Between Heathenism and Christianity

Between Heathenism and Christianity - Being a translation of Seneca's De Providentia, and Plutarch's De sera numinis vindicta, together with notes, additional extracts from these writers and two essays on Graeco-Roman life in the first century after Christ.

It is admitted by students of history of every shade of belief that the origin of Christianity and its rapid spread over the ancient world is the most remarkable fact in the recorded annals of the human race. When we remember that it was, from the first, more or less closely identified with the despised religion of the despised Jews; that largely for this reason it had to make its way against a united front, presented by the learned and intelligent in the whole gentile world, while the Jews themselves almost unanimously repudiated it; that the most efficiently organized government that had existed until then, was indifferent or hostile; that it set before the heathen world a condition of society in which all current economic ideas were transformed, and that it demanded a complete renunciation of its time-honored creeds, we may well ask in amazement, How came these things to pass? Second in order among the great facts of ancient history is the growth of the Roman Empire. Here we see a people at first occupying a few square miles of territory, compelled for nearly fifteen generations to exert themselves to the utmost to keep their enemies at bay, suddenly bursting the barriers that confined them and in less than half this time bringing under their scepter almost the whole of the then known 6world. Romes conquests have been exceeded in rapidity, but they have never been equalled in permanence. The triumphs of Christianity and those of Roman arms stand in a certain relation to each other, notwithstanding the fact that the latter were gained with material, the former with spiritual, weapons. When the conquests of the one were ended, the other began. When material forces had spent themselves, men began to turn, reluctantly indeed, to spiritual agencies and undertook to subdue the powers of darkness that had so long held sway in the human breast. While the arms of Rome were engaged in overcoming the martial opposition of her enemies, Greece was occupied with the effort to subjugate the passions of men by the weapons of the intellect. By the time Roman conquests had reached their limits it had been demonstrated that Greece, too, could go no farther. But Greece did not fail because there were no more worlds to conquer: it was because men had learned that her weapons were powerless to compass the end in view. He that ruleth his own spirit is mightier than he that taketh a city, was the lesson that the best of the Greek philosophers strove to impress upon men, but strove in vain. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 60831
Author: Plutarch, 46-120?
Release Date: Dec 2, 2019
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Contributor (Author): Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, 4? BCE-65, Super, Charles William, 1842-1939