ing of the Greeks."
His address at Athens was deliberately meant to bear a relation to the
philosophy of the experts who were present, but necessarily it could
only introduce a few salient allusions, such as even a dabbler could
have picked up, and we can hardly blame the specialists for their
erroneous judgment. As he says himself: "The Greeks demand philosophy;
but we proclaim a Messiah crucified, to the Jews a stumbling-block,
and to the Greeks a folly."

To discuss further the moral ideas of the Roman world would consume
more space and time than can be afforded here. It may, however, be
worth while to mention that suicide was commonly--and especially by
the Stoics--looked upon as a natural and blameless thing, when calm
reason appeared to justify the proceeding, and when due consideration
was given to social claims. To seek a euthanasia in such cases was an
act of wisdom. Belief in an underworld or an after life was not rare
among the common people, but it certainly did not exist in any force
among the cultivated classes. It was taught neither by philosophy nor
by the religion of the state. Yet the sense that rewards or
punishments are unfairly meted out in this world was strong in many a
mind, and this is one of the facts which account for the hold taken
upon such minds, first by the religion of Isis, and then in a still
greater and more abiding measure by Christianity.

CHAPTER XXII

THE ROMAN PROFUSION OP ART

[Illustration: FIG. 114.--THE DYING GAUL.]

[Illustration: FIG. 115.--A "CANDELIERA" OR MARBLE PILASTER OF THE
BASILICA AEMILIA.]

[Illustration: FIG. 116.--FRAGMENTS OF THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE REGIA.]

It would be a more than agreeable task to deal at some length with the
art of the Roman world of this period, but the subject is vast, and
demands a treatise to itself. How general was the love of art--or at
least the recognition of its place in life--must be obvious to those
who have seen the great collections in Rome, gathered partly from the
city itself and partly from the towns and country "villas" of Italy,
and those in the National Museum at Naples, acquired mainly from the
buried cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Nor are we amazed merely at
the quantity of statues, statuettes, busts, reliefs, paintings, mosaic
gems and cameos, and artistically wrought objects and utensils, which
have been preserved while so many thousands of such productions have
disappeared in the conflagrations of