It was the custom of Napoleon while in exile at St. Helena to converse almost daily about the ill.u.s.trious men of antiquity and to compare them with himself. On one occasion while talking upon his favorite theme with an officer, one of the companions of his exile, he suddenly stopped and asked: "But can you tell me who Jesus Christ was?" In reply, the officer candidly confessed that he had never thought much about the Nazarene.
"Well, then," said Napoleon, "I will tell you." The ill.u.s.trious captive then compared Jesus with the heroes of antiquity and finally with himself. The comparison demonstrated how paltry and contemptible was everything human when viewed in the light of the divine character and sublime achievements of the Man of Nazareth. "I think I understand somewhat of human nature," said Napoleon, "and I tell you all these were men, and I am a man, but not one is like Him; Jesus Christ was more than man. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded great empires; but upon what did the creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone founded His empire upon love, and to this very day millions would die for Him."[133]
We have every reason to believe that the homage paid the character of Jesus by Napoleon was not merely the product of his brain, but was also the humble tribute of his heart. When the disasters of the Russian campaign broke upon his fortunes, when "the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter"s withered leaves," the iron-hearted, granite-featured man who had "conquered the Alps and had mingled the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags,"
only laughed and joked. But, while contemplating the life and death of Jesus, he became serious, meditative and humble. And when he came to write his last will and testament, he made this sentence the opening paragraph: "I die in the Roman Catholic Apostolical religion, in the bosom of which I was born more than fifty years ago."[134] The Christianity of Napoleon has been questioned. It is respectfully submitted that only an ungenerous criticism will attribute hypocrisy to this final testimony of his religious faith. The imperial courage, the grandeur of character, and the loftiness of life of the greatest of the emperors negative completely the thought of insincerity in a declaration made at a time when every earthly inducement to misrepresentation had pa.s.sed forever.
But Jesus was not the Christ, the Savior of warrior-kings alone, in the hour of death. On the battlefield of Inkerman an humble soldier fell mortally wounded. He managed to crawl to his tent before he died. When found he was lying face downward with the open Bible beside him. His right hand was glued with his lifeblood to Chapter XI., Verse 25 of St.
John. When the hand was lifted, these words, containing the ever-living promise of the Master, could be clearly traced: "I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."
PART II
_GRaeCO-ROMAN PAGANISM_
[Ill.u.s.tration: JUPITER (ANTIQUE SCULPTURE)]
CHAPTER I
GRaeCO-ROMAN PAGANISM
_Extent of the Roman Empire at the Time of Christ._--The policy of ancient Rome was to extend and hold her possessions by force of arms.
She made demands; and if they were not complied with, she spurned the medium of diplomacy and appealed for arbitrament to the G.o.d of battles.
Her achievements were the achievements of war. Her glories were the glories of combat. Her trophies were the treasures of conquered provinces and chained captives bowed in grief and shame. Her theory was that "might makes right"; and in vindication and support of this theory she imbued her youth with a martial spirit, trained them in the use of arms from childhood to manhood, and stationed her legions wherever she extended her empire. Thus, military discipline and the fortune of successful warfare formed the basis of the prosperity of Rome.
At the period of which we write, her invincible legions had accomplished the conquest of the civilized earth. Britain, Gaul, Spain, Italy, Illyria, Greece, Asia Minor, Africa, Egypt, and the islands of the Mediterranean--six hundred thousand square leagues of the most fertile territory in the world--had been subdued to the Roman will and had become obedient to Roman decrees. "The empire of the Romans," says Gibbon, "filled the world, and when that empire fell into the hands of a single person, the world became a safe and dreary prison for his enemies. The slave of imperial despotism, whether he was compelled to drag his gilded chain in Rome and the Senate, or to wear out a life of exile on the barren rock of Seriphus, or on the frozen banks of the Danube, expected his fate in silent despair. To resist was fatal, and it was impossible to fly. On every side he was encompa.s.sed by a vast extent of sea and land, which he could never hope to traverse without being discovered, seized, and restored to his irritated master. Beyond the frontiers, his anxious view could discover nothing, except the ocean, inhospitable deserts, hostile tribes of barbarians, of fierce manners and unknown language, or dependent kings who would gladly purchase the emperor"s protection by the sacrifice of an obnoxious fugitive.
