Chapter IX: Appendix: I (bibliographies) 361 (7)

Such doctrines as these naturally broke down allegiance to city and nation, and made men feel that they were citizens of the world. Seneca distinguished two states, the one that into which a man is born; the other, the great and true commonwealth where dwell both gods and men, in which one looks not to this corner or to that, but measures its borders by the course of the sun.[236] In like language Musonius taught that the wise man, i.e., the philosopher, believes himself to be a citizen of the city of God, which consists of gods and men.[237] So the Emperor Marcus Aurelius reflected: “To me as Antoninus my city is Rome, but as a man it is the universe.”[238]

We may seem to have wandered somewhat from the religious aspect of Stoicism, but the digression finds its justification not only in the fact that both the belief in the natural equality of men and the cosmopolitan character of Stoicism grew out of the doctrine that each man’s reason is a part of the universal reason, but also in the significance these things had for that time and for ours.

The Stoic felt himself commissioned to preach and to turn men from their evil ways; he became a missionary to the world, exhorting men to the pursuit of sobriety, patience, virtue, and to the imitation of God. Seneca recalled with new emphasis Plato’s definition of man’s duty: “The first point in the worship of the gods is to believe that the gods exist; second to render unto them their majesty; to render likewise their goodness without which there is no majesty; to know that the gods preside over the world, that they direct the universe by their power, protect mankind, and sometimes have regard for individuals. The gods neither bring evil nor have it in themselves; but they chastise and check some men, they inflict penalties, sometimes they punish under the guise of blessings. Would’st thou propitiate the gods? Be thou good thyself. He has worshipped them aright who has imitated them.” And again: “The divine nature is not worshipped with the fat bodies of slain bulls, or with gold or silver votive offerings, or with money collected for the sacred treasury, but with a pious and upright will.”[239] Epictetus reviews the gifts of providence to men and asks: “What words can praise the works of providence in us and set them forth according to their worth? If we have understanding, ought we to do anything else, individually or all together, save sing hymns and bless the deity and tell of his benefits?... But since most of you have become blind, should there not be someone to fulfill this duty and on behalf of all to sing the hymn to God? For what else can I do, a lame old man, but sing hymns to God? If I were a nightingale, I should do the part of a nightingale; if I were a swan, I should do the part of a swan. But now I am a rational creature, and therefore must praise God. This is my task. I will do it, nor will I leave my post, so long as I may keep it; and I urge you to join in this same song.”[240]

Under the Empire Stoicism lost the moderate interest in speculation which it had once had, and became almost exclusively a moral philosophy. It was an age which called for moral resistance, when men were obliged to steel themselves to endure oppression and disaster, to “endure and refrain.” This is the motto of the later Stoics, ἀνέχου καὶ ἀπέχου, by which they meant: “Refrain from all that thy will cannot control; endure all that may assault thee; practise thyself in following the guide of reason; resist all passions.” This is almost the sum total of the discourses of Epictetus. The ancient conflict between body and soul also came to the front once more, and Stoicism showed the same ascetic tendency that is found in all the later philosophies. To it Marcus Aurelius gives clearest expression. Reflecting on his own nature the Emperor quotes a saying of Epictetus: “Thou art a poor soul burdened with a corpse.”[241] Again in self-exhortation he says: “ This thing I am is but flesh, breath, and the guiding reason. Farewell my books! strain after them no more. They are not for thee. As if already in the presence of death, despise thy flesh—it is only foul blood and bones, a web and tissue of sinews and veins and arteries. Consider breath too! What is it? A puff of wind never the same, but every moment exhaled and again inhaled. Last comes the guiding reason—on that set all thy mind.”[242]

The Emperor bids his books farewell. Philosophy was no longer a thing for the closet and the scholar’s study, but a matter of practical life in the market place and public square; the unlettered might pursue it as well as the learned, for it was the art of living—an art which the noblest pursued with all the enthusiasm of religious emotion. Although the Stoic was most concerned with the present, and could offer no continued life for the individual soul beyond the time when all the universe should sink back into the original fire, his fervor could be that of the seer with a vision of eternity.

The contributions which the Stoics made to the ethical and religious life were large. They showed that there is a moral order in nature to which man as a part of nature must conform; by emphasizing the community of reason between man and God, so that in Epictetus’ phrase we are but fragments of God,[243] they gave a religious sanction to duty toward God and man which had hitherto been lacking; and by the conclusions which they logically drew as to the brotherhood of man, disregarding distinctions of birth, position, or race, and looking to character alone, they gave a great impulse to the improvement of morals, to the spread of justice and kindliness in private relations, and to a genuine love for humanity. The stimulus which a belief in personal immortality might have given them was replaced by a sense of divine kinship and a challenge to the will to choose the nobler course under the guide of reason.

