VIII ORIENTAL RELIGIONS IN THE WESTERN HALF OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

In our previous lectures we have had occasion more than once to refer to the effect of the conquests of Alexander in opening up the nearer East to the European West, and in making easy the contact between Greeks and Orientals, especially those of Semitic and Persian stocks. Greece, Egypt, and western Asia were for a brief period united in one great empire; and although that political empire quickly broke into many units, the sway of the Greek language and of Greek ideas was permanently extended over wide areas where they had not had potent influence before, and by this extension a door was opened for the entrance of oriental ideas into the West. No doubt the Macedonian conqueror simply accelerated a process which had been going on imperceptibly through the channels of trade and of war from prehistoric times. Now with regard to the question of oriental influence on the Greek world from the earliest period, there has been much extravagant statement and conjecture: the Orphics, Pythagoras, Plato, and others too are said to have derived many of their ideas from the East. Such inaccuracies I wish to avoid. Indeed I will take this opportunity to state that apart from certain cults which we shall presently consider I am unable to see any clear proof of direct and concrete eastern influence on Greek or Roman philosophic and religious thought until the second century b.c., at the earliest; and that I believe that the amount of such influence later—up to the time when the Jewish and the Greek streams of thought united in Christian theology—has been greatly overestimated. Nevertheless it is true that in certain places, especially at Alexandria in Egypt, the greatest intellectual center in the ancient world after 300 b.c., there was some mingling of Hellenic and Semitic thought. The translation of the sacred books of the Jews into Greek, which we know as the Septuagint, began as early as the third century, but this translation was made for Hellenized Jews of the dispersion and had little interest for Greeks until the Christian period. But in the middle of the second century before our era a certain Aristobulus endeavored to reconcile Greek philosophy, especially that of the Peripatetic School, with Jewish wisdom, and to show that the Greeks drew their philosophy from the Mosaic laws and the prophets. The so-called Wisdom of Solomon also betrays the influence of Hellenic thought on Jews at Alexandria; and we have in an earlier lecture seen how the Greek and the Jew met in Philo. Moreover all the later Platonists, Pythagoreans, and similar sects were in some degree at least in accord with the Jewish thought of the time; and in general we know that the intellectual metropolis of the ancient world showed a fusion of West and East in society and ideas such as was hardly found elsewhere.

But while this mingling of the Greek and the Jew was going on at Alexandria, a new power was rising in Italy, which, having secured the mastery of the western half of the Mediterranean, turned its attention toward the East. Let us call to mind the position of Rome at the close of the Second Punic War in 202 b.c. She was mistress of practically the entire Italian peninsula from the Alps to the Straits of Messina; by her two wars with Carthage she had gained Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, and a large part of Spain—in short at the end of the third century before our era Rome was the dominant power in the West. Within the next two centuries she was destined to take and in no small degree to Latinize all of modern Spain and Portugal, the whole of France and Belgium, a part of Holland, the Rhine districts, Switzerland, southern Germany, and Austria below the Danube; she was to extend her power over the greater part of the Balkan peninsula including Greece; and she was to become mistress of the most of Asia Minor, of Syria and Palestine, of Egypt, and of all northern Africa with the exception of what is now Morocco. The whole civilized world, and many lands to which this name could hardly be applied, were brought under her sway before the close of the first Christian century.

In their conquests of eastern lands Roman soldiers came directly into contact with Asiatic, Syrian, and Egyptian forms of religion, so that on their return to the West they brought with them some knowledge of eastern gods. But the influence of oriental cults had begun before Rome entered on her military conquests; for a long time she had had mercantile and diplomatic relations with Asia Minor and Egypt. Trade indeed was one of the great channels through which gods no less than goods moved from the East to the West. The Greeks of western Asia Minor, of Delos, of southern Italy and Sicily were the middlemen who assisted in these transfers. Furthermore, beginning with the second pre-christian century, enormous numbers of slaves were brought from Asia Minor and the neighboring lands to Italy and the West. These slaves were of every degree from the most ignorant to the highly cultivated, but whatever their class they brought with them their own religions, which they practised in their captivity and thus made known to their masters. At a later period, under the Empire, auxiliary troops, enlisted in the eastern provinces, were stationed at many points in the West. The remains of shrines and hundreds of inscriptions found along the Danube and the Rhine, in remotest Britain, in Spain and Portugal, as well as in France and other lands, show that these auxiliary troops did much to introduce oriental gods to the areas in which they served. So traders, slaves, and soldiers became the great agents in transfer of those oriental religions, which in the first three centuries of our era were spread over all the western part of the Roman Empire.

Yet the first oriental deity to be received at Rome was invited there by vote of the Senate. In one of the darkest hours of the Second Punic War, in 205 b.c., the Sibylline Books declared that Hannibal would be forced to leave Italy if the great Mother of the Gods could be brought from Phrygia to Rome. King Attalus of Pergamum, a friend and ally of the Romans, readily gave up the meteoric stone which represented the goddess, and in 204 this was received with great ceremony at Rome. Thirteen years later the divinity was installed in her permanent home on the Palatine, where the ruins of her temple may still be seen. The character of her worship was wholly different from that of any god hitherto known at Rome, and the citizens must have been greatly shocked when they first beheld it; Phrygian priests dancing and mutilating themselves furnished an appalling contrast to the sober ritual of the state. So offensive were these performances that no Roman was allowed to become a priest of the goddess until after the close of the Republic. Only on April 4 did a state official—the city praetor—offer sacrifice in the temple of the goddess, and on this same day sodalities formed among the aristocracy dined together in her honor; in 194 plays were presented on her festal day, and three years later with the dedication of her temple there were established in her honor the Ludi Megalenses, which, however, did not differ essentially from similar festivals in honor of Roman gods. But the temple service was restricted to the imported Phrygian priests, who were allowed on certain days to dance through the streets to the sound of their wild music, singing hymns to the goddess, and taking up collections for the support of the worship. Under the Empire Roman citizens were admitted to the priestly offices. Yet from the first the goddess was held in high esteem, for the promise of the Sibylline Books had been fulfilled—Hannibal had been forced to withdraw to Africa, and the Roman cause had triumphed with divine help.

