The religions of Syria never had the same solidarity in the Occident as
those from Egypt or Asia Minor. From the coasts of Phoenicia and the
valleys of Lebanon, from the borders of the Euphrates and the oases of the
desert, they came at various periods, like the successive waves of the
incoming tide, and existed side by side in the Roman world without uniting,
in spite of their similarities. The isolation in which they remained and
the persistent adherence of their believers to their particular rites were
a consequence and reflection of the disunited condition of Syria herself,
where the different tribes and districts remained more distinct than
anywhere else, even after they had been brought together under the
domination of Rome. They doggedly preserved their local gods and Semitic
dialects.
It would be impossible to outline each one of these religions in detail at
this time and to reconstruct their history, because our meager information
would not permit it, but we can indicate, in a general way, how they
penetrated into the Occidental countries at various periods, and we can try
to define their common characteristics by showing what new elements the
Syrian paganism brought to the Romans.
The first Semitic divinity to enter Italy was {104} _Atargatis_, frequently
mistaken for the Phoenician Astarte, who had a famous temple at Bambyce or
Hierapolis, not far from the Euphrates, and was worshiped with her husband,
Hadad, in a considerable part of Syria besides. The Greeks considered her
as the principal Syrian goddess ([Greek: Suria thea]), and in the Latin
countries she was commonly known as _dea Syria_, a name corrupted into
_Iasura_ by popular use.
We all remember the unedifying descriptions of her itinerant priests that
Lucian and Apuleius[1] have left. Led by an old eunuch of dubious habits, a
crowd of painted young men marched along the highways with an ass that bore
an elaborately adorned image of the goddess. Whenever they passed through a
village or by some rich villa, they went through their sacred exercises. To
the shrill accompaniment of their Syrian flutes they turned round and
round, and with their heads thrown back fluttered about and gave vent to
hoarse clamors until vertigo seized them and insensibility was complete.
Then they flagellated themselves wildly, struck themselves with swords and
shed their blood in front of a rustic crowd which pressed closely about
them, and finally they took up a profitable collection from the wondering
spectators. They received jars of milk and wine, cheeses, flour, bronze
coins of small denominations and even some silver pieces, all of which
disappeared in the folds of their capacious robes. If opportunity presented
they knew how to increase their profits by means of clever thefts or by
making commonplace predictions for a moderate consideration.
This picturesque description, based on a novel by {105} Lucius of Patras,
is undoubtedly extreme. It is difficult to believe that the sacerdotal
corps of the goddess of Hierapolis should have consisted only of charlatans
and thieves. But how can the presence in the Occident of that begging and
low nomadic clergy be explained?
It is certain that the first worshipers of the Syrian goddess in the Latin
world were slaves. During the wars against Antiochus the Great a number of
prisoners were sent to Italy to be sold at public auction, as was the
custom, and the first appearance in Italy of the _Chaldaei_[2] has been
connected with that event. The _Chaldaei_ were Oriental fortune-tellers who
asserted that their predictions were based on the Chaldean astrology. They
found credulous clients among the farm laborers, and Cato gravely exhorts
the good landlord to oust them from his estate.[3]
Beginning with the second century before Christ, merchants began to import
Syrian slaves. At that time Delos was the great trade center in this human
commodity, and in that island especially Atargatis was worshiped by
citizens of Athens and Rome.[4] Trade spread her worship in the
Occident.[5] We know that the great slave revolution that devastated Sicily
in 134 B. C. was started by a slave from Apamea, a votary of the Syrian
goddess. Simulating divine madness, he called his companions to arms,
pretending to act in accordance with orders from heaven.[6] This detail,
which we know by chance, shows how considerable a proportion of Semites
there was in the gangs working the fields, and how much authority Atargatis
enjoyed in the rural centers. Being too poor to build temples for their
national goddess, those agricultural laborers {106} waited with their
devotions until a band of itinerant _galli_ passed through the distant
hamlet where the lot of the auction had sent them. The existence of those
wandering priests depended, therefore, on the number of fellow-countrymen
they met in the rural districts, who supported them by sacrificing a part
of their poor savings.
Towards the end of the republic those diviners appear to have enjoyed
rather serious consideration at Rome. It was a pythoness from Syria that
advised Marius on the sacrifices he was to perform.[7]
Under the empire the importation of slaves increased. Depopulated Italy
needed more and more foreign hands, and Syria furnished a large quota of
the forced immigration of cultivators. But those Syrians, quick and
intelligent as they were strong and industrious, performed many other
functions. They filled the countless domestic positions in the palaces of
the aristocracy and were especially appreciated as litter-bearers.[8] The
imperial and municipal administrations, as well as the big contractors to
whom customs and the mines were farmed out, hired or bought them in large
numbers, and even in the remotest border provinces the _Syrus_ was found
serving princes, cities or private individuals. The worship of the Syrian
goddess profited considerably by the economic current that continually
brought new worshipers. We find her mentioned in the first century of our
era in a Roman inscription referring in precise terms to the slave market,
and we know that Nero took a devout fancy to the stranger that did not,
however, last very long.[9] In the popular Trastevere quarter she had a
temple until the end of paganism.[10] {107}
During the imperial period, however, the slaves were no longer the only
missionaries that came from Syria, and Atargatis was no longer the only
divinity from that country to be worshiped in the Occident. The propagation
of the Semitic worship progressed for the most part in a different manner
under the empire.