On the theological side they established the doctrine of the immanence of God in opposition to the transcendental views of the Platonists and Aristotelians. Since the whole cosmos is in their view animated by the universal reason, every part of it is alive. The heavenly bodies were therefore naturally regarded as divine, gods to whom the names of the greater gods of popular theology were conveniently given. But on the whole the traditional gods were explained allegorically, being regarded as the names assigned to various manifestations of God in nature. So Zeus was the heavens or the ether, Hera air, Poseidon the waters, Demeter earth, Hephaestus fire, Hades darkness, and so on. Now this physical allegorizing tended to destroy all belief in the mythological divinities more effectually perhaps than any other assault that had been made since the attacks began in the sixth century. But we must not think that the Stoics disbelieved in the existence of gods. I have just spoken of their doctrine that the heavenly bodies are divine; and they held that the spirits of the wisest and best survive the body as lesser divinities, as daemons. All these, however, will cease to be when the present age comes to an end and the cosmos sinks back into universal fire.

* * * * *

In the religious philosophies which we have thus far considered the reason and the will were the chief means by which security and happiness here or hereafter could be obtained. These systems taught that salvation was a matter of man’s own effort, and within his own power. Yet in Marcus Aurelius, for example, we have again and again clear evidence that the last great Stoic was conscious of the insufficiency of man to save his own soul unaided, and the philosophies to which we are now to turn recognize man’s weakness and make salvation an act of grace from God.

As we have remarked before, the last three centuries before our era among the Greeks were centuries in which their national life and culture decayed. Autocratic forms of government arose which cut men off from active participation in politics and turned their attention in upon themselves. There was a loss of creative power in literature, art, and speculative thought; and men were conscious of a failure of the sense which their forefathers had had, that this life could give them great satisfaction. These things, and the extremes of wealth and poverty, terror of the imperial power, the selfish greed and hopelessness of the mass of the people, all combined under the early Empire to fill the minds of the thoughtful with sadness and pessimism. We find these sentiments in every writer of the first two centuries of our era who deals with contemporary society. Seneca feels that the world is lost and helpless; that life itself is a fatal gift compared with which nothing is so deceitful and treacherous. Filled with ardour for his philosophy and with confidence in the efficacy of its moral teachings, he nevertheless at times loses heart. This is likewise true of the rest. As we read the pages of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, in spite of the inspiring words of that halting slave who in Nicopolis preached high fortitude to his hearers and of the Emperor who in distant camp among the Quadi on the banks of the Gran or in winter quarters at Carnuntum recounted his blessings and exhorted his own soul to endure, we have at times an inevitable sense of the hopelessness of the struggle. Furthermore, as has been frequently pointed out, the last centuries before our era had been marked by a feeling on the part of many of a separation from God and by a longing in some way to bridge the gulf between the human and the divine, to secure a revelation from heaven, and to attain to direct vision and knowledge of God. As the satisfactions of life, which the earlier, freer centuries had given, grew less, in weariness of spirit, conscious of his own weakness and lack of power to secure his soul’s freedom and happiness, man turned for help from outside himself. The reason and the will alone had failed. God’s grace was needed for salvation.

The conquests of Alexander had not only diffused Hellenic speech and thought over a wide area, but they had also opened the way by which the nearer East could influence the western part of the ancient world. Alexandria in Egypt became the chief intellectual center; from it especially spread intellectual movements to the remoter parts of the Roman world. As I hope to show in my next lecture, Greek culture became the common property of all educated men. It was natural also that some of the philosophies cultivated at Alexandria should show the influence of Jewish thought, for this metropolis had been from its founding a center for Jews as well as Greeks.

The longing for tranquillity in this life, for a revelation of God, and for the assurance of personal salvation which could not find satisfaction in Stoicism, Epicureanism, and the later Aristotelian schools, led to a revival of Pythagorean mysticism and of Platonism. These elements, combined in more than one case with Jewish thought, were the materials out of which the principal mystic schools developed at Alexandria. The three with which we are chiefly concerned are Neopythagoreanism, Judeo-Aexandrian philosophy, and Neoplatonism.

The Pythagorean school had ceased to have a separate existence by the fourth century B.C., but the ideas which the school had cherished were not lost. In the last century before our era these doctrines were revived, and in accordance with the syncretistic spirit of the age were combined with Platonic teachings into a philosophic, or as we may more truly say, a theosophic system. The first representative of this revival known to us by name is Nigidius Figulus, a friend and contemporary of Cicero. Its most famous leader was Apollonius of Tyana in Cappadocia, who lived under Nero. By the third century a mass of marvellous legends had gathered about this Apollonius which is preserved in his life, written about 210 A.D. by Philostratus at the request of the Empress Julia Domna.

The extant evidence shows us clearly that by the second century B.C. the process had begun at Alexandria of reconciling Jewish theology with Greek philosophy. The first, however, to combine the two into a system, known to us as the Judeo-Aexandrian, was the learned Philo, who was born about 25 B.C. He belonged to one of the most prominent Jewish families; in 40 A.D., he was chosen to head a delegation of Aexandrian Jews which was sent to the Emperor Caligula. His purpose in common with the other adherents of this school was primarily religious, and he aimed at a better understanding of his own religion rather than at building up a system of philosophic thought. To accomplish his purpose he took from the Hellenic schools whatever seemed useful, without troubling himself overmuch about the logical relation of the parts which he wove together. The movement actually developed a school which had a large historical significance.

