Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 3 (1897).djvu/216

 196 THE DECLINE AND FALL orthodox Theodosius contributed to the triumph of the Christian and Catholic faith. ^^ He attacked superstition in her most vital part by prohibiting the use of sacrifices, which he declared to be criminal as well as infamous ; and, if the terms of his edicts more strictly condemned the impious curiosity which ex- amined the entrails of the victims, ^2 every subsequent ex- planation tended to involve, in the same guilt, the general practice of immolation, which essentially constituted the religion of the Pagans. As the temples had been erected for the purpose of sacrifice, it was the duty of a benevolent prince to remove from his subjects the dangerous temptation of offending against the laws which he had enacted. A special commission was granted to Cynegius, the Praetorian prajfect of the East, and afterwards to the counts Jovius and Gaudentius, two officers of distinguished rank in the West ; by which they were directed to shut the temples, to seize or destroy the instruments of idolatry, to abolish the privileges of the priests, and to con- fiscate the consecrated property for the benefit of the emperor, of the church, or of the army.^^ Here the desolation might have stopped, and the naked edifices, which were no longer employed in the service of idolatry, might have been protected from the destructive rage of fanaticism. Many of those temples were the most splendid and beautiful monuments of Grecian architecture : and the emperor himself was interested not to deface the splendour of his own cities or to diminish the value of his own possessions. Those stately edifices might be suffered to remain as so many lasting trophies of tlie victory of Christ. In the decline of the arts, they might be usefully converted into magazines, manufactures, or places of public assembly ; and perhaps, when the walls of the temple had been sufficiently purified by holy rites, the worship of the true Deity might be allowed to expiate the ancient guilt of idolatry. But, as long as they subsisted, the Pagans fondly cherished the secret hope that an auspicious revolution, a second Julian, might again restore the altars of the gods ; and the earnestness with which ^' See his laws in the Theodosian Code, 1. xvi. tit. x. leg. 7-1 1. 32 Homer's sacrifices are not accompanied with any inquisition of entrails (see Feithius, Antiquitat. Homer. 1. i. c. 10, 16). The Tuscans, who produced the first Haruspices, subdued both the Greeks and the Romans (Cicero de Divinatione, ii. 23). ^Zosimus, 1. iv. p. 245, 249 [c. 37]. Theodoret, 1. v. c. 21. Idatius in Chron. Prosper Aquitan. [De promissionibus et praedictionibus Dei] 1. iii. c. 38, apud Baronium, Annal. Eccles. a.d. 389, No. 52. Libanius (pro Templis, p. 10) labours to prove that the commands of Thecxlosius were not direct and positive.