LATE ROMAN AND EARLY CHRISTIAN STYLE

niches and apses of Roman palaces and public buildings with their
grossly inflated decoration grew up all over the vast Empire. But
whilst this new style left its mark on Trier as much as on Milan, its
centre was the Eastern Mediterranean: Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor,
Palmyra—that is the country in which the Hellenistic style had
flourished in the last century B.C. And the Late Roman Style is in-
deed the successor to the Late Greek or Hellenistic.

The Eastern Mediterranean led in matters of the spirit too. From
the East came the new attitude towards religion. Men were tired of
what human intellect could provide. The invisible, the mysterious,
the irrational were the need of that orientalised, barbarised popula-
tion. The various creeds of the Gnostics, Mithraism from Persia,
Judaism, Manichaeism, found their followers. Christianity proved
strongest, found lasting forms of organisation, and survived the
danger under Constantine of an alliance with the Empire. But it
remained Eastern in essence. Tertullian's: "I believe in it because it is
absurd" would have been an impossible tenet for an enlightened
Roman. Augustine's "Beauty cannot be beheld in any bodily mat-
ter" is equally anti-antique. Of the greatest of the late Pagan philo-
sophers, Plotinus, his pupil and biographer said that he walked like
one ashamed of being in the body. Plotinus came from Egypt, St.
Augustine from Libya. St. Athanasius and Origen were Egyptians;
Basil was born and lived in Asia Minor, Diocletian was a native of
Dalmatia, Constantine and St. Jerome came from the Hungarian
plains. Judged by the standards of the age of Augustus, none of them
was a Roman.

Their architecture represents them, their fanaticism and their
passionate search for the invisible, the magic, the immaterial. S.

t
1

i. RAVENNA: s. APOLLINARE NUOVO, EARLY 6xH
CENTURY.