The third philosophy is Neoplatonism, founded at Alexandria, according to tradition, by Ammonius Saccas at the beginning of the third century. Ammonius had been reared in the Christian faith, but on reaching maturity returned to pagan philosophy. His instruction was given wholly by word of mouth. Of his numerous pupils the most famous were Origen, the church father, and Plotinus. The latter and his pupil Porphyry were the chief representatives of the school in the period we have now under consideration.

Obviously in the time at our disposal we cannot consider in detail all the several doctrines of these three schools, but we must focus our attention on certain elements which are of prime importance in the pagan philosophy of the day and most significant because of their relation to Christianity. Before we proceed to this, however, I must ask you to remember that we are now dealing not with rigidly logical systems, but with mystic philosophies, with theosophies. There is much in them, therefore, that we cannot hope to understand clearly, because these philosophers themselves abandoned the path of reason alone and let intuition and emotion guide them in their loftiest experiences.

Let us first examine certain characteristics common to all these schools. They all combine large elements drawn from Platonism with borrowings from later philosophies, especially Stoicism; and, as I have already indicated, Judeo-Alexandrianism shows the influence of Jewish thought. All hold to the dual nature of man, a view which first became of religious significance with the Orphics in the sixth century. Plato, you will remember, emphasized the conflict of flesh and spirit, and we have seen how the Stoics, for all their monistic theory, came finally to the same dualism. Closely connected with this view was the contempt for the world of the senses which these schools show. This was due to a development of the Platonic doctrines of matter and of the descent of souls into corporeal dwellings; these teachings in their turn led to a confirmation of the belief that the ascetic life was the proper one for the philosopher—a doctrine which had been held in considerable degree by the Stoics and Cynics. In theology all maintained the transcendence of God, and postulated between God and this world intermediary powers, which work God’s will and cause all the sensible phenomena with which we are acquainted. Finally all believed in the possibility of a direct revelation of God to man, when in a state of enthusiasm or ecstasy. This belief in direct divine revelation, together with the ascetic tendencies of the several schools, led to the establishment of the ideal of sanctity as that toward which the faithful sectary should strive. Pythagoras was canonized by his later followers, Plato became “the divine”; Apollonius of Tyana grew in tradition to be the model of the saint on earth. He was regarded as one filled with divine inspiration, a worker of miracles. He ate no flesh, but lived solely on bread, fruits, and ordinary herbs; water was his only drink; he practised silence and neglected his person. The same description almost fits Plotinus, as made known to us by his biographer Porphyry. In all the essential practices these pagan saints anticipated their later Christian counterparts.

Let us look at the theology of these schools a little more closely. But before we proceed, it is important to define clearly what we mean by the transcendence of God, for the term is often loosely used. A transcendent god is one who is absolutely above the world and above man’s knowledge, a god who is so far removed that man can have no dealings with him directly, nor can he deal directly with man or make his works manifest to man, save through an intermediary. Such essentially was Aristotle’s God, his First Cause. The opposite idea is that of the immanence of God, such as we have seen in the Stoic teachings, in which God is conceived of as existing in all things. Now it is evident that in any system of philosophy or theology which believes in a transcendent God, and yet regards the visible world, including man, as the creation of the divine, some provision must be made for a being or beings, mediary between the transcendent God and the world, which shall express God’s will and make God intelligible to man. If such a being or beings do not exist to serve as mediators between the world and God, then man can have no knowledge of the divine whatsoever, and God cannot express himself in the world. Now in Plato’s philosophy the transcendency of God was at least implicit, it was clearly defined in Aristotle’s thought, and the idea certainly belonged to the Jewish-Alexandrian thought of the last two centuries before the beginning of the Christian era. Philo sets forth the doctrine most plainly. According to him God is so far above all mortal things that he must be defined in a negative way. All that we can say of him is that he is pure being, incorporeal, invisible, without qualities, above all virtue, and above all knowledge. We therefore cannot say that God is good or beautiful, because he is above all beauty and goodness; he is eternal, unchanging, existing in and for himself alone. His perfection is beyond our power to comprehend; our intellect cannot grasp his nature. All that man can know or say of God is that God _is_.[244] Yet naturally Philo is not content with negative definitions, but does attempt to express in a more or less traditional fashion the perfection of God; he speaks of him as that being which includes all reality within himself, or as the only being of whom real existence can be predicated; again as the absolute happy and perfect being; or as the original of all beauty. He likewise pictures God as the source of all activity, as the being to whom endless activity is as proper as it is for fire to burn or snow to chill; God is therefore the cause of all the activity in the world, as he is the supreme cause of all things.

