CHAPTER VI

THE RELIGION OF MITHRA

Of all the oriental religions which attracted the devotion of the West in

the last three centuries of the Empire, that of Mithra was the most

powerful. It is also the system which for various reasons has the greatest

interest for the modern student. It is perhaps the highest and most

striking example of the last efforts of paganism to reconcile itself to

the great moral and spiritual movement which was setting steadily, and

with growing momentum, towards purer conceptions of God, of man’s

relations to Him, and of the life to come. It is also the greatest effort

of syncretism to absorb, without extinguishing, the gods of the classic

pantheon in a cult which was almost monotheistic, to transform old forms

of nature worship and cosmic symbolism into a system which should provide

at once some form of moral discipline and real satisfaction for spiritual

wants. In this effort, Mithraism was not so much impeded by a heritage of

coarse legend as the worships of Pessinus and Alexandria. It was indeed

sprung from the same order of religious thought as they. It could never

detach itself from its source as a cult of the powers of nature.(3003) But

the worship of the Sun, with which Mithra was inseparably connected, was

the purest and most natural form of devotion, if elemental powers were to

be worshipped at all. And heathendom tended more and more under the Empire

to fix its devotion on the source of all light and life. The Sun was to

Plato the highest material symbol of the Infinite Good. Neo-Pythagoreanism

and Neo-Platonism regarded him as the sacred image of the power beyond

human ken.(3004) “Before religion,” it has been said, “had reached the

point of proclaiming that God must be sought in the realm of the ideal and

the absolute outside the world of sense, the one rational and scientific

cult was that of the Sun.”(3005) Heliolatry also harmonised with

absolutism in the State, as the old Persian kings and their imitators, the

emperors of the third century, clearly perceived. The great temple of the

Sun, which Aurelian, the son of a priestess of the deity, founded in the

Campus Martius, with its high pontiffs and stately ritual, did honour not

only to the great lord of the heavenly spheres, but to the monarch who was

the august image of his power upon earth and who was endued with his

special grace.(3006) The power of Mithra in the fourth century lay in the

fact that, while it was tender and tolerant to the old national worships,

and never broke with the inner spirit of heathenism, it created an

all-embracing system which rose above all national barriers, which

satisfied the philosophic thought of the age in its mysticism, and gave

comfort and a hope of immortality through its sacraments.

Mithra was one of the most ancient and venerable objects of pagan

devotion, as he was one of the last to be dethroned. In faint outline he

can be traced to the cradle of the Aryan race.(3007) In the Vedas he is a

god of light, and, as the god of truth, who hates all falsehood, he has

the germ of that moral character which grew into a great force in the last

age of his worship in the West. In the Avestas, the sacred books of the

religion of Iran, which, however late their redaction, still enshrine a

very ancient creed, Mithra has the same well-defined personality. He is

the radiant god who seems to emerge from the rocky summits of eastern

mountains at dawn, who careers through heaven with a team of four white

horses; yet he is not sun or moon or any star, but a spirit of light, ever

wakeful, watching with a thousand eyes, whom nothing can escape and

nothing deceive.(3008) And so, while he gives warmth and increase to the

earth, and health and wealth to men, he is also from the beginning a moral

power. He confers wisdom and honour and a clear conscience and concord. He

wages a truceless war with the evil powers of darkness, and guards his

faithful soldiers against the craft of the enemy. He is the friend and

consoler of the poor; he is the mediator between earth and heaven; he is

the lord of the world to come.(3009) But his place in the Zoroastrian

hierarchy was not always equally high. At one time he was only one of the

_yazatas_, who were created by the supreme Ormuzd.(3010) But Mithra has

still the attributes of guardian and saviour; he is approached with

sacrifice, libation, ablution, and litany, as in the latest days of his

power in the West. And again a higher place is given to him; he is the

vicegerent of the remote, ineffable Ormuzd, the mediator through whom the

supreme power crushes evil demons, and wages war with Ahriman; he is

invoked in the same prayers side by side with the Supreme. The Great

Kings, especially the later, regard Mithra as their special guardian,

swear by him in their most solemn oaths,(3011) and call upon him in the

hour of battle. If he was the god of the humble and afflicted, he was also

the god of the prince and warrior noble, and so we shall find him at the

end.

The Persian conquest of Babylon had lasting effects on the religion of

Mithra. There he encountered a sacerdotal system which had its roots in an

immemorial civilisation. The conquerors, as so often happens, were to some

extent subdued by the vanquished.(3012) Syncretism set in; the deities of

the two races were reconciled and identified. The magical arts and the

astrolatry of the valley of the Euphrates imposed themselves on the purer

Mazdean faith, and never relaxed their hold, although they failed to check

its development as a moral system. Ormuzd was confounded with Bel, Mithra

with Shamash or the Sun-god. The astral and solar lore, the faith in

mystic numbers, which had been cultivated in Babylonia through many

generations, took its place in the theology of Mithra, and they have left

their mark in many a chapel on the Danube and the Rhine. Yet Mithra,

identified with the Sun at Babylon, was never absorbed in the cult of the

solar deity in the West.(3013) On many of the later inscriptions Mithra

and the Sun are mentioned side by side as equals and allies. Yet the

connection of Mithra with Babylon is never forgotten either by Greeks or

Romans. Claudian connects him with the mysteries of Bel.(3014) The priest

who, with many weird rites, in a waste sunless spot beside the Tigris,

conducts Menippus to the underworld, wears the dress of Media, and bears

the name Mithrobarzanes.(3015)

With the destruction of the Persian empire and the diffusion of Magian

influence in Asia Minor, the worship arrived at its last stage before

entering on the conquest of the West. The monarchs of Pontus, Armenia,

Cappadocia, and Commagene, who claimed descent from the Achaemenids, were

politic or enthusiastic votaries of the religious traditions of

Iran.(3016) While they reverenced Ormuzd and Anaitis, Mithra was their

special patron, as he was to Artaxerxes.(3017) Mithra’s name appears

constantly in the names of royal houses, such as Mithradates and

Mithrobarzanes. The inscription on the tomb of Antiochus of Commagene, who

boasted of his descent from Darius the son of Hystaspes, records the

endowment of solemn Persian rites, and combines the names of Ormuzd and

Zeus, of Apollo and Mithra.(3018) In the submergence of national barriers

which followed the fall of the Persian monarchy, and under the influence

of Greek philosophy, that process of syncretism began in Asia Minor which

was destined to produce such momentous results in the third and fourth

centuries. But the Mazdean faith, strong in its associations with the

ancient sources of spiritual enlightenment in the East, never succumbed to

the western paganism. The classical gods might be admitted to the Mazdean

heaven; Zeus might be confounded with Ormuzd; Anaitis might find an

analogue in Artemis Tauropolus. But the ancient name of Mithra was never

profaned in the liturgy by any translation.(3019) It was chiefly perhaps

in Phrygia and Lydia that alien worships produced a lasting effect in

modifying the Persian theology. The pure morality of the Mithraist creed

might seem to have little in common with the orgies of the devotees of

Attis and the Great Mother. But religious sentiment has a miraculous power

both to reject and to transmute. The costume and Phrygian cap of Attis

appear on all the monuments of Mithra to the end. And, although it is a

subject of debate, the taurobolium, that baptism of blood which was the

most impressive rite of the later paganism, was, in all probability, early

borrowed by Mithra from the ritual of Phrygia.(3020) The pine, the emblem

of immortality, which is so prominent in the scenes of mourning for

Attis,(3021) also has a place in the sculptured remains of the Persian

chapels. And the title Menotyrannus, a title of Attis, which is given to

the Persian god on many slabs, recalls his passage through the same

region.(3022) But Greek art had a more powerful and enduring effect on the

future of Mithra than any of these accretions. Probably the ancient

Persian faith recoiled from any material image of its divine powers,(3023)

although here also Assyria may have corrupted its purity. But when

Hellenic imagination began to play around the Mazdean gods, the result was

certain. The victorious Mithra was clothed with human form, and his legend

was fixed for ever by some nameless Pergamene artist, who drew his

inspiration from the “steer-slaying Victory” of Athens.(3024) The group in

which the youthful hero, his mantle blown back by the wind, with a

Phrygian cap upon his head, kneels on the shoulder of the bull, as he

buries his poniard in its throat, was for four centuries reproduced in

countless chapels from the mouth of the Danube to the Solway. That

symbolic scene, conveying so many meanings in its hieratic rigidity,

became to the pious Mithraist what the image of the Divine Figure on the

Cross has been for so many centuries to the devout Catholic.

The revelation of the spread of Mithra worship in the Roman Empire is one

of the greatest triumphs of modern archaeology. Only faint notices of the

cult are found in Herodotus, Xenophon, and Strabo.(3025) Quintus Curtius

knew the Persian god as the soldier’s special patron, inspiring courage in

battle.(3026) From the verses in the _Thebaid_ of Statius we may conclude

that he knew something of the service in Mithra’s grottoes, and that he

had seen the figure of the “bull slaying” god.(3027) Plutarch knows Mithra

as the mediator between Ormuzd and Ahriman.(3028) Lucian had probably seen

the rites in his native Samosata; he knew the figure with the candys and

tiara, and, from the sneer at the god’s ignorance of Greek, he may perhaps

have heard the old Mazdean litany.(3029) But he had probably little notion

of the hold which Mithra had already obtained on the farthest regions of

the West. Still less had he any prevision of his great destiny in the

third and fourth centuries. Literature, down to the Antonine age, teaches

us little of the character and strength of the worship. Without votive

inscriptions and the many ruins of his chapels, along with the indignant,

yet anxious, invective of the Christian apologists, we should never have

known how near the Persian god came to justifying his title of the

“Unconquered.”

It is impossible to fix the precise date when the worship of Mithra first

crossed the Aegean. The silence of inscriptions must not indeed be taken

as proving that he had no devotees in Italy before the Flavian age. A

famous passage in Plutarch’s life of Pompey would seem to refer the first

appearance of the worship in the West to the conquest of the pirates of

Cilicia by Pompey, in 70 B.C.(3030) A religion of the alien and the slave

may well have been long domiciled in Italy before it attracted general

notice. And there may have been humble worshippers of Mithra at Rome or

Puteoli even in the days of Julius Caesar. The Mithraist inscription of

the time of Tiberius is now admitted to be a forgery.(3031) But from his

reign may probably be dated the first serious inroads of the cult. Under

Tiberius, Cappadocia was incorporated in the Empire, and Pontus under

Nero; Commagene, the home of Jupiter Dolichenus, who was a firm ally of

Mithra, was finally absorbed in the reign of Vespasian.(3032) The official

organisation of these districts, and the constant intercourse established

between central Asia Minor and the capital, must have opened many channels

for the importation of new forms of devotion from the East. Almost in the

very year in which Statius was penning his verses about Mithra in the

_Thebaid_, a freedman of the Flavian house erected a tablet to the god on

the Esquiline,(3033) and soldiers of the East carried his mysteries to the

camps on the Danube. The 15th Legion, which had fought under Corbulo

against the Parthians, and taken part in the conquest of Palestine in 70

A.D., in the first years of the reign of Vespasian, established the

worship of Mithra at Carnuntum in Pannonia, which became henceforth the

sacred city of Mithra in the West.(3034) In 102 A.D. a marble group was

dedicated by the slave of a praetorian prefect of Trajan.(3035) It is

probable that at Ostia we have records of the cult from the year

162.(3036) The Mithraeum, found under the church of S. Clement at Rome,

has yielded an inscription of the last years of Antoninus Pius. That

emperor erected a temple to Mithra at Ostia.(3037) Rome and Ostia were

probably the earliest points in Italy invaded by the Persian worship. All

the conditions were favourable to an early and rapid propagation of the

cult in the capital of the world. Soldiers from the East would be serving

in the garrison, or settled after their release from service. Eastern

slaves swarmed in all the great houses, including that of the emperor. A

large proportion of the dedications are made by men of servile origin, and

the very name of the dedicator would often be enough to indicate his

nationality. More than 100 inscriptions, more than 75 pieces of Mithraist

sculpture, with the ruins of many chapels of the god, attest his powerful

influence at Rome.(3038) Ostia which, since the reconstruction of Trajan,

had overshadowed Puteoli, was hospitable to all alien rites.(3039) The

port had at least four temples of Mithra in the second century, and it is

significant of the alliance between the two worships, that a Mithraeum

there was built close to a shrine of the Great Mother,(3040) and that

members of the college of the Dendrophori sometimes made offerings and

dedications to Mithra.(3041) The remains at Ostia disclose some other

indications of the prevailing syncretism. The Roman Sylvanus has a niche

in one Mithraeum, and, in another, Saturn and Jupiter, Mars, Mercury and

Venus, are figured beside the purely Eastern symbols of the planets and

the signs of the zodiac.(3042)

The inner secret of that rapid propaganda we shall never fully know. But

we can discover with tolerable certainty the kind of people who carried

the gospel of Mithra to the most remote parts of the western world. The

soldiers were his most zealous missionaries.(3043) Drafted from Cappadocia

or Commagene, and quartered, far from his home, in a camp on the Danube or

in the Black Forest, the legionary clung to the worship of his native

East, and was eager to admit his comrades to fellowship in its rites. The

appearance of Mithraism in certain places can be traced directly to the

quartering of a legion which had been recruited from the countries which

were the original home of the worship. Officers of eastern birth on

promotion passed into other corps, and extended the influence of the

East.(3044) Centurions retiring from active service became apostles of the

movement in the places where they settled. Syrian merchants, who were

still found at Orleans in the time of the Merovingians, with all the

fanaticism of their race popularised their native worships in the ports of

Italy, Gaul, along the coasts of the Adriatic, and among the centres of

commerce on the Danube or the Rhine.(3045) The civil servants of the

emperor, clerks and commissaries of every degree, procurators and agents

of great estates, who were often men of servile origin, have left many

traces of their zeal in spreading the Persian worship both throughout

Italy and in countries north of the Alps.(3046) The slave class probably

did as much for the glory of Mithra as any other.(3047) It was largely

drawn from Cappadocia, Pontus, and Phrygia, those regions where the

religion of Mithra had taken deep root before it passed into Europe. And,

like the Christian, the religion of Mithra was, at the outset of its

career, a religion of the poor and humble. It was only in the second

century that it achieved the conquest of the court and the educated

classes. It was probably through slaves that it found its way into remote

corners of Apulia, Lucania, or Etruria.(3048)

The stages in the spread of the Mithraist rites throughout Italy cannot be

clearly traced. But in the second century the cult was established not

only in Campania, Capreae, and Ischia, but in lonely country places in

Southern Italy.(3049) It had spread to a circle of towns around

Rome—Lanuvium, Alba, Velitrae, Labici, and Praeneste.(3050) Borne by

traders, imperial officers or slaves, it followed the line of the great

roads to the north. Thus we can trace its march along the Via Cassia

through Etruria, at Volsinii, Arretium, and Florence.(3051) It arrived at

Pisa probably by sea. Along the Flaminian Way, it may be followed through

Interamna, Spoletium, and Sentinum to Bononia. At Nersae, in the Aequian

territory, the cult must have been of some antiquity in 172 A.D.(3052)

For, in that year the treasurer of the town, a man probably of the slave

class, restored a chapel which had fallen into ruins. The roll of the

patrons of a Mithraist society at Sentinum has come down to us, with the

names of slaves or freedmen among its members.(3053) In Gallia Cisalpina

the traces of Mithra are less frequent. Milan, already growing to its

great destiny in the fourth century, and Aquileia, are the chief seats of

the Persian cult. Aquileia has yielded a large number of inscriptions.

From its situation at the mouth of the Po, as the great _entrepôt_ for the

trade between the Adriatic and the Danubian provinces, it must have

powerfully stimulated the diffusion of the worship.(3054) It is curious,

however, that the passes of the Alps have yielded richer booty to the

investigator in this field than the plains of Lombardy. In the mountain

valleys leading to Rhaetia and Noricum, as well as in those above the

Italian lakes, many relics of this far-spreading religion have been given

to the light.(3055) A temple of Mithra has been discovered near Trent, in

the valley of the Adige. In the Tyrol and Carinthia sacred grottoes,

buried among woods and rocks, have disclosed bas-reliefs, sculptured with

the traditionary figures of Persian legend. They were probably frequented

by the faithful down to the reign of Valentinian.(3056) Throughout Noricum

and Pannonia imperial functionaries or agents of private enterprise,

procurators, clerks of the treasury, custom-house officers, or eastern

freedmen and slaves, have left many traces of their devotion to the

Persian god.(3057) Thus, everywhere along the great roads which radiated

from Aquileia to the markets or strong places upon the Danube, the votary

of Mithra would find in the days of the Antonines many a shrine, stately

or humble, where he could refresh his piety by the way.

The Greek provinces have yielded but few memorials of the worship of

Mithra. But, from the mouth of the Danube to the north of England his

triumphant march can be traced, with only a break here and there. He

follows the line of the rivers or the great roads, through the frontier

camps or the centres of Roman commerce. Firmly seated at Tomi and the

ports of the Black Sea, Mithra has not left many traces, so far as

exploration has gone, in Thrace and Macedonia.(3058) Nor have the Moesias

as yet contributed many monuments, although at Troesmis and Oescus, along

the great military road, bas-reliefs and inscriptions have been brought to

light.(3059) Next to Pannonia and the territory of the Upper Rhine, Dacia

was the province where Mithraism seems to have reached its greatest

popularity in Europe.(3060) In the year 107, after six desolating and

often doubtful campaigns, Dacia was resettled and organised by

Trajan.(3061) Its depopulated fields were colonised with immense masses of

men from all parts of the Roman world. Probably there has seldom been such

a _colluvies gentium_ assembled. And, among these alien settlers, there

were many from Edessa, Palmyra, and those regions of the East where Mithra

or his kindred deities had their earliest and most fervent

worshippers.(3062) In the capital of the province, Sarmizegetusa, an

excavated Mithraeum has afforded fifty bas-reliefs and inscriptions.(3063)

The colony of Apulum can show the remains of at least four temples. And

Potaissa and other places, with names strange to English ears, have

enriched the museums.

Pannonia abounds with interesting remains of Mithra, not only in the great

seats of Roman power on the Danube, but in places far in the interior.

And in this province can be distinctly traced not only the progress of the

military propaganda, but the dates, with approximate accuracy, when the

mysteries of Mithra were first introduced.(3064) Aquincum and Carnuntum

were the chief seats of the Persian worship on the Danube. In the former

town, the god had at least five chapels in the third century. There were

at least four in the territory of Carnuntum, one of them being closely

connected with that of the allied deity, Jupiter Dolichenus of

Commagene.(3065) The original votaries of the reign of Vespasian had been

contented with a rude grotto, partially formed by the configuration of the

rocks, the intervals being filled in with masonry.(3066) This structure in

the third century was replaced by a more stately edifice at the expense of

a Roman knight.(3067) There can be little doubt that the spread of

Mithraism in Pannonia was chiefly the work of two Legions, the II.

