Rome, when Marcus came to rule over it, was the centre of a vast Empire and no capital has ever surpassed it in immorality. It had all the viciousness of Paris without its grace, the gross materialism of London enhanced by a system of slavery which brutalised master as well as slave, and all this joined to the superstition of Pekin. It had not improved, but rather the reverse, since St. Paul saw it delivered over to a reprobate sense. It was the spoiled child of its Empire. All Europe except Germany and Russia owned its sway and ministered to its desires; so did Asia Minor and Syria as far East as the Euphrates; so too did Egypt and the whole northern part of Africa. The wealth of all these provinces was borne by fleets of merchantmen to its port of Ostia; and not of these alone but the wealth also of India and China. But besides wealth they gave her something which she needed more: they gave her life. She must long ago have perished of corruption, did not the fresh pure blood of Britain, Gaul and Spain come throbbing through the Empire to give health to its diseased heart. Only when the heart itself became surcharged with corruption and poured its foulness back into the system did the Empire decay. But this was not yet. More than two centuries had to pass after the reign of Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 160-181) before the final rot set in: such was the strange vitality of that Empire, the greatest the world has ever seen. From time to time the Emperors made desperate efforts to stem the rising tide of immorality. As practical men they recognised what Napoleon and even Voltaire recognised, that there could be no morality for the masses without religion; but they did not realise so clearly that there could be religion, especially pagan religion, without morality. This was indeed what came about in the second century, especially during the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and his predecessor. There was a great revival in religion but no corresponding improvement in morals. Nor was this strange. The gods themselves were represented as grossly immoral beings; religion was merely a business transaction with them--a _quid pro quo_--and under the code of honour which too often marks such transactions. Hence, if you safely could, it was quite the thing to cheat the gods; you took your chance, but the probability was that you would get the worst of it, since the gods were the more dexterous sharpers. Such were the old Græco-Roman gods; but just at this time there was new and better blood introduced into the Pantheon. The gods of Egypt and the East--Mithra and Isis--strange mystic deities, began to be in high honour all over the Empire. In these new cults there was much that was higher and nobler than the old Roman religion--in every religion, as St. Augustine says, there is something good and true--but mixed with this good there was gross immorality officially sanctioned.