feature of Diocletian's organization, and thus
prepared the way for the later form of the _themes_, or military
districts, in which the military commanders were at the head of the civil
government as well. It was in his reign also that the culture of the
silkworm was introduced into the empire by Persian monks, who had lived in
China, learned the jealously guarded secrets of this art, and brought some
eggs of the silkworm out of the country concealed in hollow canes. The
manufacture of silk goods had long been a flourishing industry in certain
cities of the Greek East and was made an imperial monopoly by Justinian.
The introduction of the silkworm rendered this trade to a large degree
independent of the importation of raw silk from the Orient.

As Justinian was the last emperor whose native tongue was Latin, so he was
the last who maintained that language as the language of government at
Constantinople and upheld the traditions of the Roman imperial policy.

CHAPTER XXV

RELIGIOUS AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE IN THE LATE EMPIRE

I. THE END OF PAGANISM

*The paganism of the late empire.* In spite of the tremendous impulse
given to the spread of Christianity by Constantine's policy of toleration
and by its adoption as the religion of the imperial house, the extinction
of paganism was by no means rapid. While the chief pagan religions during
the fourth century were the Oriental cults and the Orphic mysteries of
Eleusis, which strongly resembled them in character, the worship of the
Graeco-Roman Olympic divinities still attracted numerous followers. But,
although paganism persisted in many and divers forms, these, by a process
of religious syncretism, had come to find their place in a common
theological system. This development had its basis in the common
characteristics of the Oriental cults, each of which inculcated the belief
in a supreme deity, and received its stimulus through the conscious
opposition of all forms of paganism to Christianity, which they had come
to recognize as their common, implacable foe. The chief characteristic of
later paganism was its tendency to monotheism--a belief in one abstract
divinity of whom the various gods were but so many separate
manifestations. The development of a harmonious system of pagan theology
was greatly aided by Neoplatonic philosophy, which may be regarded as the
ultimate expression of ancient pa