The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism

by Franz Cumont

[23]. The narrative and symbolic sculpture of the Oriental cults was a preparation for that of the Middle Ages, and many remarks in Mâle's beautiful book L'Art du XIII^e siècle en France, can be applied to the art of dying paganism.

II. WHY THE ORIENTAL RELIGIONS SPREAD.

Bibliography: Boissier, La religion romaine d'Auguste aux Antonins, especially Bk. II, ch. II.—Jean Réville, La religion à Rome sous les Sévères, Paris, 1886.—Wissowa, Religion und Cultus der Römer, Munich, 1902, pp. 71 ff., 289 ff.—Samuel Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, London, 1905.—Bigg, The Church's Task Under the Roman Empire,

Oxford, 1905.—Cf. also Gruppe, Griech. Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte, 1906, pp. 1519 ff.—Wendland, Die hellenistisch-römische Kultur in ihren Beziehungen zum Judentum und zum Christentum, Tübingen, 1907, pp. 54 f.—The monographs will be cited in connection with the different cults which they treat.

[1]. Mélanges Fredericq, Brussels, 1904, pp. 63 ff. (Pourquoi le latin fut la seule langue liturgique de l'Occident); cf. the observations of Lejay, Rev. d'hist. et litt. relig., XI, 1906, p. 370.

[2]. Holl, Volkssprache in Kleinasien (Hermes, 1908, pp. 250 ff.).

[3]. The volume of Hahn, Rom und Romanismus im griechisch-römischen Osten bis auf die Zeit Hadrians (Leipsic, 1906) discusses a period for the most part prior to the one that interests us. On the period following we have nothing but a provisional sketch by the same author, Romanismus und Hellenismus bis auf die Zeit Justinians (Philologus, Suppl. X), 1907.

[4]. Cf. Tacitus, Annales, XIV, 44: "Nationes in familiis habemus quibus diversi ritus, externa sacra aut nulla sunt."

[5]. S. Reinach, Epona (Extr. Rev. archéol.). 1895.

[6]. The theory of the degeneration of races has been set forth in particular by Stewart Chamberlain, Die Grundlagen des XIX. Jahrhunderts, 3d. ed., Munich, 1901, pp. 296 ff.—The idea of selection by retrogression, of the Ausrottung der Besten, has been defended, as is well known, by Seeck in his Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt, which outlines the religious consequence (II, p. 344). His system is developed in the third volume which appeared in 1909.