in a new city, without any of the old glorious associations between the religion and the prosperity of the Roman people; and some feelings of resentment against that populace, who revenged themselves for the emperor's indifference to their splendid rites and festivals by sarcastic language and satiric verses. But, in fact, the senatorial families who were attached to the person or the fortunes of the emperor, all whose opinions were most inclined to follow those of the court, migrated to Constantinople; where, it is said, they found, by the happy provision of the emperor, their palaces built so exactly on the model of their former habitations in Rome, that they scarcely seemed to have changed their residence:-Their abandonment of the old capital would naturally concentrate the strength, as well as inflame the animosity of those who adhered to the ancient institutions. Rome, indeed, gradually sank from the first to the fourth or fifth city of the empire. In Italy, Milan and Ravenna enjoyed more of the presence of the Western Emperor. In the proud minds of the Romans this gradual disparagement of the ancient capital would induce them to cling with fonder attachment to whatever reminded them of their ancient pre-eminence. The new religion would gradually become connected with the new order of things; and that spirit of party be gradually formed which first rallies around old institutions when they are menaced with decay and ruin.

The reign of Constantine and his successors was that of equal toleration, though not of equal favour to the two religions. Paganism was still universally dominant in all the public and most of the private transactions of life. It appears in coins, medals, inscriptions, buildings.

'Constantine died in 337, aged sixty-three years, and having reigned more than thirty. Scarcely had he expired when paganism seized upon his memory, though he had been baptized, and his profession of faith was notorious throughout the empire. According to custom the senate placed him in the rank of those gods whom he had despised ... blood flowed on the altars, and incense arose in the temples to his honour. Eutropius says, "inter deos meruit referri," an extraordinary judgment to be expressed by a pagan. A calendar has been preserved where all the festivals appointed to the glory of this new god are marked; they were punctually celebrated by his sons and even later. The conscientious pagans, ready to forget all their injuries, devoted themselves to the worship of this deified Christian.'-Beugnot, i. p. 109.

The religions remained during the reign of Constantius on the same equal footing, as far as the public exercise of their respective ritual. Paganism was still, as far as all public acts, the religion of the empire.

There are indeed two laws in the Theodosian code, which, if

their date be correct, attribute to the son of Constantine the direct and forcible suppression of paganism. One is couched in these terms: Placuit, omnibus locis atque urbibus universis claudi protinus templa, et accessu vetitis omnibus, licentiam delinquendi perditis abnegari. Volumus etiam cunctos sacrificiis abstinere. Quod si quis aliquid forte hujusmodi perpetraverit, gladio ultore sternatur.' This law bears date A.C. 353. The second is assigned to the year 356: Pœna capitis subjugare præcipimus quos operam sacrificiis dare, vel colere simulachra constiterit.' Admit the authenticity of these laws, and Christianity will scarcely have ceased to be the victim of persecution, when it began to persecute. The sword had but changed hands-heathenism, from the established religion, became at once a capital crime. It is impossible to believe that the new religion had yet either the power or the inclination to retaliate in this unchristian spirit.

'A single observation,' observes M. Beugnot, is sufficient to show that these laws could not have been enacted; in fact, the inscriptions prove that under the reign of Constantius, not only was the unrestrained entrance to the temples permitted, but that sacrifices took place in Rome, in Italy, and throughout the whole of the western empire, in perfect freedom.'-vol. i. p. 141.

M. Beugnot adopts the theory of La Bastie, that the dates of these laws were assigned at random, at the time of the compilation of the Theodosian code. Extant inscriptions, in fact, prove not merely the continuance of heathen rites, but the dedication of new temples, and that not in obscure and remote places, but in Rome and its populous neighbourhood.

Under Julian the two religions again changed their relative position; there was equal toleration for both, but the avowed favour of the emperor employed every means to re-exalt paganism to its former splendour and superiority. The hostility of Julian to Christianity affected to assume the dignity of compassion or of indifference; yet his enforced consciousness of the inherent weakness of paganism could not but betray itself in bitter sarcasm, when such scenes occurred, as we trace in the description of the deserted temple in the Daphne, at Antioch, where Gibbon has so well painted the disappointment of the heathen emperor. It may be doubted whether the slight impulse of reaction in favour of paganism during the brief reign of Julian retarded its eventual dissolution. Julian, perhaps, did not adopt the wisest measures to advance his own object. 'If to reform,' as M. Beugnot observes, be to restore a religious or civil constitution on its original principles, the reformation of heathenism, which never had any fixed or settled principles, was impossible. There was no code, no plan, no system. The only theology which the imperial enthusiast could establish was formed

out

out of two directly conflicting systems, Homer and Plato, the one the representative of the popular faith, the other of the philosophy of the age. Julian, however, instead of confining himself to the higher object of refining and spiritualizing paganism, condescended to it in its grossest and most material form. Instead of contenting himself with the pomp and splendour of a more attractive ceremonial, by his prodigality of animal sacrifice he excited the ridicule and almost the contempt of his own partisans. The day was passed when the gods were believed to regard the multitude of hecatombs. There was a sort of heathen pharisaism in Julian's minute observances, which could not but clog his endeavours to restore, or rather to confer a new moral influence on his reorganized paganism. His paganism was a reassembling the scattered limbs of different faiths, on which it was impossible to bestow harmony or life.

The prohibition to teach the higher branches of literature, Julian's single overt act of persecution against the Christians, extorted probably from the fanaticism of the emperor by his favoured partisans the rhetoricians, appears equally ill adapted to its purpose. If it had produced any effect it would have thrown Christianity back on its own purer and more exclusive writings ; it would have checked it in its tendency to approximate towards heathenism, the great danger as long as there was any rival faith. Even the degeneracy of Christianity would not have enabled the effete paganism to supplant it, but nothing else would have given equal advantage to its competitor.

