TheChurch: HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH(CHAPTER VIII) CHRISTIAN LIFE IN CONTRAST WITH PAGAN CORRUPTION Pt 2

HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH*

 

 

CHAPTER VIII:

 

CHRISTIAN LIFE IN CONTRAST WITH PAGAN CORRUPTION.

 

 § 98. The Heathen Family.

 

In ancient Greece and Rome the state was the highest object of life, and the only virtues properly recognized—wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice—were political virtues. Aristotle makes the state, that is the organized body of free citizens632 (foreigners and slaves are excluded), precede the family and the individual, and calls man essentially a "political animal."  In Plato’s ideal commonwealth the state is everything and owns everything, even the children.

This political absolutism destroys the proper dignity and rights of the individual and the family, and materially hinders the development of the domestic and private virtues. Marriage was allowed no moral character, but merely a political import for the preservation of the state, and could not be legally contracted except by free citizens. Socrates, in instructing his son concerning this institution, tells him, according to Xenophon, that we select only such wives as we hope will yield beautiful children. Plato recommends even community of women to the class of warriors in his ideal republic, as the best way to secure vigorous citizens. Lycurgus, for similar reasons, encouraged adultery under certain circumstances, requiring old men to lend their young and handsome wives to young and strong men.

Woman was placed almost on the same level with the slave. She differs, indeed, from the slave, according to Aristotle, but has, after all, really no will of her own, and is hardly capable of a higher virtue than the slave. Shut up in a retired apartment of the house, she spent her life with the slaves. As human nature is essentially the same in all ages, and as it in never entirely forsaken by the guidance of a kind Providence, we must certainly suppose that female virtue was always more or less maintained and appreciated even among the heathen. Such characters as Penelope, Nausicaa, Andromache, Antigone, Iphigenia, and Diotima, of the Greek poetry and history, bear witness of this. Plutarch’s advice to married people, and his letter of consolation to his wife after the death of their daughter, breathe a beautiful spirit of purity and affection. But the general position assigned to woman by the poets, philosophers, and legislators of antiquity, was one of social oppression and degradation. In Athens she was treated as a minor during lifetime, and could not inherit except in the absence of male heirs. To the question of Socrates: "Is there any one with whom you converse less than with the wife?" his pupil, Aristobulus, replies: "No one, or at least very few."  If she excelled occasionally, in Greece, by wit and culture, and, like Aspasia, Phryne, Laïs, Theodota, attracted the admiration and courtship even of earnest philosophers like Socrates, and statesmen like Pericles, she generally belonged to the disreputable class of the hetaerae or amicae. In Corinth they were attached to the temple of Aphrodite, and enjoyed the sanction of religion for the practice of vice.633  These dissolute women were esteemed above housewives, and became the proper and only representatives of some sort of female culture and social elegance. To live with them openly was no disgrace even for married men.634  How could there be any proper conception and abhorrence of the sin of licentiousness and adultery, if the very gods, a Jupiter, a Mars, and a Venus, were believed to be guilty of those sins!  The worst vices of earth were transferred to Olympus.

Modesty forbids the mention of a still more odious vice, which even depraved nature abhors, which yet was freely discussed and praised by ancient poets and philosophers, practised with neither punishment nor dishonor, and likewise divinely sanctioned by the example of Apollo and Hercules, and by the lewdness of Jupiter with Ganymede.635

The Romans were originally more virtuous, domestic, and chaste, as they were more honest and conscientious, than the Greeks. With them the wife was honored by the title domina, matrona, materfamilias. At the head of their sacerdotal system stood the flamens of Jupiter, who represented marriage in its purity, and the vestal virgins, who represented virginity. The Sabine women interceding between their parents and their husbands, saved the republic; the mother and the wife of Coriolanus by her prayers averted his wrath, and raised the siege of the Volscian army; Lucretia who voluntarily sacrificed her life to escape the outrage to her honor offered by king Tarquin, and Virginia who was killed by her father to save her from slavery and dishonor, shine in the legendary history of Rome as bright examples of unstained purity. But even in the best days of the republic the legal status of woman was very low. The Romans likewise made marriage altogether subservient to the interest of the state, and allowed it in its legal form to free citizens alone. The proud maxims of the republic prohibited even the legitimate nuptials of a Roman with a foreign queen; and Cleopatra and Berenice were, as strangers, degraded to the position of concubines of Mark Antony and Titus. According to ancient custom the husband bought his bride from her parents, and she fulfilled the coëmption by purchasing, with three pieces of copper, a just introduction to his house and household deities. But this was for her simply an exchange of one servitude for another. She became the living property of a husband who could lend her out, as Cato lent his wife to his friend Hortensius, and as Augustus took Livia from Tiberius Nero."  Her husband or master, says Gibbon,636 "was invested with the plenitude of paternal power. By his judgment or caprice her behavior was approved or censured, or chastised; he exercised the jurisdiction of life and death; and it was allowed, that in cases of adultery or drunkenness, the sentence might be properly inflicted. She acquired and inherited for the sole profit of her lord; and so clearly was woman defined, not as a person, but as a thing, that, if the original title were deficient, she might be claimed like other movables, by the use and possession of an entire year."

Monogamy was the rule both in Greece and in Rome, but did not exclude illegitimate connexions. Concubinage, in its proper legal sense, was a sort of secondary marriage with a woman of servile or plebeian extraction, standing below the dignity of a matron and above the infamy of a prostitute. It was sanctioned and regulated by law; it prevailed both in the East and the West from the age of Augustus to the tenth century, and was preferred to regular marriage by Vespasian, and the two Antonines, the best Roman emperors. Adultery was severely punished, at times even with sudden destruction of the offender; but simply as an interference with the rights and property of a free man. The wife had no legal or social protection against the infidelity of her husband. The Romans worshipped a peculiar goddess of domestic life; but her name Viriplaca, the appeaser of husbands, indicates her partiality. The intercourse of a husband with the slaves of his household and with public prostitutes was excluded from the odium and punishment of adultery. We say nothing of that unnatural abomination alluded to in Rom. 1:26, 27, which seems to have passed from the Etruscans and Greeks to the Romans, and prevailed among the highest as well as the lowest classes. The women, however, were almost as corrupt as their husbands, at least in the imperial age. Juvenal calls a chaste wife a "rara avis in terris."  Under Augustus free-born daughters could no longer be found for the service of Vesta, and even the severest laws of Domitian could not prevent the six priestesses of the pure goddess from breaking their vow. The pantomimes and the games of Flora, with their audacious indecencies, were favorite amusements."  The unblushing, undisguised obscenity of the Epigrams of Martial, of the Romances of Apuleius and Petronius, and of some of the Dialogues of Lucian, reflected but too faithfully the spirit of their times."637

Divorce is said to have been almost unknown in the ancient days of the Roman republic, and the marriage tie was regarded as indissoluble. A senator was censured for kissing his wife in the presence of their daughter. But the merit of this virtue is greatly diminished if we remember that the husband always had an easy outlet for his sensual passions in the intercourse with slaves and concubines. Nor did it outlast the republic. After the Punic war the increase of wealth and luxury, and the influx of Greek and Oriental licentiousness swept away the stern old Roman virtues. The customary civil and religious rites of marriage were gradually disused; the open community of life between persons of similar rank was taken as sufficient evidence of their nuptials; and marriage, after Augustus, fell to the level of any partnership, which might be dissolved by the abdication of one of the associates. "Passion, interest, or caprice," says Gibbon on the imperial age, "suggested daily, motives for the dissolution of marriage; a word, a sign, a message, a letter, the mandate of a freedman, declared the separation; the most tender of human connections was degraded to a transient society of profit or pleasure."638

Various remedies were tardily adopted as the evil spread, but they proved inefficient, until the spirit of Christianity gained the control of public opinion and improved the Roman legislation, which, however, continued for a long time to fluctuate between the custom of heathenism and the wishes of the church. Another radical evil of heathen family life, which the church had to encounter throughout the whole extent of the Roman Empire, was the absolute tyrannical authority of the parent over the children, extending even to the power of life and death, and placing the adult son of a Roman citizen on a level with the movable things and slaves, "whom the capricious master might alienate or destroy, without being responsible to any earthly tribunal."

With this was connected the unnatural and monstrous custom of exposing poor, sickly, and deformed children to a cruel death, or in many cases to a life of slavery and infamy-a custom expressly approved, for the public interest, even by a Plato, an Aristotle, and a Seneca!  "Monstrous offspring," says the great Stoic philosopher, "we destroy; children too, if born feeble and ill-formed, we drown. It is not wrath, but reason, thus to separate the useless from the healthy."  "The exposition of children"—to quote once more from Gibbon—"was the prevailing and stubborn vice of antiquity: it was sometimes prescribed, often permitted, almost always practised with impunity by the nations who never entertained the Roman ideas of paternal power; and the dramatic poets, who appeal to the human heart, represent with indifference a popular custom which was palliated by the motives of economy and compassion .... The Roman Empire was stained with the blood of infants, till such murders were included, by Valentinian and his colleagues, in the letter and spirit of the Cornelian law. The lessons of jurisprudence and Christianity had been insufficient to eradicate this inhuman practice, till their gentle influence was fortified by the terrors of capital punishment."639

 

 § 99. The Christian Family.

