DOWNFALL OF ROME 



before them. The Stoic philosophy a materialistic, 

 partly pantheistic view of nature placed the ethical 

 life of man and the pursuit of virtue upon an emi- 

 nence to which no other pagan philosophy had ever 

 attained. In Rome it dominated the life and writ- 

 ings of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 

 Soon after his death it became absorbed into neo- 

 platonism and lost its separate existence. 



The Epicureans, followers of Democritus and of 

 Epicurus, taught that all nature was the blind result 

 of chance, the haphazard, fortuitous impact of the 

 atoms, without any governing cause, either efficient 

 or final. Being thus atheistic, the philosophy had 

 little or no influence upon earlier or later religions. 

 Yet its atomic theory of the physics of space is other- 

 wise a marvellous anticipation of the thought and 

 science of modern times. 



The doctrines thus taught by the various philoso- 

 phies were also practically the religions of their 

 adherents, except among the Jews and the early Chris- 

 tians. Some of the former added, as Philo did, the 

 Platonic and Stoic philosophies to the teachings of the 

 Mosaic Scriptures ; the latter the Christians either 

 rejected the philosophical religion of their teachings 

 absolutely as of no value, or accepted them in part 

 only and assimilated them into the Christian dogmas, 

 giving birth to the Gnostic, Docetic and countless 



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