"Wherever you are," said Cicero to the exiled Marcellus, "remember that you are equally within the power of the conqueror.""
In obedience to a universal law of development and growth, when the Roman empire had reached the limits of physical expansion, when Roman conquest was complete, when Roman laws and letters had reached approximate perfection, and when Roman civilization had attained its crown and consummation, Roman decline began. The birth of the empire marked the beginning of the end. It was then that the shades of night commenced to gather slowly upon the Roman world; and that the Roman ship of state began to move slowly but inevitably, upon a current of indescribable depravity and degeneracy, toward the abyss. The Roman giant bore upon his shoulders the treasures of a conquered world; and Bacchus-like, reeled, crowned and drunken, to his doom.
No period of human history is so marked by l.u.s.t and licentiousness as the history of Rome at the beginning of the Christian era. The Roman religion had fallen into contempt. The family instinct was dead, and the marital relation was a mockery and a shame. The humane spirit had vanished from Roman hearts, and slavery was the curse of every province of the empire. The destruction of infants and the gladiatorial games were mere epitomes of Roman brutality and degeneracy. Barbarity, corruption and dissoluteness pervaded every form of Roman life.
A perfect picture of the depravity of the times about which we write may be had from a perusal of the Roman satirists, Tacitus and Juvenal. The ordinary Roman debauchee was not the sole victim of their wrath. They chiseled the hideous features of the Caesars with a finer stroke than that employed by Phidias and Praxiteles in carving statues of the Olympic G.o.ds.
The purpose of Part II of this volume is to give coloring and atmosphere to the picture of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus by describing: (1) The Graeco-Roman religion; and (2) the Graeco-Roman social life, during the century preceding and the century following the birth of the Savior.
1.--THE GRaeCO-ROMAN RELIGION
_Origin and Multiplicity of the Roman G.o.ds._--The Romans acquired their G.o.ds by inheritance, by importation, and by manufacture. The Roman race sprang from a union of Etruscans, Latins, and Sabines; and the G.o.ds of these different tribes, naturalized and adopted, were the first deities of Rome. Chief among them were Ja.n.u.s, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. Other early Roman deities were Sol, the Sun, and Luna the Moon, both of Sabine origin; Mater Matuta, Mother of Day; Divus Pater Tiberinus, or Father Tiber; Fontus, the G.o.d of fountains; Vesta, the G.o.ddess of the hearth; and the Lares and Penates, household G.o.ds.
These primitive Italian divinities were at first mere abstractions, simple nature-powers; but later they were h.e.l.lenized and received plastic form. The Greeks and Romans had a common ancestry and the amalgamation of their religions was an easy matter. The successive steps in the process of blending the two forms of worship are historical. From c.u.mae, one of the oldest Greek settlements in Italy, the famous Sibylline books found their way to Rome; and through these books the Greek G.o.ds and their worship established themselves in Italy. The date of the arrival of several of the h.e.l.lenic deities is well ascertained. The first temple to Apollo was vowed in the year 351 A.U.C. To check a lingering epidemic of pestilence and disease, the worship of aesculapius was introduced from Epidaurus into Rome in the year 463. In 549, Cybele, the Idaean mother, was imported from Phrygia, in the shape of a black stone, and was worshiped at Rome by order of the Sibylline books.
In various ways, the h.e.l.lenization of the Roman religion was accomplished. The Decemviri, to whom the consulting of the Sibylline books was intrusted, frequently interpreted them to mean that certain foreign G.o.ds should be invited at once to take up their residence in Rome.
The introduction of Greek literature also resulted in the importation of Greek G.o.ds. The tragedies of Livius Andronicus and the comedies of Naevius, founded upon Greek legends of G.o.ds and heroes, were presented in Rome in the later years of the third century B.C. Fragments of Greek literature also began to make their way into the Capital about this time. Philosophers, rhetoricians, and grammarians flocked from Greece to Italy and brought with them the works of Homer, Hesiod and the Greek philosophers, whose writings were permeated with Greek mythology.