 

Such was the condition of the domestic life of the ancient world, when Christianity, with its doctrine of the sanctity of marriage, with its injunction of chastity, and with its elevation of woman from her half-slavish condition to moral dignity and equality with man, began the work of a silent transformation, which secured incalculable blessings to generations yet unborn. It laid the foundation for a well-ordered family life. It turned the eye from the outward world to the inward sphere of affection, from the all-absorbing business of politics and state-life into the sanctuary of home; and encouraged the nurture of those virtues of private life, without which no true public virtue can exist. But, as the evil here to be abated, particularly the degradation of the female sex and the want of chastity, was so deeply rooted and thoroughly interwoven in the whole life of the old world, this ennobling of the family, like the abolition of slavery, was necessarily a very slow process. We cannot wonder, therefore, at the high estimate of celibacy, which in the eyes of many seemed to be the only radical escape from the impurity and misery of married life as it generally stood among the heathen. But, although the fathers are much more frequent and enthusiastic in the praise of virginity than in that of marriage, yet their views on this subject show an immense advance upon the moral standard of the greatest sages and legislators of Greece and Rome.

CHASTITY before marriage, in wedlock, and in celibacy, in man as well as in woman, so rare in paganism, was raised to the dignity of a cardinal virtue and made the corner-stone of the family. Many a female martyr preferred cruel torture and death to the loss of honor. When St. Perpetua fell half dead from the horns of a wild bull in the arena, she instinctively drew together her dress, which had been torn in the assault. The acts of martyrs and saints tell marvellous stories, exaggerated no doubt, yet expressive of the ruling Christian sentiment, about heroic resistance to carnal temptation, the sudden punishment of unjust charges of impurity by demoniacal possession or instant death, the rescue of courtesans from a life of shame and their radical conversion and elevation even to canonical sanctity.640  The ancient councils deal much with carnal sins so fearfully prevalent, and unanimously condemn them in every shape and form. It is true, chastity in the early church and by the unanimous consent of the fathers was almost identified with celibacy, as we shall see hereafter; but this excess should not blind us to the immense advance of patristic over heathen morals.

WOMAN was emancipated, in the best sense of the term, from the bondage of social oppression, and made the life and light of a Christian home. Such pure and heroic virgins as the martyred Blandina, and Perpetua, and such devoted mothers as Nonna, Anthusa, and Monica, we seek in vain among the ancient Greek and Roman maidens and matrons, and we need not wonder that the heathen Libanius, judging from such examples as the mother of his pupil Chrysostom, reluctantly exclaimed: "What women have these Christians!"  The schoolmen of the middle ages derived from the formation of woman an ingenious argument for her proper position: Eve was not taken from the feet of Adam to be his slave, nor from his head to be his ruler, but from his side to be his beloved partner.641

At the same time here also we must admit that the ancient church was yet far behind the ideal set up in the New Testament, and counterbalanced the elevation of woman by an extravagant over-estimate of celibacy. It was the virgin far more than the faithful wife and mother of children that was praised and glorified by the fathers; and among the canonized saints of the Catholic calendar there is little or no room for husbands and wives, although the patriarchs, Moses, and some of the greatest prophets (Isaiah, Ezekiel), and apostles (Peter taking the lead) lived in honorable wedlock.

MARRIAGE was regarded in the church from the beginning as a sacred union of body and soul for the propagation of civil society, and the kingdom of God, for the exercise of virtue and the promotion of happiness. It was clothed with a sacramental or semi-sacramental character on the basis of Paul’s comparison of the marriage union with the relation of Christ to his church.642  It was in its nature indissoluble except in case of adultery, and this crime was charged not only to the woman, but to the man as even the more guilty party, and to every extra-connubial carnal connection. Thus the wife was equally protected against the wrongs of the husband, and chastity was made the general law of the family life.

We have a few descriptions of Christian homes from the ante-Nicene age, one from an eminent Greek father, another from a married presbyter of the Latin church.

Clement of Alexandria enjoins upon Christian married persons united prayer and reading of the Scriptures,643 as a daily morning exercise, and very beautifully says: "The mother is the glory of her children, the wife is the glory of her husband, both are the glory of the wife, God is the glory of all together."644

Tertullian, at the close of the book which he wrote to his wife, draws the following graphic picture, which, though somewhat idealized, could be produced only from the moral spirit of the gospel and actual experience:645  "How can I paint the happiness of a marriage which the church ratifies, the oblation (the celebration of the communion) confirms, the benediction seals, angels announce, the Father declares valid. Even upon earth, indeed, sons do not legitimately marry without the consent of their fathers. What a union of two believers—one hope, one vow, one discipline, and one worship!  They are brother and sister, two fellow-servants, one spirit and one flesh. Where there is one flesh, there is also one spirit. They pray together, fast together, instruct, exhort, and support each other. They go together to the church of God, and to the table of the Lord. They share each other’s tribulation, persecution, and revival. Neither conceals anything from the other; neither avoids, neither annoys the other. They delight to visit the sick, supply the needy, give alms without constraint, and in daily zeal lay their offerings before the altar without scruple or hindrance. They do not need to keep the sign of the cross hidden, nor to express slyly their Christian joy, nor to suppress the blessing. Psalms and hymns they sing together, and they vie with each other in singing to God. Christ rejoices when he sees and hears this. He gives them his peace. Where two are together in his name, there is he; and where he is, there the evil one cannot come."

A large sarcophagus represents a scene of family worship: on the right, four men, with rolls in their hands, reading or singing; on the left, three women and a girl playing a lyre.

For the conclusion of a marriage, Ignatius646 required "the consent of the bishop, that it might be a marriage for God, and not for pleasure. All should be done to the glory of God."  In Tertullian’s time,647 as may be inferred from the passage just quoted, the solemnization of marriage was already at least a religious act, though not a proper sacrament, and was sealed by the celebration of the holy communion in presence of the congregation. The Montanists were disposed even to make this benediction of the church necessary to the validity of marriage among Christians. All noisy and wanton Jewish and heathen nuptial ceremonies, and at first also the crowning of the bride, were discarded; but the nuptial ring, as a symbol of union, was retained.

In the catacombs the marriage ceremony is frequently represented by the man and the woman standing side by side and joining hands in token of close union, as also on heathen documents. On a gilded glass of the fourth century, the couple join hands over a small nuptial altar, and around the figures are inscribed the words (of the priest): "May ye live in God."648

MIXED MARRIAGES with heathens and also with heretics, were unanimously condemned by the voice of the church in agreement with the Mosaic legislation, unless formed before conversion, in which case they were considered valid.649  Tertullian even classes such marriages with adultery. What heathen, asks he, will let his wife attend the nightly meetings of the church, and the slandered supper of the Lord, take care of the sick even in the poorest hovels, kiss the chains of the martyrs in prison rise in the night for prayer, and show hospitality to strange brethren?  Cyprian calls marriage with an unbeliever a prostitution of the members of Christ. The Council of Elvira in Spain (306) forbade such mixed marriages on pain of excommunication, but did not dissolve those already existing. We shall understand this strictness, if, to say nothing of the heathen marriage rites, and the wretchedly loose notions on chastity and conjugal fidelity, we consider the condition of those times, and the offences and temptations which met the Christian in the constant sight of images of the household gods, mythological pictures on the walls, the floor, and the furniture; in the libations at table; in short, at every step and turn in a pagan house.

SECOND MARRIAGE.—From the high view of marriage, and also from an ascetic over-estimate of celibacy, arose a very, prevalent aversion to re-marriage, particularly of widows. The Shepherd of Hermas allows this reunion indeed, but with the reservation, that continuance in single life earns great honor with the Lord. Athenagoras goes so far as to call the second marriage a "decent adultery."650

The Montanists and Novatians condemned re-marriage, and made it a subject of discipline.

Tertullian came forward with the greatest decision, as advocate of monogamy against both successive and simultaneous polygamy.651  He thought thus to occupy the true middle ground between the ascetic Gnostics, who rejected marriage altogether, and the Catholics, who allowed more than one.652  In the earlier period of his life, when he drew the above picture of Christian marriage, before his adoption of Montanism., he already placed a high estimate on celibacy as a superior grade of Christian holiness, appealing to 1 Cor. 7:9 and advised at least his wife, in case of his death, not to marry again, especially with a heathen; but in his Montanistic writings, "De Exhortatione Castitatis" and "De Monogamia," he repudiates second marriage from principle, and with fanatical zeal contends against it as unchristian, as an act of polygamy, nay of "stuprum" and "adulterium."  He opposes it with all sorts of acute argument; now, on the ground of an ideal conception of marriage as a spiritual union of two souls for time and eternity; now, from an opposite sensuous view; and again, on principles equally good against all marriage and in favor of celibacy. Thus, on the one hand, he argues, that the second marriage impairs the spiritual fellowship with the former partner, which should continue beyond the grave, which should show itself in daily intercessions and in yearly celebration of the day of death, and which hopes even for outward reunion after the resurrection.653  On the other hand, however, he places the essence of marriage in the communion of flesh,654 and regards it as a mere concession, which God makes to our sensuality, and which man therefore should not abuse by repetition. The ideal of the Christian life, with him, not only for the clergy, but the laity also, is celibacy. He lacks clear perception of the harmony of the moral and physical elements which constitutes the essence of marriage; and strongly as he elsewhere combats the Gnostic dualism, he here falls in with it in his depreciation of matter and corporeity, as necessarily incompatible with spirit. His treatment of the exegetical arguments of the defenders of second marriage is remarkable. The levirate law, he says, is peculiar to the Old Testament economy. To Rom. 7:2 he replies, that Paul speaks here from the position of the Mosaic law, which, according to the same passage is no longer binding on Christians. In 1 Cor. 7, the apostle allows second marriage only in his subjective, human judgment, and from regard to our sensuous infirmity; but in the same chapter (1 Cor 7:40) he recommends celibacy to all, and that on the authority of the Lord, adding here, that he also has the Holy Spirit, i.e. the principle, which is active in the new prophets of Montanism. The appeal to 1 Tim. 3:2; Tit. 1:6, from which the right of laymen to second marriage was inferred, as the prohibition of it there related only to the clergy, he met with the doctrine of the universal priesthood of believers, which admitted them all both to the privileges and to the obligations of priests. But his reasoning always amounts in the end to this: that the state of original virgin purity, which has nothing at all to do with the sensual, is the best. The true chastity consists therefore not in the chaste spirit of married partners, but in the entire continence of "virgines" and "spadones." The desire of posterity, he, contrary to the Old Testament, considers unworthy of a Christian, who, in fact, ought to break away entirely from the world, and renounce all inheritance in it. Such a morality, forbidding the same that it allows, and rigorously setting as an ideal what it must in reality abate at least for the mass of mankind, may be very far above the heathen level, but is still plainly foreign to the deeper substance and the world-sanctifying principle of Christianity.

