ic office to serve both Christ and
Caesar?--The usual liberality of the emperors towards the new
religion.--Nevertheless an open profession of faith hazardous and
frequently avoided.--Marriages between Christians and
pagans.--Apostasy resulting from these.--Curious discovery
illustrating the attitude of Seneca's family towards
Christianity.--Christians in the army.--The gradual nature of the
transformation of Rome.--The significance of the inscription on
the Arch of Constantine.--The readiness of the early Church to
adopt pagan customs and even myths.--The curious mixture of pagan
and Christian conceptions which grew out of this.--Churches
became repositories for classical works of art, for which new
interpretations were invented.--The desire of the early
Christians to make their churches as beautiful as possible.--The
substitution of Christian shrines for the old pagan altars at
street corners.--Examples of both.--The bathing accommodations of
the pagan temples adopted by the Church.--Also the custom of
providing public standards of weights and measures.--These set up
in the basilicas.--How their significance became perverted in the
Dark Ages.--The adoption of funerary banquets and their
degeneration.--The public store-houses of the emperors and those
of the popes.--Pagan rose-festivals and their conversion into a
Christian institution.

It has been contended, and many still believe, that in ancient Rome
the doctrines of Christ found no proselytes, except among the lower
and poorer classes of citizens. That is certainly a noble picture
which represents the new faith as searching among the haunts of
poverty and slavery, seeking to inspire faith, hope, and charity in
their occupants; to transform them from things into human beings; to
make them believe in the happiness of a future life; to alleviate
their present sufferings; to redeem their children from shame and
servitude; to proclaim them equal to their masters. But the gospel
found its way also to the mansions of the masters, nay, even to the
palace of the Caesars. The discoveries lately made on this subject are
startling, and constitute a new chapter in the history of imperial
Rome. We have been used to consider early Christian history and
primitive Christian art as matters of secondary importance, and hardly
worthy the attention of the classical student.