Superstitions.—Religious beliefs were everywhere blended. As the ancients did not believe in a single God, it was easy for them to adopt new gods. All peoples, each of whom had its own religion, far from rejecting the religions of others, adopted the gods of their neighbors and fused them with their own. The Romans set the example by raising the Pantheon, a temple to "all the gods," where each deity had his sanctuary.
Everywhere there was much credulity. Men believed in the divinity of the dead emperors; it was believed that Vespasian had in Egypt healed a blind man and a paralytic. During the war with the Dacians the Roman army was perishing of thirst; all at once it began to rain, and the sudden storm appeared to all as a miracle; some said that an Egyptian magician had conjured Hermes, others believed that Jupiter had taken pity on the soldiers; and on the column of Marcus Aurelius Jupiter was represented, thunderbolt in hand, sending the rain which the soldiers caught in their bucklers.
When the apostles Barnabas and Paul came to the city of Lystra in Asia Minor, the inhabitants invoked Barnabas as Jupiter and Paul as Mercury; they were met by a procession, with priests at the head leading a bull which they were about to sacrifice.
Cultured people were none the less credulous.[156] The Stoic philosophers admitted omens. The emperor Augustus regarded it as a bad sign when he put on the wrong shoe. Suetonius wrote to Pliny the Younger, begging him to transfer his case to another day on account of a dream which he had had. Pliny the Younger believed in ghosts.
Among peoples ready to admit everything, different religions, instead of going to pieces, fused into a common religion. This religion, at once Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Asiatic, dominated the world at the second century of our era; and so the Christians called it the religion of the nations; down to the fourth century they gave the pagans the name of "gentiles" (men of the nations); at the same time the common law was called the Law of Nations.