Greece merged into Rome; but, though the Romans aped the arts and
manners of the Greeks, they never truly caught the Hellenic spirit. Even
Virgil only trod the court of the Gentiles of Greek culture. It was not,
therefore, possible that any social custom so peculiar as paiderastia
should flourish on Latin soil. Instead of Cleomenes and Epameinondas, we
find at Rome, Nero, the bride of Sporus, and Commodus the public
prostitute. Alcibiades is replaced by the Mark Antony of Cicero's
_Philippic_. Corydon, with artificial notes, takes up the song of
Ageanax. The melodies of Meleager are drowned in the harsh discords of
Martial. Instead of love, lust was the deity of the boy-lover on the
shores of Tiber.
In the first century of the Roman Empire, Christianity began its work of
reformation. When we estimate the effect of Christianity, we must bear
in mind that the early Christians found Paganism disorganised and
humanity rushing to a precipice of ruin. Their first efforts were
directed toward checking the sensuality of Corinth, Athens, Rome, the
capitals of Syria and Egypt. Christian asceticism, in the corruption of
the Pagan systems, led logically to the cloister and the hermitage. The
component elements of society had been disintegrated by the Greeks in
their decadence, and by the Romans in their insolence of material
prosperity. To the impassioned followers of Christ, nothing was left but
separation from nature, which had become incurable in its monstrosity of
vices. But the convent was a virtual abandonment of social problems.
From this policy of despair, this helplessness to cope with evil, and
this hopelessness of good on earth, emerged a new and nobler synthesis,
the merit of which belongs in no small measure to the Teutonic converts
to the Christian faith. The Middle Ages proclaimed, through chivalry,
the truth, then for the first time fully apprehended, that woman is the
mediating and ennobling element in human life. Not in escape into the
cloister, not in the self-abandonment to vice, but in the fellow-service
of free men and women must be found the solution of social problems. The
mythology of Mary gave religious sanction to the chivalrous enthusiasm;
and a cult of woman sprang into being, to which, although it was
romantic and visionary, we owe the spiritual basis of our domestic and
civil life. The _modus vivendi_ of the modern world was found.