It's disappointing to see the myth of the "Christian Dark Ages" still repeated so often.
It's true that the collapse of the Western Roman Empire led to a regression in social order. To blame this complex collapse entirely on Christianity is overly simplistic. There's obviously some casualties during this period of upheaval (like the Palimpsest you mentioned), but if anything the early Christian monasteries deserve some credit for preserving knowledge during this period of tremendous upheaval.
Many have also pointed out how Eurocentric this view is. Mathematics and science continued to flourish in Arabic and Chinese places of learning as well. Algebra, modern astronomy, and the printing press did not pop out of the aether the moment Europeans decided to start printing Greek gods again.
To me the difference is, there seems to have been way more freedom of thought in the pre christian societies. Polytheism is (usually) more open to new ideas than religios dogma of one god. This is for me what dark times means, and the age of enlightenment when it was possible again to dare to think in new directions and not be afraid of the inquisition anymore.
How to do real research, when you have to align every insight with some old book or face the stake? Only very restricted, in secrecy and not in open exchange.
So also in non christian societies people were killed for having the wrong ideas, but comparing greece or early rome with the christian empires, it seems obvious to me why progress was slowed down for so long.
Consider why the Roman public, commoners in particular but not exclusively, were so ready to abandon the religious beliefs of their forefathers and throw it all away, even defacing the old temples, to adopt some jewish desert hippie's promise of simple salvation. Perhaps you'd like to think this conversion of Rome was all by the sword, but in reality the early christian converts chose despite very credible threats of state violence, and the state itself only converted when the critical mass of common christians could no longer be denied or ignored.
Rome's culture and traditional was fundamentally broken; it no longer served the needs of the Roman people, and if Christianity hadn't popped up, it would have been some other system of reform instead. The status quo was unstable, rapidly deteriorating. You may idealize the religious tolerance of their polytheism, but what that matter if it isn't actually serving the spiritual needs of the people?
" You may idealize the religious tolerance of their polytheism, but what that matter if it isn't actually serving the spiritual needs of the people?"
Rome in the end was a decadent, but brutal empire full of slaves. And to a slave christian salvation sounds great.
But before there was a empire with emperors taking up the idea of becoming gods themself, there was a republic. And also after it became an empire, they did not have a institution like the inquisition shaping thought and banning heresy baked into their system.
This is the fundamental difference that I see.
In medieval times being expelled from the church was pretty much a death sentence. In roman and greek times for most of its existence not really.
The demise of the Roman Republic was an inevitability. It could have been Sulla rather than Caesar, and if not Caesar it could have been another, but one way or the other the situation was fundamentally unstable and the public was deeply discontent. Would be reformers like the Gracchi were finding enormous popular traction only to get assassinated.
Also, the Roman Republic were prolific slavers too. I say this because you speak of the Empire and slavery but then go into a "But the Republic.." This isn't Star Wars, you can't divide it into good guys and bad guys, the Republic and Empire were both imperial sons of bitches who conquered territory and took civilians as slaves. The demand for reform that would eventually motivate mass conversions to Christianity was already well established before Caesar was even born.
I’m not sure there necessarily was that much progress before that, though? With some exceptions ancient societies were highly stagnant especially technologically in contrast to high-late medieval Europe.
Also plague, climate change and demographic collapse kind of directly kickstarted the dark ages.
> Polytheism is (usually) more open to new ideas than religios dogma of one god.
This is a modern view with hindsight bias. In the ancient world, the existence of many gods did not imply peaceful co-existance, but very heated rivalry and politics.
Ironically pagan authors of late antiquity were the "conservatives" in our modern sense. Pagan literally means "farmer" - it might have similar implications to how we would call someone a "redneck" today. At the time, they were opposed to foreign gods and new influences on their traditional and respectable Pantheon.
If anything Rome was a little too open to foreign dieties. Titus performed the right of Evocatio at the siege of Jerusalem, a custom where the god(s) of their foes were enticed to abandon their current patrons in return for a home and worship on Rome.
Eh, even those polytheistic societies had their own inquisitions. Socrates was executed for defying the gods, and lots of Christians and Jews were persecuted because they refused to accept that the emperor was a god.
It's true that the collapse of the Western Roman Empire led to a regression in social order. To blame this complex collapse entirely on Christianity is overly simplistic. There's obviously some casualties during this period of upheaval (like the Palimpsest you mentioned), but if anything the early Christian monasteries deserve some credit for preserving knowledge during this period of tremendous upheaval.
Many have also pointed out how Eurocentric this view is. Mathematics and science continued to flourish in Arabic and Chinese places of learning as well. Algebra, modern astronomy, and the printing press did not pop out of the aether the moment Europeans decided to start printing Greek gods again.