FROM JULIAN TO BODHIDHARMA


When the news came drifting back over the Roman world that
the Emperor had been killed in Persia, and that an unknown
insignificant Jovian reigned in his stead;--and while three parts
of the population were rejoicing that there was an end of the
Apostate and his apostasy; and half the rest, that there was an
end of this terrible strenuosity, this taking of the Gods (good
harmless useful fictions--probably fictions) so fearfully in
earnest: I wonder how many there were to guess how near the end
of the world had come? The cataclysm was much more sudden and
over-whelming than we commonly think; and to have prophesied, in
Roman society, in the year 363, that in a century's time the
empire and all its culture would be things of the past (in the
West), would have sounded just as ridiculous, probably, as such a
prophesy concerning Europe and its culture would have sounded in
a London drawing-room fifteen years ago. There were signs and
portents, of course, for the thoughtful; and no doubt some few
Matthew Arnolds in their degree to be troubled by them. And of
course (as in our own day, but perhaps rather more), an idea with
cranks that at any moment Doomsday might come. But while the
world endured, and the Last Trump had not sounded, of course the
Roman empire would stand.--Christianity? Well, yes; it had
grown very strong; and the extremists among the Christians were
rabid enough against culture of any sort. But there were also
Christians who, while they hated the olden culture of Paganism,
were ambitious to supply a Christian literature in prose and
verse to take the place of the Classical. There had been an
awful devastation of Gaul; the barbarians of the north had been,
now and again, uneasy and troublesome; but see how Julian--even
he, with the Grace of God all against him--had chastised them!
The head of the Roman State would always be the Master of the
World.

And strangely enough, this was an idea that persisted for
centuries; facts with all their mordant logic were impotent to
kill it. Hardly in Dante's time did men guess that the Roman
empire and its civilization were gone.

Life, when Julian died, was still capable of being a very
graceful and dignified affair,--outwardly, at any rate. On their
great estates in Gaul, in Britain, in Italy, great and polished
gentlemen still enjoyed their _otium cum dignitate._ The culture
of the great past still maintained itself amongst them; although
thought and all mental vigor were buried deep under the detritus.
In fourth century Gaul there was quite a little literary
renaissance; centering, as you might expect, in the parts
furthest from German invasion. Its leading light was born in
Bordeaux in the three-thirties; and was thus (to link things up
a little) a younger contemporary of the Indian Samudragupta. He
was Ausonius: teacher of rhetoric, tutor to the prince Gratian,
consul, country gentleman, large land-owner, and, in a studious
uninspired reflective way, a goodish poet. Also a convert to
Christianity, but unenthusiastic:--altogether, a dignified and
polished figure; such as you might find in England now, in the
country squire who has held important offices in India in his
time, hunts and shoots in season, manages his estates with
something between amateur and professional interest, reads Horace
for his pleasure, and even has a turn for writing Latin verses.
Ausonius leaves us a picture of the life of his class: a placid,
cultured life, with quite a strong ethical side to it; sterile
of any deep thought or speculation; far removed from unrest.--
Another respresentative man was his friend Symmachus at Rome:
also highly cultured and of dignified leisure; a very upright
and capable gentleman widely respected for his sterling honesty;
a pagan, not for any stirring of life within his heart or
mind, but simply for love of the ancient Roman idea,--sheer
conservatism;--for much the same reasons, in fact, as make the
Englishman above-mentioned a staunch member of the English Church.
 

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