oics, in whose faultless
code the dominant note was contempt for whatever is base, respect for
all that is noble. A doctrine of great beauty, purely Greek, as was
everything else in Rome that was beautiful, its heights were too lofty
for the vulgar. It appealed only to the lettered, that is to the few,
to the infrequent disciples of Zeno and of Cicero, his prophet, who,
Erasmus said, was inspired by God.

It may be that Cicero inspired a few of God's preachers. The latter
were not yet in Rome. Christ had not come. At that period, unique in
history, man alone existed. The temples were thronged, but the skies
were bare. Cicero knew that. Elysium and Hades were as chimerical to
him as the Epicurean heavens. "People," he said, "talk of these places
as though they had been there." But that which was superstition to him
he regarded as beneficial for others, who had to have something and
who got it, in temples where a sin was a prayer.

There was once a play of which there has survived but the title: _The
Last Will and Testament of Defunct Jupiter._ It appeared in the days
of Diocletian, but it might have appealed when Cicero taught. Faith
then had fainted. Fright had ceased to build. Worship remained, but
religion had gone. The gods themselves were departing. The epoch
itself was apoplectic. The tramp of legions was continuous. Not alone
the skies but the world was in a ferment. It was not until a diadem,
falling from Cleopatra's golden bed, rolled to the feet of Augustus,
that the gods were stayed and faith revived.

In the interim, prisoners had been deported from Judea. At first they
were slaves. Subsequently manumitted, they formed a colony that in the
high-viced city resembled Esther in the seraglio of Ahasuerus. Rome,
amateur of cults, always curious of foreign faiths, might have been
interested in Judaism. It had many analogies with local beliefs. Its
adherents awaited, as Rome did, a messiah. They awaited too a golden
age. For those who were weary of philosophy, they had a religion in
which there was none. For those to whom the marvellous appealed, they
had a history in which miracles were a string of pearls. For those who
were sceptic concerning the post-mortem, they offered blankness. In
addition, their god, the enemy of all others, was adapted to an empire
that recognized no sovereignty but its own. Readily might Rome have
become Hebrew. But then, with equal ease, she might have become
Egyptian.

For those who