At the beginning of our era the Syrian merchants, _Syri negotiatores_,
undertook a veritable colonization of the Latin provinces.[11] During the
second century before Christ the traders of that nation had established
settlements along the coast of Asia Minor, on the Piraeus, and in the
Archipelago. At Delos, a small island but a large commercial center, they
maintained several associations that worshiped their national gods, in
particular Hadad and Atargatis. But the wars that shook the Orient at the
end of the republic, and above all the growth of piracy, ruined maritime
commerce and stopped emigration. This began again with renewed vigor when
the establishment of the empire guaranteed the safety of the seas and when
the Levantine traffic attained a development previously unknown. We can
trace the history of the Syrian establishments in the Latin provinces from
the first to the seventh century, and recently we have begun to appreciate
their economic, social and religious importance at its true value.
The Syrians' love of lucre was proverbial. Active, compliant and able,
frequently little scrupulous, they knew how to conclude first small deals,
then larger ones, everywhere. Using the special talents of their race to
advantage, they succeeded in establishing themselves on all coasts of the
Mediterranean, even in {108} Spain.[12] At Malaga an inscription mentions a
corporation formed by them. The Italian ports where business was especially
active, Pozzuoli, Ostia, later Naples, attracted them in great numbers. But
they did not confine themselves to the seashore; they penetrated far into
the interior of the countries, wherever they hoped to find profitable
trade. They followed the commercial highways and traveled up the big
rivers. By way of the Danube they went as far as Pannonia, by way of the
Rhone they reached Lyons. In Gaul they were especially numerous. In this
new country that had just been opened to commerce fortunes could be made
rapidly. A rescript discovered on the range of the Lebanon is addressed to
sailors from Arles, who had charge of the transportation of grain, and in
the department of Ain a bilingual epitaph has been found mentioning a
merchant of the third century, Thaïm or Julian, son of Saad, decurion of
the city of Canatha in Syria, who owned two factories in the Rhone basin,
where he handled goods from Aquitania.[13] Thus the Syrians spread over the
entire province as far as Treves, where they had a strong colony. Not even
the barbarian invasions of the fifth century stopped their immigration.
Saint Jerome describes them traversing the entire Roman world amidst the
troubles of the invasion, prompted by the lust of gain to defy all dangers.
In the barbarian society the part played by this civilized and city-bred
element was even more considerable. Under the Merovingians in about 591
they had sufficient influence at Paris to have one of their number elected
bishop and to gain possession of all ecclesiastical offices. Gregory of
Tours tells how King Gontrand, on entering the city of Orleans {109} in
585, was received by a crowd praising him "in the language of the Latins,
the Jews and the Syrians."[14] The merchant colonies existed until the
Saracen corsairs destroyed the commerce of the Mediterranean.
Those establishments exercised a strong influence upon the economic and
material life of the Latin provinces, especially in Gaul. As bankers the
Syrians concentrated a large share of the money business in their hands and
monopolized the importing of the valuable Levantine commodities as well as
of the articles of luxury; they sold wines, spices, glassware, silks and
purple fabrics, also objects wrought by goldsmiths, to be used as patterns
by the native artisans. Their moral and religious influence was not less
considerable: for instance, it has been shown that they furthered the
development of monastic life during the Christian period, and that the
devotion to the crucifix[15] that grew up in opposition to the
monophysites, was introduced into the Occident by them. During the first
five centuries Christians felt an unconquerable repugnance to the
representation of the Saviour of the world nailed to an instrument of
punishment more infamous than the guillotine of to-day. The Syrians were
the first to substitute reality in all its pathetic horror for a vague
symbolism.
In pagan times the religious ascendency of that immigrant population was no
less remarkable. The merchants always took an interest in the affairs of
heaven as well as in those of earth. At all times Syria was a land of
ardent devotion, and in the first century its children were as fervid in
propagating their barbarian gods in the Occident as after their conversion
they were enthusiastic in spreading Christianity as far {110} as Turkestan
and China. As soon as the merchants had established their places of
business in the islands of the Archipelago during the Alexandrian period,
and in the Latin period under the empire, they founded chapels in which
they practised their exotic rites.
It was easy for the divinities of the Phoenician coast to cross the seas.
Among them were Adonis, whom the women of Byblos mourned; Balmarcodes, "the
Lord of the dances," who came from Beirut; Marna, the master of rain,
worshiped at Gaza; and Maiuma,[16] whose nautical holiday was celebrated
every spring on the coast near Ostia as well as in the Orient.
Besides these half Hellenized religions, others of a more purely Semitic
nature came from the interior of the country, because the merchants
frequently were natives of the cities of the _Hinterland_, as for instance
Apamea or Epiphanea in Coele-Syria, or even of villages in that flat
country. As Rome incorporated the small kingdoms beyond the Lebanon and the
Orontes that had preserved a precarious independence, the current of
emigration increased. In 71 Commagene, which lies between the Taurus and
the Euphrates, was annexed by Vespasian, a little later the dynasties of
Chalcis and Emesa were also deprived of their power. Nero, it appears, took
possession of Damascus; half a century later Trajan established the new
province of Arabia in the south (106 A. D.), and the oasis of Palmyra, a
great mercantile center, lost its autonomy at the same time. In this manner
Rome extended her direct authority as far as the desert, over countries
that were only superficially Hellenized, and where the native devotions had
preserved all their {111} savage fervor. From that time constant
communication was established between Italy and those regions which had
heretofore been almost inaccessible. As roads were built commerce
developed, and together with the interests of trade the needs of
administration created an incessant exchange of men, of products and of
beliefs between those out-of-the-way countries and the Latin provinces.
