By

Franz Cumont

With an Introductory Essay by

Grant Showerman

Authorized Translation

Chicago 

The Open Court Publishing Company

London Agents

Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.

1911

COPYRIGHT BY

THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO.

1911

TO MY TEACHER AND FRIEND

CHARLES MICHEL

[iii]

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Introduction.—The Significance of Franz
Cumont’s Work, By Grant Showerman … v

Preface … xv

Preface to the Second Edition … xxv

I. Rome and the Orient … 1

Superiority of the Orient, 1.—Its Influence
on Political Institutions, 3.—Its Influence on
Civil Law, 5.—Its Influence on Science, 6.—Its Influence on Literature and Art, 7.—Its Influence on Industry, 9.—Sources: Destruction
of Pagan Rituals, 11.—Mythographers, 12.—Historians, 13.—Satirists, 13.—Philosophers, 14.—Christian Polemicists, 15.—Archeological Documents, 16.

II. Why the Oriental Religions Spread … 20

Difference in the Religions of the Orient and the Occident, 20.—Spread of Oriental Religions, 22.—Economic Influences, 23.—Theory of Degeneration, 25.—Conversions are of Individuals, 27.—Appeal of the Oriental Religions to the
Senses, 28.—Appeal to the Intelligence, 31.—Appeal to the Conscience, 35.—Inadequacy of the Roman Religion, 35.—Skepticism, 37.—Imperial Power, 38.—The Purification of Souls, 39.—Hope of Immortality, 42.—Conclusion, 43.

III. Asia Minor … 46

Arrival of Cybele at Rome, 46.—Her
Religion in Asia Minor, 47.—Religion at Rome
under the Republic, 51.—Adoption of the
Goddess Ma-Bellona, 53.—Politics of Claudius,
55.—Spring Festival, 56.—Spread of the Phrygian Religion in the
Provinces, 57.—Causes of Its Success, 58.—Its Official Recognition, 60.—Arrival of Other
Cults: Mèn, 61.—Judaism, 63.—Sabazius, 64.—Anahita, 65.—The
Taurobolium, 66.—Philosophy, 70.—Christianity, 70.—Conclusion, 71.

IV. Egypt … 73

Foundation of Serapis Worship, 73.—The
Egyptian Religion Hellenized, 75.—Diffusion
in Greece, 79.—Adoption at Rome, 80.—Persecutions, 82.—Adoption Under Caligula, 84.—Its History, 85.—Its Transformation, 86.—Uncertainty in Egyptian Theology, 87.—Insufficiency of Its Ethics, 90.—Power of Its Ritual, 93.—Daily Liturgy, 95.—Festivals, 97.—Doctrine of Immortality, 99.—The Refrigerium, 101.

[iv]

V. Syria … 103

The Syrian Goddess, 103.—Importation of
New Gods by Syrian Slaves, 105.—Syrian
Merchants, 107.—Syrian Soldiers, 112.—Heliogabalus and Aurelian, 114.—Value of Semitic Paganism, 115.—Animal Worship, 116.—Baals, 118.—Human Sacrifice, 119.—Transformation of the Sacerdotal Religion,
120.—Purity, 121.—Influence of Babylon, 122.—Eschatology, 125.—Theology: God is
Supreme, 127.—God is Omnipotent, 129.—God is Eternal and Universal, 130.—Semitic Syncretism, 131.—Solar Henotheism, 133.

VI. Persia … 135

Persia and Europe, 135.—Influence of the
Achemenides, 136.—Influence of Mazdaism, 138.—Conquests of Rome, 139.—Influence of the Sassanides, 140.—Origin of the Mysteries of Mithra, 142.—Persians in Asia Minor, 144.—The Mazdaism of Anatolia, 146.—Its Diffusion in the Occident, 149.—Its Qualities, 150.—Dualism, 151.—The Ethics of Mithraism, 155.—The Future Life, 158.—Conclusion, 159.

VII. Astrology and Magic … 162

Prestige of Astrology, 162.—Its
Introduction in the Occident, 163.—Astrology
Under the Empire, 164.—Polemics Powerless
Against Astrology, 166.—Astrology a
Scientific Religion, 169.—The Primitive Idea
of Sympathy, 171.—Divinity of the Stars, 172.—Transformation of the Idea of God, 174.—New Gods, 175.—Big Years, 176.—Astrological Eschatology, 177.—Man’s Relation to Heaven, 178.—Fatalism, 179.—Efficacy of Prayer, 180.—Efficacy of Magic, 182.—Treatises on Magic, 182.—Idea of Sympathy, 183.—Magic a Science, 184.—Magic is Religious, 185.—Ancient Italian Sorcery, 186.—Egypt and Chaldea, 187.—Theurgy, 188.—Persian Magic, 189.—Persecutions, 191.—Conclusion, 193.

VIII. The Transformation of Roman Paganism …
196

Paganism Before Constantine, 196.—Religion of Asia Minor, 197.—Religion of Egypt and Syria, 198.—Religion of Persia, 199.—Many Pagan Religions, 200.—Popular Religion and Philosophy, 201.—Christian Polemics, 202.—Roman Paganism Become Oriental, 204.—Mysteries, 205.—Nature Worship, 206.—Supreme God, 207.—Sidereal Worship, 208.—The Ritual Given a Moral Significance, 209.—The End of the World, 209.—Conclusion, 210.

Notes … 213

Preface, 213.—I. Rome and the Orient, 214,—II. Why the Oriental Religions Spread, 218.—III. Asia Minor, 223.—IV. Egypt, 228.—V. Syria, 241.—VI. Persia, 260.—VII. Astrology and Magic, 270.—VIII. The Transformation of Paganism, 281.

Index … 289

[v]

INTRODUCTION.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FRANZ CUMONT’S WORK.

Franz Cumont, born January 3, 1868, and educated at Ghent, Bonn,
Berlin, and Paris, resides in Brussels, and has been Professor in the
University of Ghent since 1892. His monumental work, Textes et
monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra, published in 1896
and 1899 in two volumes, was followed in 1902 by the separate
publication, under the title Les Mystères de Mithra, of the second
half of Vol. I, the Conclusions in which he interpreted the great
mass of evidence contained in the remainder of the work. The year
following, this book appeared in the translation of Thomas J. McCormack
as The Mysteries of Mithra, published by the Open Court Publishing
Company. M. Cumont’s other work of prime interest to students of the
ancient faiths, Les religions orientales dans le paganisme romain,
appeared in 1906, was revised and issued in a second edition in 1909, and
is now presented in English in the following pages.

M. Cumont is an ideal contributor to knowledge in his chosen field. As
an investigator, he combines in one person Teutonic thoroughness and
Gallic intuition. As a writer, his virtues are no less pronounced.
Recognition of his mastery of an enormous array of detailed learning
followed immediately on the publication [vi]of Textes et
monuments, and the present series of essays, besides a numerous
series of articles and monographs, makes manifest the same painstaking
and thorough scholarship; but he is something more than the mere
savant who has at command a vast and difficult body of knowledge.
He is also the literary architect who builds up his material into
well-ordered and graceful structure.

Above all, M. Cumont is an interpreter. In The Mysteries of
Mithra he put into circulation, so to speak, the coin of the ideas he
had minted in the patient and careful study of Textes et
Monuments; and in the studies of The Oriental Religions he is
giving to the wider public the interpretation of the larger and more
comprehensive body of knowledge of which his acquaintance with the
religion of Mithra is only a part, and against which as a background it
stands. What his book The Mysteries of Mithra is to his special
knowledge of Mithraism, The Oriental Religions is to his knowledge
of the whole field. He is thus an example of the highest type of
scholar—the exhaustive searcher after evidence, and the sympathetic
interpreter who mediates between his subject and the lay intellectual
life of his time.

And yet, admirable as is M. Cumont’s presentation in The Mysteries
of Mithra and The Oriental Religions, nothing is a greater
mistake than to suppose that his popularizations are facile reading. The
few specialists in ancient religions may indeed sail smoothly in the
current of his thought; but the very nature of a subject which ramifies
so extensively and so intricately into the whole of ancient life,
concerning itself with practically all the manifestations of ancient [vii]civilization—philosophy, religion,
astrology, magic, mythology, literature, art, war, commerce,
government—will of necessity afford some obstacle to readers
unfamiliar with the study of religion.

It is in the hope of lessening somewhat this natural difficulty of
assimilating M. Cumont’s contribution to knowledge, and above all, to
life, that these brief words of introduction are undertaken. The
presentation in outline of the main lines of thought which underlie his
conception of the importance of the Oriental religions in universal
history may afford the uninitiated reader a background against which the
author’s depiction of the various cults of the Oriental group will be
more easily and clearly seen.

M. Cumont’s work, then, transports us in imagination to a time when
Christianity was still—at least in the eyes of Roman
pagans—only one of a numerous array of foreign Eastern religions
struggling for recognition in the Roman world, and especially in the city
of Rome. To understand the conditions under which the new faith finally
triumphed, we should first realize the number of these religions, and the
apparently chaotic condition of paganism when viewed as a system.

“Let us suppose,” says M. Cumont, “that in modern Europe the faithful
had deserted the Christian churches to worship Allah or Brahma, to follow
the precepts of Confucius or Buddha, or to adopt the maxims of the
Shinto; let us imagine a great confusion of all the races of the world in
which Arabian mullahs, Chinese scholars, Japanese bonzes, Tibetan lamas
and Hindu pundits should all be preaching fatalism and [viii]predestination, ancestor-worship and
devotion to a deified sovereign, pessimism and deliverance through
annihilation—a confusion in which all those priests should erect
temples of exotic architecture in our cities and celebrate their
disparate rites therein. Such a dream, which the future may perhaps
realize, would offer a pretty accurate picture of the religious chaos in
which the ancient world was struggling before the reign of
Constantine.”

But it is no less necessary to realize, in the second place, that, had
there not been an essential solidarity of all these different faiths, the
triumph of Christianity would have been achieved with much less
difficulty and in much less time. We are not to suppose that religions
are long-lived and tenacious unless they possess something vital which
enables them to resist. In his chapter on “The Transformation of Roman
Paganism,” M. Cumont thus accounts for the vitality of the old faiths:
“The mass of religions at Rome finally became so impregnated by
neo-Platonism and Orientalism that paganism may be called a single
religion with a fairly distinct theology, whose doctrines were somewhat
as follows: adoration of the elements, especially the cosmic bodies; the
reign of one God, eternal and omnipotent, with messenger attendants;
spiritual interpretation of the gross rites yet surviving from primitive
times; assurance of eternal felicity to the faithful; belief that the
soul was on earth to be proved before its final return to the universal
spirit, of which it was a spark; the existence of an abysmal abode for
the evil, against whom the faithful must keep up an unceasing struggle;
the destruction of the universe, [ix]the death of the wicked, and the eternal
happiness of the good in a reconstructed world.”^[1]

If this formulation of pagan doctrine surprises those who have been
told that paganism was “a fashion rather than a faith,” and are
accustomed to think of it in terms of Jupiter and Juno, Venus and Mars,
and the other empty, cold, and formalized deities that have so long
filled literature and art, it will be because they have failed to take
into account that between Augustus and Constantine three hundred years
elapsed, and are unfamiliar with the very natural fact that during all
that long period the character of paganism was gradually undergoing
change and growth. “The faith of the friends of Symmachus,” M. Cumont
tells us, “was much farther removed from the religious ideal of Augustus,
although they would never have admitted it, than that of their opponents
in the senate.”

To what was due this change in the content of the pagan ideal, so
great that the phraseology in which the ideal is described puts us in
mind of Christian doctrine itself? First, answers M. Cumont, to
neo-Platonism, which attempted the reconciliation of the antiquated
religions with the advanced moral and intellectual ideas of its own time
by spiritual interpretation of outgrown cult stories and cult practices.
A second and more vital cause, however, wrought to bring about the same
result. This was the invasion of the Oriental religions, and the slow
working, from the advent of the Great Mother of the Gods in B. C. 204 to
the downfall of paganism at the end of the fourth [x]century of the Christian
era, of the leaven of Oriental sentiment. The cults of Asia and Egypt
bridged the gap between the old religions and Christianity, and in such a
way as to make the triumph of Christianity an evolution, not a
revolution. The Great Mother and Attis, with self-consecration,
enthusiasm, and asceticism; Isis and Serapis, with the ideals of
communion and purification; Baal, the omnipotent dweller in the far-off
heavens; Jehovah, the jealous God of the Hebrews, omniscient and
omnipresent; Mithra, deity of the sun, with the Persian dualism of good
and evil, and with after-death rewards and punishments—all these,
and more, flowed successively into the channel of Roman life and mingled
their waters to form the late Roman paganism which proved so pertinacious
a foe to the Christian religion. The influence that underlay their
pretensions was so real that there is some warrant for the view of Renan
that at one time it was doubtful whether the current as it flowed away
into the Dark Ages should be Mithraic or Christian.

The vitalization of the evidence regarding these cults is M. Cumont’s
great contribution. His perseverance in the accurate collection of
material is equalled only by his power to see the real nature and effect
of the religions of which he writes. Assuming that no religion can
succeed merely because of externals, but must stand on some foundation of
moral excellence, he shows how the pagan faiths were able to hold their
own, and even to contest the ground with Christianity. These religions,
he asserts, gave greater satisfaction first, to the senses and passions,
secondly, to the intelligence, finally, and above all, to the conscience.
“The spread of the Oriental religions”—again I quote [xi]a summary from
Classical Philology—”was due to merit. In contrast to the
cold and formal religions of Rome, the Oriental faiths, with their hoary
traditions and basis of science and culture, their fine ceremonial, the
excitement attendant on their mysteries, their deities with hearts of
compassion, their cultivation of the social bond, their appeal to
conscience and their promises of purification and reward in a future
life, were personal rather than civic, and satisfied the individual
soul…. With such a conception of latter-day paganism, we may more
easily understand its strength and the bitter rivalry between it and the
new faith, as well as the facility with which pagan society, once its
cause was proved hopeless, turned to Christianity.” The Oriental
religions had made straight the way. Christianity triumphed after long
conflict because its antagonists also were not without weapons from the
armory of God. Both parties to the struggle had their loins girt about
with truth, and both wielded the sword of the spirit; but the steel of
the Christian was the more piercing, the breastplate of his righteousness
was the stronger, and his feet were better shod with the preparation of
the gospel of peace.

Nor did Christianity stop there. It took from its opponents their own
weapons, and used them; the better elements of paganism were transferred
to the new religion. “As the religious history of the empire is studied
more closely,” writes M. Cumont, “the triumph of the church will, in our
opinion, appear more and more as the culmination of a long evolution of
beliefs. We can understand the Christianity of the fifth century with its
greatness and weaknesses, its spiritual exaltation and its puerile
superstitions, if we [xii]know the moral antecedents of the world in
which it developed.”

M. Cumont is therefore a contributor to our appreciation of the
continuity of history. Christianity was not a sudden and miraculous
transformation, but a composite of slow and laborious growth. Its four
centuries of struggle were not a struggle against an entirely unworthy
religion, else would our faith in its divine warrant be diminished; it is
to its own great credit, and also to the credit of the opponents that
succumbed to it, that it finally overwhelmed them. To quote Emil Aust:
“Christianity did not wake into being the religious sense, but it
afforded that sense the fullest opportunity of being satisfied; and
paganism fell because the less perfect must give place to the more
perfect, not because it was sunken in sin and vice. It had out of its own
strength laid out the ways by which it advanced to lose itself in the
arms of Christianity, and to recognize this does not mean to minimize the
significance of Christianity. We are under no necessity of artificially
darkening the heathen world; the light of the Evangel streams into it
brightly enough without this.”^[2]

Finally, the work of M. Cumont and others in the field of the ancient
Oriental religions is not an isolated activity, but part of a larger
intellectual movement. Their effort is only one manifestation of the
interest of recent years in the study of universal religion; other
manifestations of the same interest are to be seen in the histories of
the Greek and Roman religions by [xiii]Gruppe, Farnell, and
Wissowa, in the anthropological labors of Tylor, Lang, and Frazer, in the
publication of Reinach’s Orpheus, in the study of comparative
religion, and in such a phenomenon as a World’s Parliament of
Religions.

In a word, M. Cumont and his companion ancient Orientalists are but
one brigade engaged in the modern campaign for the liberation of
religious thought. His studies are therefore not concerned alone with
paganism, nor alone with the religions of the ancient past; in common
with the labors of students of modern religion, they touch our own faith
and our own times, and are in vital relation with our philosophy of
living, and consequently with our highest welfare. “To us moderns,” says
Professor Frazer in the preface to his Golden Bough, “a still
wider vista is vouchsafed, a greater panorama is unrolled by the study
which aims at bringing home to us the faith and the practice, the hopes
and the ideals, not of two highly gifted races only, but of all mankind,
and thus at enabling us to follow the long march, the slow and toilsome
ascent, of humanity from savagery to civilization…. But the comparative
study of the beliefs and institutions of mankind is fitted to be much
more than a means of satisfying an enlightened curiosity and of
furnishing materials for the researches of the learned. Well handled, it
may become a powerful instrument to expedite progress….”

It is possible that all this might disquiet the minds of those who
have been wont to assume perfection in the primitive Christian church,
and who assume also that present-day Christianity is the ultimate form of
the Christian religion. Such persons—if there are [xiv]such—should rather take heart from
the whole-souled devotion to truth everywhere to be seen in the works of
scholars in ancient religion, and from their equally evident sympathy
with all manifestations of human effort to establish the divine relation;
but most of all from their universal testimony that for all time and in
all places and under all conditions the human heart has felt powerfully
the need of the divine relation. From the knowledge that the desire to
get right with God—the common and essential element in all
religions—has been the most universal and the most potent and
persistent factor in past history, it is not far to the conviction that
it will always continue to be so, and that the struggle toward the divine
light of religion pure and undefiled will never perish from the
earth.

Grant Showerman.

The University of Wisconsin.

Notes to Introduction.

[xv]

PREFACE.

In November, 1905, the Collège de France honored the writer by asking
him to succeed M. Naville in opening the series of lectures instituted by
the Michonis foundation. A few months later the “Hibbert Trust” invited
him to Oxford to develop certain subjects which he had touched upon at
Paris. In this volume have been collected the contents of both series
with the addition of a short bibliography and notes intended for scholars
desirous of verifying assertions made in the text.^[1] The form of the work has scarcely been
changed, but we trust that these pages, intended though they were for
oral delivery, will bear reading, and that the title of these studies
will not seem too ambitious for what they have to offer. The propagation
of the Oriental religions, with the development of neo-Platonism, is the
leading fact in the moral history of the pagan empire. May this small
volume on a great subject throw at least some light upon this truth, and
may the reader receive these essays with the same kind interest shown by
the audiences at Paris and Oxford.

The reader will please remember that the different chapters were
thought out and written as lectures. They do not claim to contain a debit
and credit account of what the Latin paganism borrowed from or loaned to
the Orient. Certain well-known facts have been [xvi]deliberately passed
over in order to make room for others that are perhaps less known. We
have taken liberties with our subject matter that would not be tolerated
in a didactic treatise, but to which surely no one will object.

We are more likely to be reproached for an apparently serious
omission. We have investigated only the internal development of paganism
in the Latin world, and have considered its relation to Christianity only
incidentally and by the way. The question is nevertheless important and
has been the subject of celebrated lectures as well as of learned
monographs and widely distributed manuals.^[2] We wish to slight neither the interest
nor the importance of that controversy, and it is not because it seemed
negligible that we have not entered into it.

By reason of their intellectual bent and education the theologians
were for a long time more inclined to consider the continuity of the
Jewish tradition than the causes that disturbed it; but a reaction has
taken place, and to-day they endeavor to show that the church has
borrowed considerably from the conceptions and ritualistic ceremonies of
the pagan mysteries. In spite of the prestige that surrounded Eleusis,
the word “mysteries” calls up Hellenized Asia rather than Greece proper,
because in the first place the earliest Christian communities were
founded, formed and developed in the heart of Oriental populations,
Semites, Phrygians and Egyptians. Moreover the religions of those people
were much farther advanced, much richer in ideas and sentiments, more
striking and stirring than the Greco-Latin anthropomorphism. Their
liturgy always derives its inspiration from generally accepted beliefs
[xvii]about purification embodied in certain
acts regarded as sanctifying. These facts were almost identical in the
various sects. The new faith poured its revelation into the hallowed
moulds of earlier religions because in that form alone could the world in
which it developed receive its message.

This is approximately the point of view adopted by the latest
historians.

But, however absorbing this important problem may be, we could not
think of going into it, even briefly, in these studies on Roman paganism.
In the Latin world the question assumes much more modest proportions, and
its aspect changes completely. Here Christianity spread only after it had
outgrown the embryonic state and really became established. Moreover like
Christianity the Oriental mysteries at Rome remained for a long time
chiefly the religion of a foreign minority. Did any exchange take place
between these rival sects? The silence of the ecclesiastical writers is
not sufficient reason for denying it. We dislike to acknowledge a debt to
our adversaries, because it means that we recognize some value in the
cause they defend, but I believe that the importance of these exchanges
should not be exaggerated. Without a doubt certain ceremonies and
holidays of the church were based on pagan models. In the fourth century
Christmas was placed on the 25th of December because on that date was
celebrated the birth of the sun (Natalis Invicti) who was born to
a new life each year after the solstice.^[3] Certain vestiges of the religions of
Isis and Cybele besides other polytheistic practices perpetuated
themselves in the adoration of local saints. On the other hand as soon as
Christianity became a moral power in [xviii]the world, it
imposed itself even on its enemies. The Phrygian priests of the Great
Mother openly opposed their celebration of the vernal equinox to the
Christian Easter, and attributed to the blood shed in the taurobolium the
redemptive power of the blood of the divine Lamb.^[4]

All these facts constitute a series of very delicate problems of
chronology and interrelation, and it would be rash to attempt to solve
them en bloc. Probably there is a different answer in each
particular case, and I am afraid that some cases must always remain
unsolved. We may speak of “vespers of Isis” or of a “eucharist of Mithra
and his companions,” but only in the same sense as when we say “the
vassal princes of the empire” or “Diocletian’s socialism.” These are
tricks of style used to give prominence to a similarity and to establish
a parallel strongly and closely. A word is not a demonstration, and we
must be careful not to infer an influence from an analogy. Preconceived
notions are always the most serious obstacles to an exact knowledge of
the past. Some modern writers, like the ancient Church Fathers, are fain
to see a sacrilegious parody inspired by the spirit of lies in the
resemblance between the mysteries and the church ceremonies. Other
historians seem disposed to agree with the Oriental priests, who claimed
priority for their cults at Rome, and saw a plagiarism of their ancient
rituals in the Christian ceremonies. It would appear that both are very
much mistaken. Resemblance does not necessarily presuppose imitation, and
frequently a similarity of ideas and practices must be explained by
common origin, exclusive of any borrowing. [xix]

An illustration will make my thought clearer. The votaries of Mithra
likened the practice of their religion to military service. When the
neophyte joined he was compelled to take an oath (sacramentum)
similar to the one required of recruits in the army, and there is no
doubt that an indelible mark was likewise branded on his body with a hot
iron. The third degree of the mystical hierarchy was that of “soldier”
(miles). Thenceforward the initiate belonged to the sacred militia
of the invincible god and fought the powers of evil under his orders. All
these ideas and institutions are so much in accord with what we know of
Mazdean dualism, in which the entire life was conceived as a struggle
against the malevolent spirits; they are so inseparable from the history
even of Mithraism, which always was a soldiers’ religion, that we cannot
doubt they belonged to it before its appearance in the Occident.

On the other hand, we find similar conceptions in Christianity. The
society of the faithful—the term is still in use—is the
“Church Militant.” During the first centuries the comparison of the
church with an army was carried out even in details;^[5] the baptism of the neophyte was the oath
of fidelity to the flag taken by the recruits. Christ was the “emperor,”
the commander-in-chief, of his disciples, who formed cohorts triumphing
under his command over the demons; the apostates were deserters; the
sanctuaries, camps; the pious practices, drills and sentry-duty, and so
on.

If we consider that the gospel preached peace, that for a long time
the Christians felt a repugnance to military service, where their faith
was threatened, we are tempted to admit a priori an influence of
the belligerent cult of Mithra upon Christian thought. [xx]

But this is not the case. The theme of the militia Christi
appears in the oldest ecclesiastical authors, in the epistles of St.
Clement and even in those of St. Paul. It is impossible to admit an
imitation of the Mithraic mysteries then, because at that period they had
no importance whatever.

But if we extend our researches to the history of that notion, we
shall find that, at least under the empire, the mystics of Isis were also
regarded as forming sacred cohorts enlisted in the service of the
goddess, that previously in the Stoic philosophy human existence was
frequently likened to a campaign, and that even the astrologers called
the man who submitted to destiny and renounced all revolt a “soldier of
fate.”^[6]

This conception of life, especially of religious life, was therefore
very popular from the beginning of our era. It was manifestly prior both
to Christianity and to Mithraism. It developed in the military monarchies
of the Asiatic Diadochi. Here the soldier was no longer a citizen
defending his country, but in most instances a volunteer bound by a
sacred vow to the person of his king. In the martial states that fought
for the heritage of the Achemenides this personal devotion dominated or
displaced all national feeling. We know the oaths taken by those subjects
to their deified kings.^[7]
They agreed to defend and uphold them even at the cost of their own
lives, and always to have the same friends and the same enemies as they;
they dedicated to them not only their actions and words, but their very
thoughts. Their duty was a complete abandonment of their personality in
favor of those monarchs who were held the equals of the gods. The sacred
militia of the mysteries was nothing but this civic [xxi]morality
viewed from the religious standpoint. It confounded loyalty with
piety.

As we see, the researches into the doctrines or practices common to
Christianity and the Oriental mysteries lead almost always beyond the
limits of the Roman empire into the Hellenistic Orient. The religious
conceptions which imposed themselves on Latin Europe under the Cæsars^[8] were developed there, and
it is there we must look for the key to enigmas still unsolved. It is
true that at present nothing is more obscure than the history of the
religions that arose in Asia when Greek culture came in contact with
barbarian theology. It is rarely possible to formulate satisfactory
conclusions with any degree of certainty, and before further discoveries
are made we shall frequently be compelled to weigh contrasting
probabilities. We must frequently throw out the sounding line into the
shifting sea of possibility in order to find secure anchorage. But at any
rate we perceive with sufficient distinctness the direction in which the
investigations must be pursued.

It is our belief that the main point to be cleared up is the composite
religion of those Jewish or Jewish-pagan communities, the worshipers of
Hypsistos, the Sabbatists, the Sabaziasts and others in which the new
creed took root during the apostolic age. In those communities the Mosaic
law had become adapted to the sacred usages of the Gentiles even before
the beginning of our era, and monotheism had made concessions to
idolatry. Many beliefs of the ancient Orient, as for instance the ideas
of Persian dualism regarding the infernal world, arrived in Europe by two
roads, the more or less orthodox Judaism of the communities of [xxii]the
dispersion in which the gospel was accepted immediately, and the pagan
mysteries imported from Syria or Asia Minor. Certain similarities that
surprised and shocked the apologists will cease to look strange as soon
as we reach the distant sources of the channels that reunited at
Rome.

But these delicate and complicated researches into origins and
relationships belong especially to the history of the Alexandrian period.
In considering the Roman empire, the principal fact is that the Oriental
religions propagated doctrines, previous to and later side by side with
Christianity, that acquired with it universal authority at the decline of
the ancient world. The preaching of the Asiatic priests also unwittingly
prepared for the triumph of the church which put its stamp on the work at
which they had unconsciously labored.

Through their popular propaganda they had completely disintegrated the
ancient national faith of the Romans, while at the same time the Cæsars
had gradually destroyed the political particularism. After their advent
it was no longer necessary for religion to be connected with a state in
order to become universal. Religion was no longer regarded as a public
duty, but as a personal obligation; no longer did it subordinate the
individual to the city-state, but pretended above all to assure his
welfare in this world and especially in the world to come. The Oriental
mysteries offered their votaries radiant perspectives of eternal
happiness. Thus the focus of morality was changed. The aim became to
realize the sovereign good in the life hereafter instead of in this
world, as the Greek philosophy had done. No longer did man act in view of
tangible [xxiii]realities, but to attain ideal hopes.
Existence in this life was regarded as a preparation for a sanctified
life, as a trial whose outcome was to be either everlasting happiness or
everlasting pain.

As we see, the entire system of ethical values was overturned.

The salvation of the soul, which had become the one great human care,
was especially promised in these mysteries upon the accurate performance
of the sacred ceremonies. The rites possessed a power of purification and
redemption. They made man better and freed him from the dominion of
hostile spirits. Consequently, religion was a singularly important and
absorbing matter, and the liturgy could be performed only by a clergy
devoting itself entirely to the task. The Asiatic gods exacted undivided
service; their priests were no longer magistrates, scarcely citizens.
They devoted themselves unreservedly to their ministry, and demanded of
their adherents submission to their sacred authority.

All these features that we are but sketching here, gave the Oriental
religions a resemblance to Christianity, and the reader of these studies
will find many more points in common among them. These analogies are even
more striking to us than they were in those times because we have become
acquainted in India and China with religions very different from the
Roman paganism and from Christianity as well, and because the
relationships of the two latter strike us more strongly on account of the
contrast. These theological similarities did not attract the attention of
the ancients, because they scarcely conceived of the existence of other
possibilities, while differences were what they [xxiv]remarked especially.
I am not at all forgetting how considerable these were. The principal
divergence was that Christianity, by placing God in an ideal sphere
beyond the confines of this world, endeavored to rid itself of every
attachment to a frequently abject polytheism. But even if we oppose
tradition, we cannot break with the past that has formed us, nor separate
ourselves from the present in which we live. As the religious history of
the empire is studied more closely, the triumph of the church will, in
our opinion, appear more and more as the culmination of a long evolution
of beliefs. We can understand the Christianity of the fifth century with
its greatness and weaknesses, its spiritual exaltation and its puerile
superstitions, if we know the moral antecedents of the world in which it
developed. The faith of the friends of Symmachus was much farther removed
from the religious ideal of Augustus, although they would never have
admitted it, than that of their opponents in the senate. I hope that
these studies will succeed in showing how the pagan religions from the
Orient aided the long continued effort of Roman society, contented for
many centuries with a rather insipid idolatry, toward more elevated and
more profound forms of worship. Possibly their credulous mysticism
deserves as much blame as is laid upon the theurgy of neo-Platonism,
which drew from the same sources of inspiration, but like neo-Platonism
it has strengthened man’s feeling of eminent dignity by asserting the
divine nature of the soul. By making inner purity the main object of
earthly existence, they refined and exalted the psychic life and gave it
an almost supernatural intensity, which until then was unknown in the
ancient world. [xxv]

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

In this second edition the eight lectures forming the reading matter
of this book have suffered scarcely any change, and, excepting the
chapter on Syria, the additions are insignificant. It would have been an
easy matter to expand them, but I did not want these lectures to become
erudite dissertations, nor the ideas which are the essential part of a
sketch like the present to be overwhelmed by a multiplicity of facts. In
general I have therefore limited myself to weeding out certain errors
that were overlooked, or introduced, in the proofreading.

The notes, however, have been radically revised. I have endeavored to
give expression to the suggestions or observations communicated to me by
obliging readers; to mention new publications and to utilize the results
of my own studies. The index makes it easy to find the subjects
discussed.

And here I must again thank my friend Charles Michel, who undertook
the tedious task of rereading the proofs of this book, and whose
scrupulous and sagacious care has saved me from many and many a
blunder.

F. C.

Paris, France, February, 1909.

[1]

ROME AND THE ORIENT.

We are fond of regarding ourselves as the heirs of Rome, and we like
to think that the Latin genius, after having absorbed the genius of
Greece, held an intellectual and moral supremacy in the ancient world
similar to the one Europe now maintains, and that the culture of the
peoples that lived under the authority of the Cæsars was stamped forever
by their strong touch. It is difficult to forget the present entirely and
to renounce aristocratic pretensions. We find it hard to believe that the
Orient has not always lived, to some extent, in the state of humiliation
from which it is now slowly emerging, and we are inclined to ascribe to
the ancient inhabitants of Smyrna, Beirut or Alexandria the faults with
which the Levantines of to-day are being reproached. The growing
influence of the Orientals that accompanied the decline of the empire has
frequently been considered a morbid phenomenon and a symptom of the slow
decomposition of the ancient world. Even Renan does not seem to have been
sufficiently free from an old prejudice when he wrote on this subject:^[1] “That the oldest and most
worn out civilization should by its corruption subjugate the younger was
inevitable.”

But if we calmly consider the real facts, avoiding the optical
illusion that makes things in our immediate [2]vicinity look larger, we
shall form a quite different opinion. It is beyond all dispute that Rome
found the point of support of its military power in the Occident. The
legions from the Danube and the Rhine were always braver, stronger and
better disciplined than those from the Euphrates and the Nile. But it is
in the Orient, especially in these countries of “old civilization,” that
we must look for industry and riches, for technical ability and artistic
productions, as well as for intelligence and science, even before
Constantine made it the center of political power.

While Greece merely vegetated in a state of poverty, humiliation and
exhaustion; while Italy suffered depopulation and became unable to
provide for her own support; while the other countries of Europe were
hardly out of barbarism; Asia Minor, Egypt and Syria gathered the rich
harvests Roman peace made possible. Their industrial centers cultivated
and renewed all the traditions that had caused their former celebrity. A
more intense intellectual life corresponded with the economic activity of
these great manufacturing and exporting countries. They excelled in every
profession except that of arms, and even the prejudiced Romans admitted
their superiority. The menace of an Oriental empire haunted the
imaginations of the first masters of the world. Such an empire seems to
have been the main thought of the dictator Cæsar, and the triumvir Antony
almost realized it. Even Nero thought of making Alexandria his capital.
Although Rome, supported by her army and the right of might, retained the
political authority for a long time, she bowed to the fatal moral
ascendency of more advanced peoples. Viewed from this standpoint the
history of the empire [3]during the first three centuries may be
summarized as a “peaceful infiltration” of the Orient into the
Occident.^[2] This truth has
become evident since the various aspects of Roman civilization are being
studied in greater detail; and before broaching the special subject of
these studies we wish to review a few phases of the slow metamorphosis of
which the propagation of the Oriental religions was one phenomenon.

In the first place the imitation of the Orient showed itself plainly
in political institutions.^[3] To be convinced of this fact it is
sufficient to compare the government of the empire in the time of
Augustus with what it had become under Diocletian. At the beginning of
the imperial régime Rome ruled the world but did not govern it. She kept
the number of her functionaries down to a minimum, her provinces were
mere unorganized aggregates of cities where she only exercised police
power, protectorates rather than annexed countries.^[4] As long as law and order were maintained
and her citizens, functionaries and merchants could transact their
business, Rome was satisfied. She saved herself the trouble of looking
after the public service by leaving broad authority to the cities that
had existed before her domination, or had been modeled after her. The
taxes were levied by syndicates of bankers and the public lands rented
out. Before the reforms instituted by Augustus, even the army was not an
organic and permanent force, but consisted theoretically of troops levied
before a war and discharged after victory.

Rome’s institutions remained those of a city. It was difficult to
apply them to the vast territory she attempted to govern with their aid.
They were a clumsy [4]apparatus that worked only by sudden starts, a
rudimentary system that could not and did not last.

What do we find three centuries later? A strongly centralized state in
which an absolute ruler, worshiped like a god and surrounded by a large
court, commanded a whole hierarchy of functionaries; cities divested of
their local liberties and ruled by an omnipotent bureaucracy, the old
capital herself the first to be dispossessed of her autonomy and
subjected to prefects. Outside of the cities the monarch, whose private
fortune was identical with the state finances, possessed immense domains
managed by intendants and supporting a population of serf-colonists. The
army was composed largely of foreign mercenaries, professional soldiers
whose pay or bounty consisted of lands on which they settled. All these
features and many others caused the Roman empire to assume the likeness
of ancient Oriental monarchies.

It would be impossible to admit that like causes produce like results,
and then maintain that a similarity is not sufficient proof of an
influence in history. Wherever we can closely follow the successive
transformations of a particular institution, we notice the action of the
Orient and especially of Egypt. When Rome had become a great cosmopolitan
metropolis like Alexandria, Augustus reorganized it in imitation of the
capital of the Ptolemies. The fiscal reforms of the Cæsars like the taxes
on sales and inheritances, the register of land surveys and the direct
collection of taxes, were suggested by the very perfect financial system
of the Lagides,^[5] and it
can be maintained that their government was the first source from which
those of modern Europe were derived, through the medium [5]of the Romans. The
imperial saltus, superintended by a procurator and cultivated by
metayers reduced to the state of serfs, was an imitation of the ones that
the Asiatic potentates formerly cultivated through their agents.^[6] It would be easy to
increase this list of examples. The absolute monarchy, theocratic and
bureaucratic at the same time, that was the form of government of Egypt,
Syria and even Asia Minor during the Alexandrine period was the ideal on
which the deified Cæsars gradually fashioned the Roman empire.

One cannot however deny Rome the glory of having elaborated a system
of private law that was logically deduced from clearly formulated
principles and was destined to become the fundamental law of all
civilized communities. But even in connection with this private law,
where the originality of Rome is uncontested and her preeminence
absolute, recent researches have shown with how much tenacity the
Hellenized Orient maintained its old legal codes, and how much resistance
local customs, the woof of the life of nations, offered to unification.
In truth, unification never was realized except in theory.^[7] More than that, these
researches have proved that the fertile principles of that provincial
law, which was sometimes on a higher moral plane than the Roman law,
reacted on the progressive transformation of the old ius civile.
And how could it be otherwise? Were not a great number of famous jurists
like Ulpian of Tyre and Papinian of Hemesa natives of Syria? And did not
the law-school of Beirut constantly grow in importance after the third
century, until during the fifth century it became the most brilliant
center of legal education? Thus Levantines [6]cultivated even the
patrimonial field cleared by Scaevola and Labeo.^[8]

In the austere temple of law the Orient held as yet only a minor
position; everywhere else its authority was predominant. The practical
mind of the Romans, which made them excellent lawyers, prevented them
from becoming great scholars. They esteemed pure science but little,
having small talent for it, and one notices that it ceased to be
earnestly cultivated wherever their direct domination was established.
The great astronomers, mathematicians, and physicians, like the
originators or defenders of the great metaphysical systems, were mostly
Orientals. Ptolemy and Plotinus were Egyptians, Porphyry and Iamblichus,
Syrians, Dioscorides and Galen, Asiatics. All branches of learning were
affected by the spirit of the Orient. The clearest minds accepted the
chimeras of astrology and magic. Philosophy claimed more and more to
derive its inspiration from the fabulous wisdom of Chaldea and Egypt.
Tired of seeking truth, reason abdicated and hoped to find it in a
revelation preserved in the mysteries of the barbarians. Greek logic
strove to coordinate into an harmonious whole the confused traditions of
the Asiatic religions.

Letters, as well as science, were cultivated chiefly by the Orientals.
Attention has often been called to the fact that those men of letters
that were considered the purest representatives of the Greek spirit under
the empire belonged almost without exception to Asia Minor, Syria or
Egypt. The rhetorician Dion Chrysostom came from Prusa in Bithynia, the
satirist Lucian from Samosata in Commagene on the borders of the
Euphrates. A number of other names could be cited. [7]From Tacitus and Suetonius
down to Ammianus, there was not one author of talent to preserve in Latin
the memory of the events that stirred the world of that period, but it
was a Bithynian again, Dion Cassius of Nicea, who, under the Severi,
narrated the history of the Roman people.

It is a characteristic fact that, besides this literature whose
language was Greek, others were born, revived and developed. The Syriac,
derived from the Aramaic which was the international language of earlier
Asia, became again the language of a cultured race with Bardesanes of
Edessa. The Copts remembered that they had spoken several dialects
derived from the ancient Egyptian and endeavored to revive them. North of
the Taurus even the Armenians began to write and polish their barbarian
speech. Christian preaching, addressed to the people, took hold of the
popular idioms and roused them from their long lethargy. Along the Nile
as well as on the plains of Mesopotamia or in the valleys of Anatolia it
proclaimed its new ideas in dialects that had been despised hitherto, and
wherever the old Orient had not been entirely denationalized by
Hellenism, it successfully reclaimed its intellectual autonomy.