Other divinities came in what may be described as unofficial ways, through the agencies that I have already mentioned. For example, as early as the third century before our era, the worship of the goddess Isis and her associates Serapis, Anubis, and the rest, spread from Alexandria into Sicily and southern Italy, as it had extended in the same period to Delos and the other islands of the Aegean Sea, and to the coast of Asia Minor. Before 105 b.c. a temple had been built at Puteoli, the important seaport of that day on the Bay of Naples, which had close commercial relations with Delos and other ports in the East. The temple of Isis at Pompeii was erected at about the same period. Within half a century a shrine of the goddess had been established on the very Capitol at Rome, where she maintained herself in spite of many efforts to dislodge her. This Egyptian cult had been introduced by immigrant traders and slaves, but it soon spread to other classes. About 38 a.d., a temple to the goddess was erected on the Campus Martius not far from the Pantheon. There is today in front of the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva a little east of the Pantheon an elephant carrying on his back a small obelisk at which he casts an amusing look. That obelisk originally stood before the temple of Isis, which was the chief center of the Egyptian cult at Rome to the end of paganism.

The campaigns of Sulla and Pompey in Asia Minor had brought the soldiers into contact with the worship of a Cappadocian “Mother-goddess,” Mâ, to whom the Romans gave the Italian name of Bellona. The cult of this divinity was apparently carried on privately at Rome during the last half-century of the Republic, but the goddess did not receive official recognition before the third Christian century.

It was in the first century of our era, however, that a flood of divinities came from the East to the West. Of these I can mention only a few. From northern Syria slaves and traders brought the Syrian goddess Atargatis, whom they made known as far as Britain under the name of Dea Syria. From many Syrian towns came the local Baalim, who were regularly identified with Iupiter Optimus Maximus. So Adad, the consort of Atargatis at Hierapolis in Syria, was known in the West; the Baal of Heliopolis, Baalbec, was worshipped as Iupiter Optimus Maximus Heliopolitanus, not only in Italy, but in the Balkan peninsula, along the Danube and the Rhine, and in Gaul. The Syrian port Berytus, the modern Beyrout, became apparently a center for the export, so to speak, of these oriental divinities. We have inscriptions which show that an association of Syrian merchants coming from this city was settled at Puteoli, where they formed a religious society, cultores Iovis Heliopolitani Berytenses, which carried on the worship of the Baal of Heliopolis at the end of the first and the beginning of the second century of our era. A dedication to the same god, from Nîmes in southern France, was set up by a retired centurion, who tells us that his home was Beyrout; and likewise in the third century at Zellhausen near the Rhine another centurion paid his devotions to the gods and wrote himself down as from the same place. From the little town of Doliche in Commagene, a district of northern Syria, soldiers carried their warlike god to the western borders of the Roman world; Damascus furnished Iupiter Optimus Maximus Damascenus; and I might quote many other illustrations. More important, however, than these divinities was the god Mithras, whose worship originated in Persia, but had long been established in Asia Minor. It was to become prominent in the West at the close of the first Christian century.

I have already said that these oriental gods were known over virtually all the western world. We naturally find the evidence for their worship most abundant in the great centers of trade and in those districts where soldiers were quartered. In Italy the ports of Puteoli on the Bay of Naples and of Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber, together with the capital, Rome, were the greatest centers. But the oriental cults were found throughout the Italian peninsula. In the provinces of the Gauls and the Germanies we find two great areas—the populous valleys of the Rhone and the upper Garonne, and the Rhine valley. The chief centers, as we should expect, were for the most part the larger towns or army headquarters: Marseilles, Arles, Orange, Die, Vaison, Vienne, Nîmes, Narbonne, and Bordeaux; Lyons, Trèves, Mayence, Heddernheim, and Cologne. Occasionally a small town showed remarkable devotion to some cult, as did Lactoure in Aquitaine, where the Great Mother of the Gods was especially popular in the latter third of the second and the first half of the third century of our era. In like fashion these cults flourished along the valley of the Danube and even in remote Dacia, which included approximately modern Rumania and Transylvania; dedications are also found in the more important towns in Africa, Spain, and Britain, being most abundant in the last named province along the line of Hadrian’s wall.

With regard to the centuries during which these oriental religions flourished our evidence, aside from that for the Great Mother, shows clearly that some entered southern Italy in the second century b.c. or even earlier, and that they began at Rome about 100 b.c.; there they lasted to the very close of the fourth century of our era, almost a hundred years after the recognition of Christianity by Constantine. In the provinces of the Roman Empire these cults did not become prominent until about 100 a.d., and they ceased before the close of the third century. When in 307 a.d. Diocletian, Galerius, and Licinius restored a shrine of Mithras, “the protector of their empire,” at Carnuntum on the Danube, they were honoring a god whose potency in the European provinces had ended more than a generation before.[287] The reasons for the decay of these cults we shall consider later. But I should like you now to observe that in Rome these religions flourished for a good century longer than they did in the western provinces. The explanation of this fact is to be found in that sharp conflict between paganism and Christianity which went on through the fourth century, when the pagan party rallied its forces of every sort for a final defense against the advance of Christianity. This movement at Rome, which had slight influence elsewhere save perhaps in some of the largest cities, produced a pagan revival which helped to maintain the adopted oriental religions for over a century after they had lost all vitality in the provinces.