Grecian sculpture was as potent as Grecian literature in transforming and h.e.l.lenizing the religion of Rome. The subjugation of the Greek colonies in the south of Italy and the conquests of Greek cities like Syracuse and Corinth in the East, brought together in Rome the masterpieces of the Greek sculptors.
A determined effort was made from time to time by the patriotic Romans to destroy h.e.l.lenic influence and to preserve in their original purity early Roman forms of worship. But all attempts were futile. The average Roman citizen, though practical and unimaginative, was still enamored of the beautiful myths and exquisite statues of the Greek G.o.ds. And it was only by h.e.l.lenizing their own deities that they could bring themselves into touch and communion with the h.e.l.lenic spirit. The aesthetical and fascinating influence of the Greek language, literature and sculpture, was overwhelming. "At bottom, the Roman religion was based only on two ideas--the might of the G.o.ds who were friendly to Rome, and the power of the ceremonies over the G.o.ds. How could a religion, so poverty-stricken of thought, with its troops of phantom G.o.ds, beingless shadows and deified abstractions, remain unscathed and unaltered when it came in contact with the profusion of the Greek religion, with its circle of G.o.ds, so full of life, so thoroughly anthropomorphised, so deeply interwoven into everything human?"[135]
Not only from Greece but from every conquered country, strange G.o.ds were brought into Italy and placed in the Roman pantheon. When a foreign city was besieged and captured, the Romans, after a preliminary ceremony, invited the native G.o.ds to leave their temples and go to Rome where, they were a.s.sured, they would have much grander altars and would receive a more enthusiastic worship. It was a religious belief of the ancient masters of the world that G.o.ds could be enticed from their allegiance and induced to emigrate. In their foreign wars, the Romans frequently kept the names of their own G.o.ds secret to prevent the enemy from bribing them.
The G.o.ds at Rome increased in number just in proportion that the empire expanded. The admission of foreign territory brought with it the introduction of strange G.o.ds into the Roman worship.
When the Romans needed a new G.o.d and could not find a foreign one that pleased them, they deliberately manufactured a special deity for the occasion. In the breaking up and multiplication of the G.o.d-idea, they excelled all the nations of antiquity. It was the duty of the pontiffs to manufacture a divinity whenever an emergency arose and one was needed. The G.o.d-casting business was a regular employment of the Decemviri and the Quindecemviri; and a perusal of the pages of Roman history reveals these G.o.d-makers actively engaged in their workshops making some new deity to meet some new development in Roman life.
The extent of the polytheistic notions of the ancient Romans is almost inconceivable to the modern mind. Not only were the great forces of nature deified, but the simplest elements of time, of thought, and action. Ordinary mental abstractions were clothed with the attributes of G.o.ds. Mens (Mind), Pudicitia (Chast.i.ty), Pietas (Piety), Fides (Fidelity), Concordia (Concord), Virtus (Courage), Spes (Hope), and Voluptas (Pleasure), were all deities of the human soul, and were enthusiastically worshiped by the Romans. A single human action was frequently broken into parts each of which had a little G.o.d of its own.
The beginning of a marriage had one deity and its conclusion, another.
Cunina was the cradle-G.o.ddess of a child. Statilinus, Edusa, Potnia, Paventia, Fabelinus and Catius were other G.o.ddesses who presided over other phases of its infancy. Juventas was the G.o.ddess of its youth; and, in case of loss of parents, Orbona was the G.o.ddess that protected its orphanage.
Any political development in the Roman state necessitated a new divinity to mark the change. In the early periods of their history, the Romans used cattle as a medium of exchange in buying and bartering. Pecunia was then the G.o.ddess of such exchange. But when, in later times, copper money came into use, a G.o.d called aescula.n.u.s was created to preside over the finances; and when, still later, silver money began to be used, the G.o.d Argentarius was called into being to protect the coinage. This Argentarius was naturally the son of aescula.n.u.s.