Adjutrix and XV. Apollinaris, both largely recruited from Commagene or

Cappadocia.(3068) The bricks of a Mithraeum at Carnuntum bear the stamp of

the 15th Legion, and the inscriptions contain several dedications by

soldiers of the two corps.(3069) The 15th Legion, which was quartered on

the Danube in 71 or 72, had fought under Corbulo against the Parthians,

and had borne a part in suppressing the Jewish revolt of 70 A.D. We may be

sure that the gaps in its ranks were filled by eastern recruits.(3070) The

soldiers of other corps, such as the Legions XIII and XIV, Geminae

Martiae, caught the religious enthusiasm, and took part in the erection of

buildings and in monumental offerings.(3071) It was probably through

officers, transferred from the Danube, that the worship was introduced

into the camp of Lambaesis in Numidia. There is a tablet of the third

century to Mithra in that camp, dedicated by a prefect of the 3rd Legion,

who was born at Carnuntum.(3072) In Noricum and Rhaetia, the military

propaganda seems to have been less vigorous than in Pannonia. But a corner

of the former province was once guarded by a corps from Commagene, which

has left traces of its presence in the name of a town on the Danube and in

some monuments to Mithra.(3073) In Rhaetia his remains are singularly

scanty.(3074) But when we come to the _Agri Decumates_ and the region of

the Upper Rhine, we find ourselves in a district once more teeming with

relics of Mithra. Not only has this region given to the light the largest

number of his chapels,(3075) but the bas-reliefs found in their ruins

surpass all others in their dimensions and the completeness of their

symbolism. The tauroctonus group of Osterburken is regarded as the

masterpiece of Mithraist art in its complex variety and the vivid and

masterly skill of the execution.(3076) Many of the German inscriptions to

Mithra are offered by simple citizens. But, from the number dedicated by

soldiers also, Cumont may be right in tracing the diffusion of the worship

once more to military zeal. It is true, the legions quartered in Germany

did not contain any considerable number of recruits from the East. But

they were in constant communication with the camps upon the Danube, where

oriental influences were strong. It is significant that the earliest

inscription to Mithra yet found in Germany, of the year A.D. 148, is that

of a centurion of the 8th Legion, which was quartered in Moesia from 47

till 69, and which during that time had frequent communications with the

East. The legion was in 70 removed from Moesia to Upper Germany.(3077) It

is probable that, however it was introduced, the worship of Mithra may

have found its way into the valley of the Neckar, and even to the Lower

Rhine, before the end of the first century. Coins of Trajan have been

found in the temple at Friedberg;(3078) a series of coins from Vespasian

to M. Aurelius has been recovered from a temple in the neighbourhood of

Cologne.(3079) From Cologne the line of conquest may be followed to

Boulogne, the station of the British fleet. Thence the cult passed easily

to London, which, in the time of Tacitus, was a centre of great commercial

activity.(3080) The legions probably carried the worship to the great

camps of Caerleon, Chester and York. At all the guardposts of the great

rampart of Hadrian, there were chapels of the eastern god, and the

inscriptions show that the officers at this remote outpost of the Empire

maintained a warm devotion to the religion of their native East.(3081)

The regions of the western world on which Mithra, from whatever causes,

seems to have made least impression were Western Gaul, Spain, and North

Africa.(3082) Syrian merchants, slaves, or soldiers, had established the

worship at Lyons, Arles, and Narbonne. But Elusa is the only place in

Aquitaine where traces of it have been found. In Spain, the legionaries

carried it only to a few remote frontier posts in Asturia or

Gallicia.(3083) The African garrisons, recruited largely from the

surrounding country, remained true to their native deities, and the few

inscriptions to Mithra at great military strongholds, like Lambesi, are

probably due to the devotion of some of the higher officers, who had been

transferred to these distant quarters from Syria or the Danube.(3084)

If we try to explain the fascination of this religion of central Asia for

western minds, we must seek it partly in its theological system, partly in

its ritual and clerical organisation, still more in its clear promise of a

life beyond the grave. In these characteristics, Mithraism differed

profoundly from Graeco-Roman paganism, and seemed, in the eyes of the

Christian apologists, to be a deceptive imitation of the rites and

doctrines of the Christian Church. Inspired with the tendency or ambition

to gather many races into its fold, Mithraism was a compound of the

influences of very different ages, and offered many footholds for the

faith or superstition of the lands which it traversed in its march. It

drew, from points widely severed in time and place, doctrine or symbolism

or rite, from the ancient lands of the Aryan race, from the mountain homes

of the Persians, from Babylon and Phrygia and Commagene, from the

philosophy of Greece, and the mythologies of all the peoples among whom it

came. Yet it never to the end ceased to be a Persian cult. In the Divine

Comedy of Lucian, as it may be called, Mithra, even when he is admitted to

Olympus, cannot speak in Greek.(3085) His name is never disguised or

translated. On many of his inscriptions the names of the old Mazdean

pantheon, such as Ahriman, the power of evil, still figure.(3086) The

mystic beasts which are always present in the sacred scene of the

tauroctonus, the lion, the dog, the snake, the scorpion, had all a

hieratic meaning in Persian theology.(3087) The cave, which was the

immemorial sanctuary of the worship, amid all the mystic meanings attached

to it by later Neo-Platonist speculation, carried the mind back to

Zoroastrian symbolism.(3088) The _petra genetrix_, which is figured on so

many sacred slabs on the Danube and in Upper Germany, goes back to the

very cradle of the worship.(3089) The young god, emerging from the spires

of rock, round which a serpent coils itself, is the first radiance of the

upspringing sun, as on high, lonely peaks it flashes and broadens to the

dawn. The great elemental powers, sun and moon, ocean, the winds and

seasons, are generally grouped around the central piece, in forms borrowed

from classic art.(3090) Fire and water are always present; no chapel was

without its fountain.(3091) And the tradition of the astral lore of the

Euphrates can be seen in the signs of the zodiac which encompass the

sacred scene of mystic sacrifice in the chapels on the Upper Rhine.(3092)

The very letters of the name of Mithra, expanded into Meithras, according

to S. Jerome, like the mystic word Abraxas, yielded to ingenious

calculation the exact number of days in the year.(3093) It is difficult

for us to conceive how these frigid astronomical fancies should form a

part in a religious system which undoubtedly from the beginning had a

profound moral effect on its adherents. Yet it is well to remember that

there was a time when the mystery of the stellar spaces, and the grandeur

and beneficence of the sun, were the most awful and impressive things in

human experience. The cold scrutiny of the telescope has long since robbed

the heavenly orbs of their mystic power over human destiny. Yet even now,

a man who has not been imbued with the influence of modern science, may,

on some calm, starlit summer night, travel back in imagination to the

dreams of the early star-gazers on the Ganges or the Euphrates, and fancy

that, in the far solitary splendour and ordered movement of those eternal

fires, which shine so serene and pitiless on this small point in the

universe, there may be forces to guide or signs to predict the course of

mortal destiny. Nor was it an altogether unworthy dream, which floated

before the minds of so many generations, that in those liquid depths of

space, where, in the infinite distance, the radiance of widely-severed

constellations blends into a luminous haze, might be the eternal abode of

spirits who, after their sojourn in the flesh, have purged themselves of

earthly taint.(3094)

The relative influence of Babylon and ancient Iran in moulding the

theology of Mithraism, has long been a subject of controversy. The

opposing schools, represented by Lajard and Windischmann,(3095) have been

discredited or reconciled by saner methods of criticism, and wider

archaeological knowledge. It is now seen that while Babylonia has left a

deep impress on the creed of Mithra, yet the original Aryan or Persian

elements still maintained their ascendency. Mithra, in his long journey,

came under many influences; and he absorbed many alien ideas from the

cults and art of the many lands through which he travelled. His tolerance,

indeed, was one great secret of his power. But, while he absorbed, he

assimilated and transmuted. He remained the god of Persia, while he

gathered into his creed mystic elements that might appease the spiritual

cravings of the western world.(3096) His system came to represent the best

theological expression of the long movement of pagan mysticism, which,

beginning with the mythic names of Orpheus and Pythagoras, organised in

the classic mysteries, elevated and glorified by the genius of Plato,

ended, if it has ended, in the Neo-Platonic movement which offered a last

resistance to the Christian church. The central ideas of that theory of

life and death were presented to the neophyte in the mysteries of Mithra,

and one of the last expounders of the Platonic creed, in the reign of

Theodosius, had probably been initiated in one of the last chapels of the

worship.(3097) In that vision of human destiny, of the descent and ascent

of the human soul, the old Orphic doctrine is united with the star-lore of

the Euphrates. Travelling towards its future prison-house in the flesh,

the spirit which leaves the presence of Ormuzd descends by the gate of

Cancer, through the spheres of the seven planets, and in each acquires a

new faculty appropriate to its earthly state. The Mithraist discipline and

sacraments prepare it for the ascent after death. When the soul at last

leaves its mortal prison, it has to submit to a great judgment in the

presence of Mithra, and if it pass the ordeal, it may then return through

the seven spheres, at each stage divesting itself of those passions or

earthly powers, which it had taken on for a time in its downward

journey.(3098) Finally, through the remote gate of Capricorn, its

sublimated essence will pass back again to ecstatic union with the

Supreme. It is thus that the East and West, Orphic mysteries and Chaldaean

astrology, combined to satisfy the craving for a moral faith and the

vision of another world.

The religion of Mithra probably achieved its highest victory through an

ethical theology, typified and made concrete to the average worshipper by

an elaborate symbolism in rite and sculptured scene. But it had also a

cosmic theology. Mithra, in virtue of his moral power, became in the end

the central figure. But in nearly all his chapels can be discovered a

divine hierarchy, in which, for ages, he did not hold the foremost rank.

The highest place is given to Infinite Time, without sex or passions, or

properly without even a name, although in order to bring him within the

vulgar ken, he may be called Cronus or Saturn and imaged in stone as a

lion, wrapped in the coils of a snake.(3099) He is the author of life and

death; he carries the keys of heaven, and in his limitless sway, he is

identified with the unbending power of Fate. Like other cosmic systems of

the East the Mazdean explained the universe by a succession of emanations

from the Infinite First Cause.(3100) From his own essence, Cronus

engendered Earth and Heaven, whom mythologers may call Jupiter and Juno,

and they in turn give life to Ocean. Jupiter, as in classical mythology,

succeeded to the power of Cronus, and gave to the world the Olympian

deities, along with Fortune, Themis, and the Fates. In the hemisphere of

gloom and evil, another order was engendered by Infinite Time, which is

represented by Ahriman, or, in the fancy of more western lands, by Pluto

and Hecate. The evil spirits, who are their progeny, like the Titans of

Greek legend, have tried to storm Olympus, and been hurled back to the

under world.(3101) There they still retain their power to plague and

corrupt the race of men; but, by means of incantation, and sacrifice,

their malice may be turned aside. In this daemonology Mithraism joined

hands with the new Platonism, of which Plutarch, as we have seen, was one

of the earliest apostles, and the affinity between them continued to the

last age of paganism.(3102) But it was in its divinisation of the

elemental powers and heavenly bodies that this religion probably obtained

its most powerful hold on an age profoundly fatalist and superstitious.

The strife of the four elements figures under animal symbolism on

innumerable sculptures of the chapels of Mithra, around the image of the

bull-slaying God.(3103) The divine fire which sparkles in the stars, and

diffuses the warmth of life in animal or plant, blazed perpetually on the

altar of the crypt.(3104) The sun and moon are seldom missing from these

slabs. In the great masterpiece of Mithraic art at Osterburken, the two

deities occupy opposite corners of the tablet.(3105) The sun-god, with a

cloak floating from his right shoulder, is urging his four-horse team up

the steep of heaven, and over the car floats Phosphorus, as a naked boy,

bearing a torch in each hand. On the opposite side, Selene, crowned with

the crescent and erect in her car, is urging her team of oxen downwards

towards the gloom. On another piece, also found in the heart of Germany,

there is an impressive scene, in which Mithra and the Sun, arrayed in

eastern costume, stand side by side over a huge slaughtered bull. The sun

god is handing to Mithra a bunch of grapes, which he receives with a

gesture of admiration.(3106)

The most popular, and the least wholesome, element, which Mithraism

borrowed from Babylon, was the belief in planetary influence. The seven

planets became the arbiters of human destiny, and their number acquired a

hieratic significance.(3107) The days of the week and the seven principal

metals were consecrated to them. The various grades of initiation into the

mysteries of Mithra found a correspondence in the intervals of the seven

spheres.(3108) The soul, in descending to its earthly tenement for a

season, passes through their successive realms, and assumes appropriate

faculties in each, just as, on its release and ascension, it divests

itself of them, one by one, as it returns to the region of ethereal

purity. But the astral doctrine, introduced into the system of Iran from

Chaldaea, was a dangerous addition to the creed. It was a fatal heritage

from ages of benumbing superstition, and, while it gave an immense impetus

to the progress of the solar cult, it counterbalanced, and, to some

extent, neutralised its more spiritual and salutary doctrines.(3109) A

co-ordinate evil power, side by side with the beneficent Creator and

Preserver, and his revealer and mediator, a host of daemons, tempting to

sin, as well as visiting men with calamity, an iron Fate at the centre of

the Universe, whose inevitable decrees are at once indicated and executed

by the position and motions of the planets—all this gloomy doctrine lay

like a nightmare on the human mind for many ages, and gave birth to all

sorts of evil arts to discover or avert or direct the pitiless forces

which controlled the fate of man. This is the dark side of Mithra worship,

and, in this evil tradition from Babylon, which partially overlaid the

purer creed of Persia, we may find some explanation of the strange

blending of dark superstition with moral earnestness which characterised

the reaction of Julian, the votary of the Sun, and the patron of Maximus.

But, although the deification of the great elemental powers and the

mingled charm and terror of astrology gave the religion of Mithra a

powerful hold on the West, there were other and nobler elements in his

system which cannot escape the candid enquirer. The old unmoral, external

paganism no longer satisfied the spiritual wants of all men in the second

century. It is true the day will probably never come when the religion of

many will not begin and end in solemn, stately rite, consecrated to the

imagination by ancient use, and captivating the sense by scrupulously

ordered ceremonial. The ritualist and the puritan conception of worship

will probably always exist side by side, for they represent two opposite

conceptions of religion which can never entirely blend. And certainly in

the days of M. Aurelius the placid satisfaction in a sumptuous sacrifice,

at which every word of the ancient litany was rendered to the letter, was

still profoundly felt by many, even by the philosophic emperor himself.

But there were other ideas in the air. Men heard from wandering preachers

that God required other offerings than the “blood of bulls and the ashes

of a heifer,” that the true worship was in the sacrifice of a purified

spirit.(3110) Platonist and Pythagorean, even when they might reverently

handle the ancient symbolism of ritual, were teaching that communion with

the Infinite Father was only possible to a soul emancipated from the

tyranny of sense. Moreover, as we have seen, the new Platonism was

striving to create some mediatorial power between the world of sense and

the Infinite Spirit, transcending all old materialistic fancies of the

Divine.(3111) This Platonic daemonology, indeed, from the Christian point

of view, was a very crude and imperfect attempt to bridge the gulf. And it

had the graver fault that it was really a revival of the old mythology.

Yet it was also an attempted reformation. It was an effort to introduce a

moral influence into paganism. It was an effort to substitute for physical

and naturalistic conceptions a moral theory of the government of the

world. That was surely an immense advance in religious history, and

foreshadowed the great revolution which was to launch the western world on

a new spiritual career. The hosts of sister spirits, whom Maximus of Tyre

imagines as surrounding and sustaining the life of men, involved in the

darkness and sorrow of time, are a conception strange to the old paganism.

And the need of mediatorial sympathy, of a sympathetic link, however

slight, with the dim, awful Power, ever receding into more remote and

mysterious distances, was also connected with the need of some assurance,

or fainter hope, of a life beyond the tomb. To that hope the old classical

paganism afforded only slight and shadowy nutriment. Yet, from hundreds of

sepulchral inscriptions the yearning, often darkened by a doubt, appeals

with pathetic force. Apart, in fact, from the crowd of mere antiquarian

formalists and lovers of spectacle, there were, we believe, a great mass

who longed for some channel through which they might have the faintest

touch of sympathy with the Infinite Spirit; for some promise, however

veiled in enigmatic symbolism, that this poor, puzzling, ineffectual life

should not close impotently at death.

In all the Mazdean pantheon, it has been remarked, Mithra was the only

divine figure that profoundly affected the religious imagination of

Europe. Who can dare at this distance to pierce the mystery? But we may

conjecture that the ascendency is partly due to his place as mediator in

the Persian hierarchy, partly to the legends, emblazoned on so many slabs,

of his miraculous and Herculean triumphs; but still more to the moral and

sacramental support, and the sure hope of immortal life which he offered

to his faithful worshippers. Mithra came as a deliverer from powers of

evil and as a mediator between man and the remote Ormuzd. He bears the

latter office in a double sense. In the cosmic system, as lord of light,

he is also lord of the space between the heavenly ether and the mists of

earth. As a solar deity, he is the central point among the planetary

orbs.(3112) In the ubiquitous group of the slaughtered bull, Mithra stands

between the two Dadophori, Cautes and Cautopates, who form with him a sort

of Trinity, and are said to be incarnations of him.(3113) One of these

figures in Mithraic sculpture always bears a torch erect, the other a

torch turned downwards to the earth. They may have a double significance.

They may figure the ascending light of dawn, and the last radiance of day

as it sinks below the horizon. They may be taken to image the growth of

solar strength to its midsummer triumphs, and its slow decline towards

fading autumn and the cold of winter. Or again, they may shadow forth the

wider and more momentous processes of universal death and resurgent life.

But Mithra also became a mediator in the moral sense, standing between

Ormuzd and Ahriman, the powers of good and evil, as Plutarch conceives

him.(3114) He is the ever victorious champion, who defies and overthrows

the malignant demons that beset the life of man; who, above all, gives the

victory over the last foe of humanity.

The legend of Mithra in hymn or litany is almost entirely lost. But

antiquarian ingenuity and cultivated sympathy have plausibly recovered

some of its meanings from the many sculptural remains of his chapels. On

the great monuments of Virunum, Mauls, Neuenheim, and Osterburken, can be

seen the successive scenes of the hero’s career. They begin with his

miraculous birth from the “mother rock,” which was familiar to Justin

Martyr, S. Jerome, and many of the Fathers.(3115) The dedications _petrae

genetrici_ abound along the Danube, and the sacred stone was an object of

adoration in many chapels.(3116) A youthful form, his head crowned with a

Phrygian cap, a dagger in one hand, and a torch in the other, is pictured

emerging from an opening rock, around which sometimes a serpent is coiled.

Shepherds from the neighbouring mountain gaze in wonder at the divine

birth, and presently come nearer to adore the youthful hero, and offer him

the firstlings of their flocks and fields.(3117) And again, a naked boy is

seen screening himself from the violence of the wind in the shelter of a

fig tree; he eats of its fruit and makes himself a garment from the

leaves.(3118) In another scene, the sacred figure appears in full eastern

costume, armed with a bow from which he launches an arrow against a rock

rising in front of him.(3119) From the spot where the arrow strikes the

stone, a fountain gushes forth, and the water is eagerly caught in his

upturned palms by a form kneeling below. Then follow the famous scenes of

the chase and slaughter of the mystic bull. At first the beast is seen

borne in a skiff over an expanse of waters. Soon afterwards he is grazing

quietly in a meadow, when Mithra comes upon the scene. In one monument the

hero is carrying the bull upon his shoulders; in others he is borne upon

the animal’s back, grasping it by the horns. Or again, the bull is seen in

full career with the hero’s arms thrown around his neck. At last the bull

succumbs to his rider’s courage, and is dragged by the hind-legs, which

are drawn over his captor’s shoulders, into a cavern where the famous

slaughter was enacted.(3120) The young god, his mantle floating on the

wind, kneels on the shoulder of the fallen beast, draws back its head with

his left hand, while with the other he buries his dagger in its

neck.(3121) Below this scene are invariably sculptured the scorpion, the

faithful dog, and the serpent lapping the flowing blood. The two

Dadophori, silent representatives of the worlds of light and gloom, one on

each side, are always calm watchers of the mystic scene. But the

destruction of the bull was not a mere spectacle of death. It was followed

by a miracle of fresh springing life and fertility, and, here and there,

on the slabs are seen ears of corn shooting from the tail of the dying

beast, or young plants and flowers springing up around.(3122) His blood

gives birth to the vine which yields the sacred juice consecrated in the

mysteries. Thus, in spite of the scorpion and the serpent, symbols of the

evil powers, who seek to wither and sterilise the sources of vitality,

life is ever rising again from the body of death.(3123)

Mithra’s mysterious reconciliation with the Sun is figured in other

groups.(3124) Mithra, as usual, in eastern costume, has, kneeling before

him, a youthful figure either naked or lightly clad. The god touches the

head of the suppliant with some mysterious symbol, and the subject of the

rite raises his hands in prayer. The mystic symbol is removed, and Mithra

sets a radiant crown on the suppliant’s head. This reconciliation of the

two deities is a favourite subject. In the sculpture of Osterburken, they

ratify their pact with solemn gestures before an altar. Their restored

harmony is commemorated in even more solemn fashion. In one monument the

two are reclining on a couch at a solemn agape, with a table before them

bearing the sacred bread, which is marked with the cross, and both are in

the act of raising the cup in their right hands.(3125)

The legend of Mithra, thus faintly and doubtfully reconstructed from the

sacred sculptures, in the absence of express tradition, must probably for

ever remain somewhat of an enigma. It has been, since the third century,

the battle-ground of ingenious interpreters. To enumerate and discuss

these theories, many of them now discredited by archaeological research,

is far beyond the scope of this work. It is clear that from the early

Chaldaean magi, who, to some extent, imposed their system on Iranian

legend, down to the Neo-Platonists, the god and his attendants were

treated as the symbols of cosmic theory. The birth from the rock was the

light of dawn breaking over serrated crests of eastern hills.(3126) The

cave, which was always piously perpetuated in the latest Mithraist

architecture, was the solid vault of heaven, and the openings pierced in

its roof were the stars shining through the celestial dome.(3127) The

fountain which rose in every chapel, the fire on the altar, the animals

surrounding the bull, represent the powers of nature in their changes and

conflict. The young archer, causing water to spring from the rock by a

shot from his bow, marks the miraculous cessation of prehistoric dearth,

as the bull leaping from a skiff perhaps commemorates a primaeval deluge.

