the moon, and the stars (see Deut. iv. 19; Job xxxi. 25), especially the planet Venus, but this cult was of secondary importance only (see W. Robertson Smith, op. cit., p. 135, n. 1), although it grew in proportion as the Babylonian influence became stronger. The polemics of the Fathers of the Syrian Church show how considerable its prestige was in the Christian era (cf. Ephrem, Opera Syriaca, Rome, 1740, II, pp. 447 ff.; the "Assyrian" Tatian, c. 9 ff., etc.).
[58]. Humann and Puchstein, Reise in Klein-Asien und Nord-Syrien, 1890, pl. XL; Mon. myst. Mithra, I, p. 188, fig. 8; Bouché-Leclercq, Astrol. gr., p. 439.
[59]. Cf. Wissowa, op. cit., p. 306-7.—On the temple of Bel at Palmyra, cf. Sobernheim, Palmyrenische Inschriften (Mitt. der vorderasiat. Gesellsch., X), 1905, pp. 319 ff.; Lidzbarski, Ephemeris, I, pp. 255 ff., II, p. 280.—Priests of Bel: Clermont-Ganneau, Recueil d'arch. orient., VII, p. 12, 24, 364. Cf. supra, n. [54]. The power of Palmyra under Zenobia, who ruled from the Tigris to the Nile, must have had as a corollary the establishment of an official worship that was necessarily syncretic. Hence its special importance for the history of paganism. Although the Babylonian astrology was a powerful factor in this worship, Judaism seems to have had just as great an influence in its formation. There was at Palmyra a large Jewish colony, which the writers of the Talmud considered only tolerably orthodox (Chaps, Gli Ebrei di Palmira [Rivista Israelitica, I], Florence, 1904, pp. 171 ff., 238 f. Cf. "Palmyra" in the Jewish Encycl.; Jewish insc. of Palmyra; Euting, Sitzb. Berl. Acad., 1885, p. 669; Landauer, ibid., 1884, pp. 933 ff.). This colony seems to have made compromises with the idolaters. On the other hand we see Zenobia herself rebuilding a synagogue in Egypt (Revue archéologique, XXX, 1875, p. III; Zeitschrift für Numismatik, V, p. 229; Dittenberger, Orientis inscript., 729). This influence of Judaism seems to explain the development at Palmyra of the cult of Ζεὺς ὕψιτος καὶ ἐπήκοος, "he whose name is blessed in eternity." The name of Hypsistos has been applied everywhere to Jehovah and to the pagan Zeus (supra, p. [62], [128]) at the same time. The text of Zosimus (I, 61), according to which Aurelian brought from Palmyra to Rome the statues of Ἡλίου τε καὶ Βήλου (this has been wrongly changed to read τοῦ καὶ Βήλου), proves that the
astrological religion of the great desert city recognized a supreme god residing in the highest heavens, and a solar god, his visible image and agent, according to the Semitic theology of the last period of paganism (supra, p. [134]).
[60]. I have spoken of this solar eschatology in the memorial cited infra, n. [88].
[61]. This opinion is that of Posidonius (see Wendland, Philos Schrift über die Vorsehung, Berlin, 1892, p. 68, n. 1; 70, n. 2). It is shared by the ancient astrologers.
[62]. This old pagan and gnostic idea has continued to the present day in Syria among the Nosaïris; cf. Dussaud, Histoire et religion des Nosaïris, 1900, p. 125.
[63]. The belief that pious souls are guided to heaven by a psychopompus, is found not only in the mysteries of Mithra (Mon. myst. Mithra, I, p. 310), but also in the Syrian cults where that rôle was often assigned to the solar god, see Isid. Lévy, Cultes syriens dans le Talmud (Revue des études juives, XLIII), 1901, p. 5, and Dussaud, Notes, p. 27; cf. the Le Bas-Waddington inscription, 2442:
"Βασιλεῦ δέσποτα (= the sun), ἵλαθι καὶ δίδου πᾶσιν ἡμῖν ὑγίην καθαράν, πρήξις ἀγαθὰς καὶ βίου τέλος ἐσθλόν."—
The same idea is found in inscriptions in the Occident; as for instance in the peculiar epitaph of a sailor who died at Marseilles (Kaibel, Inscr. gr., XIV, 2462 = Epigr., 650):