The Catholic church, indeed, kept aloof from this Montanistic extravagance, and forbade second marriage only to the clergy (which the Greek church does to this day); yet she rather advised against it, and leaned very decidedly towards a preference for celibacy, as a higher grade of Christian morality.655

As to the relation of PARENTS and CHILDREN, Christianity exerted from the beginning a most salutary influence. It restrained the tyrannical power of the father. It taught the eternal value of children as heirs of the kingdom of heaven, and commenced the great work of education on a religious and moral basis. It resisted with all energy the exposition of children, who were then generally devoured by dogs and wild beasts, or, if found, trained up for slavery or doomed to a life of infamy. Several apologists, the author to the Epistle of Diognetus, Justin Martyr,656 Minutius Felix, Tertullian, and Arnobius speak with just indignation against this unnatural custom. Athenagoras declares abortion and exposure to be equal to murder.657  No heathen philosopher had advanced so far. Lactantius also puts exposure on a par with murder even of the worst kind, and admits no excuse on the ground of pity or poverty, since God provides for all his creatures.658  The Christian spirit of humanity gradually so penetrated the spirit of the age that the better emperors, from the time of Trajan, began to direct their attention to the diminution of these crying evils; but the best legal enactments would never have been able to eradicate them without the spiritual influence of the church. The institutions and donations of Trajan, Antonins Pius, Septimius Severus, and private persons, for the education of poor children, boys and girls, were approaches of the nobler heathen towards the genius of Christianity. Constantine proclaimed a law in 315 throughout Italy "to turn parents from using a parricidal hand on their new-born children, and to dispose their hearts to the best sentiments."  The Christian fathers, councils, emperors, and lawgivers united their efforts to uproot this monstrous evil and to banish it from the civilized world.659

 

 § 100. Brotherly Love, and Love for Enemies.

 

SCHAUBACH: Das Verhältniss der Moral des classischen Alterthums zur christlichen, beleuchtet durch vergleichende Erörterung der Lehre von der Feindesliebe, in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1851, p. 59–121. Also the works of SCHMIDT, CHASTEL, UHLHORN, etc., quoted at § 88 above.

 

It is generally admitted, that selfishness was the soul of heathen morality. The great men of antiquity rose above its sordid forms, love of gain and love of pleasure, but were the more under the power of ambition and love of fame. It was for fame that Miltiades and Themistocles fought against the Persians; that Alexander set out on his tour of conquest; that Herodotus wrote his history, that Pindar sang his odes, that Sophocles composed his tragedies, that Demosthenes delivered his orations, that Phidias sculptured his Zeus. Fame was set forth in the Olympian games as the highest object of life; fame was held up by Aeschylus as the last comfort of the suffering; fame was declared by Cicero, before a large assembly, the ruling passion of the very best of men.660  Even the much-lauded patriotism of the heroes of ancient Greece and Rome was only an enlarged egotism. In the catalogue of classical virtues we look in vain for the two fundamental and cardinal virtues, love and humility. The very word which corresponds in Greek to humility661 signifies generally, in classical usage, a mean, abject mind. The noblest and purest form of love known to the heathen moralist is friendship, which Cicero praises as the highest good next to wisdom. But friendship itself rested, as was freely admitted, on a utilitarian, that is, on an egotistic basis, and was only possible among persons of equal or similar rank in society. For the stranger, the barbarian, and the enemy, the Greek and Roman knew no love, but only contempt and hatred. The jus talionis, the return of evil for evil, was universally acknowledged throughout the heathen world as a just principle and maxim, in direct opposition to the plainest injunctions of the New Testament.662  We must offend those who offend us, says Aeschylus.663  Not to take revenge was regarded as a sign of weakness and cowardice. To return evil for good is devilish; to return good for good is human and common to all religions; to return good for evil is Christlike and divine, and only possible in the Christian religion.

On the other hand, however, we should suppose that every Christian virtue must find some basis in the noblest moral instincts and aspirations of nature; since Christianity is not against nature, but simply above it and intended for it. Thus we may regard the liberality, benevolence, humanity and magnanimity which we meet with in heathen antiquity, as an approximation to, and preparation for, the Christian virtue of charity. The better schools of moralists rose more or less above the popular approval of hatred of the enemy, wrath and revenge. Aristotle and the Peripatetics, without condemning this passion as wrong in itself, enjoined at least moderation in its exercise. The Stoics went further, and required complete apathy or suppression of all strong and passionate affections. Cicero even declares placability and clemency one of the noblest traits in the character of a great man,664 and praises Caesar for forgetting nothing except injuries. Seneca, Epictetus, Plutarch, and Marcus Aurelius, who were already indirectly and unconsciously under the influence of the atmosphere of Christian morality, decidedly condemn anger and vindictiveness, and recommend kindness to slaves, and a generous treatment even of enemies.

But this sort of love for an enemy, it should be remembered, in the first place, does not flow naturally from the spirit of heathenism, but is, as it were, an accident and exception; secondly, it is not enjoined as a general duty, but expected only from the great and the wise; thirdly, it does not rise above the conception of magnanimity, which, more closely considered, is itself connected with a refined form of egotism, and with a noble pride that regards it below the dignity of a gentleman to notice the malice of inferior men;665 fourthly, it is commended only in its negative aspect as refraining from the right of retaliation, not as active benevolence and charity to the enemy, which returns good for evil; and finally it is nowhere derived from a religious principle, the love of God to man, and therefore has no proper root, and lacks the animating soul.

No wonder, then, that in spite of the finest maxims of a few philosophers, the imperial age was controlled by the coldest selfishness, so that, according to the testimony of Plutarch, friendship had died out even in families, and the love of brothers and sisters was supposed to be possible only in a heroic age long passed by. The old Roman world was a world without charity. Julian the Apostate, who was educated a Christian, tried to engraft charity upon heathenism, but in vain. The idea of the infinite value of each human soul, even the poorest and humblest, was wanting, and with it the basis for true charity.

It was in such an age of universal egotism that Christianity first revealed the true spirit of love to man as flowing from the love of God, and exhibited it in actual life. This cardinal virtue we meet first within the Church itself, as the bond of union among believers, and the sure mark of the genuine disciple of Jesus. "That especially," says Tertullian to the heathen, in a celebrated passage of his Apologeticus, "which love works among us, exposes us to many a suspicion. ’Behold,’ they say, ’how they love one another!’  Yea, verily this must strike them; for they hate each other. ’And how ready they are to die for one another!’  Yea, truly; for they are rather ready to kill one another. And even that we call each other ’brethren,’ seems to them suspicious for no other reason, than that, among them, all expressions of kindred are only feigned. We are even your brethren, in virtue of the common nature, which is the mother of us all; though ye, as evil brethren, deny your human nature. But how much more justly are those called and considered brethren, who acknowledge the one God as their Father; who have received the one Spirit of holiness; who have awaked from the same darkness of uncertainty to the light of the same truth?... And we, who are united in spirit and in soul, do not hesitate to have also all things common, except wives. For we break fellowship just where other men practice it."

This brotherly love flowed from community of life in Christ. Hence Ignatius calls believers "Christ-bearers" and "God-bearers."666  The article of the Apostles’ Creed: "I believe in the communion of saints;" the current appellation of "brother" and "sister;" and the fraternal kiss usual on admission into the church, and at the Lord’s Supper, were not empty forms, nor even a sickly sentimentalism, but the expression of true feeling and experience, only strengthened by the common danger and persecution. A travelling Christian, of whatever language or country, with a letter of recommendation from his bishop,667 was everywhere hospitably received as a long known friend. It was a current phrase: In thy brother thou hast seen the Lord himself. The force of love reached beyond the grave. Families were accustomed to celebrate at appointed times the memory, of their departed members; and this was one of the grounds on which Tertullian opposed second marriage.

