Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

50 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMself, wielding with the modesty of a senator, who wasbut the princeps of his order, that vast central powerwhich so great a mass required to hold it in cohesion,the gain would have been as permanent as it wasgreat. That was the empire which Virgil and Horacesaw and celebrated with a heartiness and a sinceritywhich their own previous sufferings, and that of allmen under the republic, might justify. If those inwhom an exclusive Eoman patriotism was strong mightfeel thus, was not the whole world of the subject provincesready to cry out with them,"0 Meliboce, Deus nobis hcec otia fecit" ?That, no less, was the empire which, fifty years later,Philo praised in glowing colours as the reign of law,and described as the voluptuous enjoyment of civilisationwithout a rival and without an enemy. But thedark side of the picture remained to be filled in, andwhen another seventy years had passed after the deathof Tiberius, Tacitus drew this portrait with a master'shand. Mental apathy, disregard of high thought, andintense corruption of morals make up the Eome whichhe describes. And certainly the whole surviving literatureof that time bears out his censure. Writerswhose undying grace of form and language havesecured the admiration of all posterity, if judged accordingto a moral standard, betray a state of societywhich seemed to value only the material goodsof civilisation, peace, plenty, bread, and games. Philosophygives scarcely a sign of life during this period.From Cicero to Seneca it is almost silent: during thismost important century when the world-empire wasforming, it can show only the honourable but unin-fluential school of the Sextii. That city of gods and"