William Gordon Holmes

“ Without history and without science, inflated by ambition within their narrow sphere, they applied the conception of immortality, which millenniums would not justify, to being acclaimed in the ephemeral fervour of the populace or to being remembered for a few decades in the finite language of poetry and rhetoric.
While the Roman state was in its cradle a citizen and a soldier were equivalent terms, and every man gave his military service as a free contribution to the general welfare of the public. ”

“ Whatever ethical purity may have adorned the lives of the first converts, Christianity as an established religion was not less of a grovelling superstition than Paganism in its worst forms. The worship of martyrs, of saints, the factitious miracles wrought at their graves, the veneration of their relics and images, were but a travesty of polytheism under another name without the saving graces of the old belief. ”

“ The early Greek philosophers awoke into life to find themselves endowed with vast intelligence in a world of which they knew nothing. No record of the past, no forecast of the future disturbed the serenity of their intellectual horizon. In a more aesthetic environment they renewed the impulse to interpret nature with a finer sense of congruity than was possessed by their rude ancestors, but their methods were identical, and they believed they could advance beyond the bounds of experience by the exercise of a vivid imagination. ”

“ CONSTANTINOPLE IN THE SIXTH CENTURY [3] The Byzantine peninsula has been regarded from a very early date as an ideal situation for a capital city. Placed at the junction of two great seas which wash the shores of three continents, and possessed of a safe and extensive anchorage for shipping, it might become the centre of empire and commerce for the whole Eastern hemisphere. Yet, owing to an adverse fate, the full realization of this splendid conception remains a problem of the future. Byzantium as an independent city was little more than an outpost of civilization ”

“ An imaginative system of cosmogony, baseless as the fabric of a dream, is the creation of a moment; to dissipate it the work of ages in study and investigation. Less than a century ago philosophic scepticism could only vent itself in a sneer at the credibility of a tradition, or the fidelity of a manuscript; and the folklore of peasants, encrusted with the hoar of antiquity, was accepted by erudite mystics as the solution of cosmogony and the proof of our communion with the supernatural. ”

“ When Grecian science and philosophy seemed to stand on the threshold of modern enlightenment the pall of despotism and superstition descended on the earth and stifled every impulse of progress for more than fifteen centuries. The Yggdrasil of Christian superstition spread its roots throughout the Roman Empire, strangling alike the nascent ethics of Christendom, and the germinating science of the ancient world. ”

“ The arts of Greece, after having flourished in perfection from the time of Pericles to that of Alexander in the various departments of architecture, sculpture, painting, and literature, remained dormant for some centuries until the establishment of universal peace under the dominion of Rome provided a new theatre for their exercise. Fostered in the Augustan age by the indolence and luxury of the Imperial city, which offered the prospect of fortune to every artist of ambition and talent, they were communicated to the Latins, who strove earnestly to imitate and equal their masters. ”

“ The people of this age contemplated nature without comprehending her operations; her forces were displayed before their eyes, but it never entered into their heads to master them and make them subservient to the needs of human life; they moved within a narrow cage unconscious of the barriers which confined them, without a thought of emerging to the freedom of the beyond; and an ordinary citizen of the present day is in the possession of information which would surprise and instruct the greatest sage of ancient Greece. ”

“ Evidential obscurity has always been the soul of such pretensions; and the truth of the most improbable occurrences has been resolutely maintained because assured witnesses could not be produced in order to prove a negative. But the time for historical discussion or sifting of evidence in relation to such matters has long gone by; and in the twentieth century the philosopher is enabled without examination to dismiss with a smile the mere suggestion that such events have occurred. ”

“ Civilization has now included almost the whole globe in its comprehensive embrace; both the old world and the new have been overrun by the intellectual heirs of the Greeks; in every land the extinction of retrograde races proceeds with measured certainty, and we appear to be safer from a returning flood of barbarism than from some astronomical catastrophe. The mediaeval order of things is reversed, the xii ravages of Attila reappear under a new aspect, and the descendants of the Han and the Hun alike are raised by the hand, or crushed under the foot of aggressive civilization. ”

“ I do not design to produce under this heading a lengthy disquisition on paedagogics among the Byzantines, but merely to indicate, by some broad lines, upon what stock of common knowledge the foundations of civilization rested in this age. The student of early Roman history will scarcely need to be reminded that the virtues of the Republic were not derived from the schools of art or philosophy; or that the aesthetic tastes of those blunt citizens only developed in proportion as they found themselves lords over the culture as well as over the country of the Greeks. ”

“ Animated by a genius so restless and aspiring, it is evident that such a woman needed only transference to a field of higher potential, to become one of the most notable characters of the age. Such a place had been prepared for her by fate, and she was destined to renew on the throne of the Empire the triumphs she had won on the boards of the theatre. ”

“ BIRTH AND FORTUNES OF THE ELDER JUSTIN: THE ORIGINS OF JUSTINIAN The function of a government is to administer the affairs of mankind in accordance with the spirit of the age. Not from the political arena, but from the laboratory emanates that expansion of knowledge which surely, though fitfully, changes the aspect and methods of civilization both in peace and war. An impulse which controls the passions of millions may originate with some obscure investigator who reveals a more immediate means to individual or national advantage ”