The brotherly love expressed itself, above all, in the most self-sacrificing beneficence to the poor and sick, to widows and orphans, to strangers and prisoners, particularly to confessors in bonds. It magnifies this virtue in our view, to reflect, that the Christians at that time belonged mostly to the lower classes, and in times of persecution often lost all their possessions. Every congregation was a charitable society, and in its public worship took regular collections for its needy members. The offerings at the communion and love-feasts, first held on the evening, afterwards on the morning of the Lord’s Day, were considered a part of worship.668  To these were added numberless private charities, given in secret, which eternity alone will reveal. The church at Rome had under its care a great multitude of widows, orphans, blind, lame, and sick,669 whom the deacon Laurentius, in the Decian persecution, showed to the heathen prefect, as the most precious treasures of the church. It belonged to the idea of a Christian housewife, and was particularly the duty of the deaconesses, to visit the Lord, to clothe him, and give him meat and drink, in the persons of his needy disciples. Even such opponents of Christianity as Lucian testify to this zeal of the Christians in labors of love, though they see in it nothing but an innocent fanaticism. "It is incredible," says Lucian, "to see the ardor with which the people of that religion help each other in their wants. They spare nothing. Their first legislator has put into their heads that they are all brethren."670

This beneficence reached beyond the immediate neighborhood. Charity begins at home, but does not stay at, home. In cases of general distress the bishops appointed special collections, and also fasts, by which food might be saved for suffering brethren. The Roman church sent its charities great distances abroad.671  Cyprian of Carthage, who, after his conversion, sold his own estates for the benefit of the poor, collected a hundred thousand sestertia, or more than three thousand dollars, to redeem Christians of Numidia, who had been taken captive by neighboring barbarians; and he considered it a high privilege "to be able to ransom for a small sum of money him, who has redeemed us from the dominion of Satan with his own blood." A father, who refused to give alms on account of his children, Cyprian charged with the additional sin of binding his children to an earthly inheritance, instead of pointing them to the richest and most loving Father in heaven.

Finally, this brotherly love expanded to love even for enemies, which returned the heathens good for evil, and not rarely, in persecutions and public misfortunes, heaped coals of fire on their heads. During the persecution under Gallus (252), when the pestilence raged in Carthage, and the heathens threw out their dead and sick upon the streets, ran away from them for fear of the contagion, and cursed the Christians as the supposed authors of the plague, Cyprian assembled his congregation, and exhorted them to love their enemies; whereupon all went to work; the rich with their money, the poor with their hands, and rested not, till the dead were buried, the sick cared for, and the city saved from desolation. The same self-denial appeared in the Christians of Alexandria during a ravaging plague under the reign of Gallienus. These are only a few prominent manifestations of a spirit which may be traced through the whole history of martyrdom and the daily prayers of the Christians for their enemies and persecutors. For while the love of friends, says Tertullian, is common to all men, the love of enemies is a virtue peculiar to Christians.672  "You forget," he says to the heathens in his Apology, "that, notwithstanding your persecutions, far from conspiring against you, as our numbers would perhaps furnish us with the means of doing, we pray for you and do good to you; that, if we give nothing for your gods, we do give for your poor, and that our charity spreads more alms in your streets than the offerings presented by your religion in your temples."

The organized congregational charity of the ante-Nicene age provided for all the immediate wants. When the state professed Christianity, there sprang up permanent charitable institutions for the poor, the sick, for strangers, widows, orphans, and helpless old men.673  The first clear proof of such institutions we find in the age of Julian the Apostate, who tried to check the progress of Christianity and to revive paganism by directing the high priest of Galatia, Arsacius, to establish in every town a Xenodochium to be supported by the state and also by private contributions; for, he said, it was a shame that the heathen should be left without support from their own, while "among the Jews no beggar can be found, and the godless Galilaeans" (i.e. the Christians) "nourish not only their own, but even our own poor." A few years afterwards (370) we hear of a celebrated hospital at Caesarea, founded by St. Basilius, and called after him "Basilias," and similar institutions all over the province of Cappadocia. We find one at Antioch at the time of Chrysostom, who took a practical interest in it. At Constantinople there were as many as thirty-five hospitals. In the West such institutions spread rapidly in Rome, Sicily, Sardinia, and Gaul.674

 

 § 101. Prayer and Fasting.

 

In regard to the importance and the necessity of prayer, as the pulse and thermometer of spiritual life, the ancient church had but one voice. Here the plainest and the most enlightened Christians met; the apostolic fathers, the steadfast apologists, the realistic Africans, and the idealistic Alexandrians. Tertullian sees in prayer the daily sacrifice of the Christian, the bulwark of faith, the weapon against all the enemies of the soul. The believer should not go to his bath nor take his food without prayer; for the nourishing and refreshing of the spirit must precede that of the body, and the heavenly must go before the earthly. "Prayer," says he, "blots out sins, repels temptations, quenches persecutions, comforts, the desponding, blesses the high-minded, guides the wanderers, calms the billows, feeds the poor, directs the rich, raises the fallen, holds up the falling, preserves them that stand." Cyprian requires prayer by day and by night; pointing to heaven, where we shall never cease to pray and give thanks. The same father, however, falls already into that false, unevangelical view, which represents prayer as a meritorious work and a satisfaction to be rendered to God.675  Clement of Alexandria conceives the life of a genuine Christian as an unbroken prayer. "In every place he will pray, though not openly, in the sight of the multitude. Even on his walks, in his intercourse with others, in silence, in reading, and in labor, he prays in every way. And though he commune with God only in the chamber of his soul, and call upon the Father only with a quiet sigh, the Father is near him." The same idea we find in Origen, who discourses in enthusiastic terms of the mighty inward and outward effects of prayer, and with all his enormous learning, regards prayer as the sole key to the spiritual meaning of the Scriptures.

The order of human life, however, demands special times for this consecration of the every-day business of men. The Christians generally followed the Jewish usage, observed as times of prayer the hours of nine, twelve, and three, corresponding also to the crucifixion of Christ, his death, and his descent from the cross; the cock-crowing likewise, and the still hour of midnight they regarded as calls to prayer.

With prayer for their own welfare, they united intercessions for the whole church, for all classes of men, especially for the sick and the needy, and even for the unbelieving. Polycarp enjoins on the church of Philippi to pray for all the saints, for kings and rulers, for haters and persecutors, and for the enemies of the cross. "We pray," says Tertullian, "even for the emperors and their ministers, for the holders of power on earth, for the repose of all classes, and for the delay of the end of the world."

With the free outpourings of the heart, without which living piety cannot exist, we must suppose, that, after the example of the Jewish church, standing forms of prayer were also used, especially such as were easily impressed on the memory and could thus be freely delivered. The familiar "ex pectore" and "sine monitore" of Tertullian prove nothing against this; for a prayer committed to memory may and should be at the same time a prayer of the heart, as a familiar psalm or hymn may be read or sung with ever new devotion. The general use of the Lord’s Prayer in the ancient church in household and public worship is beyond all doubt. The Didache (ch. 8) enjoins it three times a day. Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen, wrote special treatises upon it. They considered it the model prayer, prescribed by the Lord for the whole church. Tertullian calls it the "regular and usual prayer, a brief summary of the whole gospel, and foundation of all the other prayers of the Christians." The use of it, however, was restricted to communicants; because the address presupposes the worshipper’s full sonship with God, and because the fourth petition was taken in a mystical sense, as referring to the holy Supper, and was therefore thought not proper for catechumens.

As to posture in prayer; kneeling or standing, the raising or closing of the eyes, the extension or elevation of the hands, were considered the most suitable expressions of a bowing spirit and a soul directed towards God. On Sunday the standing posture was adopted, in token of festive joy over the resurrection from sin and death. But there was no uniform law in regard to these forms. Origen lays chief stress on the lifting of the soul to God and the bowing of the heart before him; and says that, where circumstances require, one can worthily pray sitting, or lying, or engaged in business.

After the Jewish custom, FASTING was frequently joined with prayer, that the mind, unencumbered by earthly matter, might devote itself with less distraction to the contemplation of divine things. The apostles themselves sometimes employed this wholesome discipline,676 though without infringing the gospel freedom by legal prescriptions. As the Pharisees were accustomed to fast twice in the week, on Monday and Thursday, the Christians appointed Wednesday and especially Friday, as days of half-fasting or abstinence from flesh,677 in commemoration of the passion and crucifixion of Jesus. They did this with reference to the Lord’s words: "When the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, then will they fast."678

In the second century arose also the custom of Quadragesimal fasts before Easter, which, however, differed in length in different countries; being sometimes reduced to forty hours, sometimes extended to forty days, or at least to several weeks. Perhaps equally ancient are the nocturnal fasts or vigils before the high festivals, suggested by the example of the Lord and the apostles.679  But the Quatemporal fasts680 are of later origin, though founded likewise on a custom of the Jews after the exile. On special occasions the bishops appointed extraordinary fasts, and applied the money saved to charitable purposes; a usage which became often a blessing to the poor. Yet hierarchical arrogance and Judaistic legalism early intruded here, even to the entire destruction of the liberty of a Christian man.681

This rigidity appeared most in the Montanists. Besides the usual fasts, they observed special Xerophagiae682 as they were called; seasons of two weeks for eating only dry or properly uncooked food, bread, salt, and water. The Catholic church, with true feeling, refused to sanction these excesses as a general rule, but allowed ascetics to carry fasting even to extremes. A confessor in Lyons, for example, lived on bread and water alone, but forsook that austerity when reminded that he gave offence to other Christians by so despising the gifts of God.

Against the frequent over-valuation of fasting, Clement of Alexandria quotes the word of Paul: The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, therefore neither abstinence from wine and flesh, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

 

 § 102. Treatment of the Dead

 

Comp. Chapter VII. on the Catacombs.

 

The pious care of the living for the beloved dead is rooted in the noblest instincts of human future, and is found among all nations, ancient and modern, even among barbarians. Hence the general custom of surrounding the funeral with solemn rites and prayers, and giving the tomb a sacred and inviolable character. The profane violation of the dead and robbery of graves were held in desecration, and punished by law.683  No traditions and laws were more sacred among the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans than those that guarded and protected the shades of the departed who can do no harm to any of the living. "It is the popular belief," says Tertullian, "that the dead cannot enter Hades before they are buried." Patroclus appears after his death to his friend Achilles in a dream, and thus exhorts him to provide for his speedy burial:

 

  "Achilles, sleepest thou, forgetting me?