These annexations, therefore, were followed by a renewed influx of Syrian
divinities into the Occident. At Pozzuoli, the last port of call of the
Levantine vessels, there was a temple to the Baal of Damascus (_Jupiter
Damascenus_) in which leading citizens officiated, and there were altars on
which two golden camels[17] were offered to Dusares, a divinity who had
come from the interior of Arabia. They kept company with a divinity of more
ancient repute, the Hadad of Baabek-Heliopolis (_Jupiter Heliopolitanus_),
whose immense temple, considered one of the world's wonders,[18] had been
restored by Antoninus Pius, and may still be seen facing Lebanon in
majestic elegance. Heliopolis and Beirut had been the most ancient colonies
founded by Augustus in Syria. The god of Heliopolis participated in the
privileged position granted to the inhabitants of those two cities, who
worshiped in a common devotion,[19] and he was naturalized as a Roman with
greater ease than the others.
The conquest of all Syria as far as Euphrates and the subjection of even a
part of Mesopotamia aided the diffusion of the Semitic religions in still
another manner. From these regions, which were partly inhabited by fighting
races, the Cæsars drew recruits for the imperial army. They levied a great
number of {112} legionaries, but especially auxiliary troops, who were
transferred to the frontiers. Troopers and foot-soldiers from those
provinces furnished important contingents to the garrisons of Europe and
Africa. For instance, a cohort of one thousand archers from Emesa was
established in Pannonia, another of archers from Damascus in upper Germany;
Mauretania received irregulars from Palmyra, and bodies of troops levied in
Ituraea, on the outskirts of the Arabian desert, were encamped in Dacia,
Germany, Egypt and Cappadocia at the same time. Commagene alone furnished
no less than six cohorts of five hundred men each that were sent to the
Danube and into Numidia.[20]
The number of inscriptions consecrated by soldiers proves both the ardor of
their faith and the diversity of their beliefs. Like the sailors of to-day
who are transferred to strange climes and exposed to incessant danger, they
were constantly inclined to invoke the protection of heaven, and remained
attached to the gods who seemed to remind them in their exile of the
distant home country. Therefore it is not surprising that the Syrians who
served in the army should have practised the religion of their Baals in the
neighborhood of their camps. In the north of England, near the wall of
Hadrian, an inscription in verse in honor of the goddess of Hierapolis has
been found; its author was a prefect, probably of a cohort of Hamites
stationed at this distant post.[21]
Not all the soldiers, however, went to swell the ranks of believers
worshiping divinities that had long been adopted by the Latin world, as did
that officer. They also brought along new ones that had come from a still
greater distance than their predecessors, in fact {113} from the outskirts
of the barbarian world, because from those regions in particular trained
men could be obtained. There were, for instance, _Baltis_, an "Our Lady"
from Osroene beyond the Euphrates;[22] _Aziz_, the "strong god" of Edessa,
who was identified with the star Lucifer;[23] _Malakbel_, the "Lord's
messenger," patron of the soldiers from Palmyra, who appeared with several
companions at Rome, in Numidia and in Dacia.[24] The most celebrated of
those gods then was the Jupiter of Doliche, a small city of Commagene, that
owed its fame to him. Because of the troops coming from that region, this
obscure Baal, whose name is mentioned by no author, found worshipers in
every Roman province as far as Africa, Germany and Brittany. The number of
known inscriptions consecrated to him exceeds a hundred, and it is still
growing. Being originally nothing but a god of lightning, represented as
brandishing an ax, this local genius of the tempest was elevated to the
rank of tutelary divinity of the imperial armies.[25]
The diffusion of the Semitic religions in Italy that commenced
imperceptibly under the republic became more marked after the first century
of our era. Their expansion and multiplication were rapid, and they
attained the apogee of their power during the third century. Their
influence became almost predominant when the accession of the Severi lent
them the support of a court that was half Syrian. Functionaries of all
kinds, senators and officers, vied with each other in devotion to the
patron gods of their sovereigns, gods which the sovereigns patronized in
turn. Intelligent and ambitious princesses like Julia Domna, Julia Maesa,
Julia Mammea, whose ascendency was very {114} considerable, became
propagators of their national religion. We all know the audacious
pronunciamento of the year 218 that placed upon the throne the
fourteen-year-old emperor Heliogabalus, a worshiper of the Baal of Emesa.
His intention was to give supremacy over all other gods to his barbarian
divinity, who had heretofore been almost unknown. The ancient authors
narrate with indignation how this crowned priest attempted to elevate his
black stone, the coarse idol brought from Emesa, to the rank of supreme
divinity of the empire by subordinating the whole ancient pantheon to it;
they never tire of giving revolting details about the dissoluteness of the
debaucheries for which the festivities of the new _Sol invictus Elagabal_
furnished a pretext.[26] However, the question arises whether the Roman
historians, being very hostile to that foreigner who haughtily favored the
customs of his own country, did not misrepresent or partly misunderstand
the facts. Heliogabalus's attempt to have his god recognized as supreme,
and to establish a kind of monotheism in heaven as there was monarchy on
earth, was undoubtedly too violent, awkward and premature, but it was in
keeping with the aspirations of the time, and it must be remembered that
the imperial policy could find the support of powerful Syrian colonies not
only at Rome but all over the empire.
Half a century later Aurelian[27] was inspired by the same idea when he
created a new worship, that of the "Invincible Sun." Worshiped in a
splendid temple, by pontiffs equal in rank to those of ancient Rome, having
magnificent plays held in his honor every fourth year, _Sol invictus_ was
also elevated to the supreme rank in the divine hierarchy, and became the
special {115} protector of the emperors and the empire. The country where
Aurelian found the pattern he sought to reproduce, was again Syria. Into
the new sanctuary he transferred the images of Bel and Helios, taken from
Palmyra, after it had fallen before his arms.