The slaying of the bull, the central scene of all, may go back to the

exploits of the heroic pioneers of settled life, a Hercules or a Theseus,

who tamed the savage wilderness to the uses of man. It had many meanings

to different ages. To one occupied with the processes of nature, it may

have symbolised the withering of the vegetative freshness of the world in

midsummer heats, yet with a promise of a coming spring. To another it may

have meant a victory over evil spirits and powers of darkness.(3128) Or it

may, in the last days, have been the prototype of that sacramental

cleansing which gave assurance of immortal life, and which seemed to the

Fathers the mockery of a Diviner Sacrifice.

There can be no doubt that Mithra and his exploits, in response to a great

need, came to have a moral and spiritual meaning. From the earliest times,

he is the mediator between good and evil powers; ever young, vigorous, and

victorious in his struggles, the champion of truth and purity, the

protector of the weak, the ever vigilant foe of the hosts of daemons who

swarm round the life of man, the conqueror of death. His religion, in

spite of its astrology, was not one of fatalist reverie; it was a religion

of struggle and combat. In this aspect it was congenial to the virile

Roman temperament, and, above all, to the temperament of the Roman

soldier, at once the most superstitious and the most strenuous of

men.(3129) Who can tell what inspiration the young heroic figure, wearing

an air of triumphant vigour even on the rudest slabs,(3130) may have

breathed into a worn old veteran, who kept ceaseless watch against the

Germans in some lonely post on the Danube, when he spent a brief hour in

the splendour of the brilliantly lighted crypt, and joined in the old

Mazdean litany? Before him was the sacred group of the Tauroctonus, full

of so many meanings to many lands and ages, but which, to his eyes,

probably shed the light of victory over the perilous combats of time, and

gave assurance of a larger hope. Suddenly, by the touch of an unseen hand,

the plaque revolved,(3131) and he had before him the solemn agape of the

two deities in which they celebrated the peaceful close of their mystic

conflict. And he went away, assured that his hero god was now enthroned on

high, and watching over his faithful soldiers upon earth.(3132) At the

same time, he had seen around him the sacred symbols or images of all the

great forces of nature, and of the fires of heaven which, in their motions

and their effluences, could bring bane or happiness to men below. In the

chapels of Mithra, all nature became divine and sacred, the bubbling

spring, the fire on the cottage hearth, the wind that levelled the pine

tree or bore the sailor on his voyage, the great eternal lights that

brought seed-time and harvest and parted day from night, the ever-welling

vital force in opening leaf and springing corn-ear, and birth of young

creatures, triumphing in regular round over the malignant forces which

seem for a time to threaten decay and corruption. The “Unconquered Mithra”

is thus the god of light and hope in this world and the next.(3133)

The ancient world was craving for a promise of immortality. Mithraism

strove to nurse the hope, but, like the contemporaneous Platonism and the

more ancient Orphic lore, it linked it with moral responsibility and grave

consequences. Votaries were taught that the soul descended by graduated

fall from the Most High to dwell for a season in the prison of the

flesh.(3134) After death there is a great judgment, to decide the future

destiny of each soul, according to the life which had been led on

earth.(3135) Spirits which have defiled themselves during life are dragged

down by Ahriman and his evil angels, and may be consigned to torture, or

may sink into endless debasement. The pure, who have been fortified by the

holy mysteries, will mount upwards through the seven spheres, at each

stage parting with some of their lower elements, till, at last, the

subtilised essential spirit reaches the empyrean, and is received by

Mithra into the eternal light.

But the conflict between good and evil, even on this earth, will not last

for ever. There will be a second coming of Mithra, which is to be presaged

by great plagues. The dead will arise from their tombs to meet him. The

mystic bull will again be slain, and his blood, mingled with the juice of

the sacred Haoma, will be drunk by the just, and impart to them the gift

of eternal life.(3136) Fire from heaven will finally devour all that is

evil. Thus the slaughter of the bull, which is the image of the succession

of decay and fructifying power in physical nature, is also the symbol and

guarantee of a final victory over evil and death. And, typifying such

lofty and consolatory truths, it naturally met the eye of the worshipper

in every chapel. It was also natural that the taurobolium, which was

originally a rite of the Great Mother, should be absorbed, like so many

alien rites and ideas, by the religion which was the great triumph of

syncretism. The baptism of blood was, indeed, a formal cleansing from

impurity of the flesh; but it was also cleansing in a higher sense. The

inscriptions of the fourth century, which commemorate the blessing of the

holy rite, often close with the words _in aeternum renatus_.(3137) How far

the phrase expressed a moral resurrection, how far it records the sure

hope of another life, we cannot presume to say. Whether borrowed from

Christian sources or not, it breathes an aspiration strangely different

from the tone of old Roman religion, even at its best. There may have been

a good deal of ritualism in the cleansing of Mithra. Yet Mithra was, from

the beginning, a distinctly moral power, and his worship was apparently

untainted by the licence which made other heathen worships schools of

cruelty and lust. His connection, indeed, with some of them, must at times

have led his votaries into more than doubtful company; Sabazius and Magna

Mater were dangerous allies.(3138) Yet, on the whole, it has been

concluded that Mithraism was a gospel of truth and purity, although the

purity was often a matter of merely ceremonial purification and

abstinence.

The day is far distant when the mass of men will be capable of the austere

mystic vision, which relies little on external ceremonies of worship.

Certainly the last ages of paganism in the West were not ripe for any such

reserved spirituality. And the religions which captivated the ages that

preceded the triumph of the Catholic Church, while they strove to satisfy

the deeper needs of the spirit, were more intensely sacerdotal, and more

highly organised than the old religions of Greece and Rome. Probably no

small part of their strength lay in sacramental mystery, and an occult

sacred lore which was the monopoly of a class set apart from the

world.(3139) Our knowledge of the Mithraic priesthood is unfortunately

scanty, and the ancient liturgy has perished.(3140) But inscriptions

mention an _ordo sacerdotum_; and Tertullian speaks of a “high pontiff of

Mithra” and of holy virgins and persons vowed to continence in his

service.(3141) The priestly functions were certainly more constant and

exacting than those of the old priestly colleges of Greece and Rome. There

were solemn sacraments and complicated rites of initiation to be

performed. Three times a day, at dawn, noon, and evening, the litany to

the Sun was recited.(3142) Daily sacrifice was offered at the altars of

various gods, with chanting and music. The climax of the solemn office was

probably marked by the sounding of a bell.(3143) And turning on a pivot,

the sacred slab in the apse displayed, for the adoration of the faithful,

the scene of the holy feast of Mithra and the Sun after their

reconciliation. The seventh day of the week was sacred to the Sun, the

sixteenth of each month to Mithra, and the 25th of December, as marking

the sun’s entrance on a new course of triumph, was the great festival of

Mithra’s sacred year.(3144)

Initiation in the mysteries, after many rites of cleansing and trial, was

the crowning privilege of the Mithraist believer. The gradation of

spiritual rank, and the secrecy which bound the votaries to one another in

a sacred freemasonry, were a certain source of power. S. Jerome alone has

preserved for us the seven grades through which the neophyte rose to full

communion. They were Corax, Cryphius, Miles, Leo, Perses, Heliodromus, and

Pater.(3145) What their origin was who shall say? They may correspond to

the seven planets, and mark the various stages of the descent of the soul

into flesh, and its rise again to the presence of God. According to

Porphyry, the first three stages were merely preliminary to complete

initiation. Only the Lions were full and real communicants,(3146) and the

title Leo certainly appears oftenest on inscriptions. The dignity Pater

Patrum, or Pater Patratus, was much coveted, and conferred a real

authority over the brethren, with an official title to their

reverence.(3147) The admission to each successive grade was accompanied by

symbolic ceremonies, as when the Miles put aside the crown twice tendered

to him, saying that Mithra was his only crown.(3148) The veil of the

Cryphius, and the Phrygian bonnet of the Perses, have a significance or a

history which needs no comment. Admission to full communion was preceded

by austerities and ordeals which were made the subject of exaggeration and

slander. The neophyte, blindfold and bound, was obliged to pass through

flame. It was said that he had to take part in a simulated murder with a

blood-dripping sword. On the sculpture of Heddernheim a figure is seen

standing deep in snow. These ceremonies probably went back to the scenes

and ages in which mutilations in honour of Bellona and Magna Mater took

their rise. They may also have been a lesson, or a test of apathy and

moral courage.(3149) But the tales of murder and torture connected with

these rites have probably no better foundation than similar slanders about

the early Christian mysteries.(3150)

The votaries of Mithra, like those of Isis and other eastern deities,

formed themselves into guilds which were organised on the model of

ordinary sodalities and colleges. As funerary societies, or under the

shelter of Magna Mater, they escaped persecution. They had their roll of

members, their council of decurions, their masters and curators.(3151)

And, like the secular colleges, they depended to a great extent, for the

erection of chapels and the endowment of their services, on the generosity

of their wealthier members and patrons.(3152) One man might give the site

of a chapel, another a marble altar; a poor slave might contribute out of

his _peculium_ a lamp or little image to adorn the walls of the

crypt.(3153)

One undoubted cause of the success of Mithra in the West was the spirit of

fraternity and charity which was fostered in his guilds. The hopeless

obscurity and depression of the plebeian and servile classes had some

alleviation in companies where, for the moment, the poor and lowly-born

found himself on an equality with his social superiors. Plebeians and the

slaves had a great part in the propagation of the eastern worships, and

especially that of the God of Light.(3154) In his mysteries and guilds the

highest dignities were open to them.(3155) Moreover, from the size of the

chapels it is clear that the congregations were generally small, so that

the members of lower social importance were not lost in a crowd.(3156)

Growing numbers were accommodated, not by enlarging, but by multiplying

the shrines.

In the sacraments of Mithra, Tertullian and other Apologists perceived a

diabolic parody of the usages of the Church.(3157) The _acceptio_ of the

neophytes, the _sacramentum_, in which they were pledged to secrecy and

holy service, the sign or brand made on the brow of the Miles, the

ablutions or baptism with holy water, as in the rites of Isis, whatever

their origin, could not fail, in an age of death-struggle for supremacy,

to arouse the suspicions and fears of the champions of the Church.(3158)

Finally, the consecrated bread and mingled water and wine, which were only

offered to the higher grades, may well have seemed the last and worst

profanation of the most solemn Christian rite. The draught from the mystic

cup, originally the juice of Haoma, was supposed to have supernatural

effects. It imparted not only health and prosperity and wisdom, but also

the power to conquer the spirits of evil and darkness, and a secret virtue

which might elude the grasp of death.(3159)

The temples in which these rites took place repeated for ages the same

original type. Mithra and his cave are inseparable ideas, and the name

_spelaeum_, _antrum_, or _specus_, remained to the end the regular

designation of his chapels.(3160) In country places, grottoes or recesses

on the side of a rocky hill might supply a natural oratory of the ancient

type.(3161) But, in the centre of great towns, the skill of the architect

had to simulate the rude structure of the original cavern. Entering

through an open portico, the worshipper found himself in an antechapel,

through which he passed into another chamber which was called the

_apparatorium_, where the priests and neophytes arrayed themselves in

their robes or masques before the holy rites.(3162) Thence they descended

by stairs to the level of the cave-like crypt, which was the true

sanctuary. On each side there ran a bench of stone, on which was ranged

the company of the initiated.(3163) The central aisle led up to the apse,

against the walls of which was set the sculptured scene of the slaying of

the bull, surrounded by the symbolic figures and emblems of Chaldaean

star-lore, with altars in front.(3164) This was the holiest place, and,

from some remains, it would seem to have been railed in, like the chancel

of one of our churches.(3165) The neophyte, as he approached, must have

been impressed by a dazzling scene. On either side the congregation knelt

in prayer. Countless lamps shed their brilliant light on the forms of

ancient Hellenic gods, or on the images of the mighty powers of earth or

ether(3166)—above all, on the sacred scene which was the memorial of the

might of the “unconquered.” The ancient rhythmic litany was chanted to the

sound of music; the lights came and went in startling alternations of

splendour and gloom. The draught of the sacred cup seemed to ravish the

sense. And the votary, as in the Isiac vision in Apuleius, for a moment

seemed borne beyond the bounds of space and time into mystic

distances.(3167)

The Persian cult owed much of its success to imperial and aristocratic

favour. The last pagan emperor of the West, the last generation of the

pagan aristocracy, were devotees of the Sun-god. It is a curious thing

that even under the early Empire Mithraism seems never to have suffered

from the suspicion and persecution with which other alien worships had to

contend.(3168) Its close league with the cult of the Great Mother, which,

since the second century B.C., had been an established institution, may

have saved Mithra from official mistrust. He also emerged into prominence

in the age in which imperial jealousy of guilds and colleges was visibly

relaxing its precautions.(3169) A more satisfying explanation may perhaps

be found in the sympathy of the Flavian dynasty(3170) and the princes of

the third century for the religious ideas of the East, and in the manifest

support which heliolatry lent to growing absolutism and the worship of the

Caesars.

The apotheosis of the emperors began even in the time of the first Caesar,

who rose to the highest divine honours before his death. But it was long a

fluctuating and hesitating creed. The provinces, and particularly the

cities of Asia Minor,(3171) were more eager to decree temples and divine

honours to the lord of the world than even the common people of Italy. The

superstitious masses and the soldiery, indeed, were equal to any

enthusiasm of flattery and superstition. But the cultivated upper class,

in spite of the effusive compliance of court poets,(3172) having but

little belief in any Divine Powers, were not likely to yield an easy faith

to the godhead of a Claudius or a Nero.(3173) The emperors themselves,

belonging to this class, and often sharing its fastidious scepticism, for

a time judiciously restrained a too exuberant devotion to their

person.(3174) The influence of Herod may have filled the lunatic

imagination of Caligula with dreams of an eastern despotism and the

superhuman dignity of kings.(3175) Nero, who had visions of a new monarchy

with its seat on eastern hills, may have rejoiced in being adored by

Tiridates as the equal of Mithra.(3176) But the politic Augustus, while he

permitted the foundation of temples and priestly orders in his honour

throughout the provinces, and even in Italian towns, along with the

divinity of Rome, obstinately refused to have shrines erected to him in

the capital.(3177) Tiberius pursued the same policy, which was congenial

to his cold, realistic temperament. Vespasian, although eastern

superstition had a certain charm for him, jested on his death-bed about

his own claims to divinity.(3178) It was reserved for his son Domitian to

be the first emperor who claimed the salutation of “Dominus et Deus” in

his lifetime.(3179) The best of the early emperors aspired to full divine

honours only when their career on earth had closed.

Many historic causes made their posthumous elevation to divine rank seem

not unnatural. The cult of the Manes, or good spirits of departed friends

and ancestors, prepared the Roman mind to adore the memory of the father

of the State. The legendary kings of the Latin race—Saturnus, Faunus,

Picus, Latinus—were worshipped as _Di indigetes_;(3180) Romulus had

vanished in a tempest and been carried up to heaven to join the company of

the gods. The hero-worship of the Greeks, which raised to semi-divine

state after death those who had done great deeds of service to mankind,

who had founded cities, or manifested splendid gifts of mind or body,

influenced the imagination of a people who had long sat at the feet of

Greece. Greek cities raised altars to Rome and to Roman generals who had

enslaved them.(3181) When the Senate decreed divine honours to a dead

emperor, he became _divus_, not _deus_, at least to the cultivated class,

and _divus_ is a title which even modern sentiment might accord to men who

have borne a great and shining part in a world-wide system of

administration. The Spartan women were said to call great warriors, men

who won their admiration by gallantry, “divine.”(3182) To the masses the

dead emperor no doubt became a veritable god, as the image of M. Aurelius

two centuries after his death was found among the _penates_ of every pious

family in the West.(3183) But the philosophic man of the world might also

honestly accept the imperial apotheosis by the decree of the Senate, in

the sense that another figure had been added to the rare company of those

who have been lifted by fortune or merit far above their fellows, and have

filled a great space in the life of humanity. People, who for generations

erected shrines to the minion of Hadrian, might easily believe in the

claims of the Antonine emperors to a place among the gods.

The influence of Egypt and Persia lent its force to stimulate native and

original tendencies to king-worship, and to develop the principate of

Augustus into the theocratic despotism of Aurelian and Diocletian. The

eastern peoples were always eager to lavish on the emperors the adoration

which they had been used to offer to their native princes. The ancient

Pharaohs had been revered as incarnations of the deity and gods upon

earth.(3184) The Ptolemies inherited and utilised so useful a

superstition. These ideas spread into Italy with the diffusion of the

Isiac cult among the upper class, and through the influence of travellers

and envoys who kept up a fruitful intercourse between Alexandria and Rome.

But Egypt went rather too far for the western mind in its apotheosis of

kings.(3185) A more potent and congenial influence came from the lands of

the remoter East. The Persians prostrated themselves before their

monarchs, but they did not actually adore them as gods. They reverenced

the daemon, or, in Roman phrase, the “genius Caesaris,” without

worshipping the monarch himself.(3186) The king was supposed to be

enlightened, inspired, and guarded by a heavenly grace; his brow was

crowned by a divine aureole. Yet he was not the equal of God. But the

majesty and fortune of kings was something divine and supernatural; they

reigned by special grace and had a divine protection. The dynasties who

succeeded to the great heritage of the East exploited these ideas to the

full, and the most solemn oath was by the Fortune of the King.(3187) The

superstition of Chaldaea, which connected all human destiny with the orbs

of heaven, exercised a profound influence for many centuries both in the

East and West. And the Sun, the monarch of the heavens, often identified

with Mithra, was regarded as the special patron of kings, enduing them

with irresistible power, and guarding their lofty destiny. These ideas

spread easily from Pontus and Commagene into the western world. In eastern

cities, Caligula and Nero had altars raised to them as solar

deities,(3188) and Tiridates offered to Nero the adoration due to

Mithra.(3189) The enigmatical goddess Fortuna, who seems to have had early

associations with the Sun,(3190) gained fresh strength from the ideas of

the divinised destiny of eastern monarchs. According to Plutarch, Tyche

left the regions of Assyria and Persia to make her home on the

Palatine.(3191) The republican “Fortune of the Roman People” naturally

passed into the “Fortuna Augusti,” which appears on the imperial coins

from the reign of Vespasian. In the age of the Antonines, the image of the

goddess in gold always stood in the prince’s bed-chamber, and was

transferred at the hour of his death to his successor.(3192) With the

reign of Commodus, who was himself initiated both in the Isiac and

Mithraic mysteries, begins the temporary triumph of the oriental cults,

which was to reach its height in the reign of Julian. The absence of full

materials for the history of the third century,(3193) a century crowded

with great events, and pregnant with great spiritual movements, should

perhaps impose greater caution in tracing the development of imperial

power than some writers have always observed. Yet there can be little

doubt that the monarchy of the West tended to become a theocratic

despotism, and that Persian Sun-worship had a large share in this

development. There was always a sober sense in the West which rebelled

against the oriental apotheosis of the prince.(3194) Yet the iterated

adulation, so often recorded faithfully in the Augustan History, reveals

an extraordinary abasement of the upper class before the person of the

emperor.(3195) The emperors never, indeed, claimed like the Sassanids to

be “brothers or sons of the Sun and Moon.”(3196) But in their official

style and insignia there were many approaches to the divine claims of the

monarchs of the East. The title _invictus_, sacred to Mithra and the Sun,

was assumed by Commodus, and borne by his successors.(3197) The still more

imposing title of “eternal,” springing from the same origin, came into

vogue in the third century, and appears in the edicts of the last shadowy

emperors of the fifth. From the reign of Nero, the imperial crown with

darting rays, symbolised the solar ancestry of the prince. Gallienus used

to go forth crowned in this manner, and with gold dust in his hair, and

raised a colossal statue of himself in the garb of the Sun.(3198) The

coins of Aurelian, who built the great temple of the Sun from the spoils

of Palmyra, bear the legend “deo et domino nato.”(3199) The West probably

never took these assumptions so literally as the East. But metaphor and

imagery tended to become a real faith. The centre of the great religion

which was to be the last stronghold of paganism, was the prototype of the

emperor in the starry world, and his protector on earth. And the solar

grace which surrounded the prince found an easy explanation in the mystic

philosophy of the soul’s descent which had been absorbed by Mithraism. In

coming to earth from the empyrean, the future lord of the world received a

special gift of grace and power from the great luminary which is the

source of light and life. The religion of the Sun thus tended to become a

great spiritual support of an absolutism which was more and more modelling

itself on the royalty of the East. The cult of the Sun, which was

established in such splendour in 273 A.D. by Aurelian, must have had a

great effect in preparing for the oriental claims of monarchy from the

reign of Diocletian. Thirty years after the foundation of the stately

shrine on the Esquiline, and only twenty years before the conversion of

Constantine, all the princes of the imperial house, Jovii Herculii,

Augusti, Caesares, as an inscription tells, united to restore a temple of

Mithra at Carnuntum, his holy city on the Danube.(3200) But the days of

Mithra as the god of kings were numbered. After the establishment of the

Christian Empire, he had a brief illusory triumph in the reign of Julian,

and again in the short-lived effort of reaction led by Eugenius and

Nicomachus Flavianus, which had a tragic close in the battle on the

Frigidus. Yet his mystic theology was the theme of debate among Roman

nobles, trained in the philosophy of Alexandria, long after his last

chapels had been buried in ruins; and his worship lingered in secluded

valleys of the Alps or the Vosges into the fifth century.(3201) The

theocratic claim of monarchy, to which Mithra lent his support for so many

generations, was destined, in its symbols and phrases, to have a long

reign.

M. Renan has hazarded the opinion that, if the Christian Church had been

stricken with some mortal weakness, Mithraism might have become the

religion of the western world. And, indeed, its marvellously rapid

diffusion in Italy and the provinces along the Danube and the Rhine, in

the second and third centuries, might well have inspired the hope of such

a splendid destiny. Although it was primarily a kingly and military creed,

it appealed in the end to all classes, by many various attractions.

Springing from remote regions of the East, it seemed instinctively to

seize the opportunity offered by a marvellous political unity, along with

anarchy in morals and religion, to satisfy the imperious needs of a world

eager for spiritual light and hope, but distracted among the endless

claimants for its devotion. Philosophy had long tried and was still trying

to find a spiritual synthesis, and to draw from old mythologies a support

for life and conduct. Might not religion succeed where philosophy had

failed? Or rather, might not religion gather up into itself the forces of

philosophy, and transmute and glorify them in a great concrete symbol?

Might not the claims of the past be harmonised with the higher intuitions

of a more instructed age, and the countless cults embraced within the

circuit of the Roman power be reconciled with the supreme reverence for

one central divine figure, as the liberties of an Alpine canton, like

those of a great city of Asia, were sheltered under the unchallenged

supremacy of Rome? Mithra made the effort, and for the time he succeeded.

In his progress to what seemed an almost assured victory, he swept into

his orbit the Greek and Latin and Phrygian gods—nay, even the gods of

Celtic cantons.(3202) They all found a place in his crypts, beside his own

sacred image and the Persian deities of his original home. Their altars

were ranged around his chapels, and were duly visited by his priests. Yet,

though the Persian deity might seem very cosmopolitan and liberal in his

indulgence to parochial devotion, he never abated his own lofty claims,

and he never forgot his ancestry. While he might ally himself with Magna

Mater and Jupiter Dolichenus, he coldly repulsed any association with Isis

and Serapis, who were his rivals for oecumenical sway. The old hostility

between the worships of Persia and Egypt was only softened in the

internecine conflict of both with a more powerful foe. It is only in the

last stone records that a votary of Mithra is found combining a devotion

to Isis.(3203) The claims of the Sun-god to spiritual primacy are

expounded in the orations of Julian and the dissertations of Praetextatus

in the _Saturnalia_ of Macrobius. Monotheism in the pagan world was not,

indeed, a new thing. It goes back to the philosophers of Ionia and Elea,

to Aeschylus and Plato. Nor was syncretism unknown to earlier ages. The

Greeks of the days of Herodotus identified the gods of Egypt with their

own, as Julius Caesar and Tacitus identified Gallic and German deities

with those of the Roman pantheon.(3204) But the monotheistic syncretism of

Mithra was a broader and more sweeping movement. Local and national gods

represented single aspects of nature. Mithra was seated at the centre on

which all nature depends. If nature-worship was to justify itself in the

eyes of philosophic reason, men must rise to the adoration of the

Sun-king, the head of a great hierarchy of divine forces, by means of

which he acts and diffuses his inexhaustible energy throughout the

universe. And such is the claim made for him by Praetextatus, in the

_Saturnalia_ of Macrobius, who was a high adept in the mysteries of

Mithra.

But the world needed more than a great physical force to assuage its

cravings; it demanded a moral God, Who could raise before the eyes of men

a moral ideal, and support them in striving to attain it; One Who could

guide and comfort in the struggles of life, and in the darkness of its

close, Who could prepare the trembling soul for the great ordeal, in which

the deeds done in the body are sifted on the verge of the eternal world.

In fulfilling his part, Mithra could rely on his own early character as a

god of truth and righteousness, a mediator between the powers of good and

evil: he had also the experience of the classic mysteries, stretching back

to the legendary Orpheus, which, in whatever crude, shadowy symbolism, had

taught for ten centuries the doctrine of a moral sequence between this

life and the next. The descent of the soul into gross material form, and

its possible ascent again, if duly fortified, to ethereal worlds, was

common to Mithra and the Orphic and Pythagorean systems. Such a system on

one side sad and pessimist, on another was full of the energy of hope. And

Mithraism combined the two. It was a religion of strenuous effort and

warfare, with the prospect of high rewards in some far-off eternal life.

It is little wonder that the Fathers, from the second century, saw in

Mithra the most formidable foe of Christ. Indeed, the resemblances between

the two religions, some of them superficial, others of a deeper kind, were

very striking. How far some of these were due to a common stock of ideas

in East and West, how far they were the result of conscious borrowing and

mutual imitation, seems to be an insoluble problem. The most learned

student of the cult of Mithra is the most cautious in his conclusions on

the subject.(3205) On the one hand, the two religions, in outlying regions

of the Empire, long followed different lines of dispersion. Christianity

from its origin in the religion of Israel, spread at first among the

cities on the Mediterranean, chiefly where there were colonies of

Jews.(3206) On the other hand, outside Italy, Mithraism, which was

propagated by soldiers and imperial officers, followed the line of the

camps and centres of commerce chiefly along the great rivers of the

northern frontier. Yet at Ostia and Rome and elsewhere, the two eastern

religions must have been early brought face to face. In the syncretism of

that age, the age of Gnosticism, rites and doctrines passed easily from

one system to another. Mithra certainly absorbed much from kindred

worships of Asia Minor, from Hellenic mysteries, and from Alexandrian

philosophy. It is equally certain that the Church did not disdain a policy

of accommodation, along with the consecration of altars of Christ in the

old shrines of paganism. The cult of local heroes was transferred to

saints and martyrs. Converts found it hard to part with consecrated

phrases and forms of devotion, and might address Jesus in epithets sacred

to the Sun. Some Christians in the fifth century still saluted the rising

sun with a prayer.(3207)

Futile attempts have been made to find parallels to Biblical narrative or

symbolism in the faint and faded legend of Mithra recovered from his

monuments, the miraculous birth, the sacred rock, the adoration of the

shepherds, the grotto,—above all, in the mystic sacrifice of the bull,

which seemed to occupy the same space in Mithraic devotion as the

Sacrifice on Calvary. But one great weakness of Mithraism lay precisely

here—that, in place of the narrative of a Divine life, instinct with human

sympathy, it had only to offer the cold symbolism of a cosmic legend. In

their offices and sacramental system the two religions had a more real

affinity. Mithra had his baptism and confirmation of new disciples, his

ablutions, ascetic preparation for the sacred mysteries, and holy feasts

of the consecrated bread and wine, where the mystic draught gave purity

and life to soul and body, and was the passport to a life in God. The

sacerdotal and liturgical character of his worship, with its striking

symbolism, using to the full the emotional effects of lights and music and

sacred pomp, offered to souls, who were ripe for a diviner faith, some of

that magical charm which was to be exerted over so many ages by the

Catholic Church. There are, however, deeper and more fundamental

resemblances between the faiths of Mithra and of Christ, and it was to

these that the Persian cult owed its great superiority to classical

mythology and the official Roman paganism. It responded to a great

spiritual movement, of which it is one great object of this book to show

the sweep and direction. Formal devotion and ascetic discipline were

linked with lofty doctrines as to the origin of the human spirit and an

immortal destiny, depending on conduct, as well as sacramental grace,

through Mithra the mediator. While the vulgar may have rested in the

external charm and power of the worship, there were others who drank in a

more spiritual creed expounded to us by one of the last Neo-Platonic

votaries of the Sun-God. It told of a fall of the soul into the duress of

the body, for a brief period of probation, of a resurrection and great

judgment, of a final ascent and beatitude in the life in God, or of

endless exile from His presence.(3208)

And yet the two systems were separated by an impassable gulf, and Mithra

had associations which could not save him from the fate of Jupiter and

Demeter, of Hecate and Isis. It is true that his fate was hastened by

hostile forces and causes external to religion. Many of his shrines in the

Danubian provinces, and along the upper Rhine, were desolated and buried

in ruins by the hordes of invaders in the third century.(3209) And in the

fourth century, the fiercest assaults of the Christian Empire were

directed against the worship which was thought to be the patron of magic

arts, and a device of the Evil One to travesty and defy the Religion of

the Cross.(3210) But material force, however fiercely and decisively

exerted, although it hastened the doom of the Persian god, only

anticipated an inevitable defeat.

A certain severity in Mithraism, which marked it off honourably from other

worships of the East, also weakened it as a popular and enduring force.

The absence of the feminine charm in its legend, while it saved it from

the sensual taint of other heathen systems, deprived it of a fascination

for the softer and more emotional side of human nature.(3211) Although

women may, perhaps, have not been altogether excluded from his

mysteries,(3212) still Mithra did not welcome them with the warm sympathy

which gave Demeter and Magna Mater and Isis so firm a hold on the

imagination of women for many generations. The Mater Dolorosa has in all

ages been an enthralling power. The legend of the Tauroctonus was a

religion for strenuous men. And even its symbolism, with all its strange

spell, seems to lack depth and warmth for human nature as a whole. It

would indeed be rash to set limits to the power of pious sentiment to

transfigure and vivify the most unspiritual materials. And the slaughtered

bull in the apse of every chapel of Mithra may have aroused in the end

visions and mystic emotion which had passed far beyond the sphere of

astral symbolism.

Yet such spiritual interpretation of ancient myth is only for the few, who

find in a worship what they bring. For the gross masses, the symbolism of

natural processes, however majestic, could never have won that marvellous

power which has made a single Divine, yet human, life the inexhaustible

source of spiritual strength for all the future. With all his heroic

effort to make himself a moral and spiritual force, Mithra remained

inextricably linked with the nature-worships of the past. And, with such

associations, even the God of light could not be lord of the spiritual

future of humanity. Mithraism, with all its strange moral force, with all

its charm of antiquity and sacramental rite, with all its charity and

tolerance, had within it the germs of a sure mortality. In its tolerance

lay precisely its great weakness. The Christian Church might, in S.

Augustine’s phrase, “spoil the Egyptians,” it might borrow and adapt rites

and symbols from pagan temples, or ideas from Greek philosophy.(3213) But

in borrowing, it transfigured them. In all that was essential, the Church

would hold no truce with paganism. “Break the idols and consecrate the

temples” was the motto of the great Pontiff. But Mithra was ready to

shelter the idols under his purer faith. The images of Jupiter and Venus,

of Mars and Hecate, of the local deities of Dacia and Upper Germany, find

a place in his chapels beside the antique symbols of the Persian

faith.(3214) And thus, in spite of a lofty moral mysticism, Mithra was

loaded with the heritage of the heathen past. A man admitted to his

highest ministry might also worship at the old altars of Greece and Rome.

The last hierophant of Eleusis was a high-priest of Mithra.(3215) Human

nature and religious sentiment are so complex that men of the sincere

monotheistic faith of Symmachus, Praetextatus, and Macrobius, have left

the almost boastful record of an all-embracing laxity of tolerance on

their tombs.(3216) On many of these slabs you may read that the man who

has been a “father” in the mysteries of Mithra, who has been “born again”

in the taurobolium, is also a priest of Hecate, the goddess of dark arts

and baleful spirits of the night.(3217) Through the astral fatalism of

Babylon, Mithra was inseparably connected with the darkest superstitions

of East or West,(3218) which covered all sorts of secret crime and

perfidy, which lent themselves to seduction, conspiracy, and murder, which

involved the denial of a moral Providence of the world. Many a pious

devotee of Mithra and Hecate would have recoiled, as much as we do, from

the last results of his superstition. Such people probably wished only to

gain another ally in facing the terrors of the unseen world. Yet there can

be little doubt that the majestic supremacy of Mithra, through its old

connection with Babylon, sheltered some of the most degrading impostures

of superstition.

So rooted is religious sentiment in reverence for the past, for what our

fathers have loved and venerated, that men will long tolerate, or even

wistfully cherish, sacred forms and ideas which their moral sense has

outgrown. Down to the last years of the fourth century, the Persian

worship was defended with defiant zeal by members of the proudest Roman

houses. In their philosophic gatherings in the reign of Honorius, they

found in Sun-worship the sum and climax of the pagan devotion of the

past.(3219) Many a pious old priest of Mithra, in the reign of Gratian,

was probably filled with wonder and sorrow when he saw a Gracchus and his

retinue break into the sanctuary and tear down the venerable symbols from

the wall of the apse.(3220) He deemed himself the prophet of a pure

immemorial faith, as pure as that of Galilee. He was probably a man of

irreproachable morals, with even a certain ascetic sanctity, unspotted by

the world. He treasured the secret lore of the mysterious East, which sped

the departing soul with the last comforting sacraments on its flight to

ethereal worlds. But he could not see, or he could not regret, that every

day when he said his liturgy, as he made the round of the altars, he was

lending the authority of a purer faith to other worships which had

affrighted or debauched and enervated the Roman world for forty

generations. He could not see that the attempt to wed a high spiritual

ideal with nature-worship was doomed to failure. The masses around him

remained in their grossness and darkness. And on that very day, it may be,

one of his aristocratic disciples, high in the ranks of Mithra’s sacred

guilds, was attending a priestly college which was charged with the

guardianship of gross and savage rites running back to Evander, or he was

consulting a Jewish witch, or a Babylonian diviner, on the meaning of some

sinister omen, or he may have been sending down into the arena, with cold

proud satisfaction, a band of gallant fighters from the Thames or the

Danube, to butcher one another for the pleasure of the rabble of Rome.

Mithra, the Unconquered, the god of many lands and dynasties from the dawn

of history, was a fascinating power. But, at his best, he belonged to the

order which was vanishing.

INDEX

Abascantus, secretary _ab epistulis_, career of, described in the

_Silvae_, 110

_ Acta diurna_,

regular arrival of, in the provinces, 205;

reader of, 95

Acte, mistress of Nero, cares for his burial, 115

Aelian of Praeneste,

account of his work on Providence, 456;

immense credulity, and hatred of rationalism, _ib._;

the pious cock of Tanagra, 457;

last dream of Philemon, _ib._

Africa,

the development of its city life, organisation of Thamugadi,

202;

of Lambesi, 208;

amphitheatres in, 201;

and bishoprics, _ib._;

little touched by Mithraism, 597

Agrippina, mother of Nero,

memoirs by, used by Tacitus, 80;

sits on the tribunal with Claudius, 81;

shade propitiated by Nero, 491

Albinus, P. Caeionius, restores a temple at Thamugadi, 202

Alcantara, the bridge of, 220

Alexander of Abonoteichos,

oracle on the Marcomannic war, 451, 476;

physical and mental gifts of, 473 sq.;

skilful charlatanry, 474 sq.;

war with the Epicureans, 476;

Lucian’s treatment of, 477;

establishes new Mysteries, 476 sq.

Alexandria,

roses from, for Nero’s dinners, 32;

singing boys from, at Trimalchio’s dinner, 130 sq.;

character of its populace, 374;

Dion Chrysostom rebukes their passion for games, _ib._;

a great focus of religious feeling, 397;

and eclecticism, 561

Animal-worship,

excites ridicule, 571;

philosophy justified it, _ib._, 395;

little noticed in Apuleius, 572

Annaeus Serenus, Seneca’s _De Tranquillitate_ addressed to,

character of, 319

Antinous, death and apotheosis of, 450, 477, 478

Antium, temple of Fortuna Primigenia at, 456

Antoninus Pius,

builds a temple to Juno Sospita of Lanuvium, 538;

to Mithra at Ostia, 591;

his country pleasures at Lorium, 537;

flattered by the Arval Brothers, 542;

Magna Mater on his coins, 549;

taurobolium for, in 160, _ib._, 557

Apollonius of Tyana,

involved in political conspiracy, 40;

a great preacher, effect of his sermons, 347;

early life, Pythagorean asceticism, Sun worship, and catholic

ritualism, 399;

reconciled myth with a purer faith, 400;

visits all the oracles, 472;

his ideas of a future state, 518 sqq.

Apotheosis,

in the Antonine age, 386, 537;

of Antinous, 477;

of Peregrinus, 478;

of M. Aurelius, _ib._;

of the Emperors, its history, 615 sqq.

Apuleius,

sensual imagination and mysticism of, 389;

weird scenes of miracle in Thessaly, 483;

lofty conception of God, 389;

description of the revels of the wandering priests of the

Syrian goddess, 551 sqq.;

of other scenes in Thessaly, 552;

conception of Isis in the Metamorphoses, 563;

mystic raptures, 570, 574, 576

Aquileia, a great seat of Mithraism, 593

Ardeliones, the, life of, described, 12, 174

Aristides, P. Aelius,

picture of the Roman Empire in, 199;

general security, 205;

journey from Mysia to Rome, 206, 464;

early history and travels, 457;

long ill health and resort to temples of healing, 458 sqq.;

his rhetorical training affected his religious attitude, 458

sq.;

diseases of, lasting for thirteen years, 463;

his ordeals and vitality, 465;

visited by the gods, 466;

recovers his rhetorical power, _ib._;

mingled vanity and piety of, 467

Aristotle, influence of,

on Plutarch, 412;

on Seneca, 314;

on Maximus of Tyre, 421

Army, the,

honesty and courage in, 49;

_ castra stativa_ grow into towns, 207;

Septimius Severus allows the soldier to live with his family,

208;

how pensions provided for, 283;

military colleges, their objects, 283;

the worship of Mithra propagated by, 591;

the legions which were most active, 595, 596

Arrius Antoninus, grandfather of Ant. Pius, Greek verses of, 166

Art,

pretence of taste for, 131, 178;

influence of, in religion discussed by Dion Chrysostom, 382;

decay of, lamented by Petronius, 125

Artemidorus,

work on Dreams by, 468;

immense industry, collections, and faith in the science,

_ib._;

contempt for impostors, 469;

quasi scientific method, _ib._;

its absurdities, 470

Arvales Fratres, the College of,

revived by Augustus, 534;

early history, meetings and ritual of, 540 sq.;

servility to the Emperors, 541

Asclepius,

immense popularity of his worship, 459, 539;

temples of, and their routine and organisation, 460;

new oracle of, at Abonoteichos, 474

Asiaticus, freedman of Vitellius, history of, 206

Astrology,

influence of, in the early empire, a political danger, 45,

447;

astrologers banished by Claudius, Vitellius and Vespasian, 45,

448;

a Greek trade, 93;

Augustus burns books of, 446;

Tiberius believes in, 448;

Otho, 45, 448;

Titus, 449;

and M. Aurelius, 450;

Domitian, _ib._;

Hadrian, _ib._;

in Mithraism, 598, 602

Attis,

legend of, 549;

becomes a solar deity, 556

Augury,

decay of, 445;

abuse of, 532

Augustales, the,

Trimalchio one of, 136;

importance, organisation, social rank, and insignia in

municipal towns, 216, 217;

generosity of, as patrons of colleges, 275

Augustine, S.,

defends the Cynics of his time, 352;

contempt for rites of Magna Mater, 547;

on Varro’s theology, 417, 531 n.;

on the cult of martyrs, 488;

on Plato, 523

Augustus,

his disguised power, 41;

destroys 2000 books of divination, 446;

his horoscope cast, 447;

his religious restoration, and its motive, 533;

attitude to foreign religions, 533;

restores a temple of Magna Mater, 548;

cautious acceptance of divine honours, 615

Aurelian,

his temple of the Sun, 586;

outbreak of the workmen of the Mint in his reign, 255;

legend _deo et domino nato_ on his coins, 618;

effect of his Sun-worship on the development of imperial

power, 619

Aurelius, M.,

slight interest of, in speculation, 339;

his tutors of various schools, 343;

as a boy recites the Salian litany, 385;

his gospel of renunciation, 393 sq.;

his conformity, 394;

employs diviners, 450;

relations of, with Galen, 506;

views of, about immortality, 507;

his Stoic ideal of life, 509;

his sadness and its causes, 510;

one of the Salii in his 8th year, 535;

his religious conservatism, 537;

images of, in every family in the West, 616

Balbilla, Greek verses by, 80

Birth,

respect for, in Juvenal, 69;

in D. Cassius, Suetonius, and Pliny, 70;

manufacture of genealogies, in Vit. Apollonius of Tyana, and

S. Jerome, _ib._;

Herodes Atticus traced his descent from the Aeacidae, 225;

Tiberius on, 70

Bithynia,

civic mismanagement in, 220;

literary distinction of, 372

Boeotia, the oracles of, 471

Brescia, high moral tone of, 147

Caenis, concubine of Vespasian, influence and intrigues of, 52, 115

Caligula,

wild schemes and profusion of, 32;

his cruelty and insolence to Senators, 51;

depraving example, 73;

consults the oracle of Fortune at Antium, 472;

apparitions at his burial, 490;

claims of divinity, 615

Calpurnia, Pliny’s wife,

character of, and his love for her, 188, 189;

literary taste of, 80

_ Canabae legionis_, at Lambesi, 208

Canusium,

_ Album_ of, 210;

Herodes Atticus gave an aqueduct to, 225

Captation,

a regular profession, 72;

result of plebeian poverty and aristocratic vice, 96;

at Croton, in Petronius, 127;

Regulus a captator, 156

Carnuntum, in Pannonia,

a seat of Mithraism from 70 A.D., 591;

its temples, 595;

temple restored at, by the imperial house, in the fourth

century, 619

Centumviral court, the,

picture of, in Pliny’s Letters, 154 sqq.;

he welcomes young aristocrats to, 187

Chaeremon, Alexandrian librarian, wrote a treatise on Isis, 568

Charity, and munificence,

provision for poor children by Trajan and later Emperors, 192,

193;

private benevolence exemplified by Pliny, 193;

his benefactions, 193 sqq.;

other examples in the inscriptions, 193, 224;

the Stertinii, 224;

Dion Chrysostom and his father, 225;

Herodes Atticus, enormous benefactions of, _ib._;

munificence of the Emperors, Vespasian, Titus, Hadrian, 227,

228;

private examples from inscriptions, 223, 229;

ideals of the uses of wealth, 232;

men ruin themselves by generosity, 245

Cicero,

adorned by Pliny, 158;

on augury, 445;

on beneficence, 190;

on superstition, 443;

on legend, 495;

on Delphi, 471;

on immortality, 488

City life,

splendour of, in the Antonine age, 4;

weariness of life in the capital, 174;

growth of, in Gaul, Spain, Dacia, and Asia, 200 sqq.

Claudian,

connects Mithra with Bel, 588;

contempt for Greeks, 90

Claudius,

recruits the Senate from the provinces, 71, 72;

Hellenism of, 89;

his encouragement of trade, 264;

his effort to revive the art of augury, 445;

banishes the astrologers, 418;

conservative in religion, 536;

persecutes the Jewish and Druidic religions, 566

Claudius Etruscus, career of, and duties as minister, 109

Clea, a priestess of Osiris at Delphi, 424

Client, the,

in Juvenal, 93, 94;

change of the relation under the Empire, _ib._;

the relation in the colleges, 273

Clients,

position in the time of Juvenal, 93 sq.;

and Martial, 61

Clodius, P., uses the colleges, 254

Colleges, the,

plebeian class in towns, 251;

pride of free artisan class, 253;

early history of _Collegia_, 254;

danger from, 255;

restrained by law, _ib._;

an irresistible movement, 256;

wish for pious burial, 257;

evidence on, from inscriptions, 258;

funerary colleges authorised, 259;

consequences of the concession, 260;

College of Diana and Antinous, its organisation, fees, etc.

260 sqq.;

College of Aesculapius and Hygia, its regulations, 262;

colleges founded on religion, 263;

industrial colleges, great fair at Cremona, 264;

wandering traders, _collegia peregrinorum_, 265;

colleges at Lyons, Ostia, Arles, etc. 265 sq.;

objects of association, 266 sqq.;

favoured by masters, 267;

colleges moulded on the model of the city, names of offices,

etc. 269;

gradation of rank in, its object, 270;

how the _schola_ was provided, 271;

associations gather round it, gifts made to it, 272;

College of Silvanus at Philippi, _ib._;

patrons of, and their _raison d’être_, 273;

colleges and their patrons of very different rank, 274;

election of a patron, _ib._;

colleges founded to guard a tomb, 276;

provisions for permanent observances, 277;

college feasts and _sportulae_, 277 sq.;

regulations for decorum in, fines, 279;

the college a family, in which the slave is an equal, 281;

were colleges eleemosynary institutions? 282;

military colleges of Lambesi, their organisation and objects,

283 sqq.;

extinction of a college, 285

Commodus,

takes the tonsure of Isis and walks in an Isiac procession,

553;

assumes the Mithraic title of _Invictus_, 618

Como,

Pliny’s estates at, 145;

his gifts to, 194;

a suicide at, 184;

_ honorarium_ of its curia, 209

Conversion,

Seneca on, 34;

result of the preaching of Apollonius, 347;

conversion of Polemon, _ib._;

of D. Chrysostom, 368;

in Plutarch, 413

Corellius Rufus, suicide of, 184

Cornelia, wife of Pompey, culture of, 80

Cotta, M. Aurelius, liberality of, to a freedman, 119

Country life,

growing love of, 174;

Roman country seats, their sites and architecture, 176;

extent and grounds, 178;

routine of life, 179;

purchase and management of estates, 180;

charm of the country in Roman literature, 197;

yet contempt for it, 199;

moral tone of, 2, 144, 147

Cremona,

great fair at, 263;

sack of, 264;

colleges of youth at, 265;

munificence of its citizens, 225

Curatores,

heard of first in the reign of Trajan, 222;

control of municipal finance by, 248

Curia, the,

composition of, illustrated by the roll of Canusium, 210;

numbers, and qualification of, 214;

its fate, 248

Cynics, the,

met a general demand for moral guidance, 340;

description of, in Dion Chrysostom, 349;

and in the literature of the age, 350 n.;

the Cynic in Lucian’s _Banquet_, _ib._;

attractions of the life of, 351;

gross charges against; S. Augustine’s testimony, 352;

causes of prejudice against, _ib._;

death of Peregrinus as treated by Lucian, 355;

affinity of, with Christian asceticism, 355, 361;

evidently a great popular force, 358;

a one-sided Stoicism, 359;

Cynic ideal, 359 sq.;

attitude to the Empire, 362 sq.;

and to popular religion, 363;

cultivated Cynics, 364 sqq.

Dacia,

organisation and town life of, 201;

worship of Magna Mater in, 549;

of Isis, 568;

settlement of, by Trajan, a seat of Mithraism, 594;

of the worship of Isis and Magna Mater, 549, 568

Daemons,

conception of, in Plutarch and Maximus of Tyre, 426;

history of, in Greek literature from Hesiod, 427;

use of the idea by Platonists, 425;

Xenocrates first taught the existence of evil daemons, 431

sq.;

employed by Plutarch to rehabilitate myth, 432;

believed in by the Fathers, 433;

a cause of oracular inspiration, 437;

mortality of, 426;

daemon of Socrates, 438;

daemon a higher self, 439;

daemonology an attempt to bridge the gulf between man and the

Infinite Spirit, 603

Dea Dia, worship of, 540

Delation,

history and causes of, 35;

delators of every rank, _ib._;

attractions of, wealth gained by, 36;

Regulus a delator, 37, 155;

Silius Italicus, 164;

under Domitian, 35

Delphi,

temple of Osiris at, 424;

Plutarch’s love of, 403, 435;

decay of, in first century, 434;

revival of, 435;

why oracles were given in prose, 436;

sources of its inspiration, 437;

Nero’s violence to, 472;

Hadrian tested, _ib._

Demetrius, the Cynic,

life of, 361;

a cultivated ascetic, 362;

knew Apollonius of Tyana, _ib._;

attitude to the Empire, beards Nero and Vespasian, _ib._

Demonax,

attitude to popular religion, 363;

origin, education, and philosophic tone of, 364;

fashion of his life and teaching, 365;

epigrams and sarcasms, 365 sq.;

his personal magnetism, and reverence for him after his death,

366

Dendrophori,

dedications by, to Magna Mater, 549;

in the inscriptions, 551;

at Lyons, 557

Dion Chrysostom,

view of the Cynics, 349;

early history, exile, conversion, and preaching of, 367 sq.;

orations of, 368;

simple philosophy, and view of the time, 369, 370;

warning to Tarsus, 370;

sermon at Olbia, 371 sq.;

picture of city life in Asia Minor, its vices and jealousies,

372 sqq.;

gospel of social charity, 373;

scorn for the Alexandrian character, 374;

his prose idyll on virtuous rural life in Euboea, 375 sq.;

view of prostitution and slavery, 376;

ideal of monarchy, parable of the Two Peaks, 377 sqq.;

oration at Olympia, 379 sq.;

suggested by Olympian Zeus of Pheidias, 380;

Dion’s discussion on natural theology and anthropomorphism,

381;

makes Pheidias defend representation of the Infinite in human

form, 382;

his Zeus a moral ideal and spiritual power, 383

Domitian,

delators under, 35;

his belief in astrology, 45;

secret of his reign, 52;

value of the authorities on, 52 n.;

good traits in his character, 53;

his encouragement of literature and political merit, _ib._;

his Hellenism, 89;

a moral reformer, 54, 74;

causes of his unpopularity, 54;

contradictions in his character, 55;

replenishes the treasury by confiscation, 56;

his terror at the end, 56, 57, 450;

his funereal banquet, 57;

founds a quinquennial competition in literature, 171;

his superstition, 450;

a conservative in religion, 536;

celebrated the Quinquatria of Minerva, 538;

his victories, 542;

escaped from the capital in the vestments of Isis in 69 A.D.,

567;

built a temple to Isis, _ib._;

first called _Dominus et Deus_, 615

Dreams,

in temples of healing, 460;

dream-oracles, 461;

prescriptions in, 463, 464;

treatise of Artemidorus on, 467 sqq.;

his faith in, 468;

his absurdities, 470;

Pliny on, 452, 490

Education,

Vespasian endows, 148;

influence of Quintilian on, 149;

Pliny helps to endow a school at Como, 193;

culture in Asia Minor, 372;

among freedmen, 131, 134

Empire, the,

its temptations, 31;

the influence of the Emperor’s example illustrated, 31;

how waste led to cruelty and confiscation, 33;

the secret of the imperial terror, various theories, 37;

the ideal of the Empire, 39, 43;

constant danger from pretenders, 40, 41, 44;

the fiction of Augustus, the Emperor’s real power, 41;

checks upon it, 42;

its tolerance of municipal liberty, 203

Entellus, gardens of, 112

Epicharis, freedwoman, refuses to betray the Pisonian conspirators,

47

Epictetus,

his ideal of the Cynic philosopher, 359;

men the soldiers of God, 393;

gospel of renunciation in, _ib._ n. 5;

on augury and divination, 455;

early history of, 503;

attitude to belief in immortality, 504;

reference to female Platonists, 80;

preaching of gratitude and resignation, 393

Epicurus,

Seneca quotes, and defends to Lucilius, 306;

Aelian anathematises, 456;

Epicureans at Abonoteichos oppose Alexander, 476;

orders banquets to his shade, 456;

influence of, in last age of Republic, 530

Epidaurus,

temple of Asclepius at, 462, 539;

social life of the patients, 463

Equites,

in provincial towns, 215;

freedmen raised to the rank of, 113;

Juvenal’s contempt for, 70;

general low estimate of, 113;

displace freedmen as imperial secretaries, 107;

employment by Vitellius, Domitian, Hadrian, and Antoninus

Pius, _ib._

Espionage,

under the Empire, 34;

under Domitian, 56

Euboea, D. Chrysostom’s description of rural life in, 375

Euhemerus,

translated by Ennius, 530;

Plutarch on, 425

Euphrates,

Pliny’s sketch of, 151;

suicide of, 356

Evil, Plutarch’s theory of, 430

Extravagance,

of Nero, 20, 32;

of Domitian, 55, 56;

of Vitellius, 32;

of Caligula, 32;

under the Republic, 67

Fannia, widow of Helvidius Priscus, Pliny’s admiration for, 152

Finance,

profusion of Caligula, 32;

straits of Domitian, 56;

economy of Vespasian, 32, 148;

Nero’s waste and plunder, 20 sq.;

Nerva’s retrenchment, 32;

waste of Vitellius, 32;

finance of provincial towns, 220, 248

Fortuna Augusti, 618

Freedmen, the,

their rise a great movement, 100;

prejudice against, 101 sqq.;

why it was natural, 103;

contempt of literary men for vulgar wealth, 104;

yet the rise of the freedmen a promising movement, 105;

rise of, in the imperial household, 106;

become great ministers, 107;

replaced gradually by Equites, 107;

early freedmen ministers worthy of their place, 108;

career of Claudius Etruscus and Abascantus, 109 sqq.;

of Narcissus and Pallas, 110, 111;

how their wealth was gained, 112, 129;

their politic splendour, 112;

romantic career of a freedman, 113;

yet freedmen despised and ostracised, _ib._;

sometimes made great marriages, 114;

doubtful position of women of this class, 114;

yet some had great influence, 115;

Panthea, mistress of L. Verus, picture of, by Lucian, _ib._;

lower freedmen in the imperial service, 116;

transition from slavery to freedom, how freedmen rose,

118-120;

grossness and ostentation of their wealthy class, 129 sqq.

Freedom and Necessity,

Plutarch’s views of, 412;

Seneca’s, 311

Gaius, on the law of Colleges, 254

Galen,

early history and training of, 505;

eclecticism of, _ib._;

views of immortality, _ib._;

relations with M. Aurelius, 506

Genii,

invented for every corporation and scene in Roman life, 386;

tales of, in Britain and on the Indian Ocean, 420, 426;

wide-spread cult of, 479 sq.

Gladiators,

municipal shows of, in Petronius, 134;

Trajan provides 10,000 on his Dacian triumph, 234;

protests against, by Seneca and Demonax, 235;

schools of, 236, 241;

shows began in Campania, _ib._;

school of, at Pompeii, 237;

notices in the inscriptions, 238;

enthusiasm for, _ib._;

shows in remote places, 239;

after battle of Bedriacum, 240;

less popular in Greece, except at Corinth, 241;

various cost of, 241;

classes who furnished gladiators, attractions of the

profession, 242 sq.;

organisation of a school; a college of gladiators, 243

God,

new conceptions of, 5;

in Seneca, 305;

God of the Stoics, varying conceptions of, 307;

demand for a moral God, 389;

Stoicism fades into Platonism, 391;

the Stoic god has no claim to worship, _ib._;

vague higher conceptions of, 396, 603;

a transcendent Deity, 397;

Plutarch’s highest idea of, 418;

man’s relation to, according to Maximus of Tyre, 421;

relation of, to daemons, 425 sqq.

Hadrian,

letter of, to Servianus, 397;

tests the omniscience of Delphi, 435;

dabbled in astrology, and other dark arts, 450, 503;

his love of travel, 503;

his faint belief in immortality, 503;

a sceptic, 536;

the Canopus of, at his villa at Tibur, 567;

conspiracy against, 41;

character of, 503

Hellenism,

various aspects of, reaction against, from the times of the

elder Cato, 88;

Hellenism of early Emperors, 88, 89;

Roman prejudice against Greeks, 90;

why Greeks succeeded under the Empire, 91;

Greek _grammatici_, 91;

Greeks as doctors, 92;

Greek parasites, 93;

love of Greek in Pliny’s days, 166 sq.

