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.