not so utterly bad as the satirists Juvenal and Martial might lead us to suppose; nor must we judge it by the character of the court gossip Suetonius served up for a public eager to feast on scandals of high life, or the sardonic irony of Tacitus who wrote as the critic in opposition. Happily Rome was not the measure of the empire. Not only was there much serious effort after better things, but the monuments in the cemeteries contain touching records of simple family affections that could not flourish in a world that was utterly corrupt. And yet a deep sense of failure gave a mournful tone to the speculations of the most earnest men who were labouring for the social welfare. "No flight of imagination," says Harnack, writing of a later period, equally corrupt, "can form any idea of what would have come over the ancient world or the Roman Empire during the third century, had it not been for the Church.[1]
- ↑ Expansion of Christianity, voL i. p. 158 (Eng. edit.).