Helvidius Priscus,

violence of, 40;

flouts Vespasian, _ib._

Herculaneum,

temple of Magna Mater at, 548;

frescoes of, illustrating the worship of Isis, 578

Herodes Atticus,

gifts of, to many communities, 225 sqq.;

friend of Demonax and Plutarch, 364, 403;

on the uses of wealth, 232;

claimed descent from the Aeacidae, 225

Herodotus,

identifies Greek and Egyptian deities, 561;

on Mithra, 589

Hesiod, on daemons, 427

Holconii, the, of Pompeii, public honours and benefactions of, 223

Horace,

love of the country, and memories of Mount Vultur in, 196,

198;

journey to Brundisium, 206;

on beneficence, 190

Hortensius, Q.,

luxury of, 71;

poverty of his descendants, _ib._

Icelus,

raised to rank by Galba, 107;

journey of, to Spain, 206

Immortality,

ideas of, depend on ideas of God, 484;

“We know not what we shall be,” 485;

faith in the _Manes_, 486;

evidence of epitaphs on, 487 sqq.;

Lemures, 488 sq.;

the _Mundus_, 489;

mingled elements in Virgil’s Inferno, 491 sqq.;

Roman longing for posthumous sympathy, 488;

Orphic and Pythagorean influences on Virgil, 494;

evidence of inscriptions on belief in, 496 sqq.;

Epicurean negation of, 498 sq.;

philosophic opinion on, 449 sqq.;

Lucretius and Julius Caesar on, 500, 501;

attitude of Epictetus, 504;

Galen’s ideas of, 505 sq.;

M. Aurelius on, 507 sqq.;

Seneca on, 514 sq.;

Apollonius of Tyana on, 518 sq.;

Plutarch on, 521 sqq.;

Platonic imagery of the future world, and its influence on

Plutarch, 523 sq.;

belief in, fostered by Isiac worship, 575, 583;

and by Mithraism, 609

Inns, poor and disreputable, 207

Isis,

prescriptions of, in dreams, 461;

transformation of her worship by the Ptolemies, 560;

at the Peiraeus, _ib._;

influence of Greek settlers in Egypt, and of Greek mysticism,

561, 563 sq.;

lofty conception of, in Apuleius, 563;

date of her introduction in Italy, _ib._;

power over women, 565;

repeated persecution of her worshippers, first century, B.C.,

565;

in the reign of Tiberius, 566;

favoured by Otho and the Flavians, 567;

Domitian builds a temple to, in 92 A.D., classes who

propagated the worship of, 567 sq.;

spread through all Western Europe, 568 sq.;

secret of her fascination, 569;

highest conception of, 572;

a real spiritual power, 574;

gives the hope of immortality, 575;

impressive ritual of, 576;

daily offices, 577 sq.;

her rites in frescoes of Herculaneum, 578;

great festivals of, the procession to the shore described, 578

sq.;

her priesthood, including women, 580, 582;

sacred guilds, Isiaci, Pastophori, etc., 581;

syncretism of her worship, _ib._;

her priesthood a separate caste, their presbyteries, and

ascetic life, 582

Jerome, S.,

account of the grades of initiation in Mithraism by, 611;

genealogies in, 70

Jews,

growing influence of, in the first century A.D.;

especially under the Flavian dynasty, 83;

spread of Jewish observances, 84;

foster superstition, 84

Julian, his hatred of Oenomaus of Gadara, 364

_ Jumentarii_, at the gates of towns, 206

Juvenal,

his views of society compared with Tacitus, 58;

social rank and early training of, 59;

experience as a client, _ib._;

bitterness of, 60;

dates of his _Satires_, 60;

he and Martial have a common stock of subjects, 60, 61;

plebeian pride, and old Roman prejudice, combined with the

moral feeling of a later age, 63;

attitude to religion, 64;

extravagant pessimism, his ideal in the past, 65;

great movements of society described by, and sometimes

misunderstood, 69;

decay of the noble class described by, 69;

contempt for new men, 70;

signs of aristocratic poverty, 72;

his ideal of senatorial dignity, 74;

treatment of women in the Sixth Satire, its faults, 76;

condemns mere eccentricities and even laudable tastes, 77;

distrusts growing culture of women, 79, 80;

fighting a lost battle, 81;

scorn for women’s devotion to eastern cults, 82;

pessimism about women had some justification, 84 sqq.;

his judgments must be taken with some reserve, 87;

indignation at the invasion of the Greeks, 88;

humiliation of the client, 93;

general poverty, 95;

the cry of the poor, and Roman contempt for industry and

trade, 98;

Juvenal compared with Pliny, as a painter of society, 141

Lambaesis,

the camp at, how it grew into a _municipium_, 208;

military colleges at, 283;

temple of Isis at, 568;

worship of Mithra at, 595

Lanuvium, college at, 260

Lemuria, the, described, 489

Libraries,

restocked with MSS. by Domitian, 53;

Trimalchio’s Greek and Latin libraries, 131;

rapid production of books, 156

Literature,

in the Antonine age, 3;

in Pliny’s days, 157;

literary amateurs abound, _ib._;

Pliny’s poetry, 159;

love of Cicero, 158;

the plague of readings, 160, 172;

decadence of, 163, 173;

Silius Italicus, 164 sq.;

composition in Greek, 166;

Titinius Capito, a historian, 167;

devotion to poetry, and its causes, influence of the Augustan

tradition, 169;

fashion of the archaic style, 170;

Domitian founds a literary competition, its influence, 171;

literary men generally born in provincial places, 196;

Demonax rebukes literary archaism, 367

Livy,

on decay of augury, 445;

on the Bacchanalian scandal, 563;

on the apocryphal books of Numa, 564

Lucan,

on the worship of Isis, 568;

betrays his mother, his death, 471;

style of, referred to in the _Satiricon_ of Petronius, 123

Lucian,

his war against the Cynics, 337;

yet sometimes approaches their view of life, 337 sq.;

the _Charon_ of, 338;

the _Hermotimus_ of, witnesses to a moral movement, 341 sqq.;

the Cynic in his _Banquet_, and _Fugitives_, 350;

his treatment of the character of Peregrinus, 354 sqq.;

visit to Olympia at the time of the Cynic’s suicide, 355;

how he regarded it, and watched the growth of a myth, 357 sq.;

description of the new oracle of Abonoteichos, 474 sqq.;

ridicule of superstition in the _Philopseudes_, 490;

reference to Mithra, 590

Lucretius,

on immortality, 500, 501;

on Magna Mater, 547

Luxury,

Juvenal’s view of, 65;

Roman luxury in Republican times, 67;

luxury a relative term, 68;

luxury of the Roman villa, chiefly in marbles, 177;

the luxury of travelling, progresses of Nero, 206

Maecenas,

counsels of, to Augustus in Dion Cassius, 446, 533;

Trimalchio, a freedman of, 128 n.

Magna Mater,

brought from Pessinus, 204 B.C., 548;

no Roman priest of, for 100 years, _ib._;

growing popularity of, at Rome, in Spain and Dacia, 549;

legend of, _ib._;

her festival in spring, 550;

her priests in the inscriptions, 550 sq.;

her sacred colleges, 551;

her disreputable followers in Apuleius, _ib._ sqq.;

her worship transmuted, 554;

the taurobolium and its history, 556;

alliance of, with Mithra, and Attis, 556 sq.;

women admitted to sacred rank, 557;

identified with Maia, Demeter, Bona Dea, etc., 559

Majesty, the law of, under the Empire, 33

Malaga, inscriptions of, 209

Manetho,

treatise of, on myths, 561;

assists the first Ptolemy in recasting Isiac worship, _ib._

Marcian, on Colleges, 255

Martial,

deals with the same social subjects as Juvenal, 61;

his graphic picture of the age, 61, 62;

better side of, love of country life, picture of the farm of

Faustinus, love of Bilbilis, 62;

on Regulus, 156;

on literary amateurs, 157;

on Silius Italicus, 158;

relations of, with Pliny, 158;

regret for the capital, 198

Maximus of Tyre,

character of his Discourses, 349;

conciliation of anthropomorphism with a higher vision of God

by, 395;

ethical theory of, 421;

daemonology of, 429;

fortified by tales of apparitions, 491;

influenced by Aristotle, 421

Medicine,

profession of, filled by Greeks, 92;

great physicians, Antonius Musa, the Stertinii, etc., _ib._;

sneers against, _ib._;

public physicians in municipal towns, 219;

income and munificence of the Stertinii, 224;

science of, in the second century, superstitious elements,

459;

how blended with real skill, 462;

skilled physicians in temples of Asclepius, 465

_ Medixtuticus_, title of, still preserved in Oscan towns, 203

Minucius Felix,

quoted, 545;

on the festivals of Isis, 578 n.;

on daemons, 433

Miracles,

Origen and Celsus on, 481;

universal belief in, 482;

miracles in temples of Serapis, 573;

Vespasian consents to work, _ib._

Mithra,

growing power of, 386;

the taurobolium a part of his worship, 556;

alliance of, with Magna Mater and Attis, _ib._, 589 sq.;

in the Vedas and Avestas, 586;

in the Zoroastrian system, 587;

the God of kings, _ib._;

influence of Babylon on the worship of, 587;

influence of syncretism in Asia Minor on, 588;

the taurobolium probably borrowed, _ib._;

origin of the Tauroctonus group, date of the introduction of

the

cult into Europe, 590;

Plutarch’s statement in the Life of Pompey, _ib._;

worship of, in the Flavian age, _ib._;

syncretism of, 592;

worship of, propagated by soldiers, civil servants, etc.,

_ib._;

stages of its diffusion through Italy, 593;

and north of the Alps, 594;

progress of the worship along the Danube, 594 sqq.;

legions which propagated it in Pannonia, 595;

remains of, in Upper Germany, 596;

in England, 597;

in Gaul, _ib._;

its many attractions, _ib._;

Persian symbolism, 598;

Babylonian elements in, astrology, 598, 602, sq.;

relative influence of Iran and Babylon, different views of,

599;

influence of Platonism and Pythagoreanism on, 600;

doctrine of the soul’s descent, _ib._;

cosmic theory, doctrine of emanation, and deification of

elemental powers, 601 sqq.;

Mithra as mediator in two senses, 604 sq.;

the Dadophori, _ib._, 606;

the legend recovered from monuments, 605;

the _petra genetrix_, _ib._;

symbolism of the slaughtered bull, 606;

agape of Mithra and Sun, 607;

various interpretations of the legend, 607;

Mithraism a religion of combat, 608;

its consolations, _ib._;

its eschatology, 609;

effect of the taurobolium, _ib._;

ritual and sacraments of, 610;

daily offices, and festivals of, 611;

seven grades of the initiated, 611;

ordeals of, 612;

guilds of, 612;

rites regarded as a diabolic parody of the Church, 613;

description of the chapels of, _ib._ sq.;

how Mithraism escaped persecution, 614;

how it fostered theocratic ideas at Rome, 617 sqq.;

a great imperial cult, 619;

last days of, _ib._;

worship of, a great effort of syncretism, 620;

moral and mystic strength of, 621;

relations to Christianity, 622;

similarities between them, 623;

weaknesses of Mithraism, 624;

inseparably involved with Nature-worship, 626

Monarchy,

Seneca’s conception of, 16;

hereditary succession and adoption, 27;

ideal of, in Dion Chrysostom, 377, sqq.;

apotheosis of, in third century, 615 sqq.;

attitude of Tacitus to, 21

Morals,

divorced from politics and speculation, 290 sq.;

became a religion in Seneca, 305;

relation of precept and dogma, _ib._;

freedom and necessity, 311;

the fall of man, 312;

Plutarch’s theory of, 410 sqq.

Municipal life,

picture of, in Petronius, 133 sqq.;

rapid organisation of, in Spain, Gaul, Dacia, etc., immense

growth of towns, 200;

Baden in 69 A.D., 201;

Thamugadi in Numidia, 202;

policy of government towards provincial towns, 203;

drift towards uniformity of civic organisation, influence of

the capital, 204;

how towns were formed, 207;

development from _castra stativa_, 207, sq.;

soldiers allowed to live with their families in the third

century, 208;

municipal town aristocratic in constitution, 209, 231;

_ Album Canusii_, 210;

the _honestiores_, _ib._;

popular election the rule in the first century, 211;

magistracies, 212;

their burdens, signs of decay, 212;

powers of the duumvirs, 213;

the Curia, its numbers, qualification, and privileges, 214,

215;

local _Equites_, 215;

Augustales, their importance, organisation, insignia, etc.,

216, 217;

municipal finance, 218;

public charges, food, education, medical attendance, 219;

public works, 220;

finances, and maladministration of Bithynian towns in Trajan’s

reign, 220, 221;

municipal life of Pompeii, 222, sqq.;

generous gifts to towns, 223, 225;

examples from the inscriptions, 226 sqq.;

public feasts on a great scale, 229;

gifts of money according to social rank, 230;

tone of town life, 231;

pleasures of, 233;

gladiatorial shows, 236 sqq.;

how the community rewarded benefactors, 244 sq.;

municipal meanness, 245;

decaying local patriotism, 246;

Plutarch on, 247;

growing centralisation and interference, 248;

shadows of the end, 249

Musonius,

his ideal of chastity, 77;

condemns the Sophists, 344;

exile of, under Nero; character of his teaching; preaches to

the soldiery in 69 A.D., 348

Nature,

love of, in Virgil, 197;

in Pliny, 174;

in Martial, _ib._, 62, 198

Nero,

hereditary taint of, 17;

not without some good qualities, 17;

could inspire affection, 18;

his devotion to art, and its evil results, 19;

a _cupitor incredibilium_, 20;

his waste leads to cruel oppression, 20, 21;

examples of wild profusion, 32;

his superstition, 45, 536;

compelled by the mob to recall Octavia, 49;

popular indignation at his appearance on the stage, 74;

the “Noctes Neronis,” 75;

his phil-Hellenism, 89;

silences Delphi, 434;

belief in astrology, 448;

propitiates his mother’s shade, 491;

flattery of, by the Arval Brothers, 542;

worshipped by Tiridates, 617;

violence to Delphi, 472

Nerva,

retrenchments of, 32;

first provided for poor children, 192

Nicomedia, D. Chrysostom on its public vices, 373

Numa, apocryphal books of, 564

Octavia, divorced on false charge, and recalled by Nero at the

bidding of the mob, 49

Oenomaus of Gadara,

rejection of myth and oracles by, 363;

theory of oracles, 364;

Julian’s denunciation of, _ib._

Olbia, D. Chrysostom’s visit to, 371 sq.

Oracles,

decay of, 434;

revival of, 386;

theory of their inspiration, 437 sqq.;

and of their cessation, 437, 471;

that of Abonoteichos defers to the older, 472;

many oracles not silenced till the reign of Constantine, 473;

how an oracle was worked, 474;

oracles in Boeotia, 471

Orphic mysticism, the, 427;

influence of, on Virgil, 494;

on Mithraism, 600;

on belief in immortality, 516

Osterburken, remains of Mithra worship at, 596

Ostia,

colleges at, 215;

cult of Mithra at, 591;

temple of Magna Mater at, _ib._

Otho,

extravagance of, 32;

his belief in astrology, 45, 448;

devotion of soldiers to, 50;

his end, 449;

flattered by the Arval Brotherhood, 541;

the first Emperor who took part in Isiac worship, 566

Ovid,

his ideal of womanhood, 77, 142;

shocked by the influence of the theatre on women, 86;

attitude to religion, 532

Pallas, power and insolence of, receives the adulation of the

Senate, his wealth, and his end, 111

Panaetius and the Scipionic circle, 293;

modification of Stoicism by, 408;

abandons belief in immortality, 500;

rejects divination, 530;

little sympathy with popular religion, 531

Panthea, mistress of L. Verus, charms of, described by Lucian, 115

Paphlagonia, superstition of, 474

Pastophori of Isis, the,

recognised by Sulla, 565;

scribe of, 570

Peregrinus,

early history of, connection with the Christians, and

self-immolation, 354;

Lucian’s attacks on his character, 354;

assumes that the motive of Peregrinus was notoriety, 356;

Peregrinus influenced by eastern mysticism, 355;

character of, in Aulus Gellius, 358

Pessimism,

of Seneca, 10, 11, 14, 303, 313;

of Tacitus, 30, 46;

Juvenal, 65;

M. Aurelius, 304, 335;

of the Greek poets, 416

Petronius,

shared in the “Noctes Neronis,” 75;

various opinions as to the date and object of his _Satiricon_,

120;

motive of the work, 122;

the Petronius of Tacitus, his character and his end; the

_Satiricon_ only a fragment, 124;

not without a higher moral tone, 125;

originality of Petronius, 126;

the scene and the characters, 127

Philosophy,

power of, in government, 6;

Stoic opposition in the first century, 39, 151 sqq.;

was it ever a dangerous force? 40;

new ideals of humanity, 63;

elevating influence of, 190;

change in the conception of, in the first century, 289;

practical interest in predominant, causes of the change, 339,

290 sq.;

eclecticism and scepticism in, _ib._, 408, 412;

necessity for moral reform, 292;

private direction of souls, 293;

directors in great houses, 294;

the philosopher a _generis humani paedagogus_, 299;

modifications of Stoicism in Seneca, 314 sqq., 306;

“nulla virtus sine philosophia,” 341;

eclecticism, 343;

the Cynic opposition, 362 sq.;

eclecticism of Dion Chrysostom, 368 sq.;

need of a philosophic théodicée, 384;

effort of, to rehabilitate myth, 432

Pheidias,

the Olympian Zeus of, 380;

his defence of anthropomorphism in D. Chrysostom, 382

Pisa, disturbance at elections in, 212

Piso, the conspiracy of, 47 sq.

Platonism,

few adherents of, in the first century, 408;

affected Panaetius, _ib._;

and Seneca, 308;

and Plutarch, 409;

its daemonology, 430;

encouraged belief in immortality, 501;

visionary power of the great Master, 523;

influence on Mithraism, 600

Plebeian life,

picture of, in Petronius, 132 sqq.;

in the inscriptions, 252 sq., 271

Pliny, the elder,

on Roman luxury, 67, 68;

care of his nephew, 145;

life, character, and prodigious industry of, 146;

scorn for popular religion, 535;

superstition of, 451;

rejection of immortality, 502;

on town life in Spain and Gaul, 201 sq.;

description of baths of Posides, 112;

on the Stertinii, 224

Pliny, the younger,

ideal of the principate in the _Panegyric_, 43;

compared with Juvenal as a painter of society, 141;

idealised his circle, 142, 185;

his blameless aristocrats, 144;

early life of, influence of Quintilian on, 149;

student friends, 150;

admiration of the Stoic circle, 151;

military service, and entrance on forensic work, 153 sq.;

the Centumviral court, 154 sq.;

sketch of Regulus, 155 sqq.;

passion for fame, 157;

literary amateurs, 157;

befriends Martial, 158;

admiration for Cicero, and for Greece, 158;

his loose verses, 159;

ideas of oratory, 160;

value of his Letters, 161, 163;

imitated in fourth century, _ib._;

their principle of arrangement, and date, 162;

his devotion to literature, 164;

admiration for Tacitus, _ib._;

his judgment of Silius Italicus, _ib._;

theory of life, 165;

literary coteries, Greek verse writing, 166;

writers of history, 167;

literary competitions, 171;

the plague of recitations; Pliny gives readings himself, and

punctually attends them: his estimate of their value, 173;

weariness of the capital and love of the country, 174;

not a sportsman, 175;

pictures of Roman country seats, 175;

routine of country life, 179;

management of rural estates, 180;

Pliny’s kindness to slaves and dependents, 181;

view of suicide, 183;

Corellius Rufus, 184;

Pliny’s belief in the solidarity of rank, and the duty of

mutual support, 186;

his superstition, 452, 490;

delight in helping young men of the upper class, 187;

love for Calpurnia, and ideal of girlhood, 188, 189;

last glimpse of Pliny and Calpurnia, 189;

he represents the finest moral tone of the age, 190;

his many benefactions and their amount, 193, 224

Plutarch,

on the duties of municipal life, 247;

early history of, 401;

friends of, at Rome, 402;

love of Chaeronea, and Delphi, 403;

visits to other parts of Greece, 403;

table talk of, 404;

his historic power, 406;

ethical motive in, predominant, 405;

admiration for Plato, 409;

eclecticism, _ib._;

attacks Stoic psychology, 410;

adopts some Aristotelian principles, 412;

yet has many Stoic elements, 414;

his treatment of Fate and free-will, 412;

ideal of moral teaching, 413;

conception of theology, 417;

idea of God, 418;

of matter and evil, 419;

treatment of myth and religious symbol, 423;

daemonology, 430 sqq.;

used to rehabilitate myth, 432;

interest in Delphi, 435 sqq.;

theory of inspiration, 439;

on the future state, 496 sq.;

on comfort in the Mysteries, 516;

Consolation to his wife on the death of their daughter, 520

sq.;

arguments for immortality, 521 sqq.;

visions of the future world, 523 sqq.;

reference to Mithra as a mediator, 590;

on the first appearance of Mithraism in Europe, 590;

tales of ghosts at Chaeronea, 490

Politta, wife of Rubellius Plautus, courage and devotion of, 49

Polybius, freedman minister of Claudius, life of, described by

Seneca, 108

Polybius, the historian, his attitude to Roman religion, 531

Pompeii,

situation and various industries of, 223;

family of the Holconii, Eumachia, their gifts to the town,

223;

amphitheatre and temple of Isis at, 224, 563;

election placards at, 211;

tombs of Alexandrian traders at, 567;

colleges of “late sleepers” and “late drinkers” at, 265

Pontifex Maximus, the, 534;

office held by the Emperors, its power, 535

Poppaea, her sympathy with Judaism, 83

Post, the public,

organisation of, 206;

Pliny’s use of, for Calpurnia, 189

Poverty,

contempt for, 104;

common in Juvenal’s time, 94;

D. Chrysostom on, 375

Prayer,

an effort of adoration, 394;

a colloquy with God, 420

Preachers, the philosophic,

Apollonius, 347;

Musonius, 348;

Maximus of Tyre, 349;

Dion Chrysostom, 370 sqq.

Prudentius, description of the taurobolium by, 558

Public works,

mismanagement of, in Bithynia, 220 sq.;

curator of, _ib._;

undertaken by private persons, evidence of inscriptions on,

225 sq.