A revival of native art went hand in hand with this linguistic
awakening. In no field of intellect has the illusion mentioned above been
so complete and lasting as in this one. Until a few years ago the opinion
prevailed that an “imperial” art had come into existence in the Rome of
Augustus and that thence its predominance had slowly spread to the
periphery of the ancient world. If it had undergone some special
modifications in Asia these were due to exotic influences, undoubtedly
[8]Assyrian or Persian. Not even the important
discoveries of M. de Vogüé in Hauran^[9] were sufficient to prove the emptiness
of a theory that was supported by our lofty conviction of European
leadership.

To-day it is fully proven not only that Rome has given nothing or
almost nothing to the Orientals but also that she has received quite a
little from them. Impregnated with Hellenism, Asia produced an
astonishing number of original works of art in the kingdoms of the
Diadochs. The old processes, the discovery of which dates back to the
Chaldeans, the Hittites or the subjects of the Pharaohs, were first
utilized by the conquerors of Alexander’s empire who conceived a rich
variety of new types, and created an original style. But if during the
three centuries preceding our era, sovereign Greece played the part of
the demiurge who creates living beings out of preexisting matter, during
the three following centuries her productive power became exhausted, her
faculty of invention weakened, the ancient local traditions revolted
against her empire and with the help of Christianity overcame it.
Transferred to Byzantium they expanded in a new efflorescence and spread
over Europe where they paved the way for the formation of the Romanesque
art of the early Middle Ages.^[10]

Rome, then, far from having established her suzerainty, was tributary
to the Orient in this respect. The Orient was her superior in the extent
and precision of its technical knowledge as well as in the inventive
genius and ability of its workmen. The Cæsars were great builders but
frequently employed foreign help. Trajan’s principal architect, a
magnificent builder, was a Syrian, Apollodorus of Damascus.^[11] [9]

Her Levantine subjects not only taught Italy the artistic solution of
architectonic problems like the erection of a cupola on a rectangular or
octagonal edifice, but also compelled her to accept their taste, and they
saturated her with their genius. They imparted to her their love of
luxuriant decoration, and of violent polychromy, and they gave religious
sculpture and painting the complicated symbolism that pleased their
abstruse and subtle minds.

In those times art was closely connected with industry, which was
entirely manual and individual. They learned from each other, they
improved and declined together, in short they were inseparable. Shall we
call the painters that decorated the architecturally fantastic and airy
walls of Pompeii in Alexandrian or perhaps Syrian taste artisans or
artists? And how shall we classify the goldsmiths, Alexandrians also, who
carved those delicate leaves, those picturesque animals, those
harmoniously elegant or cunningly animated groups that cover the phials
and goblets of Bosco Reale? And descending from the productions of the
industrial arts to those of industry itself, one might also trace the
growing influence of the Orient; one might show how the action of the
great manufacturing centers of the East gradually transformed the
material civilization of Europe; one might point out how the introduction
into Gaul^[12] of exotic
patterns and processes changed the old native industry and gave its
products a perfection and a popularity hitherto unknown. But I dislike to
insist overmuch on a point apparently so foreign to the one now before
us. It was important however to mention this subject at the beginning
because in whatever direction scholars of [10]to-day pursue their
investigations they always notice Asiatic culture slowly supplanting that
of Italy. The latter developed only by absorbing elements taken from the
inexhaustible reserves of the “old civilizations” of which we spoke at
the beginning. The Hellenized Orient imposed itself everywhere through
its men and its works; it subjected its Latin conquerors to its
ascendancy in the same manner as it dominated its Arabian conquerors
later when it became the civilizer of Islam. But in no field of thought
was its influence, under the empire, so decisive as in religion, because
it finally brought about the complete destruction of the Greco-Latin
paganism.^[13]

The invasion of the barbarian religions was so open, so noisy and so
triumphant that it could not remain unnoticed. It attracted the anxious
or sympathetic attention of the ancient authors, and since the
Renaissance modern scholars have frequently taken interest in it.
Possibly however they did not sufficiently understand that this religious
evolution was not an isolated and extraordinary phenomenon, but that it
accompanied and aided a more general evolution, just as that aided it in
turn. The transformation of beliefs was intimately connected with the
establishment of the monarchy by divine right, the development of art,
the prevailing philosophic tendencies, in fact with all the
manifestations of thought, sentiment and taste.

We shall attempt to sketch this religious movement with its numerous
and far-reaching ramifications. First we shall try to show what caused
the diffusion of the Oriental religions. In the second place we shall
examine those in particular that originated in Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria
and Persia, and we shall endeavor to [11]distinguish their
individual characteristics and estimate their value. We shall see,
finally, how the ancient idolatry was transformed and what form it
assumed in its last struggle against Christianity, whose victory was
furthered by Asiatic mysteries, although they opposed its doctrine.

But before broaching this subject a preliminary question must be
answered. Is the study which we have just outlined possible? What items
will be of assistance to us in this undertaking? From what sources are we
to derive our knowledge of the Oriental religions in the Roman
empire?

It must be admitted that the sources are inadequate and have not as
yet been sufficiently investigated.

Perhaps no loss caused by the general wreck of ancient literature has
been more disastrous than that of the liturgic books of paganism. A few
mystic formulas quoted incidentally by pagan or Christian authors and a
few fragments of hymns in honor of the gods^[14] are practically all that escaped
destruction. In order to obtain an idea of what those lost rituals may
have been one must turn to their imitations contained in the chorus of
tragedies, and to the parodies comic authors sometimes made; or look up
in books of magic the plagiarisms that writers of incantations may have
committed.^[15] But all
this gives us only a dim reflection of the religious ceremonies. Shut out
from the sanctuary like profane outsiders, we hear only the indistinct
echo of the sacred songs and not even in imagination can we attend the
celebration of the mysteries.

We do not know how the ancients prayed, we cannot penetrate into the
intimacy of their religious life, [12]and certain depths of the
soul of antiquity we must leave unsounded. If a fortunate windfall could
give us possession of some sacred book of the later paganism its
revelations would surprise the world. We could witness the performance of
those mysterious dramas whose symbolic acts commemorated the passion of
the gods; in company with the believers we could sympathize with their
sufferings, lament their death and share in the joy of their return to
life. In those vast collections of archaic rites that hazily perpetuated
the memory of abolished creeds we would find traditional formulas couched
in obsolete language that was scarcely understood, naive prayers
conceived by the faith of the earliest ages, sanctified by the devotion
of past centuries, and almost ennobled by the joys and sufferings of past
generations. We would also read those hymns in which philosophic thought
found expression in sumptuous allegories^[16] or humbled itself before the
omnipotence of the infinite, poems of which only a few stoic effusions
celebrating the creative or destructive fire, or expressing a complete
surrender to divine fate can give us some idea.^[17]

But everything is gone, and thus we lose the possibility of studying
from the original documents the internal development of the pagan
religions.

We should feel this loss less keenly if we possessed at least the
works of Greek and Latin mythographers on the subject of foreign
divinities like the voluminous books published during the second century
by Eusebius and Pallas on the Mysteries of Mithra. But those works were
thought devoid of interest or even dangerous by the devout Middle Ages,
and they are not likely to have survived the fall of paganism. The [13]treatises on mythology that have been
preserved deal almost entirely with the ancient Hellenic fables made
famous by the classic writers, to the neglect of the Oriental
religions.^[18]

As a rule, all we find in literature on this subject are a few
incidental remarks and passing allusions. History is incredibly poor in
that respect. This poverty of information was caused in the first place
by a narrowness of view characteristic of the rhetoric cultivated by
historians of the classical period and especially of the empire. Politics
and the wars of the rulers, the dramas, the intrigues and even the gossip
of the courts and of the official world were of much higher interest to
them than the great economic or religious transformations. Moreover,
there is no period of the Roman empire concerning which we are so little
informed as the third century, precisely the one during which the
Oriental religions reached the apogee of their power. From Herodianus and
Dion Cassius to the Byzantines, and from Suetonius to Ammianus
Marcellinus, all narratives of any importance have been lost, and this
deplorable blank in historic tradition is particularly fatal to the study
of paganism.

It is a strange fact that light literature concerned itself more with
these grave questions. The rites of the exotic religions stimulated the
imagination of the satirists, and the pomp of the festivities furnished
the novelists with brilliant descriptive matter. Juvenal laughs at the
mortifications of the devotees of Isis; in his Necromancy Lucian
parodies the interminable purifications of the magi, and in the
Metamorphoses Apuleius relates the various scenes of an initiation
into the mysteries of Isis with the fervor of a neophyte and [14]the studied
refinement of a rhetorician. But as a rule we find only incidental
remarks and superficial observations in the authors. Not even the
precious treatise On the Syrian Goddess, in which Lucian tells of
a visit to the temple of Hierapolis and repeats his conversation with the
priests, has any depth. What he relates is the impression of an
intelligent, curious and above all an ironical traveler.^[19]

In order to obtain a more perfect initiation and a less fragmentary
insight into the doctrines taught by the Oriental religions, we are
compelled to turn to two kinds of testimony, inspired by contrary
tendencies, but equally suspicious: the testimony of the philosophers,
and that of the fathers of the church. The Stoics and the Platonists
frequently took an interest in the religious beliefs of the barbarians,
and it is to them that we are indebted for the possession of highly
valuable data on this subject. Plutarch’s treatise Isis and Osiris
is a source whose importance is appreciated even by Egyptologists, whom
it aids in reconstructing the legends of those divinities.^[20] But the philosophers
very seldom expounded foreign doctrines objectively and for their own
sake. They embodied them in their systems as a means of proof or
illustration; they surrounded them with personal exegesis or drowned them
in transcendental commentaries; in short, they claimed to discover their
own ideas in them. It is always difficult and sometimes impossible to
distinguish the dogmas from the self-confident interpretations which are
usually as incorrect as possible.

The writings of the ecclesiastical authors, although prejudiced, are
very fertile sources of information, but in perusing them one must guard
against another kind [15]of error. By a peculiar irony of fate those
controversialists are to-day in many instances our only aid in reviving
the idolatry they attempted to destroy. Although the Oriental religions
were the most dangerous and most persistent adversaries of Christianity,
the works of the Christian writers do not supply as abundant information
as one might suppose. The reason for this is that the fathers of the
church often show a certain reserve in speaking of idolatry, and affect
to recall its monstrosities only in guarded terms. Moreover, as we shall
see later on,^[21] the
apologists of the fourth century were frequently behind the times as to
the evolution of doctrines, and drawing on literary tradition, from
epicureans and skeptics, they fought especially the beliefs of the
ancient Grecian and Italian religions that had been abolished or were
dying out, while they neglected the living beliefs of the contemporary
world.

Some of these polemicists nevertheless directed their attacks against
the divinities of the Orient and their Latin votaries. Either they
derived their information from converts or they had been pagans
themselves during their youth. This was the case with Firmicus Maternus
who has written a bad treatise on astrology and finally fought the
Error of the Profane Religions. However, the question always
arises as to how much they can have known of the esoteric doctrines and
the ritual ceremonies, the secret of which was jealously guarded. They
boast so loudly of their power to disclose these abominations, that they
incur the suspicion that the discretion of the initiates baffled their
curiosity. In addition they were too ready to believe all the calumnies
that were circulated against the pagan mysteries, [16]calumnies directed
against occult sects of all times and against the Christians
themselves.

In short, the literary tradition is not very rich and frequently
little worthy of belief. While it is comparatively considerable for the
Egyptian religions because they were received by the Greek world as early
as the period of the Ptolemies, and because letters and science were
always cultivated at Alexandria, it is even less important for Phrygia,
although Cybele was Hellenized and Latinized very early, and excepting
the tract by Lucian on the goddess of Hierapolis it is almost nothing for
the Syrian, Cappadocian and Persian religions.

The insufficiency of the data supplied by writers increases the value
of information furnished by epigraphic and archeological documents, whose
number is steadily growing. The inscriptions possess a certainty and
precision that is frequently absent in the phrases of the writers. They
enable one to draw important conclusions as to the dates of propagation
and disappearance of the various religions, their extent, the quality and
social rank of their votaries, the sacred hierarchy and sacerdotal
personnel, the constitution of the religious communities, the offerings
made to the gods, and the ceremonies performed in their honor; in short,
conclusions as to the secular and profane history of these religions, and
in a certain measure their ritual. But the conciseness of the lapidary
style and the constant repetition of stereotyped formulas naturally
render that kind of text hardly explicit and sometimes enigmatical. There
are dedications like the Nama Sebesio engraved upon the great
Mithra bas-relief preserved in the Louvre, that caused a number of [17]dissertations to be written without any one
explaining it. And besides, in a general way, epigraphy gives us but
little information about the liturgy and almost nothing regarding the
doctrines.

Archeology must endeavor to fill the enormous blanks left by the
written tradition; the monuments, especially the artistic ones, have not
as yet been collected with sufficient care nor interpreted with
sufficient method. By studying the arrangement of the temples and the
religious furniture that adorned them, one can at the same time determine
part of the liturgic ceremonies which took place there. On the other
hand, the critical interpretation of statuary relics enables us to
reconstruct with sufficient correctness certain sacred legends and to
recover part of the theology of the mysteries. Unlike Greek art, the
religious art at the close of paganism did not seek, or sought only
incidentally, to elevate the soul through the contemplation of an ideal
of divine beauty. True to the traditions of the ancient Orient, it tried
to edify and to instruct at the same time.^[22] It told the history of the gods and
the world in cycles of pictures, or it expressed through symbols the
subtle conceptions of theology and even certain doctrines of profane
science, like the struggle of the four elements; just as during the
Middle Ages, so the artist of the empire interpreted the ideas of the
clergy, teaching the believers by means of pictures and rendering the
highest religious conceptions intelligible to the humblest minds. But to
read this mystic book whose pages are scattered in our museums we must
laboriously look for its key, and we cannot take for a guide and
exegetist some Vincent de Beauvais of Diocletian’s period^[23] as when looking over
the marvelous [18]sculptured encyclopedias in our Gothic
cathedrals. Our position is frequently similar to that of a scholar of
the year 4000 who would undertake to write the history of the Passion
from the pictures of the fourteen stations, or to study the veneration of
the saints from the statues found in the ruins of our churches.

But, as far as the Oriental religions are concerned, the results of
all the laborious investigations now being made in the classical
countries can be indirectly controlled, and this is a great advantage.
To-day we are tolerably well acquainted with the old religions of Egypt,
Babylonia and Persia. We read and translate correctly the hieroglyphics
of the Nile, the cuneiform tablets of Mesopotamia and the sacred books,
Zend or Pahlavi, of Parseeism. Religious history has profited more by
their deciphering than the history of politics or of civilization. In
Syria also, the discovery of Aramaic and Phœnician inscriptions and
the excavations made in temples have in a certain measure covered the
deficiency of information in the Bible or in the Greek writers on Semitic
paganism. Even Asia Minor, that is to say the uplands of Anatolia, is
beginning to reveal herself to explorers although almost all the great
sanctuaries, Pessinus, the two Comanas, Castabala, are as yet buried
underground. We can, therefore, even now form a fairly exact idea of the
beliefs of some of the countries that sent the Oriental mysteries to
Rome. To tell the truth, these researches have not been pushed far enough
to enable us to state precisely what form religion had assumed in those
regions at the time they came into contact with Italy, and we should be
likely to commit very strange errors, if we brought together practices
that may have been [19]separated by thousands of years. It is a
task reserved for the future to establish a rigorous chronology in this
matter, to determine the ultimate phase that the evolution of creeds in
all regions of the Levant had reached at the beginning of our era, and to
connect them without interruption of continuity to the mysteries
practiced in the Latin world, the secrets of which archeological
researches are slowly bringing to light.

We are still far from welding all the links of this long chain firmly
together; the orientalists and the classical philologists cannot, as yet,
shake hands across the Mediterranean. We raise only one corner of Isis’s
veil, and scarcely guess a part of the revelations that were, even
formerly, reserved for a pious and chosen few. Nevertheless we have
reached, on the road of certainty, a summit from which we can overlook
the field that our successors will clear. In the course of these lectures
I shall attempt to give a summary of the essential results achieved by
the erudition of the nineteenth century and to draw from them a few
conclusions that will, possibly, be provisional. The invasion of the
Oriental religions that destroyed the ancient religions and national
ideals of the Romans also radically transformed the society and
government of the empire, and in view of this fact it would deserve the
historian’s attention even if it had not foreshadowed and prepared the
final victory of Christianity.

[20]

WHY THE ORIENTAL RELIGIONS SPREAD.

When, during the fourth century, the weakened empire split asunder
like an overburdened scale whose beam is broken, this political divorce
perpetuated a moral separation that had existed for a long time. The
opposition between the Greco-Oriental and the Latin worlds manifests
itself especially in religion and in the attitude taken by the central
power toward it.

Occidental paganism was almost exclusively Latin under the empire.
After the annexation of Spain, Gaul and Brittany, the old Iberian, Celtic
and other religions were unable to keep up the unequal struggle against
the more advanced religion of the conquerors. The marvelous rapidity with
which the literature of the civilizing Romans was accepted by the subject
peoples has frequently been pointed out. Its influence was felt in the
temples as well as in the forum; it transformed the prayers to the gods
as well as the conversation between men. Besides, it was part of the
political program of the Cæsars to make the adoption of the Roman
divinities general, and the government imposed the rules of its
sacerdotal law as well as the principles of its public and civil law upon
its new subjects. The municipal laws prescribed the election of pontiffs
and augurs in common with the judicial duumvirs. In Gaul druidism, with
its oral traditions embodied in [21]long poems, perished and disappeared less on
account of the police measures directed against it than in consequence of
its voluntary relinquishment by the Celts, as soon as they came under the
ascendency of Latin culture. In Spain it is difficult to find any traces
of the aboriginal religions. Even in Africa, where the Punic religion was
far more developed, it maintained itself only by assuming an entirely
Roman appearance. Baal became Saturn and Eshmoun Æsculapius. It is
doubtful if there was one temple in all the provinces of Italy and Gaul
where, at the time of the disappearance of idolatry, the ceremonies were
celebrated according to native rites and in the local idiom. To this
exclusive predominance of Latin is due the fact that it remained the only
liturgic language of the Occidental church, which here as in many other
cases perpetuated a preexisting condition and maintained a unity
previously established. By imposing her speech upon the inhabitants of
Ireland and Germany, Christian Rome simply continued the work of
assimilation in the barbarian provinces subject to her influence that she
had begun while pagan.^[1]

In the Orient, however, the churches that are separate from the Greek
orthodoxy use, even to-day, a variety of dialects calling to mind the
great diversity of races formerly subject to Rome. In those times twenty
varieties of speech translated the religious thought of the peoples
joined under the dominion of the Cæsars. At the beginning of our era
Hellenism had not yet conquered the uplands of Anatolia,^[2] nor central Syria, nor the divisions of
Egypt. Annexation to the empire might retard and in certain regions
weaken the power of expansion of Greek civilization, [22]but it could not
substitute Latin culture for it^[3] except around the camps of the legions
guarding the frontier, and in a very few colonies. It especially
benefitted the individuality of each region. The native religions
retained all their prestige and independence. In their ancient
sanctuaries that took rank with the richest and most famous of the world,
a powerful clergy continued to practise ancestral devotions according to
barbarian rites, and frequently in a barbarian tongue. The traditional
liturgy, everywhere performed with scrupulous respect, remained Egyptian
or Semitic, Phrygian or Persian, according to the locality.

Neither pontifical law nor augural science ever obtained credit
outside of the Latin world. It is a characteristic fact that the worship
of the deified emperors, the only official worship required of every one
by the government as a proof of loyalty, should have originated of its
own accord in Asia, received its inspiration from the purest monarchic
traditions, and revived in form and spirit the veneration accorded to the
Diadochi by their subjects.

Not only were the gods of Egypt and Asia never supplanted like those
of Gaul or Spain, but they soon crossed the seas and gained worshipers in
every Latin province. Isis and Serapis, Cybele and Attis, the Syrian
Baals, Sabazius and Mithra were honored by brotherhoods of believers as
far as the remotest limits of Germany. The Oriental reaction that we
perceive from the beginning of our era, in studying the history of art,
literature, and philosophy, manifested itself with incomparably greater
power in the religious sphere. First, there was a slow infiltration of
despised exotic religions, then, toward the end of the first [23]century, the
Orontes, the Nile and the Halys, to use the words of Juvenal, flowed into
the Tiber, to the great indignation of the old Romans. Finally, a hundred
years later, an influx of Egyptian, Semitic and Persian beliefs and
conceptions took place that threatened to submerge all that the Greek and
Roman genius had laboriously built up. What called forth and permitted
this spiritual commotion, of which the triumph of Christianity was the
outcome? Why was the influence of the Orient strongest in the religious
field? These questions claim our attention. Like all great phenomena of
history, this particular one was determined by a number of influences
that concurred in producing it. In the mass of half-known particulars
that brought it about, certain factors or leading causes, of which every
one has in turn been considered the most important, may be
distinguished.

If we yielded to the tendency of many excellent minds of to-day and
regarded history as the resultant of economic and social forces, it would
be easy to show their influence in that great religious movement. The
industrial and commercial preponderance of the Orient was manifest, for
there were situated the principal centers of production and export. The
ever increasing traffic with the Levant induced merchants to establish
themselves in Italy, in Gaul, in the Danubian countries, in Africa and in
Spain; in some cities they formed real colonies. The Syrian emigrants
were especially numerous. Compliant, quick and diligent, they went
wherever they expected profit, and their colonies, scattered as far as
the north of Gaul, were centers for the religious propaganda of paganism
just as the Jewish communities of the Diaspora were for Christian [24]preaching. Italy not only bought her grain
from Egypt, she imported men also; she ordered slaves from Phrygia,
Cappadocia, Syria and Alexandria to cultivate her depopulated fields and
perform the domestic duties in her palaces. Who can tell what influence
chambermaids from Antioch or Memphis gained over the minds of their
mistresses? At the same time the necessities of war removed officers and
men from the Euphrates to the Rhine or to the outskirts of the Sahara,
and everywhere they remained faithful to the gods of their far-away
country. The requirements of the government transferred functionaries and
their clerks, the latter frequently of servile birth, into the most
distant provinces. Finally, the ease of communication, due to the good
roads, increased the frequency and extent of travel.

Thus the exchange of products, men and ideas necessarily increased,
and it might be maintained that theocracy was a necessary consequence of
the mingling of the races, that the gods of the Orient followed the great
commercial and social currents, and that their establishment in the
Occident was a natural result of the movement that drew the excess
population of the Asiatic cities and rural districts into the less
thickly inhabited countries.

These reflections, which could be developed at some length, surely
show the way in which the Oriental religions spread. It is certain that
the merchants acted as missionaries in the seaports and places of
commerce, the soldiers on the frontiers and in the capital, the slaves in
the city homes,^[4] in the
rural districts and in public affairs. But while this acquaints us with
the means and the agents of the diffusion of those religions, [25]it tells us
nothing of the reasons for their adoption by the Romans. We perceive the
how, but not the why, of their sudden expansion. Especially imperfect is
our understanding of the reasons for the difference between the Orient
and the Occident pointed out above.

An example will make my meaning clear. A Celtic divinity, Epona,^[5] was held in particular
honor as the protectress of horses, as we all know. The Gallic horsemen
worshiped her wherever they were cantoned; her monuments have been found
scattered from Scotland to Transylvania. And yet, although this goddess
enjoyed the same conditions as, for instance Jupiter Dolichenus

whom the cohorts of Commagene introduced into Europe, it does not appear
that she ever received the homage of many strangers; it does not appear,
above all, that druidism ever assumed the shape of “mysteries of Epona”
into which Greeks and Romans would have asked to be initiated. It was too
deficient in the intrinsic strength of the Oriental religions, to make
proselytes.

Other historians and thinkers of to-day prefer to apply the laws of
natural science to religious phenomena; and the theories about the
variation of species find an unforeseen application here. It is
maintained that the immigration of Orientals, of Syrians in particular,
was considerable enough to provoke an alteration and rapid deterioration
in the robust Italic and Celtic races. In addition, a social status
contrary to nature, and a bad political régime effected the destruction
of the strongest, the extermination of the best and the ascendancy of the
worst elements of the population. This multitude, corrupted by
deleterious cross-breeding and weakened by bad selection, became unable
to [26]oppose the invasion of the Asiatic chimeras
and aberrations. A lowering of the intellectual level and the
disappearance of the critical spirit accompanied the decline of morals
and the weakening of character. In the evolution of beliefs the triumph
of the Orient denoted a regression toward barbarism, a return to the
remote origins of faith and to the worship of natural forces. This is a
brief outline of explanations recently proposed and received with some
favor.^[6]

It cannot be denied that souls and morals appear to have become
coarser during the Roman decline. Society as a whole was deplorably
lacking in imagination, intellect and taste. It seemed afflicted with a
kind of cerebral anemia and incurable sterility. The impaired reason
accepted the coarsest superstitions, the most extreme asceticism and most
extravagant theurgy. It resembled an organism incapable of defending
itself against contagion. All this is partly true; but the theories
summarized proceed from an incorrect conception of things; in reality
they are based on the illusion that Asia, under the empire, was inferior
to Europe. While the triumph of the Oriental religions sometimes assumed
the appearance of an awakening of savagery, these religions in reality
represented a more advanced type in the evolution of religious forms than
the ancient national devotions. They were less primitive, less simple,
and, if I may use the expression, provided with more organs than the old
Greco-Roman idolatry. We have indicated this on previous occasions, and
hope to bring it out with perfect clearness in the course of these
studies.

It is hardly necessary to state that a great religious conquest can be
explained only on moral grounds. [27]Whatever part must be ascribed to the
instinct of imitation and the contagion of example, in the last analysis
we are always face to face with a series of individual conversions. The
mysterious affinity of minds is as much due to reflection as to the
continued and almost unconscious influence of confused aspirations that
produce faith. The obscure gestation of a new ideal is accomplished with
pangs of anguish. Violent struggles must have disturbed the souls of the
masses when they were torn away from their old ancestral religions, or
more often from indifference, by those exacting gods who demanded a
surrender of the entire person, a devotion in the etymological
meaning of the word. The consecration to Isis of the hero of Apuleius was
the result of a call, of an appeal, by the goddess who wanted the
neophyte to enlist in her sacred militia.^[7]

If it is true that every conversion involves a psychological crisis, a
transformation of the intimate personality of the individual, this is
especially true of the propagation of the Oriental religions. Born
outside of the narrow limits of the Roman city, they grew up frequently
in hostility to it, and were international, consequently individual. The
bond that formerly kept devotion centered upon the city or the tribe,
upon the gens or the family, was broken. In place of the ancient
social groups communities of initiates came into existence, who
considered themselves brothers no matter where they came from.^[8] A god, conceived of as
being universal, received every mortal as his child. Whenever these
religions had any relation to the state they were no longer called upon
to support old municipal or social institutions, but to lend their
strength to the [28]authority of a sovereign regarded as the
eternal lord of the whole world jointly with God himself. In the circles
of the mystics, Asiatics mingled with Romans, and slaves with high
functionaries. The adoption of the same faith made the poor freedman the
equal and sometimes the superior, of the decurion and the
clarissimus. All submitted to the same rules and participated in
the same festivities, in which the distinctions of an aristocratic
society and the differences of blood and country were obliterated. The
distinctions of race and nationality, of magistrate and father of a
family, of patrician and plebeian, of citizen and foreigner, were
abolished; all were but men, and in order to recruit members, those
religions worked upon man and his character.

In order to gain the masses and the cream of Roman society (as they
did for a whole century) the barbarian mysteries had to possess a
powerful charm, they had to satisfy the deep wants of the human soul, and
their strength had to be superior to that of the ancient Greco-Roman
religion. To explain the reasons for their victory we must try to reveal
the nature of this superiority—I mean their superiority in the
struggle, without assuming innate superiority.

I believe that we can define it by stating that those religions gave
greater satisfaction first, to the senses and passions, secondly, to the
intelligence, finally, and above all, to the conscience.

In the first place, they appealed more strongly to the senses. This
was their most obvious feature, and it has been pointed out more often
than any other. Perhaps there never was a religion so cold and prosaic as
the Roman. Being subordinated to politics, it sought, [29]above all, to
secure the protection of the gods for the state and to avert the effects
of their malevolence by the strict execution of appropriate practices. It
entered into a contract with the celestial powers from which mutual
obligations arose: sacrifices on one side, favors on the other. The
pontiffs, who were also magistrates, regulated the religious practices
with the exact precision of jurists;^[9] as far as we know the prayers were all
couched in formulas as dry and verbose as notarial instruments. The
liturgy reminds one of the ancient civil law on account of the minuteness
of its prescriptions. This religion looked suspiciously at the
abandonment of the soul to the ecstasies of devotion. It repressed, by
force if necessary, the exuberant manifestations of too ardent faith and
everything that was not in keeping with the grave dignity befitting the
relations of a civis Romanus with a god. The Jews had the same
scrupulous respect as the Romans for a religious code and formulas of the
past, “but in spite of their dry and minute practices, the legalism of
the Pharisees stirred the heart more strongly than did Roman
formalism.”^[10]

Lacking the recognized authority of official creeds, the Oriental
religions had to appeal to the passions of the individual in order to
make proselytes. They attracted men first by the disturbing seductiveness
of their mysteries, where terror and hope were evoked in turns, and
charmed them by the pomp of their festivities and the magnificence of
their processions. Men were fascinated by the languishing songs and
intoxicating melodies. Above all these religions taught men how to reach
that blissful state in which the soul was freed from the tyranny of the
body and of suffering, [30]and lost itself in raptures. They led to
ecstasy either by means of nervous tension resulting from continued
maceration and fervent contemplation or by more material means like the
stimulation of vertiginous dances and dizzy music, or even by the
absorption of fermented liquors after a long abstinence,^[11] as in the case of the priests of the
Great Mother. In mysticism it is easy to descend from the sublime to the
vile.

Even the gods, with whom the believers thought they were uniting
themselves in their mystic outbursts, were more human and sometimes more
sensual than those of the Occident. The latter had that quietude of soul
in which the philosophic morality of the Greeks saw a privilege of the
sage; in the serenity of Olympus they enjoyed perpetual youth; they were
Immortals. The divinities of the Orient, on the contrary, suffered and
died, but only to revive again.^[12] Osiris, Attis and Adonis were mourned
like mortals by wife or mistress, Isis, Cybele or Astarte. With them the
mystics moaned for their deceased god and later, after he had revived,
celebrated with exultation his birth to a new life. Or else they joined
in the passion of Mithra, condemned to create the world in suffering.
This common grief and joy were often expressed with savage violence, by
bloody mutilations, long wails of despair, and extravagant acclamations.
The manifestations of the extreme fanaticism of those barbarian races
that had not been touched by Greek skepticism and the very ardor of their
faith inflamed the souls of the multitudes attracted by the exotic
gods.

The Oriental religions touched every chord of sensibility and
satisfied the thirst for religious emotion that the austere Roman creed
had been unable to quench. [31]But at the same time they satisfied the
intellect more fully, and this is my second point.

In very early times Greece—later imitated by Rome—became
resolutely rationalistic: her greatest originality lies here. Her
philosophy was purely laical; thought was unrestrained by any sacred
tradition; it even pretended to pass judgment upon these traditions and
condemned or approved of them. Being sometimes hostile, sometimes
indifferent and some times conciliatory, it always remained independent
of faith. But while Greece thus freed herself from the fetters of a
superannuated mythology, and openly and boldly constructed those systems
of metaphysics by means of which she claimed to solve the enigmas of the
universe, her religion lost its vitality and dried up because it lacked
the strengthening nourishment of reflection. It became a thing devoid of
sense, whose raison d’être was no longer understood; it embodied
dead ideas and an obsolete conception of the world. In Greece as well as
at Rome it was reduced to a collection of unintelligible rites,
scrupulously and mechanically reproduced without addition or omission
because they had been practised by the ancestors of long ago, and
formulas hallowed by the mos maiorum, that were no longer
understood or sincerely cherished. Never did a people of advanced culture
have a more infantile religion.

The Oriental civilizations on the contrary were sacerdotal in
character. As in medieval Europe, the scholars of Asia and Egypt were
priests. In the temples the nature of the gods and of man were not the
only subjects of discussion; mathematics, astronomy, medicine, philology
and history were also studied. The successors of Berosus, a priest from
Babylonia, and [32]Manetho, a priest from Heliopolis, were
considered deeply versed in all intellectual disciplines as late as the
time of Strabo.^[13]

This state of affairs proved detrimental to the progress of science.
Researches were conducted according to preconceived ideas and were
perverted through strange prejudices. Astrology and magic were the
monstrous fruit of a hybrid union. But all this certainly gave religion a
power it had never possessed either in Greece or Rome.

All results of observation, all conquests of thought, were used by an
erudite clergy to attain the principal object of their activities, the
solution of the problem of the destiny of man and matter, and of the
relations of heaven and earth. An ever enlarging conception of the
universe kept transforming the modes of belief. Faith presumed to enslave
both physics and metaphysics. The credit of every discovery was given to
the gods. Thoth in Egypt and Bel in Chaldea were the revealers not only
of theology and the ritual, but of all human knowledge.^[14] The names of the Oriental Hipparchi
and Euclids who solved the first problems of astronomy and geometry were
unknown; but a confused and grotesque literature made use of the name and
authority of Hermes Trismegistus. The doctrines of the planetary spheres
and the opposition of the four elements were made to support systems of
anthropology and of morality; the theorems of astronomy were used to
establish an alleged method of divination; formulas of incantation,
supposed to subject divine powers to the magician, were combined with
chemical experiments and medical prescriptions.

This intimate union of erudition and faith continued [33]in the Latin
world. Theology became more and more a process of deification of the
principles or agents discovered by science and a worship of time regarded
as the first cause, the stars whose course determined the events of this
world, the four elements whose innumerable combinations produced the
natural phenomena, and especially the sun which preserved heat, fertility
and life. The dogmas of the mysteries of Mithra were, to a certain
extent, the religious expression of Roman physics and astronomy. In all
forms of pantheism the knowledge of nature appears to be inseparable from
that of God.^[15] Art
itself complied more and more with the tendency to express erudite ideas
by subtle symbolism, and it represented in allegorical figures the
relations of divine powers and cosmic forces, like the sky, the earth,
the ocean, the planets, the constellations and the winds. The sculptors
engraved on stone everything man thought and taught. In a general way the
belief prevailed that redemption and salvation depended on the revelation
of certain truths, on a knowledge of the gods, of the world and of our
person, and piety became gnosis.^[16]

But, you will say, since in the classic age philosophy also claimed to
lead to morality through instruction and to acquaint man with the supreme
good, why did it yield to Oriental religions that were in reality neither
original nor innovating? Quite right, and if a powerful rationalist
school, possessed of a good critical method, had led the minds, we may
believe that it would have checked the invasion of the barbarian
mysteries or at least limited their field of action. However, as has
frequently been pointed out, even in ancient Greece the philosophic
critics had very little hold on [34]popular religion obstinately faithful to its
inherited superstitious forms. But how many second century minds shared
Lucian’s skepticism in regard to the dogmatic systems! The various sects
were fighting each other for ever so long without convincing one another
of their alleged error. The satirist of Samosata enjoyed opposing their
exclusive pretensions while he himself reclined on the “soft pillow of
doubt.” But only intelligent minds could delight in doubt or surrender to
it; the masses wanted certainties. There was nothing to revive confidence
in the power of a decrepit and threadbare science. No great discovery
transformed the conception of the universe. Nature no longer betrayed her
secrets, the earth remained unexplored and the past inscrutable. Every
branch of knowledge was forgotten. The world cursed with sterility, could
but repeat itself; it had the poignant appreciation of its own decay and
impotence. Tired of fruitless researches, the mind surrendered to the
necessity of believing. Since the intellect was unable to formulate a
consistent rule of life faith alone could supply it, and the multitudes
gravitated toward the temples, where the truths taught to man in earlier
days by the Oriental gods were revealed. The stanch adherence of past
generations to beliefs and rites of unlimited antiquity seemed to
guarantee their truth and efficacy. This current was so strong that
philosophy itself was swept toward mysticism and the neo-Platonist school
became a theurgy.

The Oriental mysteries, then, could stir the soul by arousing
admiration and terror, pity and enthusiasm in turn. They gave the
intellect the illusion of learned depth and absolute certainty and
finally—our third [35]point—they satisfied conscience as
well as passion and reason. Among the complex causes that guaranteed
their domination, this was without doubt the most effective.

In every period of their history the Romans, unlike the Greeks in this
respect, judged theories and institutions especially by their practical
results. They always had a soldier’s and business man’s contempt for
metaphysicians. It is a matter of frequent observation that the
philosophy of the Latin world neglected metaphysical speculations and
concentrated its attention on morals, just as later the Roman church left
to the subtle Hellenes the interminable controversies over the essence of
the divine logos and the double nature of Christ. Questions that could
rouse and divide her were those having a direct application to life, like
the doctrine of grace.

The old religion of the Romans had to respond to this demand of their
genius. Its poverty was honest.^[17] Its mythology did not possess the
poetic charm of that of Greece, nor did its gods have the imperishable
beauty of the Olympians, but they were more moral, or at least pretended
to be. A large number were simply personified qualities, like chastity
and piety. With the aid of the censors they imposed the practice of the
national virtues, that is to say of the qualities useful to society,
temperance, courage, chastity, obedience to parents and magistrates,
reverence for the oath and the law, in fact, the practice of every form
of patriotism. During the last century of the republic the pontiff
Scaevola, one of the foremost men of his time, rejected as futile the
divinities of fable and poetry, as superfluous or obnoxious those of the
philosophers and the exegetists, [36]and reserved all his favors for those of the
statesmen, as the only ones fit for the people.^[18] These were the ones protecting the old
customs, traditions and frequently even the old privileges. But in the
perpetual flux of things conservatism ever carries with it a germ of
death. Just as the law failed to maintain the integrity of ancient
principles, like the absolute power of the father of the family,
principles that were no longer in keeping with the social realities, so
religion witnessed the foundering of a system of ethics contrary to the
moral code that had slowly been established. The idea of collective
responsibility contained in a number of beliefs is one instance. If a
vestal violated her vow of chastity the divinity sent a pest that ceased
only on the day the culprit was punished. Sometimes the angry heavens
granted victory to the army only on condition that a general or soldier
dedicate himself to the infernal gods as an expiatory victim. However,
through the influence of the philosophers and the jurists the conviction
slowly gained ground that each one was responsible for his own misdeeds,
and that it was not equitable to make a whole city suffer for the crime
of an individual. People ceased to admit that the gods crushed the good
as well as the wicked in one punishment. Often, also, the divine anger
was thought to be as ridiculous in its manifestations as in its cause.
The rural superstitions of the country districts of Latium continued to
live in the pontifical code of the Roman people. If a lamb with two heads
or a colt with five legs was born, solemn supplications were prescribed
to avert the misfortunes foreboded by those terrifying prodigies.^[19]

All these puerile and monstrous beliefs that burdened [37]the religion of
the Latins had thrown it into disrepute. Its morality no longer responded
to the new conception of justice beginning to prevail. As a rule Rome
remedied the poverty of her theology and ritual by taking what she needed
from the Greeks. But here this resource failed her because the poetic,
artistic and even intellectual religion of the Greeks was hardly moral.
And the fables of a mythology jeered at by the philosophers, parodied on
the stage and put to verse by libertine poets were anything but
edifying.

