The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism Part 10

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

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

At a somewhat later period arrived the numerous and varied Baals of Syria.

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

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

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

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

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

However, we would be tempted to believe that there had been no change in the Roman faith, were we to read certain authors that fought idolatry in those days. Saint Augustine, for instance, in his _City of G.o.d_, pleasantly pokes fun at the mult.i.tude of Italian G.o.ds that presided over the paltriest acts of life.[3] But the useless, ridiculous deities of the old pontifical litanies no longer existed outside of the books of antiquaries. As a matter of fact, the Christian polemicist's authority in this instance was Varro.

The defenders of the {203} church sought weapons against idolatry even in Xenophanes, the first philosopher to oppose Greek polytheism. It has frequently been shown that apologists find it difficult to follow the progress of the doctrines which they oppose, and often their blows fall upon dead men. Moreover, it is a fault common to all scholars, to all imbued with book learning, that they are better acquainted with the opinions of ancient authors than with the sentiments of their contemporaries, and that they prefer to live in the past rather than in the world surrounding them. It was easier to reproduce the objections of the Epicureans and the skeptics against abolished beliefs, than to study the defects of an active organism with a view to criticizing it. In those times the merely formal culture of the schools caused many of the best minds to lose their sense of reality.

The Christian polemics therefore frequently give us an inadequate idea of paganism in its decline. When they complacently insisted upon the immorality of the sacred legends they ignored the fact that the G.o.ds and heroes of mythology had no longer any but a purely literary existence.[4]

The writers of that period, like those of the Renaissance, regarded the fictions of mythology as details necessary to poetical composition. They were ornaments of style, rhetorical devices, but not the expression of a sincere faith. Those old myths had fallen to the lowest degree of disrepute in the theater. The actors of mimes ridiculing Jupiter's gallant adventures did not believe in their reality any more than the author of Faust believed in the compact with Mephistopheles.

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

One fact becomes immediately clear from an examination of those doc.u.ments.

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

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

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

All writers agree with Firmicus that the pagans wors.h.i.+ped the _elementa_.[14] Under this term were included not only the four simple substances which by their opposition and blending caused all phenomena of the visible world,[15] but also the stars and in general the elements of all celestial and earthly bodies.[16]

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

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

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

Just as a superficial observation might lead to the belief that the theology of the last pagans had reverted to its origin, so at first sight the transformation of the ritual might appear like a return to savagery.

With the adoption of the Oriental mysteries barbarous, cruel and obscene practices were undoubtedly spread, as for instance the masquerading in the guise of animals in the Mithraic initiations, the b.l.o.o.d.y dances of the _galli_ of the Great Mother and the mutilations of the Syrian priests.

Nature wors.h.i.+p was originally as "amoral" as nature itself. But an ethereal spiritualism ideally transfigured the coa.r.s.eness of those primitive customs. Just as the doctrine had become completely impregnated with philosophy and erudition, so the liturgy had become saturated with ethical ideas.

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

Paganism had become a school of morality, the priest a doctor and director of the conscience.[23]

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

"Man is a fallen G.o.d who still remembers heaven."

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

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

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

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

Sometimes when {211} reading the long works of the last Latin writers, like Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus or Boethius, or the panegyrics of the official orators,[30] scholars could well ask whether their authors were pagan or Christian. In the time of Symmachus and Praetextatus, the members of the Roman aristocracy who had remained faithful to the G.o.ds of their ancestors did not have a mentality or morality very different from that of adherents of the new faith who sat with them in the senate. The religious and mystical spirit of the Orient had slowly overcome the whole social organism and had prepared all nations to unite in the bosom of a universal church.

{213}

NOTES.

PREFACE.

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

2 An outline of the present state of the subject will be found in a recent volume by Gruppe, _Griechische Mythologie_, 1906, pp. 1606 ff., whose views are sharply opposed to the negative conclusions formulated, with certain reservations, by Harnack, _Ausbreitung des Christentums_, II, pp. 274 ff.

Among the latest studies intended for the general reader that have appeared on this subject, may be mentioned in Germany those of Geffcken (_Aus der Werdezeit des Christentums_, Leipsic, 1904, pp. 114 ff.), and in England those of Cheyne (_Bible Problems_, 1904), who expresses his opinion in these terms: "The Christian religion is a synthesis, and only those who have dim eyes can a.s.sert that the intellectual empires of Babylonia and Persia have fallen."--Very useful is the new book of Clemen, _Religionsgeschichtliche Erklarung des Neuen Testaments_, Giessen, 1909.

