Seems fair to infer that there were multiple moments when Roman elites could signal their social virtue by conspicuously sympathizing with the barbarians with trendy a neoplatonist-ish religion (Christianity).
It's funny to imagine how virtue signalling would work in a political order that Nietzsche would tell us was unaffected by Christian slave morality.
The sincere answer is that stoicism introduced a slave morality in Roman society that was highly regarded among elites, but which sat VERY uncomfortably with the tendency of Roman elites to violently suppress slave revolts and populist movements.
Sympathizing w/ Christians probably let Roman elites signal slave morality in spite of this tension.
