110
ATHENS
atone:\ient
ings, and gave the name of Hadrianopolis to a new quarter.
But, though Athens was outwardly as splendid as ever, she was inwardly decadent, being, in philo- sophy, letters, and art, a city Uving upon tradi- tions. Her first-rate statesmen and orators, poets and thinkers, did not outlive the nation's freedom.
'The self-esteem of the Hellenes, well-warranted in itself and fostered by the attitude of the Roman government . . . called into life among them a cultus of the past, which was compounded of a faithful clinging to the memories of greater and happier times and a quaint reverting of matured ci\'ili3at ion to its in part very primitive beginnings. . . . The bane of Hellenic existence lay in the Umitation of its sphere ; high ambition lacked a cor- responding aim, and therefore the low and degrading ambition flourished luxuriantly' (Mommsen, op. cit. i. 280, 283).
_ The decay of Athens was due less to the exhaus- tion of her creative energy, with the substitution of imitative for original work, than to the simple fact that the thought and art of her citizens were no longer wedded to noble action and brave endur- ance. Full of aesthetes and dilettantes, loving the reputation more than the reality of culture, letting a restless inquisitiveness and shallow scepticism take the place of high aspiration and moral enthusiasm, she became blind to the visions, and deaf to the voices, which redeem individual and collective life from vanity.
The devouring appetite of the Athenians for news had long been one of their best-known traits.
Demosthenes {Phil. i. p. 43) pictvires them bustling about the Agorainquiringif any newer thing is being told (nvv9a.v6iJ.evoi. Kara Tr)v ayopdv el Tt AeyeTai veutTtpov), the tragedy being that, while they were talking, Philip was acting. Thucydides (,iii- 38) makes Cleon say to them : ' So you are the best men to be im- posed on with novelty of argument, and to be unwilling to follow up what has been approved by you, being slaves of every new paradox, and despisers of what is ordinary. Each of you wishes above all to be able to speak himself. ... In a word, you are overpowered by the pleasures of the ear, and are like men sitting to be amused by rhetoricians rather than deliberating upon State affairs.'
Among the philosophers of St. Paul's time the penchant for news took the form of an eagerness to hear the latest novelty in speculation or religion which any (nrepnoXSyos (picker-up of scraps of infor- mation) might have to publish (Ac 17-'), in order that they might exercise their nimble wits upon it, and most probably hold it up to ridicule.
Though St. Paul spoke the language of Hellas, and acknowledged himself a debtor to the Hellenes (Ro 1^'*), yet Athens does not seem to have exercised any fascination over him. She did not beckon him Hke Rome ; he did not see her in his dreams, or pray that he might be prospered to come to her ; he never exclaimed, with a sense of destiny, ' I must see Athens.' That he ever visited her at all was apparently the result of an accident. He was hurried away from Beroea before he had time to mature his plans of future action, and he merely waited at Athens for the arrival of his friends, Silas and Timothy (Ac 17'^'). To picture him wandering among temples and porticos, lost in admiration of works of genius, and 'perhaps wit- nessing the performance of a play of Euripides,' is to misunderstand him. He did not spend his leisure in Athens, any more than Luther in Rome, in appraising the masterpieces of plastic and dra- matic art. They were both 'provoked'* by what they saw as they passed by. They were consumed with the prophetic zeal which seeks to replace a false or imperfect religion with a true and perfect one. St. Paul, indeed, knew the Hellenic world too well to imagine that, while the city was 'full of idols' {KareldwXov), its men of culture were given to idolatry. In their case the worship of the gods survived only in that cultus of physical beauty to which innumerable sculptured forms bore silent
* napo^vvofjLai is often used in the LXX to express a burning Divine fand prophetic) indignation against idolatry (Hos 8^, Zee 10'). ** Cop'jriyhl, 1916, by
witness, while such spiritual faith as they still re- tained found expression rather in altars *Ayvwffr(f) Oev ; to the existence of which Pausanias (i. i. 4) and Philostratus (Vit. Apollon. vi. 2) testify (see Unknown God).
St. Paul's address before the court or council of Areopagus (q. i'.) is a noble attempt to find common ground with the Athenian philosophers, an ap- preciation of what was highest in their rehgion, an expression of sympathy with their sincere agnosticism, an appeal to that groping, innate sense of spiritual reahties, that universal instinct of monotheism, which lead to the true God who is near to all men, and who, though unseen, is no longer unknown. Renan suggests that St. Paul was 'embarrassed' by all the wonders that met his eyes in Athens, as if Athene herself had per- haps cast her spell upon him and made him some- what doubtful of the GaUlajan ; but there is no sort of foundation for such a fancy. It is certain, however, that the Apostle had a new experience of a different kind in Athens. Faced by an audience half-courteous and haH-derisive, he was first ridiculed and then ignored, when he would have preferred to be contradicted and persecuted. Not driven from the city by hostile feeling, but quitting it of his own accord, too unimportant to be noticed, too harmless to be molested, he departed with a crushing sense of failure, and, apparently as a consequence, began his mission in Corinth 'in weakness and fear and much trem- bling' (1 Co 2^). It is possible that he felt he had made a mistake. All that he said to the philo- sophers of Athens was true; but ineffective. It did httle or nothing to storm the enemy's citadel. In a modern phrase, it was magnificent, but it was not war. Another power was needed to humihate the wise, as well as to end the long reign of the gods of Greece. It is significant that in Corinth the Apostle determined — not, indeed, for the first time, but certainly with a new emphasis — not to know anything save Jesus Christ and Him crucified (1 Co 2-), who was for both Jews and Hellenes the power of God and the wisdom of God (12").