Moreover—this was its second weakness—whatever morality it
demanded of a pious man went unrewarded. People no longer believed that
the gods continually intervened in the affairs of men to reveal hidden
crimes and to punish triumphant vice, or that Jupiter would hurl his
thunderbolt to crush the perjurer. At the time of the proscriptions and
the civil wars under Nero or Commodus it was more than plain that power
and possessions were for the strongest, the ablest or even the luckiest,
and not for the wisest or the most pious. The idea of reward or
punishment beyond the grave found little credit. The notions of future
life were hazy, uncertain, doubtful and contradictory. Everybody knows
Juvenal’s famous lines: “That there are manes, a subterranean kingdom, a
ferryman with a long pole, and black frogs in the whirlpools of the Styx;
that so many thousand men could cross the waves in a single boat, to-day
even children refuse to believe.”^[20]

After the fall of the republic indifference spread, the temples were
abandoned and threatened to tumble into ruins, the clergy found it
difficult to recruit members, the festivities, once so popular, fell into
desuetude, and [38]Varro, at the beginning of his
Antiquities, expressed his fear lest “the gods might perish, not
from the blows of foreign enemies, but from very neglect on the part of
the citizens.”^[21] It is
well known that Augustus, prompted by political rather than by religious
reasons, attempted to revive the dying religion. His religious reforms
stood in close relation to his moral legislation and the establishment of
the imperial dignity. Their tendency was to bring the people back to the
pious practice of ancient virtues but also to chain them to the new
political order. The alliance of throne and altar in Europe dates from
that time.

This attempted reform failed entirely. Making religion an auxiliary to
moral policing is not a means of establishing its empire over souls.
Formal reverence for the official gods is not incompatible with absolute
and practical skepticism. The restoration attempted by Augustus is
nevertheless very characteristic because it is so consistent with the
Roman spirit which by temperament and tradition demanded that religion
should support morality and the state.

The Asiatic religions fulfilled the requirements. The change of
régime, although unwelcome, brought about a change of religion. The
increasing tendency of Cæsarism toward absolute monarchy made it lean
more and more upon the Oriental clergy. True to the traditions of the
Achemenides and the Pharaohs, those priests preached doctrines tending to
elevate the sovereign above humanity, and they supplied the emperors with
dogmatic justification for their despotism.^[22]

It is a noteworthy fact that the rulers who most loudly proclaimed
their autocratic pretentions, like [39]Domitian and Commodus,
were also those that favored foreign creeds most openly.

But his selfish support merely sanctioned a power already established.
The propaganda of the Oriental religions was originally democratic and
sometimes even revolutionary like the Isis worship. Step by step they
advanced, always reaching higher social classes and appealing to popular
conscience rather than to the zeal of functionaries.

As a matter of fact all these religions, except that of Mithra, seem
at first sight to be far less austere than the Roman creed. We shall have
occasion to note that they contained coarse and immodest fables and
atrocious or vile rites. The Egyptian gods were expelled from Rome by
Augustus and Tiberius on the charge of being immoral, but they were
called immoral principally because they opposed a certain conception of
the social order. They gave little attention to the public interest but
attached considerable importance to the inner life and consequently to
the value of the individual. Two new things, in particular, were brought
to Italy by the Oriental priests: mysterious methods of purification, by
which they claimed to wash away the impurities of the soul, and the
assurance that a blessed immortality would be the reward of piety.^[23]

These religions pretended to restore lost purity^[24] to the soul either through the
performance of ritual ceremonies or through mortifications and penance.
They had a series of ablutions and lustrations supposed to restore
original innocence to the mystic. He had to wash himself in the sacred
water according to certain prescribed forms. This was really a magic
rite, because bodily purity acted sympathetically upon the soul, or [40]else it
was a real spiritual disinfection with the water driving out the evil
spirits that had caused pollution. The votary, again, might drink or
besprinkle himself with the blood of a slaughtered victim or of the
priests themselves, in which case the prevailing idea was that the liquid
circulating in the veins was a vivifying principle capable of imparting a
new existence.^[25] These
and similar rites^[26]

used in the mysteries were supposed to regenerate the initiated person
and to restore him to an immaculate and incorruptible life.^[27]

Purgation of the soul was not effected solely by liturgic acts but
also by self-denial and suffering.^[28] The meaning of the term
expiatio changed. Expiation, or atonement, was no longer
accomplished by the exact performance of certain ceremonies pleasing to
the gods and required by a sacred code like a penalty for damages, but by
privation and personal suffering. Abstinence, which prevented the
introduction of deadly elements into the system, and chastity, which
preserved man from pollution and debility, became means of getting rid of
the domination of the evil powers and of regaining heavenly favor.^[29] Macerations, laborious
pilgrimages, public confessions, sometimes flagellations and mutilations,
in fact all forms of penance and mortifications uplifted the fallen man
and brought him nearer to the gods. In Phrygia a sinner would write his
sin and the punishment he suffered upon a stela for every one to see and
would return thanks to heaven that his prayer of repentance had been
heard.^[30] The Syrian,
who had offended his goddess by eating her sacred fish, dressed in sordid
rags, covered himself with a sack and sat in the public highway humbly to
proclaim his misdeed in order to obtain forgiveness.^[31] [41]“Three times, in the
depths of winter,” says Juvenal, “the devotee of Isis will dive into the
chilly waters of the Tiber, and shivering with cold, will drag herself
around the temple upon her bleeding knees; if the goddess commands, she
will go to the outskirts of Egypt to take water from the Nile and empty
it within the sanctuary.”^[32] This shows the introduction into
Europe of Oriental asceticism.

But there were impious acts and impure passions that contaminated and
defiled the soul. Since this infection could be destroyed only by
expiations prescribed by the gods, the extent of the sin and the
character of the necessary penance had to be estimated. It was the
priest’s prerogative to judge the misdeeds and to impose the penalties.
This circumstance gave the clergy a very different character from the one
it had at Rome. The priest was no longer simply the guardian of sacred
traditions, the intermediary between man or the state and the gods, but
also a spiritual guide. He taught his flock the long series of
obligations and restrictions for shielding their weakness from the
attacks of evil spirits. He knew how to quiet remorse and scruples, and
to restore the sinner to spiritual calm. Being versed in sacred
knowledge, he had the power of reconciling the gods. Frequent sacred
repasts maintained a spirit of fellowship among the mystics of Cybele,
Mithra or the Baals,^[33]
and a daily service unceasingly revived the faith of the Isis worshipers.
In consequence, the clergy were entirely absorbed in their holy office
and lived only for and by their temples. Unlike the sacerdotal colleges
of Rome in which the secular and religious functions were not yet clearly
differentiated,^[34] they
were not an [42]administrative commission ruling the sacred
affairs of the state under the supervision of the senate; they formed
what might almost be called a caste of recluses distinguished from
ordinary men by their insignia, garb, habits and food, and constituting
an independent body with a hierarchy, formulary and even councils of
their own.^[35] They did
not return to every-day duties as private citizens or to the direction of
public affairs as magistrates as the ancient pontiffs had done after the
solemn festival service.

We can readily understand that these beliefs and institutions were
bound to establish the Oriental religions and their priests on a strong
basis. Their influence must have been especially powerful at the time of
the Cæsars. The laxity of morals at the beginning of our era has been
exaggerated but it was real. Many unhealthy symptoms told of a profound
moral anarchy weighing on a weakened and irresolute society. The farther
we go toward the end of the empire the more its energy seems to fail and
the character of men to weaken. The number of strong healthy minds
incapable of a lasting aberration and without need of guidance or comfort
was growing ever smaller. We note the spread of that feeling of
exhaustion and debility which follows the aberrations of passion, and the
same weakness that led to crime impelled men to seek absolution in the
formal practices of asceticism. They applied to the Oriental priests for
spiritual remedies.

People flattered themselves that by performing the rites they would
attain a condition of felicity after death. All barbarian mysteries
pretended to reveal to their adherents the secret of blessed immortality.
Participation in the occult ceremonies of the sect was a [43]chief means of
salvation.^[36] The vague
and disheartening beliefs of ancient paganism in regard to life after
death were transformed into the firm hope of a well-defined form of
happiness.^[37]

This faith in a personal survival of the soul and even of the body was
based upon a strong instinct of human nature, the instinct of
self-preservation. Social and moral conditions in the empire during its
decline gave it greater strength than it had ever possessed before.^[38] The third century saw
so much suffering, anguish and violence, so much unnecessary ruin and so
many unpunished crimes, that the Roman world took refuge in the
expectation of a better existence in which all the iniquity of this world
would be retrieved. No earthly hope brightened life. The tyranny of a
corrupt bureaucracy choked all disposition for political progress.
Science stagnated and revealed no more unknown truths. Growing poverty
discouraged the spirit of enterprise. The idea gained ground that
humanity was afflicted with incurable decay, that nature was approaching
her doom and that the end of world was near.^[39] We must remember all these causes of
discouragement and despondency to understand the power of the idea,
expressed so frequently, that the spirit animating man was forced by
bitter necessity to imprison itself in matter and that it was delivered
from its carnal captivity by death. In the heavy atmosphere of a period
of oppression and impotence the dejected soul longed with incredible
ardor to fly to the radiant abode of heaven.

To recapitulate, the Oriental religions acted upon the senses, the
intellect and the conscience at the same time, and therefore gained a
hold on the entire man. [44]Compared with the ancient creeds, they
appear to have offered greater beauty of ritual, greater truth of
doctrine and a far superior morality. The imposing ceremonial of their
festivities and the alternating pomp and sensuality, gloom and exaltation
of their services appealed especially to the simple and the humble, while
the progressive revelation of ancient wisdom, inherited from the old and
distant Orient, captivated the cultured mind. The emotions excited by
these religions and the consolations offered strongly attracted the
women, who were the most fervent and generous followers and most
passionate propagandists^[40] of the religions of Isis and Cybele.
Mithra was worshiped almost exclusively by men, whom he subjected to a
rigid moral discipline. Thus souls were gained by the promise of
spiritual purification and the prospect of eternal happiness.

The worship of the Roman gods was a civic duty, the worship of the
foreign gods the expression of a personal belief. The latter were the
objects of the thoughts, feelings and intimate aspirations of the
individual, not merely of the traditional and, one might say, functional
adoration of the citizen. The ancient municipal devotions were connected
with a number of earthly interests that helped to support each other.
They were one of various forms of family spirit and patriotism and
guaranteed the prosperity of the community. The Oriental mysteries,
directing the will toward an ideal goal and exalting the inner spirit,
were less mindful of economic utility, but they could produce that
vibration of the moral being that caused emotions, stronger than any
rational faculty, to gush forth from the depths of the soul. Through a
sudden illumination [45]they furnished the intuition of a spiritual
life whose intensity made all material happiness appear insipid and
contemptible. This stirring appeal of supernatural life made the
propaganda irresistible. The same ardent enthusiasm guaranteed at the
same time the uncontested domination of neo-Platonism among the
philosophers. Antiquity expired and a new era was born.

[46]

ASIA MINOR.

The first Oriental religion adopted by the Romans was that of the
goddess of Phrygia, whom the people of Pessinus and Mount Ida worshiped,
and who received the name of Magna Mater deum Idea in the
Occident. Its history in Italy covers six centuries, and we can trace
each phase of the transformation that changed it in the course of time
from a collection of very primitive nature beliefs into a system of
spiritualized mysteries used by some as a weapon against Christianity. We
shall now endeavor to outline the successive phases of that slow
metamorphosis.

This religion is the only one whose success in the Latin world was
caused originally by a mere chance circumstance. In 205 B. C, when
Hannibal, vanquished but still threatening, made his last stand in the
mountains of Bruttium, repeated torrents of stones frightened the Roman
people. When the books were officially consulted in regard to this
prodigy they promised that the enemy would be driven from Italy if the
Great Mother of Ida could be brought to Rome. Nobody but the Sibyls
themselves had the power of averting the evils prophesied by them. They
had come to Italy from Asia Minor, and in this critical situation their
sacred poem recommended the practice of their native religion as a
remedy. In token of his [47]friendship, King Attalus presented the
ambassadors of the senate with the black aerolite, supposed to be the
abode of the goddess, that this ruler had shortly before transferred from
Pessinus to Pergamum. According to the mandate of the oracle the stone
was received at Ostia by the best citizen of the land, an honor accorded
to Scipio Nasica—and carried by the most esteemed matrons to the
Palatine, where, hailed by the cheers of the multitude and surrounded by
fumes of incense, it was solemnly installed (Nones of April, 204). This
triumphal entry was later glorified by marvelous legends, and the poets
told of edifying miracles that had occurred during Cybele’s voyage. In
the same year Scipio transferred the seat of war to Africa, and Hannibal,
compelled to meet him there, was beaten at Zama. The prediction of the
Sybils had come true and Rome was rid of the long Punic terror. The
foreign goddess was honored in recognition of the service she had
rendered. A temple was erected to her on the summit of the Palatine, and
every year a celebration enhanced by scenic plays, the ludi
Megalenses, commemorated the date of dedication of the sanctuary and
the arrival of the goddess (April 4th-10th).

What was this Asiatic religion that had suddenly been transferred into
the heart of Rome by an extraordinary circumstance? Even then it could
look back upon a long period of development. It combined beliefs of
various origin. It contained primitive usages of the religion of
Anatolia, some of which have survived to this day in spite of
Christianity and Islam. Like the Kizil-Bash peasants of to-day, the
ancient inhabitants of the peninsula met on the summits of mountains
covered with woods no ax had desecrated, and [48]celebrated their festal
days.^[1] They believed that
Cybele resided on the high summits of Ida and Berecyntus, and the
perennial pines, in conjunction with the prolific and early maturing
almond tree, were the sacred trees of Attis. Besides trees, the country
people worshiped stones, rocks or meteors that had fallen from the sky
like the one taken from Pessinus to Pergamum and thence to Rome. They
also venerated certain animals, especially the most powerful of them all,
the lion, who may at one time have been the totem of savage tribes.^[2] In mythology as well as in
art the lion remained the riding or driving animal of the Great Mother.
Their conception of the divinity was indistinct and impersonal. A goddess
of the earth, called Mâ or Cybele, was revered as the fecund mother of
all things, the “mistress of the wild beasts”^[3] that inhabit the woods. A god Attis, or
Papas, was regarded as her husband, but the first place in this divine
household belonged to the woman, a reminiscence of the period of
matriarchy.^[4]

When the Phrygians at a very early period came from Thrace and
inserted themselves like a wedge in the old Anatolian races, they adopted
the vague deities of their new country by identifying them with their
own, after the habit of pagan nations. Thus Attis became one with the
Dionysus-Sabazius of the conquerors, or at least assumed some of his
characteristics. This Thracian Dionysus was a god of vegetation. Foucart
has thus admirably pictured his savage nature: “Wooded summits, deep oak
and pine forests, ivy-clad caverns were at all times his favorite haunts.
Mortals who were anxious to know the powerful divinity ruling these
solitudes had to observe the life of his kingdom, [49]and to guess the god’s
nature from the phenomena through which he manifested his power. Seeing
the creeks descend in noisy foaming cascades, or hearing the roaring of
steers in the uplands and the strange sounds of the wind-beaten forests,
the Thracians thought they heard the voice and the calls of the lord of
that empire, and imagined a god who was fond of extravagant leaps and of
wild roaming over the wooded mountains. This conception inspired their
religion, for the surest way for mortals to ingratiate themselves with a
divinity was to imitate him, and as far as possible to make their lives
resemble his. For this reason the Thracians endeavored to attain the
divine delirium that transported their Dionysus, and hoped to realize
their purpose by following their invisible yet ever-present lord in his
chase over the mountains.”^[5]

In the Phrygian religion we find the same beliefs and rites, scarcely
modified at all, with the one difference that Attis, the god of
vegetation, was united to the goddess of the earth instead of living “in
sullen loneliness.” When the tempest was beating the forests of the
Berecyntus or Ida, it was Cybele traveling about in her car drawn by
roaring lions mourning her lover’s death. A crowd of worshipers followed
her through woods and thickets, mingling their shouts with the shrill
sound of flutes, with the dull beat of tambourines, with the rattling of
castanets and the dissonance of brass cymbals. Intoxicated with shouting
and with uproar of the instruments, excited by their impetuous advance,
breathless and panting, they surrendered to the raptures of a sacred
enthusiasm. Catullus has left us a dramatic description of this divine
ecstasy.^[6] [50]

The religion of Phrygia was perhaps even more violent than that of
Thrace. The climate of the Anatolian uplands is one of extremes. Its
winters are rough, long and cold, the spring rains suddenly develop a
vigorous vegetation that is scorched by the hot summer sun. The abrupt
contrasts of a nature generous and sterile, radiant and bleak in turn,
caused excesses of sadness and joy that were unknown in temperate and
smiling regions, where the ground was never buried under snow nor
scorched by the sun. The Phrygians mourned the long agony and death of
the vegetation, but when the verdure reappeared in March they surrendered
to the excitement of a tumultuous joy. In Asia savage rites that had been
unknown in Thrace or practiced in milder form expressed the vehemence of
those opposing feelings. In the midst of their orgies, and after wild
dances, some of the worshipers voluntarily wounded themselves and,
becoming intoxicated with the view of the blood, with which they
besprinkled their altars, they believed they were uniting themselves with
their divinity. Or else, arriving at a paroxysm of frenzy, they
sacrificed their virility to the gods as certain Russian dissenters still
do to-day. These men became priests of Cybele and were called Galli.
Violent ecstasis was always an endemic disease in Phrygia. As late as the
Antonines, montanist prophets that arose in that country attempted to
introduce it into Christianity.

All these excessive and degrading demonstrations of an extreme worship
must not cause us to slight the power of the feeling that inspired it.
The sacred ecstasy, the voluntary mutilations and the eagerly sought
sufferings manifested an ardent longing for [51]deliverance from
subjection to carnal instincts, and a fervent desire to free the soul
from the bonds of matter. The ascetic tendencies went so far as to create
a kind of begging monachism—the métragyrtes. They also
harmonized with some of the ideas of renunciation taught by Greek
philosophy, and at an early period Hellenic theologians took an interest
in this devotion that attracted and repelled them at the same time.
Timotheus the Eumolpid, who was one of the founders of the Alexandrian
religion of Serapis, derived the inspiration for his essays on religious
reform, among other sources, from the ancient Phrygian myths. Those
thinkers undoubtedly succeeded in making the priests of Pessinus
themselves admit many speculations quite foreign to the old Anatolian
nature worship. The votaries of Cybele began at a very remote period to
practise “mysteries”^[7] in
which the initiates were made acquainted, by degrees, with a wisdom that
was always considered divine, but underwent peculiar variations in the
course of time.

Such is the religion which the rough Romans of the Punic wars accepted
and adopted. Hidden under theological and cosmological doctrines it
contained an ancient stock of very primitive and coarse religious ideas,
such as the worship of trees, stones and animals. Besides this
superstitious fetichism it involved ceremonies that were both sensual and
ribald, including all the wild and mystic rites of the bacchanalia which
the public authorities were to prohibit a few years later.

When the senate became better acquainted with the divinity imposed
upon it by the Sibyls, it must have been quite embarrassed by the present
of King Attalus. [52]The enthusiastic transports and the somber
fanaticism of the Phrygian worship contrasted violently with the calm
dignity and respectable reserve of the official religion, and excited the
minds of the people to a dangerous degree. The emasculated Galli were the
objects of contempt and disgust and what in their own eyes was a
meritorious act was made a crime punishable by law, at least under the
empire.^[8] The authorities
hesitated between the respect due to the powerful goddess that had
delivered Rome from the Carthaginians and the reverence for the mos
maiorum. They solved the difficulty by completely isolating the new
religion in order to prevent its contagion. All citizens were forbidden
to join the priesthood of the foreign goddess or to participate in her
sacred orgies. The barbarous rites according to which the Great Mother
was to be worshiped were performed by Phrygian priests and priestesses.
The holidays celebrated in her honor by the entire nation, the
Megalensia, contained no Oriental feature and were organized in
conformity with Roman traditions.

A characteristic anecdote told by Diodorus^[9] shows what the public feeling was
towards this Asiatic worship at the end of the republic. In Pompey’s time
a high priest from Pessinus came to Rome, presented himself at the forum
in his sacerdotal garb, a golden diadem and a long embroidered
robe—and pretending that the statue of his goddess had been
profaned demanded public expiation. But a tribune forbade him to wear the
royal crown, and the populace rose against him in a mob and compelled him
to seek refuge in his house. Although apologies were made later, this
story shows how little the people of that period felt [53]the veneration
that attached to Cybele and her clergy after a century had passed.

Kept closely under control, the Phrygian worship led an obscure
existence until the establishment of the empire. That closed the first
period of its history at Rome. It attracted attention only on certain
holidays, when its priests marched the streets in procession, dressed in
motley costumes, loaded with heavy jewelry, and beating tambourines. On
those days the senate granted them the right to go from house to house to
collect funds for their temples. The remainder of the year they confined
themselves to the sacred enclosure of the Palatine, celebrating foreign
ceremonies in a foreign language. They aroused so little notice during
this period that almost nothing is known of their practices or of their
creed. It has even been maintained that Attis was not worshiped together
with his companion, the Great Mother, during the times of the republic,
but this is undoubtedly wrong, because the two persons of this divine
couple must have been as inseparable in the ritual as they were in the
myths.^[10]

But the Phrygian religion kept alive in spite of police surveillance,
in spite of precautions and prejudices; a breach had been made in the
cracked wall of the old Roman principles, through which the entire Orient
finally gained ingress.

Directly after the fall of the republic a second divinity from Asia
Minor, closely related to the Great Mother, became established in the
capital. During the wars against Mithridates the Roman soldiers learned
to revere Mâ, the great goddess of the two Comanas, who was worshiped by
a whole people of hierodules in the ravines of the Taurus and along the
banks of the [54]Iris. Like Cybele she was an ancient
Anatolian divinity and personified fertile nature. Her worship, however,
had not felt the influence of Thrace, but rather that of the Semites and
the Persians,^[11] like
the entire religion of Cappadocia. It is certain that she was identical
with the Anâhita of the Mazdeans, who was of much the same nature.

The rites of her cult were even more sanguinary and savage than those
of Pessinus, and she had assumed or preserved a warlike character that
gave her a resemblance to the Italian Bellona. The dictator Sulla, to
whom this invincible goddess of combats had appeared in a dream, was
prompted by his superstition to introduce her worship into Rome. The
terrible ceremonies connected with it produced a deep impression. Clad in
black robes, her “fanatics,” as they were called, would turn round and
round to the sound of drums and trumpets, with their long, loose hair
streaming, and when vertigo seized them and a state of anesthesia was
attained, they would strike their arms and bodies great blows with swords
and axes. The view of the running blood excited them, and they
besprinkled the statue of the goddess and her votaries with it, or even
drank it. Finally a prophetic delirium would overcome them, and they
foretold the future.

This ferocious worship aroused curiosity at first, but it never gained
great consideration. It appears that the Cappadocian Bellona joined the
number of divinities that were subordinated to the Magna Mater
and, as the texts put it, became her follower (pedisequa).^[12] The brief popularity
enjoyed by this exotic Mâ at the beginning of our era shows,
nevertheless, the growing [55]influence of the Orient, and of the
religions of Asia Minor in particular.

After the establishment of the empire the apprehensive distrust in
which the worship of Cybele and Attis had been held gave way to marked
favor and the original restrictions were withdrawn. Thereafter Roman
citizens were chosen for archigalli, and the holidays of the
Phrygian deities were solemnly and officially celebrated in Italy with
even more pomp than had been displayed at Pessinus.

According to Johannes Lydus, the Emperor Claudius was the author of
this change. Doubts have been expressed as to the correctness of the
statement made by this second-rate compiler, and it has been claimed that
the transformation in question took place under the Antonines. This is
erroneous. The testimony of inscriptions corroborates that of the
Byzantine writer.^[13] In
spite of his love of archaism, it was Claudius who permitted this
innovation to be made, and we believe that we can divine the motives of
his action.

Under his predecessor, Caligula, the worship of Isis had been
authorized after a long resistance. Its stirring festivities and imposing
processions gained considerable popularity. This competition must have
been disastrous to the priests of the Magna Mater, who were
secluded in their temple on the Palatine, and Caligula’s successor could
not but grant to the Phrygian goddess, so long established in the city,
the favor accorded the Egyptian divinity who had been admitted into Rome
but very recently. In this way Claudius prevented too great an ascendency
in Italy of this second stranger and supplied a distributary to the
current of popular superstition. Isis must have been held under great
[56]suspicion by a ruler who clung to old
national institutions.^[14]

The Emperor Claudius introduced a new cycle of holidays that were
celebrated from March 15th to March 27th, the beginning of spring at the
time of the revival of vegetation, personified in Attis. The various acts
of this grand mystic drama are tolerably well known. The prelude was a
procession of cannophori or reed-bearers on the fifteenth;
undoubtedly they commemorated Cybele’s discovery of Attis, who, according
to the legends, had been exposed while a child on the banks of the
Sangarius, the largest river of Phrygia, or else this ceremony may have
been the transformation of an ancient phallephory intended to guarantee
the fertility of the fields.^[15] The ceremonies proper began with the
equinox. A pine was felled and transferred to the temple of the Palatine
by a brotherhood that owed to this function its name of “tree-bearers”
(dendrophori). Wrapped like a corpse in woolen bands and garlands
of violets, this pine represented Attis dead. This god was originally
only the spirit of the plants, and the honors given to the “March-tree”^[16] in front of the
imperial palace perpetuated a very ancient agrarian rite of the Phrygian
peasants. The next day was a day of sadness and abstinence on which the
believers fasted and mourned the defunct god. The twenty-fourth bore the
significant name of Sanguis in the calendars. We know that it was
the celebration of the funeral of Attis, whose manes were appeased by
means of libations of blood, as was done for any mortal. Mingling their
piercing cries with the shrill sound of flutes, the Galli flagellated
themselves and cut their flesh, and neophytes performed the supreme [57]sacrifice with the aid of a sharp stone,
being insensible to pain in their frenzy.^[17] Then followed a mysterious vigil
during which the mystic was supposed to be united as a new Attis with the
great goddess.^[18] On
March 25th there was a sudden transition from the shouts of despair to a
delirious jubilation, the Hilaria. With springtime Attis awoke
from his sleep of death, and the joy created by his resurrection burst
out in wild merry-making, wanton masquerades, and luxurious banquets.
After twenty-four hours of an indispensable rest (requietio), the
festivities wound up, on the twenty-seventh, with a long and gorgeous
procession through the streets of Rome and surrounding country districts.
Under a constant rain of flowers the silver statue of Cybele was taken to
the river Almo and bathed and purified according to an ancient rite
(lavatio).

The worship of the Mother of the Gods had penetrated into the Hellenic
countries long before it was received at Rome, but in Greece it assumed a
peculiar form and lost most of its barbarous character. The Greek mind
felt an unconquerable aversion to the dubious nature of Attis. The
Magna Mater, who is thoroughly different from her Hellenized
sister, penetrated into all Latin provinces and imposed herself upon them
with the Roman religion. This was the case in Spain, Brittany, the
Danubian countries, Africa and especially in Gaul.^[19] As late as the fourth century the car
of the goddess drawn by steers was led in great state through the fields
and vineyards of Autun in order to stimulate their fertility.^[20] In the provinces the
dendrophori, who carried the sacred pine in the spring
festivities, formed associations recognized by the state. These
associations had charge of the work of our [58]modern fire departments,
besides their religious mission. In case of necessity these woodcutters
and carpenters, who knew how to fell the divine tree of Attis, were also
able to cut down the timbers of burning buildings. All over the empire
religion and the brotherhoods connected with it were under the high
supervision of the quindecimvirs of the capital, who gave the priests
their insignia. The sacerdotal hierarchy and the rights granted to the
priesthood and believers were minutely defined in a series of senate
decrees. These Phrygian divinities who had achieved full naturalization
and had been placed on the official list of gods, were adopted by the
populations of the Occident as Roman gods together with the rest. This
propagation was clearly different from that of any other Oriental
religion, for here the action of the government aided the tendencies that
attracted the devout masses to these Asiatic divinities.

This popular zeal was the result of various causes. Ancient authors
describe the impression produced upon the masses by those magnificent
processions in which Cybele passed along on her car, preceded by
musicians playing captivating melodies, by priests wearing gorgeous
costumes covered with amulets, and by the long line of votaries and
members of the fraternities, all barefoot and wearing their insignia. All
this, however, created only a fleeting and exterior impression upon the
neophyte, but as soon as he entered the temple a deeper sensation took
hold of him. He heard the pathetic story of the goddess seeking the body
of her lover cut down in the prime of his life like the grass of the
fields. He saw the bloody funeral services in which the cruel death of
the young man was mourned, [59]and heard the joyful hymns of triumph, and
the gay songs that greeted his return to life. By a skilfully arranged
gradation of feelings the onlookers were uplifted to a state of rapturous
ecstasy. Feminine devotion in particular found encouragement and
enjoyment in these ceremonies, and the Great Mother, the fecund and
generous goddess, was always especially worshiped by the women.

Moreover, people founded great hopes on the pious practice of this
religion. Like the Thracians, the Phrygians began very early to believe
in the immortality of the soul. Just as Attis died and came to life again
every year, these believers were to be born to new life after their
death. One of the sacred hymns said: “Take courage, oh mystics, because
the god is saved; and for you also will come salvation from your
trials.”^[21] Even the
funeral ceremonies were affected by the strength of that belief. In some
cities, especially at Amphipolis in Macedonia, graves have been found
adorned with earthenware statuettes representing the shepherd Attis;^[22] and even in Germany the
gravestones are frequently decorated with the figure of a young man in
Oriental costume, leaning dejectedly upon a knotted stick (pedum),
who represented the same Attis. We are ignorant of the conception of
immortality held by the Oriental disciples of the Phrygian priests.
Maybe, like the votaries of Sabazius, they believed that the blessed ones
were permitted to participate with Hermes Psychopompos in a great
celestial feast, for which they were prepared by the sacred repasts of
the mysteries.^[23] [60]

Another agent in favor of this imported religion was, as we have
stated above, the fact of its official recognition. This placed it in a
privileged position among Oriental religions, at least at the beginning
of the imperial régime. It enjoyed a toleration that was neither
precarious nor limited; it was not subjected to arbitrary police measures
nor to coercion on the part of magistrates; its fraternities were not
continually threatened with dissolution, nor its priests with expulsion.
It was publicly authorized and endowed, its holidays were marked in the
calendars of the pontiffs, its associations of dendrophori were organs of
municipal life in Italy and in the provinces, and had a corporate
entity.

Therefore it is not surprising that other foreign religions, after
being transferred to Rome, sought to avert the dangers of an illicit
existence by an alliance with the Great Mother. The religion of the
latter frequently consented to agreements and compromises, from which it
gained in reality as much as it gave up. In exchange for material
advantages it acquired complete moral authority over the gods that
accepted its protection. Thus Cybele and Attis absorbed a majority of the
divinities from Asia Minor that had crossed the Ionian Sea. Their clergy
undoubtedly intended to establish a religion complex enough to enable the
emigrants from every part of the vast peninsula, slaves, merchants,
soldiers, functionaries, scholars, in short, people of all classes of
society, to find their national and favorite devotions in it. As a matter
of fact no other Anatolian god could maintain his independence side by
side with the deities of Pessinus.^[24]

We do not know the internal development of the [61]Phrygian mysteries
sufficiently to give details of the addition of each individual part. But
we can prove that in the course of time certain religions were added to
the one that had been practised in the temple of the Palatine ever since
the republic.

In the inscriptions of the fourth century, Attis bears the cognomen of
menotyrannus. At that time this name was undoubtedly understood to
mean “lord of the months,” because Attis represented the sun who entered
a new sign of the zodiac every month.^[25] But that was not the original meaning
of the term. “Mèn tyrannus” appears with quite a different meaning
in many inscriptions found in Asia Minor. Tyrannos (????????),
“lord,” is a word taken by the Greeks from the Lydian, and the honorable
title of “tyrant” was given to Mèn, an old barbarian divinity worshiped
by all Phrygia and surrounding regions.^[26] The Anatolian tribes from Caria to the
remotest mountains of Pontus worshiped a lunar god under that name who
was supposed to rule not only the heavens but also the underworld,
because the moon was frequently brought into connection with the somber
kingdom of the dead. The growth of plants and the increase of cattle and
poultry were ascribed to his celestial influence, and the villagers
invoked his protection for their farms and their district. They also
placed their rural burial grounds under the safeguard of this king of
shadows. No god enjoyed greater popularity in the country districts.

This powerful divinity penetrated into Greece at an early period.
Among the mixed populations of the Ægean seaports, in the Piræus, at
Rhodes, Delos and Thasos, religious associations for his worship were
[62]founded. In Attica the presence of the cult
can be traced back to the fourth century, and its monuments rival those
of Cybele in number and variety. In the Latin Occident, however, no trace
of it can be found, because it had been absorbed by the worship of
Magna Mater. In Asia itself, Attis and Mèn were sometimes
considered identical, and this involved the Roman world in a complete
confusion of those two persons, who in reality were very different. A
marble statue discovered at Ostia represents Attis holding the lunar
crescent, which was the characteristic emblem of Mèn. His assimilation to
the “tyrant” of the infernal regions transformed the shepherd of Ida into
a master of the underworld, an office that he combined with his former
one as author of resurrection.

A second title that was given to him reveals another influence. A
certain Roman inscription is dedicated to Attis the Supreme (?????
??????).^[27] This epithet is very
significant. In Asia Minor “Hypsistos” was the appellation used to
designate the god of Israel.^[28] A number of pagan thiasi had arisen
who, though not exactly submitting to the practice of the synagogue, yet
worshiped none but the Most High, the Supreme God, the Eternal God, God
the Creator, to whom every mortal owed service. These must have been the
attributes ascribed to Cybele’s companion by the author of the
inscription, because the verse continues: (???

????????? ??
???) “To thee, who containest and maintainest
all things.”^[29] Must we
then believe that Hebraic monotheism had some influence upon the
mysteries of the Great Mother? This is not at all improbable. We know
that numerous Jewish colonies were established in Phrygia by the
Seleucides, and that [63]these expatriated Jews agreed to certain
compromises in order to conciliate their hereditary faith with that of
the pagans in whose midst they lived. It is also possible that the clergy
of Pessinus suffered the ascendancy of the Biblical theology. Under the
empire Attis and Cybele became the “almighty gods” (omnipotentes)
par excellence, and it is easy to see in this new conception a
leaning upon Semitic or Christian doctrines, more probably upon Semitic
ones.^[30]

We shall now take up the difficult question of the influence of
Judaism upon the mysteries during the Alexandrian period and at the
beginning of the empire. Many scholars have endeavored to define the
influence exercised by the pagan beliefs on those of the Jews; it has
been shown how the Israelitic monotheism became Hellenized at Alexandria
and how the Jewish propaganda attracted proselytes who revered the one
God, without, however, observing all the prescriptions of the Mosaic law.
But no successful researches have been made to ascertain how far paganism
was modified through an infiltration of Biblical ideas. Such a
modification must necessarily have taken place to some extent. A great
number of Jewish colonies were scattered everywhere on the Mediterranean,
and these were long animated with such an ardent spirit of proselytism
that they were bound to impose some of their conceptions on the pagans
that surrounded them. The magical texts which are almost the only
original literary documents of paganism we possess, clearly reveal this
mixture of Israelitic theology with that of other peoples. In them we
frequently find names like Iao (Yahveh), Sabaoth, or the names of angels
side by side with those of Egyptian or Greek divinities. Especially in
Asia [64]Minor, where the Israelites formed a
considerable and influential element of the population, an intermingling
of the old native traditions and the religion of the strangers from the
other side of the Taurus must have occurred.

This mixture certainly took place in the mysteries of Sabazius, the
Phrygian Jupiter or Dionysus.^[31] They were very similar to those of
Attis, with whom he was frequently confounded. By means of an audacious
etymology that dates back to the Hellenistic period, this old
Thraco-Phrygian divinity has been identified with “Yahveh Zebaoth,” the
Biblical “Lord of Hosts.” The corresponding expression (??????
??????) in the
Septuagint has been regarded as the equivalent of the kurios
Sabazios (??????

????????)
of the barbarians. The latter was worshiped as the supreme, almighty and
holy Lord. In the light of a new interpretation the purifications
practised in the mysteries were believed to wipe out the hereditary
impurity of a guilty ancestor who had aroused the wrath of heaven against
his posterity, much as the original sin with which Adam’s disobedience
had stained the human race was to be wiped out. The custom observed by
the votaries of Sabazius of dedicating votive hands which made the
liturgic sign of benediction with the first three fingers extended (the
benedictio latina of the church) was probably taken from the
ritual of the Semitic temples through the agency of the Jews. The
initiates believed, again like the Jews, that after death their good
angel (angelus bonus) would lead them to the banquet of the
eternally happy, and the everlasting joys of these banquets were
anticipated on earth by the liturgic repasts. This celestial feast can
[65]be
seen in a fresco painting on the grave of a priest of Sabazius called
Vincentius, who was buried in the Christian catacomb of Prætextatus, a
strange fact for which no satisfactory explanation has as yet been
furnished. Undoubtedly he belonged to a Jewish-pagan sect that admitted
neophytes of every race to its mystic ceremonies. In fact, the church
itself formed a kind of secret society sprung from the synagogue but
distinct from it, in which Gentiles and the Children of Israel joined in
a common adoration.

If it is a fact, then, that Judaism influenced the worship of
Sabazius, it is very probable that it influenced the cult of Cybele also,
although in this case the influence cannot be discerned with the same
degree of certainty. The religion of the Great Mother did not receive
rejuvenating germs from Palestine only, but it was greatly changed after
the gods of more distant Persia came and joined it. In the ancient
religion of the Achemenides, Mithra, the genius of light, was coupled
with Anâhita, the goddess of the fertilizing waters. In Asia Minor the
latter was assimilated with the fecund Great Mother, worshiped all over
the peninsula,^[32] and
when at the end of the first century of our era the mysteries of Mithra
spread over the Latin provinces, its votaries built their sacred crypts
in the shadow of the temples of the Magna Mater.

Everywhere in the empire the two religions lived in intimate
communion. By ingratiating themselves with the Phrygian priests, the
priests of Mithra obtained the support of an official institution and
shared in the protection granted by the state. Moreover, men alone could
participate in the secret ceremonies of the Persian liturgy, at least in
the Occident. Other [66]mysteries, to which women could be admitted,
had therefore to be added in order to complete them, and so the mysteries
of Cybele received the wives and daughters of the Mithraists.

This union had even more important consequences for the old religion
of Pessinus than the partial infusion of Judaic beliefs had had. Its
theology gained a deeper meaning and an elevation hitherto unknown, after
it had adopted some of the conceptions of Mazdaism.

The introduction of the taurobolium in the ritual of the Magna
Mater, where it appeared after the middle of the first century, was
probably connected with this transformation. We know the nature of this
sacrifice, of which Prudentius gives a stirring description based on
personal recollection of the proceeding. On an open platform a steer was
killed, and the blood dropped down upon the mystic, who was standing in
an excavation below. “Through the thousand crevices in the wood,” says
the poet, “the bloody dew runs down into the pit. The neophyte receives
the falling drops on his head, clothes and body. He leans backward to
have his cheeks, his ears, his lips and his nostrils wetted; he pours the
liquid over his eyes, and does not even spare his palate, for he moistens
his tongue with blood and drinks it eagerly.”^[33] After submitting to this repulsive
sprinkling he offered himself to the veneration of the crowd. They
believed that he was purified of his faults, and had become the equal of
the deity through his red baptism.

Although the origin of this sacrifice that took place in the mysteries
of Cybele at Rome is as yet shrouded in obscurity, recent discoveries
enable us to trace back [67]very closely the various phases of its
development. In accordance with a custom prevalent in the entire Orient
at the beginning of history, the Anatolian lords were fond of pursuing
and lassoing wild buffalos, which they afterwards sacrificed to the gods.
Beasts caught during a hunt were immolated, and frequently also prisoners
of war. Gradually the savagery of this primitive rite was modified until
finally nothing but a circus play was left. During the Alexandrian period
people were satisfied with organizing a corrida in the arena, in
the course of which the victim intended for immolation was seized. This
is the proper meaning of the terms taurobolium and criobolium (???????????,
??????????.),
which had long been enigmas,^[34] and which denoted the act of catching
a steer or a ram by means of a hurled weapon, probably the thong of a
lasso. Without doubt even this act was finally reduced to a mere sham
under the Roman empire, but the weapon with which the animal was slain
always remained a hunting weapon, a sacred boar spear.^[35]

The ideas on which the immolation was based were originally just as
barbarous as the sacrifice itself. It is a matter of general belief among
savage peoples that one acquires the qualities of an enemy slain in
battle or of a beast killed in the chase by drinking or washing in the
blood, or by eating some of the viscera of the body. The blood especially
has often been considered as the seat of vital energy. By moistening his
body with the blood of the slaughtered steer, the neophyte believed that
he was transfusing the strength of the formidable beast into his own
limbs.