* * * * *
The sovereigns, then, twice attempted to replace the Capitoline Jupiter by
a Semitic god and to make a Semitic religion the principal and official
religion of the Romans. They proclaimed the fall of the old Latin idolatry
and the accession of a new paganism taken from Syria. What was the
superiority attributed to the creeds of that country? Why did even an
Illyrian general like Aurelian look for the most perfect type of pagan
religion in that country? That is the problem to be solved, but it must
remain unsolved unless an exact account is given of the fate of the Syrian
beliefs under the empire.
That question has not as yet been very completely elucidated. Besides the
superficial opuscule of Lucian on the _dea Syria_, we find scarcely any
reliable information in the Greek or Latin writers. The work by Philo of
Byblos is a euhemeristic interpretation of an alleged Phoenician cosmogony,
and a composition of little merit. Neither have we the original texts of
the Semitic liturgies, as we have for Egypt. Whatever we have learned we
owe especially to the inscriptions, and while these furnish highly valuable
indications as to the date and area of expansion of these religions, they
tell us hardly anything about their doctrines. Light on this subject may be
expected from the excavations that are being made in the great sanctuaries
of Syria, and also from a more exact interpretation {116} of the sculptured
monuments that we now possess in great numbers, especially those of Jupiter
Dolichenus.
Some characteristics of the Semitic paganism, however, are known at
present, and it must be admitted that it would appear at a disadvantage if
judged by those noticeable features that first attract our attention. It
had retained a stock of very primitive ideas and some aboriginal nature
worship that had lasted through many centuries and was to persist, in part,
under Christianity and Islam until the present day.[28] Such were the
worship of high elevations on which a rustic enclosure sometimes marked the
limits of the consecrated territory; the worship of the waters that flow to
the sea, the streams that arise in the mountains, the springs that gush out
of the soil, the ponds, the lakes and the wells, into all of which
offerings were thrown with the idea either of venerating in them the
thirst-quenching liquid or else the fecund nature of the earth; the worship
of the trees that shaded the altars and that nobody dared to fell or
mutilate; the worship of stones, especially of the rough stones called
bethels that were regarded, as their name (_beth-El_) indicates, as the
residence of the god, or rather, as the matter in which the god was
embodied.[29] Aphrodite Astarte was worshiped in the shape of a conical
stone at Paphos, and a black aerolite covered with projections and
depressions to which a symbolic meaning was attributed represented
Elagabal, and was transferred from Emesa to Rome, as we have said.
The animals, as well as inanimate things, received their share of homage.
Remnants of the old Semitic zoolatry perpetuated themselves until the end
of paganism and even later. Frequently the gods were {117} represented
standing erect on animals. Thus the Dolichean Baal stood on a steer, and
his spouse on a lion. Around certain temples there were sacred parks, in
which savage beasts roamed at liberty,[30] a reminder of the time when they
were considered divine. Two animals especially were the objects of
universal veneration, the pigeon and the fish. Vagrant multitudes of
pigeons received the traveler landing at Ascalon,[31] and they played about
the enclosures of all the temples of Astarte[32] in flocks resembling white
whirlwinds. The pigeon belonged, properly speaking, to the goddess of love,
whose symbol it has remained above all to the people worshiping that
goddess.
"Quid referam ut volitet crebras intacta per urbes
Alba Palaestino sancta columba Syro?"[33]
The fish was sacred to Atargatis, who undoubtedly had been represented in
that shape at first, as Dagon always was.[34] The fish were kept in ponds
in the proximity of the temples.[35] A superstitious fear prevented people
from touching them, because the goddess punished the sacrilegious by
covering their bodies with ulcers and tumors.[36] At certain mystic
repasts, however, the priests and initiates consumed the forbidden food in
the belief that they were absorbing the flesh of the divinity herself. That
worship and its practices, which were spread over Syria, probably suggested
the ichthus symbolism in the Christian period.[37]
However, over this lower and primordial stratum that still cropped out here
and there, other less rudimentary beliefs had formed. Besides inanimate
objects and animals, the Syrian paganism worshiped personal divinities
especially. The character of the gods that were originally adored by the
Semitic tribes has been {118} ingeniously reconstructed.[38] Each tribe had
its Baal and Baalat who protected it and whom only its members were
permitted to worship. The name of _Ba'al_, "master," summarizes the
conception people had of him. In the first place he was regarded as the
sovereign of his votaries, and his position in regard to them was that of
an Oriental potentate towards his subjects; they were his servants, or
rather his slaves.[39] The Baal was at the same time the "master" or
proprietor of the country in which he resided and which he made fertile by
causing springs to gush from its soil. Or his domain was the firmament and
he was the _dominus caeli_, whence he made the waters fall to the roar of
tempests. He was always united with a celestial or earthly "queen" and, in
the third place, he was the "lord" or husband of the "lady" associated with
him. The one represented the male, the other the female principle; they
were the authors of all fecundity, and as a consequence the worship of the
divine couple often assumed a sensual and voluptuous character.
As a matter of fact, immorality was nowhere so flagrant as in the temples
of Astarte, whose female servants honored the goddess with untiring ardor.
In no country was sacred prostitution so developed as in Syria, and in the
Occident it was to be found practically only where the Phoenicians had
imported it, as on Mount Eryx. Those aberrations, that were kept up until
the end of paganism,[40] probably have their explanation in the primitive
constitution of the Semitic tribe, and the religious custom must have been
originally one of the forms of exogamy, which compelled the woman to unite
herself first with a stranger.[41] {119}
As a second blemish, the Semitic religions practised human immolations
longer than any other religion, sacrificing children and grown men in order
to please sanguinary gods. In spite of Hadrian's prohibition of those
murderous offerings,[42] they were maintained in certain clandestine rites
and in the lowest practices of magic, up to the fall of the idols, and even
later. They corresponded to the ideas of a period during which the life of
a captive or slave had no greater value than that of an animal.
