History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell [162]
Panaetius the Stoic has been already considered in the preceding chapter. He was a friend of Polybius, and, like him, a protégé of the younger Scipio. While Scipio lived, he was frequently in Rome, but after Scipio's death in 129 B.C. he stayed in Athens as head of the Stoic school. Rome still had, what Greece had lost, the hopefulness connected with the opportunity for political activity. Accordingly the doctrines of Panaetius were more political, and less akin to those of the Cynics, than were those of earlier Stoics. Probably the admiration of Plato felt by cultivated Romans influenced him in abandoning the dogmatic narrowness of his Stoic predecessors. In the broader form given to it by him and by his successor Posidonius, Stoicism strongly appealed to the more serious among the Romans.
At a later date, Epictetus, though a Greek, lived most of his life in Rome. Rome supplied him with most of his illustrations; he is always exhorting the wise man not to tremble in the presence of the Emperor. We know the influence of Epictetus on Marcus Aurelius, but his influence on the Greeks is hard to trace.
Plutarch (ca. A.D. 46–120), in his Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, traced a parallelism between the most eminent men of the two countries. He spent a considerable time in Rome, and was honoured by the Emperors Hadrian and Trajan. In addition to his Lives, he wrote numerous works on philosophy, religion, natural history, and morals. His Lives are obviously concerned to reconcile Greece and Rome in men's thoughts.
On the whole, apart from such exceptional men, Rome acted as a blight on the Greek-speaking part of the Empire. Thought and art alike declined. Until the end of the second century A.D., life, for the well-to-do, was pleasant and easy-going; there was no incentive to strenuousness, and little opportunity for great achievement. The recognized schools of philosophy—the Academy, the Peripatetics, the Epicureans, and the Stoics—continued to exist until they were closed by Justinian. None of these, however, showed any vitality throughout the time after Marcus Aurelius, except the Neoplatonists in the third century A.D., whom we shall consider in the next chapter; and these men were hardly at all influenced by Rome. The Latin and Greek halves of the Empire became more and more divergent; the knowledge of Greek became rare in the west, and after Constantine Latin, in the east, survived only in law and in the army.
II. The influence of Greece and the East on Rome. There are here two very different things to consider: first, the influence of Hellenic art and literature and philosophy on the most cultivated Romans; second, the spread of non-Hellenic religions and superstitions throughout the Western world.
(1) When the Romans first came in contact with Greeks, they became aware of themselves as comparatively barbarous and uncouth. The Greeks were immeasurably their superiors in many ways: in manufacture and in the technique of agriculture; in the kinds of knowledge that are necessary for a good official; in conversation and the art of enjoying life; in art and literature and philosophy. The only things in which the Romans were superior were military tactics and social cohesion. The relation of the Romans to the Greeks was something like that of the Prussians to the French in 1814 and 1815; but this latter was temporary, whereas the other lasted a long time. After the Punic Wars, young Romans conceived an admiration for the Greeks. They learnt the Greek language, they copied Greek architecture, they employed Greek sculptors. The Roman gods were identified with the gods of Greece. The Trojan origin of the Romans was invented