Tormented by growing economics hardship and insecurity, the urban poor of the third and fourth century empire turned more and more from the boisterous and unlikely gods of the Greco-Roman Olympic cult - Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, Minerva and the rest - to compelling new religions that offered release from individual guilt and the promise of personal salvation and eternal life. These new 'mystery religions' originated in the older, Eastern cultures that Rome had absorbed into its empire. From Egypt came the cult of the goddess Isis, from Persia Christianity.

The gods and goddesses of Olympus survived for a time but in altered form. During the third century, all that was vital in the traditional pagan cults was incorporated into a new philosophical scheme called "Neoplatonism" (based loosely on the much earlier though of the Greek philosopher Plato). Neoplatonism was the creation of the third century philosopher Plotinus, one of the most influential minds of the Romans imperial era. Plotinus taught the doctrine of one god, who was infinite, unknowable and unapproachable, except through a mystical experience. This deity was the ultimate source of everything, spiritual and physical. All existence was conceived of as a series of circles radiating outward from him, like concentric ripples in a pond, diminishing in excellent and significance as they grew more distant from their divine source. Human reason, which the Greeks had earlier exalted, now lost its fascination, for at the core of reality was a god that lay beyond reason's scope.

Plotinus and his followers regarded the multitudes of pagan gods and goddesses as crude but useful symbols, pointing to the overarching Neoplatonic god. Though poorly suited to the deepening mood of otherworldliness, the pagan cults acquired new life under under the canopy of Neoplatonic philosophy, which brought them into line with the trend toward mysticism and monotheism. The distinction between Jupiter and the new Eastern deities was steadily blurring.

During the third century conditions grew still worse. Invading tribes broke through the frontiers again and again, forcing cities to construct protective walls and threatening for a time to tear the Empire to pieces.  Imperial survival depended increasingly on a military defense, and the Roman legions, well aware of the fact made and unmade emperors. Roman armies repeatedly battled one another for control of the imperial office until (to  exaggerate only slightly) a man might be a general one day, emperor the next, and dead the third. Some twenty-odd emperors (depending on whom you count) reigned during the calamitous half-century between 235 and 285, and all but one were murdered, were killed in combat or died in captivity. With political anarchy came social and economics breakdown. The cost of living soared 1000% between A.D 256 and 280, and the increase in numbers of soldiers and administrators forced the government, in order to pay their salaries, to levy higher and higher taxes on its peasants and townspeople. Many fled their homes and jobs to escape the tax collector. The golden age had given way to what one third-century writer described as an "age of iron and rust".

The Empire was saved, though just barely, by a series of warrior-emperors of the late third and early fourth centuries. By tremendous military effort they threw back Germanic raiders and Persian armies, recovered the lost provinces and restored the old frontiers. They also took measures to arrest the social and economic decay and to reconstruct the Romans administration - on severely authoritarian lines. These measures have often been criticized, and with some justice. But they enabled the faltering empire to survive for nearly two more centuries in the West and for over a thousand years in the East.

Roman women, even the wealthiest, were forbidden to hold any political office. By long tradition they were expected to stay home and obey their husbands, but many Roman wifes declined to meet these expectations. Indeed, in the Empire's later centuries women acquired considerable independence with respect to marriage, divorce and the holding of property, and upper-class women were often well educated. The Roman father - however - was the master of his family and exercised the power of life or death over his newborn children. If he liked their looks, he kept them; if they seemed scrawny or deformed, or if the father already had enough children (particularly female children), they were often cast out, to be adopted by passers-by or to die of exposure. This custom of infanticide was yet another brutal consequence of Rome's marginal economy: the Empire could not afford excess mouths.

The imperial economic system provoked no general rebellion because the lower classes knew no better way of managing an empire. Virtually all ancient civilizations were afflicted by mass enslavement, impoverishment, malnutrition, internal violence, the suppression of women and the abandonment of unwanted infants - although the religion of the Hebrews prohibited infanticide. In these respects Roman imperial civilization was no worse than the others, and in the larger cities, where public baths and other amenities were available (such as free bread in the city of Rome), it was significantly better. Life in Rome's 'golden age' could be pleasant enough if one were male, adult, very wealthy and naturally immune to various epidemic diseases.

