ns, had been part ejected, part exploited, and wholly compromised
by a new gospel from the east.

[Footnote 1: About A.D. 100]

[Footnote 2: A.D. 404-476]

While the Oriental had been compelled by Rome to draw his political
frontier at the Euphrates, and had failed so far to cross the river-line,
he had maintained his cultural independence within sight of the
Mediterranean. In the hill country of Judah, overlooking the high road
between Antioch and Alexandria, the two chief foci of Hellenism in the
east which the Macedonians had founded, and which had grown to maturity
under the aegis of Rome, there dwelt a little Semitic community which had
defied all efforts of Greek or Roman to assimilate it, and had finally
given birth to a world religion about the time that a Roman punitive
expedition razed its holy city of Jerusalem to the ground.[1] Christianity
was charged with an incalculable force, which shot like an electric
current from one end of the Roman Empire to the other. The
highly-organized society of its adherents measured its strength in several
sharp conflicts with the Imperial administration, from which it emerged
victorious, and it was proclaimed the official religious organization of
the Empire by the very emperor that founded Constantinople.[2]

[Footnote 1: A.D. 70.]

[Footnote 2: Constantine the Great recognized Christianity in A.D. 313 and
founded Constantinople in A.D. 328.]

The established Christian Church took the best energies of Hellenism into
its service. The Greek intellectuals ceased to become lecturers and
professors, to find a more human and practical career in the bishop's
office. The Nicene Creed, drafted by an 'oecumenical' conference of
bishops under the auspices of Constantine himself,[1] was the last notable
formulation of Ancient Greek philosophy. The cathedral of Aya Sophia, with
which Justinian adorned Constantinople, was the last original creation of
Ancient Greek art.[2] The same Justinian closed the University of Athens,
which had educated the world for nine hundred years and more, since Plato
founded his college in the Academy. Six recalcitrant professors went into
exile for their spiritual freedom, but they found the devout
Zoroastrianism of the Persian court as unsympathetic as the devout
Christianity of the Roman. Their humiliating return and recantation broke
the 'Golden Chain' of Hellenic thought for ever.

Hellenism was thus expiring from its own inanition, when the inev