 Never of me unmindful in my life,

 Thou dost neglect me dead. O, bury me

 Quickly, and give me entrance through the gates

 Of Hades; for the souls, the forms of those

 Who live no more, repulse me, suffering not

 That I should join their company beyond

 The river, and I now must wander round

 The spacious portals of the House of Death."684

 

Christianity intensified this regard for the departed, and gave it a solid foundation by the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body. Julian the Apostate traced the rapid spread and power of that religion to three causes: benevolence, care of the dead, and honesty.685 After the persecution under Marcus Aurelius, the Christians in Southern Gaul were much distressed because the enraged heathens would not deliver them the corpses of their brethren for burial.686  Sometimes the vessels of the church were sold for the purpose. During the ravages of war, famine, and pestilence, they considered it their duty to bury the heathen as well as their fellow-Christians. When a pestilence depopulated the cities in the reign of the tyrannical persecutor Maximinus, "the Christians were the only ones in the midst of such distressing circumstances that exhibited sympathy and humanity in their conduct. They continued the whole day, some in the care and burial of the dead, for numberless were they for whom there was none to care; others collected the multitude of those wasting by the famine throughout the city, and distributed bread among all. So that the fact was cried abroad, and men glorified the God of the Christians, constrained, as they were by the facts, to acknowledge that these were the only really pious and the only real worshippers of God."687  Lactantius says: "The last and greatest office of piety is the burying of strangers and the poor; which subject these teachers of virtue and justice have not touched upon at all, as they measure all their duties by utility. We will not suffer the image and workmanship of God to lie exposed as a prey to beasts and birds; but we will restore it to the earth, from which it had its origin; and although it be in the case of an unknown man, we will fulfil the office of relatives, into whose place, since they are wanting, let kindness succeed; and wherever there shall be need of man, there we will think that our duty is required."688

The early church differed from the pagan and even from the Jewish notions by a cheerful and hopeful view of death, and by discarding lamentations, rending of clothes, and all signs of extravagant grief. The terrors of the grave were dispelled by the light of the resurrection, and the idea of death was transformed into the idea of a peaceful slumber. No one, says Cyprian, should be made sad by death, since in living is labor and peril, in dying peace and the certainty of resurrection; and he quotes the examples of Enoch who was translated, of Simeon who wished to depart in peace, several passages from Paul, and the assurance of the Lord that he went to the Father to prepare heavenly mansions for us.689  The day of a believer’s death, especially if he were a martyr, was called the day of his heavenly birth. His grave was surrounded with symbols of hope and of victory; anchors, harps, palms, crowns. The primitive Christians always showed a tender care for the dead; under a vivid impression of the unbroken communion of saints and the future resurrection of the body in glory. For Christianity redeems the body as well as the soul, and consecrates it a temple of the Holy Spirit. Hence the Greek and Roman custom of burning the corpse (crematio) was repugnant to Christian feeling and the sacredness of the body.690  Tertullian even declared it a symbol of the fire of hell, and Cyprian regarded it as equivalent to apostasy. In its stead, the church adopted the primitive Jewish usage of burial (inhumatio),691 practiced also by the Egyptians and Babylonians. The bodies of the dead were washed, 692 wrapped in linen cloths,693 sometimes embalmed,694 and then, in the presence of ministers, relatives, and friends, with prayer and singing of psalms, committed as seeds of immortality to the bosom of the earth. Funeral discourses were very common as early as the Nicene period.695  But in the times of persecution the interment was often necessarily performed as hastily and secretly as possible. The death-days of martyrs the church celebrated annually at their graves with oblations, love feasts, and the Lord’s Supper. Families likewise commemorated their departed members in the domestic circle. The current prayers for the dead were originally only thanksgiving for the grace of God manifested to them. But they afterwards passed into intercessions, without any warrant in the reaching of the apostles, and in connection with questionable views in regard to the intermediate state. Tertullian, for instance, in his argument against second marriage, says of the Christian widow, she prays for the soul of her departed husband,696 and brings her annual offering on the day of his departure.

The same feeling of the inseparable communion of saints gave rise to the usage, unknown to the heathens, of consecrated places of common burial.697  For these cemeteries, the Christians, in the times of persecution, when they were mostly poor and enjoyed no corporate rights, selected remote, secret spots, and especially subterranean vaults, called at first crypts, but after the sixth century commonly termed catacombs, or resting-places, which have been discussed in a previous chapter.

We close with a few stanzas of the Spanish poet Prudentius (d. 405), in which he gives forcible expression to the views and feelings of the ancient church before the open grave:698

 

"No more, ah, no more sad complaining;
Resign these fond pledges to earth:

Stay, mothers, the thick-falling tear-drops;
This death is a heavenly birth.

 

Take, Earth, to thy bosom so tender,—
Take, nourish this body. How fair,

How noble in death!  We surrender
These relics of man to thy care

 

This, this was the home of the spirit,
Once built by the breath of our God;

And here, in the light of his wisdom,
Christ, Head of the risen, abode.

 

Guard well the dear treasure we lend thee
The Maker, the Saviour of men:

Shall never forget His beloved,
But claim His own likeness again."

 

 § 103. Summary of Moral Reforms.

 

Christianity represents the thoughts and purposes of God in history. They shine as so many stars in the darkness of sin and error. They are unceasingly opposed, but make steady progress and are sure of final victory. Heathen ideas and practices with their degrading influences controlled the ethics, politics, literature, and the house and home of emperor and peasant, when the little band of despised and persecuted followers of Jesus of Nazareth began the unequal struggle against overwhelming odds and stubborn habits. It was a struggle of faith against superstition, of love against selfishness, of purity against corruption, of spiritual forces against political and social power.

Under the inspiring influence of the spotless purity of Christ’s teaching and example, and aided here and there by the nobler instincts and tendencies of philosophy, the Christian church from the beginning asserted the individual rights of man, recognized the divine image in every rational being, taught the common creation and common redemption, the destination of all for immortality and glory, raised the humble and the lowly, comforted the prisoner and captive, the stranger and the exile, proclaimed chastity as a fundamental virtue, elevated woman to dignity and equality with man, upheld the sanctity and inviolability of the marriage tie, laid the foundation of a Christian family and happy home, moderated the evils and undermined the foundations of slavery, opposed polygamy and concubinage, emancipated the children from the tyrannical control of parents, denounced the exposure of children as murder, made relentless war upon the bloody games of the arena and the circus, and the shocking indecencies of the theatre, upon cruelty and oppression and every vice infused into a heartless and loveless world the spirit of love and brotherhood, transformed sinners into saints, frail women into heroines, and lit up the darkness of the tomb by the bright ray of unending bliss in heaven.

Christianity reformed society from the bottom, and built upwards until it reached the middle and higher classes, and at last the emperor himself. Then soon after the conversion of Constantine it began to influence legislation, abolished cruel institutions, and enacted laws which breathe the spirit of justice and humanity. We may deplore the evils which followed in the train of the union of church and state, but we must not overlook its many wholesome effects upon the Justinian code which gave Christian ideas an institutional form and educational power for whole generations to this day. From that time on also began the series of charitable institutions for widows and orphans, for the poor and the sick, the blind and the deaf, the intemperate and criminal, and for the care of all unfortunate,—institutions which we seek in vain in any other but Christian countries.

Nor should the excesses of asceticism blind us against the moral heroism of renouncing rights and enjoyments innocent in themselves, but so generally abused and poisoned, that total abstinence seemed to most of the early fathers the only radical and effective cure. So in our days some of the best of men regard total abstinence rather than temperance, the remedy of the fearful evils of intemperance.

Christianity could not prevent the irruption of the Northern barbarians and the collapse of the Roman empire. The process of internal dissolution had gone too far; nations as well as individuals may physically and morally sink so low that they, are beyond the possibility of recovery. Tacitus, the heathen Stoic in the second century, and Salvianus, the Christian presbyter in the fifth, each a Jeremiah of his age, predicted the approaching doom and destruction of Roman society, looked towards the savage races of the North for fresh blood and new vigor. But the Keltic and Germanic conquerors would have turned Southern Europe into a vast solitude (as the Turks have laid waste the fairest portions of Asia), if they had not embraced the principles, laws, and institutions of the Christian church.

 

 

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* Schaff, Philip, History of the Christian Church, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1997. This material has been carefully compared, corrected¸ and emended (according to the 1910 edition of Charles Scribner's Sons) by The Electronic Bible Society, Dallas, TX, 1998.

564  Friedländer, III. 369 sqq. (5^th ed.), gives much interesting information about the book trade in Rome, which was far more extensive than is generally supposed, and was facilitated by slave-labor. Books were cheap. The first book of Martial (over 700 verses in 118 poems) cost in the best outfit only 5 denarii (80 cts.). Julius Caesar conceived the plan of founding public libraries, but was prevented from carrying it into effect. In the fourth century there were no less than twenty-eight public libraries in Rome. The ease and enjoyment of reading, however, were considerably diminished by the many errors, the absence of division and punctuation. Asinius Pollio introduced the custom of public readings of new works before invited circles.

565  Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. III. Renan expresses the same view.

