The great Greek philosophers, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, had started movements of intellectual speculation in their search for explanation of the world in which they lived, which pointed away from the myths and polytheism of the popular religion of their times. Greek philosophical thinking influenced those amongst the Romans who were longer satisfied with the gods and goddesses of popular religion. Many Romans were particularly influenced by Stoic philosophy which developed in Greece in the early part of the third century B.C. The Stoics believed that a supreme power, a world-soul, and controls the universe was possible to speak of the world-soul as God, but in an impersonal way. Each person was said to have a spark of the divine fire of the world soul. Everything that existed was part of one single system called Nature. The aim of the individual life was to find harmony with Nature and world-soul. To achieve this harmony, the individual practiced accepting everything that happened as being according to the divine will. The Stoic controlled his emotions, being equally indifferent to wealth, he a; -and comfort as to poverty, pain and hardship. He desired to achieve a fatalistic, unmoved attitude to life, being disturbed by nothing. It understandable that this kind of philosophical attitude to life was attractive to men who had learned to be disciplined through military service and the dangers and risks of war. However, Stoic philosophy did answer some of the deepest questions that were being asked about meaning of human life.

At the time when the Christian faith began to spread, there we: many people in the Roman empire who had grown dissatisfied with t many gods of Rome, Greece and other countries. Some had turned t philosophy, others to cults with secret practices, such as the Mithras worship of the soldiers.

Some had turned to the strange Jewish religion and had become God-fearers'. It was the right time for the new faith to offer a new way of life and a new meaning to life to the cosmopolitan society of t -Roman empire.