Why You Think the Way You Do: The Story of Western Worldviews from Rome to Home

by Glenn S. Sunshine

With birthrates dropping, the Romans were forced to make up the gap by permitting into the Empire more and more Germanic immigrants from beyond the borders, lured by the promise of being able to share in the benefits of Roman rule. By the late third century, the army was increasingly becoming Germanized, as was a growing percentage of the population. This resulted in a cultural change within the Empire and a transformation of what it meant to be Roman. When the barbarian tribes moved into the Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries, they were following a path that others had already laid out, and the transformation of the Latin-speaking western half of the Empire was already well under way. Another force was involved in the transformation of the Empire, however — one that did not come from migration from the outside. An obscure Jewish sect arose in the first century that, despite its unpopularity, became a rising force that transformed the fundamental worldview of the Empire and laid the groundwork for the development of what we today call Western Civilization. That force was Christianity, the subject of the next chapter.