Not only the beneficent but the malign forces of nature were deified.
Pests, plagues, and tempests had their special divinities who were to be placated. "There were particular G.o.ds for every portion of a dwelling--the door, the threshold of the door, and even the hinges of the door. There was a special G.o.d for each different cla.s.s--even the most menial and the most immoral; and a special divinity for those who were afflicted in a peculiar manner, such as the childless, the maimed or the blind. There was the G.o.d of the stable, and the G.o.ddess of the horses; there were G.o.ds for merchants, artists, poets and tillers of the soil. The G.o.ds must be invoked before the harvest could be reaped; and not even a tree could be felled in the forest without supplicating the unknown G.o.d who might inhabit it."[136]
The extreme of the Roman divinity-making process was the deification of mere negative ideas. Tranquillitas Vacuna was the G.o.ddess of "doing nothing."
Not only were special actions and peculiar ideas broken up and subdivided with an appropriate divinity for each part or subdivision, but the individual G.o.ds themselves were subdivided and multiplied. It is said that there were three hundred Jupiters in Rome. This means that Jupiter was worshiped under three hundred different forms. Jupiter Pluvius, Jupiter Fulgurator, Jupiter Tonans, Jupiter Fulminator, Jupiter Imbricitor, Jupiter Serenator, were only a few designations of the supreme deity of the Romans.
It will thus be seen that polytheism was insatiable in its thirst for new and strange G.o.ds. When the G.o.d-casting business was once begun, there was no end to it. And when the Roman empire had reached its greatest expansion, and Roman public and private life had attained to complete development, the deities of the Roman religion were innumerable. No pantheon could hold them, and no Roman could remember the names of all. Temples of the G.o.ds were everywhere to be found throughout the empire; and where there were no altars or temples, certain trees, stones and rocks were decorated with garlands and worshiped as sacred places which the G.o.ds were supposed to frequent.
Thus the Roman world became crowded with holy places, and the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses became an innumerable host. Petronius makes a countrywoman from a district adjoining Rome declare that it was much easier to find a G.o.d in her neighborhood than a man. We shall see that the multiplicity of the G.o.ds was finally the cause of the decay and ruin of the Roman religion.
_The Roman Priesthood._--The Roman priesthood was composed of several orders of pontiffs, augurs, keepers of the Sibylline books, Vestal virgins, epulos, salians, lupercals, etc.
Fifteen pontiffs exercised supreme control in matters of religion. They were consecrated to the service of the G.o.ds; and all questions of doubtful religious interpretation were submitted to the judgment of their tribunal.
Fifteen learned and experienced augurs observed the phenomena of nature and studied the flight of birds as a means of directing the actions of the state.
Fifteen keepers of the Sibylline books read the pages of their treasures and from them divined coming events.
Six Vestals, immaculate in their virginity, guarded the Roman sacred fire, and presided at the national hearthstone of the Roman race.
Seven epulos conducted the solemn processions and regulated the religious ceremonies at the annual festivals of the G.o.ds.
Fifteen flamens were consecrated to the service of separate deities.
Those of Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus were held in the highest esteem.
The Flamen Dialis, or priest of Jupiter, was loaded down with religious obligations and restrictions. He was not permitted to take an oath, to ride, to have anything tied with knots on his person, to look at a prisoner, see armed men, or to touch a dog, a goat, or raw flesh, or yeast. He was not allowed to bathe in the open air; nor could he spend the night outside the city. He could resign his office only on the death of his wife. The Salians were priests of Mars, who, at festivals celebrated in honor of the war-G.o.d, danced in heavy armor, and sang martial hymns.
_Roman Forms of Worship._--Roman worship was very elaborate and ceremonial. It consisted of sacrifices, vows, prayers, and festivals.
With the exception of the ancient Hebrews, the Romans were the greatest formalists and ritualists of antiquity. Every act of Roman public and private life was supposed to be framed in accordance with the will of the G.o.ds. There was a formula of prayer adapted to every vicissitude of life. Caesar never mounted his chariot, it is said, that he did not repeat a formula three times to avert dangers.