566  Either from disgust of life, or because he thought he could not live off the remaining ten million of sesterces, after he had wasted sixty or a hundred million. Seneca, Ad Helv. x. 9. Heliogabalus chose Apicius as his model. These, however, are exceptional cases, and became proverbial. See on this whole subject of Roman luxury the third volume of Friedlaender’s Sittengeschichte, pp. 1-152. He rather modifies the usual view, and thinks that Apicius had more imitators among French epicures under Louis XIV., XV., and XVI. than among the Roman nobles, and that some petty German princes of the eighteenth century, like King August of Saxony (who wasted eighty thousand thalers on a single opera), and Duke Karl of Württemberg, almost equalled the heathen emperors in extravagance and riotous living, at the expense of their poor subjects. The wealth of the old Romans was much surpassed by that of some modern Russian and English noblemen, French bankers, and American merchant princes, but had a much greater purchasing value. The richest Romans were Ca. Lentulus, and Narcissus (a freedman of Nero), and their fortune amounted to four hundred million sesterces (from sixty-five to seventy million marks); while Mazarin left two hundred million francs, Baron James Rothschild (d. 1868) two thousand million francs (l.c. p. 13 sqq.). The architecture of the imperial age surpassed all modern palaces in extravagance and splendor, but in parks and gardens the modem English far surpass the ancient Romans (p. 78 sqq.).

567  Decline and Fall, ch. III.

568  Seekers after God, p. 37.

569  Zeller, l.c. p. 37: "Nearly all the most important Stoics before the Christian era belong by birth to Asia Minor, to Syria, and to the islands of the Eastern Archipelago. Then follow a line of Roman Stoics, among whom the Phrygian Epictetus occupies a prominent place; but Greece proper is exclusively represented by men of third or fourth-rate capacity."

570  Niebuhr says of Seneca: "He acted on the principle that he could dispense with the laws of morality which he laid down for others." Macaulay: "The business of the philosopher was to declaim in praise of poverty, with two millions sterling at usury; to meditate epigrammatic conceits about the evils of luxury in gardens which moved the envy of sovereigns; to rant about liberty while fawning on the insolent and pampered freedman of a tyrant; to celebrate the divine beauty of virtue with the same pen which had just before written a defense of the murder of a mother by a son." Farrar (l.c. p. 161): "In Seneca’s life, we see as clearly as in those of many professed Christians, that it is impossible to be at once worldly and righteous. His utter failure was due to the vain attempt to combine in his own person two opposite characters—that of a Stoic and that of a courtier .... In him we see some of the most glowing pictures of the nobility of poverty combined with the most questionable avidity in the pursuit of wealth." For a convenient collection of Seneca’s resemblances to Scripture, see Farrar, ch. XV., 174-185. The most striking passages are: "A sacred spirit dwells within us, the observer and guardian of all our evil and our good ... there is no good man without God."Ep. ad Lucil. 41. Comp. 1 Cor. 3:16."Not one of us is without fault ... no man is found who can acquit himself." De Ira I.14; II. 27. Comp. 1 John 1:8. "Riches .... the greatest source of human trouble. "De Tranqu. An. 8. Comp. 1 Tim. 6:10 ."You must live for another, if you wish to live for yourself."Ep. 48. Comp. Rom. 12:10. "Let him who hath conferred a favor hold his tongue." De Benef. II.11 Comp. Matt. 6:3.

571  Col. 1:7; 4:12, 13.

572  Disc. III. 22. Comp. 1 Cor. 7:35; but also Eph. 5:28-33. Farrar, l.c., p. 213, thinks that the philosopher and the apostle agree in recommending celibacy as "a counsel of perfection." But this is the Roman Catholic, not the Scripture view.

573  Discourses, III. 10. Here E. discusses the manner in which we ought to bear sickness.

574  The only point about which the Stoics were undecided was whether all souls would last until that time as separate souls, or whether, as Chrysippus held, only the souls of the wise would survive."Zeller, l.c., p. 205.

575  Disc. IV. 7: "Through madness (uJpo maniva") it is possible for a man to be so disposed towards these things and through habit(uJpo; e[qou"), as the Galileans." By Galileans he no doubt means Christians, and the allusion is rather contemptuous, like the allusion of Marcus Aurelius to the martyrs, with this difference that the emperor attributes to obstinacy what Epictetus attributes to "habit." But Schweighäuser (II. 913 sq.) suspects that the reading uJpo; e[qou" is false, and that Arrian wrote uJpo; ajponoiva" , wJ" oiJ Gal., so that, Epictetus ascribed to the Christians fury and desperation or dementia. To the Greeks the gospel is foolishness, 1 Cor. 1:22.

576  According to less probable accounts he died of suicide, or of poison administered to him by order of his son, Commodus. See Renan, p. 485.

577  "Quid me fletis, et non magis de pestilentia et communi morte cogitatis?" Capitolinus, M. Aurelius.

578  Medit. v. 31.

579  So Renan, Marc-Aurèle, p. 488, without qualification: "Avec lui, la philosophie a régné. Un moment, grâce à lui, le monde a été gouverné par l’homme le meilleur et le plus grand de son siècle." But elsewhere he puts Antoninus Pius above Aurelius. "Of the two, " he says (Conférences d’Angleterre, translated by Clara Erskine Clement, p. 140 sq.): "I consider Antonine the greatest. His goodness did not lead him into faults: he was not tormented with that internal trouble which disturbed, without ceasing, the heart of his adopted son. This strange malady, this restless study of himself, this demon of scrupulousness, this fever of perfection, are signs of a less strong and distinguished nature. As the finest thoughts are those which are not written, Antonins had in this respect also a superiority over Marcus Aurelius. But let us add, that we should be ignorant of Antonine, if Marcus Aurelius had not transmitted to us that exquisite portrait of his adopted father, in which he seems to have applied himself through humility, to painting the picture of a better man than himself."

580  Medit. II. 13.

581  IV. 17.

582  IV. 26, 27.

583  III. 5

584  IX. 4.

585  . IX. 5.

586  V. 10.

587  IV. 23.

588   IV. 34, 35.

589  XII. 21.

590   IX. 2, 3; XI. 3.

591  The significant title of Renan’s book is Marc-Aurèle et la fin du monde antique.

592   XI. 3: "What a soul that is which is ready, if at any moment it must be separated from the body, and ready either to be extinguished or dispersed, or continue to exist; but so that this readiness comes from a man’s own judgment, not from mere obstinacy, as with the Christians, but considerately and with dignity, and in a way to persuade another without scenic show (ajtragwvdw")." I have availed myself in these extracts of Long’s excellent translation, but compared them with the Greek original in Gataker’s edition.

593  At his earnest request the obsequious Senate declared Faustina a goddess; she was represented in her temples with the attributes of Juno, Venus, and Ceres; and it was decreed that on the day of their nuptials the youth of both sexes should pay their vows before the altar of this adulterous woman. See Gibbon, ch. IV. A bas-relief in the museum of the Capitol at Rome represents Faustina borne to heaven by a messenger of the gods, and her husband looking at her with admiration and love. Renan apologizes for his favorite hero on the ground of the marvellous beauty of Faustina, and excuses her, because she naturally grew tired of the dull company of an ascetic philosopher!

594  Renan thus describes the sudden relapse (p. 490): "Horrible déception pourles gens de bien! Tant de vertu, tant d’amour n’aboutissant qu’à mettre le monde entre les mains d’un équarrisseur de bêtes, d’un gladiateur ! Aprés cette belle apparition d’un monde élyséen sur la terre, retomber dans l’enfer des Césars, qu’on croyaitfermé pour toujours ! La foi dans le bien fut alors perdue. Après Caligula, après Néron, après Domitien, on avait pu espérer encore. Les expériences n’ avaient pas été décisives. Maintenant, c’est après le plus grand effort de rationalisme gouvernemental, oprès quatre-ving quatre ans d’un régime excellent, après Nerva, Trajan, Adrien, Antonin., Marc-Aurèle, que le règne du mal recommence, pire que jamais. Adieu, verta; adieu, raison. Puisque Marc-Aurèle n’a pas pu sauver le monde, qui le sauvera?"

595  So Trench calls him, l.c. p. 112. The best account of his philosophy is given by Zeller in his Philosophie der Griechen, Part III., 141-182; and more briefly by Ueberweg, Hist. of Phil. (Eng. Ver.) I. 234-236.

596  Introduction to Goodwin’s ed. p. xi.

597  Adv. Colotem (an Epicurean), c. 31 (Moralia, ed. Tauchnitz, VI. 265).

598  · De Sera Numinis Vindicta. in Goodwin’s ed. vol. IV. 140-188.

599  Poikivlon ti kai; polupaqe;" kakw'n tamei'on qhsauvrisma, wJ" fhsi Dhmovkrito". Animi ne an corporis affectiones sint pejores, c. 2 (in Wyttenbach’s ed. Tom. III. p. 17).

600  See § 2, p. 9. sq.

601  Octavius, cap. 35.

602  Sacramentum militiae Christianae

603  Symbolum, or,tessera militaris.

604  Character militaris, stigma militare,

605  . Octavius, cap. 37

606  Friedlaender, II. 391: "Neben den gewaltigen Aufregungen, die Circus und Arena boten, konnte die Bühne ihre Anziehungskraft, für die Massen nur durch unedle Mittel behaupten durch rohe Belustigung und raffinirten Sinnenkitzel: und so hat sie, statt dem verderblichen Einfluss jener anderen Schauspiele die Wage zu halten, zur Corruption und Verwilderung Roms nicht am wenigsten beigetragcn."

