Between the Christian and Roman ideals of the early centuries A.D. there is a disjunction which is perfect. Rome stands for corpor...ate civic strength, Christianity (at least in its early stages when the Second Advent was a daily possibility) abominates all that is secular; Rome stands for a disciplined society in which tolerance allows all sorts to live together in peace, Christianity is a narrowly exclusive sect which shrinks apart. When Rome was doing all she could to hold together society and civilization, Christianity was becoming chief of the forces of disintegration. In the end Christianity triumphed but who shall say that the enemy was Rome? No doubt it shed (as unfeelingly as any fledgling) the shell which had fostered it; but the shell had been cracked from outside. Now it is a momentous happening that the beginnings of the Christian and the Roman imperial eras nearly coincide in time. The two were enemies from birth. The Roman Empire is dead, the Christian Church lives on. The Empire began in pride and splendor, the Church in humility and insignificance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In a word, the Roman lacked the humanitas (the sure sense of human values and of the part played by man in the universe) which mad...e the Greek civilization great. The Greek saw life steadily and saw it whole; the Roman saw it steadily, but his vision was strictly limited, and it did not occur to him to ask whether he saw life whole. He saw life in terms of action and action in terms of his own needs; he never attained by himself to con sciousness of the world of thought and to the vision of the ideals by which all right action must be governed. It is true and fortunate for posterity that he was inspired by Greek idealism to much of his greatest work, but in himself he remained the realist of the Western world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »