In obedience to a universal law of development and growth, when the Roman empire had reached the limits of physical expansion, when Roman conquest was complete, when Roman laws and letters had reached approximate perfection, and when Roman civilization had attained its crown and consummation, Roman decline began. The birth of the empire marked the beginning of the end. It was then that the shades of night commenced to gather slowly upon the Roman world; and that the Roman ship of state began to move slowly but inevitably, upon a current of indescribable depravity and degeneracy, toward the abyss. The Roman giant bore upon his shoulders the treasures of a conquered world; and Bacchus-like, reeled, crowned and drunken, to his doom. No period of human history is so marked by lust and licentiousness as the history of Rome at the beginning of the Christian era. The Roman religion had fallen into contempt. The family instinct was dead, and the marital relation was a mockery and a shame. The humane spirit had vanished from Roman hearts, and slavery was the curse of every province of the empire. The destruction of infants and the gladiatorial games were mere epitomes of Roman brutality and degeneracy. Barbarity, corruption and dissoluteness pervaded every form of Roman life. A perfect picture of the depravity of the times about which we write may be had from a perusal of the Roman satirists, Tacitus and Juvenal. The ordinary Roman debauchee was not the sole victim of their wrath. They chiseled the hideous features of the Cæsars with a finer stroke than that employed by Phidias and Praxiteles in carving statues of the Olympic gods. The purpose of Part II of this volume is to give coloring and atmosphere to the picture of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus by describing: (1) The Græco-Roman religion; and (2) the Græco-Roman social life, during the century preceding and the century following the birth of the Savior. 1.--THE GRÆCO-ROMAN RELIGION _Origin and Multiplicity of the Roman Gods._--The Romans acquired their gods by inheritance, by importation, and by manufacture. The Roman race sprang from a union of Etruscans, Latins, and Sabines; and the gods of these different tribes, naturalized and adopted, were the first deities of Rome. Chief among them were Janus, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. Other early Roman deities were Sol, the Sun, and Luna the Moon, both of Sabine origin; Mater Matuta, Mother of Day; Divus Pater Tiberinus, or Father Tiber; Fontus, the god of fountains; Vesta, the goddess of the hearth; and the Lares and Penates, household gods.