§ 5. FEOM JOVIAN TO TIL PD0SITI3. 61
in the East till 378, favored the Arians and persecuted the Catholics. Both, however, prohibited bloody sacrifices * and divination, Maximin, the representative of Yalentinian at Rome, proceeded with savage cruelty against all who were found guilty of the crime of magic, especially the Roman aristocracy. Soothsayers were burnt alive, while their meaner accomplices were beaten to death by straps loaded with lead. In almost every case recorded the magical arts can be traced to pagan religious usages.
Under this reign heathenism was for the first time ofiicially designated 2k& jpaganismus^ that is, peasant-religion; because it had almost entirely died out in the cities, and maintained only a decrepit and obscure existence in retired villages." What an inversion of the state of things in the second century, when Celsus contemptuously called Christianity a religion of mechanics and slaves ! Of course large exceptions must in both cases be made. Especially in Rome, many of the oldest and most respectable families for a long time still adhered to the heathen traditions, and the city appears to have preserved until the latter part of the fourth century a hundred and fifty-two temples and a hundred and eighty-three smaller chapels and altars of patron deities.^ But advocates of the old religion — a Themistius, a Libanius, and a Symmachus — ^limited themselves to the claim of toleration, and thus, in their oppressed condition, became, as formerly the Christians were, and as the persecuted sects in the Catholic church and the Protestant state churches since have been, advocates of religious freedom.
The same toleration continued under Gkatian, son and
* Libanius, I. c. (ed. Reiske, ii. 163) : rb ^hnv lepeTa — eKuXv^rj irapk rolv aS€\(j)o7y, a\\' ou rh Xi^avurSv. No such law, however, has come down to us.
^ The word pagani (from pagus), properly villagers, peasantry, then equivalent to rude, simple, ignorant, iSiwttjs, &cppccu, first occurs in the religious sense in a law of Valentinian, of 368 (Cod. Theodos. 1. xvi. tit. 2, 1. 18), and came into general use under Theodosius, instead of the earlier terms : gentes, gentiles, nationes, Graeci, cultores simulacrorum, etc. The English heathen and heathenism (from heath), and the German Heiden and Heidenthum (from Heidc),\\a.vQ a similar meaning, and are probably imitations of the Latin paganismus in its later usage.
' According to the Descriptiones Urbis of Publicus Victor and Sextus Rufus Festus, which cannot have been composed before, nor long after, the reign of Valentinian. Comp. Beugnot, 1. o. i. 266, and Robertson, 1. c. p. 260.
62 THIRD PEKIOD. A.T). 811-590.
6ucc3Ssor of Yalentinian (375-383). After a time, lioweTer, under tlie influence of Ambrose, bishop of Milan, this emperoi went a step further, lie laid aside the title and dignity of Pontifex Maximus^ confiscated the temple property, abolished most of the privileges of the priests and vestal virgins, and withdrew, at least in part, the appropriation from the public treasury for their suppoi't.' By this step heathenism became, like Christianity before Constantine and now in the American republic, dependent on the voluntary system, while, unlike Christianity, it had no spirit of self-sacrifice, no energy of selfpreservation. The withdrawal of the public support cut its lifestring, aiid left it still to exist for a time by vis inertiae alone. Gratian also, in spite of the protest of the heathen party, removed in 382 the statue and tlie altar of Victoria, the goddess of victory, in the senate building at Eome, where once the senators used to take their oath, scatter incense, and ofi*er sacrifice; though he was obliged still to tolerate there the elsewhere forbidden sacrifices and the public support of some heathen festivities. Inspired by Ambrose with great zeal for the Catholic faith, he refused freedom to heretics, and prohibited the public assemblies of the Eunomians, Photinians, and Manichoeans.
His brother, Yalentinian II. (383-392), rejected the renewed petition of the Romans for the restoration of the altar of Victoria (384). The eloquent and truly venerable prefect Symmachus, who, as prinoeps senatus and first pontifex in Rome, was now the spokesman of the heathen party, prayed the emperor in a dignified and elegant address, but in the tone of apologetic difiidence, to make a distinction between his private religion and the rdigio urbis, to respect the authority of antiquity and the rights of the venerable city, M'hich had attained the dominion of the world under the worship of the gods. But Ambrose of Milan represented to the emperor, in the firm t3ne of episcopal dignity and conscious success, thn* the granting of the petition would be a sanctioning of heathenism and a renunciation of his Christian convictions ; denied,
^Cod. Thcos. xn. 1, 75 ; xvi. 10, 20. Symmach. Ep. x. 61. Ambrose, Ep. xriL