had deserted the Christian churches to worship Allah or Brahma, to follow the precepts of Confucius or Buddha, or to adopt the maxims of the Shinto; let us imagine a great confusion of all the races of the world in which Arabian mullahs, Chinese scholars, Japanese bonzes, Tibetan lamas and Hindu pundits would be preaching fatalism and predestination, ancestor-worship and devotion to a deified sovereign, pessimism and deliverance through annihilation—a confusion in which all those priests would erect temples of exotic architecture in our cities and celebrate their disparate rites therein. Such a dream, which the future may perhaps realize, would offer a pretty accurate picture of the religious chaos in which the ancient world was struggling before the reign of Constantine.
The Oriental religions that successively gained popularity exercised a decisive influence on the transformation of Latin paganism. Asia Minor was the first to have its gods accepted by Italy. Since the end of the Punic wars the black stone symbolizing the Great Mother of Pessinus had been established on the Palatine, but only since the reign of Claudius could the Phrygian cult freely develop in all its splendor and excesses. It introduced a sensual, highly-colored and fanatical worship into the grave and somber religion of the Romans. Officially recognized, it attracted and took under its protection other foreign divinities from Anatolia and assimilated them to Cybele and Attis, who thereafter bore the symbols of several deities together. Cappadocian, Jewish, Persian and even Christian influences modified the old rites of Pessinus and filled them with ideas of spiritual purification and
eternal redemption by the bloody baptism of the taurobolium. But the priests did not succeed in eliminating the basis of coarse naturism which ancient barbaric tradition had imposed upon them.
Beginning with the second century before our era, the mysteries of Isis and Serapis spread over Italy with the Alexandrian culture whose religious expression they were, and in spite of all persecution established themselves at Rome where Caligula gave them the freedom of the city. They did not bring with them a very advanced theological system, because Egypt never produced anything but a chaotic aggregate of disparate doctrines, nor a very elevated ethics, because the level of its morality—that of the Alexandrian Greeks—rose but slowly from a low stage. But they made Italy, and later the other Latin provinces, familiar with an ancient ritual of incomparable charm that aroused widely different feelings with its splendid processions and liturgic dramas. They also gave their votaries positive assurance of a blissful immortality after death, when they would be united with Serapis and, participating body and soul in his divinity, would live in eternal contemplation of the gods.
At a somewhat later period arrived the numerous and varied Baals of Syria. The great economic movement starting at the beginning of our era which produced the colonization of the Latin world by Syrian slaves and merchants, not only modified the material civilization of Europe, but also its conceptions and beliefs. The Semitic cults entered into successful competition with those of Asia Minor and Egypt. They may not have had so stirring a liturgy, nor have been so thoroughly absorbed in preoccupation with a future
life, although they taught an original eschatology, but they did have an infinitely higher idea of divinity. The Chaldean astrology, of which the Syrian priests were enthusiastic disciples, had furnished them with the elements of a scientific theology. It had led them to the notion of a God residing far from the earth above the zone of the stars, a God almighty, universal and eternal. Everything on earth was determined by the revolutions of the heavens according to infinite cycles of years. It had taught them at the same time the worship of the sun, the radiant source of earthly life and human intelligence.
The learned doctrines of the Babylonians had also imposed themselves upon the Persian mysteries of Mithra which considered time identified with heaven as the supreme cause, and deified the stars; but they had superimposed themselves upon the ancient Mazdean creed without destroying it. Thus the essential principles of the religion of Iran, the secular and often successful rival of Greece, penetrated into the Occident under cover of Chaldean wisdom. The Mithra worship, the last and highest manifestation of ancient paganism, had Persian dualism for its fundamental dogma. The world is the scene and the stake of a contest between good and evil, Ormuzd and Ahriman, gods and demons, and from this primary conception of the universe flowed a strong and pure system of ethics. Life is a combat; soldiers under the command of Mithra, invincible heroes of the faith, must ceaselessly oppose the undertakings of the infernal powers which sow corruption broadcast. This imperative ethics was productive of energy and formed the characteristic
feature distinguishing Mithraism from all other Oriental cults.
Thus every one of the Levantine countries—and that is what we meant to show in this brief recapitulation—had enriched Roman paganism with new beliefs that were frequently destined to outlive it. What was the result of this confusion of heterogeneous doctrines whose multiplicity was extreme and whose values were very different? How did the barbaric ideas refine themselves and combine with each other when thrown into the fiery crucible of imperial syncretism? In other words, what shape was assumed by ancient idolatry, so impregnated with exotic theories during the fourth century, when it was finally dethroned? It is this point that we should like to indicate briefly as the conclusion to these studies.
However, can we speak of one pagan religion? Did not the blending of the races result in multiplying the variety of disagreements? Had not the confused collision of creeds produced a division into fragments, a communication of churches? Had not a complacent syncretism engendered a multiplication of sects? The "Hellenes," as Themistius told the Emperor Valens, had three hundred ways of conceiving and honoring deity, who takes pleasure in such diversity of homage.[[1]] In paganism a cult does not die violently, but after long decay. A new doctrine does not necessarily displace an older one. They may co-exist for a long time as contrary possibilities suggested by the intellect or faith, and all opinions, all practices, seem respectable to paganism. It never has any radical or revolutionary transformations. Undoubtedly, the pagan beliefs of the fourth century or earlier did not