607  De Spectac. c. 10. Comp. Minut. Felix, Octav. c. 37.

608  Gibbon, ch. XXXI. (vol. III. 384, ed. Smith).

609  Gibbon, ch. XII. (I. 646).

610  See the long list of amphitheatres in Friedlaender, II. 502-566.

611  Friedlaender, II. 370: "In der ganzen römischen Literatur begegnen wir kaum einer Aeusserung des Abscheus, den die heutige Welt gegen diese unmenschlichen Lustbarkeiten empfindet. In der Regel werden die Fechterspiele mit der grössten Gleichgiltigkeit erwähnt. Die Kinder spielen Gladiatoren wie jetzt in Andalusien Stier und Matador."

612  De Habitu Muliebri, and De Cultu Feminarum.

613  On the action of his successors, see vol. III. 122 sq.

614  Lecky, Hist. of Europ. Morals, II. 36 sq.

615  1 Cor. 7:20.

616  Apol. c. 42.

617  Exules vitae.

618  "Militamus," which proves that many Christians served in the army.

619  Apol. c. 38: "Nec ulla res aliena magis quam publica."

620  See the prayer for rulers in the newly discovered portions of the Epistle of Clement of Rome, quoted in § 66,above.

621  Gibbon, ch. 36, admits this in part. "If the decline of the Roman empire was hastened by the conversion of Constantine, the victorious religion broke the violence of the fall, and mollified the ferocious temper of the conquerors." Milman says of the Church: "If treacherous(?) to the interests of the Roman empire, it was true to those of mankind" (III. 48). Lecky (II. 153) says: "It is impossible to deny that the Christian priesthood contributed materially both by their charity and by their arbitration, to mitigate the calamities that accompanied the dissolution of the empire; and it is equally impossible to doubt that their political attitude greatly increased their power for good. Standing between the conflicting form, almost indifferent to the issue, and notoriously exempt from the passions of the combat, they obtained with the conqueror, and used for the benefit of the conquered, a degree of influence they would never have possessed had they been regarded as Roman patriots."

622  De Civ. Dei. l.c. 1.

623  "Facies, quae ad similitudinen pulchritudinis est coelestis figurata." Cod. Just. IX 17. 17.

624  Totidem esse hostes, quot servos." Seneca, Ep. 47. From the time of the Servile Wars the Romans lived in constant fear of slave conspiracies and insurrections. The slaves formed nearly one half of the population, and in some agricultural districts, as in Sicily and Calabria, they were largely in the majority.

625  Lib. v. c. 15 (ed. Fritsche. Lips. 1842, p. 257).

626  Inst. v. 14 (p. 257): "Deus enim, qui homines general et inspirat, omnes aequos, id est pares esse voluit; eandem conditionem vivendi onnibus posuit; omnes ad sapientiam genuit; omnibus immortalitatem spopondit, nemo a beneficiis coelestibus segregatur .... Nemo apud cum servus est, nemo dominus; si enim cunctis idem Pater est, aequo jure omnes liberi sumus.

627  Bulletino for 1866, p. 24. V. Schultze (Die Katakomben, P. 258) infers from the monuments that in the early Christian congregations slavery was reduced to a minimum.

628  Acta Sanct. Boll. Maj. tom. i. p. 371

629  Acta Sanct. Ian. tom. iii. 275.

630  Acta Sanct. Maj. tom. vi. 777.

631  Champagny, Charité chrét. p. 210 (as quoted by Lecky, II. 74).

632  Koinwniva tw'n ejleuqevrwn.

633  Their name eJtai'rai was an Attic euphonism for povrnai. In the temple of Aphrodite at Corinth more than a thousand hetaerae were employed as hierodulae and were the ruin of foreigners (Strabo, VIII. 6, 20). Korinqiva kovrh was a synonym for hetaera, and expressive of the acme of voluptuousness. A full account of these hetaerae and of the whole domestic life of the ancient Greeks may be found in Becker’s Charicles, translated by Metcalf, third ed. London, 1866. Becker says (p. 242), that in the period of the greatest refinement of classical Greece, "sensuality, if not the mother, was at all events the nurse of the Greek perception of the beautiful." Plato himself, even in his ideal state, despaired of restricting his citizens to the lawful intercourse of marriage.

634  Aspasia bewitched Pericles by her beauty and genius; and Socrates acknowledged his deep obligation to the instructions of a courtesan named Diotima.

635  Lecky (II. 311) derives this unnatural vice of Greece from the influence of the public games, which accustomed men to the contemplation of absolute nudity, and awoke unnatural passions. See the thirteenth book of Athenaeus, Grote on the Symposium of Plato, and the full account in Döllinger’sHeidenthum und Judenthum, 1857, p. 684 sqq. He says: "Bei den Griechen tritt das Laster der Paederastie mit allen symptomen einer grossen nationalen Krankheit, gleichsam eines ethischen Miasma auf; es zeigt. sich als ein Gefühl, das stärker and heftiger wirkte, als die Weiberliebe bei andern Völkern, massloser, leidenschaftlicher in seinem Ausbrüchen war ... In der ganzen Literatur der vorchristlichen Periode ist kaum ein Schriftsteller zu finden, der sich entschieden dagegen erklärt hätte. Vielmehr war die ganze Gesellschaft davon angesteckt, und man athmete das Miama, so zu sagen, mit der Luft ein." Even Socrates and Plato gave this morbid vice the sanction of their great authority, if not in practice, at least in theory. Comp. Xenophon’s Mem. VIII. 2, Plato’s Charmides, and his descriptions of Eros, and Döllinger, l.c. p. 686 sq. Zeno, the founder of the austere sect of Stoics, was praised for the moderation with which he practiced this vice.

636  Chapter XLIV., where he discusses at length the Roman code of laws.

637  Lecky, II. 321.

638  Gibbon (ch. XLIV.) confirms the statement by several examples, to which more might be added. Maecenas, "qui uxores millies duxit" (Seneca, Ep. 114) was as notorious for his levity in forming and dissolving the nuptial tie, as famous for his patronage of literature and art. Martial (Epigr. VI. 7), though in evident poetical exaggeration, speaks of ten husbands in one month. Juvenal (Satir. VI. 229) exposes a matron, who in five years submitted to the embraces of eight husbands. Jerome (Ad Gerontiam) "saw at Rome a triumphant husband bury his twenty-first wife, who had interred twenty-two of his less sturdy predecessors." These are extreme cases, and hardly furnish a sufficient basis for a general judgment of the state of society in Rome, much less in the provinces. We should not forget the noble and faithful Roman women even in the days of imperial corruption, as Mallonia, who preferred suicide to the embraces of Tiberius; Helvia, the mother of Seneca, and Paulina his wife, who opened her vein to accompany him to the grave; the elder Arria who, when her husband Paetus was condemned to death under Claudius (42), and hesitated to commit suicide, plunged the dagger in her breast, and, drawing it out, said to him with her dying breath: "My Paetus, it does not pain" (Paete, non dolet); and her worthy daughter, Caecinia Arria, the wife of Thrasea, who was condemned to death (66), and her granddaughter Fannia, who accompanied her husband Helvidius Priscus twice into banishment, and suffered a third for his sake after his execution (93). See Pliny, Epist. III.16; Tacitus, Ann. XVI. 30-34; Friedlaender, I. 459 sqq. . Nor should we overlook the monumental evidences of conjugal devotion and happiness in numerous Roman epitaphs. See Friedlaender, I. 463. Yet sexual immorality reached perhaps its lowest depths in imperial Rome, far lower than in the worst periods of the dark ages, or in England under Charles II., or in France under Louis XIV. and XV. And it is also certain, as Lecky says (II. 326), "that frightful excesses of unnatural passion, of which the most corrupt of modern courts present no parallel, were perpetrated with but little concealment on the Palatine." Prenuptial unchastity of men was all but universal among the Romans, according to Cicero’s testimony. Even Epictetus, the severest among the Stoic moralists, enjoins only moderation, not entire abstinence, from this form of vice. Lampridius relates of Alexander Severus, who otherwise legislated against vice, that he provided his unmarried provincial governors with a concubine as a part of their outfit, because "they could not exist without one" (quod sine concubinis esse non possent)."

639  Ch. XLIV. See a good chapter on the exposure of children in Brace, Gesta Christi, p. 72-83.

640  Among the converted courtesans of the ancient church in the Roman calendar are St. Mary Magdalene, St. Mary of Egypt, St. Afra, St. Pelagia, St. Thais, and St. Theodota. See Charles de Bussy Les Courtisanes saintes. St. Vitalius, it is said, visited dens of vice every night, gave money to the inmates to keep them from sin, and offered up prayers for their conversion. A curious story is told of St. Serapion, who went to such a place by appointment, and prayed and prayed and prayed till the unfortunate courtesan was converted and fell half dead at his feet. See Lecky, II. 338.

641  This beautiful idea (often attributed to Matthew Henry, the commentator) was first suggested by Augustin. De Genesi ad Literam, l. IX. c. 13 (in Migne’s ed. of Opera, III.col. 402), and fully stated by Peter the Lombard, Sentent. l. II. Dist. XVIII. (de formatione mulieris): "Mulier de viro, non de qualibet parte corporis viri, sed de latere eius formata est, ut ostenderetur quia in consortium creabatur dilectionis, ne forte, si fuisset de capite facta, viro ad dominationem videretur preferenda, aut si de pedibus, ad servitutem subjicienda. Quia igitur viro nec domina, nec ancilla parabatur, sed socia, nec capite, nec de pedibus, sed de latere fuerat producenda, ut juxta se ponendam cognosceret quam de suo latere sumptam didicisset." And again by Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theol. Pars. I. Quaest. XCII. Art. III. (in Migne’s ed. l.col. 1231).