This naive and purely material conception was soon [68]modified and
refined. The Thracians brought into Phrygia, and the Persian magi into
Cappadocia, the fast spreading belief in the immortality of mankind.
Under their influence, especially under that of Mazdaism, which made the
mythical steer the author of creation and of resurrection, the old savage
practice assumed a more spiritual and more elevated meaning. By complying
with it, people no longer thought they were acquiring the buffalo’s
strength; the blood, as the principle of life, was no longer supposed to
renew physical energy, but to cause a temporary or even an eternal
rebirth of the soul. The descent into the pit was regarded as burial, a
melancholy dirge accompanied the burial of the old man who had died. When
he emerged purified of all his crimes by the sprinkling of blood and
raised to a new life, he was regarded as the equal of a god, and the
crowd worshiped him from a respectful distance.^[36]

The vogue obtained in the Roman empire by the practice of this
repugnant rite can only be explained by the extraordinary power ascribed
to it. He who submitted to it was in aeternum renatus,^[37] according to the
inscriptions.

We could also outline the transformation of other Phrygian ceremonies,
of which the spirit and sometimes the letter slowly changed under the
influence of more advanced moral ideas. This is true of the sacred feasts
attended by the initiates. One of the few liturgic formulas antiquity has
left us refers to these Phrygian banquets. One hymn says: “I have eaten
from the tambourine, I have drunk from the cymbal, I have become a mystic
of Attis.” The banquet, which is found in several Oriental religions, was
sometimes simply the [69]external sign indicating that the votaries
of the same divinity formed one large family. Admitted to the sacred
table, the neophyte was received as the guest of the community and became
a brother among brothers. The religious bond of the thiasus or
sodalicium took the place of the natural relationship of the
family, the gens or the clan, just as the foreign religion replaced the
worship of the domestic hearth.

Sometimes other effects were expected of the food eaten in common.
When the flesh of some animal supposed to be of a divine nature was
eaten, the votary believed that he became identified with the god and
that he shared in his substance and qualities. In the beginning the
Phrygian priests probably attributed the first of these two meanings to
their barbarous communions.^[38] Towards the end of the empire, moral
ideas were particularly connected with the assimilation of sacred liquor
and meats taken from the tambourine and cymbal of Attis. They became the
staff of the spiritual life and were to sustain the votary in his trials;
at that period he considered the gods as especially “the guardians of his
soul and thoughts.”^[39]

As we see, every modification of the conception of the world and of
man in the society of the empire had its reflection in the doctrine of
the mysteries. Even the conception of the old deities of Pessinus was
constantly changing. When astrology and the Semitic religions caused the
establishment of a solar henotheism as the leading religion at Rome,
Attis was considered as the sun, “the shepherd of the twinkling stars.”
He was identified with Adonis, Bacchus, Pan, Osiris and Mithra; he was
made a “polymorphous”^[40]
being in which all celestial powers manifested [70]themselves in turn; a
pantheos who wore the crown of rays and the lunar crescent at the
same time, and whose various emblems expressed an infinite multiplicity
of functions.

When neo-Platonism was triumphing, the Phrygian fable became the
traditional mould into which subtle exegetists boldly poured their
philosophic speculations on the creative and stimulating forces that were
the principles of all material forms, and on the deliverance of the
divine soul that was submerged in the corruption of this earthly world.
In his hazy oration on the Mother of the Gods, Julian lost all notion of
reality on account of his excessive use of allegory and was swept away by
an extravagant symbolism.^[41]

Any religion as susceptible to outside influences as this one was
bound to yield to the ascendancy of Christianity. From the explicit
testimony of ecclesiastical writers we know that attempts were made to
oppose the Phrygian mysteries to those of the church. It was maintained
that the sanguinary purification imparted by the taurobolium was more
efficacious than baptism. The food that was taken during the mystic
feasts was likened to the bread and wine of the communion; the Mother of
the Gods was undoubtedly placed above the Mother of God, whose son also
had risen again. A Christian author, writing at Rome about the year 375,
furnishes some remarkable information on this subject. As we have seen, a
mournful ceremony was celebrated on March 24th, the dies sanguinis
in the course of which the galli shed their blood and sometimes
mutilated themselves in commemoration of the wound that had caused
Attis’s death, ascribing an expiatory and atoning power to the blood thus
shed. The pagans [71]claimed that the church had copied their
most sacred rites by placing her Holy Week at the vernal equinox in
commemoration of the sacrifice of the cross on which the divine Lamb,
according to the church, had redeemed the human race. Indignant at these
blasphemous pretensions, St. Augustine tells of having known a priest of
Cybele who kept saying: Et ipse Pileatus christianus
est—”and even the god with the Phrygian cap [i. e., Attis] is a
Christian.”^[42]

But all efforts to maintain a barbarian religion stricken with moral
decadence were in vain. On the very spot on which the last taurobolia
took place at the end of the fourth century, in the Phrygianum,
stands to-day the basilica of the Vatican.

There is no Oriental religion whose progressive evolution we could
follow at Rome so closely as the cult of Cybele and Attis, none that
shows so plainly one of the reasons that caused their common decay and
disappearance. They all dated back to a remote period of barbarism, and
from that savage past they inherited a number of myths the odium of which
could be masked but not eradicated by philosophical symbolism, and
practices whose fundamental coarseness had survived from a period of rude
nature worship, and could never be completely disguised by means of
mystic interpretations. Never was the lack of harmony greater between the
moralizing tendencies of theologians and the cruel shamelessness of
tradition. A god held up as the august lord of the universe was the
pitiful and abject hero of an obscene love affair; the taurobolium,
performed to satisfy man’s most exalted aspirations for spiritual
purification and immortality, looked like a [72]shower bath of blood and
recalled cannibalistic orgies. The men of letters and senators attending
those mysteries saw them performed by painted eunuchs, ill reputed for
their infamous morals, who went through dizzy dances similar to those of
the dancing dervishes and the Aissaouas. We can imagine the repugnance
these ceremonies caused in everybody whose judgment had not been
destroyed by a fanatical devotion. Of no other pagan superstition do the
Christian polemicists speak with such profound contempt, and there is
undoubtedly a reason for their attitude. But they were in a more
fortunate position than their pagan antagonists; their doctrine was not
burdened with barbarous traditions dating back to times of savagery; and
all the ignominies that stained the old Phrygian religion must not
prejudice us against it nor cause us to slight the long continued efforts
that were made to refine it gradually and to mould it into a form that
would fulfil the new demands of morality and enable it to follow the
laborious march of Roman society on the road of religious progress.

[73]

EGYPT.

We know more about the religion of the early Egyptians than about any
other ancient religion. Its development can be traced back three or four
thousand years; we can read its sacred texts, mythical narratives, hymns,
rituals, and the Book of the Dead in the original, and we can ascertain
its various ideas as to the nature of the divine powers and of future
life. A great number of monuments have preserved for our inspection the
pictures of divinities and representations of liturgic scenes, while
numerous inscriptions and papyri enlighten us in regard to the sacerdotal
organization of the principal temples. It would seem that the enormous
quantity of documents of all kinds that have been deciphered in the
course of nearly an entire century should have dispelled every
uncertainty about the creed of ancient Egypt, and should have furnished
exact information with regard to the sources and original character of
the worship which the Greeks and the Romans borrowed from the subjects of
the Ptolemies.

And yet, this is not the case. While of the four great Oriental
religions which were transplanted into the Occident, the religion of Isis
and Serapis is the one whose relation to the ancient belief of the mother
country we can establish with greatest accuracy, we [74]know very little of its
first form and of its nature before the imperial period, when it was held
in high esteem.

One fact, however, appears to be certain. The Egyptian worship that
spread over the Greco-Roman world came from the Serapeum founded at
Alexandria by Ptolemy Soter, somewhat in the manner of Judaism that
emanated from the temple of Jerusalem. But the earliest history of that
famous sanctuary is surrounded by such a thick growth of pious legends,
that the most sagacious investigators have lost their way in it. Was
Serapis of native origin, or was he imported from Sinope or Seleucia, or
even from Babylon? Each of these opinions has found supporters very
recently. Is his name derived from that of the Egyptian god Osiris-Apis,
or from that of the Chaldean deity Sar-Apsi? Grammatici certant.^[1]

Whichever solution we may adopt, one fact remains, namely, that
Serapis and Osiris were either immediately identified or else were
identical from the beginning. The divinity whose worship was started at
Alexandria by Ptolemy was the god that ruled the dead and shared his
immortality with them. He was fundamentally an Egyptian god, and the most
popular of the deities of the Nile. Herodotus says that Isis and Osiris
were revered by every inhabitant of the country, and their traditional
holidays involved secret ceremonies whose sacred meaning the Greek writer
dared not reveal.^[2]

Recognizing their Osiris in Serapis, the Egyptians readily accepted
the new cult. There was a tradition that a new dynasty should introduce a
new god or give a sort of preeminence to the god of its own district.
From time immemorial politics had changed the [75]government of heaven when
changing that of earth. Under the Ptolemies the Serapis of Alexandria
naturally became one of the principal divinities of the country, just as
the Ammon of Thebes had been the chief of the celestial hierarchy under
the Pharaohs of that city, or as, under the sovereigns from Sais, the
local Neith had the primacy. At the time of the Antonines there were
forty-two Serapeums in Egypt.^[3]

But the purpose of the Ptolemies was not to add one more Egyptian god
to the countless number already worshiped by their subjects. They wanted
this god to unite in one common worship the two races inhabiting the
kingdom, and thus to further a complete fusion. The Greeks were obliged
to worship him side by side with the natives. It was a clever political
idea to institute a Hellenized Egyptian religion at Alexandria. A
tradition mentioned by Plutarch^[4] has it that Manetho, a priest from
Heliopolis, a man of advanced ideas, together with Timotheus, a Eumolpid
from Eleusis, thought out the character that would best suit the
newcomer. The result was that the composite religion founded by the
Lagides became a combination of the old creed of the Pharaohs and the
Greek mysteries.

First of all, the liturgic language was no longer the native idiom but
Greek. This was a radical change. The philosopher Demetrius of Phalerum,
who had been cured of blindness by Serapis, composed poems in honor of
the god that were still sung under the Cæsars several centuries later.^[5] We can easily imagine that
the poets, who lived on the bounty of the Ptolemies, vied with each other
in their efforts to celebrate their benefactors’ god, and the old rituals
that were translated from the Egyptian were also enriched with [76]edifying bits
of original inspiration. A hymn to Isis, found on a marble monument in
the island of Andros,^[6]
gives us some idea of these sacred compositions, although it is of more
recent date.

In the second place, the artists replaced the old hieratic idols by
more attractive images and gave them the beauty of the immortals. It is
not known who created the figure of Isis draped in a linen gown with a
fringed cloak fastened over the breast, whose sweet meditative,
graciously maternal face is a combination of the ideals imagined for Hera
and Aphrodite. But we know the sculptor of the first statue of Serapis
that stood in the great sanctuary of Alexandria until the end of
paganism. This statue, the prototype of all the copies that have been
preserved, is a colossal work of art made of precious materials by a
famous Athenian sculptor named Bryaxis, a contemporary of Scopas. It was
one of the last divine creations of Hellenic genius. The majestic head,
with its somber and yet benevolent expression, with its abundance of
hair, and with a crown in the shape of a bushel, bespoke the double
character of a god ruling at the same time both the fertile earth and the
dismal realm of the dead.^[7]

As we see, the Ptolemies had given their new religion a literary and
artistic shape that was capable of attracting the most refined and
cultured minds. But the adaptation to the Hellenic feeling and thinking
was not exclusively external. Osiris, the god whose worship was thus
renewed, was more adapted than any other to lend his authority to the
formation of a syncretic faith. At a very early period, in fact before
the time of Herodotus, Osiris had been identified with Dionysus, and Isis
with Demeter. M. Foucart has [77]endeavored to prove in an ingenious essay
that this assimilation was not arbitrary, that Osiris and Isis came into
Crete and Attica during the prehistoric period, and that they were
mistaken for Dionysus and Demeter^[8] by the people of those regions. Without
going back to those remote ages, we shall merely say with him that the
mysteries of Dionysus were connected with those of Osiris by far-reaching
affinities, not simply by superficial and fortuitous resemblances. Each
commemorated the history of a god governing both vegetation and the
underworld at the same time, who was put to death and torn to pieces by
an enemy, and whose scattered limbs were collected by a goddess, after
which he was miraculously revived. The Greeks must have been very willing
to adopt a worship in which they found their own divinities and their own
myths again with something more poignant and more magnificent added. It
is a very remarkable fact that of all the many deities worshiped by the
Egyptian districts those of the immediate neighborhood, or if you like,
the cycle of Osiris, his wife Isis, their son Harpocrates and their
faithful servant Anubis, were the only ones that were adopted by the
Hellenic populations. All other heavenly or infernal spirits worshiped by
the Egyptians remained strangers to Greece.^[9]

In the Greco-Latin literature we notice two opposing attitudes toward
the Egyptian religion. It was regarded as the highest and the lowest of
religions at the same time, and as a matter of fact there was an abyss
between the always ardent popular beliefs and the enlightened faith of
the official priests. The Greeks and Romans gazed with admiration upon
the splendor of the temples and ceremonial, upon the fabulous [78]antiquity of
the sacred traditions and upon the erudition of a clergy possessed of a
wisdom that had been revealed by divinity. In becoming the disciples of
that clergy, they imagined they were drinking from the pure fountain
whence their own myths had sprung. They were overawed by the pretensions
of a clergy that prided itself on a past in which it kept on living, and
they strongly felt the attraction of a marvelous country where everything
was mysterious, from the Nile that had created it to the hieroglyphs
engraved upon the walls of its gigantic edifices.^[10] At the same time they were shocked by
the coarseness of its fetichism and by the absurdity of its
superstitions. Above all they felt an unconquerable repulsion at the
worship of animals and plants, which had always been the most striking
feature of the vulgar Egyptian religion and which, like all other archaic
devotions, seems to have been practised with renewed fervor after the
accession of the Saite dynasty. The comic writers and the satirists never
tired of scoffing at the adorers of the cat, the crocodile, the leek and
the onion. Juvenal says ironically: “O holy people, whose very
kitchen-gardens produce gods.”^[11] In a general way, this strange people,
entirely separated from the remainder of the world, were regarded with
about the same kind of feeling that Europeans entertained toward the
Chinese for a long time.

A purely Egyptian worship would not have been acceptable to the
Greco-Latin world. The main merit of the mixed creation of the political
genius of the Ptolemies consisted in the rejection or modification of
everything repugnant or monstrous like the phallophories of Abydos, and
in the retention of none but [79]stirring or attractive elements. It was the
most civilized of all barbarian religions; it retained enough of the
exotic element to arouse the curiosity of the Greeks, but not enough to
offend their delicate sense of proportion, and its success was
remarkable.

It was adopted wherever the authority or the prestige of the Lagides
was felt, and wherever the relations of Alexandria, the great commercial
metropolis, extended. The Lagides induced the rulers and the nations with
whom they concluded alliances to accept it. King Nicocreon introduced it
into Cyprus after having consulted the oracle of the Serapeum,^[12] and Agathocles
introduced it into Sicily, at the time of his marriage with the
daughter-in-law of Ptolemy I (298).^[13] At Antioch, Seleucus Callinicus built
a sanctuary for the statue of Isis sent to him from Memphis by Ptolemy
Euergetes.^[14] In token
of his friendship Ptolemy Soter introduced his god Serapis into Athens,
where the latter had a temple at the foot of the Acropolis^[15] ever after, and
Arsinoë, his mother or wife, founded another at Halicarnassus, about the
year 307.^[16] In this
manner the political activity of the Egyptian dynasty was directed toward
having the divinities, whose glory was in a certain measure connected
with that of their house, recognized everywhere. Through Apuleius we know
that under the empire the priests of Isis mentioned the ruling sovereign
first of all in their prayers.^[17] And this was simply an imitation of
the grateful devotion which their predecessors had felt toward the
Ptolemies.

Protected by the Egyptian squadrons, sailors and merchants propagated
the worship of Isis, the goddess of navigators, simultaneously on the
coasts of Syria, [80]Asia Minor and Greece, in the islands of the
Archipelago,^[18] and as
far as the Hellespont and Thrace.^[19] At Delos, where the inscriptions
enable us to study this worship somewhat in detail, it was not merely
practised by strangers, but the very sacerdotal functions were performed
by members of the Athenian aristocracy. A number of funereal bas-reliefs,
in which the deified dead wears the calathos of Serapis on his
head, prove the popularity of the belief in future life propagated by
these mysteries. According to the Egyptian faith he was identified with
the god of the dead.^[20]

Even after the splendor of the court of Alexandria had faded and
vanished; even after the wars against Mithridates and the growth of
piracy had ruined the traffic of the Ægean Sea, the Alexandrian worship
was too deeply rooted in the soil of Greece to perish, although it became
endangered in certain seaports like Delos. Of all the gods of the Orient,
Isis and Serapis were the only ones that retained a place among the great
divinities of the Hellenic world until the end of paganism.^[21]

It was this syncretic religion that came to Rome after having enjoyed
popularity in the eastern Mediterranean. Sicily and the south of Italy
were more than half Hellenized, and the Ptolemies had diplomatic
relations with these countries, just as the merchants of Alexandria had
commercial relations with them. For this reason the worship of Isis
spread as rapidly in those regions as on the coasts of Ionia or in the
Cyclades.^[22] It was
introduced into Syracuse and Catana during the earliest years of the
third century by [81]Agathocles. The Serapeum of Pozzuoli, at
that time the busiest seaport of Campania, was mentioned in a city
ordinance of the year 105 B. C.^[23] About the same time an Iseum was
founded at Pompeii, where the decorative frescos attest to this day the
power of expansion possessed by the Alexandrian culture.

After its adoption by the southern part of the Italian peninsula, this
religion was bound to penetrate rapidly to Rome. Ever since the second
century before our era, it could not help but find adepts in the
chequered multitude of slaves and freedmen. Under the Antonines the
college of the pastophori recalled that it had been founded in the
time of Sulla.^[24] In
vain did the authorities try to check the invasion of the Alexandrian
gods. Five different times, in 59, 58, 53, and 48 B. C., the senate
ordered their altars and statues torn down,^[25] but these violent measures did not
stop the diffusion of the new beliefs. The Egyptian mysteries were the
first example at Rome of an essentially popular religious movement that
was triumphant over the continued resistance of the public authorities
and the official clergy.

Why was this Egyptian worship the only one of all Oriental religions
to suffer repeated persecutions? There were two motives, one religious
and one political.

In the first place, this cult was said to exercise a corrupting
influence perversive of piety. Its morals were loose, and the mystery
surrounding it excited the worst suspicions. Moreover, it appealed
violently to the emotions and senses. All these factors offended the
grave decency that a Roman was wont to [82]maintain in the presence
of the gods. The innovators had every defender of the mos maiorum
for an adversary.

In the second place, this religion had been founded, supported and
propagated by the Ptolemies; it came from a country that was almost
hostile to Italy during the last period of the republic;^[26] it issued from Alexandria, whose
superiority Rome felt and feared. Its secret societies, made up chiefly
of people of the lower classes, might easily become clubs of agitators
and haunts of spies. All these motives for suspicion and hatred were
undoubtedly more potent in exciting persecution than the purely
theological reasons, and persecution was stopped or renewed according to
the vicissitudes of general politics.

As we have stated, the chapels consecrated to Isis were demolished in
the year 48 B. C. After Cæsar’s death, the triumvirs decided in 43 B. C.
to erect a temple in her honor out of the public funds, undoubtedly to
gain the favor of the masses. This action would have implied official
recognition, but the project appears never to have been executed. If
Antony had succeeded at Actium, Isis and Serapis would have entered Rome
in triumph, but they were vanquished with Cleopatra; and when Augustus
had become the master of the empire, he professed a deep aversion for the
gods of his former enemies. Moreover, he could not have suffered the
intrusion of the Egyptian clergy into the Roman sacerdotal class, whose
guardian, restorer and chief he was. In 28 B. C. an ordinance was issued
forbidding the erecting of altars to the Alexandrian divinities inside
the sacred enclosure of the pomerium, and seven years later
Agrippa extended this prohibitive regulation to a radius of a thousand
paces around the [83]city. Tiberius acted on the same principle
and in 19 A. D. instituted the bloodiest persecution against the priests
of Isis that they ever suffered, in consequence of a scandalous affair in
which a matron, a noble and some priests of Isis were implicated.

All these police measures, however, were strangely ineffectual. The
Egyptian worship was excluded from Rome and her immediate neighborhood in
theory if not in fact, but the rest of the world remained open to its
propaganda.^[27]

With the beginning of the empire it slowly invaded the center and the
north of Italy and spread into the provinces. Merchants, sailors, slaves,
artisans, Egyptian men of letters, even the discharged soldiers of the
three legions cantoned in the valley of the Nile contributed to its
diffusion. It entered Africa by way of Carthage, and the Danubian
countries through the great emporium of Aquileia. The new province of
Gaul was invaded through the valley of the Rhone. At that period many
Oriental emigrants went to seek their fortunes in these new countries.
Intimate relations existed between the cities of Arles and Alexandria,
and we know that a colony of Egyptian Greeks, established at Nimes by
Augustus, took the gods of their native country thither.^[28] At the beginning of our era there set
in that great movement of conversion that soon established the worship of
Isis and Serapis from the outskirts of the Sahara to the vallum of
Britain, and from the mountains of Asturias to the mouths of the
Danube.

The resistance still offered by the central power could not last much
longer. It was impossible to dam in this overflowing stream whose
thundering waves struck the [84]shaking walls of the pomerium from
every side. The prestige of Alexandria seemed invincible. At that period
the city was more beautiful, more learned, and better policed than Rome.
She was the model capital, a standard to which the Latins strove to rise.
They translated the works of the scholars of Alexandria, imitated her
authors, invited her artists and copied her institutions. It is plain
that they had also to undergo the ascendancy of her religion. As a matter
of fact, her fervent believers maintained her sanctuaries, despite the
law, on the very Capitol. Under Cæsar, Alexandrian astronomers had
reformed the calendar of the pontiffs, and Alexandrian priests soon
marked the dates of Isis holidays upon it.

The decisive step was taken soon after the death of Tiberius. Caligula
erected the great temple of Isis Campensis on the Campus Martius probably
in the year 38.^[29] In
order to spare the sacerdotal susceptibilities, he founded it outside of
the sacred enclosure of the city of Servius. Later Domitian made one of
Rome’s most splendid monuments of that temple. From that time Isis and
Serapis enjoyed the favor of every imperial dynasty, the Flavians as well
as the Antonines and the Severi. About the year 215 Caracalla built an
Isis temple, even more magnificent than that of Domitian, on the
Quirinal, in the heart of the city, and perhaps another one on the
Coelian. As the apologist Minucius Felix states, the Egyptian gods had
become entirely Roman.^[30]

The climax of their power seems to have been reached at the beginning
of the third century; later on the popular vogue and official support
went to other divinities, like the Syrian Baals and the Persian [85]Mithras. The
progress of Christianity also deprived them of their power, which was,
however, still considerable until the end of the ancient world. The Isis
processions that marched the streets of Rome were described by an eye
witness as late as the year 394,^[31] but in 391 the patriarch Theophilus
had consigned the Serapeum of Alexandria to the flames, having himself
struck the first blow with an ax against the colossal statue of the god
that had so long been the object of a superstitious veneration. Thus the
prelate destroyed the “very head of idolatry,” as Rufinus put it.^[32]

As a matter of fact, idolatry received its death blow. The worship of
the gods of the Ptolemies died out completely between the reigns of
Theodosius and Justinian,^[33] and in accordance with the sad
prophecy of Hermes Trismegistus^[34] Egypt, Egypt herself, lost her
divinities and became a land of the dead. Of her religions nothing
remained but fables that were no longer believed, and the only thing that
reminded the barbarians who came to inhabit the country of its former
piety, were words engraved on stone.

This rapid sketch of the history of Isis and Serapis shows that these
divinities were worshiped in the Latin world for more than five
centuries. The task of pointing out the transformations of the cult
during that long period, and the local differences there may have been in
the various provinces, is reserved for future researches. These will
undoubtedly find that the Alexandrian worship did not become Latinized
under the empire, but that its Oriental character became more and more
pronounced. When Domitian restored the Iseum of the Campus Martius and
that of Beneventum, he [86]transferred from the valley of the Nile
sphinxes, cynocephali and obelisks of black or pink granite bearing
borders of hieroglyphics of Amasis, Nectanebos or even Rameses II. On
other obelisks that were erected in the propyleums even the inscriptions
of the emperors were written in hieroglyphics.^[35] Half a century later that true
dilettante, Hadrian, caused the luxuries of Canopus to be reproduced,
along with the vale of Tempe, in his immense villa at Tibur, to enable
him to celebrate his voluptuous feasts under the friendly eyes of
Serapis. He extolled the merits of the deified Antinous in inscriptions
couched in the ancient language of the Pharaohs, and set the fashion of
statues hewn out of black basalt in the Egyptian style.^[36] The amateurs of that period affected
to prefer the hieratic rigidity of the barbarian idols to the elegant
freedom of Alexandrian art. Those esthetic manifestations probably
corresponded to religious prejudices, and the Latin worship always
endeavored to imitate the art of temples in the Nile valley more closely
than did the Greek. This evolution was in conformity with all the
tendencies of the imperial period.

By what secret virtue did the Egyptian religion exercise this
irresistible influence over the Roman world? What new elements did those
priests, who made proselytes in every province, give the Roman world? Did
the success of their preaching mean progress or retrogression from the
standard of the ancient Roman faith? These are complex and delicate
questions that would require minute analysis and cautious treatment with
a constant and exact observation of shades. I am compelled to limit
myself to a rapid sketch, which, I [87]fear, will appear rather
dry and arbitrary, like every generalization.

The particular doctrines of the mysteries of Isis and Serapis in
regard to the nature and power of the gods were not, or were but
incidentally, the reasons for the triumph of these mysteries. It has been
said that the Egyptian theology always remained in a “fluid state,”^[37] or better in a state of
chaos. It consisted of an amalgamation of disparate legends, of an
aggregate of particular cults, as Egypt herself was an aggregate of a
number of districts. This religion never formulated a coherent system of
generally accepted dogmas. It permitted the coexistence of conflicting
conceptions and traditions, and all the subtlety of its clergy never
accomplished, or rather never began, the task of fusing those
irreconcilable elements into one harmonious synthesis.^[38] For the Egyptians there was no
principle of contradiction. All the heterogeneous beliefs that ever
obtained in the various districts during the different periods of a very
long history, were maintained concurrently and formed an inextricable
confusion in the sacred books.

About the same state of affairs prevailed in the Occidental worship of
the Alexandrian divinities. In the Occident, just as in Egypt, there were
“prophets” in the first rank of the clergy, who learnedly discussed
religion, but never taught a theological system that found universal
acceptance. The sacred scribe Cheremon, who became Nero’s tutor,
recognized the stoical theories in the sacerdotal traditions of his
country.^[39] When the
eclectic Plutarch speaks of the character of the Egyptian gods, he finds
it agrees surprisingly with his own philosophy,^[40] and when the neo-Platonist [88]Iamblichus
examines them, their character seems to agree with his doctrines. The
hazy ideas of the Oriental priests enabled every one to see in them the
phantoms he was pursuing. The individual imagination was given ample
scope, and the dilettantic men of letters rejoiced in molding these
malleable doctrines at will. They were not outlined sharply enough, nor
were they formulated with sufficient precision to appeal to the
multitude. The gods were everything and nothing; they got lost in a
sfumato. A disconcerting anarchy and confusion prevailed among
them. By means of a scientific mixture of Greek, Egyptian and Semitic
elements “Hermetism”^[41]
endeavored to create a theological system that would be acceptable to all
minds, but it seems never to have imposed itself generally on the
Alexandrian mysteries which were older than itself, and furthermore it
could not escape the contradictions of Egyptian thought. The religion of
Isis did not gain a hold on the soul by its dogmatism.

It must be admitted, however, that, owing to its extreme flexibility,
this religion was easily adapted to the various centers to which it was
transferred, and that it enjoyed the valuable advantage of being always
in perfect harmony with the prevailing philosophy. Moreover, the
syncretic tendencies of Egypt responded admirably to those that began to
obtain at Rome. At a very early period henotheistic theories had been
favorably received in sacerdotal circles, and while crediting the god of
their own temple with supremacy, the priests admitted that he might have
a number of different personalities, under which he was worshiped
simultaneously. In this way the unity of the supreme being was affirmed
for the thinkers, and polytheism with its [89]intangible traditions
maintained for the masses. In the same manner Isis and Osiris had
absorbed several local divinities under the Pharaohs, and had assumed a
complex character that was capable of indefinite extension. The same
process continued under the Ptolemies when the religion of Egypt came
into contact with Greece. Isis was identified simultaneously with
Demeter, Aphrodite, Hera, Semele, Io, Tyche, and others. She was
considered the queen of heaven and hell, of earth and sea. She was “the
past, the present and the future,”^[42] “nature the mother of things, the
mistress of the elements, born at the beginning of the centuries.”^[43] She had numberless
names, an infinity of different aspects and an inexhaustible treasure of
virtues. In short, she became a pantheistic power that was everything in
one, una quae est omnia.^[44]

The authority of Serapis was no less exalted, and his field no less
extensive. He also was regarded as a universal god of whom men liked to
say that he was “unique.” (???

????
???????) In him all
energies were centered, although the functions of Zeus, of Pluto or of
Helios were especially ascribed to him. For many centuries Osiris had
been worshiped at Abydos both as author of fecundity and lord of the
underworld,^[45] and this
double character early caused him to be identified with the sun, which
fertilizes the earth during its diurnal course and travels through the
subterranean realms at night. Thus the conception of this nature
divinity, that had already prevailed along the Nile, accorded without
difficulty with the solar pantheism that was the last form of Roman
paganism. This theological system, which did not gain the upper hand in
the Occident until the [90]second century of our era, was not brought
in by Egypt. It did not have the exclusive predominance there that it had
held under the empire, and even in Plutarch’s time it was only one creed
among many.^[46] The
deciding influence in this matter was exercised by the Syrian Baals and
the Chaldean astrology.

The theology of the Egyptian mysteries, then, followed rather than led
the general influx of ideas. The same may be said of their ethics. It did
not force itself upon the world by lofty moral precepts, nor by a sublime
ideal of holiness. Many have admired the edifying list in the Book of the
Dead, that rightfully or otherwise sets forth the virtues which the
deceased claims to have practised in order to obtain a favorable judgment
from Osiris. If one considers the period in which it appears, this ethics
is undoubtedly very elevated, but it seems rudimentary and even childish
if one compares it with the principles formulated by the Roman jurists,
to say nothing of the minute psychological analyses of the Stoic
casuists. In this range of ideas also, the maintenance of the most
striking contrasts characterizes Egyptian mentality, which was never
shocked by the cruelties and obscenities that sullied the mythology and
the ritual. Like Epicurus at Athens, some of the sacred texts actually
invited the believers to enjoy life before the sadness of death.^[47]

Isis was not a very austere goddess at the time she entered Italy.
Identified with Venus, as Harpocrates was with Eros, she was honored
especially by the women with whom love was a profession. In Alexandria,
the city of pleasure, she had lost all severity, and at Rome this good
goddess remained very indulgent to human weaknesses. Juvenal harshly
refers to [91]her as a procuress,^[48] and her temples had a more than
doubtful reputation, for they were frequented by young men in quest of
gallant adventures. Apuleius himself chose a lewd tale in which to
display his fervor as an initiate.

But we have said that Egypt was full of contradictions, and when a
more exacting morality demanded that the gods should make man virtuous,
the Alexandrian mysteries offered to satisfy that demand.

At all times the Egyptian ritual attributed considerable importance to
purity, or, to use a more adequate term, to cleanliness. Before every
ceremony the officiating priest had to submit to ablutions, sometimes to
fumigations or anointing, and to abstain from certain foods and from
incontinence for a certain time. Originally no moral idea was connected
with this purification. It was considered a means of exorcising
malevolent demons or of putting the priest into a state in which the
sacrifice performed by him could have the expected effect. It was similar
to the diet, shower-baths and massage prescribed by physicians for
physical health. The internal status of the officiating person was a
matter of as much indifference to the celestial spirits as the actual
worth of the deceased was to Osiris, the judge of the underworld. All
that was necessary to have him open the fields of Aalu to the soul was to
pronounce the liturgic formulas, and if the soul declared its innocence
in the prescribed terms its word was readily accepted.

But in the Egyptian religion, as in all the religions of antiquity,^[49] the original conception
was gradually transformed and a new idea slowly took its place. The
sacramental acts of purification were now [92]expected to wipe out
moral stains, and people became convinced that they made man better. The
devout female votaries of Isis, whom Juvenal^[50] pictures as breaking the ice to bathe
in the Tiber, and crawling around the temple on their bleeding knees,
hoped to atone for their sins and to make up for their shortcomings by
means of these sufferings.

When a new ideal grew up in the popular conscience during the second
century, when the magicians themselves became pious and serious people,
free from passions and appetites, and were honored because of the dignity
of their lives more than for their white linen robes,^[51] then the virtues of which the Egyptian
priests enjoined the practice also became less external. Purity of the
heart rather than cleanliness of the body was demanded. Renunciation of
sensual pleasures was the indispensable condition for the knowledge of
divinity, which was the supreme good.^[52] No longer did Isis favor illicit love.
In the novel by Xenophon of Ephesus (about 280 A. D.) she protects the
heroine’s chastity against all pitfalls and assures its triumph.
According to the ancient belief man’s entire existence was a preparation
for the formidable judgment held by Serapis after death, but to have him
decide in favor of the mystic, it was not enough to know the rites of the
sect; the individual life had to be free from crime; and the master of
the infernal regions assigned everybody a place according to his
deserts.^[53] The doctrine
of future retribution was beginning to develop.

However, in this regard, as in their conception of the divinity, the
Egyptian mysteries followed the general progress of ideas more than they
directed it. [93]Philosophy transformed them, but found in
them little inspiration.

How could a religion, of which neither the theology nor the ethics was
really new, stir up at the same time so much hostility and fervor among
the Romans? To many minds of to-day theology and ethics constitute
religion, but during the classical period it was different, and the
priests of Isis and Serapis conquered souls mainly by other means. They
seduced them by the powerful attraction of the ritual and retained them
by the marvelous promises of their doctrine of immortality.

To the Egyptians ritual had a value far superior to that we ascribe to
it to-day. It had an operative strength of its own that was independent
of the intentions of the officiating priest. The efficacy of prayer
depended not on the inner disposition of the believer, but on the
correctness of the words, gestures and intonation. Religion was not
clearly differentiated from magic. If a divinity was invoked according to
the correct forms, especially if one knew how to pronounce its real name,
it was compelled to act in conformity to the will of its priest. The
sacred words were an incantation that compelled the superior powers to
obey the officiating person, no matter what purpose he had in view. With
the knowledge of the liturgy men acquired an immense power over the world
of spirits. Porphyry was surprised and indignant because the Egyptians
sometimes dared to threaten the gods in their orations.^[54] In the consecrations the priest’s
summons compelled the gods to come and animate their [94]statues, and
thus his voice created divinities,^[55] as originally the almighty voice of
Thoth had created the world.^[56]

The ritual that conferred such superhuman power^[57] developed in Egypt into a state of
perfection, completeness and splendor unknown in the Occident. It
possessed a unity, a precision and a permanency that stood in striking
contrast to the variety of the myths, the uncertainty of the dogmas and
the arbitrariness of the interpretations. The sacred books of the
Greco-Roman period are a faithful reproduction of the texts that were
engraved upon the walls of the pyramids at the dawn of history,
notwithstanding the centuries that had passed. Even under the Cæsars the
ancient ceremonies dating back to the first ages of Egypt, were
scrupulously performed because the smallest word and the least gesture
had their importance.

This ritual and the attitude toward it found their way for the most
part into the Latin temples of Isis and Serapis. This fact has long been
ignored, but there can be no doubt about it. A first proof is that the
clergy of those temples were organized just like those of Egypt during
the period of the Ptolemies.^[58] There was a hierarchy presided over by
a high priest, which consisted of prophetes skilled in the sacred
science, stolistes, or ornatrices,^[59] whose office it was to dress the
statues of the gods, pastophori who carried the sacred temple
plates in the processions, and so on, just as in Egypt. As in their
native country, the priests were distinguished from common mortals by a
tonsure, by a linen tunic, and by their habits as well as by their garb.
They devoted themselves entirely to their ministry and had no other
profession. This [95]sacerdotal body always remained Egyptian in
character, if not in nationality, because the liturgy it had to perform
remained so. In a similar manner the priests of the Baals were Syrians,^[60] because they were the
only ones that knew how to honor the gods of Syria.

In the first place a daily service had to be held just as in the Nile
valley. The Egyptian gods enjoyed a precarious immortality, for they were
liable to destruction and dependent on necessities. According to a very
primitive conception that always remained alive, they had to be fed,
clothed and refreshed every day or else perish. From this fact arose the
necessity of a liturgy that was practically the same in every district.
It was practised for thousands of years and opposed its unaltering form
to the multiplicity of legends and local beliefs.^[61]

This daily liturgy was translated into Greek, perhaps later into Latin
also; it was adapted to the new requirements by the founders of the
Serapeum, and faithfully observed in the Roman temples of the Alexandrian
gods. The essential ceremony always was the opening (apertio)^[62] of the sanctuary. At
dawn the statue of the divinity was uncovered and shown to the community
in the naos, that had been closed and sealed during the night.^[63] Then, again as in
Egypt, the priest lit the sacred fire and offered libations of water
supposed to be from the deified Nile,^[64] while he chanted the usual hymns to
the sound of flutes. Finally, “erect upon the threshold”—I
translate literally from Porphyry—”he awakens the god by calling to
him in the Egyptian language.”^[65] As we see, the god was revived by the
sacrifice and, as under the Pharaohs, awoke from his slumber at the
calling of [96]his name. As a matter of fact the name was
indissolubly connected with the personality; he who could pronounce the
exact name of an individual or of a divinity was obeyed as a master by
his slave.^[66] This fact
made it necessary to maintain the original form of that mysterious word.
There was no other motive for the introduction of a number of barbarian
appellatives into the magical incantations.

It is also probable that the toilet of the statue was made every day,
that its body and head were dressed,^[67] as in the Egyptian ritual. We have
seen that the ornatrices or stolistes were especially
entrusted with these duties. The idol was covered with sumptuous raiment
and ornamented with jewels and gems. An inscription furnishes us with an
inventory of the jewels worn by an Isis of ancient Cadiz;^[68] her ornaments were more
brilliant than those of a Spanish madonna.

During the entire forenoon, from the moment that a noisy acclamation
had greeted the rising of the sun, the images of the gods were exposed to
the silent adoration of the initiates.^[69] Egypt is the country whence
contemplative devotion penetrated into Europe. Then, in the afternoon, a
second service was held to close the sanctuary.^[70]

The daily liturgy must have been very absorbing. This innovation in
the Roman paganism was full of consequences. No longer were sacrifices
offered to the god on certain occasions only, but twice a day elaborate
services were held. As with the Egyptians, whom Herodotus had termed the
most religious of all peoples,^[71] devotion assumed a tendency to fill
out the whole existence and to dominate private and public interests. The
constant repetition of the same prayers [97]kept up and renewed
faith, and, we might say, people lived continually under the eyes of the
gods.