Notwithstanding the elegance of Roman cities, the imperial economy was based primarily on agriculture. By the first and second centuries A.D the small family farms of the Roman past were passing into the hands of great aristocrats, who came to hold conglomerations of smaller farms or who, in some instances, consolidated them into large estates tilled by slaves or half-free peasants. Although the products of Roman farming varied considerably from region to region, the principal crops of the Roman Empire were grain, grapes and olives, the so-called Mediterranean triad that had dominated agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin for countless generations. Grain (chiefly wheat and barley) and grape vines were cultivated throughout most of the Empire. From this the Romans produced two of the basic staples of their diet: bread and wine. Olive trees were also grown in abundance, though their vulnerability to cold restricted their cultivation to the frost-free lowlands around the Mediterranean Sea. The inhabitants of the Mediterranean Basin used olive oil in place of butter, which was favored by the Germanic tribes to the north but turned rancid in the southern heat.

Through much of Italy grain production had been giving way to the raising of sheep and cattle, and the fertile wheat-growing provinces of Egypt and North Africa had by now become the primary suppliers of bread for the teeming populace of Rome. Such specialization in agriculture was made possible by the Roman Peace - the Pax Romana - that linked distant provinces into a single political-economic unit and safeguarded the Mediterranean sea lanes.

The culture of Rome's 'golden age' captivated the historians of past centuries. Never, they wrote, was the human race so happy as in the great days of the Empire - the first and second centuries A.D. They viewed Rome's decline and fall as the supreme historical catastrophe, the triumph of barbarism and religion. Today historians see the matter quite differently. Roman classical culture was impressive, but it was also narrowly limited, shared only by the Empire's upper-crust. And although all inhabitants benefited from the Roman Peace, the great majority of them were impoverished and undernourished, and vast numbers were enslaved.

During the first and second centuries A.D Rome was at the height of its power. Roman emperors ruled in relative peace over an immense realm that encircled the Mediterranean Sea and bulged northward across present-day France and England. Not all of them ruled wisely; several of Rome's 'golden-age' emperors were decidedly dull-witted and a couple of them were (to put it charitably) mentally ill. The first-century emperor Caligula used to have his favourite horse wined and dined at imperial banquets and made plans to have the beast raised to the office of Roman consul (the project was cut short by Caligula's assassination). And the less said about the emperor Nero, the better. But a number of the early emperors were able and far-sighted, and even under the worst of them the imperial government continued to function. Roman legions guarded the farflung frontiers, paved roads tied the provinces to Rome, and Roman ships sailed the Mediterranean and Black Seas, rarely troubled by pirates or enemy fleets. Scattered across the Empire were cities built in the classical Roman style with temples, public buildings, baths, schools, amphitheaters and triumphal arches. Their ruins are still to be seen all around the Mediterranean and beyond - in Italy, France, Spain, England, North Africa, the Balkans and the Near East - bearing witness even now to the tremendous scope of Roman political authority and the tasteful uniformity of Roman achitecture.

The Empire extended about 3000 miles from east to west, the approximate length of the United States. According to the best scholarly guesses, its inhabitants numbered something like 50 million, heavily concentrated in the eastern provinces where commerce and civilization had flourished for thousands of years. Egypt, Israel, Mesopotamia and Greece had all fallen by now under Roman authority, although Greece exerted such a dominating influence on Roman culture that Romans could express some doubt as to who had conquered whom.

To the east Rome shared a boundary with the Parthian Empire, which gave way during the third century to a new and aggressive Persian Empire. But elsewhere Rome's expansion from the Mediterranean Basin was halted only by the Arabian and Sahara Deserts, the Caucasus Mountains, the dense forests of central Europe beyond the Rhine and Danube Rivers, the barren highlands of Scotland, and the Atlantic Ocean. In short, the Roman frontiers encompassed virtually all the lands that could be reached by Roman armies and cultivated profitably by Roman landowners.