The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World QUOTES

121 " Pliny suggested that what divinity there was, was to be found in humanity itself: “God,” he wrote, “is one mortal helping another. "

― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

122 " Perhaps even more so: Plato would continue to (sporadically) alarm the Church for centuries. In the eleventh century, a new clause was inserted into the Lenten liturgy censuring those who believed in Platonic forms. “Anathema on those,” it declared, “who devote themselves to Greek studies and instead of merely making them a part of their education, adopt the foolish doctrines of the ancients and accept them as the truth. "

― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

123 " As the Greek poet Palladas archly observed, as he looked at a fine array of gods in the house of one wealthy Christian, “the inhabitants of Olympus, having become Christians, live here undisturbed: for here, at least, they will escape the cauldron that melts them down for petty change. "

― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

124 " Out of all the froth and fury that was being issued from the government at the time, one law would become infamous for the next 1,500 years. Read this law and, in comparison to some of Justinian’s other edicts, it sounds almost underwhelming. Filed under the usual dull bureaucratic subheading, it is now known as “Law 1.11.10.2.” “Moreover,” it reads, “we forbid the teaching of any doctrine by those who labour under the insanity of paganism” so that they might not “corrupt the souls of their disciples. "

― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

125 " One writer railed furiously at those who “put aside the sacred word of God, and devote themselves to geometry . . . Some of them give all their energies to the study of Euclidean geometry, and treat Aristotle . . . with reverent awe; to some of them Galen is almost an object of worship. "

― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

126 " It was clear to Celsus that a person’s religious affiliation was based less on any rational analysis of competing religious ideologies than on the geography of their birth. Every nation always, he points out, thinks its way of doing things is “by far the best. "

― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

127 " This was the law that forced Damascius and his followers to leave Athens. It was this law that caused the Academy to close. It was this law that led the English scholar Edward Gibbon to declare that the entirety of the barbarian invasions had been less damaging to Athenian philosophy than Christianity was.22 This law’s consequences were described more simply by later historians. It was from this moment, they said, that a Dark Age began to descend upon Europe. "

― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

128 " Some monks lost their minds—if they had ever been in full possession of them. When Apollo of Scetis, a shepherd who later became a monk, spotted a pregnant woman in a field, he said to himself: “I should like to see how the child lies in her womb.” He ripped the woman open and saw the fetus. The child and the mother died.19 "

― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

129 " Heretics were intellectual, therefore intellectuals were, if not heretical, then certainly suspect. So ran the syllogism. Intellectual simplicity or, to put a less flattering name on it, ignorance was widely celebrated. "

― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

130 " Damascius and his fellow scholars loathed the religion and its uncompromising leaders. Even Damascius’s famously mild and gentle teacher, Isidore, “found them absolutely repulsive”; he considered them “irreparably polluted, and nothing whatever could constrain him to accept their company. "

― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

131 " see or feel, these materialists argued, was made up of two things: atoms and space “in which these bodies are and through which they move this way and that.”31 Even living creatures were made from them: humans were, as one (hostile) author summarized, not made by God but were instead nothing more than “a haphazard union of elements.”32 The distinct species of animals were explained by a form of proto-Darwinism. As the Roman poet and atomist Lucretius wrote, nature put forth many species. Those that had useful characteristics—the fox and its cunning, say, or the dog and its intelligence—survived, thrived and reproduced. Those creatures that lacked these “lay at the mercy of others for prey and profit . . . until nature brought that race to destruction.”33 "

― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

132 " Damascius, however, was not a man to be put off by fear. “Nothing human is worth as much as a clear conscience,” he had once written. “A man should [never] give greater importance to anything other than truth—not the danger of an impending struggle, nor a difficult task from which one turns away in fear. "

― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

133 " The gospels of the old Latin Bible were written in a distinctly demotic style, rich in grammatical solecisms and the sort of words that grated on educated ears.44 The loss of meaning was negligible—the ancient equivalent of saying “serviette” rather than “napkin.” The loss of status was intolerable. If this was the word of God, then God seemed to speak with a distinctly common accent. "

― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

134 " In AD 356, less than fifty years after Constantine had announced that “no man whatever should be refused complete toleration,” the death penalty was instituted for those who made sacrifices.29 In 407, the old merry ceremonies were forbidden. “It shall not be permitted at all to hold convivial banquets in honour of sacrilegious rites in such funereal places or to celebrate any solemn ceremony.” If anyone declared themselves an official in charge of pagan festivals then, the law said, they would be executed "

― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

135 " Not even Nero’s own father had high hopes for his offspring. When he was born, Domitius remarked sanguinely that “any child born to himself and Agrippina was bound to have a detestable nature and become a public danger. "

― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

136 " The miasmatic presence of the religion is keenly felt on countless pages: it is Christians who are driving persecutions, torturing their colleagues, pushing philosophers into exile. Damascius and his fellow scholars loathed the religion and its uncompromising leaders. Even Damascius’s famously mild and gentle teacher, Isidore, “found them absolutely repulsive”; he considered them “irreparably polluted, and nothing whatever could constrain him to accept their company. "

― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

137 " The philosophy they had lived for starts to die itself. Some strands of ancient philosophy live on, preserved by the hands of some Christian philosophers—but it is not the same. Works that have to agree with the pre-ordained doctrines of a church are theology, not philosophy. Free philosophy has gone. "

― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

138 " As the Christian orator Tertullian put it: “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” He went on: “What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? . . . Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition! We want no . . . inquisition after enjoying the gospel! With our faith, we desire no further belief.”43 No need for knowledge, for the philosophy of the Stoics, or the Platonists or indeed anything else. One had faith; that was enough. "

― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

139 " Actors were little better than whores—no, they actually were whores: Christians regularly substituted the words “actor” and “dancer” with the word “prostitute”; the theater itself was “the temple of lust for prostitution. "

― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

140 " When modern histories describe this period, this time when all the old religions died away and Christianity finally became pre-eminent, they tend to call it the “triumph of Christianity.” It is worth remembering, however, the original Roman meaning of the word “triumph.” A true Roman triumph wasn’t merely about the victory of the winner.9 It was about the total and utter subjugation of the loser. In a true Roman triumph the losing side was paraded through the capital while the winning side looked on at an enemy whose soldiers had been slain, whose possessions had been despoiled and whose leaders had been humiliated. A triumph was not merely a “victory.” It was an annihilation. "

― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World