The character of these oriental religions offers a marked contrast to that of the Roman. In my last lecture I pointed out that this latter was a formal, practical, bread-and-butter sort of religion, one that was natural to an unimaginative agricultural people; it was a religion in which the worship of the gods consisted primarily in the exact performance of ritual to secure practical blessings of a material kind. I further tried to show that this religion offered no satisfaction to man’s deeper questionings, made slight appeal to religious emotion, and had little moral effect except in the emphasis which it laid on duty; we also saw that the forms of Greek religion, which were imported into Italy, were serviceable chiefly in that they were cults in which all classes of citizens could share, and because they offered certain aesthetic satisfactions; I likewise spoke of the way in which the Greco-Roman religion of the state fell into decay after the end of the third century before our era, so that before Cicero’s day the intellectual class had lost their belief in it. This did not mean, however, that men had lost their religious longing. Far from it. For there is abundant proof that under the stimulus of Greek philosophy and mysticism, questionings as to the nature of man, his relation to divinity, and his immortality became more earnest. To these questions the Greco-Roman religion offered no answer.

The oriental gods, however, were of a very different sort from those of Greece and Rome: they required a spiritual devotion on the part of their devotees and they made strong appeals to the religious emotions. These appeals were increased by the exotic character of these foreign cults, for it seems to be a characteristic of the human mind in time of special need or distress to seek some foreign source of help or relief. Egypt and the East made a far greater appeal to the imagination at the close of the Roman Republic and in the early Empire than they do even today. Furthermore many of these religions could claim the warrant of great age: Isis and Osiris had been mighty in Egypt for two thousand years; the Great Mother of the Gods belonged to a class of Asiatic mother-goddesses of immemorial antiquity; and Mithras came from a period beyond the knowledge of the Roman world. Whenever records failed, pious tradition supplied the need. The devotees formed closed communities, sacred brotherhoods, to which admission was obtained through rites of initiation. Their rituals were essentially mysteries, in which through emotional experiences and revelations the devout gained assurance of divine aid here and hereafter. Furthermore these oriental religions had proselyting priests who recruited the number of devotees by their appeals, and each religion numbered among its followers considerable bodies of men who followed a certain holy life—they were known as sacrati, “the consecrated.” There was, in fact, much in common between these oriental mysteries and the greater mysteries of Greece and the Orphic religion.

These oriental gods, moreover, were adaptable. They were sometimes identified with familiar Greek and Roman divinities, in the same fashion as Greek gods had been given Italian names; but their adaptability went much further. Freed from all local restrictions, the Orientals could take on the characteristics and functions required by their new environment without losing their individualities, and their systems could be easily modified and elevated to meet the needs and demands of successive generations. Unmoral or even immoral when first brought into the Greco-Roman world, a number of them adopted first the current secular morality and eventually became strong moral agencies. Finally they all displayed a pantheistic tendency. We have already seen how philosophy inclined from the first toward pantheism or monotheism; that the general attitude which first belonged to the philosopher became finally common to large numbers of men, for the human mind naturally tends to see resemblances and through them affinities, rather than their opposites. Therefore in religious thought men, acting consciously or unconsciously under the influence of philosophy and of this syncretistic tendency, now looked through the variety of popular polytheism and found unity in the divine; they did not deny the multiplicity of gods, but they rather regarded each of the many gods as a manifestation of the one divine principle in the world. So religion was in agreement with Stoicism and the later mystic philosophies.

The devotees of the oriental gods generally adopted this syncretistic view, so that most, if not all, saw in their god the supreme all-embracing divinity whose divine nature was manifest in countless other gods. This belief is best expressed by Apuleius, who composed his famous Metamorphoses in the middle of the second century of our era. After his hero Lucius had passed through many hardships and adventures, the saving goddess Isis appeared in a vision and thus declared herself: “Lo, I am here, Lucius, moved by thy prayers, I, the parent of the universe, mistress of the elements, the primal offspring of the ages, greatest of divinities, queen of the dead, first among the celestials, the single form of gods and goddesses; I, who by my word rule the bright heights of heaven, the healthful breezes of the sea, the gloomy silent shades below. To my divinity, one in itself, the entire world does reverence under many forms, with varied rites, and manifold names. Hence it is that the primal Phrygians call me at Pessinus the Mother of the Gods, hence the Athenians, who are sprung from the ground on which they dwell, name me Cecropian Minerva, the wave-beat Cyprians Paphian Venus, the archer Cretans Dictynnan Diana, the Sicilians with their triple speech Stygian Proserpina, the people of Eleusis ancient Ceres, others Juno, others Bellona, some Hecate, again Rhamnusia; but the Aethiopians on whom shine the growing rays of the sun at his birth, the Arians, and the Egyptians, mighty in their ancient learning, worship me with the proper rites and call me by my true name Queen Isis.”[288]

This revelation by the goddess not only squares with the pantheism of philosophic thought and with the doctrine of emanations of the divine, such as were believed in by the Neoplatonists, but it is also in harmony with the popular polytheism. At the beginning of the second century of our era the genial Plutarch first stated a philosophy of a universal syncretistic religion: “Not different gods among different peoples—gods of Barbarians, of Greeks, of the South, or of the North; but even as sun and moon, heaven and earth and sea are common to all, yet have different names among different peoples, so there is one Intelligence which rules in the world, one Providence which directs it; the same powers act everywhere. Honors, names, and symbols vary.”[289] This statement represents the attitude of all the more enlightened classes after the beginning of the second century. A pantheism, which made abundant provision for a subordinate polytheism, was the dominant belief. In fact Greco-Roman paganism ended in such a pantheism, in which the sun was the symbol of the supreme and all-embracing divinity.

Although many, if not most, of these eastern religions were probably mysteries, requiring that their devotees should undergo certain initiatory rites before being admitted to full participation in the sacred service, we shall confine ourselves to sure ground and shall consider briefly the mysteries of Isis, of Mithras, and of the Great Mother of the Gods—especially those of Isis, because Apuleius, from whose work I quoted a moment ago, has left us a rather full account of the initiation of his hero Lucius, whose experiences in this part of the Metamorphoses are apparently the author’s own.