Besides the daily rites of the Abydos liturgy the holidays marking the
beginning of the different seasons were celebrated at the same date every
year.^[72] It was the same
in Italy. The calendars have preserved the names of several of them, and
of one, the Navigium Isidis, the rhetorician Apuleius^[73] has left us a brilliant
description on which, to speak with the ancients, he emptied all his
color tubes. On March 5th, when navigation reopened after the winter
months, a gorgeous procession^[74] marched to the coast, and a ship
consecrated to Isis, the protectress of sailors, was launched. A
burlesque group of masked persons opened the procession, then came the
women in white gowns strewing flowers, the stolistes waving the
garments of the goddess and the dadophori with lighted torches.
After these came the hymnodes, whose songs mingled in turn with
the sharp sound of the cross-flutes and the ringing of the brass
timbrels; then the throngs of the initiates, and finally the priests,
with shaven heads and clad in linen robes of a dazzling white, bearing
the images of animal-faced gods and strange symbols, as for instance a
golden urn containing the sacred water of the Nile. The procession
stopped in front of altars^[75] erected along the road, and on these
altars the sacred objects were uncovered for the veneration of the
faithful. The strange and sumptuous magnificence of these celebrations
made a deep impression on the common people who loved public
entertainments.

But of all the celebrations connected with the worship of Isis the
most stirring and the most suggestive [98]was the commemoration of
the “Finding of Osiris” (Inventio, ???????). Its
antecedents date back to remote antiquity. Since the time of the twelfth
dynasty, and probably much earlier, there had been held at Abydos and
elsewhere a sacred performance similar to the mysteries of our Middle
Ages, in which the events of Osiris’s passion and resurrection were
reproduced. We are in possession of the ritual of those performances.^[76] Issuing from the
temple, the god fell under Set’s blows; around his body funeral
lamentations were simulated, and he was buried according to the rites;
then Set was vanquished by Horus, and Osiris, restored to life, reentered
his temple triumphant over death.

The same myth was represented in almost the same manner at Rome at the
beginning of each November.^[77] While the priests and the believers
moaned and lamented, Isis in great distress sought the divine body of
Osiris, whose limbs had been scattered by Typhon. Then, after the corpse
had been found, rehabilitated and revived, there was a long outburst of
joy, an exuberant jubilation that rang through the temples and the
streets so loudly that it annoyed the passers-by.

This mingled despair and enthusiasm acted as strongly upon the
feelings of the believers as did the spring-holiday ceremony in the
Phrygian religion, and it acted through the same means. Moreover, there
was an esoteric meaning attached to it that none but the pious elect
understood. Besides the public ceremonies there was a secret worship to
which one was admitted only after a gradual initiation. The hero of
Apuleius had to submit to the ordeal three times in order to obtain the
whole revelation. In Egypt the [99]clergy communicated certain rites and
interpretations only upon a promise not to reveal them. In fact this was
the case in the worship of Isis at Abydos and elsewhere.^[78] When the Ptolemies regulated the Greek
ritual of their new religion, it assumed the form of the mysteries spread
over the Hellenic world and became very like those of Eleusis. The hand
of the Eumolpid Timotheus is noticeable in this connection.^[79]

But while the ceremonial of the initiations and even the production of
the liturgic drama were thus adapted to the religious habits of the
Greeks, the doctrinal contents of the Alexandrian mysteries remained
purely Egyptian. The old belief that immortality could be secured by
means of an identification of the deceased with Osiris or Serapis never
died out.

Perhaps in no other people did the epigram of Fustel de Coulanges find
so complete a verification as in the Egyptians: “Death was the first
mystery; it started man on the road to the other mysteries.”^[80] Nowhere else was life
so completely dominated by preoccupation with life after death; nowhere
else was such minute and complicated care taken to secure and perpetuate
another existence for the deceased. The funeral literature, of which we
have found a very great number of documents, had acquired a development
equaled by no other, and the architecture of no other nation can exhibit
tombs comparable with the pyramids or the rock-built sepulchers of
Thebes.

This constant endeavor to secure an after-existence for one’s self and
relatives manifested itself in various ways, but it finally assumed a
concrete form in the worship of Osiris. The fate of Osiris, the god who
died and returned to life, became the prototype of the [100]fate of every
human being that observed the funeral rites. “As truly as Osiris lives,”
says an Egyptian text, “he also shall live; as truly as Osiris is not
dead, shall he not die; as truly as Osiris is not annihilated, shall he
not be annihilated.”^[81]

If, then, the deceased had piously served Osiris-Serapis, he was
assimilated to that god, and shared his immortality in the underworld,
where the judge of the dead held forth. He lived not as a tenuous shade
or as a subtle spirit, but in full possession of his body as well as of
his soul. That was the Egyptian doctrine, and that certainly was also the
doctrine of the Greco-Latin mysteries.^[82]

Through the initiation the mystic was born again, but to a superhuman
life, and became the equal of the immortals.^[83] In his ecstasy he imagined that he was
crossing the threshold of death and contemplating the gods of heaven and
hell face to face.^[84] If
he had accurately followed the prescriptions imposed upon him by Isis and
Serapis through their priests, those gods prolonged his life after his
decease beyond the duration assigned to it by destiny, and he
participated eternally in their beatitude and offered them his homage in
their realm.^[85] The
“unspeakable pleasure” he felt when contemplating the sacred images in
the temple^[86] became
perpetual rapture when he was in the divine presence instead of in the
presence of the image, and drawn close to divinity his thirsting soul
enjoyed the delights of that ineffable beauty.^[87]

When the Alexandrian mysteries spread over Italy under the republic,
no religion had ever brought to mankind so formal a promise of blest
immortality as these, and this, more than anything else, lent them an
[101]irresistible power of attraction. Instead
of the vague and contradictory opinions of the philosophers in regard to
the destiny of the soul, Serapis offered certainty founded on divine
revelation corroborated by the faith of the countless generations that
had adhered to it. What the votaries of Orpheus had confusedly discovered
through the veil of the legends, and taught to Magna Grecia,^[88] namely, that this
earthly life was a trial, a preparation for a higher and purer life, that
the happiness of an after-life could be secured by means of rites and
observances revealed by the gods themselves, all this was now preached
with a firmness and precision hitherto unknown. These eschatological
doctrines in particular, helped Egypt to conquer the Latin world and
especially the miserable masses, on whom the weight of all the iniquities
of Roman society rested heavily.

The power and popularity of that belief in future life has left traces
even in the French language, and in concluding this study, from which I
have been compelled to exclude every picturesque detail, I would like to
point out how a French word of to-day dimly perpetuates the memory of the
old Egyptian ideas.

During the cold nights of their long winters the Scandinavians dreamed
of a Walhalla where the deceased warriors sat in well-closed brilliantly
illuminated halls, warming themselves and drinking the strong liquor
served by the Valkyries; but under the burning sky of Egypt, near the
arid sand where thirst kills the traveler, people wished that their dead
might find a limpid spring in their future wanderings to assuage the heat
that devoured them, and that they might be [102]refreshed by the
breezes of the north wind.^[89] Even at Rome the adherents of the
Alexandrian gods frequently inscribed the following wish on their tombs:
“May Osiris give you fresh water.”^[90] Soon this water became, in a
figurative sense, the fountain of life pouring out immortality to
thirsting souls. The metaphor obtained such popularity that in Latin
refrigerium became synonymous with comfort and happiness. The term
retained this meaning in the liturgy of the church,^[91] and for that reason people continue to
pray for spiritual rafraîchissement of the dead although the
Christian paradise has very little resemblance to the fields of Aalu.

[103]

SYRIA.

The religions of Syria never had the same solidarity in the Occident
as those from Egypt or Asia Minor. From the coasts of Phœnicia and
the valleys of Lebanon, from the borders of the Euphrates and the oases
of the desert, they came at various periods, like the successive waves of
the incoming tide, and existed side by side in the Roman world without
uniting, in spite of their similarities. The isolation in which they
remained and the persistent adherence of their believers to their
particular rites were a consequence and reflection of the disunited
condition of Syria herself, where the different tribes and districts
remained more distinct than anywhere else, even after they had been
brought together under the domination of Rome. They doggedly preserved
their local gods and Semitic dialects.

It would be impossible to outline each one of these religions in
detail at this time and to reconstruct their history, because our meager
information would not permit it, but we can indicate, in a general way,
how they penetrated into the Occidental countries at various periods, and
we can try to define their common characteristics by showing what new
elements the Syrian paganism brought to the Romans.

The first Semitic divinity to enter Italy was [104]Atargatis,
frequently mistaken for the Phœnician Astarte, who had a famous
temple at Bambyce or Hierapolis, not far from the Euphrates, and was
worshiped with her husband, Hadad, in a considerable part of Syria
besides. The Greeks considered her as the principal Syrian goddess (?????
???), and in the Latin countries she
was commonly known as dea Syria, a name corrupted into
Iasura by popular use.

We all remember the unedifying descriptions of her itinerant priests
that Lucian and Apuleius^[1]
have left. Led by an old eunuch of dubious habits, a crowd of painted
young men marched along the highways with an ass that bore an elaborately
adorned image of the goddess. Whenever they passed through a village or
by some rich villa, they went through their sacred exercises. To the
shrill accompaniment of their Syrian flutes they turned round and round,
and with their heads thrown back fluttered about and gave vent to hoarse
clamors until vertigo seized them and insensibility was complete. Then
they flagellated themselves wildly, struck themselves with swords and
shed their blood in front of a rustic crowd which pressed closely about
them, and finally they took up a profitable collection from the wondering
spectators. They received jars of milk and wine, cheeses, flour, bronze
coins of small denominations and even some silver pieces, all of which
disappeared in the folds of their capacious robes. If opportunity
presented they knew how to increase their profits by means of clever
thefts or by making commonplace predictions for a moderate
consideration.

This picturesque description, based on a novel by [105]Lucius of
Patras, is undoubtedly extreme. It is difficult to believe that the
sacerdotal corps of the goddess of Hierapolis should have consisted only
of charlatans and thieves. But how can the presence in the Occident of
that begging and low nomadic clergy be explained?

It is certain that the first worshipers of the Syrian goddess in the
Latin world were slaves. During the wars against Antiochus the Great a
number of prisoners were sent to Italy to be sold at public auction, as
was the custom, and the first appearance in Italy of the
Chaldaei^[2] has been
connected with that event. The Chaldaei were Oriental
fortune-tellers who asserted that their predictions were based on the
Chaldean astrology. They found credulous clients among the farm laborers,
and Cato gravely exhorts the good landlord to oust them from his
estate.^[3]

Beginning with the second century before Christ, merchants began to
import Syrian slaves. At that time Delos was the great trade center in
this human commodity, and in that island especially Atargatis was
worshiped by citizens of Athens and Rome.^[4] Trade spread her worship in the
Occident.^[5] We know that
the great slave revolution that devastated Sicily in 134 B. C. was
started by a slave from Apamea, a votary of the Syrian goddess.
Simulating divine madness, he called his companions to arms, pretending
to act in accordance with orders from heaven.^[6] This detail, which we know by chance,
shows how considerable a proportion of Semites there was in the gangs
working the fields, and how much authority Atargatis enjoyed in the rural
centers. Being too poor to build temples for their national goddess,
those agricultural laborers [106]waited with their devotions until a band
of itinerant galli passed through the distant hamlet where the lot
of the auction had sent them. The existence of those wandering priests
depended, therefore, on the number of fellow-countrymen they met in the
rural districts, who supported them by sacrificing a part of their poor
savings.

Towards the end of the republic those diviners appear to have enjoyed
rather serious consideration at Rome. It was a pythoness from Syria that
advised Marius on the sacrifices he was to perform.^[7]

Under the empire the importation of slaves increased. Depopulated
Italy needed more and more foreign hands, and Syria furnished a large
quota of the forced immigration of cultivators. But those Syrians, quick
and intelligent as they were strong and industrious, performed many other
functions. They filled the countless domestic positions in the palaces of
the aristocracy and were especially appreciated as litter-bearers.^[8] The imperial and municipal
administrations, as well as the big contractors to whom customs and the
mines were farmed out, hired or bought them in large numbers, and even in
the remotest border provinces the Syrus was found serving princes,
cities or private individuals. The worship of the Syrian goddess profited
considerably by the economic current that continually brought new
worshipers. We find her mentioned in the first century of our era in a
Roman inscription referring in precise terms to the slave market, and we
know that Nero took a devout fancy to the stranger that did not, however,
last very long.^[9] In the
popular Trastevere quarter she had a temple until the end of paganism.^[10] [107]

During the imperial period, however, the slaves were no longer the
only missionaries that came from Syria, and Atargatis was no longer the
only divinity from that country to be worshiped in the Occident. The
propagation of the Semitic worship progressed for the most part in a
different manner under the empire.

At the beginning of our era the Syrian merchants, Syri
negotiatores, undertook a veritable colonization of the Latin
provinces.^[11] During the
second century before Christ the traders of that nation had established
settlements along the coast of Asia Minor, on the Piraeus, and in the
Archipelago. At Delos, a small island but a large commercial center, they
maintained several associations that worshiped their national gods, in
particular Hadad and Atargatis. But the wars that shook the Orient at the
end of the republic, and above all the growth of piracy, ruined maritime
commerce and stopped emigration. This began again with renewed vigor when
the establishment of the empire guaranteed the safety of the seas and
when the Levantine traffic attained a development previously unknown. We
can trace the history of the Syrian establishments in the Latin provinces
from the first to the seventh century, and recently we have begun to
appreciate their economic, social and religious importance at its true
value.

The Syrians’ love of lucre was proverbial. Active, compliant and able,
frequently little scrupulous, they knew how to conclude first small
deals, then larger ones, everywhere. Using the special talents of their
race to advantage, they succeeded in establishing themselves on all
coasts of the Mediterranean, even in [108]Spain.^[12] At Malaga an inscription mentions a
corporation formed by them. The Italian ports where business was
especially active, Pozzuoli, Ostia, later Naples, attracted them in great
numbers. But they did not confine themselves to the seashore; they
penetrated far into the interior of the countries, wherever they hoped to
find profitable trade. They followed the commercial highways and traveled
up the big rivers. By way of the Danube they went as far as Pannonia, by
way of the Rhone they reached Lyons. In Gaul they were especially
numerous. In this new country that had just been opened to commerce
fortunes could be made rapidly. A rescript discovered on the range of the
Lebanon is addressed to sailors from Arles, who had charge of the
transportation of grain, and in the department of Ain a bilingual epitaph
has been found mentioning a merchant of the third century, Thaïm or
Julian, son of Saad, decurion of the city of Canatha in Syria, who owned
two factories in the Rhone basin, where he handled goods from
Aquitania.^[13] Thus the
Syrians spread over the entire province as far as Treves, where they had
a strong colony. Not even the barbarian invasions of the fifth century
stopped their immigration. Saint Jerome describes them traversing the
entire Roman world amidst the troubles of the invasion, prompted by the
lust of gain to defy all dangers. In the barbarian society the part
played by this civilized and city-bred element was even more
considerable. Under the Merovingians in about 591 they had sufficient
influence at Paris to have one of their number elected bishop and to gain
possession of all ecclesiastical offices. Gregory of Tours tells how King
Gontrand, on entering the city of Orleans [109]in 585, was received by
a crowd praising him “in the language of the Latins, the Jews and the
Syrians.”^[14] The
merchant colonies existed until the Saracen corsairs destroyed the
commerce of the Mediterranean.

Those establishments exercised a strong influence upon the economic
and material life of the Latin provinces, especially in Gaul. As bankers
the Syrians concentrated a large share of the money business in their
hands and monopolized the importing of the valuable Levantine commodities
as well as of the articles of luxury; they sold wines, spices, glassware,
silks and purple fabrics, also objects wrought by goldsmiths, to be used
as patterns by the native artisans. Their moral and religious influence
was not less considerable: for instance, it has been shown that they
furthered the development of monastic life during the Christian period,
and that the devotion to the crucifix^[15] that grew up in opposition to the
monophysites, was introduced into the Occident by them. During the first
five centuries Christians felt an unconquerable repugnance to the
representation of the Saviour of the world nailed to an instrument of
punishment more infamous than the guillotine of to-day. The Syrians were
the first to substitute reality in all its pathetic horror for a vague
symbolism.

In pagan times the religious ascendency of that immigrant population
was no less remarkable. The merchants always took an interest in the
affairs of heaven as well as in those of earth. At all times Syria was a
land of ardent devotion, and in the first century its children were as
fervid in propagating their barbarian gods in the Occident as after their
conversion they were enthusiastic in spreading Christianity as far [110]as
Turkestan and China. As soon as the merchants had established their
places of business in the islands of the Archipelago during the
Alexandrian period, and in the Latin period under the empire, they
founded chapels in which they practised their exotic rites.

It was easy for the divinities of the Phœnician coast to cross
the seas. Among them were Adonis, whom the women of Byblos mourned;
Balmarcodes, “the Lord of the dances,” who came from Beirut; Marna, the
master of rain, worshiped at Gaza; and Maiuma,^[16] whose nautical holiday was celebrated
every spring on the coast near Ostia as well as in the Orient.

Besides these half Hellenized religions, others of a more purely
Semitic nature came from the interior of the country, because the
merchants frequently were natives of the cities of the Hinterland,
as for instance Apamea or Epiphanea in Coele-Syria, or even of villages
in that flat country. As Rome incorporated the small kingdoms beyond the
Lebanon and the Orontes that had preserved a precarious independence, the
current of emigration increased. In 71 Commagene, which lies between the
Taurus and the Euphrates, was annexed by Vespasian, a little later the
dynasties of Chalcis and Emesa were also deprived of their power. Nero,
it appears, took possession of Damascus; half a century later Trajan
established the new province of Arabia in the south (106 A. D.), and the
oasis of Palmyra, a great mercantile center, lost its autonomy at the
same time. In this manner Rome extended her direct authority as far as
the desert, over countries that were only superficially Hellenized, and
where the native devotions had preserved all their [111]savage fervor. From
that time constant communication was established between Italy and those
regions which had heretofore been almost inaccessible. As roads were
built commerce developed, and together with the interests of trade the
needs of administration created an incessant exchange of men, of products
and of beliefs between those out-of-the-way countries and the Latin
provinces.

These annexations, therefore, were followed by a renewed influx of
Syrian divinities into the Occident. At Pozzuoli, the last port of call
of the Levantine vessels, there was a temple to the Baal of Damascus
(Jupiter Damascenus) in which leading citizens officiated, and
there were altars on which two golden camels^[17] were offered to Dusares, a divinity
who had come from the interior of Arabia. They kept company with a
divinity of more ancient repute, the Hadad of Baabek-Heliopolis
(Jupiter Heliopolitanus), whose immense temple, considered one of
the world’s wonders,^[18]

had been restored by Antoninus Pius, and may still be seen facing Lebanon
in majestic elegance. Heliopolis and Beirut had been the most ancient
colonies founded by Augustus in Syria. The god of Heliopolis participated
in the privileged position granted to the inhabitants of those two
cities, who worshiped in a common devotion,^[19] and he was naturalized as a Roman with
greater ease than the others.

The conquest of all Syria as far as Euphrates and the subjection of
even a part of Mesopotamia aided the diffusion of the Semitic religions
in still another manner. From these regions, which were partly inhabited
by fighting races, the Cæsars drew recruits for the imperial army. They
levied a great number of [112]legionaries, but especially auxiliary
troops, who were transferred to the frontiers. Troopers and foot-soldiers
from those provinces furnished important contingents to the garrisons of
Europe and Africa. For instance, a cohort of one thousand archers from
Emesa was established in Pannonia, another of archers from Damascus in
upper Germany; Mauretania received irregulars from Palmyra, and bodies of
troops levied in Ituraea, on the outskirts of the Arabian desert, were
encamped in Dacia, Germany, Egypt and Cappadocia at the same time.
Commagene alone furnished no less than six cohorts of five hundred men
each that were sent to the Danube and into Numidia.^[20]

The number of inscriptions consecrated by soldiers proves both the
ardor of their faith and the diversity of their beliefs. Like the sailors
of to-day who are transferred to strange climes and exposed to incessant
danger, they were constantly inclined to invoke the protection of heaven,
and remained attached to the gods who seemed to remind them in their
exile of the distant home country. Therefore it is not surprising that
the Syrians who served in the army should have practised the religion of
their Baals in the neighborhood of their camps. In the north of England,
near the wall of Hadrian, an inscription in verse in honor of the goddess
of Hierapolis has been found; its author was a prefect, probably of a
cohort of Hamites stationed at this distant post.^[21]

Not all the soldiers, however, went to swell the ranks of believers
worshiping divinities that had long been adopted by the Latin world, as
did that officer. They also brought along new ones that had come from a
still greater distance than their predecessors, in fact [113]from the
outskirts of the barbarian world, because from those regions in
particular trained men could be obtained. There were, for instance,
Baltis, an “Our Lady” from Osroene beyond the Euphrates;^[22] Aziz, the
“strong god” of Edessa, who was identified with the star Lucifer;^[23] Malakbel, the
“Lord’s messenger,” patron of the soldiers from Palmyra, who appeared
with several companions at Rome, in Numidia and in Dacia.^[24] The most celebrated of
those gods then was the Jupiter of Doliche, a small city of Commagene,
that owed its fame to him. Because of the troops coming from that region,
this obscure Baal, whose name is mentioned by no author, found worshipers
in every Roman province as far as Africa, Germany and Brittany. The
number of known inscriptions consecrated to him exceeds a hundred, and it
is still growing. Being originally nothing but a god of lightning,
represented as brandishing an ax, this local genius of the tempest was
elevated to the rank of tutelary divinity of the imperial armies.^[25]

The diffusion of the Semitic religions in Italy that commenced
imperceptibly under the republic became more marked after the first
century of our era. Their expansion and multiplication were rapid, and
they attained the apogee of their power during the third century. Their
influence became almost predominant when the accession of the Severi lent
them the support of a court that was half Syrian. Functionaries of all
kinds, senators and officers, vied with each other in devotion to the
patron gods of their sovereigns, gods which the sovereigns patronized in
turn. Intelligent and ambitious princesses like Julia Domna, Julia Maesa,
Julia Mammea, whose ascendency was very [114]considerable, became
propagators of their national religion. We all know the audacious
pronunciamento of the year 218 that placed upon the throne the
fourteen-year-old emperor Heliogabalus, a worshiper of the Baal of Emesa.
His intention was to give supremacy over all other gods to his barbarian
divinity, who had heretofore been almost unknown. The ancient authors
narrate with indignation how this crowned priest attempted to elevate his
black stone, the coarse idol brought from Emesa, to the rank of supreme
divinity of the empire by subordinating the whole ancient pantheon to it;
they never tire of giving revolting details about the dissoluteness of
the debaucheries for which the festivities of the new Sol invictus
Elagabal furnished a pretext.^[26] However, the question arises whether
the Roman historians, being very hostile to that foreigner who haughtily
favored the customs of his own country, did not misrepresent or partly
misunderstand the facts. Heliogabalus’s attempt to have his god
recognized as supreme, and to establish a kind of monotheism in heaven as
there was monarchy on earth, was undoubtedly too violent, awkward and
premature, but it was in keeping with the aspirations of the time, and it
must be remembered that the imperial policy could find the support of
powerful Syrian colonies not only at Rome but all over the empire.

Half a century later Aurelian^[27] was inspired by the same idea when he
created a new worship, that of the “Invincible Sun.” Worshiped in a
splendid temple, by pontiffs equal in rank to those of ancient Rome,
having magnificent plays held in his honor every fourth year, Sol
invictus was also elevated to the supreme rank in the divine
hierarchy, and became the special [115]protector of the
emperors and the empire. The country where Aurelian found the pattern he
sought to reproduce, was again Syria. Into the new sanctuary he
transferred the images of Bel and Helios, taken from Palmyra, after it
had fallen before his arms.

The sovereigns, then, twice attempted to replace the Capitoline
Jupiter by a Semitic god and to make a Semitic religion the principal and
official religion of the Romans. They proclaimed the fall of the old
Latin idolatry and the accession of a new paganism taken from Syria. What
was the superiority attributed to the creeds of that country? Why did
even an Illyrian general like Aurelian look for the most perfect type of
pagan religion in that country? That is the problem to be solved, but it
must remain unsolved unless an exact account is given of the fate of the
Syrian beliefs under the empire.

That question has not as yet been very completely elucidated. Besides
the superficial opuscule of Lucian on the dea Syria, we find
scarcely any reliable information in the Greek or Latin writers. The work
by Philo of Byblos is a euhemeristic interpretation of an alleged
Phœnician cosmogony, and a composition of little merit. Neither
have we the original texts of the Semitic liturgies, as we have for
Egypt. Whatever we have learned we owe especially to the inscriptions,
and while these furnish highly valuable indications as to the date and
area of expansion of these religions, they tell us hardly anything about
their doctrines. Light on this subject may be expected from the
excavations that are being made in the great sanctuaries of Syria, and
also from a more exact interpretation [116]of the sculptured
monuments that we now possess in great numbers, especially those of
Jupiter Dolichenus.

Some characteristics of the Semitic paganism, however, are known at
present, and it must be admitted that it would appear at a disadvantage
if judged by those noticeable features that first attract our attention.
It had retained a stock of very primitive ideas and some aboriginal
nature worship that had lasted through many centuries and was to persist,
in part, under Christianity and Islam until the present day.^[28] Such were the worship
of high elevations on which a rustic enclosure sometimes marked the
limits of the consecrated territory; the worship of the waters that flow
to the sea, the streams that arise in the mountains, the springs that
gush out of the soil, the ponds, the lakes and the wells, into all of
which offerings were thrown with the idea either of venerating in them
the thirst-quenching liquid or else the fecund nature of the earth; the
worship of the trees that shaded the altars and that nobody dared to fell
or mutilate; the worship of stones, especially of the rough stones called
bethels that were regarded, as their name (beth-El) indicates, as
the residence of the god, or rather, as the matter in which the god was
embodied.^[29] Aphrodite
Astarte was worshiped in the shape of a conical stone at Paphos, and a
black aerolite covered with projections and depressions to which a
symbolic meaning was attributed represented Elagabal, and was transferred
from Emesa to Rome, as we have said.

The animals, as well as inanimate things, received their share of
homage. Remnants of the old Semitic zoolatry perpetuated themselves until
the end of paganism and even later. Frequently the gods were [117]represented standing erect on animals.
Thus the Dolichean Baal stood on a steer, and his spouse on a lion.
Around certain temples there were sacred parks, in which savage beasts
roamed at liberty,^[30] a
reminder of the time when they were considered divine. Two animals
especially were the objects of universal veneration, the pigeon and the
fish. Vagrant multitudes of pigeons received the traveler landing at
Ascalon,^[31] and they
played about the enclosures of all the temples of Astarte^[32] in flocks resembling
white whirlwinds. The pigeon belonged, properly speaking, to the goddess
of love, whose symbol it has remained above all to the people worshiping
that goddess.

The fish was sacred to Atargatis, who undoubtedly had been represented
in that shape at first, as Dagon always was.^[34] The fish were kept in ponds in the
proximity of the temples.^[35] A superstitious fear prevented people
from touching them, because the goddess punished the sacrilegious by
covering their bodies with ulcers and tumors.^[36] At certain mystic repasts, however,
the priests and initiates consumed the forbidden food in the belief that
they were absorbing the flesh of the divinity herself. That worship and
its practices, which were spread over Syria, probably suggested the
ichthus symbolism in the Christian period.^[37]

However, over this lower and primordial stratum that still cropped out
here and there, other less rudimentary beliefs had formed. Besides
inanimate objects and animals, the Syrian paganism worshiped personal
divinities especially. The character of the gods that were originally
adored by the Semitic tribes has been [118]ingeniously
reconstructed.^[38] Each
tribe had its Baal and Baalat who protected it and whom only its members
were permitted to worship. The name of Ba‘al, “master,”
summarizes the conception people had of him. In the first place he was
regarded as the sovereign of his votaries, and his position in regard to
them was that of an Oriental potentate towards his subjects; they were
his servants, or rather his slaves.^[39] The Baal was at the same time the
“master” or proprietor of the country in which he resided and which he
made fertile by causing springs to gush from its soil. Or his domain was
the firmament and he was the dominus caeli, whence he made the
waters fall to the roar of tempests. He was always united with a
celestial or earthly “queen” and, in the third place, he was the “lord”
or husband of the “lady” associated with him. The one represented the
male, the other the female principle; they were the authors of all
fecundity, and as a consequence the worship of the divine couple often
assumed a sensual and voluptuous character.

As a matter of fact, immorality was nowhere so flagrant as in the
temples of Astarte, whose female servants honored the goddess with
untiring ardor. In no country was sacred prostitution so developed as in
Syria, and in the Occident it was to be found practically only where the
Phœnicians had imported it, as on Mount Eryx. Those aberrations,
that were kept up until the end of paganism,^[40] probably have their explanation in the
primitive constitution of the Semitic tribe, and the religious custom
must have been originally one of the forms of exogamy, which compelled
the woman to unite herself first with a stranger.^[41] [119]

As a second blemish, the Semitic religions practised human immolations
longer than any other religion, sacrificing children and grown men in
order to please sanguinary gods. In spite of Hadrian’s prohibition of
those murderous offerings,^[42] they were maintained in certain
clandestine rites and in the lowest practices of magic, up to the fall of
the idols, and even later. They corresponded to the ideas of a period
during which the life of a captive or slave had no greater value than
that of an animal.

These sacred practices and many others, on which Lucian complacently
enlarges in his opuscule on the goddess of Hierapolis, daily revived the
habits of a barbarous past in the temples of Syria. Of all the
conceptions that had successively dominated the country, none had
completely disappeared. As in Egypt, beliefs of very different date and
origin coexisted, without any attempt to make them agree, or without
success when the task was undertaken. In these beliefs zoolatry,
litholatry and all the other nature worships outlived the savagery that
had created them. More than anywhere else the gods had remained the
chieftains of clans^[43]
because the tribal organizations of Syria were longer lived and more
developed than those of any other region. Under the empire many districts
were still subjected to the tribal régime and commanded by “ethnarchs” or
“phylarchs.”^[44]
Religion, which sacrificed the lives of the men and the honor of the
women to the divinity, had in many regards remained on the moral level of
unsocial and sanguinary tribes. Its obscene and atrocious rites called
forth exasperated indignation on the part of [120]the Roman conscience
when Heliogabalus attempted to introduce them into Italy with his Baal of
Emesa.

How, then, can one explain the fact that in spite of all, the Syrian
gods imposed themselves upon the Occident and made even the Cæsars accept
them? The reason is that the Semitic paganism can no more be judged by
certain revolting practices, that perpetuated in the heart of
civilization the barbarity and puerilities of an uncultivated society,
than the religion of the Nile can be so judged. As in the case of Egypt
we must distinguish between the sacerdotal religion and the infinitely
varied popular religion that was embodied in local customs. Syria
possessed a number of great sanctuaries in which an educated clergy
meditated and expatiated upon the nature of the divine beings and on the
meaning of traditions inherited from remote ancestors. As their own
interests demanded, that clergy constantly amended the sacred traditions
and modified their spirit when the letter was immutable, in order to make
them agree with the new aspirations of a more advanced period. They had
their mysteries and their initiates to whom they revealed a wisdom that
was above the vulgar beliefs of the masses.^[45]

Frequently we can draw diametrically opposite conclusions from the
same principle. In that manner the old idea of tabu, that seems to
have transformed the temples of Astarte into houses of debauchery, also
became the source of a severe code of morals. The Semitic tribes were
haunted with the fear of the tabu. A multitude of things were either
impure or sacred because, in the original confusion, those two notions
[121]had not been clearly differentiated. Man’s
ability to use the products of nature to satisfy his needs, was thus
limited by a number of prohibitions, restrictions and conditions. He who
touched a forbidden object was soiled and corrupted, his fellows did not
associate with him and he could no longer participate in the sacrifices.
In order to wipe out the blemish, he had recourse to ablutions and other
ceremonies known to the priests. Purity, that had originally been
considered simply physical, soon became ritualistic and finally
spiritual. Life was surrounded by a network of circumstances subject to
certain conditions, every violation of which meant a fall and demanded
penance. The anxiety to remain constantly in a state of holiness or
regain that state when it had been lost, filled one’s entire existence.
It was not peculiar to the Semitic tribes, but they ascribed a prime
importance to it.^[46] And
the gods, who necessarily possessed this quality in an eminent degree,
were holy beings (?????)^[47] par excellence.

In this way principles of conduct and dogmas of faith have frequently
been derived from instinctive and absurd old beliefs. All theological
doctrines that were accepted in Syria modified the prevailing ancient
conception of the Baals. But in our present state of knowledge it is very
difficult indeed to determine the shares that the various influences
contributed, from the conquests of Alexander to the Roman domination, to
make the Syrian paganism what it became under the Cæsars. The
civilization of the Seleucid empire is little known, and we cannot
determine what caused the alliance of Greek thought with the Semitic
traditions.^[48] The
religions of the neighboring nations [122]also had an undeniable
influence. Phœnicia and Lebanon remained moral tributaries of Egypt
long after they had liberated themselves from the suzerainty of the
Pharaohs. The theogony of Philo of Byblos took gods and myths from that
country, and at Heliopolis Hadad was honored “according to Egyptian
rather than Syrian rite.”^[49] The rigorous monotheism of the Jews,
who were dispersed over the entire country, must also have acted as an
active ferment of transformation.^[50] But it was Babylon that retained the
intellectual supremacy, even after its political ruin. The powerful
sacerdotal caste ruling it did not fall with the independence of the
country, and it survived the conquests of Alexander as it had previously
lived through the Persian domination. The researches of Assyriologists
have shown that its ancient worship persisted under the Seleucides, and
at the time of Strabo the “Chaldeans” still discussed cosmology and first
principles in the rival schools of Borsippa and Orchoë.^[51] The ascendancy of that erudite clergy
affected all surrounding regions; it was felt by Persia in the east,
Cappadocia in the north, but more than anywhere else by the Syrians, who
were connected with the Oriental Semites by bonds of language and blood.
Even after the Parthians had wrested the valley of the Euphrates from the
Seleucides, relations with the great temples of that region remained
uninterrupted. The plains of Mesopotamia, inhabited by races of like
origin, extended on both sides of an artificial border line; great
commercial roads followed the course of the two rivers flowing into the
Persian Gulf or cut across the desert, and the pilgrims came to Babylon,
as Lucian tells us, to perform their devotions to the Lady of Bambyce.^[52] [123]

Ever since the Captivity, constant spiritual relations had existed
between Judaism and the great religious metropolis. At the birth of
Christianity they manifested themselves in the rise of gnostic sects in
which the Semitic mythology formed strange combinations with Jewish and
Greek ideas and furnished the foundation for extravagant
superstructures.^[53]
Finally, during the decline of the empire, it was Babylon again from
which emanated Manicheism, the last form of idolatry received in the
Latin world. We can imagine how powerful the religious influence of that
country on the Syrian paganism must have been.

That influence manifested itself in various ways. First, it introduced
new gods. In this way Bel passed from the Babylonian pantheon into that
of Palmyra and was honored throughout northern Syria.^[54] It also caused ancient divinities to
be arranged in new groups. To the primitive couple of the Baal and the
Baalat a third member was added in order to form one of those triads
dears to Chaldean theology. This took place at Hierapolis as well as at
Heliopolis, and the three gods of the latter city, Hadad, Atargatis and
Simios, became Jupiter, Venus and Mercury in Latin inscriptions.^[55] Finally, and most
important, astrolatry wrought radical changes in the characters of the
celestial powers, and, as a further consequence, in the entire Roman
paganism. In the first place it gave them a second personality in
addition to their own nature. The sidereal myths superimposed themselves
upon the agrarian myths, and gradually obliterated them. Astrology, born
on the banks of the Euphrates, imposed itself in Egypt upon the haughty
and unapproachable clergy of the most conservative of all nations.^[56] Syria [124]received it
without reserve and surrendered unconditionally;^[57] numismatics and archeology as well as
literature prove this. King Antiochus of Commagene, for instance, who
died 34 B. C., built himself a monumental tomb on a spur of the Taurus,
in which he placed his horoscope, designed on a large bas-relief, beside
the images of his ancestral divinities.^[58]

The importance which the introduction of the Syrian religions into the
Occident has for us consists therefore in the fact that indirectly they
brought certain theological doctrines of the Chaldeans with them, just as
Isis and Serapis carried beliefs of old Egypt from Alexandria to the
Occident. The Roman empire received successively the religious tribute of
the two great nations that had formerly ruled the Oriental world. It is
characteristic that the god Bel whom Aurelian brought from Asia to set up
as the protector of his states, was in reality a Babylonian who had
emigrated to Palmyra,^[59]
a cosmopolitan center apparently predestined by virtue of its location to
become the intermediary between the civilizations of the Euphrates and
the Mediterranean.

The influence exercised by the speculations of the Chaldeans upon
Greco-Roman thought can be asserted positively, but cannot as yet be
strictly defined. It was at once philosophic and religious, literary and
popular. The entire neo-Platonist school used the names of those
venerable masters, but it cannot be determined how much it really owes to
them. A selection of poems that has often been quoted since the third
century, under the title of “Chaldaic Oracles” (?????
????????)
combines the ancient Hellenic theories with a fantastic [125]mysticism that
was certainly imported from the Orient. It is to Babylonia what the
literature of Hermes Trismegistus is to Egypt, and it is equally
difficult to determine the nature of the ingredients that the author put
into his sacred compositions. But at an earlier date the Syrian religions
had spread far and wide in the Occident ideas conceived on the distant
banks of the Euphrates. I shall try to indicate briefly what their share
in the pagan syncretism was.

We have seen that the gods from Alexandria gained souls especially by
the promise of blessed immortality. Those from Syria must also have
satisfied doubts tormenting all the minds of that time. As a matter of
fact the old Semitic ideas on man’s fate in after-life were little
comforting. We know how sad, dull and hopeless their conception of life
after death was. The dead descended into a subterranean realm where they
led a miserable existence, a weak reflection of the one they had lost;
since they were subject to wants and suffering, they had to be supported
by funeral offerings placed on their sepulchers by their descendants.
Those ancient beliefs and customs were found also in primitive Greece and
Italy.

This rudimentary eschatology, however, gave way to quite a different
conception, one that was closely related to the Chaldean astrology, and
which spread over the Occident towards the end of the republic. According
to this doctrine the soul returned to heaven after death, to live there
among the divine stars. While it remained on earth it was subject to all
the bitter necessities of a destiny determined by the revolutions of the
stars; but when it ascended into the upper regions, it escaped that fate
and even the limits of time; [126]it shared equally in the immortality of
the sidereal gods that surrounded it.^[60] In the opinion of some, the soul was
attracted by the rays of the sun, and after passing through the moon,
where it was purified, it lost itself in the shining star of day.^[61] Another more purely
astrological theory, that was undoubtedly a development of the former,
taught that the soul descended to earth from the heights of heaven by
passing through the spheres of the seven planets. During its passage it
acquired the dispositions and qualities proper to each planet. After
death it returned to its original abode by the same route. To get from
one sphere to another, it had to pass a door guarded by a commandant
(?????).^[62] Only the souls of
initiates knew the password that made those incorruptible guardians
yield, and under the conduct of a psychopompus^[63] they ascended safely from zone to
zone. As the soul rose it divested itself of the passions and qualities
it had acquired on its descent to the earth as though they were garments,
and, free from sensuality, it penetrated into the eighth heaven to enjoy
everlasting happiness as a subtle essence.

Perhaps this doctrine, undoubtedly of Babylonian origin, was not
generally accepted by the Syrian religions, as it was by the mysteries of
Mithra, but these religions, impregnated with astrology, certainly
propagated the belief that the souls of those worshipers that had led
pious lives were elevated to the heights of heaven, where an apotheosis
made them the equals of the luminous gods.^[64] Under the empire this doctrine slowly
supplanted all others; the Elysian fields, which the votaries of Isis and
Serapis still located in [127]the depths of the earth, were transferred
into the ether bathing the fixed stars,^[65] and the underworld was thereafter
reserved for the wicked who had not been allowed to pass through the
celestial gates.

The sublime regions occupied by the purified souls were also the abode
of the supreme god.^[66]

When it transformed the ideas on the destiny of man, astrology also
modified those relating to the nature of the divinity. In this matter the
Syrian religions were especially original; for even if the Alexandrian
mysteries offered man just as comforting prospects of immortality as the
eschatology of their rivals, they were backward in building up a
commensurate theology. To the Semitic races belongs the honor of having
reformed the ancient fetichism most thoroughly. Their base and narrow
conceptions of early times to which we can trace their existence, broaden
and rise until they form a kind of monotheism.

