The strength of his position was not official but [lersonal — vaguely indicated by the title Augustus (^fjSao-Tos, Ac 26'-'-='). The courtly fiction that the Julian house was descended from the gods might do service for a time ; but the truth came out clear at Vespasian's elevation. If he was a tough old general with no romance about him, who died with a scotl' on his lips at his own divinity, he was none the less the impersonation of the glory of the world and Rome ; and this is what made the emperors divine, and kept them so in spite of absurd deifications like those of Claudius and of Poppsea's infant. Emperor -worship might be fashion ; but it was also a real cult sustained by genuine belief. If courtiers placed Augustus among the household gods, courtiers did not keep Marcus there in Constantine's time. Kings were counted gods from the Pharaohs of Egypt to the Jubas of Mauretania ; and the Greeks had wor- shipped great men from Lysander (B.C. 403) on- ward, till deification became a cheap compliment for kings and their favourites. Rome understood better than the Greeks the dillerence between gods and men — deus is a much more definite word than Seij ; yet even she deified legendary kings. But Romulus was the last of tliem, and she nevei deified the heroes of the Republic. Flamininus was a god in Greece ; but Scipio was no more than a man at Rome; and even Sulla was only iTs^io;, not Augusttis. To the last she reserved the honour for emjierors and their near relations, for the worship of Hadrian's favourite Antinous was rather Eastern and Greek than Roman. Yet in the goddess Roma the spirit of the State was worshipped long before the honours of deity were pressed on the dictator Ciesar by a grateful people and a servile Senate. CiEsar's murder was a warnin" to Augustus ; and he called himself Dim Filius, hut not Divus. He allowed the A.siatic cities to build temples to him after the battle of Actium, but required them to join with him the goddess Roma. Other cities followed : first in Asia in apostolic times was
ROMAN EMPIRE
ROMANS, EPISTLE TO THE 293
Pergamum, ' where Satan's seat is ' (Rev 2"). Such cities were called vtuKipoi or temple wardens of Au;.'ustu8, as Ephesus (Ac 19^) was vcuxdpos of Artemis. Before long a. Commune A sice {rb xoiydr TTjs 'Aatat) was formed, with a chief priest or a!sIARCH (in looser sense, as Ac 19^', unless these be jiast Asiarchs) in each city, and over them an elected Asiarcli (in the strict sense) or chief priest of the province. Other provinces did likewise, as liithynia, Galatia, Phoenicia, etc., and in li.c. 12 the b"o States of Gaul organized a Commune, meet- ing annually at the confluence of the Rhone and the Sai'^ne. These provincial assemblies were powerful enough— the priests were always mag- nates — to answer some of tlie purposes of rei>re- sentative government. They could complain of a had governor, and often obtain his recall. In Italy, and especially in Rome, the worship of the emperor was chiefly represented by that of his genius or his virtues : only at his death he was formally placed among the gods by the Senate. ' lieliquos deos accepimus,' says Valerius Maximus, ' Ca:sare3 dedimus. This deification was the rule, though emperors who displeased the Senate were not deified when the honour could safely be refused them ; and it can be traced well into Christian times, certainly till Jovian (364), and perhaps as late as Theodosius, though long before that time the emperor had ceased to be a real divinity, even among the heathens.
If the Empire was the greatest of hindrances to the gospel, it was also the greatest of helps. We nmst look below its superficial tolerance in the Apostolic Age, below the deeper enmity proclaimed by Nero's persecution. The single fact that the Empire wa.s universal went far to complete the fulness of time for Christ's coming. Rome put a stop to the wars of nations and the great sales of slaves resulting from them, to the civil strife of cities and their murderous revolutions. Henceforth they were glad to live quietly beneath the shelter of the Roman peace. Intercourse and trade (wit- ness the migratory Jews) were easier an<l freer than ever since in Europe till quite recently. It was settled peace, too, such as never came again till after Waterloo. Whole provinces hardly saw the face of war for generations togetlier. Roman law went with Roman citizenship ; and Latin civilization overspread the West, while Greece under Roman protection completed her conquest of Asia within Mount Taurus.
Historically, the Empire is the great barrier which won for civilization a respite of centuries by checking at the Rhine the tide of Northern barbarism, and at the Euphrates the two thousand years' advance of Asiatic barbarism through Par- thian and Saracen and Turkish times, beginning with Alexander's retreat from the Sutlei, li.c. .327, and ending only at the repulse of the Turks from Vienna in 1683. During that momentous respite Rome gathered into herself the failing powers of the old world, and fostered within her the nascent powers of the new. This was her work in history — (o he tlie link between the ancient and the modem — between the heathen city-states of the ancient world and the Christian nations of the modern. Her weakness was not political. Em-