Isis and Osiris were ancient gods whose worship had been wide spread in Egypt from very early times; they had been carried by Egyptian traders to some other parts of the Mediterranean world before the conquests of Alexander. But the form of the Isiac religion which ultimately spread over the Greco-Roman world was a conscious mingling of Egyptian and Hellenic elements. The Ptolemies naturally desired to unite the Greeks and Egyptians under their rule, and Ptolemy Soter (306-285 b.c.), the first of the line, according to Plutarch, employed Manetho, a priest at Heliopolis in Egypt, and Timotheus, one of the sacred family of the Eumolpidae in Eleusis, to work out a modified religion of Isis, with whom was now associated a new divinity, Serapis, said to have been originally Hades of Sinope, a Greek colony on the south shore of the Black Sea. Thus Greek elements were grafted on the Egyptian stock, Serapis being identified with Osiris. The ancient forms apparently were largely retained, and the priesthood remained Egyptian; but Greek became the common language for the ritual, while Greek artists made statues of Isis and her consort, and Greek poets sang the goddess’s praise. Thus the spread of this composite religion was rendered easy, especially as its mysteries claimed to give that assurance of salvation for which men longed.

The mysteries were based on the story of Osiris, the brother and husband of Isis. According to the tale Set, or Typhon, killed Osiris, but the body was discovered by Isis. However while Isis was visiting her son Horus, Set again gained possession of the body, tore it in pieces, and scattered its fragments far and wide. But these Isis once more found and buried, and now Osiris lives again and reigns in the lower world, and also in heaven, as the sun; that is, Osiris-Serapis is lord of life and death. The story was early brought into relation with the Egyptian doctrine of immortality. It is another myth of a god who dies and lives again, whose rebirth, like that of Dionysus, Attis, and Adonis, becomes the warrant of man’s future existence. The story was early acted as a kind of passion play at Abydos; this element was kept in the Ptolemaic creation, so that in Rome, at least beginning with the reigns of Caligula and of Claudius, Isis’ hunt for her murdered consort, her mourning for him, and her joy over the discovery of his body and over his revival were experienced again yearly by her priests during the days from October 28 to November 3. The final joy of the participants in this sacred season was indicated by the name, Hilaria, given to the last day. The Empire also knew a spring festival of the goddess as ruler of the sea and protectress of sailors.

There were three grades of initiation into the Isiac mysteries. The first was that of Isis, the second of Osiris-Serapis, the third led to the priesthood. In Apuleius’ story his hero Lucius had through over-curious tampering with a magic unguent been changed into the shape of an ass. In this form he suffered various adventures which fill the greater part of the extraordinary work; but at last, through the favor of the goddess, he was restored to his human form, and in a vision was commanded to devote himself to the divine service. Although most eager to be initiated, he was informed that he must wait until the goddess should indicate her willingness to receive him. Finally another vision told him that the happy day had arrived. At dawn the priest met him and conducted him to the temple, where the matin service of opening the shrine was solemnly performed. Then he told Lucius that he must provide certain things before the initiation took place—evidently gifts to the temple and the priests and something in the nature of a fee. After these had been secured, Lucius was taken to a public bath nearby, where after prayer the priest sprinkled him with holy water and duly purified him. Then Lucius was led back to the temple, set at the feet of the goddess, and secretly given many instructions “too sacred for utterance”; openly he was charged to abstain for ten consecutive days from all pleasures of the table, to eat no animal food, and to drink no wine.

After the ten days of preparation had been reverently observed, toward nightfall great numbers of the initiates assembled bringing gifts to the neophyte. When the uninitiate had been excluded from the temple area, a fresh robe was placed about Lucius and he was led into the holiest part of the shrine. What there took place he might not tell; only this much he could say: “I approached the bounds of death. I trod the threshold of Proserpina. I was carried through all the elements and returned again to the upper air. At dead of night I saw the sun all glowing with a brilliant light. The gods of heaven and of hell I approached in very person and worshipped face to face.”[290]

Our imagination may busy itself as much as it will with trying to conceive the means which were employed to produce this effect; it is most probable that a hypnotic condition was induced in the neophyte and that in this state he was made to see the proper visions. But that must remain uncertain. This, however, is clear: the initiate, through a series of emotional experiences, was inspired with the belief that he had seen a divine vision. Like the seer in the Apocalypse, he knew that there was no night in the final abode of those who had been consecrated. By passing through the elements he had acquired a knowledge of holy things, which no uninitiated could possibly gain: he had been given assurance that he was to be ever after under the divine protection—in fact he had attained the certainty of salvation.

But let us follow Apuleius’ hero through his later experiences. The morning after his secret initiation Lucius was clothed in twelve sacred articles of dress and placed on a wooden dais in the middle of the shrine before the statue of the goddess; over him was thrown a linen garment, richly embroidered in various colors with marvellous animals, with Indian dragons and hyperborean gryphons. In his right hand was put a lighted torch, while on his head was placed a garland of palm leaves, which stood out like the rays of the sun. Then the curtains were drawn back and the neophyte was displayed to the assembled people. The meaning of this ceremony also is evident: by initiation Lucius had become one with the god, and therefore this exhibition of him is the epiphany of the initiate as the Sun God. The last is clearly indicated by the garland of palm leaves which represented the rays of the sun. The meaning of the dress is obscure to us, but naturally it was effective in the impression which it made on the wearer and on those who viewed him. After this epiphany certain minor rites followed on the next day, completing the initiation of Lucius into the first degree, that of Isis.

