Full text: Prosalesebuch für Untertertia der Vollanstalten oder Klasse III der Realschulen (Teil 4, [Schülerband])

Christianity Established 
in the establishment of Constantine as sole emperor in A.D. 
323. He was son of one of the co-emperors and Constantine 
of a Christian lady named Helena. Constantine the Great, 
made an important change in the government of the empire by 
dividing the military power from the civil authority. The in- 
fluence of the Zegaf or provincial viceroys was thus reduced, 
and the emperor alone had both civil and military power in his 
hands, a fact which gave him a great predominance, 
6. In A.D. 324 Christianity was established by Constantine 
as the religion of the state, and in 330 he made Byzantium 
Byzan'tium the capital of the empire. "This town, becomes the 
on the Thracian Bosporus, founded by Greek S*pital. 
colonists in B.C. 658, had early become a great commercial 
centre, After being held successively by the Athenians, Lace- 
daemonians, and Macedonians, it came into Roman possession, 
and the new city now built there, or the enlarged and recon- 
structed Byzantium, was afterwards called Conrstantinop'olis 
(“ City of Constantine,” from Greek polis, city), and remained the 
capital of the Eastern Empire of Rome till A.D. 1453. 
7. In religion, Constantine seems to have been a strange 
compound of Paganism and Christianity. He WS opargcter 
an able general and statesman, whose real character and death of 
has been obscured by historical excesses, both of C©onstantine, 
panegyric and of detraction, and around whose name, in con- 
nection with Christianity, ridiculous fables have gathered, 
Constantine embraced the new religion because he thought it 
expedient for his own interest so to do, and not from any mira- 
culous apparition or divine command. He died in 337, leaving 
the empire to confusion and civil war under his sons. 
8. We have seen that one of the best and latest developments 
of Paganism—-that under the Antonines—was the Roman 
fatalism of a lofty but loveless Stoicism. “ Among arte 
the loftier minds who stood out protesting against difference, 
corruption, and daring in a corrupted age to believe in the 
superiority of Right to enjoyment, we find a grand contempt for 
pleasure and a sublime defiance of pain, worthy of the heart 
‚of steel which beat beneath the Roman’s robe, This was 
|Stotcism, the Grecian philosophy which took. deepest root, as 
might have been expected, in the soil of Roman thought. 
toicism was submission to Destiny—rigid, loveless submission. 
Its language was ‘Must.’ ‘ It must be, and man’s highest manli- 
ness is to submit to the inevitable. It is right because it must
	        
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