A Roman extrapolation

If what Marrou writes of in regards to the Roman tradition's single-mindedness and practicality still holds water then it says a lot about modern culture. Particularly, it says a lot about the sort of Christianity that took root in most of Europe and later spread through the rest of the world and why it's so slow to accept social change and progress.

Apparently, much of the education in early Rome concentrated on practical things. There was no high-falutin ideal that students were chasing, nor were students being raised into men rather than nurtured as children as was the case with the ancient Greek systems. Instead, Roman pupils were taught about things like husbandry, medicine, and law. They were instructed in subjects that pertained to the everyday and to the sorts of problems that those who were formally educated ("squires, gentlemen farmers," as Marrou calls them on page 323) were likely to face: How to make money from the land you owned, how to treat slaves and underlings to maximize the work they could do, and how to deal with other members of society.

These subjects were apparently steeped in tradition, ways that worked in the past were handed down as, well, law.

Marrou doesn't get much into the "why" of Roman moral education beyond simply noting that it rose out of the practical. But whatever its origins, the early Romans seem like they were much less concerned with moral abstraction than the ancient Greeks were. Now, since this moral practicality is to be found at the outset of Roman civilization, and Rome (if Marrou still holds true) held tradition in the highest esteem it makes sense that Christianity as adapted by Rome would hold to the same sort of morality.

I can't help but wonder then, if after existing in this traditional society for centuries what would later become Western Europe's Christianity was just too single-minded to change and instead had to splinter to cater to changes in society.