THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 296
Paganism and the Fall of Rome
20.4. Paganism and the Fall of Rome
Thus upon a monotheistic basis there arose a new polytheism, in which the Olympian deities, whose credit had been shaken by rationalistic philosophy, were largely replaced by daemons and demigods.
Theology, which is presented on its purer side by Macrobius, degenerated in popular usage into theurgy; the ethical and intellectual aspirations after union with the divine were replaced by mere magic. Yet magic had the countenance of the philosophers, who, distinguishing carefully between white and black magic (to borrow later terms) repudiated the latter while they allowed the former. And although theurgy was a sharp declension from the principles of Platonism, whether old or new, it was very natural. It was extremely venerable and it was able to take the colour of science. The doctrine of the sympathy of the seen and the unseen worlds, together with the gradual recognition of the mighty power of cosmic law, even when controlled by spirits or daemons, resulted necessarily in an attempt to coerce these beings by means of material things, almost, one might say, by means of chemical reagents. So, the larger the knowledge of nature and its operations, the wider the spread of magical practices. Magic had a living force which Christianity was for ages powerless to break.
Another potent factor in keeping alive the flame of Paganism was the belief in the eternal destiny of Rome. Christian writers in the second century, like Tertullian, held that Rome would last as long as the world and that her fall would coincide with the Day of Judgment. Christian writers before whose eyes the city fell without the coming of the Day, stood bewildered and in part regretful. The news dashed the pen from the hand of Jerome in his cell at Bethlehem: "the human race is included in the ruins” he wrote; and Augustine, while he looks for the founding of an abiding and divine city in the room of that which had disappeared, and taunts the Romans with the poor protection afforded them by their gods, declares that the whole world groaned at the fall of Rome and is himself proud of her great past and of the qualities of Roman endurance and faith that gave her so high a place among the nations. Orosius, again, who carried on the plan and thought of the de civitate Dei, to whose mind the Roman Empire was founded upon blood and sin, yet proclaims, as Augustine his master had proclaimed, that Roman peace and Roman culture were greater and would last longer than Rome herself.
If such were the sentiments of Christian writers towards the imperial city, which had been much more of a step-mother than a mother to their faith, what must pagans have felt for the home of their religion, upon which Plutarch had exhausted his store of eulogistic metaphor, which to Julian was "dear to the gods, invincible," whose piety might surely claim divine protection?
To discover this we have but to turn the pages of Claudian and Rutilius Namatianus. Claudian (A.D. 400) was not a Roman born, but a Greek-speaking native of Egypt. Yet he has Juvenal's contempt for "Greek Quirites" and an unconcealed hatred of New Rome, and he finds his true inspiration in the great city on the Tiber whom he addresses as Roma dea, consort of Jupiter, mother of arts and arms and of the world's peace. "Rise, reverend mother," he cries, "and with firm hope trust the favouring gods Lay aside old age's craven fear. O city coeval with the sky, iron Fate shall never master thee till Nature changes her laws and rivers run backward." But it is not only the city with her pomp and beauty, her hills and temples, the home of gods and Fortune, that compels his praise. The empire of which she was the visible head, an empire won by bloodshed, it is true, but kept together by the willing love of all the various races that have passed into the fabric — this is Claudian's real theme, the mighty diapason that runs through all his utterance and redeems his panegyric of Roman noble and emperor from the charge of mere servility.
We have said that Claudian hardly ever refers directly to Christianity, and indeed echoes of spiritual language in his verse are faint and uncertain. The hostility which he must have felt against the religion that was sapping the seats of the ancient worship is to be gathered from hints rather than from direct expression. That hostility lies nearer the surface in the Return from exile (A.D. 416) of Rutilius Claudius Namatianus, a great Gaulish lord and friend of Roman lords, who betrays more clearly than Claudian the sentiments of the ruling class. But even in Rutilius the allusions to Christianity are veiled. As a high official (he was praefect of the city) he could not openly attack the religion of the emperor, and must content himself with fulminations against Judaism, “the root of superstition” and the monks whose life is a voluntary death to life, its pleasures, and its duties.
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