These sacred practices and many others, on which Lucian complacently
enlarges in his opuscule on the goddess of Hierapolis, daily revived the
habits of a barbarous past in the temples of Syria. Of all the conceptions
that had successively dominated the country, none had completely
disappeared. As in Egypt, beliefs of very different date and origin
coexisted, without any attempt to make them agree, or without success when
the task was undertaken. In these beliefs zoolatry, litholatry and all the
other nature worships outlived the savagery that had created them. More
than anywhere else the gods had remained the chieftains of clans[43]
because the tribal organizations of Syria were longer lived and more
developed than those of any other region. Under the empire many districts
were still subjected to the tribal régime and commanded by "ethnarchs" or
"phylarchs."[44] Religion, which sacrificed the lives of the men and the
honor of the women to the divinity, had in many regards remained on the
moral level of unsocial and sanguinary tribes. Its obscene and atrocious
rites called forth exasperated indignation on the part of {120} the Roman
conscience when Heliogabalus attempted to introduce them into Italy with
his Baal of Emesa.
* * * * *
How, then, can one explain the fact that in spite of all, the Syrian gods
imposed themselves upon the Occident and made even the Cæsars accept them?
The reason is that the Semitic paganism can no more be judged by certain
revolting practices, that perpetuated in the heart of civilization the
barbarity and puerilities of an uncultivated society, than the religion of
the Nile can be so judged. As in the case of Egypt we must distinguish
between the sacerdotal religion and the infinitely varied popular religion
that was embodied in local customs. Syria possessed a number of great
sanctuaries in which an educated clergy meditated and expatiated upon the
nature of the divine beings and on the meaning of traditions inherited from
remote ancestors. As their own interests demanded, that clergy constantly
amended the sacred traditions and modified their spirit when the letter was
immutable, in order to make them agree with the new aspirations of a more
advanced period. They had their mysteries and their initiates to whom they
revealed a wisdom that was above the vulgar beliefs of the masses.[45]
Frequently we can draw diametrically opposite conclusions from the same
principle. In that manner the old idea of _tabu_, that seems to have
transformed the temples of Astarte into houses of debauchery, also became
the source of a severe code of morals. The Semitic tribes were haunted with
the fear of the tabu. A multitude of things were either impure or sacred
because, in the original confusion, those two notions {121} had not been
clearly differentiated. Man's ability to use the products of nature to
satisfy his needs, was thus limited by a number of prohibitions,
restrictions and conditions. He who touched a forbidden object was soiled
and corrupted, his fellows did not associate with him and he could no
longer participate in the sacrifices. In order to wipe out the blemish, he
had recourse to ablutions and other ceremonies known to the priests.
Purity, that had originally been considered simply physical, soon became
ritualistic and finally spiritual. Life was surrounded by a network of
circumstances subject to certain conditions, every violation of which meant
a fall and demanded penance. The anxiety to remain constantly in a state of
holiness or regain that state when it had been lost, filled one's entire
existence. It was not peculiar to the Semitic tribes, but they ascribed a
prime importance to it.[46] And the gods, who necessarily possessed this
quality in an eminent degree, were holy beings ([Greek: hagioi])[47] _par
excellence_.
In this way principles of conduct and dogmas of faith have frequently been
derived from instinctive and absurd old beliefs. All theological doctrines
that were accepted in Syria modified the prevailing ancient conception of
the Baals. But in our present state of knowledge it is very difficult
indeed to determine the shares that the various influences contributed,
from the conquests of Alexander to the Roman domination, to make the Syrian
paganism what it became under the Cæsars. The civilization of the Seleucid
empire is little known, and we cannot determine what caused the alliance of
Greek thought with the Semitic traditions.[48] The religions of the
neighboring nations {122} also had an undeniable influence. Phoenicia and
Lebanon remained moral tributaries of Egypt long after they had liberated
themselves from the suzerainty of the Pharaohs. The theogony of Philo of
Byblos took gods and myths from that country, and at Heliopolis Hadad was
honored "according to Egyptian rather than Syrian rite."[49] The rigorous
monotheism of the Jews, who were dispersed over the entire country, must
also have acted as an active ferment of transformation.[50] But it was
Babylon that retained the intellectual supremacy, even after its political
ruin. The powerful sacerdotal caste ruling it did not fall with the
independence of the country, and it survived the conquests of Alexander as
it had previously lived through the Persian domination. The researches of
Assyriologists have shown that its ancient worship persisted under the
Seleucides, and at the time of Strabo the "Chaldeans" still discussed
cosmology and first principles in the rival schools of Borsippa and
Orchoë.[51] The ascendancy of that erudite clergy affected all surrounding
regions; it was felt by Persia in the east, Cappadocia in the north, but
more than anywhere else by the Syrians, who were connected with the
Oriental Semites by bonds of language and blood. Even after the Parthians
had wrested the valley of the Euphrates from the Seleucides, relations with
the great temples of that region remained uninterrupted. The plains of
Mesopotamia, inhabited by races of like origin, extended on both sides of
an artificial border line; great commercial roads followed the course of
the two rivers flowing into the Persian Gulf or cut across the desert, and
the pilgrims came to Babylon, as Lucian tells us, to perform their
devotions to the Lady of Bambyce.[52] {123}
Ever since the Captivity, constant spiritual relations had existed between
Judaism and the great religious metropolis. At the birth of Christianity
they manifested themselves in the rise of gnostic sects in which the
Semitic mythology formed strange combinations with Jewish and Greek ideas
and furnished the foundation for extravagant superstructures.[53] Finally,
during the decline of the empire, it was Babylon again from which emanated
Manicheism, the last form of idolatry received in the Latin world. We can
imagine how powerful the religious influence of that country on the Syrian
paganism must have been.
