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

THE TRANSFORMATION OF ROMAN PAGANISM. 211
reading the long works of the last Latin writers, like
Ammianus Marcellinus or Boethius, or the panegyrics
of the official orators,3 scholars cotild well ask whether
their authors were pagan or Christian. In the time
of Symmachus and Praetextatus, the members of the
Roman aristocracy who had remained faithful to the
gods of their ancestors did not have a mentality or
morality very different from that of adherents of the
new faith who sat with them in the senate. The re
ligious and mystical spirit
of the Orient had slowly
overcome the whole social organism and had prepared if
all nations to unite in the bosom of a universal church.