The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism Part 5

It must be admitted, however, that, owing to its extreme flexibility, this religion was easily adapted to the various centers to which it was transferred, and that it enjoyed the valuable advantage of being always in perfect harmony with the prevailing philosophy. Moreover, the syncretic tendencies of Egypt responded admirably to those that began to obtain at Rome. At a very early period henotheistic theories had been favorably received in sacerdotal circles, and while crediting the G.o.d of their own temple with supremacy, the priests admitted that he might have a number of different personalities, under which he was wors.h.i.+ped simultaneously. In this way the unity of the supreme being was affirmed for the thinkers, and polytheism with its {89} intangible traditions maintained for the ma.s.ses.

In the same manner Isis and Osiris had absorbed several local divinities under the Pharaohs, and had a.s.sumed a complex character that was capable of indefinite extension. The same process continued under the Ptolemies when the religion of Egypt came into contact with Greece. Isis was identified simultaneously with Demeter, Aphrodite, Hera, Semele, Io, Tyche, and others. She was considered the queen of heaven and h.e.l.l, of earth and sea.

She was "the past, the present and the future,"[42] "nature the mother of things, the mistress of the elements, born at the beginning of the centuries."[43] She had numberless names, an infinity of different aspects and an inexhaustible treasure of virtues. In short, she became a pantheistic power that was everything in one, _una quae est omnia_.[44]

The authority of Serapis was no less exalted, and his field no less extensive. He also was regarded as a universal G.o.d of whom men liked to say that he was "unique." ([Greek: Heis Zeus Sarapis]) In him all energies were centered, although the functions of Zeus, of Pluto or of Helios were especially ascribed to him. For many centuries Osiris had been wors.h.i.+ped at Abydos both as author of fecundity and lord of the underworld,[45] and this double character early caused him to be identified with the sun, which fertilizes the earth during its diurnal course and travels through the subterranean realms at night. Thus the conception of this nature divinity, that had already prevailed along the Nile, accorded without difficulty with the solar pantheism that was the last form of Roman paganism. This theological system, which did not gain the upper hand in the Occident until the {90} second century of our era, was not brought in by Egypt. It did not have the exclusive predominance there that it had held under the empire, and even in Plutarch's time it was only one creed among many.[46] The deciding influence in this matter was exercised by the Syrian Baals and the Chaldean astrology.

The theology of the Egyptian mysteries, then, followed rather than led the general influx of ideas. The same may be said of their ethics. It did not force itself upon the world by lofty moral precepts, nor by a sublime ideal of holiness. Many have admired the edifying list in the Book of the Dead, that rightfully or otherwise sets forth the virtues which the deceased claims to have practised in order to obtain a favorable judgment from Osiris. If one considers the period in which it appears, this ethics is undoubtedly very elevated, but it seems rudimentary and even childish if one compares it with the principles formulated by the Roman jurists, to say nothing of the minute psychological a.n.a.lyses of the Stoic casuists. In this range of ideas also, the maintenance of the most striking contrasts characterizes Egyptian mentality, which was never shocked by the cruelties and obscenities that sullied the mythology and the ritual. Like Epicurus at Athens, some of the sacred texts actually invited the believers to enjoy life before the sadness of death.[47]

Isis was not a very austere G.o.ddess at the time she entered Italy.

Identified with Venus, as Harpocrates was with Eros, she was honored especially by the women with whom love was a profession. In Alexandria, the city of pleasure, she had lost all severity, and at Rome this good G.o.ddess remained very indulgent to human weaknesses. Juvenal harshly refers to {91} her as a procuress,[48] and her temples had a more than doubtful reputation, for they were frequented by young men in quest of gallant adventures. Apuleius himself chose a lewd tale in which to display his fervor as an initiate.

But we have said that Egypt was full of contradictions, and when a more exacting morality demanded that the G.o.ds should make man virtuous, the Alexandrian mysteries offered to satisfy that demand.