Yet with his view of the transcendence of God, Philo could not say that God is present in the world save in his acts; and these acts he does not perform directly, for if God were to deal directly with the matter out of which the visible world is made, contact with that matter would defile the divine perfection. The creation of the world, therefore, God accomplished by incorporeal powers (δυνάμεις), by ideas (ἰδέαι), which are his servants.[245] The chief of these is the supreme reason, the word, the logos. In this logos all the ideas have their place, as the plan of a city has its place in the soul of its architect. The logos stands midway between God and the created world; it is not eternal as God is, or mortal as we, but occupies a middle position. The indebtedness of Philo to Plato is self-evident. Plato’s absolute and Plato’s ideas have been made mediary between the transcendent God and the visible world. This term, logos, the word, had been familiar not only to Greek philosophy from the time of Heraclitus but it had also a verbal parallel at least in certain Jewish expressions, “the wisdom of God,” “the word of God,” which Philo interprets in terms of the logos.

According to Philo the logos has a double rôle. Through the logos God created the world out of inert and formless matter, and continues to reveal himself through it to the world. The logos also serves as the high priest, the intercessor and advocate of the world with God.[246] Let me here note, however, that in Philo’s thought the logos could not take corporeal form; it could not become flesh and dwell among us, and therefore it was not possible that the logos should be identified completely with the idea of the Jewish Messiah.

Following Plato and the Stoics Philo teaches that man’s reason, his soul, is a particle, so to speak, of the divine intelligence that has entered into the human body. The human spirit, therefore, is divine, but man’s body is mortal and sinful. Here then, as in most of the philosophies which were influenced by Platonism, a discipline is necessary to subdue the flesh and free the spirit: man must constantly exercise his choice in preferring the things of the spirit, for through the gift of God man is free with power to choose the right or wrong. The moral obligation of man and the path of his salvation is the same as we have seen in earlier Greek thought. To this end Philo lays much weight on practice and education as contributing to advance in virtue; he is fired with a passionate longing for purity. In a notable passage he speaks thus to his own soul: “Haste thee, O my soul, to become God’s dwelling place, pure, holy; to become strong instead of utterly weak, powerful instead of impotent, wise instead of foolish, most reasonable instead of wandering.”[247] Yet he goes beyond his predecessors in teaching that man is so possessed by sin that he can escape from the bondage only by divine help; that his own reason and his own will are insufficient for the task. Knowledge and virtue are not acquired by unaided human effort, but are the gifts of God. Philo outdoes even the Stoics in requiring man to free himself from the passions of the body, and yet he points out that just because man is subject to these passions, because he is a sinner, he cannot unaided follow and imitate God, or make himself God’s holy temple. Man’s goodness then is due to the favor of God; salvation is an act of grace.

The end of man’s effort and hope is to attain to knowledge of God and thereby to find supreme happiness. But man cannot reach this by his own will or intellect, for God is so far removed from the world that he cannot be fully apprehended by one dwelling here, so that the gulf between man and God must be bridged. This is possible, Philo teaches, when the soul in ecstasy passes out of itself, beyond the sensuous world, the realm of ideas and the logos, to be at one with God. This vision of God is the supreme blessing, accorded only to the most perfect and holy among men; in it the human soul finds not only its rest and full satisfaction, but its own consummation.[248]

You recognize at once that we have here philosophy fired with religious emotion, that in Philo’s system at the end reason gives way before a passionate desire for revelation through union with God. Philosophy has become theosophy. The ecstacy which we have hitherto seen, has been connected chiefly with the worship of Dionysus, in which it was stimulated by means which we find offensive. But this ecstasy is not aroused by dance or music, or indeed by contemplation, but is attained in a purely passive condition when the soul is emptied of itself and becomes one with the Absolute.

These same ideas—the transcendence of God, the existence of mediary powers between God and the world, the ascetic life as a means of growth, the dependence of man on God’s grace for his salvation, the possibility of the Beatific Vision—all are common in varying degrees to all the mystic philosophies of the day. In the third century Neoplatonism became the most popular and influential. Through Origen and St. Augustine it passed into Christian theology. The real problem for Neoplatonism, as for the other religious philosophies of this time, was to set forth the way by which the soul of man could grasp the Divine directly and find its happiness and complete satisfaction in perfect unity with him. We have just seen how Philo had conceived of God as wholly transcendent, and had established the logos as the mediator who furnishes the necessary connection between the eternal, transcendent God and the created, temporal world. Plotinus outdid Philo in that he removed his God one stage still farther away. His definition of God is necessarily similar to that of Philo, but he endeavors to give a notion of an Absolute more remote, if possible, than that of his predecessors. God he says is neither reason itself nor can he be grasped by the use of reason, but is above all knowledge and reason.[249] We must conceive of him as absolute unity, as at once pure creative activity, the first cause, the power on which the world depends, and at the same time as the final cause toward which the world is tending. The acts of creation are constant; yet God does not create the visible world directly, but as the sun without effort or loss to itself sends out its rays, so God out of the fullness of his perfection emanates Intelligence (Νοῦς), in which are immanent the Ideas: these are the causes of all things which come into being. The second grade of emanation is that of the World-soul (Ψυχή), which pours itself out, so to speak, into the individual souls. The last stage of emanation is that of Matter, the material which in itself has no characteristics of being. The sensible world is produced by the action of the Ideas on Matter, forming and shaping it through Intelligence.[250] You will note here the four stages, God, Intelligence, Soul, and Matter, as compared with Philo’s three, God, the Logos, and Matter.