After continuing for some days enjoying the inexpressible bliss afforded him by the sight of the goddess and receiving the blessings which her power bestowed, Lucius set out from Corinth for Rome in obedience to a vision which the goddess had granted him. There, when a year had rolled round, he was divinely warned that he was to advance to the second degree, that of the invincible Osiris; and shortly after this he was ordered in like manner to take the highest degree of initiation; henceforth he was a priest and an official in the sacred association. For the second and third degrees the same days of preparation were required as for the first, and like ceremonies were performed. When the final initiation had been undergone, Lucius was marked by a shaven head, and apparently also by a sign branded on his forehead, as one who had consecrated his life to Isis.[291]

This is a brief summary of the fullest account which we possess of an initiation into any of these oriental mysteries. We see from it not only how the initiate was given the satisfaction of feeling that he had seen divinity face to face—a vision by which he obtained a foretaste of the final knowledge of god and received assurance of his own salvation; but also how his religious life was constantly fed and supported by daily religious services, by matins and vespers in the temple. In these his emotions were stimulated and his consecration renewed by a ritual made impressive through every means which an immemorial history had sanctified and by every suggestion which an elaborate symbolism could give. He realized that he had become a member of a body set apart from the rest of the world. The members of this holy company were called “the consecrated ones,” sacrati. They had been born again indeed through initiation into the Isiac life. The term reborn, renatus, is used frequently of the initiates, the day of whose initiation was often referred to and celebrated as their birthday.

More widely spread and more powerful than the religion of Isis was the religion of Mithras. Into the details of its early history we may not now go, but we must limit ourselves to a few points only. Mithraism had its origin in Persia, yet it was greatly influenced by the ancient theology of the Chaldeans and by Babylonian astrology, as well as later by the more barbarous religions of Asia Minor, whither it was carried by Persian colonists during the last three centuries before the Christian era. The Romans first came into contact with it during Pompey’s campaign against the pirates of Cilicia in 67 b.c., but the soldiers seem not to have been greatly impressed at that time, for it was about a hundred and fifty years later that Mithraism began to be influential in the West. Soldiers, traders, and slaves all aided in its spread. For the most part it followed in the steps of the Syrian gods, with whom it was closely associated. Along the borders of the Roman Empire, at the military stations on the Danube, on the Rhine, and by Hadrian’s Wall in Britain inscriptions and ruined chapels still attest the popularity of the cult; there are few Roman military centers in Europe, outside of Greece, or in the African provinces, which have not given evidence of its existence. In the ports of Italy, Puteoli and Ostia, in Rome, and in all the chief cities of the West, traders and slaves introduced the Persian religion; and the cult attracted many Roman citizens; it found favor with the imperial house, especially from Commodus to Diocletian. In fact during the second and third centuries Christianity found in Mithraism its chief rival.

Mithras himself was an extremely ancient divinity known to the ancestors of both the Iranian and Indian peoples. In early Zoroastrianism he had no place, but later appeared as one of the inferior divinities. Under the manifold influences to which Persian Mazdaism was exposed, the position of Mithras gradually rose in importance. The details of the theology at the time the religion became known to the Romans cannot be determined, but it seems evident that the main features were these: the Mazdaists conceived of the world as a battleground in which the powers of light and of righteousness were ever fighting against the powers of darkness and of evil; at the head of the powers of light was Ahura Mazda, Oromasdes, or, to use the form more familiar to us, Ormuzd; opposed to him was Ahriman, the archfiend and adversary, lord of the world of darkness, who with his demons was thought to strive continually to spread evil in the world; midway was Mithras whose function was to help mankind and to hasten the destruction of wickedness. So far as we can judge from the sculptured monuments, Mithras in the sacred myths was not identified with the sun, yet it is clear that he was regarded by the Roman devotees as the chief divinity of light. This position was the more easily assured him by the fact that he had been originally such a god, so that the Chaldeans had identified him with Shamash, their solar divinity, just as the Greeks in Asia Minor had made him equivalent to their sun god, Helios. Later philosophy too lent its aid in that it took the sun as the supreme symbol of divinity. On Roman dedications Mithras is often called simply “The Invincible Sun,” Sol Invictus.

For all its exotic character Mithraism could offer nothing essentially new in point of theology which would attract devotees, nor could it win them simply by its elaborate and distinctive ritual. The characteristic which distinguished it from the other religions of its time save Christianity was the thoroughgoing dualism to which I have just referred—I mean that dualism which divided the world into two opposing armies, the one the legions of light and righteousness, the other the forces of sin and darkness. The evil principle was deified in the same way as the principle of good. It is quite true that the Greeks and other peoples had conceived of evil powers, like the Titans for example, but nowhere was the opposition between the two made so sharp or the conflict regarded as so constant. In the cosmic struggle the Mithraist believed man shared; for he too, the microcosm, was both good and evil, so that the same battle had to be waged within him as everywhere in the world. This religion, then, was able to supply a strong moral motive for the individual: he was bound to struggle continually against the powers of sin to aid in bringing about the final victory of the powers of righteousness, and he was taught that in this struggle Mithras gave the faithful constant aid.

Mithraism therefore was well suited to stir and energize the individual in a time when the ancient fibre of the Romans was relaxing and when the signs of social and economic decay were evident. In the first three centuries of the Empire, as we have already had occasion to observe more than once, the loss of political power and the weakening of the satisfactions which a vigorous society can give, led men to search for other rewards and assurances than those of this world; in the mystic philosophies and religions they found their strength and hope. No oriental pagan cult had so much to offer as Mithraism. Its compelling system of ethics, the high ideal of moral purity which it inherited from its Persian source, the fraternity which its associations fostered, and the confidence which the promise of Mithras’ aid gave the individual, all combined to extend its sway to the westernmost boundaries of the Roman Empire and to maintain its power until it was forced to yield before the victorious advance of a nobler faith.

