The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism [1911] - Get a Free Blog

PERSIA. 161
danger, it appears to me, would have been that the
Caesars would have established a theocratic absolutism
supported by the Oriental ideas of the divinity of
kings. The union of throne and altar would have been
inseparable, and Europe would never have known the
invigorating struggle between church and state. But
on the other hand the discipline of Mithraism, so pro
ductive of individual energy, and the democratic or
of its societies in which senators and slaves
ganization
rubbed elbows, contain a germ of liberty.
We might dwell at some length on these contrasting
possibilities, but it is hard to find a mental pastime
less profitable than the attempt to remake history and
to conjecture on what might have been had events
proved
otherwise. If the torrent of actions and re
actions that carries us along were turned out of its
course what imagination could describe the unknown
regions through which it would flow?