That influence manifested itself in various ways. First, it introduced new
gods. In this way Bel passed from the Babylonian pantheon into that of
Palmyra and was honored throughout northern Syria.[54] It also caused
ancient divinities to be arranged in new groups. To the primitive couple of
the Baal and the Baalat a third member was added in order to form one of
those triads dears to Chaldean theology. This took place at Hierapolis as
well as at Heliopolis, and the three gods of the latter city, Hadad,
Atargatis and Simios, became Jupiter, Venus and Mercury in Latin
inscriptions.[55] Finally, and most important, astrolatry wrought radical
changes in the characters of the celestial powers, and, as a further
consequence, in the entire Roman paganism. In the first place it gave them
a second personality in addition to their own nature. The sidereal myths
superimposed themselves upon the agrarian myths, and gradually obliterated
them. Astrology, born on the banks of the Euphrates, imposed itself in
Egypt upon the haughty and unapproachable clergy of the most conservative
of all nations.[56] Syria {124} received it without reserve and surrendered
unconditionally;[57] numismatics and archeology as well as literature prove
this. King Antiochus of Commagene, for instance, who died 34 B. C., built
himself a monumental tomb on a spur of the Taurus, in which he placed his
horoscope, designed on a large bas-relief, beside the images of his
ancestral divinities.[58]
The importance which the introduction of the Syrian religions into the
Occident has for us consists therefore in the fact that indirectly they
brought certain theological doctrines of the Chaldeans with them, just as
Isis and Serapis carried beliefs of old Egypt from Alexandria to the
Occident. The Roman empire received successively the religious tribute of
the two great nations that had formerly ruled the Oriental world. It is
characteristic that the god Bel whom Aurelian brought from Asia to set up
as the protector of his states, was in reality a Babylonian who had
emigrated to Palmyra,[59] a cosmopolitan center apparently predestined by
virtue of its location to become the intermediary between the civilizations
of the Euphrates and the Mediterranean.
The influence exercised by the speculations of the Chaldeans upon
Greco-Roman thought can be asserted positively, but cannot as yet be
strictly defined. It was at once philosophic and religious, literary and
popular. The entire neo-Platonist school used the names of those venerable
masters, but it cannot be determined how much it really owes to them. A
selection of poems that has often been quoted since the third century,
under the title of "Chaldaic Oracles" ([Greek: Logia Chaldaika]) combines
the ancient Hellenic theories with a fantastic {125} mysticism that was
certainly imported from the Orient. It is to Babylonia what the literature
of Hermes Trismegistus is to Egypt, and it is equally difficult to
determine the nature of the ingredients that the author put into his sacred
compositions. But at an earlier date the Syrian religions had spread far
and wide in the Occident ideas conceived on the distant banks of the
Euphrates. I shall try to indicate briefly what their share in the pagan
syncretism was.
We have seen that the gods from Alexandria gained souls especially by the
promise of blessed immortality. Those from Syria must also have satisfied
doubts tormenting all the minds of that time. As a matter of fact the old
Semitic ideas on man's fate in after-life were little comforting. We know
how sad, dull and hopeless their conception of life after death was. The
dead descended into a subterranean realm where they led a miserable
existence, a weak reflection of the one they had lost; since they were
subject to wants and suffering, they had to be supported by funeral
offerings placed on their sepulchers by their descendants. Those ancient
beliefs and customs were found also in primitive Greece and Italy.
This rudimentary eschatology, however, gave way to quite a different
conception, one that was closely related to the Chaldean astrology, and
which spread over the Occident towards the end of the republic. According
to this doctrine the soul returned to heaven after death, to live there
among the divine stars. While it remained on earth it was subject to all
the bitter necessities of a destiny determined by the revolutions of the
stars; but when it ascended into the upper regions, it escaped that fate
and even the limits of time; {126} it shared equally in the immortality of
the sidereal gods that surrounded it.[60] In the opinion of some, the soul
was attracted by the rays of the sun, and after passing through the moon,
where it was purified, it lost itself in the shining star of day.[61]
Another more purely astrological theory, that was undoubtedly a development
of the former, taught that the soul descended to earth from the heights of
heaven by passing through the spheres of the seven planets. During its
passage it acquired the dispositions and qualities proper to each planet.
After death it returned to its original abode by the same route. To get
from one sphere to another, it had to pass a door guarded by a commandant
([Greek: archôn]).[62] Only the souls of initiates knew the password that
made those incorruptible guardians yield, and under the conduct of a
psychopompus[63] they ascended safely from zone to zone. As the soul rose
it divested itself of the passions and qualities it had acquired on its
descent to the earth as though they were garments, and, free from
sensuality, it penetrated into the eighth heaven to enjoy everlasting
happiness as a subtle essence.
Perhaps this doctrine, undoubtedly of Babylonian origin, was not generally
accepted by the Syrian religions, as it was by the mysteries of Mithra, but
these religions, impregnated with astrology, certainly propagated the
belief that the souls of those worshipers that had led pious lives were
elevated to the heights of heaven, where an apotheosis made them the equals
of the luminous gods.[64] Under the empire this doctrine slowly supplanted
all others; the Elysian fields, which the votaries of Isis and Serapis
still located in {127} the depths of the earth, were transferred into the
ether bathing the fixed stars,[65] and the underworld was thereafter
reserved for the wicked who had not been allowed to pass through the
celestial gates.