At all times the Egyptian ritual attributed considerable importance to purity, or, to use a more adequate term, to cleanliness. Before every ceremony the officiating priest had to submit to ablutions, sometimes to fumigations or anointing, and to abstain from certain foods and from incontinence for a certain time. Originally no moral idea was connected with this purification. It was considered a means of exorcising malevolent demons or of putting the priest into a state in which the sacrifice performed by him could have the expected effect. It was similar to the diet, shower-baths and ma.s.sage prescribed by physicians for physical health. The internal status of the officiating person was a matter of as much indifference to the celestial spirits as the actual worth of the deceased was to Osiris, the judge of the underworld. All that was necessary to have him open the fields of Aalu to the soul was to p.r.o.nounce the liturgic formulas, and if the soul declared its innocence in the prescribed terms its word was readily accepted.

But in the Egyptian religion, as in all the religions of antiquity,[49] the original conception was gradually transformed and a new idea slowly took its place. The sacramental acts of purification were now {92} expected to wipe out moral stains, and people became convinced that they made man better. The devout female votaries of Isis, whom Juvenal[50] pictures as breaking the ice to bathe in the Tiber, and crawling around the temple on their bleeding knees, hoped to atone for their sins and to make up for their shortcomings by means of these sufferings.

When a new ideal grew up in the popular conscience during the second century, when the magicians themselves became pious and serious people, free from pa.s.sions and appet.i.tes, and were honored because of the dignity of their lives more than for their white linen robes,[51] then the virtues of which the Egyptian priests enjoined the practice also became less external. Purity of the heart rather than cleanliness of the body was demanded. Renunciation of sensual pleasures was the indispensable condition for the knowledge of divinity, which was the supreme good.[52] No longer did Isis favor illicit love. In the novel by Xenophon of Ephesus (about 280 A. D.) she protects the heroine's chast.i.ty against all pitfalls and a.s.sures its triumph. According to the ancient belief man's entire existence was a preparation for the formidable judgment held by Serapis after death, but to have him decide in favor of the mystic, it was not enough to know the rites of the sect; the individual life had to be free from crime; and the master of the infernal regions a.s.signed everybody a place according to his deserts.[53] The doctrine of future retribution was beginning to develop.

However, in this regard, as in their conception of the divinity, the Egyptian mysteries followed the general progress of ideas more than they directed it. {93} Philosophy transformed them, but found in them little inspiration.

How could a religion, of which neither the theology nor the ethics was really new, stir up at the same time so much hostility and fervor among the Romans? To many minds of to-day theology and ethics const.i.tute religion, but during the cla.s.sical period it was different, and the priests of Isis and Serapis conquered souls mainly by other means. They seduced them by the powerful attraction of the ritual and retained them by the marvelous promises of their doctrine of immortality.

To the Egyptians ritual had a value far superior to that we ascribe to it to-day. It had an operative strength of its own that was independent of the intentions of the officiating priest. The efficacy of prayer depended not on the inner disposition of the believer, but on the correctness of the words, gestures and intonation. Religion was not clearly differentiated from magic. If a divinity was invoked according to the correct forms, especially if one knew how to p.r.o.nounce its real name, it was compelled to act in conformity to the will of its priest. The sacred words were an incantation that compelled the superior powers to obey the officiating person, no matter what purpose he had in view. With the knowledge of the liturgy men acquired an immense power over the world of spirits. Porphyry was surprised and indignant because the Egyptians sometimes dared to threaten the G.o.ds in their orations.[54] In the consecrations the priest's summons compelled the G.o.ds to come and animate their {94} statues, and thus his voice created divinities,[55] as originally the almighty voice of Thoth had created the world.[56]

The ritual that conferred such superhuman power[57] developed in Egypt into a state of perfection, completeness and splendor unknown in the Occident.

It possessed a unity, a precision and a permanency that stood in striking contrast to the variety of the myths, the uncertainty of the dogmas and the arbitrariness of the interpretations. The sacred books of the Greco-Roman period are a faithful reproduction of the texts that were engraved upon the walls of the pyramids at the dawn of history, notwithstanding the centuries that had pa.s.sed. Even under the Caesars the ancient ceremonies dating back to the first ages of Egypt, were scrupulously performed because the smallest word and the least gesture had their importance.

