The late 4th century witnessed the death of the pagan world and the rise of the early medieval era. Today, our culture focuses on the here & now and we neglect the past. But the past is important because we can learn from the rivers explored by our ancestors. In our modern age of religious pluralism, poised between the past and the future, I am often struck by how aproposthe dispute between the pagan Prefect of Rome, Symmachus, and the great Christian cleric Ambrose, seems. Here is Symmachus:
The divine Mind has distributed different guardians and different cults to different cities. As souls are separately given to infants as they are born, so to peoples the genius of their destiny. Here comes in the proof from advantage, which most of all vouches to man for the gods. For, since our reason is wholly clouded, whence does the knowledge of the ...
