their roots in antiquity, so that we cannot continue to treat this
account with the mildness which has been customary up to the present.
The atrocious crime of mankind which rendered Christianity possible, as
it actually became possible, is the _guilt_ of antiquity. With
Christianity antiquity will also be cleared away.--At the present time
it is not so very far behind us, and it is certainly not possible to do
justice to it. It has been availed of in the most dreadful fashion for
purposes of repression, and has acted as a support for religious
oppression by disguising itself as "culture." It was common to hear the
saying, "Antiquity has been conquered by Christianity."

This was a historical fact, and it was thus thought that no harm could
come of any dealings with antiquity. Yes, it is so plausible to say that
we find Christian ethics "deeper" than Socrates! Plato was easier to
compete with! We are at the present time, so to speak, merely chewing
the cud of the very battle which was fought in the first centuries of
the Christian era--with the exception of the fact that now, instead of
the clearly perceptible antiquity which then existed, we have merely its
pale ghost; and, indeed, even Christianity itself has become rather
ghostlike. It is a battle fought _after_ the decisive battle, a
post-vibration. In the end, all the forces of which antiquity consisted
have reappeared in Christianity in the crudest possible form: it is
nothing new, only quantitatively extraordinary.


160

What severs us for ever from the culture of antiquity is the fact that
its foundations have become too shaky for us. A criticism of the Greeks
is at the same time a criticism of Christianity; for the bases of the