The Mithraic worship was carried on in small chapels which would seldom hold as many as a hundred worshippers at once, so that when the number of devotees was considerable more than one chapel was required. No less than five have been found at Ostia, the seaport at the mouth of the Tiber, and in the capital some sixty have been discovered. These structures were generally half-subterranean, recalling the sacred cave of the Mithraic legend. Before each was a pronaos, an anteroom, from which steps led down to the chapel proper. Through the middle of this ran an aisle flanked on either side by a raised platform for the devotees. In the floor were often represented the signs of the Zodiac, which played an important part in the belief. The farther end of the chapel contained a relief which always reproduced the same scene in the type which some Pergamene sculptor had established in the Hellenistic period. The god Mithras was shown in the act of slaying the sacred bull; subordinate figures and creatures were also represented, and on some reliefs a series of scenes from the sacred legends formed a frame for the central representation. We can readily understand something of the effect produced on the mind of the neophyte when he was first introduced into the lighted chapel from the darkness without. The rows of worshippers on either side, the symbolic figures and signs, and especially the sacred relief which was doubtless brightly illuminated, must have all combined to stimulate acutely the tiro’s imagination, already stirred by his anticipations.

There were seven grades of initiation, each with its symbol and magic name. The first stage was that of the Raven (corax), the second that of the Hidden One (κρύφιος), and the third that of the Soldier (miles). These first three degrees seem to have been preliminary, so that the initiate was not admitted to full participation in the privileges of the sacred community until he had been inducted into the fourth degree, the Lion (leo). The succeeding degrees were the Persian (Persa), the Courier of the Sun (ἡλιοδρόμος), and the Father (pater); the head of a number of Mithraic communities was apparently the Pater Patrum. Each stage had its proper initiatory ceremonies, admission to which required abstinence, lustrations and ablutions, and many symbolic acts. The courage and constancy of the neophyte were tested; oaths were administered to him; a seal was set on his forehead; he was bound to secrecy; and doubtless many other vows were required. The candidate for the degree of the Soldier was presented with a crown which he was expected to thrust aside and to say that Mithras was his only crown. He was made to feel that he had enlisted for a sacred warfare against the powers of evil and to realize that perfect purity was the goal toward which the faithful must strive. Apparently the culminating point of the tests and trials which the neophyte underwent was a symbolic death in which he died at the hands of the priest and rose again into a new and purified existence. Such rites are common in similar mysteries, but there is some reason to suspect that in Mithraism the symbolic act had an especially terrifying nature.

The religious life of the devotees was fed by meetings held in the half-underground chapels. A part of the services evidently consisted of a sacred communion, which, with consecrated cup and loaf, recalled the sacred meal which Mithras had once celebrated with the Sun after he had completed his service upon the earth. This is shown on a relief discovered some years since at Konjica in Dalmatia, in which Mithras and the Sun are shown reclining at table, where they are served by attendants, one of whom wears a Phrygian cap, another a mask of a crow, a third that of a lion, while the head of the fourth is hopelessly mutilated.[292] It was believed that this mystic communion on earth gave the devotees strength and wisdom, that it imparted the power necessary to combat the emissaries of evil, and conferred immortality upon those who partook of it. The parallelism with the Christian eucharist is self-evident, and it is not strange that the church fathers claimed that the Mithraists had stolen from Christianity.

According to the Mithraic doctrine the divine essence in man survived, and was susceptible of rewards and punishments after this life. When the body died the emissaries from heaven and the powers of darkness contended for the possession of the soul. It stood on trial before Mithras, the final judge. If the man had been impure, his soul was dragged below for torture, but if virtuous, then his soul rose to the celestial regions. At this point we come upon a doctrine which seems to be foreign to Mazdaism, and which was doubtless borrowed from alien sources. The heavens were conceived to be seven spheres presided over by the seven planets, the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. In each sphere was a gate guarded by an angel of Ormuzd. To open these gates magic names and passwords were necessary, which were known only to the initiates. The souls of men were thought to have descended from the empyrean through these spheres, receiving from the planets that presided over them the passions and qualities which they exhibited when incarnate on earth. As the righteous soul returned, it dropped at each stage of its ascent its earthly passions and faculties like garments, until, stripped and pure, it entered into eternal bliss. In the realms of everlasting light beyond the stars, it enjoyed the companionship of the gods themselves.

With this concept of the final fate of the soul there was inconsistently united a doctrine of a final resurrection of the flesh when the world should come to an end. It may be that the sublimated doctrine of the bliss of the purified soul did not appeal to the ordinary man, and that, therefore, there was introduced from some external source this belief that the whole man, flesh and spirit alike, would ultimately enjoy a blissful existence. In any case the Mithraist believed that the struggle between the contending powers of good and evil was not to continue forever; that in the fullness of time the evil powers would destroy the world, but that Mithras would once more descend, wake the dead, and separate the good from the evil; with a new communion he would then confer immortality on all the just, while the wicked would be consumed with Ahriman and his fiends, and Mithras would reign in a new and sinless world forever.

These are some of the essential features of Mithraism. It was a religion which called for unceasing effort, for action on the part of men, and which promised them divine aid in their efforts. It is little wonder that it was popular in the Roman Empire, or that it appealed to soldiers and to civilians alike. The remains of its chapels and the dedications to its god furnish more abundant evidence than we possess for any other oriental religion. Although in common with other cults of this sort it had fallen into decay in the provinces of the western world before the end of the third century, yet it was kept alive by the pagan revival at Rome until nearly 400 a.d.

In the cult of the Great Mother of the Gods and Attis also there developed certain rites which gave the promise of security here and of salvation after death—the greatest religious concern of the opening centuries of the Roman Empire. Down to the close of the Republic the Great Mother apparently exerted no very wide or deep influence on the people. She had quickly accomplished the purpose for which she had been brought in 204 b.c., and therefore, with the exceptions of which I spoke earlier in this lecture, her worship was left to the Phrygian priests. Attis certainly played a small part at Rome before the Empire, but by the second century of our era, if not before, he overshadowed to a considerable extent the Great Goddess herself.