As we have seen, the Syrian tribes worshiped a god of lightning,^[67] like all primitive
races. That god opened the reservoirs of the firmament to let the rain
fall and split the giant trees of the woods with the double ax that
always remained his emblem.^[68] When the progress of astronomy removed
the constellations to incommensurable distances, the “Baal of the
Heavens” (Ba‘al šamîn) had to grow in majesty.
Undoubtedly at the time of the Achemenides, he was connected with the
Ahura-Mazda of the Persians, the ancient god of the vault of heaven, who
had become the highest physical and moral power, and this connection
helped to transform the old genius of thunder.^[69] People continued to worship the
material heaven in him; under the Romans he was still simply called [128]Caelus, as well as “Celestial
Jupiter” (Jupiter Caelestis, ????

????????),^[70] but it was a heaven
studied by a sacred science that venerated its harmonious mechanism. The
Seleucides represented him on their coins with a crescent over his
forehead and carrying a sun with seven rays, to symbolize the fact that
he presided over the course of the stars;^[71] or else he was shown with the two
Dioscuri at his side, heroes who enjoyed life and suffered death in turn,
according to the Greek myth, and who had become the symbols of the two
celestial hemispheres. Religious uranography placed the residence of the
supreme divinity in the most elevated region of the world, fixing its
abode in the zone most distant from the earth, above the planets and the
fixed stars. This fact was intended to be expressed by the term Most-High
(???????)
applied to the Syrian Baals as well as to Jehovah.^[72] According to this cosmic religion, the
Most High resided in the immense orb that contained the spheres of all
the stars and embraced the entire universe which was subject to his
domination. The Latins translated the name of this “Hypsistos” by
Jupiter summus exsuperantissimus^[73] to indicate his preeminence over all
divine beings.

As a matter of fact, his power was infinite. The primary postulate of
the Chaldean astrology was that all phenomena and events of this world
were necessarily determined by sidereal influence. The changes of nature,
as well as the dispositions of men, were controlled according to fate, by
the divine energies that resided in the heavens. In other words, the gods
were almighty; they were the masters of destiny that governed the
universe absolutely. The notion of their [129]omnipotence resulted
from the development of the ancient autocracy with which the Baals were
credited. As we have stated, they were conceived after the image of an
Asiatic monarch, and the religious terminology was evidently intended to
display the humility of their priests toward them. In Syria we find
nothing analogous to what existed in Egypt, where the priest thought he
could compel the gods to act, and even dared to threaten them.^[74] The distance separating
the human and the divine always was much greater with the Semitic tribes,
and all that astrology did was to emphasize the distance more strongly by
giving it a doctrinal foundation and a scientific appearance. In the
Latin world the Asiatic religions propagated the conception of the
absolute and illimitable sovereignty of God over the earth. Apuleius
calls the Syrian goddess omnipotens et omniparens, “mistress and
mother of all things.”^[75]

The observation of the starry skies, moreover, had led the Chaldeans
to the notion of a divine eternity. The constancy of the sidereal
revolutions inspired the conclusion as to their perpetuity. The stars
follow their ever uncompleted courses unceasingly; as soon as the end of
their journey is reached, they resume without stopping the road already
covered, and the cycles of years in which their movements take place
extend from the indefinite past into the indefinite future.^[76] Thus a clergy of
astronomers necessarily conceived Baal, “Lord of the heavens,” as the
“Master of eternity” or “He whose name is praised through all eternity”^[77]—titles which
constantly recur in Semitic inscriptions. The divine stars did not die,
like Osiris or Attis; whenever they seemed to weaken, they were [130]born to a
new life and always remained invincible (invicti).

Together with the mysteries of the Syrian Baals, this theological
notion penetrated into Occidental paganism.^[78] Whenever an inscription to a deus
aeternus is found in the Latin provinces it refers to a Syrian
sidereal god, and it is a remarkable fact that this epithet did not enter
the ritual before the second century, at the time the worship of the god
Heaven (Caelus)^[79] was propagated. That the philosophers
had long before placed the first cause beyond the limits of time was of
no consequence, for their theories had not penetrated into the popular
consciousness nor modified the traditional formulary of the liturgies. To
the people the divinities were beings more beautiful, more vigorous, and
more powerful than man, but born like him, and exempt only from old age
and death, the immortals of old Homer. The Syrian priests diffused the
idea of a god without beginning and without end through the Roman world,
and thus contributed, along lines parallel with the Jewish proselytism,
to lend the authority of dogma to what had previously been only a
metaphysical theory.

The Baals were universal as well as eternal, and their power became
limitless in regard to space as it had been in regard to time. These two
principles were correlative. The title of “mar‘olam” which
the Baals bore occasionally may be translated by “Lord of the universe,”
or by “Lord of eternity,” and efforts certainly have been made to claim
the twofold quality for them.^[80] Peopled with divine constellations and
traversed by planets assimilated to the inhabitants of Olympus, the
heavens determined the destinies of the [131]entire human race by
their movements, and the whole earth was subject to the changes produced
by their revolutions.^[81]

Consequently the old Ba‘al šamîn was necessarily
transformed into a universal power. Of course, even under the Cæsars
there existed in Syria traces of a period when the local god was the
fetich of a clan and could be worshiped by the members of that clan only,
a period when strangers were admitted to his altars only after a ceremony
of initiation, as brothers, or at least as guests and clients.^[82] But from the period
when our knowledge of the history of the great divinities of Heliopolis
or Hierapolis begins, these divinities were regarded as common to all
Syrians, and crowds of pilgrims came from distant countries to obtain
grace in the holy cities. As protectors of the entire human race the
Baals gained proselytes in the Occident, and their temples witnessed
gatherings of devotees of every race and nationality. In this respect the
Baals were distinctly different from Jehovah.

The essence of paganism implies that the nature of a divinity broadens
as the number of its votaries increases. Everybody credits it with some
new quality, and its character becomes more complex. As it gains in power
it also has a tendency to dominate its companion gods and to concentrate
their functions in itself. To escape this threatening absorption, these
gods must be of a very sharply defined personality and of a very original
character. The vague Semitic deities, however, were devoid of a
well-defined individuality. We fail to find among them a well organized
society of immortals, like that of the Greek Olympus where each divinity
had its own features and its own particular [132]life full of adventures
and experiences, and each followed its special calling to the exclusion
of all the others. One was a physician, another a poet, a third a
shepherd, hunter or blacksmith. The Greek inscriptions found in Syria
are, in this regard, eloquently concise.^[83] Usually they have the name of Zeus
accompanied by some simple epithet: kurios (??????,

Lord), aniketos (????????,
invincible), megistos (????????,
greatest). All these Baals seem to have been brothers. They were
personalities of indeterminate outline and interchangeable powers and
were readily confused.

At the time the Romans came into contact with Syria, it had already
passed through a period of syncretism similar to the one we can study
with greater precision in the Latin world. The ancient exclusiveness and
the national particularism had been overcome. The Baals of the great
sanctuaries had enriched themselves with the virtues^[84] of their neighbors; then, always
following the same process, they had taken certain features from foreign
divinities brought over by the Greek conquerors. In that manner their
characters had become indefinable, they performed incompatible functions
and possessed irreconcilable attributes. An inscription found in
Britain^[85] assimilates
the Syrian goddess to Peace, Virtue, Ceres, Cybele, and even to the sign
of the Virgin.

In conformity with the law governing the development of paganism, the
Semitic gods tended to become pantheistic because they comprehended all
nature and were identified with it. The various deities were nothing but
different aspects under which the supreme and infinite being manifested
itself. Although Syria [133]remained deeply and even coarsely
idolatrous in practice, in theory it approached monotheism or, better
perhaps, henotheism. By an absurd but curious etymology the name Hadad
has been explained as “one, one” (‘ad ‘ad).^[86]

Everywhere the narrow and divided polytheism showed a confused
tendency to elevate itself into a superior synthesis, but in Syria
astrology lent the firmness of intelligent conviction to notions that
were vague elsewhere. The Chaldean cosmology, which deified all elements
but ascribed a predominant influence to the stars, ruled the entire
Syrian syncretism. It considered the world as a great organism which was
kept intact by an intimate solidarity, and whose parts continually
influenced each other.

The ancient Semites believed therefore that the divinity could be
regarded as embodied in the waters, in the fire of the lightning, in
stones or plants. But the most powerful gods were the constellations and
the planets that governed the course of time and of all things.

The sun was supreme because it led the starry choir, because it was
the king and guide of all the other luminaries and therefore the master
of the whole world.^[87]
The astronomical doctrines of the “Chaldeans” taught that this
incandescent globe alternately attracted and repelled the other sidereal
bodies, and from this principle the Oriental theologians had concluded
that it must determine the entire life of the universe, inasmuch as it
regulated the movements of the heavens. As the “intelligent light” it was
especially the creator of human reason, and just as it repelled and
attracted the planets in turn, it was believed [134]to send out souls, at
the time of birth, into the bodies they animated, and to cause them to
return to its bosom after death by means of a series of emissions and
absorptions.

Later on, when the seat of the Most-High was placed beyond the limits
of the universe, the radiant star that gives us light became the visible
image of the supreme power, the source of all life and all intelligence,
the intermediary between an inaccessible god and mankind, and the one
object of special homage from the multitude.^[88]

Solar pantheism, which grew up among the Syrians of the Hellenistic
period as a result of the influence of Chaldean astrolatry, imposed
itself upon the whole Roman world under the empire. Our very rapid sketch
of the constitution of that theological system shows incidentally the
last form assumed by the pagan idea of God. In this matter Syria was
Rome’s teacher and predecessor. The last formula reached by the religion
of the pagan Semites and in consequence by that of the Romans, was a
divinity unique, almighty, eternal, universal and ineffable, that
revealed itself throughout nature, but whose most splendid and most
energetic manifestation was the sun. To arrive at the Christian
monotheism^[89] only one
final tie had to be broken, that is to say, this supreme being residing
in a distant heaven had to be removed beyond the world. So we see once
more in this instance, how the propagation of the Oriental cults levelled
the roads for Christianity and heralded its triumph. Although astrology
was always fought by the church, it had nevertheless prepared the minds
for the dogmas the church was to proclaim.

[135]

PERSIA.

The dominant historical fact in western Asia in ancient times was the
opposition between the Greco-Roman and Persian civilizations, which was
itself only an episode in the great struggle that was constantly in
progress between the Orient and the Occident in those countries. In the
first enthusiasm of their conquests, the Persians extended their dominion
as far as the cities of Ionia and the islands of the Ægean Sea, but their
power of expansion was broken at the foot of the Acropolis. One hundred
and fifty years later, Alexander destroyed the empire of the Achemenides
and carried Hellenic culture to the banks of the Indus. After two and a
half centuries the Parthians under the Arsacid dynasty advanced to the
borders of Syria, and Mithradates Eupator, an alleged descendant of
Darius, penetrated to the heart of Greece at the head of his Persian
nobility from Pontus.

After the flood came the ebb. The reconstructed Roman empire of
Augustus soon reduced Armenia, Cappadocia and even the kingdom of the
Parthians to a kind of vassalage. But after the middle of the third
century the Sassanid dynasty restored the power of Persia and revived its
ancient pretensions. From that time until the triumph of Islam it was one
long [136]duel between the two rival states, in
which now one was victorious and now the other, while neither was ever
decisively beaten. An ambassador of king Narses to Galerius called these
two states “the two eyes of the human race.”^[1]

The “invincible” star of the Persians might wane and vanish, but only
to reappear in greater glory. The political and military strength
displayed by this nation through the centuries was the result of its high
intellectual and moral qualities. Its original culture was always hostile
to such an assimilation as that experienced in different degrees by the
Aryans of Phrygia, the Semites of Syria and the Hamites of Egypt. Hellenism and
Iranism—if I may use that term—were two equally noble
adversaries but differently educated, and they always remained separated
by instinctive racial hostility as much as by hereditary opposition of
interests.

Nevertheless, when two civilizations are in contact for more than a
thousand years, numerous exchanges are bound to occur. The influence
exercised by Hellenism as far as the uplands of Central Asia has
frequently been pointed out,^[2] but the prestige retained by Persia
throughout the ages and the extent of area influenced by its energy has
not perhaps been shown with as much accuracy. For even if Mazdaism was
the highest expression of Persian genius and its influence in consequence
mainly religious, yet it was not exclusively so.

After the fall of the Achemenides the memory of their empire long
haunted Alexander’s successors. Not only did the dynasties which claimed
to be descended from Darius, and which ruled over Pontus, [137]Cappadocia and
Commagene, cultivate political traditions that brought them nearer to
their supposed ancestors, but those traditions were partly adopted even
by the Seleucides and the Ptolemies, the legitimate heirs of the ancient
masters of Asia. People were fond of recalling the ideals of past
grandeur and sought to realize them in the present. In that manner
several institutions were transmitted to the Roman emperors through the
agency of the Asiatic monarchies. The institution of the amici
Augusti, for instance, the appointed friends and intimate counselors
of the rulers, adopted in Italy the forms in use at the court of the
Diadochi, who had themselves imitated the ancient organization of the
palace of the Great Kings.^[3]

The custom of carrying the sacred fire before the Cæsars as an emblem
of the perpetuity of their power, dated back to Darius and with other
Persian traditions passed on to the dynasties that divided the empire of
Alexander. There is a striking similarity not only between the observance
of the Cæsars and the practice of the Oriental monarchs, but also between
the beliefs that they held. The continuity of the political and religious
tradition cannot be doubted.^[4] As the court ceremonial and the internal
history of the Hellenistic kingdoms become better known we shall be able
to outline with greater precision the manner in which the divided and
diminished heritage of the Achemenides, after generations of rulers, was
finally left to those Occidental sovereigns who called themselves the
sacrosanct lords of the world as Artaxerxes had done.^[5] It may not be generally known that the
habit of welcoming friends with a kiss was a ceremony in the [138]Oriental
formulary before it became a familiar custom in Europe.^[6]

It is very difficult to trace the hidden paths by which pure ideas
travel from one people to another. But certain it is that at the
beginning of our era certain Mazdean conceptions had already spread
outside of Asia. The extent of the influence of Parseeism upon the
beliefs of Israel under the Achemenides cannot be determined, but its
existence is undeniable.^[7]

Some of its doctrines, as for instance those relating to angels and
demons, the end of the world and the final resurrection, were propagated
everywhere in the basin of the Mediterranean as a consequence of the
diffusion of Jewish colonies.

On the other hand, ever since the conquests of Cyrus and Darius, the
active attention of the Greeks had been drawn toward the doctrines and
religious practices of the new masters of the Orient.^[8] A number of legends representing
Pythagoras, Democritus and other philosophers as disciples of the magi
prove the prestige of that powerful sacerdotal class. The Macedonian
conquest, which placed the Greeks in direct relations with numerous
votaries of Mazdaism, gave a new impetus to works treating that religion,
and the great scientific movement inaugurated by Aristotle caused many
scholars to look into the doctrines taught by the Persian subjects of the
Seleucides. We know from a reliable source that the works catalogued
under the name of Zoroaster in the library of Alexandria contained two
million lines. This immense body of sacred literature was bound to
attract the attention of scholars and to call forth the reflections of
philosophers. The dim and dubious science that reached [139]even the lower
classes under the name of “magic” was to a considerable extent of Persian
origin, as its name indicates, and along with physician’s recipes and
thaumaturgic processes it imparted some theological doctrines in a
confused fashion.^[9]

This explains why certain institutions and beliefs of the Persians had
found imitators and adepts in the Greco-Oriental world long before the
Romans had gained a foothold in Asia. Their influence was indirect,
secret, frequently indiscernible, but it was certain. The most active
agencies in the diffusion of Mazdaism as of Judaism seem to have been
colonies of believers who had emigrated far from the mother country.
There was a Persian dispersion similar to that of the Israelites.
Communities of magi were established not only in eastern Asia Minor, but
in Galatia, Phrygia, Lydia and even in Egypt. Everywhere they remained
attached to their customs and beliefs with persistent tenacity.^[10]

When Rome extended her conquests into Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, the
influence of Persia became much more direct. Superficial contact with the
Mazdean populations began with the wars against Mithradates, but it did
not become frequent and lasting until the first century of our era.
During that century the empire gradually extended its limits to the upper
Euphrates, and thereby absorbed all the uplands of Anatolia and Commagene
south of the Taurus. The native dynasties which had fostered the secular
isolation of those distant countries in spite of the state of vassalage
to which they had been reduced disappeared one after another. The
Flavians constructed through those hitherto almost inaccessible regions
an immense network [140]of roads that were as important to Rome as
the railways of Turkestan or of Siberia are to modern Russia. At the same
time Roman legions camped on the banks of the Euphrates and in the
mountains of Armenia. Thus all the little Mazdean centers scattered in
Cappadocia and Pontus were forced into constant relation with the Latin
world, and on the other hand the disappearance of the buffer states made
the Roman and Parthian empires neighboring powers in Trajan’s time
(98-117 A. D.).

From these conquests and annexations in Asia Minor and Syria dates the
sudden propagation of the Persian mysteries of Mithra in the Occident.
For even though a congregation of their votaries seems to have existed at
Rome under Pompey as early as 67 B. C., the real diffusion of the
mysteries began with the Flavians toward the end of the first century of
our era. They became more and more prominent under the Antonines and the
Severi, and remained the most important cult of paganism until the end of
the fourth century. Through them as a medium the original doctrines of
Mazdaism were widely propagated in every Latin province, and in order to
appreciate the influence of Persia upon the Roman creeds, we must now
give them our careful attention.

However, it must be said that the growing influence of Persia did not
manifest itself solely in the religious sphere. After the accession of
the Sassanid dynasty (228 A. D.) the country once more became conscious
of its originality, again resumed the cultivation of national traditions,
reorganized the hierarchy of its official clergy and recovered the
political cohesion which had been wanting under the Parthians. It felt
[141]and showed its superiority over the
neighboring empire that was then torn by factions, thrown upon the mercy
of manifestoes, and ruined economically and morally. The studies now
being made in the history of that period show more and more that
debilitated Rome had become the imitator of Persia.

In the opinion of contemporaries the court of Diocletian, prostrating
itself before a master who was regarded as the equal of God, with its
complicated hierarchy and crowd of eunuchs that disgraced it, was an
imitation of the court of the Sassanides. Galerius declared in
unmistakable terms that Persian absolutism must be introduced in his
empire,^[11] and the
ancient Cæsarism founded on the will of the people seemed about to be
transformed into a sort of caliphate.

Recent discoveries also throw light upon a powerful artistic school
that developed in the Parthian empire and later in that of the Sassanides
and which grew up independently of the Greek centers of production. Even
if it took certain models from the Hellenic sculpture or architecture, it
combined them with Oriental motives into a decoration of exuberant
richness. Its field of influence extended far beyond Mesopotamia into the
south of Syria where it has left monuments of unequalled splendor. The
radiance of that brilliant center undoubtedly illuminated Byzantium, the
barbarians of the north, and even China.^[12]

The Persian Orient, then, exerted a dominant influence on the
political institutions and artistic tastes of the Romans as well as on
their ideas and beliefs. The propagation of the religion of Mithra, which
always proudly proclaimed its Persian origin, was accompanied by a number
of parallel influences of the [142]people from which it had issued. Never,
not even during the Mohammedan invasions, had Europe a narrower escape
from becoming Asiatic than when Diocletian officially recognized Mithra
as the protector of the reconstructed empire.^[13] The time when that god seemed to be
establishing his authority over the entire civilized world was one of the
critical phases in the moral history of antiquity. An irresistible
invasion of Semitic and Mazdean conceptions nearly succeeded in
permanently overwhelming the Occidental spirit. Even after Mithra had
been vanquished and expelled from Christianized Rome, Persia did not
disarm. The work of conversion in which Mithraism had failed was taken up
by Manicheism, the heir to its cardinal doctrines, and until the Middle
Ages Persian dualism continued to cause bloody struggles in the ancient
Roman provinces.

Just as we cannot understand the character of the mysteries of Isis
and Serapis without studying the circumstances accompanying their
creation by the Ptolemies, so we cannot appreciate the causes of the
power attained by the mysteries of Mithra, unless we go far back to their
origin.

Here the subject is unfortunately more obscure. The ancient authors
tell us almost nothing about the origin of Mithra. One point on which
they all agree is that he was a Persian god, but this we should know from
the Avesta even if they had not mentioned it. But how did he get to Italy
from the Persian uplands?

Two scant lines of Plutarch are the most explicit document we have on
the subject. He narrates incidentally that the pirates from Asia Minor
vanquished [143]by Pompey in 67 performed strange
sacrifices on Olympus, a volcano of Lycia, and practiced occult rites,
among others those of Mithra which, he says, “exist to the present day
and were first taught by them.”^[14] Lactantius Placidus, a commentator on
Statius and a mediocre authority, also tells us that the cult passed from
the Persians to the Phrygians and from the Phrygians to the Romans.^[15]

These two authors agree then in fixing in Asia Minor the origin of
this Persian religion that later spread over the Occident, and in fact
various indications direct us to that country. The frequency of the name
Mithradates, for instance, in the dynasties of Pontus, Cappadocia,
Armenia and Commagene, connected with the Achemenides by fictitious
genealogies, shows the devotion of those kings to Mithra.

As we see, the Mithraism that was revealed to the Romans at the time
of Pompey had established itself in the Anatolian monarchies during the
preceding period, which was an epoch of intense moral and religious
unrest. Unfortunately we have no monuments of that period of its history.
The absence of direct testimony on the development of Mazdean sects
during the last three centuries before our era prevents us from gaining
exact knowledge of the Parseeism of Asia Minor.

None of the temples dedicated to Mithra in that religion have been
examined.^[16] The
inscriptions mentioning his name are as yet few and insignificant, so
that it is only by indirect means that we can arrive at conclusions about
this primitive cult. The only way to explain its distinguishing features
in the Occident is to study the environment in which it originated.

During the domination of the Achemenides eastern [144]Asia Minor was
colonized by the Persians. The uplands of Anatolia resembled those of
Persia in climate and soil, and were especially adapted to the raising of
horses.^[17] In Cappadocia
and even in Pontus the aristocracy who owned the soil belonged to the
conquering nation. Under the various governments which followed after the
death of Alexander, those landlords remained the real masters of the
country, chieftains of clans governing the canton where they had their
domains, and, on the outskirts of Armenia at least, they retained the
hereditary title of satraps through all political vicissitudes until the
time of Justinian, thus recalling their Persian origin.^[18] This military and feudal aristocracy
furnished Mithradates Eupator a considerable number of the officers who
helped him in his long defiance of Rome, and later it defended the
threatened independence of Armenia against the enterprises of the Cæsars.
These warriors worshiped Mithra as the protecting genius of their arms,
and this is the reason why Mithra always, even in the Latin world,
remained the “invincible” god, the tutelary deity of armies, held in
special honor by warriors.

Besides the Persian nobility a Persian clergy had also become
established in the peninsula. It officiated in famous temples, at Zela in
Pontus and Hierocæsarea in Lydia. Magi, called magousaioi or
pyrethes (firelighters) were scattered over the Levant. Like the
Jews, they retained their national customs and traditional rites with
such scrupulous loyalty that Bardesanes of Edessa cited them as an
example in his attempt to refute the doctrines of astrology and to show
that a nation can retain the same customs in different climates.^[19] We know their religion
sufficiently to be [145]certain that the Syrian author had good
grounds for attributing that conservative spirit to them. The sacrifices
of the pyrethes which Strabo observed in Cappadocia recall all the
peculiarities of the Avestan liturgy. The same prayers were recited
before the altar of the fire while the priest held the sacred fasces
(bareçman); the same offerings were made of milk, oil and honey;
and the same precautions were taken to prevent the priest’s breath from
polluting the divine flame. Their gods were practically those of orthodox
Mazdaism. They worshiped Ahura Mazda, who had to them remained a divinity
of the sky as Zeus and Jupiter had been originally. Below him they
venerated deified abstractions (such as Vohumano, “good mind,” and
Ameretat, “immortality”) from which the religion of Zoroaster made its
Amshaspends, the archangels surrounding the Most High.^[20] Finally they sacrificed to the spirits
of nature, the Yazatas: for instance, Anahita or Anaites the goddess of
the waters—that made fertile the fields; Atar, the personification
of fire; and especially Mithra, the pure genius of light.

Thus the basis of the religion of the magi of Asia Minor was Mazdaism,
somewhat changed from that of the Avesta, and in certain respects holding
closer to the primitive nature worship of the Aryans, but nevertheless a
clearly characterized and distinctive Mazdaism, which was to remain the
most solid foundation for the greatness of the mysteries of Mithra in the
Occident.

Recent discoveries^[21]
of bilingual inscriptions have succeeded in establishing the fact that
the language used, or at least written, by the Persian colonies of Asia
Minor was not their ancient Aryan idiom, but [146]Aramaic, which was a
Semitic dialect. Under the Achemenides this was the diplomatic and
commercial language of all countries west of the Tigris. In Cappadocia
and Armenia it remained the literary and probably also the liturgical
language until it was slowly supplanted by Greek during the Hellenistic
period. The very name magousaioi (??????????)

given to the magi in those countries is an exact transcription of a
Semitic plural.^[22] This
phenomenon, surprising at first sight, is explained by the history of the
magousaioi who emigrated to Asia Minor. They did not come there
directly from Persepolis or Susa, but from Mesopotamia. Their religion
had been deeply influenced by the speculations of the powerful clergy
officiating in the temples of Babylon. The learned theology of the
Chaldeans imposed itself on the primitive Mazdaism, which was a
collection of traditions and rites rather than a body of doctrines. The
divinities of the two religions became identified, their legends
connected, and the Semitic astrology, the result of long continued
scientific observations, superimposed itself on the naturalistic myths of
the Persians. Ahura Mazda was assimilated to Bel, Anahita to Ishtar, and
Mithra to Shamash, the solar god. For that reason Mithra was commonly
called Sol invictus in the Roman mysteries, and an abstruse and a
complicated astronomic symbolism was always part of the teachings
revealed to candidates for initiation and manifested itself also in the
artistic embellishments of the temple.

In connection with a cult from Commagene we can observe rather closely
how the fusion of Parseeism with Semitic and Anatolian creeds took place,
because [147]in those regions the form of religious
transformations was at all times syncretic. On a mountain top in the
vicinity of a town named Doliche, a deity was worshiped who after a
number of transformations became a Jupiter Protector of the Roman armies.
Originally this god, who was believed to have discovered the use of iron,
seems to have been brought to Commagene by a tribe of blacksmiths, the
Chalybes, who had come from the north.^[23] He was represented standing on a steer
and holding in his hand a two-edged ax, an ancient symbol venerated in
Crete during the Mycenean age and found also at Labranda in Caria and all
over Asia Minor.^[24] The
ax symbolized the god’s mastery over the lightning which splits asunder
the trees of the forest amidst the din of storms. Once established on
Syrian soil, this genius of thunder became identified with some local
Baal and his cult took up all the Semitic features. After the conquests
of Cyrus and the founding of the Persian domination, this “Lord of the
heavens” was readily confounded with Ahura Mazda, who was likewise “the
full circle of heaven,” according to a definition of Herodotus,^[25] and whom the Persians
also worshiped on mountain tops. When a half Persian, half Hellenic
dynasty succeeded Alexander in Commagene, this Baal became a Zeus
Oromasdes (????

?????????,
Ahura Mazda) residing in the sublime ethereal regions. A Greek
inscription speaks of the celestial thrones “on which this supreme
divinity receives the souls of its worshipers.”^[26] In the Latin countries “Jupiter
Caelus” remained at the head of the Mazdean pantheon,^[27] and in all the provinces the temples
of [148]“Jupiter Dolichenus” were erected beside
those of Mithra, and the two remained in the closest relations.^[28]

The same series of transformations took place elsewhere with a number
of other gods.^[29] The
Mithra worship was thus formed, in the main, by a combination of Persian
beliefs with Semitic theology, incidentally including certain elements
from the native cults of Asia Minor. The Greeks later translated the
names of the Persian divinities into their language and imposed certain
forms of their mysteries on the Mazdean cult.^[30] Hellenic art lent to the Yazatas that
idealized form in which it liked to represent the immortals, and
philosophy, especially that of the Stoics, endeavored to discover its own
physical and metaphysical theories in the traditions of the magi. But in
spite of all these accommodations, adaptations and interpretations, Mithraism always
remained in substance a Mazdaism blended with Chaldeanism, that is to
say, essentially a barbarian religion. It certainly was far less
Hellenized than the Alexandrian cult of Isis and Serapis, or even that of
the Great Mother of Pessinus. For that reason it always seemed
unacceptable to the Greek world, from which it continued to be almost
completely excluded. Even language furnishes a curious proof of that
fact. Greek contains a number of theophorous (????????,

god-bearing) names formed from those of Egyptian or Phrygian gods, like
Serapion, Metrodoros, Metrophilos—Isidore is in use at the present
day—but all known derivations of Mithra are of barbarian formation.
The Greeks never admitted the god of their hereditary enemies, and the
great centers of Hellenic [149]civilization escaped his influence and he
theirs.^[31] Mithraism
passed directly from Asia into the Latin world.

There it spread with lightning rapidity from the time it was first
introduced. When the progressive march of the Romans toward the Euphrates
enabled them to investigate the sacred trust transmitted by Persia to the
magi of Asia Minor, and when they became acquainted with the Mazdean
beliefs which had matured in the seclusion of the Anatolian mountains,
they adopted them with enthusiasm. The Persian cult was spread by the
soldiers along the entire length of the frontiers towards the end of the
first century and left numerous traces around the camps of the Danube and
the Rhine, near the stations along the wall of Britain, and in the
vicinity of the army posts scattered along the borders of the Sahara or
in the valleys of the Asturias. At the same time the Asiatic merchants
introduced it in the ports of the Mediterranean, along the great
waterways and roads, and in all commercial cities. It also possessed
missionaries in the Oriental slaves who were to be found everywhere,
engaging in every pursuit, employed in the public service as well as in
domestic work, in the cultivation of land as well as in financial and
mining enterprises, and above all in the imperial service, where they
filled the offices.

Soon this foreign god gained the favor of high functionaries and of
the sovereign himself. At the end of the second century Commodus was
initiated into the mysteries, a conversion that had a tremendous effect.
A hundred years later Mithra’s power was such that at one time he seemed
about to eclipse both Oriental and Occidental rivals and to dominate the
[150]entire Roman world. In the year 307
Diocletian, Galerius and Licinius met in a solemn interview at Carnuntum
on the Danube and dedicated a sanctuary there to Mithra, “the protector
of their empire” (fautori imperii sui).^[32]

In previous works on the mysteries of Mithra we have endeavored to
assign causes for the enthusiasm that attracted humble plebeians and
great men of the world to the altars of this barbarian god. We shall not
repeat here what any one who has the curiosity may read either in a large
or a small book according to his preferences,^[33] but we must consider the problem from
a different point of view. Of all Oriental religions the Persian cult was
the last to reach the Romans. We shall inquire what new principle it
contained; to what inherent qualities it owed its superiority; and
through what characteristics it remained distinct in the conflux of
creeds of all kinds that were struggling for supremacy in the world at
that time.

The originality and value of the Persian religion lay not in its
doctrines regarding the nature of the celestial gods. Without doubt
Parseeism is of all pagan religions the one that comes closest to
monotheism, for it elevates Ahura Mazda high above all other celestial
spirits. But the doctrines of Mithraism are not those of Zoroaster. What
it received from Persia was chiefly its mythology and ritual; its
theology, which was thoroughly saturated with Chaldean erudition,
probably did not differ noticeably from the Syrian. At the head of the
divine hierarchy it placed as first cause an abstraction, deified Time,
the Zervan Akarana of the Avesta. This divinity regulated the revolutions
of the stars and in consequence was the absolute master of [151]all things.
Ahura Mazda, whose throne was in the heavens, had become the equivalent
of Ba‘al Samin, and even before the magi the Semites had
introduced into the Occident the worship of the sun, the source of all
energy and light. Babylonian astrology and astrolatry inspired the
theories of the mithreums as well as of the Semitic temples, a fact that
explains the intimate connection of the two cults. This half religious,
half scientific system which was not peculiarly Persian nor original to
Mithraism was not the reason for the adoption of that worship by the
Roman world.

Neither did the Persian mysteries win the masses by their liturgy.
Undoubtedly their secret ceremonies performed in mountain caves, or at
any rate in the darkness of the underground crypts, were calculated to
inspire awe. Participation in the liturgical meals gave rise to moral
comfort and stimulation. By submitting to a sort of baptism the votaries
hoped to expiate their sins and regain an untroubled conscience. But the
sacred feasts and purifying ablutions connected with the same spiritual
hopes are found in other Oriental cults, and the magnificent suggestive
ritual of the Egyptian clergy certainly was more impressive than that of
the magi. The mythic drama performed in the grottoes of the Persian god
and culminating in the immolation of a steer who was considered as the
creator and rejuvenator of the earth, must have seemed less important and
affecting than the suffering and joy of Isis seeking and reviving the
mutilated body of her husband, or than the moaning and jubilation of
Cybele mourning over and reviving her lover Attis.

But Persia introduced dualism as a fundamental principle in religion.
It was this that distinguished [152]Mithraism from other sects and inspired
its dogmatic theology and ethics, giving them a rigor and firmness
unknown to Roman paganism. It considered the universe from an entirely
new point of view and at the same time provided a new goal in life.

Of course, if we understand by dualism the antithesis of mind and
matter, of reason and intuition, it appeared at a considerably earlier
period in Greek philosophy,^[34] where it was one of the leading ideas
of neo-Pythagoreanism and of Philo’s system. But the distinguishing
feature of the doctrine of the magi is the fact that it deified the evil
principle, set it up as a rival to the supreme deity, and taught that
both had to be worshiped. This system offered an apparently simple
solution to the problem of evil, the stumbling block of theologies, and
it attracted the cultured minds as well as the masses, to whom it
afforded an explanation of their sufferings. Just as the mysteries of
Mithra began to spread Plutarch wrote of them favorably and was inclined
himself to adopt them.^[35] From that time dates the appearance in
literature of the anti-gods (????????),^[36] under the command of
the powers of darkness^[37] and arrayed against the celestial
spirits, messengers or “angels”^[38] of divinity. They were Ahriman’s
devas struggling with the Yazatas of Ormuzd.

A curious passage in Porphyry^[39] shows that the earliest neo-Platonists
had already admitted Persian demonology into their system. Below the
incorporeal and indivisible supreme being, below the stars and the
planets, there were countless spirits.^[40] Some of them, the gods of cities and
nations, received special names: [153]the others comprised a
nameless multitude. They were divided into two groups. The first were the
benevolent spirits that gave fecundity to plants and animals, serenity to
nature, and knowledge to men. They acted as intermediaries between gods
and men, bearing up to heaven the homage and prayers of the faithful, and
down from heaven portents and warnings. The others were wicked spirits
inhabiting regions close to the earth and there was no evil that they did
not exert every effort to cause.^[41] At the same time both violent and
cunning, impetuous and crafty, they were the authors of all the
calamities that befell the world, such as pestilence, famine, tempests
and earthquakes. They kindled evil passions and illicit desires in the
hearts of men and provoked war and sedition. They were clever deceivers
rejoicing in lies and impostures. They encouraged the phantasmagoria and
mystification of the sorcerers^[42] and gloated over the bloody sacrifices
which magicians offered to them all, but especially to their chief.

Doctrines very similar to these were certainly taught in the mysteries
of Mithra; homage was paid to Ahriman (Arimanius) lord of the somber
underworld, and master of the infernal spirits.^[43] This cult has continued in the Orient
to the present day among the Yezidis, or devil worshipers.

In his treatise against the magi, Theodore of Mopsuestia^[44] speaks of Ahriman as
Satan (???????). At first
sight there really is a surprising resemblance between the two. Both are
heads of a numerous army of demons; both are spirits of error and
falsehood, princes of darkness, [154]tempters and corrupters. An almost
identical picture of the pair could be drawn, and in fact they are
practically the same figure under different names. It is generally
admitted that Judaism took the notion of an adversary of God^[45] from the Mazdeans along
with portions of their dualism. It was therefore natural that Jewish
doctrine, of which Christianity is heir, should have been closely allied
to the mysteries of Mithra. A considerable part of the more or less
orthodox beliefs and visions that gave the Middle Ages their nightmare of
hell and the devil thus came from Persia by two channels: on the one hand
Judeo-Christian literature, both canonical and apocryphal; and on the
other, the remnants of the Mithra cult and the various sects of
Manicheism that continued to preach the old Persian doctrines on the
antagonism between the two world principles.

But a theoretical adherence of the mind to dogmas that satisfy it,
does not suffice to convert it to a new religion. There must be motives
of conduct and a basis for hope besides grounds for belief. The Persian
dualism was not only a powerful metaphysical conception; it was also the
foundation of a very efficacious system of ethics, and this was the chief
agent in the success of the mysteries of Mithra during the second and
third centuries in the Roman world then animated by unrealized
aspirations for more perfect justice and holiness.

A sentence of the Emperor Julian,^[46] unfortunately too brief, tells us that
Mithra subjected his worshipers to “commandments” (???????)
and rewarded faithful observance both in this world and in the next. The
[155]importance attached by the Persians to
their peculiar ethics and the rigor with which they observed its
precepts, are perhaps the most striking features of their national
character as manifested in history. They were a race of conquerors
subject to a severe discipline, like the Romans, and like them they
realized the necessity of discipline in the administration of a vast
empire. Certain affinities between the two imperial nations connected
them directly without the mediation of the Greek world. Mazdaism brought
long awaited satisfaction to the old-time Roman desire for a practical
religion that would subject the individual to a rule of conduct and
contribute to the welfare of the state.^[47] Mithra infused a new vigor into the
paganism of the Occident by introducing the imperative ethics of
Persia.

Unhappily the text of the Mithraic decalogue has not been preserved
and its principal commandments can be restored only by implication.

Mithra, the ancient spirit of light, became the god of truth and
justice in the religion of Zoroaster and retained that character in the
Occident. He was the Mazdean Apollo, but while Hellenism, with a finer
appreciation of beauty, developed the esthetic qualities in Apollo, the
Persians, caring more for matters of conscience, emphasized the moral
character in Mithra.^[48]
The Greeks, themselves little scrupulous in that respect, were struck by
the abhorrence in which their Oriental neighbors held a lie. The Persians
conceived of Ahriman as the embodiment of deceit. Mithra was always the
god invoked as the guarantor of faith and protector of the inviolability
of contracts. Absolute fidelity to his oath had to be a cardinal virtue
[156]in the religion of a soldier, whose first
act upon enlistment was to pledge obedience and devotion to the
sovereign. This religion exalted loyalty and fidelity and undoubtedly
tried to inspire a feeling similar to our modern idea of honor.

In addition to respect for authority it preached fraternity. All the
initiates considered themselves as sons of the same father owing to one
another a brother’s affection. It is a question whether they extended the
love of neighbor to that universal charity taught by philosophy and
Christianity. Emperor Julian, a devoted mystic, liked to set up such an
ideal, and it is probable that the Mithraists of later paganism rose to
this conception of duty,^[49] but they were not its authors. They
seemed to have attached more importance to the virile qualities than to
compassion and gentleness. The fraternal spirit of initiates calling
themselves soldiers was doubtless more akin to the spirit of comradeship
in a regiment that has esprit de corps, than to the love of one’s
neighbor that inspires works of mercy towards all.

All primitive people imagine nature filled with unclean and wicked
spirits that corrupt and torture those who disturb their repose; but
dualism endowed this universal belief with marvelous power as well as
with a dogmatic basis. Mazdaism is governed throughout by ideas of purity
and impurity. “No religion on earth has ever been so completely dominated
by an ideal of purification.”^[50] This kind of perfection was the goal
of the aspiration and effort of believers. They were obliged to guard
with infinite precaution against defiling the divine elements, for
instance water or fire, or their own persons, and to wipe out all
pollution by [157]repeated lustrations. But, as in the
Syrian cults of the imperial period, these Mithraic rites did remain
simply formal, mechanical and of the flesh, inspired by the old idea of
tabu. Mithraic baptism wiped out moral faults; the purity aimed at
had become spiritual.

This perfect purity distinguishes the mysteries of Mithra from those
of all other Oriental gods. Serapis is the brother and husband of Isis,
Attis the lover of Cybele, every Syrian Baal is coupled with a spouse;
but Mithra lives alone. Mithra is chaste, Mithra is holy
(sanctus),^[51] and
for the worship of fecundity he substitutes a new reverence for
continence.

