Between Heathenism and Christianity - College of Stoic Philosophers

Plutarch and the Greece of His Age
tion shows no decay in what we may call religion,
either in Greece or Rome. Its external forms and
traditional rites were sedulously kept up and scrupu
lously
maintained. Plutarch likewise bears testi
mony to this condition of things. Scoffers and in
fidels had become more numerous, mainly because
the Romans were more tolerant in such matters than
the Greeks. To the ruling class all cults were alike;
consequently they made no objections to anything
that was spoken or written, so long as their authority
was not directly or indirectly attacked. In the vari
ous controversies about religion mentioned in the
New Testament, the attitude of the government is
always one of indifference except as to the mainte
nance of public order.
The Greeks, generally speaking, preferred, like
Plutarch, the limited sphere of
local political activity
to the larger one offered at Rome. The provincials
who came to honor on the other side of the Adriatic
were few in number.
In the main the provinces fared better under the
imperial government than under the republic. There
was a higher degree of probability that wrongs would
be redressed. A case in point is that of the apostle
Paul who appealed to Caesar even when the Caesar
was Nero.
It is a well-known fact of ancient history that prop
erty in transit, either by land or sea, was at no time
particularly safe at a distance from the centers of pop
ulation. The thief and the robber are familiar figures
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