This ritual and the att.i.tude toward it found their way for the most part into the Latin temples of Isis and Serapis. This fact has long been ignored, but there can be no doubt about it. A first proof is that the clergy of those temples were organized just like those of Egypt during the period of the Ptolemies.[58] There was a hierarchy presided over by a high priest, which consisted of _prophetes_ skilled in the sacred science, _stolistes_, or _ornatrices_,[59] whose office it was to dress the statues of the G.o.ds, _pastophori_ who carried the sacred temple plates in the processions, and so on, just as in Egypt. As in their native country, the priests were distinguished from common mortals by a tonsure, by a linen tunic, and by their habits as well as by their garb. They devoted themselves entirely to their ministry and had no other profession. This {95} sacerdotal body always remained Egyptian in character, if not in nationality, because the liturgy it had to perform remained so. In a similar manner the priests of the Baals were Syrians,[60] because they were the only ones that knew how to honor the G.o.ds of Syria.

In the first place a daily service had to be held just as in the Nile valley. The Egyptian G.o.ds enjoyed a precarious immortality, for they were liable to destruction and dependent on necessities. According to a very primitive conception that always remained alive, they had to be fed, clothed and refreshed every day or else perish. From this fact arose the necessity of a liturgy that was practically the same in every district. It was practised for thousands of years and opposed its unaltering form to the multiplicity of legends and local beliefs.[61]

This daily liturgy was translated into Greek, perhaps later into Latin also; it was adapted to the new requirements by the founders of the Serapeum, and faithfully observed in the Roman temples of the Alexandrian G.o.ds. The essential ceremony always was the opening (_apertio_)[62] of the sanctuary. At dawn the statue of the divinity was uncovered and shown to the community in the _naos_, that had been closed and sealed during the night.[63] Then, again as in Egypt, the priest lit the sacred fire and offered libations of water supposed to be from the deified Nile,[64] while he chanted the usual hymns to the sound of flutes. Finally, "erect upon the threshold"--I translate literally from Porphyry--"he awakens the G.o.d by calling to him in the Egyptian language."[65] As we see, the G.o.d was revived by the sacrifice and, as under the Pharaohs, awoke from his slumber at the calling of {96} his name. As a matter of fact the name was indissolubly connected with the personality; he who could p.r.o.nounce the exact name of an individual or of a divinity was obeyed as a master by his slave.[66] This fact made it necessary to maintain the original form of that mysterious word. There was no other motive for the introduction of a number of barbarian appellatives into the magical incantations.

It is also probable that the toilet of the statue was made every day, that its body and head were dressed,[67] as in the Egyptian ritual. We have seen that the _ornatrices_ or _stolistes_ were especially entrusted with these duties. The idol was covered with sumptuous raiment and ornamented with jewels and gems. An inscription furnishes us with an inventory of the jewels worn by an Isis of ancient Cadiz;[68] her ornaments were more brilliant than those of a Spanish madonna.

During the entire forenoon, from the moment that a noisy acclamation had greeted the rising of the sun, the images of the G.o.ds were exposed to the silent adoration of the initiates.[69] Egypt is the country whence contemplative devotion penetrated into Europe. Then, in the afternoon, a second service was held to close the sanctuary.[70]

The daily liturgy must have been very absorbing. This innovation in the Roman paganism was full of consequences. No longer were sacrifices offered to the G.o.d on certain occasions only, but twice a day elaborate services were held. As with the Egyptians, whom Herodotus had termed the most religious of all peoples,[71] devotion a.s.sumed a tendency to fill out the whole existence and to dominate private and public interests. The constant repet.i.tion of the same prayers {97} kept up and renewed faith, and, we might say, people lived continually under the eyes of the G.o.ds.

Besides the daily rites of the Abydos liturgy the holidays marking the beginning of the different seasons were celebrated at the same date every year.[72] It was the same in Italy. The calendars have preserved the names of several of them, and of one, the _Navigium Isidis_, the rhetorician Apuleius[73] has left us a brilliant description on which, to speak with the ancients, he emptied all his color tubes. On March 5th, when navigation reopened after the winter months, a gorgeous procession[74] marched to the coast, and a s.h.i.+p consecrated to Isis, the protectress of sailors, was launched. A burlesque group of masked persons opened the procession, then came the women in white gowns strewing flowers, the _stolistes_ waving the garments of the G.o.ddess and the _dadophori_ with lighted torches. After these came the _hymnodes_, whose songs mingled in turn with the sharp sound of the cross-flutes and the ringing of the bra.s.s timbrels; then the throngs of the initiates, and finally the priests, with shaven heads and clad in linen robes of a dazzling white, bearing the images of animal-faced G.o.ds and strange symbols, as for instance a golden urn containing the sacred water of the Nile. The procession stopped in front of altars[75] erected along the road, and on these altars the sacred objects were uncovered for the veneration of the faithful. The strange and sumptuous magnificence of these celebrations made a deep impression on the common people who loved public entertainments.

