Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

FOUNDATION OF THE ROMAN CHURCH 7selves to be incapable. The Komans through abusehad lost it. For good government, however, both enjoyedsuch a degree of it as they had rarely attainedbefore.1 If the senate trembled at the rumour of conspiracy,Alexandria as well as Jerusalem were profoundlythankful for a consideration which the profligatedaughter of the Ptolemies, or the Idumean heirof the Maccabees, hadInever shown them, while forthe rest might it not be as well to live under oneCaesar,2 as to be liable to a senate such as Cicerodescribes in his letters, to a Verres, or a Clodius, or aDolabella, or even a Pompey ?3Viewed in connection with its moral corruption andits religious apathy, this singular prosperity of theGraeco-Roman world at the time specified by Philo isthe more remarkable. Far from there being anylonging after divine things, any unsatisfied yearningsafter truth and certitude, or any strong conviction asto a future state, no age appears to us more destituteof these than the age of Virgil, Horace, Livy, andOvid, no period less, illumined with high and noblethought than the reign of Tiberius, as pictured for usby Tacitus. And yet at this time the Greek mind hadbeen brought during three centuries into close contactwith the Jewish. By the founding of Alexandria,and by the policy of the Ptolemies, when they, therepresentatives of Hellenic culture, took possession of1 Von Reumont, i. 347. " So war doch unter Augustus und TiberiusH -_*- -"und gerechter als jemals die der Konige der gestiirzten Reiche gewesenwar."2 "Neque provinciae ilium rerum statum abnuebant, suspecto senatuspopulique imperio, ob certamina potentium et avaritiam magistratuum ;invalido m legum auxilio, quse vi, ambitu, postremo pecunia * turbabantur,"Tacit. Ann. i, 2.M"