less striking in its cultural
than in its political and economic aspects. This cultural decline was the
result of political causes which had been gradually undermining the
foundations of a vigorous intellectual life. The culture of Greece
culminated in its scientific achievements of the third century B. C. At
that time in comparison with the Greeks the neighboring, peoples were at
best semi-barbarians; in the eastern Mediterranean the Greeks were the
dominant race, still animated by a strong love of political freedom. But
the Roman conquest with its ruthless exploitation of the provinces ruined
the Greek world economically and broke the morale of the Greek peoples,
forcing them to seek their salvation in fawning servility to Rome. The
consequence was that as the Greeks came under the dominion of Rome their
creative impulses withered, their intellectual progress ceased and their
eyes were turned backward upon their past achievements. And the Italians
themselves were on too low an intellectual level to develop a culture of
their own. They had not progressed beyond the adoption of certain aspects
of Greek culture before the century of civil wars between 133 and 30 B. C.
resulted in the establishment of a type of government which gradually
crushed out the spirit of initiative in the Latin speaking world. The
material prosperity and peace during the first two centuries of the
principate made possible the diffusion of a uniform type of culture
throughout the empire as a whole, but after the age of Augustus this is
characterized both in the East and in the West by its imitation of the
past and its lack of creative power. The third century A. D. with its long
period of civil war, foreign invasions, and economic chaos, dealt a fatal
blow to the material basis of ancient civilization. The collapse of
Graeco-Roman culture was rapid and complete, resembling the breakdown of
the civilization of the Aegean Bronze age toward the close of the second
millennium before the Christian era. Culturally, the fourth century A. D.
belongs to the Middle Ages.

III. THE IMPERIAL CULT AND THE ORIENTAL RELIGIONS IN ROMAN PAGANISM

*The religious transformation of the Roman world.* The religious
transformation of the Roman world during the principate was fully as
important for future ages as its political transformation. This religious
development consisted in the diffusion throughout the empire of a group of
religions which originated in t