Pythagoreanism,

not extinct in the first century B.C., 398;

daemonology of, 428;

influence of, on Virgil, 493 sq.;

on Seneca, 515;

connection with the Mysteries, 516;

spiritual influence of, 517;

influence on the mythology of Egypt, 562;

and on Mithraism, 600

Quintilian,

career of, as a teacher, and high moral influence, 149;

treats immortality as an open question, 502

Readings,

the plague of, in Juvenal, 59, 95;

in Pliny, 160, 173;

in Martial, 61

Regulus, M. Aquilius,

career of, as delator, 37;

as pleader, his wealth, and eccentricities, 155, 156

Religion, old Roman,

decay of, from the second Punic War, 529;

its causes, 530;

attitude to, of Varro, Panaetius, Polybius, 531;

Augustan restoration of, 533;

conservative influence of the chief pontificate, 535;

early emperors continue the Augustan policy, 536;

reverence for the oldest Latin deities in the inscriptions,

538;

Jupiter, 543;

Hercules, Silvanus, and the Nymphs, 539;

revival of the Arval Brotherhood, 540 sqq.;

feeling of the educated to, 544;

real strength of, 545;

last champions of, in the fourth century, 546;

its formalism compared with the eastern worships, 554

Scepticism,

from the second Punic War, 530;

the scepticism of the elder Pliny, Seneca, Juvenal, etc., 535

Seleucus, an astrologer of Otho, 448

Senate, the,

prestige and ancient claims of, 38;

hated and feared by bad princes, 38, 39;

respect for, under good Emperors, 39;

theoretical position of, under the Empire, 41, 42;

Pliny’s _Panegyric_ throws light on, 44;

moral degradation of, shown in 69 A.D., 50;

poverty of many great houses, 51, 71;

insults heaped on, by Emperors, 51;

reduction of its numbers by massacre etc., 71;

great families pensioned by Emperors, 71;

Senators compelled to act and fight as gladiators, 73, 74;

scorn of, for freedmen, 113;

frivolity of, in Pliny’s time, 185;

senatorial life in the country, 174 sqq.

Seneca,

his experience of the tyranny, 7, 8;

sad close of his life, 9;

knowledge of character, how acquired, 9;

conception of the state of nature, and pessimism of, 10, 11,

14, 304, 313;

ghastly picture of high society, 11;

of slavery, 12, 329;

his terrors, 13;

attitude to philosophic revolutionaries, 15;

conception of imperial power, 16;

ideal of female character and capacity, 188;

anticipates the movement of the Antonine age, 190;

as a spiritual director, 294;

his undoubted power, 295;

his experience prepared him for the work, 296 sqq.;

his court-life and wealth, _ib._;

contrasts in, 297;

calumnies against, 298;

conception of the great office of philosophy, 299;

attitude to liberal studies, 300;

treatment of Physics, the moral effects and lessons of the

study, 301 sqq.;

intense earnestness of, 304;

defends and quotes Epicurus, 306;

yet often a Stoic dogmatist, _ib._;

conception of God, 307, 390;

influenced by Platonism, 308;

his psychology, 308 sq.;

necessity and conversion, 311;

the fall of man, 312;

Aristotelian elements in, 314 sq.;

humility of, 316;

his disciples of the upper class, 317;

on philosophic retreat, 318;

his precepts for moral growth, 320 sqq.;

death a mere bugbear, 322;

attitude to myth, _ib._;

on public duty, 325;

on the social instinct, kindness, forgiveness, etc., 327;

his ideal of womanhood, 329;

Seneca and Thomas à Kempis, 331;

his view of immortality approaches the Christian, 5, 13 sqq.;

Pythagorean influences on, 515

Sentinum, college of Mithra at, 593

Serapis,

his temple of healing at Canopus, 461;

his origin, various theories of, 561 sq.;

linked with Jupiter in the inscriptions, 562;

lofty conception of, in Aristides, 572, 574;

miracles in his temples, 573;

a guide and judge of souls, 575;

his boundless sway, 583

Sidonius Apollinaris,

imitation of Pliny’s Letters in, 162 sq.;

refers to Sulpicia, 80;

to Petronius, 121

Silius Italicus,

Pliny’s estimate of, 164;

career and tastes of, 165;

a connoisseur, 177;

suicide of, 184

Slavery,

moral and political effects of, according to Seneca, 12;

courage of Octavia’s slave girls, 48;

transition from slavery to freedom, 116 sq.;

kindly feeling, 117, 257;

manumission, how obtained, 118;

growing _peculium_ of trusted slaves, 118;

tie between patron and freedman, 119;

duties and generosity of patrons, _ib._;

rise of the freedmen, _ib._;

Pliny’s kindness to slaves, 181;

harsh masters and their perils, 182;

slave class dwindling, 252;

slaves in the colleges, 281

Society,

_ circuli_, 13;

gossip, 33;

extravagant luxury, 66;

respect for birth and manufacture of genealogies, 69, 70;

poverty and mendicancy of great houses, 71, 72;

wider interests among women 78;

culture of Roman women from Cornelia to Serena, wife of

Stilicho, 80;

dangerous temptations of women’s life, 85 sq.;

general poverty under the Empire, 94 sq.;

mean trades more lucrative than cultivated professions, 95;

society materialised, _ib._;

contempt for poverty, 97;

grossness of freedmen, 132 sqq.;

a sounder class in the worst days, 143;

wholesome force of Roman tradition, and country life, 144;

old-fashioned retreats of virtue, 147;

love of country life, 174;

suicide, 183;

wedded life of Calpurnia and Pliny, 188 sq.;

new moral ideals in Seneca, Juvenal, and Pliny, 190;

duties of wealth, 191;

public spirit of the age, 193;

rage for amusement, 234 sqq.;

municipal gratitude and meanness, 245;

need of association in clubs, etc., 256 sqq.;

immense force of the movement, 266 sqq.;

ennui and self-abandonment of upper class, 304, 319 sq.;

need for popular evangelism, how the Cynics supplied it, 335,

360

Socrates, theories of his daemon, 438

Sophists, the,

influence of, 4;

frivolous subjects and showy style of, condemned by

philosophers, 344;

Plutarch’s opinion of, 413

Sotion, trains Seneca in Pythagorean asceticism, 296

Spain,

growth of towns in, 200;

journey of Icelus in, to reach Galba, 206;

little affected by Mithraism, 597;

worship of Isis in, 567

Spectacles, the,

Senators descend into the arena, 73;

women present at, mingling with men at the Circus, 86;

obscenities of the theatre, _ib._;

number of days in the year given to, 234;

scene in Flavian Amphitheatre, 235

Spurinna, Vestricius,

a verse writer, 166;

his orderly life a type, 175

Statius,

his sketches of the great imperial freedmen, 109 sqq.;

of the villas of Manlius Vopiscus, and Pollius Felix, 176;

reference to Mithra in the _Thebaid_, 589 sq.

Stoicism,

the God of, 307;

gospel of, in Seneca, 309 sq.;

freedom and necessity, 311;

weakness of its moral theory, 313;

instantaneous conversion, _ib._;

no intermediate states of character, _ib._;

modifications of, 314;

relation to Cynicism, 323, 359;

competing tendencies in, 324;

the two cities, Zeno on civic duty, 325;

the brotherhood of man, 328;

the religion of Stoicism breaks down, 391, 512;

later Stoic mysticism, 392;

influence of Panaetius, 408, 530;

its theory of human nature assailed by Plutarch, 410 sq.;

older Stoic belief in a limited immortality, 500;

ideal of life in M. Aurelius, 509;

Stoic attitude to augury, etc., 530

Strabo,

on oracles and augury, 471;

on the temple of Serapis at Canopus, 461

Suetonius,

career of, 168;

Pliny’s friendship for, _ib._;

a dilatory author, 168;

superstition of, 452, 535;

secretary of Hadrian, 169

Suffetes, title of, preserved in Africa under the Empire, 203

Suicide,

Pliny’s view of, 183;

suicide of Euphrates, 356;

Stoic view of, 356;

suicide of Peregrinus, 357;

of Silius Italicus, 184;

of Corellius Rufus, 184;

Hadrian’s wish for, 356;

a suicide on Lake Como, 184

Sulla, recognises the Isiac cult in 80 B.C., 565

Sulpicia, verses of, mentioned by Martial and Sidonius, 80

Sun worship,

the highest form of nature-worship, 585 sq.;

Aurelian’s temple, 586;

Mithra identified with the Sun at Babylon, 587;

influence of, in fostering theocratic ideas in the Empire, 617

sq.

Superstition,

tales of, at Trimalchio’s table, 131, 136;

of Regulus, 156;

of Suetonius and Pliny, 168;

various conceptions of, 443;

Plutarch on, 443 sq.;

astrology, 446 sqq.;

superstition of the Emperors, 447 sqq.;

of the great writers of the age, 451 sqq.;

its connection with medicine in the temples, 459;

dream oracles, 461;

Aristides has visits from the gods, 466;

superstition of Rutilianus and the Roman nobles in the reign

of M. Aurelius, 475;

rampant in Paphlagonia, 476 sq.;

cult of _Genii_, 479;

universal belief in miracles, 482;

apparitions in the _Philopseudes_ of Lucian, 490;

encouraged by Mithraism, 602

Symmachus,

religious conservatism of, 546;

Letters of, 161

Syncretism,

in Aristides, 388;

in Apuleius, _ib._;

in Plutarch, 424;

of the oriental worships, 558;

in the worship of Isis, 581;

and of Serapis, 583;

Mithraism the greatest effort of, 585, 592;

at Babylon, 587;

in Asia Minor, 588

Tacitus,

his attitude to the tyranny of the early Caesars, 21;

early history and experience of, 22;

various views of, 23;

the key to his tone as a historian, 24;

a moralist, rather than a politician, 25, 26;

views of the future, 26, 27;

belief in birth and traditions, 28;

early training, and ideal of family life, 28, 29;

admiration for Agricola, 29;

his experience had affected his ideas of human nature and of

the Divine government, 30;

gloomy view of the time, 46;

wavering attitude to superstition, 453, 535;

faint hope of immortality, 502;

account of Serapis, 562

Tarsus, D. Chrysostom on its vices, 370

Taurobolium, the,

enthralling power of, 547;

first glimpse of, 549;

offered for Ant. Pius in 160, _ib._;

suspected by the Fathers, 555;

history of, 556;

Anaitis and Artemis Tauropolus, _ib._;

question whether it became part of the worship of Mithra,

_ib._, 609;

its ceremonial and cost, 557 sq.;

its meaning and effects, 609

Tertullian,

his tale of a priest of Cybele, 549;

on the taurobolium, 555;

holds up priests of Isis as an example, 582;

his view of the sacraments of Mithra, 613

Theagenes,

pupil of Peregrinus, 354;

lectures in Rome, _ib._

Theatre, the, a great corruptor, 86

Thespesius of Soli, his vision of the unseen world, 524

Thrasea, his character, compared with Paetus and Helvidius Priscus,

152

Thrasyllus, an astrologer of Tiberius, 448

Tiberius,

conservatism of, in religion, 536;

little sympathy with Hellenism, 88;

cost of his gladiators, 241;

belief in astrology, 448;

tried the lottery at Padua, 472;

persecutes the eastern cults, 566;

treatment of descendants of Hortensius, 71;

his _mot_ on birth, 70

Timarchus, his visit to the other world, 526 sq.

Titinius Capito, writes a history of the victims of the Terror, 167

Titus,

his love of the East and superstition, 449;

visit to shrine of the Paphian Venus, 472

Trade,

great fair at Cremona, 264;

wandering traders, their colleges, _ib._;

immense development of, 253, 265;

Juvenal’s contempt for, 98;

encouragement of, by Claudius, 264

Trajan,

provision of, for poor children, 192;

his friendship with Dion Chrysostom, 369 sq.;

vows of the Arval Brotherhood for, 542;

Pliny’s _Panegyric_ on, 43

Travel,

became general, 205;

example of Hadrian, _ib._;

easy and luxurious, _ib._;

facilities of posting, 206;

speed of, by land and sea, 206;

passion for change of scene, 330 sqq.;

travels of Aristides, 464;

of Dion Chrysostom, 368

Trimalchio, the, of Petronius,

sketches his own career, 129;

his estates, _ib._;

description of, _ib._;

surprises of his dinner, 130;

his libraries and his ignorance, 131;

treatment of his wife, 137;

gives an order for his monument, 136

Trophonius, the oracle of, 461

Ummidia Quadratilla,

character in Pliny’s Letters, 185;

builds a temple and amphitheatre for Casinum, 224

Varro,

theology of, 417, 531 sq.;

on Magna Mater, 547;

Saturae Menippeae of, 126

Veleia, tablet of, 192

Verginius, Rufus, guardian of Pliny, 145

Vespasian,

accession of, a moral revolution, 1;

his economies, 32, 227;

tolerance of the Stoic opposition by, 40;

treatment of astrologers, 45;

defamed by men of the Neronian circle, 52;

Hellenism of, 89;

love of old associations, 148;

his immense task; combined economy and liberality, 148;

banishes the astrologers, yet believes in them, 449;

consults the oracle on Mount Carmel, 472;

conservative in religion, 536;

restores the shrine of Magna Mater at Herculaneum, 548;

consents to work miracles at Alexandria, 573

Vestinus, Atticus, suicide of, under Nero, 48

Vestinus, Julius, chief pontiff of Egypt, a secretary of Hadrian,

568

Virgil,

immense popularity of, his verses in the Graffiti of Pompeii,

170;

pictures of rural scenery by, 197;

_ Sortes Virgilianae_ consulted by Hadrian, 450;

Inferno of, its discordant conceptions, 491 sqq.;

recitation of the Aeneid at Trimalchio’s table, 131

Vitellius,

cruelty and ghastly end of, 240;

superstition of, 449;

profusion of, 32;

treatment of his freedman, Asiaticus, 206;

employs _Equites_ as imperial secretaries, 107;

his horoscope, 449

Women,

high ideal of, in the first century, 77;

growth of wider interests in, 78;

superstition among, _ib._;

emancipation of, began long before the Empire, 79;

vices of, in the time of the elder Cato, _ib._;

Roman ideal of, lasted to the end, _ib._;

cultivated women from Cornelia to Serena, 80;

growing influence of, in public life, 81;

“Mothers of the camp, _patronae_,” _Curia mulierum_ at

Lanuvium, 81;

attractions of eastern cults for, 82;

Roman girls carefully guarded till marriage, when their perils

began, 84;

temptations of Roman matrons, _ib._;

dangers of the Circus, theatre, and gladiatorial shows, 86;

manners in the freedwomen class, 135;

good women of Pliny’s circle, 145;

others of doubtful character, 185;

Calpurnia, wife of Pliny; their ideal married life, 188 sq.;

beautiful character of a girl, 189;

ideal of, in Seneca, 329;

light women keep fasts of Isis, 553, 565, 570;

female worshippers of Magna Mater, 557

Xenocrates, on bad daemons, 431, 433

Xenophanes, on legend, 544

Zoticus, freedman of Elagabalus, sources of his wealth, 112

THE END

_Printed in Great Britain by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.

FOOTNOTES

_ 1 Ann._ iii. 55; xvi. 5; cf. Suet. _Vesp._ ix. xii.

2 Suet. _Vesp._ ii. quare princeps quoque et locum incunabulorum

assidue frequentavit, manente villa, qualis fuerat olim, etc.

3 Tac. _Ann._ xv. 23; xvi. 21, 34; _Agric._ 2, 45; Plin. _Ep._ iii.

16, § 10; vii. 19, § 3; iii. 11, § 3; ix. 13, § 3.

4 Tac. _Ann._ xiv. 60.

5 Tac. _Ann._ iv. 6; i. 80; xiii. 50, 51; xi. 24; Suet. _Nero_, x.;

_Dom._ viii.; cf. Merivale, vii. 385; Renan, _Apôtres_, p. 308 sqq;

Gréard, _Morale de Plut._ p. 200.

6 Suet. _Vitell._ v.; _Otho_, iii. provinciam administravit

moderatione atque abstinentia singulari.

7 Sen. _Ep._ 47; _De Ira_, i. 5; iii. 24; _De Benef._ iv. 11, § 3; _De

Brev. Vit._ xiii. § 7; Plin. _Ep._ iv. 22; Juv. xiv. 15 sqq.; xv.

131; D. Cass. lxvi. 15; _Or. Henz. Inscr. Lat._ 7244, Bene fac, hoc

tecum feres; Denis, _Hist. des Idées Morales_, ii. 156, 172, 181.

8 Sid. Apoll. _Ep._ viii. 6, § 5.

_ 9 Or. Henz._ iii. Ind. p. 27 sq.

10 Apul. _Apol._ c. 55, sacrorum pleraque initia in Graecia

participavi, et plurimos ritus ... didici; Lamprid. _Alex. Sev._ c.

29, 43.

11 Max. Tyr. _Diss._ viii.; xi. § 3; xvii.; D. Chrys. _Or._ xii. § 83.

12 Renan, _Les Évangiles_, p. 382.

13 Friedl. _Sittengesch._ iv. 420; Denis, _Idées Morales_, ii. 200

sqq.; Renan, _M. Aurèle_, p. 24 sqq.

14 Luc. _Som._ 32; _Traj._ 15; _Charon_, 15, 20; _Tim._ 14, 36; M.

Aurel. v. 10, 33: ix. 29; 34; x. 19: cf. Sen. _De Ira_, ii. 8; _Ad

Marc._ ii. 17, 20, 22; Petron. _Sat._ 88.

_ 15 Ep._ 108, § 22; cf. Suet. _Tib._ lxi. nullus a poena hominum

cessavit dies.

16 Suet. _Tib._ 61; Tac. _Ann._ iv. 34.

17 D. Cass. lix. 19; Suet. _Calig._ 53.

_ 18 Nec. Inj._ xviii.; cf. Suet. _Calig._ 50; Sen. _De Ira_, i. 20;

iii. 18; _De Tranq._ xiv.; _Ad Polyb._ xiii. xvii.; _Ad Helv._ x. 4;

_De Benef._ iv. 31.

19 Sen. _De Ira_, ii. 33.

20 Tac. _Ann._ xii. 8; D. Cass. 60. 8; 61. 10; Sen. _Ad Polyb._ 13. 2;

_Ad Helv._ 15. 2.

21 For the worst charges _v._ D. Cass. lxii. 2; lxi. 10; Tac. _Ann._

13. 13.

22 D. Cass. _l.c._; Tac. _Ann._ 13. 42. But cf. Seneca’s reply, Tac.

_Ann._ 14. 53, and 15. 62.

23 Tac. _Ann._ 15. 65.

24 Sen. _Frag._ 108.

25 Sen. _De Tranq._ x. 6.

26 Sen. _Ep._ i. 18; Tac. _Ann._ 14. 52.

_ 27 Ep._ 70, § 14; 88, § 17; _Ep._ 77; _De Ira_, iii. 15; _Ad Helv._ 5,

§ 4.

28 Mart. vii. 27, 11; Juv. xi. 4; Sen. _Dial._ 1, 5, 4; _De Benef._

vii. 22, 2; Friedl. _Sittengesch._ i. 281.

29 Sen. _De Ira_, ii. 33; _De Tranq._ xii. 7.

30 Sen. _Ep._ 97, § 2; Sen. _De Benef._ i. 10, § 1. Cf. _De Ira_, ii.

8; _Ep._ 95, § 20; _Ep._ 115, § 10.

31 Sen. _Ep._ 90, § 42.

_ 32 Ep._ 90, § 40.

_ 33 Ib._ 90, § 38.

_ 34 Ib._ 90, § 5, § 36, avaritia atque luxuria dissociavere mortales.

_ 35 Ib._ 90, § 12.

36 Sen. _Ep._ 90, § 19.

_ 37 De Brev. Vit._ xvi. tarde ire horas queruntur; _Ep._ 77; _Ep._ 104,

§ 15.

_ 38 Ep._ 115, § 10; _De Ira_, iii. 33; _Ep._ 60; _Ep._ 74.

_ 39 Ad Polyb._ vi. 5, magna servitus est magna fortuna.

_ 40 De Ira_, ii. 8.

_ 41 De Ira_, ii. 33.

_ 42 Ib._ iii. 35, deinde idem de republica libertatem sublatam quereris

quam domi sustulisti.

_ 43 Ib._ iii. 24, 32; Petron. _Sat._ 49, 53; Sen. _Ep._ 47, § 10; Juv.

vi. 490; Sen. _De Clem._ i. 18.

44 Boissier, _Rel. Rom._ ii. 353; Marq. _Priv._ i. 142; Wallon,

_L’Escl. dans l’Ant._ ii. 146.

45 Sen. _De Brev._ _V._ xiii.

_ 46 Ib._ xvi. transilire dies volunt.

