Under the Roman Empire the longing for religious satisfaction through mystic rites and revelations found new and exotic sources of gratification. Slaves, traders, and finally soldiers from Hellenized Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor, carried their gods throughout the Mediterranean world, and even beyond, to the Atlantic Ocean, to Hadrian’s Wall in Britain, to the Rhine and Danube, and to the borders of the African desert. The invasion of the West by these oriental gods began in 204 B.C., when, in answer to the Roman Senate’s invitation, the Asiatic Great Mother of the Gods took up her residence in Rome. Many other divinities came during the succeeding centuries; but three remained most prominent: the Great Mother of the Gods, whom I have just mentioned, with her attendant Attis; Egyptian Isis and her associate divinities, who were worshipped in Rome as early as Cicero’s day; and the Persian Mithras, whose cult became influential in the West toward the close of the first century of our era.[29] These religions added to their exotic charm that spell which great age casts over men’s imaginations. Osiris, the husband of Isis, had been lord of the dead in Egypt for more than two thousand years; Attis and the Great Mother belonged to an immemorial antiquity; while Mithras had his origin in the remoter East, at a period to which neither Greek nor Roman knowledge ran. Moreover, Attis and Osiris, like Dionysus and Persephone among the Greeks, or the Semitic Adonis and Tammuz, were gods who died and lived again, and who therefore became warrants of man’s immortality. Mithras belonged to another class of divinities. He was held to be the benefactor and constant supporter of mankind. According to the sacred legend, he had himself wrestled with the powers of darkness and had established civilization on earth, before he ascended to heaven, whence he was believed to aid his faithful followers in their constant struggle against the servants of Ahriman, the lord of wickedness.
The devotees of these gods formed sacred communities, admission to which was obtained by secret initiation; the rituals were mysteries in which the devotee had pictured to him, or himself acted out, the sacred drama, whereby he received assurance of divine protection here and of a happy immortality hereafter. The initiate, moreover, was believed to experience a new birth and to enter into union with his god, so that he became Osiris-Serapis, or Attis, or Mithras, even as the Dionysiac devotee became a Bacchus.
To the question how the comforting assurance of present safety and of future immortality was given the initiate, we can return no more satisfactory answer than we can make in the case of the Greek mysteries; yet we may get some hint from the words which the Latin writer, Apuleius, puts into the mouth of his hero, Lucius, who was initiated into the rites of Isis. This is all that he might tell: “I approached the bounds of death. I trod the threshold of Proserpina. I was carried through all the elements and returned again to the upper air. At dead of night I saw the sun glowing with a brilliant light. The gods of heaven and of hell I approached in very person and worshipped face to face.”[30] Obscure as these words are, much is plain. In some way the devotee was made to believe that he, like Virgil’s hero, had passed through the world of the dead and had been born again into a new life; he had touched the elements—earth, air, water, and fire, the very foundations of the visible cosmos; he had seen the sun which ever shines on the consecrated; and he had been granted the beatific vision. Therefore he knew that his salvation was secure forever.
Furthermore in these mystery religions preparation for the emotional experiences of initiation was made by means of lustral baths, fasting, abstinence, and penance; once consecrated, the devotee supported his religious life by following a prescribed regimen and by participating in frequent holy offices; degrees of initiation and grades of office marked his advance in faithful proficiency; while magic words and formulae, committed to memory, assured him a safe passage from this world to the next.
The oriental mysteries enjoyed a widespread popularity, except in Greece, under the Roman Empire down to the latter half of the third century. Then they began to lose their hold in the Roman provinces before the growing power of Christianity; yet in the city of Rome they stubbornly held their ground until the end of the fourth century. The first St. Peter’s was built hard beside a shrine of the Great Mother of the Gods; there for three-quarters of a century the old and the new mysteries strove in conscious rivalry, until at last Cybele was forced to yield to Christ.
The last centuries before the birth of Jesus and the opening centuries of our era were marked by an increasing religious longing and unrest, first among the Greeks and then among the Romans. There was a weariness and a dissatisfaction with the inherited forms of religious expression; and many felt a sense of separation from God, of a gulf between the human and the divine, which they hoped might be bridged by a direct revelation, by a vision, which would grant immediate knowledge of God. These eager desires led in part to an increase in superstition and credulity, over which we need not now pause; in part to the resort to the oriental mysteries of which I have just spoken; and in part to a revival of Pythagorean mysticism and of mystic Platonism among the intellectuals, who no longer felt that the reason and the will gave them the assurance which they required.
The later mystic philosophies laid much stress on an ascetic discipline in this life, to secure the soul’s purification, and all taught that the great end of man was to attain to the knowledge of God, wherein lay man’s supreme happiness. Such knowledge, it was thought, could come only through a revelation. Here these philosophies agreed with the teaching of the oriental mysteries, and indeed with popular belief as well. On the question of the immortality of the soul, however, the later mystics brought forward no new arguments. Plotinus, the greatest of the Neoplatonists, virtually repeats the proofs adduced by the founder of the Academy.[31] Undoubtedly during the opening centuries of the Christian era there was a growing belief in the soul’s immortality, or at least an increasing hope of a future life, but such hopes and beliefs, outside Christianity, were not based on new arguments. Plato had once for all in antiquity, supplied the philosophic grounds for confidence. Only in modern times have new arguments of any weight been adduced.
Let us now pause to summarize the results of the considerations which have thus far occupied us. We may fairly say that, in spite of popular doubt, intellectual scepticism, and philosophic denial, beliefs in some kind of existence beyond the grave were widespread in the Greco-Roman world at the beginning of our era. For many, probably for most, belief did not advance beyond inherited intuitions, fears, or hopes, which were fostered by tendance of the dead, prescribed by immemorial custom. Many, both the simple and the learned, found their assurance in diverse forms of Greek mysteries; others, again, strengthened to endure the buffetings of this life by the resolute doctrines of Stoicism, were satisfied with the extended, though limited, future existence vouchsafed the virtuous; while the later Platonists, returning to the mystic Orphic-Pythagorean elements which had influenced the founder of their school, offered their disciples arguments in favor of a genuine immortality. Under the Empire the supports of faith became more numerous and appealing. At the lowest end of the scale were charlatans, as there had been since Plato’s day,[32] who imposed on the fears and hopes of their victims for their own mercenary ends. Higher were those inspiring Eastern mysteries which were carried to the remotest provinces, binding their devotees by initiation, ritual service, and a prescribed regimen, more constantly to a religious life than Greek mysteries had ever done; and the great end of all was the assurance that the souls of the faithful should not die, but should mount to the upper heavens to be at one with God.
The last vital philosophy of antiquity was Neoplatonism, on which we have just touched; the chief aim of the Neoplatonist also was to secure union with the Divine, and his greatest article of faith was the soul’s immortality. If this theosophic philosophy seem to any of poor account, I would remind him that by Origen and Augustine Neoplatonism was brought into Christian thought, where it has been operative ever since.