3 _Mon. myst. Mithra_, I, p. 342, n. 4; see the new texts commented on by Usener, _Rhein. Museum_, LX, 1905, pp. 466 ff.; 489 ff., and my paper "Natalis Invicti," _C. R. Acad. des inscr._, 1911.

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

5 See Harnack, _Militia Christi_, 1905.

6 I have collected a number of texts on the religious "militias" in _Mon.

myst. Mithra_, I, p. 317, n. 1. Others could certainly be discovered: Apuleius, _Metam._, XI, 14: _E cohorte {214} religionis unus_ (in connection with a mystic of Isis);--Vettius Valens (V, 2, p. 220, 27, Kroll ed.): [Greek: Stratiotai tes heimarmenes]; (VII, 3, p. 271, 28) [Greek: Sustrateuesthai tois kairois gennaios]. See Minucius Felix, 36, -- 7: _Quod patimur non est poena, militia est._--We might also mention the commonplace term _militia Veneris_, which was popular with the Augustan poets (Propertius, IV, 1, 137; see I, 6, 30; Horace, _Od._, III, 26, and especially the parallel developed by Ovid, _Amor._, I, 9, 1 ff., and _Ars amat._, III, 233 ff.)--Socrates, in Plato's _Apologia_ (p. 28 E), incidentally likens the philosophic mission imposed on him by the divinity to the campaigns he waged under the orders of the archons, but the comparison of G.o.d with a "strategus" was developed especially by the Stoics; see Capelle, "Schrift von der Welt," _Neue Jahrb. fur das kla.s.s.

Altert._, XV, 1905, p. 558, n. 6, and Seneca, _Epist._, 107, 9: _Optimum est Deum sine murmuratione comitari, malus miles est qui imperatorem gemens sequitur_.--See now also Reitzenstein, _h.e.l.lenistische Mysterienreligion_, 1910, p. 66.

7 See _Rev. des etudes grecques_, XIV, 1901, pp. 43 ff.

8 This has been clearly shown by Wendland in connection with the idea of the [Greek: soteria], _Zeitschrift fur neutest. Wiss._, V, 1904, pp. 355 ff. More recently he has thrown light on the general influence of h.e.l.lenistic civilization on Christianity (_Die h.e.l.lenistisch-romische Kultur in ihren Beziehungen zum Judentum und Christentum_, Tubingen, 1908).

A first attempt to determine the character of h.e.l.lenistic mysteries is to be found in Reitzenstein's _h.e.l.lenistische Mysterienreligion_, 1910.

I. ROME AND THE ORIENT.

1 Renan, _L'Antechrist_, p. 130.

2 M. Krumbacher (_Byzant. Zeitschr._, XVI, 1907, p. 710) notes, in connection with the idea that I am defending here: "In ahnlicher Weise war dieser Gedanke (der Ueberflugelung des Abendlandes durch die auf allen Kulturgebieten vordringende Regsamkeit der Orientalen) kurz vorher in meiner Skizze der byzantinischen Literatur (_Kultur der Gegenwart_, I, 8 [1907], pp. 246-253) auseinandergelegt worden; es ist ein erfreulicher und bei dem Wirrsal widerstreitender Doctrinen trostlicher Beweis fur den Fortschritt der Erkenntniss, da.s.s {215} zwei von ganz verschiedenen Richtungen ausgehende Diener der Wissenschaft sich in so wichtigen allgemeinen Fragen so nahe kommen."

3. Cf. Kornemann, "Aegyptische Einflusse im romischen Kaiserreich" (_Neue Jahrb. fur das kla.s.s. Altertum_, II, 1898, p. 118 ff.) and Otto Hirschfeld, _Die kaiserl. Verwaltungsbeamten_, 2d. ed., p. 469.

4. See Cicero's statement regarding the ancient Roman dominion (_De off._, II, 8): "Illud patrocinium orbis terrae verius quam imperium poterat nominari."

5. O. Hirschfeld, _op. cit._, pp. 53, 91, 93, etc.; cf. Mitteis, _Reichsrecht und Volksrecht_, p. 9, n. 2, etc. Thus have various inst.i.tutions been transmitted from the ancient Persians to the Romans; see Ch. VI, n. 5.

6. Rostovtzew, "Der Ursprung des Kolonats" (_Beitrage zur alten Gesch._, I, 1901, p. 295); Haussoullier, _Histoire de Milet et du Didymeion_, 1902, p.