You may well ask at this point why these later philosophers with their desire to know God, should still lay so much emphasis on his transcendence, apparently vying with one another in pushing the Divine beyond the universe, which they still regarded as his creation. Now we have already seen that Plato implied that his material principle was imperfect and thereby the source of evil, and that his Absolute, the supreme Idea, was separate from matter. In the period we are now considering all schools which owed ultimate allegiance to Plato or the Pythagoreans held to a clearly defined dualistic view of the universe. Conscious that the visible, material world is imperfect and full of evil, unstable and decaying, they argued that God cannot be immanent in the world, for if he were, he would be subject to evil, imperfection, and change, whereas we must conceive him to be good, perfect, and unchanging unity. Therefore the motive which prompted all these theologians was their desire to save the unity and perfection of God by removing him from all possible contact with matter, to which some like the Neoplatonists, following Plato, absolutely denied all the attributes of being. And the doctrine of divine transcendence was the more natural for Philo and all who had come under the influence of Jewish thought, since the Old Testament constantly affirms the absolute exaltation and perfection of God. In like manner the doctrine of mediary powers was helped by the Jewish idea of the wisdom of God and the popular post-exilic belief in angels.

Yet when the theologians had removed God beyond the confines of the world, beyond all knowledge, they had still to deal with the passionate longing for knowledge of God and for assurance of salvation which was strong in large numbers of the uninstructed, as well as in the philosophic élite. This knowledge and assurance could only be supplied by a belief in the direct revelation of God to man. Such a belief was traditional in the Old Testament; on the Greek side it was fostered by the feeling that the great teachers Pythagoras and Plato were divinely inspired; and in the popular Oriental religions which we shall consider in a later lecture, divine revelation was a fundamental article of faith. But let us return to Plotinus.

The second grade of emanation in the Neoplatonic system is the World-soul (Ψυχή),[251] which, though inferior to Intelligence (Νοῦς), is nevertheless divine and immaterial. It stands midway between Intelligence and Matter and is related to both. Within the World-soul, which is the highest of all souls, corresponding to Plato’s idea of the Good, are all individual souls.[252] These descend into matter and, pervading bodies in all their parts, give them sensation, reason, and all their life. But even as the sunlight descending into darkness is dimmed or wholly lost, so by their descent and birth into corporeal forms souls are made to forget their divine origin. They wish to be independent; like children who leave their parents and dwell apart from them, the souls of men forget their own nature and their divine father; they lose their freedom; they honor that which is not honorable, and so fall deeper into sin. The sinner therefore must be turned from his ways, must be made to remember his divine race, to honor the things of the spirit, and to cease reverencing those things which are not the soul’s concern.[253] The soul’s return is to be accomplished by an asceticism with which we are now familiar. This the leaders illustrated in their own lives. Porphyry tells us that his master remained unmarried, abstained from animal food, lived in the simplest fashion, and so despised his body that he seemed ashamed of its possession.[254] The pupil laid even more stress on the subjugation of the flesh that the soul might be free and return toward God. “The more we turn toward that which is mortal,” he says, “the more we unfit our minds for the infinite grandeur, and the more we withdraw from attachment to the body, in that same measure we approach the divine.”[255] He taught that men must regard their bodies as garments, which not only burden but actually defile them, and which they like athletes must lay aside that naked and unclothed they may enter the stadium to contend in the Olympia of the soul.[256]

Plotinus, however, held that men would not all rise above the plane of the senses, but that many would remain caught by them, thinking that the good is identical with pleasure and pain with evil; others are more capable, he said, but they cannot turn their gaze upward, and so they devote themselves to the virtues of the practical life. But there is a third class of divine men of greater strength and keener insight, who can see and follow the gleam from above, so that they rise beyond the mists of this world to their true and natural abode, like men returning to their native city after long wandering.[257]

The soul’s final aim in its flight from evil Plotinus defines in Plato’s words: it is likeness to God.[258] That is the sum of all virtue. But the master distinguishes grades and degrees of virtue in practice. There are the social virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice, which serve to regulate the passions and help man to form right opinions. At this stage these cardinal virtues are related solely to external objects, and serve primarily to better man in his mundane activities. Next come those virtues which purify the soul from the pollution of the body, the activities which have nothing to do with the body but belong wholly to the soul; they are concerned with thought and reason. But in the highest range the virtues of the lower stages are no longer related to external objects, but have to do with the Intelligence (Νοῦς) alone. This is the contemplative life, man’s highest activity, in which he becomes himself divine.[259]