However, although resistance to sensuality is laudable and although
the ideal of perfection of this Mazdean sect inclined towards the
asceticism to which the Manichean conception of virtue led, yet good does
not consist exclusively in abnegation and self-control, but also in
action. It is not sufficient for a religion to classify moral values, but
in order to be effective it must furnish motives for putting them into
practice. Dualism was peculiarly favorable for the development of
individual effort and human energy; here its influence was strongest. It
taught that the world is the scene of a perpetual struggle between two
powers that share the mastery; the goal to be reached is the
disappearance of evil and the uncontested dominion, the exclusive reign,
of the good. Animals and plants, as well as man, are drawn up in two
rival camps perpetually hostile, and all nature participates in the
eternal combat of the two opposing principles. The demons created by the
infernal spirit emerge constantly from the abyss and roam about the
earth; they penetrate everywhere carrying corruption, distress, [158]sickness
and death. The celestial spirits and the supporters of piety are
compelled constantly to baffle their ever renewed enterprises. The strife
continues in the heart and conscience of man, the epitome of the
universe, between the divine law of duty and the suggestions of the evil
spirits. Life is a merciless war knowing no truce. The task of the true
Mazdean consisted in constantly fighting the evil in order to bring about
the gradual triumph of Ormuzd in the world. The believer was the
assistant of the gods in their work of purification and improvement.

The worshipers of Mithra did not lose themselves in a contemplative
mysticism like other sects. Their morality particularly encouraged
action, and during a period of laxness, anarchy and confusion, they found
stimulation, comfort and support in its precepts. Resistance to the
promptings of degrading instincts assumed the glamor and prestige of
warlike exploits in their eyes and instilled an active principle of
progress into their character. By supplying a new conception of the
world, dualism also gave a new meaning to life. This same dualism
determined the eschatological beliefs of the Mithraists. The antagonism
between heaven and hell was extended into the life hereafter.^[52] Mithra, the
“invincible” god who assisted the faithful in their struggle against the
malignity of the demons, was not only their strong companion in their
human trials, but as an antagonist of the infernal powers he insured the
welfare of his followers in the future life as well as on earth. When the
genius of corruption seizes the corpse after death, the spirits of
darkness and the celestial messengers struggle for the possession of the
soul that has left its corporeal prison. It stands [159]trial before Mithra,
and if its merits outweigh its shortcomings in the divine balance it is
defended from Ahriman’s agents that seek to drag it into the infernal
abyss. Finally it is led into the ethereal regions where Jupiter-Ormuzd
reigns in eternal light. The believers in Mithra did not agree with the
votaries of Serapis who held that the souls of the just reside in the
depths of the earth.^[53]
To them that somber kingdom was the domain of wrong-doers. The souls of
the just live in the boundless light that extends above the stars, and by
divesting themselves of all sensuality and all lust in passing through
the planetary spheres^[54]

they become as pure as the gods whose company they enter.

However, when the world came to an end the body also was to share in
that happiness because it was believed as in Egypt that the whole person
would enjoy eternal life. After time had run its course Mithra would
raise all men from the dead, pouring out a marvelous beverage of
immortality for the good, but all evil doers would be annihilated by fire
together with Ahriman himself.

Of all the Oriental cults none was so severe as Mithraism, none
attained an equal moral elevation, none could have had so strong a hold
on mind and heart. In many respects it gave its definite religious
formula to the pagan world and the influence of its ideas remained long
after the religion itself had come to a violent end. Persian dualism
introduced certain principles into Europe that have never ceased to exert
an influence. Its whole history proves the thesis with which we began,
the power of resistance and of [160]influence possessed by Persian culture and
religion. These possessed an originality so independent that after having
resisted in the Orient the power of absorption of Hellenism, and after
having checked the Christian propaganda, they even withstood the
destructive power of Islam. Firdusi (940-1020) glories in the ancient
national traditions and the mythical heroes of Mazdaism, and while the
idolatry of Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor has long since died out or
degenerated, there are votaries of Zoroaster at the present day who
piously perform the sacred ceremonies of the Avesta and practise genuine
fire worship.

Another witness to the vitality of Mithraic Mazdaism is the fact that
it escaped becoming a kind of state religion of the Roman empire during
the third century. An oft-quoted sentence of Renan’s says:^[55] “If Christianity had
been checked in its growth by some deadly disease, the world would have
become Mithraic.” In hazarding that statement he undoubtedly conjured up
a picture of what would have been the condition of this poor world in
that case. He must have imagined, one of his followers would have us
believe,^[56] that the
morals of the human race would have been but little changed, a little
more virile perhaps, a little less charitable, but only a shade
different. The erudite theology taught by the mysteries would obviously
have shown a laudable respect for science, but as its dogmas were based
upon a false physics it would apparently have insured the persistence of
an infinity of errors. Astronomy would not be lacking, but astrology
would have been unassailable, while the heavens would still be revolving
around the earth to accord with its doctrines. The greatest [161]danger, it
appears to me, would have been that the Cæsars would have established a
theocratic absolutism supported by the Oriental ideas of the divinity of
kings. The union of throne and altar would have been inseparable, and
Europe would never have known the invigorating struggle between church
and state. But on the other hand the discipline of Mithraism, so
productive of individual energy, and the democratic organization of its
societies in which senators and slaves rubbed elbows, contain a germ of
liberty.

We might dwell at some length on these contrasting possibilities, but
it is hard to find a mental pastime less profitable than the attempt to
remake history and to conjecture on what might have been had events
proved otherwise. If the torrent of actions and reactions that carries us
along were turned out of its course what imagination could describe the
unknown regions through which it would flow?

[162]

ASTROLOGY AND MAGIC.

When we consider the absolute authority that astrology exercised under
the Roman empire, we find it hard to escape a feeling of surprise. It is
difficult to think that people could ever consider astrology as the most
valuable of all arts and the queen of sciences,^[1] and it is not easy for us to imagine the
moral conditions that made such a phenomenon possible, because our state
of mind to-day is very different. Little by little the conviction has
gained ground that all that can be known about the future, at least the
future of man and of human society, is conjecture. The progress of
knowledge has taught man to acquiesce in his ignorance.

In former ages it was different: forebodings and predictions found
universal credence. The ancient forms of divination, however, had fallen
somewhat into disrepute at the beginning of our era, like the rest of the
Greco-Roman religion. It was no longer thought that the eagerness or
reluctance with which the sacred hens ate their paste, or the direction
of the flight of the birds indicated coming success or disaster.
Abandoned, the Hellenic oracles were silent. Then appeared astrology,
surrounded with all the prestige of an exact science, and based upon the
experience of many centuries. It promised to ascertain the [163]occurrences of
any one’s life with as much precision as the date of an eclipse. The
world was drawn towards it by an irresistible attraction. Astrology did
away with, and gradually relegated to oblivion, all the ancient methods
that had been devised to solve the enigmas of the future. Haruspicy and
the augural art were abandoned, and not even the ancient fame of the
oracles could save them from falling into irretrievable desuetude. This
great chimera changed religion as well as divination, its spirit
penetrated everything. And truly, if, as some scholars still hold, the
main feature of science is the ability to predict,^[2] no branch of learning could compare with
this one, nor escape its influence.

The success of astrology was connected with that of the Oriental
religions, which lent it their support, as it in turn helped them. We
have seen how it forced itself upon Semitic paganism, how it transformed
Persian Mazdaism and even subdued the arrogance of the Egyptian
sacerdotal caste.^[3]
Certain mystical treatises ascribed to the old Pharaoh Nechepso and his
confidant, the priest Petosiris, nebulous and abstruse works that became,
one might say, the Bible of the new belief in the power of the stars,
were translated into Greek, undoubtedly in Alexandria, about the year 150
before our era.^[4] About
the same time the Chaldean genethlialogy began to spread in Italy, with
regard to which Berosus, a priest of the god Baal, who came to Babylon
from the island of Cos, had previously succeeded in arousing the
curiosity of the Greeks. In 139 a prætor expelled the “Chaldaei” from
Rome, together with the Jews. But all the adherents of the Syrian
goddess, of whom there was quite a number in the Occident, were patrons
and defenders of these Oriental [164]prophets, and police measures were no more
successful in stopping the diffusion of their doctrines, than in the case
of the Asiatic mysteries. In the time of Pompey, the senator Nigidius
Figulus, who was an ardent occultist, expounded the barbarian uranography
in Latin. But the scholar whose authority contributed most to the final
acceptance of sidereal divination was a Syrian philosopher of
encyclopedic knowledge, Posidonius of Apamea, the teacher of Cicero.^[5] The works of that erudite
and religious writer influenced the development of the entire Roman
theology more than anything else.

Under the empire, while the Semitic Baals and Mithra were triumphing,
astrology manifested its power everywhere. During that period everybody
bowed to it. The Cæsars became its fervent devotees, frequently at the
expense of the ancient cults. Tiberius neglected the gods because he
believed only in fatalism,^[6] and Otho, blindly confiding in the
Oriental seer, marched against Vitellius in spite of the baneful presages
that affrighted his official clergy.^[7] The most earnest scholars, Ptolemy under
the Antonines for instance, expounded the principles of that
pseudo-science, and the very best minds received them. In fact, scarcely
anybody made a distinction between astronomy and its illegitimate sister.
Literature took up this new and difficult subject, and, as early as the
time of Augustus or Tiberius, Manilius, inspired by the sidereal
fatalism, endeavored to make poetry of that dry “mathematics,” as
Lucretius, his forerunner, had done with the Epicurean atomism. Even art
looked there for inspiration and depicted the stellar deities. At Rome
and in the provinces architects erected sumptuous septizonia in
the likeness of [165]the seven spheres in which the planets
that rule our destinies move.^[8] This Asiatic divination was first
aristocratic^[9]—because the obtaining of an exact
horoscope was a complicated matter, and consultations were
expensive—but it promptly became popular, especially in the urban
centers where Oriental slaves gathered in large numbers. The learned
genethlialogers of the observatories had unlicensed colleagues, who told
fortunes at street-crossings or in barnyards. Even common epitaphs, which
Rossi styles “the scum of inscriptions,” have retained traces of that
belief. The custom arose of stating in epitaphs the exact length of a
life to the very hour, for the moment of birth determined that of
death:

Soon neither important nor small matters were undertaken without
consulting the astrologer. His previsions were sought not only in regard
to great public events like the conduct of a war, the founding of a city,
or the accession of a ruler, not only in case of a marriage, a journey,
or a change of domicile; but the most trifling acts of every-day life
were gravely submitted to his sagacity. People would no longer take a
bath, go to the barber, change their clothes or manicure their
fingernails, without first awaiting the propitious moment.^[11] The collections of
“initiatives” (????????) that
have come to us contain questions that make us smile: Will a son who is
about to be born have a big nose? Will a girl just coming into this world
have gallant adventures?^[12] And certain precepts sound almost like
burlesques: he who gets his hair cut while [166]the moon is in her
increase will become bald—evidently by analogy.^[13]

The entire existence of states and individuals, down to the slightest
incidents, was thought to depend on the stars. The absolute control they
were supposed to exercise over everybody’s daily condition, even modified
the language in every-day use and left traces in almost all idioms
derived from the Latin. If we speak of a martial, or a jovial character,
or a lunatic, we are unconsciously admitting the existence, in these
heavenly bodies (Mars, Jupiter, Luna) of their ancient qualities.

It must be acknowledged, however, that the Grecian spirit tried to
combat the folly that was taking hold of the world, and from the time of
its propagation astrology found opponents among the philosophers. The
most subtle of these adversaries was the probabilist Carneades, in the
second century before our era. The topical arguments which he advanced,
were taken up, reproduced, and developed in a thousand ways by later
polemicists. For instance, Were all the men that perish together in a
battle, born at the same moment, because they had the same fate? Or, on
the other hand, do we not observe that twins, born at the same time, have
the most unlike characters and the most different fortunes?

But dialectics are an accomplishment in which the Greeks ever
excelled, and the defenders of astrology found a reply to every
objection. They endeavored especially to establish firmly the truths of
observation, upon which rested the entire learned structure of their art:
the influence of the stars over the phenomena of nature and the
characters of individuals. Can it be [167]denied, they said, that
the sun causes vegetation to appear and to perish, and that it puts
animals en rut or plunges them into lethargic sleep? Does not the
movement of the tide depend on the course of the moon? Is not the rising
of certain constellations accompanied every year by storms? And are not
the physical and moral qualities of the different races manifestly
determined by the climate in which they live? The action of the sky on
the earth is undeniable, and, the sidereal influences once admitted, all
previsions based on them are legitimate. As soon as the first principle
is admitted, all corollaries are logically derived from it.

This way of reasoning was universally considered irrefutable. Before
the advent of Christianity, which especially opposed it because of its
idolatrous character, astrology had scarcely any adversaries except those
who denied the possibility of science altogether, namely, the
neo-Academicians, who held that man could not attain certainty, and such
radical sceptics as Sextus Empiricus. Upheld by the Stoics, however, who
with very few exceptions were in favor of astrology, it can be maintained
that it emerged triumphant from the first assaults directed against it.
The only result of the objections raised to it was to modify some of its
theories. Later, the general weakening of the spirit of criticism assured
astrology an almost uncontested domination. Its adversaries did not renew
their polemics; they limited themselves to the repetition of arguments
that had been opposed, if not refuted, a hundred times, and consequently
seemed worn out. At the court of the Severi any one who should have
denied the influence of the planets upon the events of this world [168]would
have been considered more preposterous than he who would admit it
to-day.

But, you will say, if the theorists did not succeed in proving the
doctrinal falsity of astrology, experience should have shown its
worthlessness. Errors must have occurred frequently and must have been
followed by cruel disillusionment. Having lost a child at the age of four
for whom a brilliant future had been predicted, the parents stigmatized
in the epitaph the “lying mathematician whose great renown deluded
them.”^[14] Nobody thought
of denying the possibility of such errors. Manuscripts have been
preserved, wherein the makers of horoscopes themselves candidly and
learnedly explain how they were mistaken in such and such a case, because
they had not taken into account some one of the data of the problem.^[15] Manilius, in spite of
his unlimited confidence in the power of reason, hesitated at the
complexity of an immense task that seemed to exceed the capacity of human
intelligence,^[16] and in
the second century, Vettius Valens bitterly denounced the contemptible
bunglers who claimed to be prophets, without having had the long training
necessary, and who thereby cast odium and ridicule upon astrology, in the
name of which they pretended to operate.^[17] It must be remembered that astrology,
like medicine, was not only a science (????????), but also
an art (?????).
This comparison, which sounds irreverent to-day, was a flattering one in
the eyes of the ancients.^[18] To observe the sky was as delicate a
task as to observe the human body; to cast the horoscope of a newly born
child, just as perilous as to make a diagnosis, and to interpret the
cosmic symptoms just as hard as to [169]interpret those of our
organism. In both instances the elements were complex and the chances of
error infinite. All the examples of patients dying in spite of the
physician, or on account of him, will never keep a person who is tortured
by physical pain from appealing to him for help; and similarly those
whose souls were troubled with ambition or fear turned to the astrologer
for some remedy for the moral fever tormenting them. The calculator, who
claimed to determine the moment of death, and the medical practitioner
who claimed to avert it received the anxious patronage of people worried
by this formidable issue. Furthermore, just as marvelous cures were
reported, striking predictions were called to mind or, if need were,
invented. The diviner had, as a rule, only a restricted number of
possibilities to deal with, and the calculus of probabilities shows that
he must have succeeded sometimes. Mathematics, which he invoked, was in
his favor after all, and chance frequently corrected mischance. Moreover,
did not the man who had a well-frequented consulting-office, possess a
thousand means, if he was clever, of placing all the chances on his side,
in the hazardous profession he followed, and of reading in the stars
anything he thought expedient? He observed the earth rather than the sky,
and took care not to fall into a well.

However, what helped most to make astrology invulnerable to the blows
of reason and of common sense, was the fact that in reality, the apparent
rigor of its calculus and its theorems notwithstanding, it was not a
science but a faith. We mean not only that [170]it implied belief in
postulates that could not be proved—the same thing might be said of
almost all of our poor human knowledge, and even our systems of physics
and cosmology in the last analysis are based upon hypotheses—but
that astrology was born and reared in the temples of Chaldea and Egypt.^[19] Even in the Occident it
never forgot its sacerdotal origin and never more than half freed itself
from religion, whose offspring it was. Here lies the connection between
astrology and the Oriental religions, and I wish to draw the reader’s
special attention to this point.

The Greek works and treatises on astrology that have come down to us
reveal this essential feature only very imperfectly. The Byzantines
stripped this pseudo-science, always regarded suspiciously by the church,
of everything that savored of paganism. Their process of purification
can, in some instances, be traced from manuscript to manuscript.^[20] If they retained the
name of some god or hero of mythology, the only way they dared to write
it was by cryptography. They have especially preserved purely didactic
treatises, the most perfect type of which is Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos which
has been constantly quoted and commented upon; and they have reproduced
almost exclusively expurgated texts, in which the principles of various
doctrines are drily summarized. During the classic age works of a
different character were commonly read. Many “Chaldeans” interspersed
their cosmological calculations and theories with moral considerations
and mystical speculations. In the first part of a work that he names
“Vision,” (??????) Critodemus, in
prophetic language, represents the truths he reveals [171]as a secure
harbor of refuge from the storms of this world, and he promises his
readers to raise them to the rank of immortals.^[21] Vettius Valens, a contemporary of
Marcus Aurelius, implored them in solemn terms, not to divulge to the
ignorant and impious the arcana he was about to acquaint them with.^[22] The astrologers liked
to assume the appearance of incorruptible and holy priests and to
consider their calling a sacerdotal one.^[23] In fact, the two ministries sometimes
combined: A dignitary of the Mithraic clergy called himself studiosus
astrologiae^[24] in
his epitaph, and a member of a prominent family of Phrygian prelates
celebrated in verse the science of divination which enabled him to issue
a number of infallible predictions.^[25]

The sacred character of astrology revealed itself in some passages
that escaped the orthodox censure and in the tone some of its followers
assumed, but we must go further and show that astrology was religious in
its principles as well as in its conclusions, the debt it owed to
mathematics and observation notwithstanding.

The fundamental dogma of astrology, as conceived by the Greeks, was
that of universal solidarity. The world is a vast organism, all the parts
of which are connected through an unceasing exchange of molecules of
effluvia. The stars, inexhaustible generators of energy, constantly act
upon the earth and man—upon man, the epitome of all nature, a
“microcosm” whose every element corresponds to some part of the starry
sky. This was, in a few words, the theory formulated by the Stoic
disciples of the Chaldeans;^[26] but if we divest it of all the
philosophic garments with which it has been adorned, what do we find? The
idea of [172]sympathy, a belief as old as human
society! The savage peoples also established mysterious relations between
all bodies and all the beings that inhabit the earth and the heavens, and
which to them were animated with a life of their own endowed with latent
power, but we shall speak of this later on, when taking up the subject of
magic. Even before the propagation of the Oriental religions, popular
superstition in Italy and Greece attributed a number of odd actions to
the sun, the moon, and the constellations as well.^[27]

The Chaldaei, however, claimed a predominant power for the stars. In
fact, they were regarded as gods par excellence by the religion of
the ancient Chaldeans in its beginnings. The sidereal religion of Babylon
concentrated deity, one might say, in the luminous moving bodies at the
expense of other natural objects, such as stones, plants, animals, which
the primitive Semitic faith considered equally divine. The stars always
retained this character, even at Rome. They were not, as to us,
infinitely distant bodies moving in space according to the inflexible
laws of mechanics, and whose chemical composition may be determined. To
the Latins as to the Orientals, they were propitious or baleful deities,
whose ever-changing relations determined the events of this world.

The sky, whose unfathomable depth had not yet been perceived, was
peopled with heroes and monsters of contrary passions, and the struggle
above had an immediate echo upon earth. By what principle have such a
quality and so great an influence been attributed to the stars? Is it for
reasons derived from their apparent motion and known through observation
or experience? Sometimes. Saturn made people [173]apathetic and
irresolute, because it moved most slowly of all the planets.^[28] But in most instances
purely mythological reasons inspired the precepts of astrology. The seven
planets were associated with certain deities, Mars, Venus, or Mercury,
whose character and history are known to all. It is sufficient simply to
pronounce their names to call to mind certain personalities that may be
expected to act according to their natures, in every instance. It was
natural for Venus to favor lovers, and for Mercury to assure the success
of business transactions and dishonest deals. The same applies to the
constellations, with which a number of legends are connected:
“catasterism” or translation into the stars, became the natural
conclusion of a great many tales. The heroes of mythology, or even those
of human society, continued to live in the sky in the form of brilliant
stars. There Perseus again met Andromeda, and the Centaur Chiron, who is
none other than Sagittarius, was on terms of good fellowship with the
Dioscuri.

These constellations, then, assumed to a certain extent the good and
the bad qualities of the mythical or historical beings that had been
transferred upon them. For instance, the serpent, which shines near the
northern pole, was the author of medical cures, because it was the animal
sacred to Æsculapius.^[29]

The religious foundation of the rules of astrology, however, can not
always be recognized. Sometimes it is entirely forgotten, and in such
cases the rules assume the appearance of axioms, or of laws based upon
long observation of celestial phenomena. Here we have a simple aspect of
science. The process of [174]assimilation with the gods and catasterism
were known in the Orient long before they were practiced in Greece.

The traditional outlines that we reproduce on our celestial maps are
the fossil remains of a luxuriant mythological vegetation, and besides
our classic sphere the ancients knew another, the “barbarian” sphere,
peopled with a world of fantastic persons and animals. These sidereal
monsters, to whom powerful qualities were ascribed, were likewise the
remnants of a multitude of forgotten beliefs. Zoolatry was abandoned in
the temples, but people continued to regard as divine the lion, the bull,
the bear, and the fishes, which the Oriental imagination had seen in the
starry vault. Old totems of the Semitic tribes or of the Egyptian
divisions lived again, transformed into constellations. Heterogeneous
elements, taken from all the religions of the Orient, were combined in
the uranography of the ancients, and in the power ascribed to the
phantoms that it evoked, vibrates in the indistinct echo of ancient
devotions that are often completely unknown to us.^[30]

Astrology, then, was religious in its origin and in its principles. It
was religious also in its close relation to the Oriental religions,
especially those of the Syrian Baals and of Mithra; finally, it was
religious in the effects that it produced. I do not mean the effects
expected from a constellation in any particular instance: as for example
the power to evoke the gods that were subject to their domination.^[31] But I have in mind the
general influence those doctrines exercised upon Roman paganism.

When the Olympian gods were incorporated among the stars, when Saturn
and Jupiter became planets and [175]the celestial virgin a sign of the zodiac,
they assumed a character very different from the one they had originally
possessed. It has been shown^[32] how, in Syria, the idea of an infinite
repetition of cycles of years according to which the celestial
revolutions took place, led to the conception of divine eternity, how the
theory of a fatal domination of the stars over the earth brought about
that of the omnipotence of the “lord of the heavens,” and how the
introduction of a universal religion was the necessary result of the
belief that the stars exerted an influence upon the peoples of every
climate. The logic of all these consequences of the principles of
astrology was plain to the Latin as well as to the Semitic races, and
caused a rapid transformation of the ancient idolatry. As in Syria, the
sun, which the astrologers called the leader of the planetary choir, “who
is established as king and leader of the whole world,”^[33] necessarily became the highest power
of the Roman pantheon.

Astrology also modified theology, by introducing into this pantheon a
great number of new gods, some of whom were singularly abstract.
Thereafter man worshiped the constellations of the firmament, particularly
the twelve signs of the zodiac, every one of which had its mythologic
legend; the sky (Caelus) itself, because it was considered the
first cause, and was sometimes confused with the supreme being; the four
elements, the antithesis and perpetual transmutations of which produced
all tangible phenomena, and which were often symbolized by a group of
animals ready to devour each other;^[34] finally, time and its subdivisions.^[35]

The calendars were religious before they were secular; their purpose
was not, primarily, to record fleeting [176]time, but to observe
the recurrence of propitious or inauspicious dates separated by periodic
intervals. It is a matter of experience that the return of certain
moments is associated with the appearance of certain phenomena; they
have, therefore, a special efficacy, and are endowed with a sacred
character. By determining periods with mathematical exactness, astrology
continued to see in them “a divine power,”^[36] to use Zeno’s term. Time, that
regulates the course of the stars and the transubstantiation of the
elements, was conceived of as the master of the gods and the primordial
principle, and was likened to destiny. Each part of its infinite duration
brought with it some propitious or evil movement of the sky that was
anxiously observed, and transformed the ever modified universe. The
centuries, the years and the seasons, placed into relation with the four
winds and the four cardinal points, the twelve months connected with the
zodiac, the day and the night, the twelve hours, all were personified and
deified, as the authors of every change in the universe. The allegorical
figures contrived for these abstractions by astrological paganism did not
even perish with it.^[37]

The symbolism it had disseminated outlived it, and until the Middle Ages
these pictures of fallen gods were reproduced indefinitely in sculpture,
mosaics, and in Christian miniatures.^[38]

Thus astrology entered into all religious ideas, and the doctrines of
the destiny of the world and of man harmonized with its teachings.
According to Berosus, who is the interpreter of ancient Chaldean
theories, the existence of the universe consisted of a series of “big
years,” each having its summer and its winter. Their summer took place
when all the planets were in [177]conjunction at the same point of Cancer,
and brought with it a general conflagration. On the other hand, their
winter came when all the planets were joined in Capricorn, and its result
was a universal flood. Each of these cosmic cycles, the duration of which
was fixed at 432,000 years according to the most probable estimate, was
an exact reproduction of those that had preceded it. In fact, when the
stars resumed exactly the same position, they were forced to act in
identically the same manner as before. This Babylonian theory, an
anticipation of that of the “eternal return of things,” which Nietzsche
boasts of having discovered, enjoyed lasting popularity during antiquity,
and in various forms came down to the Renaissance.^[39] The belief that the world would be
destroyed by fire, a theory also spread abroad by the Stoics, found a new
support in these cosmic speculations.

Astrology, however, revealed the future not only of the universe, but
also of man. According to a Chaldeo-Persian doctrine, accepted by the
pagan mystics and previously pointed out by us,^[40] a bitter necessity compelled the souls
that dwell in great numbers on the celestial heights, to descend upon
this earth and to animate certain bodies that are to hold them in
captivity. In descending to the earth they travel through the spheres of
the planets and receive some quality from each of these wandering stars,
according to its positions. Contrariwise, when death releases them from
their carnal prison, they return to their first habitation, providing
they have led a pious life, and if as they pass through the doors of the
superposed heavens they divest themselves of the passions and
inclinations acquired during their first journey, [178]to ascend finally, as
pure essence to the radiant abode of the gods. There they live forever
among the eternal stars, freed from the tyranny of destiny and even from
the limitations of time.

This alliance of the theorems of astronomy with their old beliefs
supplied the Chaldeans with answers to all the questions that men asked
concerning the relation of heaven and earth, the nature of God, the
existence of the world, and their own destiny. Astrology was really the
first scientific theology. Hellenistic logic arranged the Oriental
doctrines properly, combined them with the Stoic philosophy and built
them up into a system of indisputable grandeur, an ideal reconstruction of the universe,
the powerful assurance of which inspired Manilius to sublime language
when he was not exhausted by his efforts to master an ill-adapted
theme.^[41] The vague and
irrational notion of “sympathy” is transformed into a deep sense of the
relationship between the human soul, an igneous substance, and the divine
stars, and this feeling is strengthened by thought.^[42] The contemplation of the sky has
become a communion. During the splendor of night the mind of man became
intoxicated with the light streaming from above; born on the wings of
enthusiasm, he ascended into the sacred choir of the stars and took part
in their harmonious movements. “He participates in their immortality,
and, before his appointed hour, converses with the gods.”^[43] In spite of the subtle
precision the Greeks always maintained in their speculations, the feeling
that permeated astrology down to the end of paganism never belied its
Oriental and religious origin. [179]

The most essential principle of astrology was that of fatalism. As the
poet says:^[44]

The Chaldeans were the first to conceive the idea of an inflexible
necessity ruling the universe, instead of gods acting in the world
according to their passions, like men in society. They noticed that an
immutable law regulated the movements of the celestial bodies, and, in
the first enthusiasm of their discovery they extended its effects to all
moral and social phenomena. The postulates of astrology imply an absolute
determinism. Tyche, or deified fortune, became the irresistible mistress
of mortals and immortals alike, and was even worshiped exclusively by
some under the empire. Our deliberate will never plays more than a very
limited part in our happiness and success, but, among the pronunciamentos
and in the anarchy of the third century, blind chance seemed to play with
the life of every one according to its fancy, and it can easily be
understood that the ephemeral rulers of that period, like the masses, saw
in chance the sovereign disposer of their fates.^[45]

The power of this fatalist conception during antiquity may be measured
by its long persistence, at least in the Orient, where it originated.
Starting from Babylonia,^[46] it spread over the entire Hellenic
world, as early as the Alexandrian period, and towards the end of
paganism a considerable part of the efforts of the Christian apologists
was directed against it.^[47] But it was destined to outlast all
attacks, and to impose itself even on Islam.^[48] In Latin Europe, in spite of the
anathemas of the church, the belief remained confusedly [180]alive all
through the Middle Ages that on this earth everything happens
somewhat

The weapons used by the ecclesiastic writers in contending against
this sidereal fatalism were taken from the arsenal of the old Greek
dialectics. In general, they were those that all defenders of free will
had used for centuries: determinism destroys responsibility; rewards and
punishments are absurd if man acts under a necessity that compels him, if
he is born a hero or a criminal. We shall not dwell on these metaphysical
discussions,^[50] but
there is one argument that is more closely connected with our subject,
and therefore should be mentioned. If we live under an immutable fate, no
supplication can change its decisions; religion is unavailing, it is
useless to ask the oracles to reveal the secrets of a future which
nothing can change, and prayers, to use one of Seneca’s expressions, are
nothing but “the solace of diseased minds.”^[51]

And, doubtless, some adepts of astrology, like the Emperor Tiberius,^[52] neglected the practice
of religion, because they were convinced that fate governed all things.
Following the example set by the Stoics, they made absolute submission to
an almighty fate and joyful acceptance of the inevitable a moral duty,
and were satisfied to worship the superior power that ruled the universe,
without demanding anything in return. They considered themselves at the
mercy of even the most capricious fate, and were like the intelligent
slave who guesses the desires of his master to satisfy them, and [181]knows
how to make the hardest servitude tolerable.^[53] The masses, however, never reached
that height of resignation. They looked at astrology far more from a
religious than from a logical standpoint.^[54] The planets and constellations were
not only cosmic forces, whose favorable or inauspicious action grew
weaker or stronger according to the turnings of a course established for
eternity; they were deities who saw and heard, who were glad or sad, who
had a voice and sex, who were prolific or sterile, gentle or savage,
obsequious or arrogant.^[55] Their anger could therefore be soothed
and their favor obtained through rites and offerings; even the adverse
stars were not unrelenting and could be persuaded through sacrifices and
supplications. The narrow and pedantic Firmicus Maternus strongly asserts
the omnipotence of fate, but at the same time he invokes the gods and
asks for their aid against the influence of the stars. As late as the
fourth century the pagans of Rome who were about to marry, or to make a
purchase, or to solicit a public office, went to the diviner for his
prognostics, at the same time praying to Fate for prosperity in their
undertaking.^[56] Thus a
fundamental antinomy manifested itself all through the development of
astrology, which pretended to be an exact science, but always remained a
sacerdotal theology.

Of course, the more the idea of fatalism imposed itself and spread,
the more the weight of this hopeless theory oppressed the consciousness.
Man felt himself dominated and crushed by blind forces that dragged him
on as irresistibly as they kept the celestial spheres in motion. His soul
tried to escape the oppression of this cosmic mechanism, and to leave the
slavery of [182]Ananke. But he no longer had confidence in
the ceremonies of his old religion. The new powers that had taken
possession of heaven had to be propitiated by new means. The Oriental
religions themselves offered a remedy against the evils they had created,
and taught powerful and mysterious processes for conjuring fate.^[57] And side by side with
astrology we see magic, a more pernicious aberration, gaining ground.^[58]

If, from the reading of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, we pass on to read a
magic papyrus, our first impression is that we have stepped from one end
of the intellectual world to the other. Here we find no trace of the
systematic order or severe method that distinguish the work of the
scholar of Alexandria. Of course, the doctrines of astrology are just as
chimerical as those of magic, but they are deduced with an amount of
logic, entirely wanting in works of sorcery, that compels reasoning
intellects to accept them. Recipes borrowed from medicine and popular
superstition, primitive practices rejected or abandoned by the sacerdotal
rituals, beliefs repudiated by a progressive moral religion, plagiarisms
and forgeries of literary or liturgic texts, incantations in which the
gods of all barbarous nations are invoked in unintelligible gibberish,
odd and disconcerting ceremonies—all these form a chaos in which
the imagination loses itself, a potpourri in which an arbitrary
syncretism seems to have attempted to create an inextricable
confusion.

However, if we observe more closely how magic operates, we find that
it starts out from the same principles and acts along the same line of
reasoning [183]as astrology. Born during the same period
in the primitive civilizations of the Orient, both were based on a number
of common ideas.^[59]
Magic, like astrology, proceeded from the principle of universal
sympathy, yet it did not consider the relation existing between the stars
traversing the heavens, and physical or moral phenomena, but the relation
between whatever bodies there are. It started out from the preconceived
idea that an obscure but constant relation exists between certain things,
certain words, certain persons. This connection was established without
hesitation between dead material things and living beings, because the
primitive races ascribed a soul and existence similar to those of man, to
everything surrounding them. The distinction between the three kingdoms
of nature was unknown to them; they were “animists.” The life of a person
might, therefore, be linked to that of a thing, a tree, or an animal, in
such a manner that one died if the other did, and that any damage
suffered by one was also sustained by its inseparable associate.
Sometimes the relation was founded on clearly intelligible grounds, like
a resemblance between the thing and the being, as where, to kill an
enemy, one pierced a waxen figure supposed to represent him. Or a
contact, even merely passing by, was believed to have created
indestructible affinities, for instance where the garments of an absent
person were operated upon. Often, also, these imaginary relations were
founded on reasons that escape us: like the qualities attributed by
astrology to the stars, they may have been derived from old beliefs the
memory of which is lost.

Like astrology, then, magic was a science in some respects. First,
like the predictions of its sister, it [184]was partly based on
observation—observation frequently rudimentary, superficial, hasty,
and erroneous, but nevertheless important. It was an experimental
discipline. Among the great number of facts noted by the curiosity of the
magicians, there were many that received scientific indorsement later on.
The attraction of the magnet for iron was utilized by the thaumaturgi
before it was interpreted by the natural philosophers. In the vast
compilations that circulated under the venerable names of Zoroaster or
Hostanes, many fertile remarks were scattered among puerile ideas and
absurd teachings, just as in the Greek treatises on alchemy that have
come down to us. The idea that knowledge of the power of certain agents
enables one to stimulate the hidden forces of the universe into action
and to obtain extraordinary results, inspires the researches of physics
to-day, just as it inspired the claims of magic. And if astrology was a
perverted astronomy, magic was physics gone astray.

Moreover, and again like astrology, magic was a science, because it
started from the fundamental conception that order and law exist in
nature, and that the same cause always produces the same effect. An
occult ceremony, performed with the same care as an experiment in the
chemical laboratory, will always have the expected result. To know the
mysterious affinities that connect all things is sufficient to set the
mechanism of the universe into motion. But the error of the magicians
consisted in establishing a connection between phenomena that do not
depend on each other at all. The act of exposing to the light for an
instant a sensitive plate in a camera, then immersing it, according to
given recipes, in appropriate liquids, and of making [185]the picture of
a relative or friend appear thereon, is a magical operation, but based on
real actions and reactions, instead of on arbitrarily assumed sympathies
and antipathies. Magic, therefore, was a science groping in the dark, and
later became “a bastard sister of science,” as Frazer puts it.

But, like astrology, magic was religious in origin, and always
remained a bastard sister of religion. Both grew up together in the
temples of the barbarian Orient. Their practices were, at first, part of
the dubious knowledge of fetichists who claimed to have control over the
spirits that peopled nature and animated everything, and who claimed that
they communicated with these spirits by means of rites known to
themselves alone. Magic has been cleverly defined as “the strategy of
animism.”^[60] But, just
as the growing power ascribed by the Chaldeans to the sidereal deities
transformed the original astrology, so primitive sorcery assumed a
different character when the world of the gods, conceived after the image
of man, separated itself more and more from the realm of physical forces
and became a realm of its own. This gave the mystic element which always
entered the ceremonies, a new precision and development. By means of his
charms, talismans, and exorcisms, the magician now communicated with the
celestial or infernal “demons” and compelled them to obey him. But these
spirits no longer opposed him with the blind resistance of matter
animated by an uncertain kind of life; they were active and subtle beings
having intelligence and will-power. Sometimes they took revenge for the
slavery the magician attempted to impose on them and punished the
audacious operator, who feared them, although [186]invoking their aid.
Thus the incantation often assumed the shape of a prayer addressed to a
power stronger than man, and magic became a religion. Its rites developed
side by side with the canonical liturgies, and frequently encroached on
them.^[61] The only
barrier between them was the vague and constantly shifting borderline
that limits the neighboring domains of religion and superstition.

This half scientific, half religious magic, with its books and its
professional adepts, is of Oriental origin. The old Grecian and Italian
sorcery appears to have been rather mild. Conjurations to avert
hail-storms, or formulas to draw rain, evil charms to render fields
barren or to kill cattle, love philters and rejuvenating salves, old
women’s remedies, talismans against the evil eye,—all are based on
popular superstition and kept in existence by folk-lore and charlatanism.
Even the witches of Thessaly, whom people credited with the power of
making the moon descend from the sky, were botanists more than anything
else, acquainted with the marvelous virtues of medicinal plants. The
terror that the necromancers inspired was due, to a considerable extent,
to the use they made of the old belief in ghosts. They exploited the
superstitious belief in ghost-power and slipped metal tablets covered
with execrations into graves, to bring misfortune or death to some enemy.
But neither in Greece nor in Italy is there any trace of a coherent
system of doctrines, of an occult and learned discipline, nor of any
sacerdotal instruction.

Originally the adepts in this dubious art were [187]despised. As late as
the period of Augustus they were generally equivocal beggar-women who
plied their miserable trade in the lowest quarters of the slums. But with
the invasion of the Oriental religions the magician began to receive more
consideration, and his condition improved.^[62] He was honored, and feared even more.
During the second century scarcely anybody would have doubted his power
to call up divine apparitions, converse with the superior spirits and
even translate himself bodily into the heavens.^[63]

Here the victorious progress of the Oriental religions shows itself.
The Egyptian ritual^[64]
originally was nothing but a collection of magical practices, properly
speaking. The religious community imposed its will upon the gods by means
of prayers or even threats. The gods were compelled to obey the
officiating priest, if the liturgy was correctly performed, and if the
incantations and the magic words were pronounced with the right
intonation. The well-informed priest had an almost unlimited power over
all supernatural beings on land, in the water, in the air, in heaven and
in hell. Nowhere was the gulf between things human and things divine
smaller, nowhere was the increasing differentiation that separated magic
from religion less advanced. Until the end of paganism they remained so
closely associated that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the
texts of one from those of the other.

The Chaldeans^[65] also
were past masters of sorcery, well versed in the knowledge of presages
and experts in conjuring the evils which the presages foretold. In
Mesopotamia, where they were confidential advisers of the kings, the
magicians belonged to the official [188]clergy; they invoked
the aid of the state gods in their incantations, and their sacred science
was as highly esteemed as haruspicy in Etruria. The immense prestige that
continued to surround it, assured its persistence after the fall of
Nineveh and Babylon. Its tradition was still alive under the Cæsars, and
a number of enchanters rightly or wrongly claimed to possess the ancient
wisdom of Chaldea.^[66]

And the thaumaturgus, who was supposed to be the heir of the archaic
priests, assumed a wholly sacerdotal appearance at Rome. Being an
inspired sage who received confidential communications from heavenly
spirits, he gave to his life and to his appearance a dignity almost equal
to that of the philosopher. The common people soon confused the two,^[67] and the Orientalizing
philosophy of the last period of paganism actually accepted and justified
all the superstitions of magic. Neo-Platonism, which concerned itself to
a large extent with demonology, leaned more and more towards theurgy, and
was finally completely absorbed by it.