Valentinian on his accession proclaimed the most perfect liberty of religious worship; he is praised by the pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus for the severe impartiality with which he stood between the conflicting religions. He did not force his subjects to bow their necks to that Christianity which he professed; he left the opposite party, as he found them, inviolate. He appears, indeed, to have extended the privileges of the pagan priesthood, and to have placed them on the same footing, with regard to immunities, with that to which former emperors had elevated the Christian clergy. The orator Libanius extends the same praise to his colleague Valens. Yet the sanguinary persecutions of these emperors against magic and divination, though not aimed directly at the pagan party, involved many of its most distinguished leaders. Divination was so interwoven with the whole framework of the Roman religion, that any declaratory law against the practice, however guarded and limited to unlawful or private means of consulting futurity, impeached, to a certain extent, the authority of the science, and cast back a sort of discredit on all the solemn ritual of the national faith. Valentinian's law against

secret

secret or nocturnal rites was considered, by the trembling apprehensions of the pagans, as prohibitory of the mysteries, even those of Eleusis, those mysteries, without which, in the older language, life became insupportable and lost all its dignity.' This vague and indefinite charge of magic hung like a cloud over the whole of society. The new platonism in a great degree favoured these forbidden practices, by its recognition of an intermediate race of beings, with whom man might maintain intercourse. Men of the highest rank, of the most splendid attainments, fell under the remorseless proscription; some few Christians were implicated, perhaps by the malice of personal enemies, or their furtive and superstitious indulgence in practices unworthy of their calling; but the chief brunt of this terrible persecution, which raged both in the east and in the west, fell on the chief of the pagans, whose magical arts and practices of unlawful divination were considered not solely as wicked and unlawful, but as dangerous to the power and to the lives of the reigning emperors.

Yet still to the stranger, Rome would have offered the appearance of a pagan city. M. Beugnot appeals to the descriptions of the city according to its regions, which bear the names of Publius Victor and Sextus Rufus Festus. These two dry topogra phical catalogues of the public buildings in the capital could not have been written either before or long after the reign of Valentinian. There appear to have been at that time 152 temples and 183 smaller chapels or shrines (ædicula), which bore the name of their tutelary gods, and were still used for the purposes of public worship. Christianity had not yet ventured to usurp the public edifices of paganism- Though the emperors may have detached some rich endowments from some few deserted temples, we cannot conclude that the Christians were permitted to establish themselves in the temples according to their own will and convenience.'-(vol. i. p. 267.) The religious edifices were under the protection of the prefect of the city, with his cohorts at his command; and in Rome it is certain that the prefect, and probable that the army, were at this time in the pagan interest. Above all towered the Capitol, in its yet unassailed and inviolate majesty, with its fifty temples or shrines, bearing the most imposing names in the religious and civil annals of Rome-those of Jove, of Mars, of Janus, of Romulus, of Cæsar, and of Victory.

If Rome still adhered with obstinate fidelity to the ancient faith, the greater part of Italy-with the exception of some cities, which were beginning to rival the older capital-was equally attached to the old tutelary deities. Christianity invariably spread, in the first instance, in the towns. Even in the neighbourhood of those cities of the east, Antioch, for instance, where Christianity

had obtained the earliest and most complete success, the country population, speaking another dialect and barbarous in its habits, long remained almost entirely ignorant of the gospel. This, M. Beugnot shows, was the case in the north and the centre of Italy, and in Sicily. But he has not adverted to one fact, which must have tended greatly to retard the progress of Christianity in these quarters. It was still chiefly a slave-population which cultivated the soil; and, however in the towns the better class of Christians might be eager to communicate the blessed liberty of the gospel' to this class of mankind, however their condition could not but be silently ameliorated by the softening and humanizing influence of Christianity, yet, on the whole, no doubt the servile class would be the least fitted to receive the gospel, and its general propagation among them would be embarrassed by so many difficulties, that they would partake, in smaller numbers than any part of the free population, of the blessings of the new religion.*

We apprehend that it was not until the establishment of the monastic institutions, not until the abbey or the monastery had replaced the villa or the farm of the Roman patrician, that the cultivators of the soil were finally brought within the pale. As in the wilder regions a belt of green and luxuriant cultivation spread gradually round the peaceful monastic settlement, so expanded likewise the moral culture of the rural population. This will appear more clearly at a later part of our inquiry.

M. Beugnot has well observed, that St. Martin, the first great exterminator of idolatry, the destroyer of heathen temples, introduced, at the same time, the monastic system. The one might break the ground, but the other secured the permanence of the new religion.

We approach the great crisis when the imperial power openly proclaimed the irreconcilable breach between the civil authority and the ancient religion. The reign of Gratian and of Theodosius witnessed the abrogation of almost all the privileges, the total confiscation of the estates, the forcible removal of some of the most sacred symbols of the older faith. It is remarkable how little M. Beugnot, though his researches have been devoted exclusively to this point, has been able to add to the full and brilliant chapter

* M. Beugnot, in the ardent pursuit of a theory, sometimes extorts general conclusions from trifling and unimportant incidents. He infers, in one place, the indifference or hostility of the servile class to the religion of Christ, from the fact, that they were sometimes induced to accuse their Christian masters of those horrible crimes, which were rumoured to take place in their public assemblies. But by what actual tortures or by what fears of torture, were these accusations wrung from these miserable wretches? And slaves are not rarely to be found among the noble army of martyrs,'

of