642  Eph. 5:28–32. The Vulgate translates to; musthvrion in ver. 32 by sacramentum, and thus furnished a quasi-exegetical foundation to the Catholic doctrine of the sacrament of marriage. The passage is so used by the Council of Trent and in the Roman Catechism. Ellicott (in loc.) judges that "the words cannot possibly be urged in favor of the sacramental nature of marriage, but that the very fact of the comparison does place marriage on a far holier and higher basis than modern theories are disposed to admit." Bengel refers "the mystery " not to marriage, but to the union of Christ with the church ("non matrimonium humanum sed ipsa conjunctio Christi et ecclesiae "). Meyer refers it to the preceding quotation from Genesis; Estius and Ellicott to the intimate conjugal relationship.

643  Eujch; kai; ajnavgnwsi".

644  Paedag. III. 250

645  Ad Uxorem, l II.c. 8.

646  Ad Polyc. c. 5. In the Syr. version, c. 2.

647  Tert. Ad Uxor. II. 8; Comp. De Monog. c. 11; De Pudic. c. 4.

648  Vivatis in Deo. See the picture in Northcote and Brownlow, II. 303. In other and later pictures the ceremony is presided over by Christ, who either crowns the married couple, or is represented by his monogram. Ibid. p. 302.

649  According to 1 Cor. 7:12, 16.

650  Legat. 33: JO deuvtero" gavmo" eujprephv" ejsti moiseiva. According to Origen, bigamists may be saved, but will not be crowned by Christ (Hom. XVII. in Luc.). Theophilus Ad Autol. III. 15, says that with the Christians ejgkravteia ajskei'tai, monogamiva threi'tai. Perhaps even Irenaeus held a similar view, to judge from the manner in which he speaks of the woman of Samaria (John 4:7), "quae in uno viro non mansit, sed fornicata est in multis nuptiis." Adv. Haer. III. 17, § 2

651  Comp. Hauber: Tertullian’s Kampf gegen die zweite Ehe, in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1845, p. 607 sqq.

652  De Monog. 1: "Haeretici nuptias auferunt, psychici ingerunt; illi nec semel, isti non semel nubunt."

653  De Exhort Cast. c. 11: "Duplex rubor est, quia in secundo matramonio duae uxores eundem circumstant maritum, una spiritu, alia in carne. Nequeenim pristinam poteris odisse, cui etiam religiosiorem reservas affectionem ut jam receptae apud Dominum, pro cujus spiritu postulas, pro qua oblationes annuas reddis. Stabis ergo ad Dominum cum tot uxoribus quot in oratione commemoras, et offeres pro duabus," etc.

654  De Exhort Cast. c. 9:Leges videntur matrimonii et stupri differentiam facere, per diversitatem illiciti, non per conditionem rei ipsius .... Nuptiae ipsae ex eo constant quod est stuprum."

655  "Non prohibemus secundas nuptias, " says Ambrose, "sed non suademus." None of the fathers recommends remarriage or even approves of it. Jerome represented the prevailing view of the Nicene age. He took the lowest view of marriage as a mere safeguard against fornication and adultery, and could conceive of no other motive for second or third marriage but animal passion. "The first Adam, " he says, "had one wife; the second Adam had no wife. Those who approve of digamy hold forth a third Adam, who was twice married, whom they follow" (Contra Jovin. 1). Gregory of Nazianzum infers from the analogy of marriage to the union of Christ with his church that second marriage is to be reproved, as there is but one Christ and one church (Orat. XXXI).

656  Apol. I. 27 and 29.

657  Apol. c. 35

658  Inst. Div. vi. 20 (p. 48 ed. Lips): "Let no one imagine that even this is allowed, to strangle newly-born children, which is the greatest impiety; for God breathes into their souls for life, and not for death. But men (that there may be no crime with which they may not pollute their hands) deprive souls as yet innocent and simple of the light which they themselves have not given. Can they be considered innocent who expose their own offspring as a prey to dogs, and as far as it depends upon themselves, kill them in a more cruel manner than if they had strangled them? Who can doubt that he is impious who gives occasion for the pity of others? For, although that which he has wished should befall the child—namely, that it should be brought up—he has certainly consigned his own offspring either to servitude or to the brothel? But who does not understand, who is ignorant what things may happen, or are accustomed to happen, in the case of each sex, even through error? For this is shown by the example of OEdipus alone, confused with twofold guilt. It is therefore as wicked to expose as it is to kill. But truly parricides complain of the scantiness of their means, and allege that they have not enough for bringing up more children; as though, in truth, their means were in the power of these who possess them, or God did not daily make the rich poor, and the poor rich. Wherefore, if any one on account of poverty shall be unable to bring up children, it is better to abstain from marriage than with wicked hands to mar the work of God."

659  For further details see Brace, l.c. 79 sqq., and Terme et Monfalcon, Hist. des enfants trouvés. Paris, 1840.

660  Pro Archia poeta, c. 11: "Trahimur omnes laudis studio, et optimus quisque maxime gloria ducitur."

661  Tapeinov". tapeinovfrwn,tapeinovth", tapeinofrosuvnh.

662  Matt. 5:23, 24, 44; 6:12; 18:21. Rom. 12:17, 19, 20. 1 Cor. 13:7. I Thess. 5:15. 1 Pet. 3:9.

663  Prom. Vinct. v. 1005, Comp. 1040. Many passages of similar import from Homer, Hesiod, Sophocles, Euripedes, etc., see quoted on p. 81 sqq. of the article of Schaubach referred to above.

664  De Offic. I. 25: "Nihil enim laudabilius, nihil magno et praeclaro viro dignius placabilitate et clementia."

665  Comp. Seneca, De ira II. 32: "Magni animi est injurias despicere. Illemagnus et nobilis est, qui more magnae ferae latratus minutorum canum securus exaudit."

666  Cristofovroi, qeofovroi

667   Gravmmata tetupwmevna or koinwnikav: epistolae or literae formatae; so called, because composed after a certain tuvpo" or forma, to guard against frequent forgeries.

668  Comp. James 1:27; Hebr. 13:1-3, 16.

669  Comelius, in Euseb. H. E. VI. 43.

670  De Morte Peregr. c. 13.

671  Dionysius of Corinth, in Eus. IV. 23.

672  Ad Scapulam, c. 1: Ita enim disciplina jubemur diligere inimicos quoque,et orare pro iis qui nos persequuntur, ut haec sit perfecta et propria bonitas nostra, non communis. Amicos enim diligere omnium est, inimicos autem solorum Christianorum."

673  Nosocomia, Ptochotrophia, Xenodochia, Cherotrophia, Orphanotrophia, Brephotrophia, Gerontocomia (for old men).

674  See Uhlhorn, Book III.ch. 4 (p. 319 sqq.).

675  De Orat. Domin. 33: "Cito orationes ad Deum adscendunt, quas ad Deum merita operis nostri imponunt."De Lapsis 17:"Dominus orandus est, Dominus nostra satisfactione placandus est."Epist. xl. 2: "Preces et orationes, quibus Dominus longa et continua satisfactione placandus est."

676  Comp. Acts 13:2; 14:23; 2 Cor. 6:5

677  Semijejunium, abstinentia.

678  Matt. 9:15.

679  Luke 6:12. Acts 16:25.

680  From quatuor tempora.

681  Comp. Matt. 9:15; Gal. 4:9; 5:1.

682  Xhrofagivai, aridus victus. See Tertullian, De Jejuu, 15; Hippolytus. Philos. VIII. 19.

683  And it occurs occasionally even among Christian nations. The corpse of the richest merchant prince of New York, Alexander T. Stewart (d. 1876), was stolen from St. Mark’s grave-yard, and his splendid mausoleum in Garden City on Long Island is empty.

684  Iliad XXIII. 81-88, in Bryant’s translation (IT. 284)-

685  Epist, XLIX. ad Arsacium, the pagan high-priest in Galatia.

686  Eus. IX. 8.

687  Eusebius, H. E. V. I.

688  Instit. Div. Vl.c. 12

689  Testim. l. III.c. 58

690  Comp. 1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19; 2 Cor. 6:16. Burial was the prevailing Oriental and even the earlier Roman custom before the empire, and was afterwards restored, no doubt under the influence of Christianity Minucius Felix says (Octav. c. 34): "Veterem et meliorem consuetudinem humandi frequentamus." Comp. Cicero, De Leg. II. 22; Pliny, Hist. Nat. VII. 54; Augustin, De Civ Dei I. 12, 13. Sometimes dead Christians were burned during the persecution by the heathen to ridicule their hope of a resurrection.

691  Comp. Gen. 23:19; Matt. 27:60; John 11:17; Acts 5:6; 8:2.

692  Acts 9:37.

693  Matt. 27:59; Luke 23:53; John 11:44.

694  John 19:39 sq.; 12:7.

695  We have the funeral orations of Eusebius at the death of Constantine, of Gregory of Nazianzum on his father, brother, and sister, of Ambrose on Theodosius.

696  "Pro anima ejus orat!" Compare, however, the prevailing cheerful tone of the epigraphs in the catacombs, p. 301-303.

697  Koimhthvria, cimeteria, dormitoria, areae.

698  From his Iam maesta quiesce querela, the concluding part of his tenth Cathemerinon, Opera, ed. Obbarius (1845), p. 41; Schaff, Christ in Song, p. 506 (London ed.). Another version by E. Cagwall: "Cease, ye tearful mourners, Thus your hearts to rend: Death is life’s beginning Rather than its end."