But the ancients expressly distinguished, “magic,” which was always
under suspicion and disapproved of, from the legitimate and honorable art
for which the name “theurgy”^[68] was invented. The term “magician,”
(?????) which
applied to all performers of miracles, properly means the priests of
Mazdaism, and a well attested tradition makes the Persians^[69] the authors of the real
magic, that called “black magic” by the Middle Ages. If they did not
invent it—because it is as old as humanity—they were at least
the first to place it upon a doctrinal foundation and to assign to it a
place [189]in a clearly formulated theological
system. The Mazdean dualism gave a new power to this pernicious knowledge
by conferring upon it the character that will distinguish it
henceforth.

Under what influences did the Persian magic come into existence? When
and how did it spread? These are questions that are not well elucidated
yet. The intimate fusion of the religious doctrines of the Iranian
conquerors with those of the native clergy, which took place at Babylon,
occurred in this era of belief,^[70] and the magicians that were
established in Mesopotamia combined their secret traditions with the
rites and formulas codified by the Chaldean sorcerers. The universal
curiosity of the Greeks soon took note of this marvelous science.
Naturalist philosophers like Democritus,^[71] the great traveler, seem to have
helped themselves more than once from the treasure of observations
collected by the Oriental priests. Without a doubt they drew from these
incongruous compilations, in which truth was mingled with the absurd and
reality with the fantastical, the knowledge of some properties of plants
and minerals, or of some experiments of physics. However, the limpid
Hellenic genius always turned away from the misty speculations of magic,
giving them but slight consideration. But towards the end of the
Alexandrine period the books ascribed to the half-mythical masters of the
Persian science, Zoroaster, Hostanes and Hystaspes, were translated into
Greek, and until the end of paganism those names enjoyed a prodigious
authority. At the same time the Jews, who were acquainted with the arcana
of the Irano-Chaldean doctrines and proceedings, made some of the recipes
known wherever the dispersion brought [190]them.^[72] Later, a more immediate influence was
exercised upon the Roman world by the Persian colonies of Asia Minor,^[73] who retained an
obstinate faith in their ancient national beliefs.

The particular importance attributed to magic by the Mazdeans is a
necessary consequence of their dualist system, which has been treated by
us before.^[74] Ormuzd,
residing in the heavens of light, is opposed by his irreconcilable
adversary, Ahriman, ruler of the underworld. The one stands for light,
truth, and goodness, the other for darkness, falsehood, and perversity.
The one commands the kind spirits which protect the pious believer, the
other is master over demons whose malice causes all the evils that
afflict humanity. These opposite principles fight for the domination of
the earth, and each creates favorable or noxious animals and plants.
Everything on earth is either heavenly or infernal. Ahriman and his
demons, who surround man to tempt or hurt him,^[75] are evil gods and entirely different
from those of which Ormuzd’s host consists. The magician sacrifices to
them, either to avert evils they threaten, or to direct their ire against
enemies of true belief, and the impure spirits rejoice in bloody
immolations and delight in the fumes of flesh burning on the altars.^[76] Terrible acts and words
attended all immolations. Plutarch^[77] mentions an example of the dark
sacrifices of the Mazdeans. “In a mortar,” he says, “they pound a certain
herb called wild garlic, at the same time invoking Hades (Ahriman), and
the powers of darkness, then stirring this herb in the blood of a
slaughtered wolf, they take it away and drop it on a spot never reached
by the rays of the sun.” A necromantic performance indeed. [191]

We can imagine the new strength which such a conception of the
universe must have given to magic. It was no longer an incongruous
collection of popular superstitions and scientific observations. It
became a reversed religion: its nocturnal rites were the dreadful liturgy
of the infernal powers. There was no miracle the experienced magician
might not expect to perform with the aid of the demons, providing he know
how to master them; he would invent any atrocity in his desire to gain
the favor of the evil divinities whom crime gratified and suffering
pleased. Hence the number of impious practices performed in the dark,
practices the horror of which is equaled only by their absurdity:
preparing beverages that disturbed the senses and impaired the intellect;
mixing subtle poisons extracted from demoniac plants and corpses already
in a state of putridity;^[78] immolating children in order to read
the future in their quivering entrails or to conjure up ghosts. All the
satanic refinement that a perverted imagination in a state of insanity
could conceive^[79]
pleased the malicious evil spirits; the more odious the monstrosity, the
more assured was its efficacy. These abominable practices were sternly
suppressed by the Roman government. Whereas, in the case of an astrologer
who had committed an open transgression, the law was satisfied with
expelling him from Rome—whither he generally soon
returned,—the magician was put in the same class with murderers and
poisoners, and was subjected to the very severest punishment. He was
nailed to the cross or thrown to the wild beasts. Not only the practice
of the profession, but even the simple fact of possessing works of
sorcery made any one subject to prosecution.^[80] [192]

However, there are ways of reaching an agreement with the police, and
in this case custom was stronger than law. The intermittent rigor of
imperial edicts had no more power to destroy an inveterate superstition
than the Christian polemics had to cure it. It was a recognition of its
strength when state and church united to fight it. Neither reached the
root of the evil, for they did not deny the reality of the power wielded
by the sorcerers. As long as it was admitted that malicious spirits
constantly interfered in human affairs, and that there were secret means
enabling the operator to dominate those spirits or to share in their
power, magic was indestructible. It appealed to too many human passions
to remain unheard. If, on the one hand, the desire of penetrating the
mysteries of the future, the fear of unknown misfortunes, and hope,
always reviving, led the anxious masses to seek a chimerical certainty in
astrology, on the other hand, in the case of magic, the blinding charm of
the marvelous, the entreaties of love and ambition, the bitter desire for
revenge, the fascination of crime, and the intoxication of
bloodshed,—all the instincts that are not avowable and that are
satisfied in the dark, took turns in practising their seductions. During
the entire life of the Roman empire its existence continued, and the very
mystery that it was compelled to hide in increased its prestige and
almost gave it the authority of a revelation.

A curious occurrence that took place towards the end of the fifth
century at Beirut, in Syria, shows how deeply even the strongest
intellects of that period believed in the most atrocious practices of
magic. One night some students of the famous law-school of that [193]city
attempted to kill a slave in the circus, to aid the master in obtaining
the favor of a woman who scorned him. Being reported, they had to deliver
up their hidden volumes, of which those of Zoroaster and of Hostanes were
found, together with those written by the astrologer Manetho. The whole
city was agitated, and searches proved that many young men preferred the
study of the illicit science to that of Roman law. By order of the bishop
a solemn auto-da-fé was made of all this literature, in the presence of
the city officials and the clergy, and the most revolting passages were
read in public, “in order to acquaint everybody with the conceited and
vain promises of the demons,” as the pious writer of the story says.^[81]

Thus the ancient traditions of magic continued to live in the
Christian Orient after the fall of paganism. They even outlived the
domination of the church. The rigorous principles of its monotheism
notwithstanding, Islam became infected with those Persian superstitions.
In the Occident the evil art resisted persecution and anathemas with the
same obstinacy as in the Orient. It remained alive in Rome all through
the fifth century,^[82]
and when scientific astrology in Europe went down with science itself,
the old Mazdean dualism continued to manifest itself, during the entire
Middle Ages in the ceremonies of the black mass and the worshiping of
Satan, until the dawn of the modern era.

Twin sisters, born of the superstitions of the learned Orient, magic
and astrology always remained the hybrid daughters of sacerdotal culture.
Their existence [194]was governed by two contrary principles,
reason and faith, and they never ceased to fluctuate between these two
poles of thought. Both were inspired by a belief in universal sympathy,
according to which occult and powerful relations exist between human
beings and dead objects, all possessing a mysterious life. The doctrine
of sidereal influences, combined with a knowledge of the immutability of
the celestial revolutions, caused astrology to formulate the first theory
of absolute fatalism, whose decrees might be known beforehand. But,
besides this rigorous determinism, it retained its childhood faith in the
divine stars, whose favor could be secured and malignity avoided through
worship. In astrology the experimental method was reduced to the
completing of prognostics based on the supposed character of the stellar
gods.

Magic also remained half empirical and half religious. Like our
physics, it was based on observation, it proclaimed the constancy of the
laws of nature, and sought to conquer the latent energies of the material
world in order to bring them under the dominion of man’s will. But at the
same time it recognized, in the powers that it claimed to conquer,
spirits or demons whose protection might be obtained, whose ill-will
might be appeased, or whose savage hostility might be unchained by means
of immolations and incantations.

All their aberrations notwithstanding, astrology and magic were not
entirely fruitless. Their counterfeit learning has been a genuine help to
the progress of human knowledge. Because they awakened chimerical hopes
and fallacious ambitions in the minds of their adepts, researches were
undertaken which undoubtedly [195]would never have been started or persisted
in for the sake of a disinterested love of truth. The observations,
collected with untiring patience by the Oriental priests, caused the
first physical and astronomical discoveries, and, as in the time of the
scholastics, the occult sciences led to the exact ones. But when these
understood the vanity of the astounding illusions on which astrology and
magic had subsisted, they broke up the foundation of the arts to which
they owed their birth.

[196]

THE TRANSFORMATION OF ROMAN PAGANISM.

About the time of the Severi the religion of Europe must have
presented an aspect of surprising variety. Although dethroned, the old
native Italian, Celtic and Iberian divinities were still alive. Though
eclipsed by foreign rivals, they lived on in the devotion of the lower
classes and in the traditions of the rural districts. For a long time the
Roman gods had been established in every town and had received the homage
of an official clergy according to pontifical rites. Beside them,
however, were installed the representatives of all the Asiatic pantheons,
and these received the most fervent adoration from the masses. New powers
had arrived from Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria, and the dazzling Oriental sun
outshone the stars of Italy’s temperate sky. All forms of paganism were
simultaneously received and retained while the exclusive monotheism of
the Jews kept its adherents, and Christianity strengthened its churches
and fortified its orthodoxy, at the same time giving birth to the
baffling vagaries of gnosticism. A hundred different currents carried
away hesitating and undecided minds, a hundred contrasting sermons made
appeals to the conscience of the people.

Let us suppose that in modern Europe the faithful [197]had deserted
the Christian churches to worship Allah or Brahma, to follow the precepts
of Confucius or Buddha, or to adopt the maxims of the Shinto; let us
imagine a great confusion of all the races of the world in which Arabian
mullahs, Chinese scholars, Japanese bonzes, Tibetan lamas and Hindu
pundits would be preaching fatalism and predestination, ancestor-worship
and devotion to a deified sovereign, pessimism and deliverance through
annihilation—a confusion in which all those priests would erect
temples of exotic architecture in our cities and celebrate their
disparate rites therein. Such a dream, which the future may perhaps
realize, would offer a pretty accurate picture of the religious chaos in
which the ancient world was struggling before the reign of
Constantine.

The Oriental religions that successively gained popularity exercised a
decisive influence on the transformation of Latin paganism. Asia Minor
was the first to have its gods accepted by Italy. Since the end of the
Punic wars the black stone symbolizing the Great Mother of Pessinus had
been established on the Palatine, but only since the reign of Claudius
could the Phrygian cult freely develop in all its splendor and excesses.
It introduced a sensual, highly-colored and fanatical worship into the
grave and somber religion of the Romans. Officially recognized, it
attracted and took under its protection other foreign divinities from
Anatolia and assimilated them to Cybele and Attis, who thereafter bore
the symbols of several deities together. Cappadocian, Jewish, Persian and
even Christian influences modified the old rites of Pessinus and filled
them with ideas of spiritual purification and [198]eternal redemption by
the bloody baptism of the taurobolium. But the priests did not succeed in
eliminating the basis of coarse naturism which ancient barbaric tradition
had imposed upon them.

Beginning with the second century before our era, the mysteries of
Isis and Serapis spread over Italy with the Alexandrian culture whose
religious expression they were, and in spite of all persecution
established themselves at Rome where Caligula gave them the freedom of
the city. They did not bring with them a very advanced theological
system, because Egypt never produced anything but a chaotic aggregate of
disparate doctrines, nor a very elevated ethics, because the level of its
morality—that of the Alexandrian Greeks—rose but slowly from
a low stage. But they made Italy, and later the other Latin provinces,
familiar with an ancient ritual of incomparable charm that aroused widely
different feelings with its splendid processions and liturgic dramas.
They also gave their votaries positive assurance of a blissful
immortality after death, when they would be united with Serapis and,
participating body and soul in his divinity, would live in eternal
contemplation of the gods.

At a somewhat later period arrived the numerous and varied Baals of
Syria. The great economic movement starting at the beginning of our era
which produced the colonization of the Latin world by Syrian slaves and
merchants, not only modified the material civilization of Europe, but
also its conceptions and beliefs. The Semitic cults entered into
successful competition with those of Asia Minor and Egypt. They may not
have had so stirring a liturgy, nor have been so thoroughly absorbed in
preoccupation with a future [199]life, although they taught an original
eschatology, but they did have an infinitely higher idea of divinity. The
Chaldean astrology, of which the Syrian priests were enthusiastic
disciples, had furnished them with the elements of a scientific theology.
It had led them to the notion of a God residing far from the earth above
the zone of the stars, a God almighty, universal and eternal. Everything
on earth was determined by the revolutions of the heavens according to
infinite cycles of years. It had taught them at the same time the worship
of the sun, the radiant source of earthly life and human
intelligence.

The learned doctrines of the Babylonians had also imposed themselves
upon the Persian mysteries of Mithra which considered time identified
with heaven as the supreme cause, and deified the stars; but they had
superimposed themselves upon the ancient Mazdean creed without destroying
it. Thus the essential principles of the religion of Iran, the secular
and often successful rival of Greece, penetrated into the Occident under
cover of Chaldean wisdom. The Mithra worship, the last and highest
manifestation of ancient paganism, had Persian dualism for its
fundamental dogma. The world is the scene and the stake of a contest
between good and evil, Ormuzd and Ahriman, gods and demons, and from this
primary conception of the universe flowed a strong and pure system of
ethics. Life is a combat; soldiers under the command of Mithra,
invincible heroes of the faith, must ceaselessly oppose the undertakings
of the infernal powers which sow corruption broadcast. This imperative
ethics was productive of energy and formed the characteristic [200]feature
distinguishing Mithraism from all other Oriental cults.

Thus every one of the Levantine countries—and that is what we
meant to show in this brief recapitulation—had enriched Roman
paganism with new beliefs that were frequently destined to outlive it.
What was the result of this confusion of heterogeneous doctrines whose
multiplicity was extreme and whose values were very different? How did
the barbaric ideas refine themselves and combine with each other when
thrown into the fiery crucible of imperial syncretism? In other words,
what shape was assumed by ancient idolatry, so impregnated with exotic
theories during the fourth century, when it was finally dethroned? It is
this point that we should like to indicate briefly as the conclusion to
these studies.

However, can we speak of one pagan religion? Did not the
blending of the races result in multiplying the variety of disagreements?
Had not the confused collision of creeds produced a division into
fragments, a communication of churches? Had not a complacent syncretism
engendered a multiplication of sects? The “Hellenes,” as Themistius told
the Emperor Valens, had three hundred ways of conceiving and honoring
deity, who takes pleasure in such diversity of homage.^[1] In paganism a cult does not die
violently, but after long decay. A new doctrine does not necessarily
displace an older one. They may co-exist for a long time as contrary
possibilities suggested by the intellect or faith, and all opinions, all
practices, seem respectable to paganism. It never has any radical or
revolutionary transformations. Undoubtedly, the pagan beliefs of the
fourth century or earlier did not [201]have the consistency of
a metaphysical system nor the rigor of canons formulated by a council.
There is always a considerable difference between the faith of the masses
and that of cultured minds, and this difference was bound to be great in
an aristocratic empire whose social classes were sharply separated. The
devotion of the masses was as unchanging as the depths of the sea; it was
not stirred up nor heated by the upper currents.^[2] The peasants practised their pious rites
over anointed stones, sacred springs and blossoming trees, as in the
past, and continued celebrating their rustic holidays during seed-time
and harvest. They adhered with invincible tenacity to their traditional
usages. Degraded and lowered to the rank of superstitions, these were
destined to persist for centuries under the Christian orthodoxy without
exposing it to serious peril, and while they were no longer marked in the
liturgic calendars they were still mentioned occasionally in the
collections of folk-lore.

At the other extreme of society the philosophers delighted in veiling
religion with the frail and brilliant tissue of their speculations. Like
the emperor Julian they improvised bold and incongruous interpretations
of the myth of the Great Mother, and these interpretations were received
and relished by a restricted circle of scholars. But during the fourth
century these vagaries of the individual imagination were nothing but
arbitrary applications of uncontested principles. During that century
there was much less intellectual anarchy than when Lucian had exposed the
sects “for sale at public auction”; a comparative harmony arose among the
pagans after they joined the opposition. One single school, that of
neo-Platonism, ruled all [202]minds. This school not only respected
positive religion, as ancient stoicism had done, but venerated it,
because it saw there the expression of an old revelation handed down by
past generations. It considered the sacred books divinely
inspired—the books of Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, the Chaldean
oracles, Homer, and especially the esoteric doctrines of the
mysteries—and subordinated its theories to their teachings. As
there must be no contradiction between all the disparate traditions of
different countries and different periods, because all have emanated from
one divinity, philosophy, the ancilla theologiae, attempted to
reconcile them by the aid of allegory. And thus, by means of compromises
between old Oriental ideas and Greco-Latin thought, an ensemble of
beliefs slowly took form, the truth of which seemed to have been
established by common consent. So when the atrophied parts of the Roman
religion had been removed, foreign elements had combined to give it a new
vigor and in it themselves became modified. This hidden work of internal
decomposition and reconstruction had unconsciously produced a religion
very different from the one Augustus had attempted to restore.

However, we would be tempted to believe that there had been no change
in the Roman faith, were we to read certain authors that fought idolatry
in those days. Saint Augustine, for instance, in his City of God,
pleasantly pokes fun at the multitude of Italian gods that presided over
the paltriest acts of life.^[3] But the useless, ridiculous deities of
the old pontifical litanies no longer existed outside of the books of
antiquaries. As a matter of fact, the Christian polemicist’s authority in
this instance was Varro. The defenders of the [203]church sought weapons
against idolatry even in Xenophanes, the first philosopher to oppose
Greek polytheism. It has frequently been shown that apologists find it
difficult to follow the progress of the doctrines which they oppose, and
often their blows fall upon dead men. Moreover, it is a fault common to
all scholars, to all imbued with book learning, that they are better
acquainted with the opinions of ancient authors than with the sentiments
of their contemporaries, and that they prefer to live in the past rather
than in the world surrounding them. It was easier to reproduce the
objections of the Epicureans and the skeptics against abolished beliefs,
than to study the defects of an active organism with a view to
criticizing it. In those times the merely formal culture of the schools
caused many of the best minds to lose their sense of reality.

The Christian polemics therefore frequently give us an inadequate idea
of paganism in its decline. When they complacently insisted upon the
immorality of the sacred legends they ignored the fact that the gods and
heroes of mythology had no longer any but a purely literary existence.^[4] The writers of that
period, like those of the Renaissance, regarded the fictions of mythology
as details necessary to poetical composition. They were ornaments of
style, rhetorical devices, but not the expression of a sincere faith.
Those old myths had fallen to the lowest degree of disrepute in the
theater. The actors of mimes ridiculing Jupiter’s gallant adventures did
not believe in their reality any more than the author of Faust believed
in the compact with Mephistopheles.

So we must not be deceived by the oratorical effects [204]of a
rhetorician like Arnobius or by the Ciceronian periods of a Lactantius.
In order to ascertain the real status of the beliefs we must refer to
Christian authors who were men of letters less than they were men of
action, who lived the life of the people and breathed the air of the
streets, and who spoke from experience rather than from the treatises of
mythmongers. They were high functionaries like Prudentius;^[5] like the man to whom the
name “Ambrosiaster”^[6] has
been given since the time of Erasmus; like the converted pagan Firmicus
Maternus,^[7] who had
written a treatise on astrology before opposing “The Error of the Profane
Religions”; like certain priests brought into contact with the last
adherents of idolatry through their pastoral duties, as for instance the
author of the homilies ascribed to St. Maximus of Turin;^[8] finally like the writers of anonymous
pamphlets, works prepared for the particular occasion and breathing the
ardor of all the passions of the movement.^[9] If this inquiry is based on the obscure
indications in regard to their religious convictions left by members of
the Roman aristocracy who remained true to the faith of their ancestors,
like Macrobius or Symmachus; if it is particularly guided by the
exceptionally numerous inscriptions that seem to be the public expression
of the last will of expiring paganism, we shall be able to gain a
sufficiently precise idea of the condition of the Roman religion at the
time of its extinction.

One fact becomes immediately clear from an examination of those
documents. The old national religion of Rome was dead.^[10] The great dignitaries still adorned
themselves with the titles of augur and quindecimvir, or of consul and
tribune, but those [205]archaic prelacies were as devoid of all
real influence upon religion as the republican magistracies were
powerless in the state. Their fall had been made complete on the day when
Aurelian established the pontiffs of the Invincible Sun, the protector of
his empire, beside and above the ancient high priests. The only cults
still alive were those of the Orient, and against them were directed the
efforts of the Christian polemics, who grew more and more bitter in
speaking of them. The barbarian gods had taken the place of the defunct
immortals in the devotion of the pagans. They alone still had empire over
the soul.

With all the other “profane religions,” Firmicus Maternus fought those
of the four Oriental nations. He connected them with the four elements.
The Egyptians were the worshipers of water—the water of the Nile
fertilizing their country; the Phrygians of the earth, which was to them
the Great Mother of everything; the Syrians and Carthaginians of the air,
which they adored under the name of celestial Juno;^[11] the Persians of fire, to which they
attributed preeminence over the other three principles. This system
certainly was borrowed from the pagan theologians. In the common peril
threatening them, those cults, formerly rivals, had become reconciled and
regarded themselves as divisions and, so to speak, congregations, of the
same church. Each one of them was especially consecrated to one of the
elements which in combination form the universe. Their union constituted
the pantheistic religion of the deified world.

All the Oriental religions assumed the form of mysteries.^[12] Their dignitaries were
at the same time pontiffs of the Invincible Sun, fathers of Mithra, [206]celebrants of the taurobolium of the Great
Mother, prophets of Isis; in short, they had all titles imaginable. In
their initiation they received the revelation of an esoteric doctrine
strengthened by their fervor.^[13] What was the theology they learned?
Here also a certain dogmatic homogeneity has established itself.

All writers agree with Firmicus that the pagans worshiped the
elementa.^[14]

Under this term were included not only the four simple substances which
by their opposition and blending caused all phenomena of the visible
world,^[15] but also the
stars and in general the elements of all celestial and earthly bodies.^[16]

We therefore may in a certain sense speak of the return of paganism to
nature worship; but must this transformation be regarded as a
retrogression toward a barbarous past, as a relapse to the level of
primitive animism? If so, we should be deceived by appearances. Religions
do not fall back into infancy as they grow old. The pagans of the fourth
century no longer naively considered their gods as capricious genii, as
the disordered powers of a confused natural philosophy; they conceived
them as cosmic energies whose providential action was regulated in a
harmonious system. Faith was no longer instinctive and impulsive, for
erudition and reflection had reconstructed the entire theology. In a
certain sense it might be said that theology had passed from the
fictitious to the metaphysical state, according to the formula of Comte.
It was intimately connected with the knowledge of the day, which was
cherished by its last votaries with love and pride, as faithful heirs of
the ancient wisdom of the Orient and Greece.^[17] In many instances it was nothing but a
religious form of the cosmology of the [207]period. This
constituted both its strength and its weakness. The rigorous principles
of astrology determined its conception of heaven and earth.

The universe was an organism animated by a God, unique, eternal and
almighty. Sometimes this God was identified with the destiny that ruled
all things, with infinite time that regulated all visible phenomena, and
he was worshiped in each subdivision of that endless duration, especially
in the months and the seasons.^[18] Sometimes, however, he was compared
with a king; he was thought of as a sovereign governing an empire, and
the various gods then were the princes and dignitaries interceding with
the rulers on behalf of his subjects whom they led in some manner into
his presence. This heavenly court had its messengers or “angels”
conveying to men the will of the master and reporting again the vows and
petitions of his subjects. It was an aristocratic monarchy in heaven as
on earth.^[19] A more
philosophic conception made the divinity an infinite power impregnating
all nature with its overflowing forces. “There is only one God, sole and
supreme,” wrote Maximus of Madaura about 390, “without beginning or
parentage, whose energies, diffused through the world, we invoke under
various names, because we are ignorant of his real name. By successively
addressing our supplications to his different members we intend to honor
him in his entirety. Through the mediation of the subordinate gods the
common father both of themselves and of all men is honored in a thousand
different ways by mortals who are thus in accord in spite of their
discord.”^[20]

However, this ineffable God, who comprehensively embraces everything,
manifests himself especially in [208]the resplendent brightness of the ethereal
sky.^[21] He reveals his
power in water and in fire, in the earth, the sea and the blowing of the
winds; but his purest, most radiant and most active epiphany is in the
stars whose revolutions determine every event and all our actions. Above
all he manifests himself in the sun, the motive power of the celestial
spheres, the inexhaustible seat of light and life, the creator of all
intelligence on earth. Certain philosophers like the senator
Praetextatus, one of the dramatis personae of Macrobius,
confounded all the ancient divinities of paganism with the sun in a
thorough-going syncretism.^[22]

Just as a superficial observation might lead to the belief that the
theology of the last pagans had reverted to its origin, so at first sight
the transformation of the ritual might appear like a return to savagery.
With the adoption of the Oriental mysteries barbarous, cruel and obscene
practices were undoubtedly spread, as for instance the masquerading in
the guise of animals in the Mithraic initiations, the bloody dances of
the galli of the Great Mother and the mutilations of the Syrian
priests. Nature worship was originally as “amoral” as nature itself. But
an ethereal spiritualism ideally transfigured the coarseness of those
primitive customs. Just as the doctrine had become completely impregnated
with philosophy and erudition, so the liturgy had become saturated with
ethical ideas.

The taurobolium, a disgusting shower-bath of lukewarm blood, had
become a means of obtaining a new and eternal life; the ritualistic
ablutions were no longer external and material acts, but were supposed to
cleanse the soul of its impurities and to restore its original innocence;
the sacred repasts [209]imparted an intimate virtue to the soul
and furnished sustenance to the spiritual life. While efforts were made
to maintain the continuity of tradition, its content had slowly been
transformed. The most shocking and licentious fables were metamorphosed
into edifying narratives by convenient and subtle interpretations which
were a joy to the learned mythographers. Paganism had become a school of
morality, the priest a doctor and director of the conscience.^[23]

The purity and holiness imparted by the practice of sacred ceremonies
were the indispensable condition for obtaining eternal life.^[24] The mysteries promised
a blessed immortality to their initiates, and claimed to reveal to them
infallible means of effecting their salvation. According to a generally
accepted symbol, the spirit animating man was a spark, detached from the
fires shining in the ether; it partook of their divinity and so, it was
believed, had descended to the earth to undergo a trial. It could
literally be said that

After having left their corporeal prisons, the pious souls reascended
towards the celestial regions of the divine stars, to live forever in
endless brightness beyond the starry spheres.^[25]

But at the other extremity of the world, facing this luminous realm,
extended the somber kingdom of evil spirits. They were irreconcilable
adversaries of the gods and men of good will, and constantly left the
infernal regions to roam about the earth and scatter evil. With the aid
of the celestial spirits, the faithful had to struggle forever against
their designs and seek to avert their anger by means of bloody
sacrifices. [210]But, with the help of occult and terrible
processes, the magician could subject them to his power and compel them
to serve his purposes. This demonology, the monstrous offspring of
Persian dualism, favored the rise of every superstition.^[26]

However, the reign of the evil powers was not to last forever.
According to common opinion the universe would be destroyed by fire^[27] after the times had
been fulfilled. All the wicked would perish, but the just would be
revived and establish the reign of universal happiness in the regenerated
world.^[28]

The foregoing is a rapid sketch of the theology of paganism after
three centuries of Oriental influence. From coarse fetichism and savage
superstitions the learned priests of the Asiatic cults had gradually
produced a complete system of metaphysics and eschatology, as the
Brahmins built up the spiritualistic monism of the Vedanta beside the
monstrous idolatry of Hinduism, or, to confine our comparisons to the
Latin world, as the jurists drew from the traditional customs of
primitive tribes the abstract principles of a legal system that governs
the most cultivated societies. This religion was no longer like that of
ancient Rome, a mere collection of propitiatory and expiatory rites
performed by the citizen for the good of the state; it now pretended to
offer to all men a world-conception which gave rise to a rule of conduct
and placed the end of existence in the future life. It was more unlike
the worship that Augustus had attempted to restore than the Christianity
that fought it. The two opposed creeds moved in the same intellectual and
moral sphere,^[29] and one
could actually pass from one to the other without shock or interruption.
Sometimes when [211]reading the long works of the last Latin
writers, like Ammianus Marcellinus or Boëthius, or the panegyrics of the
official orators,^[30]

scholars could well ask whether their authors were pagan or Christian. In
the time of Symmachus and Praetextatus, the members of the Roman
aristocracy who had remained faithful to the gods of their ancestors did
not have a mentality or morality very different from that of adherents of
the new faith who sat with them in the senate. The religious and mystical
spirit of the Orient had slowly overcome the whole social organism and
had prepared all nations to unite in the bosom of a universal church.

[213]

NOTES.

PREFACE.

1 We are indebted for more than one
useful suggestion to our colleagues Messrs. Charles Michel and Joseph
Bidez, who were kind enough to read the proofs of the French edition.

2 An outline of the present state
of the subject will be found in a recent volume by Gruppe, Griechische
Mythologie, 1906, pp. 1606 ff., whose views are sharply opposed to
the negative conclusions formulated, with certain reservations, by
Harnack, Ausbreitung des Christentums, II, pp. 274 ff. Among the
latest studies intended for the general reader that have appeared on this
subject, may be mentioned in Germany those of Geffcken (Aus der
Werdezeit des Christentums, Leipsic, 1904, pp. 114 ff.), and in
England those of Cheyne (Bible Problems, 1904), who expresses his
opinion in these terms: “The Christian religion is a synthesis, and only
those who have dim eyes can assert that the intellectual empires of
Babylonia and Persia have fallen.”—Very useful is the new book of
Clemen, Religionsgeschichtliche Erklärung des Neuen Testaments,
Giessen, 1909.

3 Mon. myst. Mithra, I, p.
342, n. 4; see the new texts commented on by Usener, Rhein.
Museum, LX, 1905, pp. 466 ff.; 489 ff., and my paper “Natalis
Invicti,” C. R. Acad. des inscr., 1911.

4 See page 70. Compare also Mon.
myst. Mithra, I, p. 341. The imitation of the church is plain in the
pagan reform attempted by the emperor Julian.

5 See Harnack, Militia
Christi, 1905.

6 I have collected a number of
texts on the religious “militias” in Mon. myst. Mithra, I, p. 317,
n. 1. Others could certainly be discovered: Apuleius, Metam., XI,
14: E cohorte [214]religionis unus (in connection with a
mystic of Isis);—Vettius Valens (V, 2, p. 220, 27, Kroll ed.):
??????????

???
??????????;
(VII, 3, p. 271, 28) ??????????????
????
???????
????????. See
Minucius Felix, 36, § 7: Quod patimur non est poena, militia
est.—We might also mention the commonplace term militia
Veneris, which was popular with the Augustan poets (Propertius, IV,
1, 137; see I, 6, 30; Horace, Od., III, 26, and especially the
parallel developed by Ovid, Amor., I, 9, 1 ff., and Ars
amat., III, 233 ff.)—Socrates, in Plato’s Apologia (p.
28 E), incidentally likens the philosophic mission imposed on him by the
divinity to the campaigns he waged under the orders of the archons, but
the comparison of God with a “strategus” was developed especially by the
Stoics; see Capelle, “Schrift von der Welt,” Neue Jahrb. für das
klass. Altert., XV, 1905, p. 558, n. 6, and Seneca, Epist.,
107, 9: Optimum est Deum sine murmuratione comitari, malus miles est
qui imperatorem gemens sequitur.—See now also Reitzenstein,
Hellenistische Mysterienreligion, 1910, p. 66.

7 See Rev. des études
grecques, XIV, 1901, pp. 43 ff.

8 This has been clearly shown by
Wendland in connection with the idea of the ???????, Zeitschrift für
neutest. Wiss., V, 1904, pp. 355 ff. More recently he has thrown
light on the general influence of Hellenistic civilization on
Christianity (Die hellenistisch-römische Kultur in ihren Beziehungen
zum Judentum und Christentum, Tübingen, 1908). A first attempt to
determine the character of Hellenistic mysteries is to be found in
Reitzenstein’s Hellenistische Mysterienreligion, 1910.

I. ROME AND THE ORIENT.

1 Renan, L’Antéchrist, p.
130.

2 M. Krumbacher (Byzant.
Zeitschr., XVI, 1907, p. 710) notes, in connection with the idea that
I am defending here: “In ähnlicher Weise war dieser Gedanke (der
Ueberflügelung des Abendlandes durch die auf allen Kulturgebieten
vordringende Regsamkeit der Orientalen) kurz vorher in meiner Skizze der
byzantinischen Literatur (Kultur der Gegenwart, I, 8 [1907], pp.
246-253) auseinandergelegt worden; es ist ein erfreulicher und bei dem
Wirrsal widerstreitender Doctrinen tröstlicher Beweis für den Fortschritt
der Erkenntniss, dass [215]zwei von ganz verschiedenen Richtungen
ausgehende Diener der Wissenschaft sich in so wichtigen allgemeinen
Fragen so nahe kommen.”

3. Cf. Kornemann, “Aegyptische
Einflüsse im römischen Kaiserreich” (Neue Jahrb. für das klass.
Altertum, II, 1898, p. 118 ff.) and Otto Hirschfeld, Die kaiserl.
Verwaltungsbeamten, 2d. ed., p. 469.

4. See Cicero’s statement regarding
the ancient Roman dominion (De off., II, 8): “Illud patrocinium
orbis terrae verius quam imperium poterat nominari.”

5. O. Hirschfeld, op. cit.,
pp. 53, 91, 93, etc.; cf. Mitteis, Reichsrecht und Volksrecht, p.
9, n. 2, etc. Thus have various institutions been transmitted from the
ancient Persians to the Romans; see Ch. VI, n. 5.

6. Rostovtzew, “Der Ursprung des
Kolonats” (Beiträge zur alten Gesch., I, 1901, p. 295);
Haussoullier, Histoire de Milet et du Didymeion, 1902, p. 106.

7. Mitteis, Reichsrecht und
Volksrecht in den östlichen Provinzen, 1891, pp. 8 ff.

8. Mommsen, Gesammelte
Schriften, II, 1905, p. 366: “Seit Diocletian übernimmt der östliche
Reichsteil, die partes Orientis, auf allen Gebieten die Führung.
Dieser späte Sieg des Hellenismus über die Lateiner ist vielleicht
nirgends auffälliger als auf dem Gebiet der juristischen
Schriftstellerei.”

9. De Vogüe and Duthoit,
L’Architecture civile et religieuse de la Syrie centrale, Paris,
1866-1877.

10. This result is especially due
to the researches of M. Strzygowski, but we cannot enter here into the
controversies aroused by his publications: Orient oder Rom, 1911;
Hellas in des Orients Umarmung, Munich, 1902, and especially
Kleinasien, ein Neuland der Kunstgeschichte, Leipsic, 1903; [cf.
the reports of Ch. Diehl, Journal des Savants, 1904, pp. 236 ff. =
Etudes byzantines, 1905, pp. 336 ff.; Gabriel Millet, Revue
archéolog., 1905, I, pp. 93 ff.; Marcel Laurent, Revue de l'Instr.
publ. en Belgique, 1905, pp. 145 ff.]; Mschatta, 1904, [cf.
infra, Ch. VI, n. 12].—M. Bréhier,
“Orient ou Byzance?” (Rev. archéol., 1907, II, pp. 396 ff.), gives
a substantial summary of the question.—In his last volume,
Amida (1910), M. [216]Strzygowski tries to find the source of
medieval art in Mesopotamia. For this controversy see Diehl’s Manuel
d’art byzantin, 1910.

11. See also Pliny, Epist.
Traian., 40: “Architecti tibi [in Bithynia] deesse non possunt …
cum ex Graecia etiam ad nos [at Rome] venire soliti sint.”—Among
the names of architects mentioned in Latin inscriptions there are a great
many revealing Greek or Oriental origin (see Ruggiero, Dizion.
epigr., s. v. “Architectus”), in spite of the consideration which
their eminently useful profession always enjoyed at Rome.

12. The question of the artistic
and industrial influences exercised by the Orient over Gaul during the
Roman period, has been broached frequently—among others by Courajod
(Leçons du Louvre, I, 1899, pp. 115, 327 ff.)—but it has
never been seriously studied in its entirety. Michaëlis has recently
devoted a suggestive article to this subject in connection with a statue
from the museum of Metz executed in the style of the school of Pergamum
(Jahrb. der Gesellsch. für lothring. Geschichte, XVII, 1905, pp.
203 ff.). By the influence of Marseilles in Gaul, and the ancient
connection of that city with the towns of Hellenic Asia, he explains the
great difference between the works of sculpture discovered along the
upper Rhine, which had been civilized by the Italian legions, and those
unearthed on the other side of the Vosges. This is a very important
discovery, rich in results. We believe, however, that Michaëlis ascribes
too much importance to the early Marseilles traders traveling along the
old “tin road” towards Brittany and the “amber road” towards Germany. The
Asiatic merchants and artisans did not set out from one point only. There
were many emigrants all over the valley of the Rhone. Lyons was a
half-Hellenized city, and the relations of Arles with Syria, of Nîmes
with Egypt, etc., are well known. We shall speak of them in connection
with the religions of those countries.

13. Even in the bosom of the
church the Latin Occident of the fourth century was still subordinate to
the Greek Orient, which imposed its doctrinal problems upon it (Harnack,
Mission und Ausbreitung, II, p. 283, n. 1).

14. The sacred formulas have been
collected by Alb. Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, pp. 212 ff. He
adds ???? ???
?????? ??

?????? ????,
[217]Archiv für Religionswiss., VII,
1905, p. 504, n. 1. [Cf. infra, ch. IV, n. 90.] Among the hymns of greatest importance for the
Oriental cults we must cite those in honor of Isis, discovered in the
island of Andros (Kaibel, Epigr., 4028) and elsewhere (see ch. IV,
n. 6). Fragments of hymns in honor of Attis have been preserved by
Hippolytus (Philosoph., V, 9. pp. 168 ff.) The so-called orphic
hymns (Abel, Orphica, 1883), which date back to a rather remote
period, do not seem to contain many Oriental elements (see Maas,
Orpheus, 1893, pp. 173 ff.), but this does not apply to the
gnostic hymns of which we possess very instructive fragments.—Cf.
Mon. myst. de Mithra, I, p. 313, n. 1.

15. Regarding the imitations of
the stage, see Adami, De poetis scen. Graecis hymnorum sacrorum
imitatoribus, 1901. Wünsch has shown the liturgic character of a
prayer to Asklepios, inserted by Herondas into his mimiambi (Archiv
für Religionswiss., VII, 1904, pp. 95 ff.) Dieterich believes he has
found an extensive extract from the Mithraic liturgy in a magic papyrus
of Paris (see infra, ch. VI, Bibliography).
But all these discoveries amount to very little if we think of the
enormous number of liturgic texts that have been lost, and even in the
case of ancient Greece we know little regarding this sacred literature.
See Ausfeld, De Graecorum precationibus, Leipsic, 1903; Ziegler,
De precationum apud Graecos formis quaestiones selectae, Breslau,
1905; H. Schmidt, Veteres philosophi quomodo iudicaverint de
precibus, Giessen, 1907.