Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/19

 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE OF THE MIDDLE AGES CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION No date marks the passing of the ancient world and the beginning of the Middle Ages. The transition from one to the other was a process of spiritual change, during which antique characteristics gradu- ally ceased and were replaced by much that was incipi- ently mediaeval. There no longer existed men whose education and intellectual traits, whose moods, tastes, sentiments, and views of life were those of the time of Augustus, or Trajan, or Marcus Aurelius. The older possessors of antique culture in Italy and the provinces were transformed ; within and without the Empire new races had come upon the stage ; through decade and century went on a ceaseless blending of the new, the old, and the transitional. Paganism and Christianity existed side by side in the Graeco-Roman world of the fourth and fifth centu- ries, the one with its great steadying traditions, and the other with its power of new-found faith and its fresh moral stimulus. Christians had pagan edu- cations, and pagans, like the emperor Julian and his B 1