The story of Attis has many forms in detail, due no doubt to original local differences and to the influences of later environment. The kernel of the literary myth is as follows: Attis, a beautiful shepherd, was loved by the Great Goddess; when he refused her advances, he was driven mad by her, and in his frenzy mutilated himself at the foot of a pine tree, into which his spirit departed, while from his blood sprang violets. But in answer to the prayers of the mourning goddess Attis was presently restored to life. The primitive elements from which this myth developed we need not now discuss, but it will be sufficient to note that in Attis, as in Adonis, we have an eastern vegetation-divinity, a god who dies and lives again, thus becoming a symbol of man’s resurrection into immortality and an earnest of his hope. The parallel cases of Osiris, Dionysus, and Persephone will also occur to all.

In honor of Attis a spring festival was held in which the drama of the myth was repeated by the priests and devotees. This festival was introduced at Rome during the reign of Claudius (41-54 a.d.), from which time the god’s importance there may be dated.[293] The celebration began on March 15, which is designated in a calendar of the fourth century by Canna intrat. These obscure words must be brought into connection with the colleges of the Cannophori, “reed-bearers,” which are known to us from inscriptions, but the significance of the day is not clear; apparently it is to be connected with the story of the discovery of the infant Attis, who had been exposed among the reeds by the banks of the river Gallus. On March 22, Arbor intrat, the dendrophori, “tree-bearers,” cut down a pine tree and in solemn procession brought its trunk, decorated with violets and woolen fillets, to the temple of the Great Mother on the Palatine. This act was obviously in memory of the pine tree into which the spirit of Attis passed at his death. Two days later came the “day of blood,” Sanguen, dies Sanguinis, which marked the height of the mourning for Attis. Stimulated by wild music and dances, the Galli scourged themselves with whips loaded with pieces of bone or metal, slashed their arms with knives, offering their blood on the altar of the goddess, while the would-be Galli mutilated themselves. The whole period from the first day was a time of sorrow, during which fasting and continence were required; it was followed on March 25th, Hilaria, “rejoicing,” by the wildest outbursts of joy in celebration of the resurrection of Attis.[294] The next day was that of “rest,” Requietio; and on the 27th, the festival closed with the solemn bathing in the brook Almo of the sacred meteoric stone, which was the symbol of the Great Mother. It is clear that this festival, centering in the spring equinox, had its origin in rites which were intended to recall the vegetation from its winter’s death into vernal life again, but like other similar festivals it had long had a deeper meaning before it came to Rome. As the Orphic devotee by participation in the holy rites became a Bacchus, the Isiac an Osiris, so here the orgiastic participant became an Attis and received assurance of his own resurrection. The result was identical in all essentials with that in other mysteries.

But from the second century of our era there was celebrated in the western part of the Roman Empire another mystic rite in the worship of the Great Mother to which we must now turn our attention for a moment. I mean that ritual of purification and regeneration by means of the blood of a slain bull which the ancients called the taurobolium. Without much doubt this rite developed from the sacrifice of a bull to the Great Mother, such as was made annually on March 15 at Rome. But the taurobolium was no ordinary sacrifice. It is first mentioned in the west in an inscription from Puteoli of 134 a.d.;[295] thence it quickly spread to Rome, from there to Lyons; and it was celebrated in many parts of the western provinces during the second and third centuries. Like the other oriental rites it lived on at Rome long after it had died in the provinces, the last celebration being near the close of the fourth century. One of the earliest places at Rome for the performance of the taurobolium was in the Vatican district close by the circus erected by the Emperor Caligula and enlarged by Nero. There, certainly from the time of Antoninus Pius to the end of the fourth century, this purifying and regenerating ritual was performed, never with more passionate hope of its efficacy than during the fourth century, when for some seventy years this pagan shrine and St. Peter’s first basilica stood side by side, fanes of the dying faith and of the triumphing religion. It stirs the imagination to recall that when in the early seventeenth century certain changes were being made in the present St. Peter’s, a considerable number of inscriptions were discovered buried in the ground, recording the celebration of the taurobolium by members of the nobility after the first St. Peter’s had been built.[296] So side by side the two rival religions contended for the mastery.

The two descriptions of the ritual we have date from the fourth century.[297] The one who was to be purified, after first laying aside his ordinary garments and dressing himself in rags as a suppliant and beggar, descended into a pit. This was covered with planks pierced with holes; then the sacred bull was slain over the planks that his blood, falling on the devotee, might cleanse him and give him freedom from his sin. The recipient endeavored to have every part of his person—especially his eyes, nose, and ears—washed by the cleansing streams; he opened his mouth to catch the falling blood and swallowed it. When he issued forth from the pit, dripping with his horrible purification, he was greeted by his fellow consecrates as one who had been born again. Usually the efficacy of the new birth given by the taurobolium was thought to last only twenty years (renatus in XX annos), at the expiration of which time the ritual was apparently repeated;[298] once, however, we have the confident assertion that the devotee was “born again for eternity.”[299]

In all these mystic rites there were many common elements. First, all gave assurance of the salvation of the soul through the exact performance of the rites of initiation and through the ritual of service. As we have earlier seen, philosophy, especially Neopythagoreanism and Neoplatonism, aimed at the same object as these oriental faiths; the means were different but the end was one. The devotee of Mithras, of Isis, of Cybele and Attis,—whatever the god might be—believed that by initiation he had been born into a new life, that the rites which he celebrated had a purifying power, and that they protected him against the assaults of evil spirits. Furthermore his religious life was constantly fed and nourished by membership in a brotherhood which was consecrated and set apart from the rest of the world, as well as by regular services within the shrine of his divinity. Again the gods of Greece and Rome required only occasional and rare service; the Orientals claimed the whole of a man’s life: not only at the great festivals but apparently at daily matins and vespers they received the praise and worship of their followers. The priests were no longer civilians, sharing in the ordinary life of their communities, but persons withdrawn for the divine service, distinguished by their dress and other signs. Moreover these oriental mystic religions were practically universal, in spite of the fact that only men were admitted to the mysteries of Mithras; membership in the sacred associations did not depend on birth, wealth, or learning, but on devotion. Advance in religious proficiency was usually marked by different grades, to which the devotee received a divine call. In these initiations the individual obtained direct revelations which gave him knowledge and freedom. He was made to feel his relation to the universe both visible and invisible, and to find himself in unity with it. Rebirth into a new life, constant support of faith through membership in a sacred community and by religious services, confident assurance of salvation—these were the common characteristics of the oriental religions which go far to explain their hold on the Roman world in the early centuries of our era.