But of all the celebrations connected with the wors.h.i.+p of Isis the most stirring and the most suggestive {98} was the commemoration of the "Finding of Osiris" (_Inventio_, [Greek: Heuresis]). Its antecedents date back to remote antiquity. Since the time of the twelfth dynasty, and probably much earlier, there had been held at Abydos and elsewhere a sacred performance similar to the mysteries of our Middle Ages, in which the events of Osiris's pa.s.sion and resurrection were reproduced. We are in possession of the ritual of those performances.[76] Issuing from the temple, the G.o.d fell under Set's blows; around his body funeral lamentations were simulated, and he was buried according to the rites; then Set was vanquished by Horus, and Osiris, restored to life, reentered his temple triumphant over death.

The same myth was represented in almost the same manner at Rome at the beginning of each November.[77] While the priests and the believers moaned and lamented, Isis in great distress sought the divine body of Osiris, whose limbs had been scattered by Typhon. Then, after the corpse had been found, rehabilitated and revived, there was a long outburst of joy, an exuberant jubilation that rang through the temples and the streets so loudly that it annoyed the pa.s.sers-by.

This mingled despair and enthusiasm acted as strongly upon the feelings of the believers as did the spring-holiday ceremony in the Phrygian religion, and it acted through the same means. Moreover, there was an esoteric meaning attached to it that none but the pious elect understood. Besides the public ceremonies there was a secret wors.h.i.+p to which one was admitted only after a gradual initiation. The hero of Apuleius had to submit to the ordeal three times in order to obtain the whole revelation. In Egypt the {99} clergy communicated certain rites and interpretations only upon a promise not to reveal them. In fact this was the case in the wors.h.i.+p of Isis at Abydos and elsewhere.[78] When the Ptolemies regulated the Greek ritual of their new religion, it a.s.sumed the form of the mysteries spread over the h.e.l.lenic world and became very like those of Eleusis. The hand of the Eumolpid Timotheus is noticeable in this connection.[79]

But while the ceremonial of the initiations and even the production of the liturgic drama were thus adapted to the religious habits of the Greeks, the doctrinal contents of the Alexandrian mysteries remained purely Egyptian.

The old belief that immortality could be secured by means of an identification of the deceased with Osiris or Serapis never died out.

Perhaps in no other people did the epigram of Fustel de Coulanges find so complete a verification as in the Egyptians: "Death was the first mystery; it started man on the road to the other mysteries."[80] Nowhere else was life so completely dominated by preoccupation with life after death; nowhere else was such minute and complicated care taken to secure and perpetuate another existence for the deceased. The funeral literature, of which we have found a very great number of doc.u.ments, had acquired a development equaled by no other, and the architecture of no other nation can exhibit tombs comparable with the pyramids or the rock-built sepulchers of Thebes.

This constant endeavor to secure an after-existence for one's self and relatives manifested itself in various ways, but it finally a.s.sumed a concrete form in the wors.h.i.+p of Osiris. The fate of Osiris, the G.o.d who died and returned to life, became the prototype of the {100} fate of every human being that observed the funeral rites. "As truly as Osiris lives,"

says an Egyptian text, "he also shall live; as truly as Osiris is not dead, shall he not die; as truly as Osiris is not annihilated, shall he not be annihilated."[81]

If, then, the deceased had piously served Osiris-Serapis, he was a.s.similated to that G.o.d, and shared his immortality in the underworld, where the judge of the dead held forth. He lived not as a tenuous shade or as a subtle spirit, but in full possession of his body as well as of his soul. That was the Egyptian doctrine, and that certainly was also the doctrine of the Greco-Latin mysteries.[82]

