and certain depths of the soul of antiquity we must leave unsounded. If a fortunate windfall could give us possession of some sacred book of the later paganism its revelations would surprise the world. We could witness the performance of those mysterious dramas whose symbolic acts commemorated the passion of the gods; in company with the believers we could sympathize with their sufferings, lament their death and share in the joy of their return to life. In those vast collections of archaic rites that hazily perpetuated the memory of abolished creeds we would find traditional formulas couched in obsolete language that was scarcely understood, naive prayers conceived by the faith of the earliest ages, sanctified by the devotion of past centuries, and almost ennobled by the joys and sufferings of past generations. We would also read those hymns in which philosophic thought found expression in sumptuous allegories[[16]] or humbled itself before the omnipotence of the infinite, poems of which only a few stoic effusions celebrating the creative or destructive fire, or expressing a complete surrender to divine fate can give us some idea.[[17]]
But everything is gone, and thus we lose the possibility of studying from the original documents the internal development of the pagan religions.
We should feel this loss less keenly if we possessed at least the works of Greek and Latin mythographers on the subject of foreign divinities like the voluminous books published during the second century by Eusebius and Pallas on the Mysteries of Mithra. But those works were thought devoid of interest or even dangerous by the devout Middle Ages, and they are not likely to have survived the fall of paganism. The
treatises on mythology that have been preserved deal almost entirely with the ancient Hellenic fables made famous by the classic writers, to the neglect of the Oriental religions.[[18]]
As a rule, all we find in literature on this subject are a few incidental remarks and passing allusions. History is incredibly poor in that respect. This poverty of information was caused in the first place by a narrowness of view characteristic of the rhetoric cultivated by historians of the classical period and especially of the empire. Politics and the wars of the rulers, the dramas, the intrigues and even the gossip of the courts and of the official world were of much higher interest to them than the great economic or religious transformations. Moreover, there is no period of the Roman empire concerning which we are so little informed as the third century, precisely the one during which the Oriental religions reached the apogee of their power. From Herodianus and Dion Cassius to the Byzantines, and from Suetonius to Ammianus Marcellinus, all narratives of any importance have been lost, and this deplorable blank in historic tradition is particularly fatal to the study of paganism.
It is a strange fact that light literature concerned itself more with these grave questions. The rites of the exotic religions stimulated the imagination of the satirists, and the pomp of the festivities furnished the novelists with brilliant descriptive matter. Juvenal laughs at the mortifications of the devotees of Isis; in his Necromancy Lucian parodies the interminable purifications of the magi, and in the Metamorphoses Apuleius relates the various scenes of an initiation into the mysteries of Isis with the fervor of a neophyte and
the studied refinement of a rhetorician. But as a rule we find only incidental remarks and superficial observations in the authors. Not even the precious treatise On the Syrian Goddess, in which Lucian tells of a visit to the temple of Hierapolis and repeats his conversation with the priests, has any depth. What he relates is the impression of an intelligent, curious and above all an ironical traveler.[[19]]
In order to obtain a more perfect initiation and a less fragmentary insight into the doctrines taught by the Oriental religions, we are compelled to turn to two kinds of testimony, inspired by contrary tendencies, but equally suspicious: the testimony of the philosophers, and that of the fathers of the church. The Stoics and the Platonists frequently took an interest in the religious beliefs of the barbarians, and it is to them that we are indebted for the possession of highly valuable data on this subject. Plutarch's treatise Isis and Osiris is a source whose importance is appreciated even by Egyptologists, whom it aids in reconstructing the legends of those divinities.[[20]] But the philosophers very seldom expounded foreign doctrines objectively and for their own sake. They embodied them in their systems as a means of proof or illustration; they surrounded them with personal exegesis or drowned them in transcendental commentaries; in short, they claimed to discover their own ideas in them. It is always difficult and sometimes impossible to distinguish the dogmas from the self-confident interpretations which are usually as incorrect as possible.
The writings of the ecclesiastical authors, although prejudiced, are very fertile sources of information, but in perusing them one must guard against another kind
of error. By a peculiar irony of fate those controversialists are to-day in many instances our only aid in reviving the idolatry they attempted to destroy. Although the Oriental religions were the most dangerous and most persistent adversaries of Christianity, the works of the Christian writers do not supply as abundant information as one might suppose. The reason for this is that the fathers of the church often show a certain reserve in speaking of idolatry, and affect to recall its monstrosities only in guarded terms. Moreover, as we shall see later on,[[21]] the apologists of the fourth century were frequently behind the times as to the evolution of doctrines, and drawing on literary tradition, from epicureans and skeptics, they fought especially the beliefs of the ancient Grecian and Italian religions that had been abolished or were dying out, while they neglected the living beliefs of the contemporary world.