20.1. The Persistence of Paganism
THE fourth and fifth centuries A.D. were marked by the rise of no new school of metaphysics and were illustrated by only one pre-eminent philosopher. In theology the period can boast great names, perhaps the greatest since the Apostles of Christ, but in philosophy it is singularly barren. Plotinus (A.D. 205-270), the chief exponent and practical founder of that reconstruction of Greek philosophy known as Neoplatonism, had indeed many disciples; but Proclus the Lycian (A.D. 412-485) is the only one of them who can be said to have advanced in any marked degree the study of pure thought.
The mind of the age was inclined towards religion, or at least religious idealism, rather than towards metaphysics. Nor is this matter for surprise when we remember the spiritual revival of the centuries preceding, a movement which began under the Flavians and had by no means spent its force when Constantine came to the throne. From an early period in the Empire, and more especially under the Severi, men were turning in disgust and disillusion to religion as a refuge from the evils of the world in which they lived, as a sphere in which they could realise dreams of better things than those begotten of their present discontent. This fact explains the quickening of the older cults and the ready adoption of new ones, which issued in a promiscuous pantheon and a bewildering medley of religious rites and practices.
Then came philosophy and sought to bring order out of chaos. It tried, and with some success, to clear away superstition and to raise the believer in gods many to a living communion with the One divine of which they were but different manifestations. There is no doubt that Proclus, who unified to some extent the heterogeneous system of Plotinus, was engaged in the proper business of philosophy, viz. the contemplation of metaphysical truth; there is equally no doubt that in practice the philosophy of the age was addressed to the same human need as its religion. And that need was a better knowledge of God, It is most significant that the final rally of the old religions was under the banner of a philosophy: Julian and his supporters were Neo-Platonists.
We may therefore claim that the temper of the times was on the whole religious, concerned chiefly with man's relation to God; and the fact that the Church had recently achieved so signal a victory is in itself an indication that the best intellects had gravitated towards her. Thus the highest thought was Christian, finding expression in those systematised ideas about God which are summed up in the word theology.
It would however be a grave mistake to suppose that the age which saw the triumph of the Christian idea and the establishment of Christianity as the state religion was entirely of one mind and Christian to the core. Side by side with the great current of Christian thought and belief, that was now running free after a long subterranean course, there flowed a large volume of purely pagan opinion or preconception, such interfiltration as took place being carried on by unseen channels. Thus while eager and courageous spirits were contending for the Faith with all kinds of weapons against all kinds of foes throughout the Empire, men, and some of them Christian men, were writing and speaking as though no such thing as Christianity had come into the world. And the age that witnessed the conversion of Constantine and inherited the benefits of that act was an age that in the East listened to the interminable hexameters of Nonnus's Dionysiaca, which contain no conscious reference to Christianity; that laughed over the epigrams of Cyrus; that delighted in many frankly pagan love-stories and saw nothing surprising in the attribution of one of them, the Aethiopica, to the Christian bishop Heliodorus; that in the West applauded the panegyrists when they compared emperor and patron to the hierarchy of gods and heroes ; and that in extremity found its consolation in philosophy rather than in the Gospel.
This persistence of paganism in the face of obvious defeat was due to a number of co-operating causes. Roman patriotism, which saw in worship of the gods and the secret name of Rome the only safeguard of the eternal city; the cults of Cybele, Isis, Mithra, and Orpheus, with their dreams of immortality; the stern tradition of the Stoic emperor Marcus; the lofty ideals of the Neoplatonists — all these factors helped to delay the final triumph. But probably the strongest and most persistent conservative influence was that of the rhetoric by which European education was dominated then as it was by logic in the Middle Ages, and as it has been since the Renaissance by humane letters.
Rhetoric lay in wait for the boy as he left the hands of the grammarian, and was his companion at every stage of his life. It went with him through school and university; it formed his taste and trained or paralysed his mind; but more than this, it opened to him the avenues of success and reward. For although by the fourth century oratory had lost its old political power, rhetoric still remained a breadwinning business. It was always lucrative, and it led to high position, even to the consulship, as in the case of Ausonius the rhetor (A.D. 309-392) , who was Gratian's tutor and afterwards quaestor, praefect of Gaul, and finally consul. Here is cause enough to account for the long life and paramount influence of rhetoric in the schools. Now the instrument with which both schoolmaster and professor fashioned their pupils was pagan mythology and pagan history. The great literatures of the past supplied the theme for declamation and exercise. Rules of conduct were deduced from maxims that passed under the names of Pythagoras, Solon, Socrates, and Marcus Aurelius. It was inevitable that the thoughts of the grown man should be expressed in terms of paganism when the education of the youth was upon these lines.
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"It was inevitable that the thoughts of the grown man should be expressed in terms of paganism when the education of the youth was upon these lines."
That sounds very familiar.