinus and a certain cloudiness in his system, a sediment as it were in the bottom of the cup which clouded the liquid to a certain degree. The sediment disappears in Proclus, the wine is strained and clarified; he presents us with a thoroughly articulated system, that bears a distinct resemblance in its method to Hegel’s Logic.
Proclus, like Plotinus, started with the One or the Absolute, that which cannot be called Being, for it is beyond Being, and cannot be called intelligent, for intelligence is too low a category to assert of it. It is the source of all things, and yet it would be improper to assert cause of it; it is a cause and yet not cause, αναιτίώς αϊτών. Now from the One, according to Plotinus, emanates an image which, through and in the act of turning towards the One from which it emanates, is Nous or Thought. This is the point at which Proclus makes a new departure. The immediate procession of the Nous from the One rests on a confusion, a middle term is required, aud Proclus interposed the henacls between them— a plurality of ones, whereby alone there can be participation in the One. The doctrine of the henads is the philosophical analogue of the famous filioque clause in the Latin creed; as the holy Spirit proceeds not from the Father alone, but from the Father and Son, so the Nous or Spirit proceeds not from the One directly, but from the One and the company of henads. The henads he terms Gods. Next to them, and third in the descending line, comes the sphere of Nous, differentiated into numerous categories arranged in triads. It is this triadic arrangement, of which we find the origin in Plato, that reminds us of the Hegelian system. From the intellectual world emanates the fourth term. Soul; and here he repeats his triple division, assuming three kinds of souls, divine, human, and demonic. Fifth and last in the scale comes Matter.8
This process of development is one of descent from higher to lower. There is a reverse process, the epistrophe or turning back; and this process is performed by the soul, when in the study of philosophy it turns to the intellect from which it came forth, and in whose nature it shares. Thus it is the aim of the “musical” or cultured soul to retrace the world-process in which it is involved.
In the hymns of Proclus, which he wrote under the inspiration of older Orphic hymns, and in which he celebrated all kinds of strange deities—for he used to say that a philosopher should not confine himself to the religious ideas of one people, but be “a hierophant of the world,”—he emits some of that mystic emotion with which the philosophical writings of Plotinus are suffused, but of which we can find little in his own severe treatises. For Plotinus, like Empedocles or Spinoza, often seems in a sort of divine intoxication, and the severity which attends undisturbed contemplation was lighted up, shall we say, or shadowed, by his enthusiasm as a combatant against the new religion. In his time, before Christianity attained its dominant position, no thinker with native enthusiasm could fail to be drawn into the vortex of the contending theories of the world. But in the fifth century the only thing left for non-christian philosophers was quietism. Out of the world, “a solitary worker in the vast loneliness of the Absolute,” Proclus was able to develop the timeless and spaceless triads, and study the works of Plato with a leisure and severity that Plotinus could hardly realise. Most of his works assume the modest form of commentaries on Plato.
The practical end of the Neoplatonists was, like that of the Stoics, ataraxia, freedom from disturbance; and this they thought was obtained by contemplation, herein agreeing with the Aristotelian ideal of the “theoretic life.” Thus they differed from both Stoics and Christians. For the Stoic and the Christian, theorising—the study of pure metaphysics—is valuable only as a means to right conduct, a sort of canonic for ethics; but for the Neoplatonist the practice of the ethical virtues is subsidiary to the contemplation of the metaphysical truth which is the end. And thus, although it had an atmosphere of religion about it, Neoplatonism was and could be strictly no more and no less than a philosophy. Stoicism had perhaps a larger number of the elements of a religion, and yet it too was only for the sage.
There is a certain contrast and there is also a certain analogy between the course of development of Christianity and that of Neoplatonism. As Christians had been divided into Athanasians and Arians, so Neoplatonism may be said to have fallen asunder into two divergent schools. There were the soberer and truer followers of Plotinus, among whom Hypatia may be mentioned, and there were the wilder mystical speculators like Iamblichus and the writer on Egyptian Mysteries. Thus the divergency from orthodox Neoplatonism was into the realm of the imagination; the divergency from orthodox Christianity was into the realm of the understanding. Among the new Platonists there were no rationalists like the Arians; and we may be sure that men of a cold logical temper, on whose faith the creed of ISTicaea laid too heavy a burden, were more inclined to embrace the modified form of Christianity than any form of the new pagan philosophy.
Again, the minute determination of the nature of Christ in the fifth century, through the Nestorian and Eutychian controversies, was almost9 the last period in the development of Christian doctrine, just as the minute determination of the higher categories by Proclus was the final stage of the development of Xeoplatonic thought. The first great inspiration, which in its ardour could not tolerate, or rather did not think of, precise analysis of ideas, had passed away, and men were able to reason things out more calmly and realise the subtler difficulties.
What, it may be asked, was the historical result for mankind of the new philosophy and the new religion? The presence of the Infinite, whether to an individual or a race, is bought at a great cost. Humanity seeks a deliverer; it obtains a deliverer and a tyrant. For the Infinite, having freed the human mind from the bonds of the finite, enslaves it unto itself, like a true tyrant; we may say, and the paradox is only apparent, that the human mind was cabined by the Infinite. Thought was rendered sterile and unproductive for centuries under the withering pressure of an omnipresent and monotonous idea. But through this selva oscura lay the path from ancient to modern civilisation, and few will be disposed to assert with Rousseau and Gibbon that the cost was greater than the gain.
CHAPTER II. INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ON SOCIETY
Having seen how closely Christianity was connected with the past ages of civilised Europe, whose beliefs it superseded, we must glance at its other historical aspect, in which it appears as a new departure. It has been said that the function of the German nations was to be the bearers of Christianity. The growth of the new religion was indeed contemporary with the spread of the new races in the Empire, but at this time in the external events of history, so far from being closely attached to the Germans, Christianity is identified with the Roman Empire. It is long afterwards that we see the mission fulfilled. The connection rests on a psychological basis; the German character was essentially subjective. The Teutons were gifted with that susceptibility which we call heart, and it was to the needs of the heart that Christianity possessed endless potentialities of adaptation. Prom the very first German princesses often embraced Christianity and adorned it, but it required many centuries for those nations to be regenerated by its influence. Yet even in the exclamation of the rude barbarian Chlodwig, when he heard the story of Christ’s passion, “If I had been there with my Franks, I would have revenged his injuries!” we feel the presence of this heart, in its wild state, which Christianity was destined to tame. To an old Roman, like Aurelian or Constantine, such an exclamation would have been impossible. Christianity and Teutonism were both solvents of the ancient world, and as the German nations became afterwards entirely Christian, we see that they were historically adapted to one another.
This aspect of Christianity as the religion of the future has brought us to consider it as a religion rather than as a theology, in which light its connection with the past naturally exhibited it. As a religion it was a complete novelty, and was bound to displace Stoicism and Neoplatonism. Stoicism was indeed practical, but it could only be accepted by a man of more than average intellect, while Christianity descended to the dull and the uneducated. Stoicism aimed at stifling the emotions and repressing the affections; Christianity cherished the amiable affections, and was particularly suited to be understood and embraced by women and children who, according to Aristotle, are creatures of passion, as opposed to men who are capable of living by reason. We must now point out some of the leading changes which Christianity produced in society, having first considered why Roman society adopted it.
