THE RELATIONS OF LATIN 183 



convert of Tacitus, had he not had other axes to grind. The younger 

 Pliny too shows Stoic leanings. Nor was its influence confined to 

 letters: it showed itself under the Republic in the humanistic and 

 socialistic radicalism of the Gracchi pupils of C. Blossius and 

 in the assassination of Julius Csesar; and under the early Empire 

 in the political martyrdoms of men like Musonius Rufus, Rubellius 

 Plautus, Thrasea Psetus, and many others, who formed the "Stoic 

 opposition." 



This vogue of Stoicism goes, indeed, so far as to suggest a doubt 

 as to whether the Stoicism of Rome was not merely an expression of 

 the Roman character itself. And no doubt the Romans were Stoics 

 by nature as well as by nurture. Yet Stoicism must have helped to 

 develop those elements in the Roman character to which it appealed so 

 strongly. The old Roman virtus (manliness) came to have a wider 

 sense (wisdom). Nor is it easy to say how much of the later form 

 which Stoicism assumed in the hands of men of affairs like Cicero, 

 Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius is due to contact with the Roman 

 genius for simplification and adaptation and practical life, and 

 how much to later developments of Stoicism itself, as taught by 

 men like Pansetius and Poseidonius. One thing is certain, that 

 neo-Stoicism, if I may so call it, put off something of its arrogance, 

 its dogmatism, its pedantry, and its paradoxes, and became a more 

 human thing than early Stoicism had been. And this gain more than 

 compensated for the losses which it suffered on the purely specu- 

 lative side. Neo-Stoicism as developed at Rome became a power 

 in the world. 



There is probably no school of philosophy which has been so 

 hardly judged as Stoicism. Its influence upon the world has been 

 incalculable. The main differentiae of modern society, as compared 

 with ancient, are, I suppose, broadly speaking, three: the passage 

 from the city-state to the empire-state, the abolition of slavery, and 

 the creation of the church as distinct from the state. All these were 

 voiced, or at least anticipated in principle, by Stoicism. As to the third 

 point, Stoicism, like some other Greek schools of philosophy, linked 

 men together in a unity which was independent of the state and in 

 which therefore lay the germs of a church. 



Again the Stoic theology led to an attitude towards nature which 

 was a new thing in literature, a sense of the mystery of nature, as the 

 dwelling-place and vesture of deity, the templum deorum immortalium 

 (Seneca, De Benef. vn, 7, 3). It was something like the old Greek 

 nature- worship minus its polytheism. To the formation of our modern 

 attitude towards nature no doubt other elements have contributed, 

 notably the Celtic, as Matthew Arnold held. But Stoicism was the 

 beginning of it. 



The world at large is little conscious of the debt which it owes 