The question may well be asked how far these religions inculcated morality and what their ethical characters were. It is certainly true that originally they were not moral or concerned with morality any more than most other religions have been; indeed in the stories of Cybele and Attis, of Isis and Osiris, and of many other gods, there were obscene elements almost as offensive to the enlightened ancient as to us. Mithraism on the other hand was singularly free from coarse myths. In time the baser tales were allegorized and their symbolism universally accepted, so that, as St. Augustine tells us, the ancient stories were interpreted to the people for their moral edification. Isis became the everpresent divine mother and kind providence; Serapis was a god of gracious pity toward men; the Great Mother laid aside her wild Phrygian character and changed into the beneficent mother of all Nature, while Attis became the Sun-god, the common symbol of all-embracing divinity. With such changes as these came a response to what we may call secular ethics, and there can be no question that from the second century of our era at least the oriental faiths taught a morality which would win our approval in large measure today. There were indeed many elements in them which made for righteousness. The concept of divinity as a kindly providence which cared for the individual and exacted the same good qualities from man, the unremitting devotion demanded of the devotees, the sense of moral pollution and the longing for moral purification, the shifting of men’s eyes from the material gains of this world to the ideal rewards of the next—all these and many other things gave to the oriental cults distinct and positive ethical and spiritual values. Furthermore, the self-restraint, the gentle asceticism, the obligation to strive unceasingly on the side of righteousness against the evil powers, which these religions imposed, are not to be neglected. Within the religious bodies, whose members were brothers (fratres, consecranei) the individual learned submission to the head of the society (pater), gained self-control and courage for his struggle against the evils of life. No one can read the evidence we possess and not be impressed by the earnestness and devotion of the faithful. That the oriental religions actually contributed to the higher moral and spiritual life of the Roman Empire during the second, third, and fourth centuries is certain.

It is very true that these pagan religions from the East had their charlatans and quacks in abundance, that their noblest elements were often entangled in a mesh of magic, superstitions, and false beliefs; but Christianity too suffered from the same evils. Christianity triumphed because of its own inherent superiority to the other religions, not because its rivals were wholly evil and degrading. To fail to recognize the real moral value of oriental Paganism is to fail to understand the first centuries of our era, and so to remain blind to the true nature of the world in which Christianity established its greater worth.

Yet even if we were inclined to doubt the value of these religions from our present point of view, there could be no question of their effect upon their devotees. No one who reads the prayer of praise to Isis which Lucius offered before leaving Corinth for Rome, can mistake its sincerity: “O thou holy and eternal protectress of the human race, thou who art ever kind to care for mortals and who showest unceasingly the sweet affection of a mother for the misfortunes of wretched men, neither day nor any night, nor even the slightest moment of time passes without thy blessings; thou carest for men on land and sea, thou drivest from them the storms of life and ever extendest a saving hand, wherewith thou unravellest even the inextricable web of Fate; thou assuagest the tempests of Fortune, and thou holdest in restraint the baneful courses of the stars. Thee the gods of heaven above adore, the gods of the world below obey; thou spinnest the sphere of heaven, thou lightest the sun, guidest the universe, and tramplest Tartarus beneath thy feet. To thee the stars make answer, the seasons return, the divinities show their joy, the elements do their service. At thy nod the breezes blow, the clouds send their nourishing rains, seeds swell, and buds increase. Before thy majesty the birds who traverse the heavens are in awe, the beasts that roam the mountains, the serpents that lurk beneath the ground, the monsters that swim the deep. But I am all too weak in wit to render thy praises, too poor in purse to offer thee due sacrifice; my voice has not the eloquence to express all that I feel concerning thy majesty. Nay, had I a thousand mouths and tongues or eternal continuance of speech unbroken, it were not enough. Therefore will I try to do that which alone a devotee faithful, but poor withal, can accomplish. I will guard the memory of thy divine features and thy most holy god-head deep within my heart’s secret shrine and there keep that image forever.”[300]

It may have seemed strange to some of you that in this course of lectures we should be considering matters which at first sight appear so alien to Greek thinking as these oriental mysteries. The reason is to be found in the goal toward which we are aiming, for it has been our purpose from the beginning to trace the history of Greek religious thought through to the time when it had in large measure determined the form of Christian thought and had provided the means by which the latter could be made intelligible to the contemporary world. It is necessary therefore to examine the several elements which made up the sum total of the religious thought of the earlier Christian centuries. Moreover, as we have now seen, the purpose of the oriental mysteries was one with the aim of the Greek mysteries and with the object of the Greek mystic philosophies. Therefore we have been obliged to bring into our plan these eastern religions.

But I need not remind you that at this time there was another oriental religion spreading over the world which we have not yet considered. When Christianity was introduced to the West, it must have presented itself as a new eastern mystery. Men had long been accustomed to such religions; for centuries they had sought either through mysteries such as were celebrated at Eleusis or like those brought in from the East, to find the satisfaction of their hopes for a happy immortality. In these mysteries, as in the mystic philosophies, one of the central ideas was that of the direct vision of the divine which was a revelation of God to man. This act of grace had supplanted, or rather had been added to, the use of the reason or of the will which the philosophers had urged as the means of man’s salvation. Through a long course of centuries men had been trained by philosophy, by mystery, and by political events, until an environment had been created which was favorable to the ideas of Christianity—an environment also which was destined to influence profoundly this new religion in its earlier centuries, so that it ultimately received a form different from that foreshadowed in the teachings of its founder. The relation of Christianity to the world into which it entered and some of the reasons for its triumph will be the subject of our final lectures.