In the second century BC, the Roman regions conquered Greece. Greek culture is beginning a period of remarkable transformation. The epicenter moves to the West, which eventually emerges from its isolation.
Rome is something like the antithesis of the Greek polis: it permanently extends its limits and grants citizenship to conquered peoples. Unlike the empire of Alexander the Great the growth of Rome is a relatively slow growth that would be built through several generations of emperors. The great Roman paradox is that expansion is its glory but also its coplapso, the dilated borders prevented the support of unity.
The Roman world is created through conquests. During the first stage only destroys without constuating. His work does not begin until the Empire in the 1st century. During the Republic he will assimilate the culture of the vanquished through the so-called process of Hellenization.
The Roman religion, vague, favored the assimilation of foreign gods. Thus there is a syncretism that adopts equally Greek gods and oriental cults. The Senate's attempts to curb this cultural phenomenon are in vain. Already in the first century BC the Roman nobles went to Athens to begin in the mysteries of Eleusis and the cults of Dionysius were celebrated in the houses of Pompeii. The popular classes surrendered to the new religions, the leaders continued to use the official religion for political purposes.
Art also suffers a process of Hellenization and intellectual concerns follow the imitation of the Greeks. However, there is little Roman interest in science. It is certainly the Stoics who have the greatest acceptance because they are the closest to the Roman spirit.
Augustus finally restores the official religion to become the highest pontiff. But the Roman religion is not attractive to the masses dominated by anguish: if the empire is dominated by a despot, in the universe they can no longer dominate the classical gods, but capricious fortune. That explains the success of oriental cults, astrology, magical practices, in systesis, prevails the belief of a divine element in man.
It is not possible to identify a single cause to explain the fall of the empire. Why was Rome no longer able to assimilate the barbarians who conquered it? One cannot fail to observe the economic crisis, the abandonment of the countryside first and the abandonment of the city later by the wealthy classes, the huge social differences...
The Church came to build a particular society within the State, with organization and property of its own, and the last emperors will try to rely on it to sustain the cohesion of the State: The edict of Milan grants Christians equal rights and finally in 391 Christianity is assimilated by Rome, adopting it as official religion.
Eclecticism and religious mystical orientation of the Roman period