It is strange to think of Marcus as a devotee of all these superstitions; yet such he was. The intellectual and the cultured usually were sceptical about the tales of the gods; but few of them forbore paying them the customary homage. They looked on religion as a political and social duty and went through its functions as such. Marcus took the ceremonies more seriously than did the usual Roman of high rank; but even his faith in the old myths wavered. He was content, however, not to pry into high matters, and adopted the Stoic attitude towards them. These philosophers interpreted the legends, often by Procrustean methods, to suit their own doctrine, but in reality thought their truth or falsehood of little practical importance. For them the chief thing was to live a life of virtue, relying on one’s own strength. He who lived such a life they held to be better than the gods; and in fact many of them did lead admirable lives, as far as we can judge. Their virtue, if mingled most frequently with an unlovely and repellant pride, was at all events a relief amidst the universal corruption of pagan Rome. When we consider his pagan surroundings we marvel at the virtue of Marcus Aurelius; but, great as this was, Rome had now something greater far. There were at this time many silent figures who passed with downcast eyes and modest mien through her polluted streets; they met in strange places and celebrated strange rites; they did good to all; and all about them breathed a purer air, a fragrance of Heaven unknown before. These were they beside whose God-given strength of soul the strugglings of the Stoic Emperor were but the feeble gropings of an infant. Christianity was fast spreading over the Empire. Already the Catacombs were extending in a maze of net-work beside Rome. All was ready for the greatest persecution the Church had yet endured; this time it was to come from the hands of the well-meaning but narrow and unfortunate Marcus. In Rome itself the Christians were multiplying fast; converts were made amongst the nobility; long before they had penetrated even into “Cæsar’s household.” It was about this time that Tertullian wrote his well-known words: “We are but of yesterday and yet we fill every place--your cities, your houses, your fortresses, your _municipia_, councils, camps, tribes, decurias, palace, senate, forum; we leave you your temples.” And he adds, in words in which we must allow for rhetorical exaggeration: “Were we to detach ourselves from you, you would be scared by your solitude and by the silence, which would be like that of a dead world.”