The sublime regions occupied by the purified souls were also the abode of
the supreme god.[66] When it transformed the ideas on the destiny of man,
astrology also modified those relating to the nature of the divinity. In
this matter the Syrian religions were especially original; for even if the
Alexandrian mysteries offered man just as comforting prospects of
immortality as the eschatology of their rivals, they were backward in
building up a commensurate theology. To the Semitic races belongs the honor
of having reformed the ancient fetichism most thoroughly. Their base and
narrow conceptions of early times to which we can trace their existence,
broaden and rise until they form a kind of monotheism.
As we have seen, the Syrian tribes worshiped a god of lightning,[67] like
all primitive races. That god opened the reservoirs of the firmament to let
the rain fall and split the giant trees of the woods with the double ax
that always remained his emblem.[68] When the progress of astronomy removed
the constellations to incommensurable distances, the "Baal of the Heavens"
(_Ba'al [vs]amîn_) had to grow in majesty. Undoubtedly at the time of the
Achemenides, he was connected with the Ahura-Mazda of the Persians, the
ancient god of the vault of heaven, who had become the highest physical and
moral power, and this connection helped to transform the old genius of
thunder.[69] People continued to worship the material heaven in him; under
the Romans he was still simply called {128} _Caelus_, as well as "Celestial
Jupiter" (_Jupiter Caelestis_, [Greek: Zeus Ouranios]),[70] but it was a
heaven studied by a sacred science that venerated its harmonious mechanism.
The Seleucides represented him on their coins with a crescent over his
forehead and carrying a sun with seven rays, to symbolize the fact that he
presided over the course of the stars;[71] or else he was shown with the
two Dioscuri at his side, heroes who enjoyed life and suffered death in
turn, according to the Greek myth, and who had become the symbols of the
two celestial hemispheres. Religious uranography placed the residence of
the supreme divinity in the most elevated region of the world, fixing its
abode in the zone most distant from the earth, above the planets and the
fixed stars. This fact was intended to be expressed by the term Most-High
([Greek: Hupsistos]) applied to the Syrian Baals as well as to Jehovah.[72]
According to this cosmic religion, the Most High resided in the immense orb
that contained the spheres of all the stars and embraced the entire
universe which was subject to his domination. The Latins translated the
name of this "Hypsistos" by _Jupiter summus exsuperantissimus_[73] to
indicate his preeminence over all divine beings.
As a matter of fact, his power was infinite. The primary postulate of the
Chaldean astrology was that all phenomena and events of this world were
necessarily determined by sidereal influence. The changes of nature, as
well as the dispositions of men, were controlled according to fate, by the
divine energies that resided in the heavens. In other words, the gods were
almighty; they were the masters of destiny that governed the universe
absolutely. The notion of their {129} omnipotence resulted from the
development of the ancient autocracy with which the Baals were credited. As
we have stated, they were conceived after the image of an Asiatic monarch,
and the religious terminology was evidently intended to display the
humility of their priests toward them. In Syria we find nothing analogous
to what existed in Egypt, where the priest thought he could compel the gods
to act, and even dared to threaten them.[74] The distance separating the
human and the divine always was much greater with the Semitic tribes, and
all that astrology did was to emphasize the distance more strongly by
giving it a doctrinal foundation and a scientific appearance. In the Latin
world the Asiatic religions propagated the conception of the absolute and
illimitable sovereignty of God over the earth. Apuleius calls the Syrian
goddess _omnipotens et omniparens_, "mistress and mother of all
things."[75]
The observation of the starry skies, moreover, had led the Chaldeans to the
notion of a divine eternity. The constancy of the sidereal revolutions
inspired the conclusion as to their perpetuity. The stars follow their ever
uncompleted courses unceasingly; as soon as the end of their journey is
reached, they resume without stopping the road already covered, and the
cycles of years in which their movements take place extend from the
indefinite past into the indefinite future.[76] Thus a clergy of
astronomers necessarily conceived Baal, "Lord of the heavens," as the
"Master of eternity" or "He whose name is praised through all
eternity"[77]--titles which constantly recur in Semitic inscriptions. The
divine stars did not die, like Osiris or Attis; whenever they seemed to
weaken, they were {130} born to a new life and always remained invincible
(_invicti_).
Together with the mysteries of the Syrian Baals, this theological notion
penetrated into Occidental paganism.[78] Whenever an inscription to a _deus
aeternus_ is found in the Latin provinces it refers to a Syrian sidereal
god, and it is a remarkable fact that this epithet did not enter the ritual
before the second century, at the time the worship of the god Heaven
(_Caelus_)[79] was propagated. That the philosophers had long before placed
the first cause beyond the limits of time was of no consequence, for their
theories had not penetrated into the popular consciousness nor modified the
traditional formulary of the liturgies. To the people the divinities were
beings more beautiful, more vigorous, and more powerful than man, but born
like him, and exempt only from old age and death, the immortals of old
Homer. The Syrian priests diffused the idea of a god without beginning and
without end through the Roman world, and thus contributed, along lines
parallel with the Jewish proselytism, to lend the authority of dogma to
what had previously been only a metaphysical theory.