Through the initiation the mystic was born again, but to a superhuman life, and became the equal of the immortals.[83] In his ecstasy he imagined that he was crossing the threshold of death and contemplating the G.o.ds of heaven and h.e.l.l face to face.[84] If he had accurately followed the prescriptions imposed upon him by Isis and Serapis through their priests, those G.o.ds prolonged his life after his decease beyond the duration a.s.signed to it by destiny, and he partic.i.p.ated eternally in their beat.i.tude and offered them his homage in their realm.[85] The "unspeakable pleasure" he felt when contemplating the sacred images in the temple[86] became perpetual rapture when he was in the divine presence instead of in the presence of the image, and drawn close to divinity his thirsting soul enjoyed the delights of that ineffable beauty.[87]

When the Alexandrian mysteries spread over Italy under the republic, no religion had ever brought to mankind so formal a promise of blest immortality as these, and this, more than anything else, lent them an {101} irresistible power of attraction. Instead of the vague and contradictory opinions of the philosophers in regard to the destiny of the soul, Serapis offered certainty founded on divine revelation corroborated by the faith of the countless generations that had adhered to it. What the votaries of Orpheus had confusedly discovered through the veil of the legends, and taught to Magna Grecia,[88] namely, that this earthly life was a trial, a preparation for a higher and purer life, that the happiness of an after-life could be secured by means of rites and observances revealed by the G.o.ds themselves, all this was now preached with a firmness and precision hitherto unknown. These eschatological doctrines in particular, helped Egypt to conquer the Latin world and especially the miserable ma.s.ses, on whom the weight of all the iniquities of Roman society rested heavily.

The power and popularity of that belief in future life has left traces even in the French language, and in concluding this study, from which I have been compelled to exclude every picturesque detail, I would like to point out how a French word of to-day dimly perpetuates the memory of the old Egyptian ideas.

During the cold nights of their long winters the Scandinavians dreamed of a Walhalla where the deceased warriors sat in well-closed brilliantly illuminated halls, warming themselves and drinking the strong liquor served by the Valkyries; but under the burning sky of Egypt, near the arid sand where thirst kills the traveler, people wished that their dead might find a limpid spring in their future wanderings to a.s.suage the heat that devoured them, and that they might be {102} refreshed by the breezes of the north wind.[89] Even at Rome the adherents of the Alexandrian G.o.ds frequently inscribed the following wish on their tombs: "May Osiris give you fresh water."[90] Soon this water became, in a figurative sense, the fountain of life pouring out immortality to thirsting souls. The metaphor obtained such popularity that in Latin _refrigerium_ became synonymous with comfort and happiness. The term retained this meaning in the liturgy of the church,[91]

and for that reason people continue to pray for spiritual _rafraichiss.e.m.e.nt_ of the dead although the Christian paradise has very little resemblance to the fields of Aalu.

{103}

SYRIA.

The religions of Syria never had the same solidarity in the Occident as those from Egypt or Asia Minor. From the coasts of Phoenicia and the valleys of Lebanon, from the borders of the Euphrates and the oases of the desert, they came at various periods, like the successive waves of the incoming tide, and existed side by side in the Roman world without uniting, in spite of their similarities. The isolation in which they remained and the persistent adherence of their believers to their particular rites were a consequence and reflection of the disunited condition of Syria herself, where the different tribes and districts remained more distinct than anywhere else, even after they had been brought together under the domination of Rome. They doggedly preserved their local G.o.ds and Semitic dialects.

It would be impossible to outline each one of these religions in detail at this time and to reconstruct their history, because our meager information would not permit it, but we can indicate, in a general way, how they penetrated into the Occidental countries at various periods, and we can try to define their common characteristics by showing what new elements the Syrian paganism brought to the Romans.

The first Semitic divinity to enter Italy was {104} _Atargatis_, frequently mistaken for the Phoenician Astarte, who had a famous temple at Bambyce or Hierapolis, not far from the Euphrates, and was wors.h.i.+ped with her husband, Hadad, in a considerable part of Syria besides. The Greeks considered her as the princ.i.p.al Syrian G.o.ddess ([Greek: Suria thea]), and in the Latin countries she was commonly known as _dea Syria_, a name corrupted into _Iasura_ by popular use.

