In all then that concerns the ethical standards of the people, our study of modern Greece will contribute little to the understanding of ancient thought or conduct. Christianity has fenced men about with a rigid moral code, and has exerted itself to punish those who break bounds. Duty towards man is now recognised as the complement of duty towards God; and any one who by a notoriously evil life has outraged the moral laws of conduct, is liable to be deprived by excommunication of the established means of worship. The frailties of the Greek character remain indeed such as they always were: but now religion at least enjoins, if it cannot always enforce, the observance of a moral code which includes the eighth commandment, and Pataecion, though he go regularly to church, yet lacks something. But while the Church had an open field in matters of morality and had no system of ethics based on Hellenic religion to combat in introducing her higher views of man’s duty towards his fellow-men, in the province of pure religion and of all that concerns the relations of man with his God or gods she necessarily encountered competition and opposition. Primarily the contest between paganism and Christianity might have been expected to resolve itself into a struggle between polytheism and monotheism: but as a matter of fact that simple issue became considerably complicated. The minds of the educated classes had become confused by the subtleties of the Gnostics, who sought to find, in some philosophical basis common to all religions, an intellectual justification for accepting Christianity without wholly discarding earlier religious convictions. This however was a matter of theology rather than of religion, appealing not to the heart but to the head: and so far as the common-folk were concerned we may safely say that such speculations were above their heads. Yet for them too the issue was confused in two ways. The first disturbing factor was the attitude adopted by each of the two parties, pagan and Christian, towards the object of the other’s worship. The pagans--so catholic are the sympathies of polytheism--were ready enough to welcome Christ into the number of their gods. Tertullian tells us that the emperor Tiberius proposed the apotheosis of Christ[63]. Hadrian is said to have built temples in his honour[64]. Alexander Severus had in his private chapel statues of Christ, Abraham, and Orpheus[65]; and a similar association of Homer, Pythagoras, Christ, and S. Paul is noted by S. Augustine[66]. Since then there is no reason for supposing that the common-folk were more exclusive in their religious sympathies than the upper classes, it may safely be inferred that the average Pagan was willing to admit Christ to a place among the gods of Greece. The Christians on the other hand did not attack paganism by an utter denial of the existence of the old gods. They sought rather to ridicule and discredit them by pointing out