Yet the Neoplatonist held that there is a still higher stage. When man’s soul has mounted upward to Intelligence and lives the contemplative life, the space between Intelligence and God is yet unbridged. This gulf can only be crossed when the soul in ecstasy, forgetful of all thought and of self, rises to complete knowledge and union with the One.[260] This supreme privilege, according to Porphyry, was vouchsafed his master four times in the years he was his pupil; and once he too had seen the Beatific Vision.[261]

It is evident that Neoplatonism, the last stage of Greek philosophy, is no isolated or strange phenomenon. On its metaphysical side it is the consummation and final synthesis of the whole course of Greek thought from the sixth century to its own day; likewise in ethics it combined the views of its chief predecessors as its leaders understood them; and finally in the doctrine of the soul’s union with God it only carried the mystical tendencies of previous centuries to their natural conclusion.

If time allowed, we might consider the way in which the Neoplatonists reconciled their theology with the polytheism and demonology of popular belief, but that would lead us too far; indeed it would take us away from our own proper subject and from the main interest of the great leaders of this school. They were most concerned with finding out and showing men the true path to the soul’s peace and happiness, and we are chiefly interested in the history of their thought on this high theme. They found their object not in the exercise of the reason or the will alone, but in mysticism.

FOOTNOTES:

[225] _De vita beata_, 17.

[226] _Diss._, I, 1; II, 5, 13; and often.

[227] Stob. _Ecl._ I, 1, 12 = SVF, I, 537.

[228] Diog. Laërt. VII, 149 = SVF, I, 175.

[229] Aetius, I, 27, 5 = SVF, I, 176; II, 974 ff.

[230] _Gnomol._ Stobaei 31 Schenkl; cf. _Diss._ 4, 1 (_On Freedom_) entire.

[231] Cf. Cic. _de Fin._ III, 64 mundum autem censent (Stoici) regi numine deorum eumque esse quasi communem urbem et civitatem hominum et deorum; et unumquemque nostrum eius mundi esse partem, ex quo illud natura consequi ut communem utilitatem nostrae anteponamus. Sen. _Ep._ 95, 52 membra sumus corporis magni, etc.; cf. Epict. I, 3 (_How one should proceed from the fact that God is the Father of all men to the conclusions therefrom_).

[232] Sen. _de Ben._ 3, 18, 2.

[233] _Ibid._ 20.

[234] _Ibid._ 28.

[235] _Dig._ I, 1, 4. 5, 4; XVII, 32.

[236] _De otio_, 4, 1; cf. _Epist._ 68, 2.

[237] Stob. _Flor._ 40, 9.

[238] VI, 44; and often.

[239] _Ep._ 95, 50; 115, 5.

[240] _Diss._ I, 16, 15-21.

[241] IV, 41.

[242] II, 2.

[243] _Diss._ I, 14, 6; II, 8, 11: σὺ ἀπóσπασμα εἰ τοῦ θεοῦ ἕχεις τι ἐν σεαυτῷ μἐρος ἐκείνου.

[244] It is impossible to give here all the numerous references to Philo’s works on which these and the following statements depend. The most important of Philo’s works bearing on the nature of God are _de allegoriis legum, de somniis, de opificio mundi, de Cherubim, quod deus sit immutabilis_. For detailed references consult Zeller, _Phil. d. Griechen_, III, 2^4, pp. 400 ff.

[245] _De special. legib._ I, 329; _de vita Mosis_, II, 127 ff.

[246] _Quis rer. div. her._ 205 f.

[247] _De somn._ I, 149. Wendland’s transposition and choice of text are not followed here.

[248] _De alleg. leg._ III, 29 ff.

[249] Porph. _Vita Plot._ 23; Plot. _Enn._ V, 1; VI, 9, 3; and often.

[250] _Enn._ IV, V, and VI.

[251] Plot. _Enn._ V, 1 f.

[252] _Enn._ IV, 3, 7, and 9.

[253] _Enn._ V, 1, and often.

[254] _Vita Plot._ 1 ff.

[255] _Ad Marc._ 32.

[256] _De abs._ I, 31.

[257] _Enn._ V, 9, 1.

[258] _Enn._ I, 2, 1.

[259] _Enn._ I, 2, entire.

[260] _Enn._ VI, 9, 11.

[261] Porph. _Vita Plot._ 23.

VII

THE VICTORY OF GREECE OVER ROME

By her victory at Zama in 202 B.C. Rome made her position as mistress of the western Mediterranean secure; and in the next century she extended her political dominion over Greece. But the same period saw captured Greece take her captor captive. Nor was this subjugation of the victor by the vanquished any sudden thing—in fact it had begun centuries earlier. The course of that conquest will be the main subject of the present lecture.

