The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction Of The Classical World, Nixey - B +

                                   That all superstition of pagans and heathens should be            annihilated is what God wants, God commands, God proclaims.                                                                                                                       - St. Augustine  AD 532

                                  "From almost the very first years a Christian emperor had ruled in Rome in AD 312 liberties had begun to be eroded." An onslaught against paganism began. Christianity triumphed. It is important to remember that the Roman definition of triumph was annihilation. In the fourth and fifth centuries the church destroyed. It destroyed art, statues, temples and perhaps, as many as 700,000 books. "This is a book about the Christian destruction of the classical world." It is a chronicle of immense devastation. Christianity offered guidelines for life and eternal bliss after death. And after Constantine, the church was offered preferment in the form of  tax exemptions and substantial pay for its bishops. "The struggle to convert the empire was nothing less than a battle between good and evil, between the forces of darkness and those of light. It was a battle between God and Satan himself." The Christians decided that the old religions were demonic and that the gods of the empire, Jupiter, Aphrodite, Bacchus and Isis were the paramount demons.  All the old religions were to be despised and eliminated. The toleration promised in the Edict of Milan was not to be. Before Christianity became official, it was found to be an irritant throughout the east. The reduction in sacrifices to the old gods affected the economics of animal husbandry. Many Romans found the new cult to be reclusive and their teachings offensive. When Christians refused to sacrifice and honor the emperor, they were frequently executed. However, the myth of mass Christian martyrdom was created a millennia later by the medieval church. The Romans were inclusive, whereas the Christians vigorously persecuted the "polluters of idolatry" almost immediately after taking over. Perhaps the most impressive building in the ancient world was not the Coliseum nor the Parthenon in Athens, but the Temple of Serapis in Alexandria. It housed the remnants of the great library, innumerable statues and towered over the city in a splendor of white marble. The opulence of the ancient temple offended the bishop of Alexandria. His name was Theophilus and in AD 392 he led a crowd that destroyed the temple. Constantine bestowed wealth upon his new church and funded his generosity by plundering the ancient temples of the empire. Plunder also helped him to build his new capital on the Bosporous. The spread of Christianity "was neither triumphant, nor joyful. It is a story of forced conversion and government prosecution. It is a story in which great works of art are destroyed, buildings are defaced and liberties are removed. It is a story in which those who refused to convert were outlawed and, as the prosecution deepened, were hounded, and even executed by zealous authorities." When Constantine made Rome a Christian state, approximately 10% of the empire was Christian. By the end of the century, the percentage may have been eighty. Tens of millions had been forcibly converted. In AD 408, whatever old temples were still around were ordered destroyed. The demonization of the Greco-Roman gods and literature stemmed from the often abominable conduct of those gods in comparison to Jesus as well as the often almost pornographic language of Ovid, Martial, Catullus and others. The church's repression of human sexuality was an early theme. John Chrysostom said "let here be no fornication." By the fifth century, the church had concluded that if what one rendered unto Caesar was in conflict with what one rendered unto God, then God prevailed. Christians took the law into their own hands when it pleased them. Under Justinian in AD 529 it became mandatory for everyone in the empire to convert, accept baptism or be relieved of all they owned.  "Moreover, we forbid the teaching of any doctrine by those who labor under the insanity of paganism to corrupt the souls of the disciples."  This law caused the Academy in Athens to close after a thousand years.   Its last teachers left for Persia.  The monasteries proceeded to scrape away or write over 90% of classical literature. The works of Archimedes, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca and Pliny, heretics all, were destroyed. "The pages of history go silent. The triumph of Christianity was complete." The Dark Age descended on Europe.                                                                                                      The Roman Symmachus said, "We see the same stars, the sky is shared by us all, the same world surrounds us. What does it matter what wisdom a person uses to seek the truth?" This is a powerful and magnificent book.