132 Si. Paul in Galatia. Chap. VI
formal documents. A Graeco-Roman civilisation using the Greek language was the type which Rome aimed at establishing in the East.
The efforts of Rome to naturalise Western culture in Asia Minor were more successful than those of the Greek kings had been ; but still they worked at best very slowly. The evidence of inscriptions tends to show that the Phrygian language was used in rural parts of the country during the second and even the third century. In some remote and rustic districts it persisted even until the fourth century, as Celtic did in parts of North Galatia.
The Christian influence was entirely in favour of the Greek language. The rustics clung longest to Paganism, while the Greek-speaking population of the cities adopted Christianity. It is not probable that any attempt was made to translate the Christian sacred books into Phrygian or Lycaonian ; there is not even any evidence that evan- gelisation in these languages was ever attempted. The Christians seem to have been all expected to read the Scriptures in Greek. That fact was sufficient to put the Church, as regards its practical effect on society, on the same side as the romanising influence ; and the effect was quite independent of any intentional policy. The most zealous enemy of the imperial Antichrist was none the less effective in aiding the imperial policy by spreading the official language. In fact, Christianity did far more thoroughly what the emperors tried to do. It was really their best ally, if they had recognised the facts of the case ; and the Christian Apologists of the second century are justified in claiming that their religion was essentially a loyal religion.
(2) The Empire had succeeded in imposing its languages
Sec. i. The Imperial and the Christian Policy. 133
on the central districts of Asia only so far as education spread. Every one who wrote or read, wrote and read Greek ; but those who could do neither used the native language. Hence inscriptions were almost universally ex- pressed in Greek, for even the most illiterate, if they aspired to put an epitaph on a grave, did so in barbarous (some- times unintelligible) Greek ; the desire for an epitaph was the first sign of desire for education and for Greek.
In education lay the most serious deficiency of the imperial policy. Rome cannot be said to have seriously attempted to found an educational system either in the provinces or in the metropolis. " The education imparted on a definite plan by the State did not go beyond in- stituting a regular series of amusements, some of a rather brutalising tendency" {Church in R. E., p. 360). And precisely in this point, Christianity came in to help the Imperial Government, recognising the duty of educating, as well as feeding and amusing, the mass of the population. The theory of universal education for the people has never been more boldly and thoroughly stated than by Tatian {ibid. p. 345). " The weak side of the Empire — the cause of the ruin of the first Empire — was the moral deterioration of the lower classes : Christianity, if adopted in time, might have prevented this result."
Now, the classes where education and work go hand in hand were the first to come under the influence of the new religion. On the one hand the uneducated and grossly superstitious rustics were unaffected by it. On the other hand, there were " not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble" in the Churches of the first century, i.e., not many professional teachers of wisdom and philosophy, not many of the official and governing class, not many of
134 St- Paul in Galatia. Chap. VI.
the hereditarily privileged class. But the working and thinking classes, with the students, if not the Professors, at the Universities, were attracted to the new teaching ; and it spread among them with a rapidity that seemed to many modern critics incredible and fabulous, till it was justified by recent discoveries. The enthusiasm of the period was on the side of the Christians ; its dilet- tantism, officialism, contentment and self-satisfaction were against them.