A much more important fact in the moral history of the later Republic than this lowering of the standard of conduct is the change which was being effected in the moral ideal itself. While certain causes were at work depressing the moral standard to the lowest point, perhaps, that it ever touched in the long history of Rome, there were other causes in operation which were slowly modifying the old Roman type of character and creating a new type made up largely of new virtues. We speak of this change in the ideal as a fact of greater significance than that of moral degeneracy, for the reason that a decline in actual morality, the failure of a people to live up to the best they know, is always a superficial and transient phenomenon compared with the changes effected by different influences in the moral type itself, since these changes constitute the very essence of the ethical evolution. The causes at work modifying the old Roman ideal of character were various; but more vital than all other influences were those that came through the contact of Rome with Greek culture and the civilizations of the Orient. At the heart of these ancient cultures were ethical elements of inestimable value. Among these were the Greek humanitarian spirit and the various intellectual virtues which characterized the Greek type of excellence; and, in the Oriental theosophic cultures, a deeply religious spirit and the religious virtues which marked the moral ideals of the Eastern nations, particularly the Egyptian, the Persian, and the Hebrew. We recognize the supreme importance for the later moral history of Rome, as well as for that of the whole Western world, of the ethical products of the religious culture of Judea, but we do not recognize as fully the importance of the ethical elements of the secular culture of Greece and of the theosophic civilizations of Egypt and Persia. But Rome’s ethical debt to these older cultures was also indisputably great. But since these Greco-Oriental influences which were at work modifying the old Roman type of character had not wrought their full effects before the close of the third century of the imperial period, we shall reserve further comment on them, and on the new composite type they were contributing to create, for the next division of this chapter, in which we shall follow the trend of the moral evolution under the pagan Empire. IV. THE MORAL EVOLUTION UNDER THE PAGAN EMPIRE [Sidenote: The bad bequest]