We all remember the unedifying descriptions of her itinerant priests that Lucian and Apuleius[1] have left. Led by an old eunuch of dubious habits, a crowd of painted young men marched along the highways with an a.s.s that bore an elaborately adorned image of the G.o.ddess. Whenever they pa.s.sed through a village or by some rich villa, they went through their sacred exercises. To the shrill accompaniment of their Syrian flutes they turned round and round, and with their heads thrown back fluttered about and gave vent to hoa.r.s.e clamors until vertigo seized them and insensibility was complete.

Then they flagellated themselves wildly, struck themselves with swords and shed their blood in front of a rustic crowd which pressed closely about them, and finally they took up a profitable collection from the wondering spectators. They received jars of milk and wine, cheeses, flour, bronze coins of small denominations and even some silver pieces, all of which disappeared in the folds of their capacious robes. If opportunity presented they knew how to increase their profits by means of clever thefts or by making commonplace predictions for a moderate consideration.

This picturesque description, based on a novel by {105} Lucius of Patras, is undoubtedly extreme. It is difficult to believe that the sacerdotal corps of the G.o.ddess of Hierapolis should have consisted only of charlatans and thieves. But how can the presence in the Occident of that begging and low nomadic clergy be explained?

It is certain that the first wors.h.i.+pers of the Syrian G.o.ddess in the Latin world were slaves. During the wars against Antiochus the Great a number of prisoners were sent to Italy to be sold at public auction, as was the custom, and the first appearance in Italy of the _Chaldaei_[2] has been connected with that event. The _Chaldaei_ were Oriental fortune-tellers who a.s.serted that their predictions were based on the Chaldean astrology. They found credulous clients among the farm laborers, and Cato gravely exhorts the good landlord to oust them from his estate.[3]

Beginning with the second century before Christ, merchants began to import Syrian slaves. At that time Delos was the great trade center in this human commodity, and in that island especially Atargatis was wors.h.i.+ped by citizens of Athens and Rome.[4] Trade spread her wors.h.i.+p in the Occident.[5] We know that the great slave revolution that devastated Sicily in 134 B. C. was started by a slave from Apamea, a votary of the Syrian G.o.ddess. Simulating divine madness, he called his companions to arms, pretending to act in accordance with orders from heaven.[6] This detail, which we know by chance, shows how considerable a proportion of Semites there was in the gangs working the fields, and how much authority Atargatis enjoyed in the rural centers. Being too poor to build temples for their national G.o.ddess, those agricultural laborers {106} waited with their devotions until a band of itinerant _galli_ pa.s.sed through the distant hamlet where the lot of the auction had sent them. The existence of those wandering priests depended, therefore, on the number of fellow-countrymen they met in the rural districts, who supported them by sacrificing a part of their poor savings.

Towards the end of the republic those diviners appear to have enjoyed rather serious consideration at Rome. It was a pythoness from Syria that advised Marius on the sacrifices he was to perform.[7]

Under the empire the importation of slaves increased. Depopulated Italy needed more and more foreign hands, and Syria furnished a large quota of the forced immigration of cultivators. But those Syrians, quick and intelligent as they were strong and industrious, performed many other functions. They filled the countless domestic positions in the palaces of the aristocracy and were especially appreciated as litter-bearers.[8] The imperial and munic.i.p.al administrations, as well as the big contractors to whom customs and the mines were farmed out, hired or bought them in large numbers, and even in the remotest border provinces the _Syrus_ was found serving princes, cities or private individuals. The wors.h.i.+p of the Syrian G.o.ddess profited considerably by the economic current that continually brought new wors.h.i.+pers. We find her mentioned in the first century of our era in a Roman inscription referring in precise terms to the slave market, and we know that Nero took a devout fancy to the stranger that did not, however, last very long.[9] In the popular Trastevere quarter she had a temple until the end of paganism.[10] {107}

During the imperial period, however, the slaves were no longer the only missionaries that came from Syria, and Atargatis was no longer the only divinity from that country to be wors.h.i.+ped in the Occident. The propagation of the Semitic wors.h.i.+p progressed for the most part in a different manner under the empire.