47 Id. _Ep._ 104, § 15; 89, § 20; _Ep._ 28.

48 Id. _De Tranq._ xii. § 7.

49 Mart. ii. 7, 8 (_v._ note on the word in Friedländer’s ed.); iv. 78.

50 Sen. _Ep._ i. 9; cf. Friedl. _Sittengesch._ i. 271.

51 Juv. xi. 4; Mart. vii. 97; Quintil. vi. 3, 105; Sen. _De Tranq._

xii. § 7; _De Ben._ vii. 22, 2; _De Prov._ i. 5, 4; Boissier,

_L’Opp._ p. 201 sqq.

_ 52 Ad Marc._ xx.; _De Tranq._ x.; _Ep._ 94 _ad fin._; _Ep._ 70.

_ 53 Ep._ 90, § 43, at vos ad omnem tectorum pavetis sonum et inter

picturas vestras, si quid increpuit, fugitis attoniti.

_ 54 Ep._ 70, § 14; _Ep._ 88, § 17, malis paratus sum; _Ep._ 24, § 11;

_Ad Polyb._ ix. nullus portus nisi mortis; _Ad Marc._ xx. mors quae

efficit ut nasci non supplicium sit.

_ 55 Ad Marc._ x.

_ 56 Ad Polyb._ vi.

_ 57 Ad Marc._ xxii. § 3.

_ 58 Ad Polyb._ ix.; _Ep._ 77; _Ad Marc._ xxi. § 7.

_ 59 Ep._ 108, § 17. He adopted the Pythagorean discipline under the

influence of Sotion, a pupil of Sextius, but gave it up on the

proscription of suspected rites in the reign of Tiberius, cf. Suet.

_Tib._ 36; cf. Zeller, _Die Phil. der Gr._ iii. 1, 605.

60 D. Cass. 62. 2; 61. 10. Zeller, iii. 1, 641, n. 1.

61 D. Cass. _l.c._

_ 62 Tac. Ann._ xv. 55.

63 Suet. _Vesp._ 15.

64 Sen. _Ep._ 73, § 3.

_ 65 Ib._ 103, § 4.

_ 66 De Clem._ i. 19; Plin. _Paneg._ i. 72; D. Chrys. _Or._ ii. § 77;

iii. § 39; 70 sqq.

67 Suet. _Dom._ 23; _Nero_, 57; cf. Tac. _Hist._ i. 7, ipsa aetas

Galbae irrisui ac fastidio erat adsuetis juventae Neronis et

imperatores forma ac decore corporis ... comparantibus.

68 Suet. _Calig._ 50; cf. Sen. _Nec. Inj._ 18; _De Ira_, i. 20; ii. 33;

iii. 18; _De Ben._ ii. 12, 21.

69 Suet. _Calig._ 38.

70 Id. _Nero_, 6.

_ 71 De Clem._ i. 1, § 2, electusque sum qui in terris deorum vice

fungerer.

_ 72 Ib._ i. § 5.

_ 73 Ib._ i. 4, 1, ille vinculum per quod respublica cohaeret, ille

spiritus vitalis.

_ 74 Ib._ i. 17, 1.

_ 75 Ib._ i. 7, 2.

_ 76 De Clem._ i. 12.

_ 77 Ib._ i. 13, 2, scelera enim sceleribus tuenda sunt.

78 Renan, _L’Antéchr._ p. 125.

_ 79 De Clem._ i. 1, § 2, egone ex omnibus mortalibus placui electusque

sum qui in terris deorum vice fungerer?

80 Suet. _Nero_, c. 4.

_ 81 Ib._ c. 5.

82 Sen. _De Clem._ i. 1, § 5.

83 Suet. _Nero_, c. 15; cf. _Dom._ c. viii.

_ 84 Nero_, c. 16.

_ 85 Ib._ c. 12, instituit et quinquennale certamen primus omnium Romae

more Graeco triplex, etc.

_ 86 Ib._ c. 20; 53; Renan, _L’Antéchr._ p. 132.

87 Suet. _Nero_, c. 39.

_ 88 Ib._ c. 50.

89 Renan, _L’Antéchr._ p. 316.

90 Suet. _Nero_, c. 49; Renan, _L’Antéchr._ 130. sqq.

91 Suet. _Nero_, c. 24, 49, 52, 55; Tac. _Ann._ xiv. 16; cf. Macé,

_Suétone_, p. 179; Boissier, _L’Opp._ p. 265.

92 Suet. _Nero_, c. 53, c. 20, cf. c. 24.

93 Philostr. _Apoll. Tyan._ iv. 36, 39; Tac. _Ann._ xiv. 15, 16; xv.

67, odisse coepi postquam parricida matris et uxoris, auriga et

histrio et incendiarius extitisti; Suet. _Nero_, c. 21; D. Cass. 63.

9, 10.

94 Suet. _Nero_, c. 23.

_ 95 Ib._ c. 32.

96 Merivale, viii. p. 70 sq.; Schiller, _Gesch. der Röm. Kaiserzeit_,

i. p. 467.

97 Petron. _Sat._ 8, where the decay of artistic sense is traced to the

grossness of evil living; at nos vino scortisque demersi ne paratas

quidem artes audemus cognoscere.

98 Suet. _Nero_, c. 11, 12.

99 Tac. _Ann._ 15. 42.

_ 100 Ib._ 16. 1; Suet. _Nero_, 31.

_ 101 Ib._ 16, 31.

_ 102 Ib._ c. 31; cf. _Otho_, 7.

103 Suet. _Nero_, c. 40.

_ 104 Ib._ c. 29 _ad fin._

_ 105 Ib._ c. 32; D. Cass. 63. 17.

106 Suet. _Nero_, c. 56.

107 Suet. _Nero_, c. 32; D. Cass. 63. 11.

108 Tac. _Agric._ c. 3, sic ingenia studiaque oppresseris facilius quam

revocaveris.

109 Peter, _Gesch. Litt._ ii. 53 sqq.

110 Seneca died in 65 A.D. The _Histories_ of Tacitus were published

_circ._ 106-107; cf. Plin. _Ep._ vii. 20; Peter, _Gesch. Litt._ ii.

42.

111 Tacitus was born about 55 A.D. (Peter, ii. 43; Macé, _Suétone_, p.

35, 81; Momms. _Plin._ p. 51). He was, perhaps, fifteen years older

than Suetonius, and seven years older than Pliny.

112 Plin. _Ep._ i. 6, 20; iv. 13; vi. 9, 16, 20; vii. 20, 33; viii. 7;

ix. 10, 14.

_ 113 Hist._ i. 1; _Ann._ xi. 11. This latter important passage fixes the

date of his praetorship, 88 A.D.; cf. Teuffel, ii. p. 165 n. 6;

Peter, ii. 43.

_ 114 Agric._ c. 45.

_ 115 Hist._ i. 1, sed incorruptam fidem professis, neque amore quisquam

et sine odio dicendus est; Nipperdey, _Einl._ xxvi.

116 Merivale, viii. 84, Schiller, _Gesch. der Röm. Kaiserzeit_, i. 140,

586. According to Schiller, Tacitus has no research, no exactness of

military or geographical knowledge, no true conception of the time.

He is an embittered aristocrat and rhetorician. For a sounder

estimate _v._ Peter, ii. 43, 60, 63; Nipperdey, _Einl._ xxv. For the

influence on the work of Suetonius of the Senatorial tradition, _v._

Macé, _Suétone_, p. 84; Peter, _Gesch. Litt._ ii. 69.

117 Peter, _Gesch. Litt._ ii. 66.

118 Merivale, viii. 95 sqq.

119 Peter, ii. 46 sqq.

_ 120 Ib._ ii. 188, 200.

121 His father was probably a Roman Eques, procurator in Belgium; Plin.

_H. N._ vii. 16, 76.

122 Macé, _Suétone_, p. 83, Peter, ii. 69 sqq.

123 Tac. _Ann._ i. 7; xv. 71; _Agr._ 45; Peter, ii. 62.

_ 124 Ann._ xiv. 12, 57; _Hist._ iv. 6; _Agr._ 42; Peter, ii. 47.

_ 125 Agr._ 42.

_ 126 Ann._ iii. 65, praecipuum munus annalium reor, ne virtutes

sileantur, utque pravis dictis factisque ex posteritate et infamia

metus sit; cf. Peter, ii. 46; Nipperdey, _Einl._ xxvi.

127 Tac. _Ann._ i. 39, 41.

_ 128 Ib._ c. 61, 62.

_ 129 Hist._ ii. 49.

_ 130 Ann._ ii. 82.

_ 131 Hist._ iii. 72.

_ 132 Ib._ iii. 83.

_ 133 Agr._ 32.

_ 134 Germ._ 17, 19, 20, 23, 25.

_ 135 Germ._ 33, _ad fin._

_ 136 Hist._ i. 3; ii. 38; iii. 72; Peter, ii. 62. Yet this should be

qualified by such passages as _Ann._ iii. 55; _Agr._ i.; cf.

Nipperdey, _Einl._ xxvii.

_ 137 Ann._ iii. 65.

_ 138 Ib._ iii. 26.

139 M. Aurel. ix. 29, 34; x. 19.

140 Tac. _Ann._ iii. 55; M. Aurel. vii. 1; ix. 4; x. 23; ix. 28.

_ 141 Agr._ 3.

142 Plin. _Paneg._ 35, 53, 54, 66; cf. Tac. _Hist._ i. 1.

_ 143 Hist._ i. 1, omnem potentiam ad unum conferri pacis interfuit; cf.

_Hist._ i. 16; ii. 38.

_ 144 Ann._ xiv. 47; _Hist._ iv. 8, bonos imperatores voto expetere,

qualescumque tolerare.

_ 145 Ann._ xv. 46; vi. 42; iv. 33; iii. 27; _Hist._ ii. 38.

146 Peter, ii. 53; _Ann._ vi. 42.

_ 147 Hist._ i. 16; Peter, ii. 61.

148 Tac. _Agr._ i.

149 Peter, ii. 48.

150 Tac. _Ann._ i. 76; quanquam _vili_ sanguine nimis gaudens. Cf.

_Dial. de Or._ 29; Plin. _Ep._ vi. 34, 1.

_ 151 Ann._ xiv. 43; _Germ._ 20.

_ 152 Germ._ 33. Cf. his contempt for the Christians and devotees of

Eastern cults, _Ann._ ii. 85; xv. 44.

_ 153 Ann._ i. 53; iv. 3; iii. 39: vi. 29; xii. 12; iii. 24; xvi. 16. Cf.

Peter, ii. 51.

_ 154 Ann._ xiv. 14.

_ 155 Ann._ ii. 21; vi. 27; iv. 3.

_ 156 De Or._ 29.

_ 157 Agr._ 4.

_ 158 Germ._ 19, saepta pudicitia agunt, nullis spectaculorum inlecebris

... corruptae; _De Or._ 29.

_ 159 Hist._ iii. 37; _Ann._ i. 7; xv. 57, 71.

_ 160 Agr._ 22.

_ 161 Ib._ 40.

_ 162 Ann._ xv. 60.

_ 163 Ib._ xv. 57.

_ 164 Ib._ xiv. 60.

_ 165 Ann._ xv. 71.

_ 166 Hist._ i. 2.

_ 167 Agr._ 4, memoria teneo solitum ipsum narrare se studium

philosophiae acrius, ultra quam concessum Romano ac Senatori,

exhausisse. Cf. Fabian, _Quid Tac. de num. Div. judicaverit_, p. 1.

_ 168 Hist._ v. 5; Nipperdey, _Einl._ xiv.

_ 169 Hist._ i. 22; ii. 78; i. 86. But cf. _Ann._ xii. 43, 64; xiv. 32;

xv. 8; _Hist._ i. 3; ii. 50; and Fabian, pp. 17, 19.

_ 170 Ann._ iv. 20; cf. vi. 22.

_ 171 Hist._ ii. 38.

_ 172 Ann._ xiv. 12; Fabian, p. 23.

_ 173 Ann._ xvi. 33, aequitate deum erga bona malaque documenta.

_ 174 Ann._ iii. 55; cf. xvi. 5.

175 Friedl. _Sittengesch._ iii. pp. 80, 81.

176 Plin. _Paneg._ 45; Claudian, _In Cons. Hon._ 299, componitur orbis

Regis ad exemplum.

177 Suet. _De Clar. Rhet._ c. 1.

178 Id. _Nero_, 21; Philostr. _Apoll. Tyan._ iv. 39.

179 Friedl. _Sittengesch._ i. 54.

180 Suet. _Calig._ 37; Sen. _Ad Helv._ x.

181 Suet. _Calig._ 37.

182 Suet. _Nero_, c. 30.

_ 183 Ib._ c. 27.

_ 184 Ib._ c. 30.

_ 185 Ib._ c. 31; Tac. _Ann._ xv. 42.

186 Suet. _Otho_, 5, nihilque referre, ab hoste in acie, an in foro sub

creditoribus caderet.

187 Id. _Vitell._ c. 13.

188 Id. _Vesp._ 16; D. Cass. 66. 2, 8, 10.

189 D. Cass. 67. 5; Suet. _Dom._ 12.

190 D. Cass. 68. 2, _συστέλλων ὡς οἷόν τε τὰ δαπανήματα_.

191 Capitol. _M. Aurel._ c. 17, in foro divi Trajani auctionem

ornamentorum imperialium fecit vendiditque aurea pocula et

cristallina, etc.

192 Suet. _Dom._ iii.

193 Suet. _Otho_, iii.; _Vitell._ v.; _Dom._ viii.; Boissier, _L’Opp._

p. 170.

194 Tac. _Ann._ i. 72; ii. 50; xiv. 48. For a clear account of this _v._

Boissier, _L’Opp._ p. 165.

195 Suet. _Dom._ x.; cf. xii. satis erat obici qualecunque factum

dictumve adversus majestatem principis.

_ 196 Ib._ xii.

197 Tac. _Ann._ xi. 27; xiii. 6, in urbe sermonum avida; _Hist._ ii. 91;

Mart. v. 20; Friedl. _Sittengesch._ i. p. 280.

198 D. Cass. 52. 37.

199 Mart x. 48, 21; cf. Friedl. _Chronologie der Epigr. Mart._ p. 62;

Friedl. _Sittengesch._ i. p. 285; Epict. _Diss._ iv. 13, 21, 5;

Aristid. _Or._ ix. 62.

200 Tac. _Ann._ iv. 69.

201 Philostr. _Apoll. Tyan._ vii. 24.

202 Tac. _Ann._ i. 72, 74, Crispinus formam vitae iniit quam postea

celebrem miseriae temporum et audaciae hominum fecerunt, etc.; cf.

iii. 25; Sen. _De Ben._ iii. 26; Suet. _Tib._ lxi.

203 Tac. _Ann._ iv. 20.

204 Suet. _Dom._ xx. praeter commentarios et acta Tiberii nihil

lectitabat; Plin. _Paneg._ 42, 48.

205 Suet. _Dom._ xv.

206 Tac. _Hist._ ii. 10; Plin. _Paneg._ 35; D. Cass. 68. 1; Jul.

Capitol. _Ant. P._ c. 7; id. _M. Aurel._ c. 11; Meriv. vii. 370.

207 Tac. _Ann._ xv. 34; iii. 66; _Hist._ iv. 42.

208 Schol. ad Juv. iv. 53; Duruy, iv. 660.

209 Tac. _Ann._ iv. 20.

_ 210 Ib._ xvi. 33; Boissier, _L’Opp._ p. 186.

211 Plin. _Ep._ ii. 20, 13; iv. 2; cf. Tac. _Hist._ iv. 42; Mart. vii.

31.

212 Boissier, _L’Opp._ p. 193.

213 Plin. _Ep._ ii. 11, 22.

_ 214 Ib._ iv. 7; i. 20, 15.

_ 215 Ib._ ii. 11, 22; ii. 20.

216 Plin. _Ep._ ii. 20, 2.

_ 217 Ib._ iv. 7.

_ 218 E.g._ Boissier, _L’Opp._ p. 296; Peter, _Gesch. Litt._ ii. p. 65:

Teuffel, § 328, 15; Mackail, _Lat. Lit._ p. 215.

219 Schiller, i. pp. 140, 586; Meriv. viii. 89 sqq.

220 Suet. _Claud._ x.; _Calig._ lx.; D. Cass. 60. 1. On the

assassination of Caligula, the Senate debated the question of

abolishing the memory of the Caesars, and restoring the Republic;

but the mob outside the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter demanded

“one ruler” of the world.

221 Tac. _Ann._ xi. 25; xiii. 27.

222 Suet. _Calig._ xxx.; xxvi.; _Nero_, xxxvii. eumque ordinem

sublaturum quandoque e republica...; cf. xliii. creditur destinasse

senatum universum veneno per convivia necare.... D. Cass. 63. 15,

17.

223 Plin. _Paneg._ 54, 62, 64; Spart. _Hadrian_, 6, 7, § 4; 8, § 6.

224 Suet. _Claud._ x.

225 D. Cass. 66. 16; Suet. _Vesp._ xxv.

226 See the speech of the dying Hadrian to the Senators, D. Cass. 69.

20.

227 Boissier, _L’Opp._ 102.

228 Tac. _Ann._ xvi. 21; xv. 23; xiv. 48, id _egregio_ sub principe ...

senatui statuendum disseruit.

229 Suet. _Vesp._ xv.; cf. xiii., where Demetrius is guilty of similar

rudeness; D. Cass. 66. 12.

230 Philostr. _Apoll. Tyan._ v. 35.

_ 231 Ib._ vii. 3, 4.

_ 232 Ib._ vii. 8, 33; cf. D. Cass. 67. 18.

233 Philostr. _Apoll. Tyan._ vii. 9.

234 D. Cass. 66. 12, _βασιλείας τε ἀεὶ κατηγόρει καὶ δημοκρατίαν

ἐπῄνει_.

235 Suet. _Dom._ xxi.

236 D. Cass. 66. 16.

237 D. Cass. 68. 3.

238 Spart. _Hadr._ 7, § 15.

239 Jul. Capitol. _M. Ant._ 24, 25.

240 Momms. _Staatsr._ ii. 787-821; Professor Pelham has given a luminous

account of the Principate in _Encycl. Brit._ vol. xx. p. 769.

241 Suet. _Octav._ xxviii.

242 Tac. _Ann._ i. 15.

243 Suet. _Claud._ x.; D. Cass. 60. 1; where the soldiers plainly close

the impotent debates in the Senate, and by hailing Claudius as

emperor.

244 Momms. _Röm. Staatsr._ ii. 839.

_ 245 v._ Pelham, _Encycl. Brit._ xx. p. 779.

246 Suet. _Calig._ xxix.

247 D. Cass. 59. 24.

_ 248 Ib._ 56. 1; Tac. _Ann._ vi. 13; Suet. _Dom._ xiii.; Plut. _Galba_,

17.

249 Plin. _Paneg._ 43, 44, 35.

_ 250 Ib._ 24, 62, 63, 66.

_ 251 Ib._ 80.

_ 252 Ib._ 62, 63, 64.

_ 253 Ib._ 66.

_ 254 Ib._ 72.

_ 255 Ib._ 64.

256 Plin. _Paneg._ 69.

257 Tac. _Ann._ xiii. 1; xiv. 52; xv. 48.

258 D. Cass. 63.17, _πᾶσι γὰρ παρ’ αὐτῷ δημόσιον ἔγκλημα ἦν ἀρετή τε καὶ

πλοῦτος καὶ γένος_: Tac. _Hist._ ii. 76.

259 Tac. _Ann._ ii. 32; xii. 52; D. Cass. 49. 43; D. Cass. 66. 10, 9;

Suet _Tib._ lxiii.

260 Suet. _Tib._ xiv. lxix.

261 Tac. _Ann._ xii. 52.

262 Suet. _Nero_, xxxvi.

263 Id. _Otho_, iv.

264 Id. _Vitell._ xiv.

_ 265 Ib._ ne Vitellius Germanicus intra eundem kalendarum diem usquam

esset.

266 D. Cass. 66. 10, 9.

267 Suet. _Dom._ xv.

268 Tac. _Hist._ i. 2.

269 Tac. _Ann._ xiv. 64.

_ 270 Ib._ xiv. 10, 12.

_ 271 Ib._ xiv. 10; Suet. _Nero_, xxxiv.

272 Tac. _Ann._ xv. 48.

_ 273 Ib._ xv. 57.

_ 274 Ib._ xv. 54.

_ 275 Ib._ xv. 70; probably Lucan, _Phars._ iii. 638.