to the renowned seats of culture, especially Athens and Alexandria. Sophists and rhetoricians were commonly itinerants. Armies went forth and served in remote districts as agents of Romanizing influences.

But to

The mere fact of this interchange was enough to greatly weaken tribal and national feeling, and to make men conscious of their relation to the vast body of the race within the Empire. It was all in the direction of the fusion of the individual in the universal. this means others were added by the Roman administration. The colony was made to perform an important part. "In her numerous colonies," says Uhlhorn, "Rome stretched herself out into the provinces; they were a section of Rome in the midst of Spain, Gaul, or Greece. The colonists took with them their citizenship and their Roman jurisprudence. Often strangers were received into the colony; and, even when they formed a separate community in its neighborhood, they were placed still under the constant influence of the Roman spirit." Among the places celebrated in New-Testament history, Philippi, Troas, and Antioch in Pisidia may serve as examples of the colony.

Similar in design to the planting of colonies was the extension of privileges to communities and individuals

1 Kampf des Christenthums, Book I., chap. i. An equally apt description is that given by Conybeare and Howson. "The characteristic of a colonia was, that it was a miniature resemblance of Rome. ... The colonists went out with all the pride of Roman citizens, to represent and reproduce the city in the midst of an alien population. Their names were still enrolled in one of the Roman tribes. Every traveller who passed through a colonia saw there the insignia of Rome. He heard the Latin language, and was amenable, in the strictest sense, to the Roman law." (Life and Epistles of St. Paul, vol. i., chap.

in the provinces. The good-will of distinguished places was solicited or confirmed by constituting them free cities. Athens, Thessalonica, Tarsus, and the Syrian Antioch held, among others, this rank, and enjoyed in virtue of it certain rights of local selfgovernment. The crowning right, that of citizenship, was much extended after the time of Julius Cæsar. Under his rule it was made to reach and even to cross the extreme limits of Italy, being conferred upon those dwelling beyond the Po, and also upon many communities in Transalpine Gaul and in Spain. Succeeding emperors enlarged the circle of enfranchisement, until at length, in the early part of the third century, the outside provinces stood on an equality with Italy in this respect. Citizenship carried with it exemption from scourging, the right to appeal to the emperor, the right of suffrage, and eligibility to office.

Roman jurisprudence likewise performed an important function in the great unifying process. To be sure, Roman law was primarily designed for Roman citizens. Its application therefore was not co-extensive with the Empire till the right of citizenship became general. But even before this era, it shaped, more or less, the administration of justice in all the provinces. Thus there was a movement toward an all-embracing system of jurisprudence, a system which in many points showed an admirable appreciation of the relations of man to man. Here, evidently, was an effica

1 The decree extending citizenship to the subjects of the Empire generally was issued under Caracalla. His motive is said to have been quite other than an enlightened liberality. (DIO CASSIUS, lxxvii. 9.)

Like the

cious means of unity and homogeneity. framework of a building, Roman law extended through the structure of Roman society.

"My

Something like an index to the progress made in breaking down national barriers may be seen by comparing the language of Aristotle with that of Marcus Aurelius. According to the testimony of Plutarch, Aristotle advised Alexander the Great, on the eve of his expedition into Asia, "to bear himself as a prince among the Greeks, his own people, but as a master among the barbarians; to treat the one as friends and kinsmen, the others as animals and chattels." nature," says Marcus Aurelius, "is rational and social; and my city and country, so far as I am Antoninus, is Rome, but so far as I am a man it is the world." The philosophic Emperor here expresses the Stoic idea of an universal citizenship. The requisite conditions for the development of that idea were first supplied by the conquests of Alexander, and the Roman Empire provided for its further growth and continued assertion. To be sure, the universal citizenship of the Stoic was very much of an abstraction. As contrasted with the universal brotherhood of Christianity, it was, practically, like the shadow compared with the substance. In other words, Stoicism had little inspiration or power for the realization of its ideal. Still, the existence of the ideal is a clear token of a relative disappearance of national boundaries, and the exaltation of the idea of a common humanity. From our stand-point it is difficult to realize the importance of this work of disintegration, this breaking-down of national barriers. A

1 Meditations, vi. 44.

community exists between the great body of nations to-day that was quite foreign to the states of antiquity. Such a bond of union as is supplied by a common Christian civilization was unknown to them. Had they remained intact, unfused, Christianity would have been obliged again and again to penetrate through the hard wall of a tenacious national spirit. Roman power set open doors before the advancing gospel. Its universal temporal rule prepared for the universal spiritual dominion of Christianity. A missionary activity like that of Paul, it has been well said, is inconceivable save upon the theatre of an empire like that of Rome.1 Moreover, in proportion as national barriers disappeared, the conditions were made directly favorable to the reception of the monotheistic faith. In the view of polytheism, individual gods were, to a great extent, associated with individual nations. As these nations were absorbed into a common whole, they felt, of course, less occasion for asserting their respective deities. In proportion as the unity of the race was acknowleged, it was easy to acknowledge the Divine unity.

2. CULTURE. The culture within the Roman Empire most worthy of attention, most serviceable to Christianity, was Greek rather than Roman. Rome was more a representative of the will than of the intellect; her office was rather that of the lawgiver and the

1 This is a truth which was not hid from the observation of early Christian writers. Origen, among others, taught in very explicit terms that the fusion of the nations into one monarchy was a providential preparation for the preaching of the gospel to the whole world. (Cont. Celsum, ii. 30.)

ruler than that of the teacher. Her strictly original contributions to polite literature and philosophy were of but moderate compass. At Rome, says Mommsen, nobody speculated except the money-changers.1 Nevertheless, it was no mean service which Rome performed for culture. If she did not create largely, she distributed widely. The versatile Greek had already carried his treasures into many lands; Rome caused those treasures to be scattered over a still broader field.

Among the contributions of Greek culture we notice,

(1) A language admirably adapted to the uses of Christianity. At the time the gospel began to be proclaimed, Greek approached the character of an universal speech. The Greeks were very early a colonizing people, and carried their language into various settlements, from Asia Minor to Spain. The conquests of Alexander spread the same language over a large section of the Asiatic Continent. It was extensively spoken in Palestine; the disciples of Christ, very likely, had heard it from their childhood. In Egypt, especially at the great city of Alexandria, it was made the instrument of a varied, active, and highly celebrated scholarship. It found, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an open road to Rome. A multitude of Greek slaves diffused it far and wide among the principal households of Italy. Teachers, rhetoricians, and philosophers supplied also numerous agents for its introduction. Cicero could plead with entire sincerity in behalf of Archias: "Greek is read in almost all nations; Latin is confined by its own boundaries, which, of a truth, are narrow.”2 1 History of Rome, Book IV., chap. xii. 2 Pro Archia poeta, chap. x.