Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE STANDING-GROUND OF PHILOSOPHY 179nutus, Musonius Rufus, Favorinus, Marcus Aurelius,while the vast majority of philosophical teachersthroughout the empire, in the western as well asthe eastern parts, were Greeks. But the life ofthese five, who may be said to represent very fairlythe senate, the bar, and the literature of Rome intheir day, was on the old Roman standing-ground ofAugustus, though they would have claimed to beRoman gentlemen of a more advanced civilisation,which began o already */ to concern itself with the educa-tion of the poor, and even with orphanages. Further,in considering this latter tendency it should not beforgotten that Tacitus in his language and Pliny andTrajan in their acts showed a very complete hatred ofChristianity. Trajan in his rescripts to Pliny appealsto his age as having a standard of humanity superiorto the preceding time ; and it was he who establishedon a firm basis the condemnation of Christianity as anillicit religion. Again, the learned and elegant lawyerwho appears in his letters with all the refined tastesand pursuits of an English gentleman in the nineteenthcentury, dismisses to summary execution menand women against whom nothing could be allegedbut meeting together to address worship to Christ asGod. Thus the heavy sentence which concludes theacts of martyrdom of St. Ignatius receives the fullestverisimilitude from the official proceedings of Pliny, asdescribed by his own pen to his master Trajan, whoreplies to him with affectionate commendation. Theemperor who sentences the martyr corresponds exactlyto the emperor who instructs the prefect.Taking these seven men, Epictetus, Plutarch, andDio on the one hand, Juvenal, Tacitus, Pliny, andSuetonius on the other, they offer no inadequate