All round the eastern and northern
shores of the Mediterranean a great variety of races mingled in every
port and every commercial town, and it was the policy of the powerful
Empire which extended its sway over them all to overrule their national
antagonisms. When, in the earlier period, Jew and Greek and Egyptian had
maintained their separate nationalities, hostility to other races had
been a very natural social quality, an inevitable part of the spirit of
self-preservation in a race. When the great Empires had conquered the
smaller nationalities or the decaying older Empires, this mutual
hostility was moderated, and, as the vast movements of population which
marked the end of the old and the beginning of the new era filled the
Mediterranean cities with extraordinarily mixed crowds, mutual
friendship became the more fitting and more useful social virtue. A good
deal of the old narrow patriotism had been due to the fact that each
nation had its own god. In the new Roman world this theological
exclusivism broke down, and the priests of a particular god, scattered
like their followers among the cities of the eastern world, began to
seek a cosmopolitan rather than a nationalist following.
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