The Baals were universal as well as eternal, and their power became
limitless in regard to space as it had been in regard to time. These two
principles were correlative. The title of "_mar'olam_" which the Baals bore
occasionally may be translated by "Lord of the universe," or by "Lord of
eternity," and efforts certainly have been made to claim the twofold
quality for them.[80] Peopled with divine constellations and traversed by
planets assimilated to the inhabitants of Olympus, the heavens determined
the destinies of the {131} entire human race by their movements, and the
whole earth was subject to the changes produced by their revolutions.[81]
Consequently the old _Ba'al [vs]amîn_ was necessarily transformed into a
universal power. Of course, even under the Cæsars there existed in Syria
traces of a period when the local god was the fetich of a clan and could be
worshiped by the members of that clan only, a period when strangers were
admitted to his altars only after a ceremony of initiation, as brothers, or
at least as guests and clients.[82] But from the period when our knowledge
of the history of the great divinities of Heliopolis or Hierapolis begins,
these divinities were regarded as common to all Syrians, and crowds of
pilgrims came from distant countries to obtain grace in the holy cities. As
protectors of the entire human race the Baals gained proselytes in the
Occident, and their temples witnessed gatherings of devotees of every race
and nationality. In this respect the Baals were distinctly different from
Jehovah.
The essence of paganism implies that the nature of a divinity broadens as
the number of its votaries increases. Everybody credits it with some new
quality, and its character becomes more complex. As it gains in power it
also has a tendency to dominate its companion gods and to concentrate their
functions in itself. To escape this threatening absorption, these gods must
be of a very sharply defined personality and of a very original character.
The vague Semitic deities, however, were devoid of a well-defined
individuality. We fail to find among them a well organized society of
immortals, like that of the Greek Olympus where each divinity had its own
features and its own particular {132} life full of adventures and
experiences, and each followed its special calling to the exclusion of all
the others. One was a physician, another a poet, a third a shepherd, hunter
or blacksmith. The Greek inscriptions found in Syria are, in this regard,
eloquently concise.[83] Usually they have the name of Zeus accompanied by
some simple epithet: kurios ([Greek: kurios], Lord), _aniketos_ ([Greek:
anikêtos], invincible), _megistos_ ([Greek: megistos], greatest). All these
Baals seem to have been brothers. They were personalities of indeterminate
outline and interchangeable powers and were readily confused.
At the time the Romans came into contact with Syria, it had already passed
through a period of syncretism similar to the one we can study with greater
precision in the Latin world. The ancient exclusiveness and the national
particularism had been overcome. The Baals of the great sanctuaries had
enriched themselves with the virtues[84] of their neighbors; then, always
following the same process, they had taken certain features from foreign
divinities brought over by the Greek conquerors. In that manner their
characters had become indefinable, they performed incompatible functions
and possessed irreconcilable attributes. An inscription found in
Britain[85] assimilates the Syrian goddess to Peace, Virtue, Ceres, Cybele,
and even to the sign of the Virgin.
In conformity with the law governing the development of paganism, the
Semitic gods tended to become pantheistic because they comprehended all
nature and were identified with it. The various deities were nothing but
different aspects under which the supreme and infinite being manifested
itself. Although Syria {133} remained deeply and even coarsely idolatrous
in practice, in theory it approached monotheism or, better perhaps,
henotheism. By an absurd but curious etymology the name Hadad has been
explained as "one, one" (_'ad 'ad_).[86]
Everywhere the narrow and divided polytheism showed a confused tendency to
elevate itself into a superior synthesis, but in Syria astrology lent the
firmness of intelligent conviction to notions that were vague elsewhere.
The Chaldean cosmology, which deified all elements but ascribed a
predominant influence to the stars, ruled the entire Syrian syncretism. It
considered the world as a great organism which was kept intact by an
intimate solidarity, and whose parts continually influenced each other.
The ancient Semites believed therefore that the divinity could be regarded
as embodied in the waters, in the fire of the lightning, in stones or
plants. But the most powerful gods were the constellations and the planets
that governed the course of time and of all things.
The sun was supreme because it led the starry choir, because it was the
king and guide of all the other luminaries and therefore the master of the
whole world.[87] The astronomical doctrines of the "Chaldeans" taught that
this incandescent globe alternately attracted and repelled the other
sidereal bodies, and from this principle the Oriental theologians had
concluded that it must determine the entire life of the universe, inasmuch
as it regulated the movements of the heavens. As the "intelligent light" it
was especially the creator of human reason, and just as it repelled and
attracted the planets in turn, it was believed {134} to send out souls, at
the time of birth, into the bodies they animated, and to cause them to
return to its bosom after death by means of a series of emissions and
absorptions.
Later on, when the seat of the Most-High was placed beyond the limits of
the universe, the radiant star that gives us light became the visible image
of the supreme power, the source of all life and all intelligence, the
intermediary between an inaccessible god and mankind, and the one object of
special homage from the multitude.[88]
Solar pantheism, which grew up among the Syrians of the Hellenistic period
as a result of the influence of Chaldean astrolatry, imposed itself upon
the whole Roman world under the empire. Our very rapid sketch of the
constitution of that theological system shows incidentally the last form
assumed by the pagan idea of God. In this matter Syria was Rome's teacher
and predecessor. The last formula reached by the religion of the pagan
Semites and in consequence by that of the Romans, was a divinity unique,
almighty, eternal, universal and ineffable, that revealed itself throughout
nature, but whose most splendid and most energetic manifestation was the
sun. To arrive at the Christian monotheism[89] only one final tie had to be
broken, that is to say, this supreme being residing in a distant heaven had
to be removed beyond the world. So we see once more in this instance, how
the propagation of the Oriental cults levelled the roads for Christianity
and heralded its triumph. Although astrology was always fought by the
church, it had nevertheless prepared the minds for the dogmas the church
was to proclaim.
* * * * *
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