Rome declined into atheism at around the same time Greeks did, and were arguably much worse in this regard. It’s just that Augustus made a lot of efforts to revive religion in Rome, so it lived on. Also, I wouldn’t say Socrates was the major corrupter of religion so much as the Stoics and Epicureans were, and these groups were very popular in Rome.
Edit needed: “All states begin as theocracies, and separation between church and state only occurs only once the state bureaucracy is sufficiently developed. This separation is not linear, but cyclical.”
Don't forget Catholic Spain and Portugal's near exclusive claims on the Americas for much of the sixteenth century, contemporaneous with the ongoing Reformation in the rest of Europe. The Protestant British and Dutch did not begin to colonize the western hemisphere until the beginning of the seventeenth century, long after the beginning of the Reformation. One could even argue that the Spanish Empire did not truly begin to unravel until the beginning of the nineteenth century, long after the worst of the religious crisis had abated.
Rome declined into atheism at around the same time Greeks did, and were arguably much worse in this regard. It’s just that Augustus made a lot of efforts to revive religion in Rome, so it lived on. Also, I wouldn’t say Socrates was the major corrupter of religion so much as the Stoics and Epicureans were, and these groups were very popular in Rome.
Edit needed: “All states begin as theocracies, and separation between church and state only occurs only once the state bureaucracy is sufficiently developed. This separation is not linear, but cyclical.”
Woke snowflakes
Don't forget Catholic Spain and Portugal's near exclusive claims on the Americas for much of the sixteenth century, contemporaneous with the ongoing Reformation in the rest of Europe. The Protestant British and Dutch did not begin to colonize the western hemisphere until the beginning of the seventeenth century, long after the beginning of the Reformation. One could even argue that the Spanish Empire did not truly begin to unravel until the beginning of the nineteenth century, long after the worst of the religious crisis had abated.