“ Anastasius then retired to the antechamber of the Kathisma to be invested, by the Patriarch himself, with the Imperial purple, and to have a jewelled crown placed upon his head. Again he sought the presence of the assembled multitude, whom he addressed in a set speech which was read out to them by a crier. Finally the newly-elected Autocrator departed to the Palace amid repeated cries of “God bless our Christian Emperor! You have lived virtuously, Reign as you have lived!” ”

“ Arcadius, as the elder, reigned in the East, a proof that it was esteemed to be the most brilliant position. The Notitia also, a contemporary work, places the East first as the superior dominion. No doubt the new tyrants found themselves in an uncongenial atmosphere at Rome, and the sterner stuff of the Western nations would not tolerate their sublime affectations. They could stand the follies of Nero, but not the vain-glory of Constantine, who soon fled from the covert sneers of the capital and merely paid it a couple of perfunctory visits afterwards. ”

“ In the turn of the ages we are confronted by new Pagans who adhere to an obsolete religion; and the philosopher can only hope for an era when every one will have sufficient sense and science to think according to the laws of nature and civilization.
The history of the disintegrating and moribund Byzantine Empire has been explored by modern scholars with untiring assiduity; and the exposition of that debased political system will always reflect more credit on their brilliant researches than on the chequered annals of mankind. ”

“ A Roman emperor of this age, as an admitted despot subjected to no constitutional restraints, could formulate and promulgate whatever measures commended themselves to his arbitrary will. But such authority, however absolute in theory, must always be restricted in practice by the operation of sociological laws. Although a prince with a masterful personality might dominate his subordinates to become the father or the scourge of his country, a feeble monarch would always be the slave of his great officers of state. ”

“ The advancement of humanity is the sum of the progress of its component members, and the individual who raises his own life to the highest attainable eminence becomes a factor in the elevation of the whole race. Familiarity with history dispels the darkness of the past, which is so prolific in the myths that feed credulity and foster superstition, the frequent parents of the most stubborn obstacles which have lain in the path of progress. ”

“ Civilization succumbed to the despotic influence of religion, a new field of effort was opened to the race of mortals, and all the genius of the age was exhausted in the attempt to advance the pseudo-science of theology. That genius was as brilliant as any which has hitherto been seen upon the earth. The administrative and literary powers of a Tertullian, an Origen, a Cyprian, a Eusebius, an Athanasius, of the Gregories, of Basil, Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysostom, and many others might have raised the Empire above the level of the most glorious period of the past. ”

“ PROEM The birth and death of worlds are ephemeral events in a cycle of astronomical time. In the life history of a stellar system, of a planet, of an animal, parallel periods of origin, exuberance, and of extinction are exhibited to our experience, or to our understanding. Man, in his material existence confined to a point, by continuity of effort and perpetuity of thought, becomes coequal and coextensive with the infinities of time and space. ”

“ To the anthropomorphic spirit of polytheism it was necessary that the images of the gods should be multiplied in temples and even in public places; and the Greeks essayed to express the ideal beauty of their divinities under those corporeal forms which appeared most exquisite to the human senses. Received as being of both sexes and as fulfilling the conception of faultless excellence in a variety of spheres, a boundless field lay open before the artist in which to represent them according to their diverse attributes of sovereignty, of intellect, or of grace. ”

“ Whilst the records of ages assiduously collated from every quarter of the globe exhibit the irrepressible folly of undisciplined human thought and the immeasurable credulity of ignorance, the boundless expansion of our intellectual horizon compels us to reject as irrational, the belief in an almighty and intelligent Father, who regards with equanimity the disruption of worlds, but is capable of being delighted by a choir of fulsome praise emanating from their ephemeral inhabitants. ”

“ The dissolution of powerful political organizations was no new feature in the ancient world; in Egypt, in Asia, dynasties with their dominions had periodically collapsed, but in Europe the Roman supremacy was the first to consolidate the principal countries into a compact and homogeneous state. Civil wars, however, had been waged on several occasions; princes unfit to reign had been the cause of serious administrative perturbation. Did these vicissitudes, we may inquire, herald the break-up of the Empire, unassailable as it was by any civilized adversary? ”

“ In the pride of original supremacy we may perceive that citizens of Latin lineage despise the feeble Greeks who forfeited nationality and independence, whilst the latter, pluming themselves on their inheritance of the harmonious tongue in which are enshrined all the masterpieces of poetry and philosophy, contemn the uninspired genius of the Romans, whose efforts to create a literature never soared above imitation and plagiarism. ”

“ The increase of knowledge in the nineteenth century has stripped every shred of supernaturalism from our conception of popular religions. The studies and inventions of modern 234 science have illuminated every corner of the universe; and our discovery of the origins has cleared the greatest stumbling-block from the path of philosophy and removed the last prop which sustained the fabric of organized superstition. The world will one day have to face the truth about religion ”

“ To the ancient world that first step in science must have appeared also to be the last; and ages rolled away during which man learned no more than to employ effectively the materials thus acquired. If the expectation that diligent research may be rewarded by some signal increase of knowledge be excluded from the sphere of human activity, individual aspirations must be restricted to whatever is social and national; and those desirous of distinction have no choice but to devote themselves to art or politics. Within these channels were confined the energies of the people of antiquity ”