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morals of the empire, to introduce a better and a holier spirit 
among those who had been accustomed to the unrestrained 
indulgence of their passions. Christian bishops like St. Ambrose 
dared to shut the church doors in the face of the all-powerful 
Emperor when his hands were stained by a barbarous murder 
of his fellow-creatures.* * * § A Christian monk braved the fury of 
the multitude by his bold denunciation of the brutality of the 
scenes of slaughter continually enacted in the Roman circus ; 
and though he paid the penalty of his boldness by his death, 
the result was the final and absolute abolition of those cruel 
acts of bloodshed by the decree of the Roman Emperor.f Nor 
was the Christian Church altogether unsuccessful in her con- 
flict with a more insidious enemy. It is impossible to express 
in our English language the frightful excesses of licentiousness 
which were openly indulged in in the days of heathen Rome. 
But if licentiousness has not been subdued by Christianity, it 
has at least been kept within bounds. Shameful as was the 
profligacy, disgraceful as were the crimes, of the Byzantine court, 
there was at least a marked difference between heathen Rome 
and Christian Constantinople. Crimes which were not even 
otiences at all in the eyes of Paganism, were punished with 
death by the code of Justinian. J An historian whose impar- 
tiality will not be called in question — I mean the late 
Dean Milman — has remarked that “ the courts of the Christian 
emperors, notwithstanding their crimes, weaknesses, and 
intrigues, had been awed, even on the throne, to greater 
decency of manners.” “ Neither Rome, nor Ravenna, nor 
Byzantium,” he continues, “ had witnessed, — they would not 
have endured, a Nero or an Elagabalus. The females (believing 
the worst of the early life of the Empress Theodora,” — which, 
by the way, I do not believe, resting, as such a belief must, 
solely upon the malignant Anecdotes of Procopius) “were more 
disposed on the whole to the crimes of ambition and political 
and religious intrigue than to the flagrant licentiousness of the 
wives and mothers of the early Caesars.” § Or if the statement 
* Neander, Ch. Hist., vol. iii. sec. 2. 
t Theodoret, Eccl. Hist., v. 26. St. Augustine ( Confessions , vi. 8) is some- 
times quoted to show that these games still continued after the date fixed by 
Theodoret. But he is speaking of an earlier period, when he and his friend 
Alypius were young. 
I Milman, Hist. Lat. Christianity . book iii. c. 5 ; Gibbon, Decline and 
Fall, c. 44. 
§ Milman, Latin Christianity, book iii. c. 2. Theodora is not accused, 
even by Procopius, of disgracing the Imperial throne with she vices of a 
Messalina, as described in revolting terms in the 6th Satire of Juvenal. 