The story of the sale of the Sibylline Books to King Tarquin is familiar to all: how the Cumaean Sibyl brought to the King nine books of oracles; when he refused their purchase she went away and burned three, and offered the remaining six at the price she had originally demanded for the nine; upon his second refusal she burned three more, and then offered the last three on the original terms. Tradition says that her confidence in human curiosity was justified, and that Tarquin, after consultation with his seers, purchased the last three books.[262] Although we cannot today determine what historical truth lies behind this naïve story, the date of the reputed sale—the sixth century before our era—coincides with the first period of Greek influence at Rome.

By their geographical position the early Romans were exposed to influences from two superior civilizations—the Etruscan at the north, the Greek in southern Italy. The Etruscans had entered Italy probably from the East at some time between the eleventh and the eighth centuries B.C.; but before their coming they had advanced in culture beyond the Latins whose territories they touched on the Tiber. By the sixth century certainly the Romans had come into close political and commercial relations with them, and indeed had already felt their power, for an Etruscan dynasty ruled at Rome. In spite of the patriotic efforts of Roman historians, we can now see that the Etruscan domination lasted long after the traditional expulsion of the kings. From their northern neighbors the Romans took many political and social institutions as well as certain religious elements. The most important of the latter were the College of the Haruspices, the Great Games in the Circus, the Triumph, and the Capitoline Triad of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, which was established by the Tarquins to strengthen their political position.

But far greater was the influence of the Greeks, whose colonies, firmly established, rich and prosperous, fringed the whole southern part of the Italian peninsula. From them the Romans got their alphabet, their weights and measures, and certain political institutions; but most important of all for our present interest, they received from them religious influences which finally so overlaid the early Roman religion that the Romans themselves could not well discover its original elements, and we are hardly in a better situation. Furthermore, if we can believe that there is a kernel of historic truth in the story that King Tarquin the Proud sent an embassy to consult the oracle at Delphi, Rome was not wholly without connection with Greece proper in the sixth century before our era. We have then in Rome of the sixth and earlier centuries an example of a state whose rude civilization was brought into close and intensive contact with the higher civilizations about her. It was inevitable that the results should be rapid and profound.

Of Roman religion before it was influenced by the Greeks and the Etruscans we have comparatively little knowledge. Our literary sources for that period are late and fragmentary, and consist almost wholly of the speculations of the learned. But we have preserved in fragmentary form some twenty stone calendars, dating from the early empire. These calendars are not unlike that classic work known to us all, the Old Farmer’s Almanack, in that they not only enumerate the days and the months, but also note religious festivals and great historic events. In all of them two styles of letters are employed. The larger letters in part indicate one class of religious festivals; other festivals and historical notices are inscribed in letters of smaller size. Theodor Mommsen was the first to see the meaning of this difference. He showed that the religious festivals recorded in the larger letters represented the earliest stage of Roman religion known to us.[263] Some forty-five fixed public festivals in the year’s round are thus indicated. We cannot now discover the character of a number of these, and the functions of some of the gods who belonged to that earliest stage were as obscure to the scholars of the time of Cicero as they are to us today. But we can determine the approximate date at which this earliest period of Roman religion closed, so to speak, for there is no mention in these entries of the triad of the Capitol—Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. As I have just said, tradition tells us that this group was introduced by the Tarquin dynasty in the first half of the sixth century before our era; so that the date that can be set for the close of this first stage of Roman religion is somewhere about 600-550 B.C.

An examination of the character of the earliest festivals shows the stage of civilization which had been attained by the Romans. Some thirteen or fourteen among those whose nature can be discovered had to do with agriculture, a few perhaps with grazing, a few others with war; certain ones were connected with the household and the cult of dead ancestors, or were the occasions on which special efforts were made to avert the baneful influences of the dead. The Romans then at this stage were a simple agricultural people, busy with their efforts to get a living from the soil with the aid of their flocks and herds, and engaged in armed conflicts with the neighbors. Their religion had little in it that showed the exercise of the imagination; it was confined rather to those elements which a life rooted in the ground, possessing no broad outlook, required. The heavenly bodies, the sun, moon, and stars, and the operations of nature were not deified; and the social relations, which later furnished many abstract divinities, as yet had no place among the divine powers. Only those things which had to do with the Roman’s daily life in his own neighborhood received his devotion.

