Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/271

 military despotism, and the pride which animates the strenuous virtues of a rising commonwealth was extinct. Levity pervaded the aimless crowd who lived only for the diversion of the hour. Nature had been interrogated repeatedly with an invariably negative result; her secret, if she possessed one, seemed to be impenetrable and destined to remain for ever unknown. No discovery in science had opened up the vista of a path which led through inexhaustible fields of knowledge. The psychical unrest longed for new ideals and was willing to be appeased by the slightest semblance of a revelation. Religion-making became a craft which was followed by more than one practitioner in all the chief cities of the Empire. A host of charlatans arose and made many victims by pretending to theurgic powers. Agitated by vague impulses the social units drifted with indeterminable currents, for more than a century before the heterogeneous elements which were in commotion showed a tendency to group themselves under any concrete forms. At length the appearances of a settlement became visible, and three distinct forms emerged successively from the previously existing chaos, each of which claimed to have sounded the abysmal depths and to have brought to the surface the inestimable balm which was to salve the bruised souls of humanity. But they beheld each other with horror and contempt, and a contest was initiated between them on the theatre of the Empire for the spiritual dominion of mankind.

I. In the year 28, the fifteenth of the reign of Tiberius, Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea, the subordinate officer