Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/29

common with, all theologies, so has Rome also much that is peculiar to herself, and much in common with all the cities conquered by her arms, or obscured by her glory. She has the Spartan severity, the Attic culture, the pomp of Memphis, and the grandeur of Babylon and Nineveh. In order to make a succinct proposition, we may indicate the Orient as the thesis, the West as the antithesis, and Rome as the synthesis. The Roman Empire represents the absorption of the Oriental thesis and the Western antithesis in the Roman synthesis. Let us, then, resolve this potent synthesis into its constituent elements, and it will be seen that there can be no synthesis in the political and social order, without a corresponding condition in the religious order. Both among the Oriental nations, the republics of Greece, and in the Roman Empire, theological systems serve to elucidate the political. Theology is the light of history.

The Roman Capitol could not be despoiled of its magnificence, except through the destruction of the means which had enabled it to attain its culminating point. No one could establish his power in Rome without the permission of the gods, and no one could obtain possession of the Capitol without first displacing the supreme god, Jupiter Optimus Mazimus. The ancients, who had a confused idea of the vital power inherent in all religious systems, believed that no city could be conquered so long as it was not abandoned by the national deities. Consequently, in all the wars of city against city, nation against nation, and race against race, a spiritual and religious controversy accompanied the material and political struggle. The besieged, while making an armed resistance, implored their gods not to forsake them. The besiegers, in their turn, conjured the gods,