Furthermore in this earliest stage the gods were hardly conceived anthropomorphically. Varro says that for the first hundred and seventy years of Roman history the Romans did not represent their gods by statues. According to his chronology this brings us to the founding of the Capitoline temple in which the Etruscan triad of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva were worshipped. In general we may say that his statement is true, for the Romans were in the aniconic stage until they learned from their neighbors to represent their divinities by images in human form. In this primitive period the Roman thought of his gods not as individuals but as powers (numina), resident in and associated with departments. This is an idea extremely difficult for us to grasp with our sophisticated minds. To the early Roman Janus, for example, was not the god of the door or the threshold, he was the door or the threshold—not simply resident in it, but not even distinguished from the object itself. So Vesta was the fire on the hearth; Saturn was the sown grain; Ceres the growing grain; Flora the blossoming flower; Fons the spring of water; and so on. The circle of such powers could never be closed, as the number of departments in which divine powers might reside was indefinite. Yet even in this early stage certain numina were regarded as more prominent than others. At the head of the list stood Janus, the numen of the door or passage, whose importance was such that still in later times his priest, the rex sacrorum, took precedence of all others, and prayers began with an appeal to him. Jupiter was the god of the sky and of all the phenomena which seem to have their origin there; Juno the feminine counterpart of Jove; Mars the god of war and protector of the land; Quirinus a similar divinity, belonging originally perhaps to a separate settlement on the Quirinal Hill. The list closed with Vesta, the goddess of the hearthfire, with whose name the ancient litanies always ended. These were the great gods of the period before Greek influence came. Yet in this earliest time the divinities had little, if any, personality in our sense of the word. They were simply powers. Personalities and anthropomorphic forms they acquired under the influence of the Greeks, who had left the primitive stage many centuries behind them and had long represented their divinities in human shape.

The religion of the early Romans was at once both simple and elaborate. There were no temples in the later sense; no cult images of the gods. But religion was thought to consist primarily in the employment of a scrupulous care in all dealings with the divine powers, that is to say the ritual had to be exactly performed so that the numina might be forced, if need be, to perform the things the suppliant desired. Such a concept naturally led to the development even in this earliest time of an elaborate ritual, on the exact performance of which all depended. This character Roman religion maintained to the end. So fixed was the ritual that the ancient litanies could not be changed. We have still preserved the songs of the Arval Brothers and of the Salii, which are of such primitive form that in the historical period they were largely unintelligible to those who sang them; yet no syllable of the venerable formulae might be varied. Furthermore religion was regarded as a state affair. It was by state action that certain gods had been recognized and given a kind of citizenship; no others therefore were of concern to the Romans unless the state adopted them also by formal decree. The state likewise determined where and when worship should be carried on. These legislative enactments, according to tradition, had followed the actual establishment of the state by Romulus; and in the historical period the establishment of the religious organization of a colony, for example, was regularly subsequent to the political. In fact the Romans said that the earliest religious system had been established by King Numa, as the political system had been made by Romulus, for they had a natural tendency to regard their institutions as the creations of individuals. The historical significance of this belief for us is that the “religion of Numa” marked the earliest stage of which the Romans were conscious. It is that indicated in the calendars by the entries in large letters.

The Romans further thought of their religion as a contract between the state and its gods. This view comes out clearly in the vows made at the beginning of the year or of a campaign. At such seasons the king, and later the consuls or other officials, promised that if the divine powers should prosper them against their foes, and should grant them abundant harvests, increase of the crops and herds, then the state, when the gods had done their part, would in its turn pay the price promised in the form of votive gifts and sacrifices. Livy furnishes us many illustrations. For example, in a crisis during the struggle with the Samnites the Roman leader prayed thus to the goddess of war: “Bellona, if thou wilt today grant us victory, then I promise thee a temple.”[264] Another is the vow made near the beginning of the Second Punic War: “If the state of the Roman People, the Quirites, shall be preserved, as I would have it preserved, for the next five years in these wars—the war which the Roman People is carrying on with the Carthaginians and the wars which they have with the Gauls who live this side the Alps,—then the Roman People, the Quirites, will give a gift, etc.”; a long list of the offerings to be made follows.[265]

In this first period the religion of the family also was already fixed in the form which it retained to the end of antiquity. Vesta of the hearthfire, the Penates of the larder, the Lar of the farm, the Genius of the pater familias, were the divine powers which were worshipped in the house. Rites were paid also to the Manes, the shades of the dead. As within the home the head of the family naturally performed the priestly offices, so in the state during the regal period the king was chief priest. Advisers and assistants were given him, who with the organization of the republic acquired an independent position, so that thereafter the Pontifex Maximus and his associates, who formed the College of the Pontifices, were at the head of the state religion. Although it is impossible here to go into the details of the Roman priesthoods, it is important to note that these priestly offices were state magistracies just as much as the offices of consul and praetor, and that with a few exceptions priestly office never debarred its holder from performing any other political function. The Roman state was not burdened with sacerdotalism.

Now this early religion of which I have been giving a brief summary was the religion of a little city-state; it was suited to a small, unimaginative community. As such it remained formal and practical—a religion intended to secure material blessings; but it lacked all spiritual elements, and offered little or nothing to satisfy man’s natural hope for a happy future life. More than this, it contained little to ennoble daily life, save as it taught the lesson of duty and of fidelity towards the gods in the performance of contracts agreed upon. Yet it was not an uncomfortable religion for unreflective men, winning their existence from the soil and gaining their wealth from crops, their power through war. It did not, however, have in it the possibility of satisfying men’s higher desires.