The philosophic school that was most aggressively protestant against the popular creeds and cults appears to have been the Cynic, mordant and outspoken criticism being characteristic of this sect. We have record of Diogenes’ contempt for the Eleusinian mysteries, of Antisthenes’ disdain for the Great Mother of Phrygia and her mendicant priests; and the fragments in a newly discovered papyrus of a treatise by Kerkidas,[147.1] the Cynic philosopher and statesman of Megalopolis in the third century B.C., contain a theory which reduces personal deities to impotent instruments of Fate and would substitute for Zeus and his colleagues certain divinised abstractions, such as Nemesis and Μετάδως; the latter term, if the reading is sound, seems to denote the Spirit of Unselfishness or Sacrifice, an interesting and potentially valuable idea, but at this time still-born.
Asclepios-Cult and later mysteries.—The philosophic sectarians of this later age do not appear to have made a serious attempt to capture the mind of the public; and the popular religious movements for the most part ignored them and their teaching. The Hellenistic religions are as convincedly theistic and idolatrous as the older were. The chief change lay in this, that a man now might to some extent choose his own divinity or—what was even of more import—be chosen by him or her; he was no longer limited to the cults into which he was born. This freedom had already for some time been offered by the ‘thiasoi’; and now in the Hellenistic world, especially through the powerful and wide influence of the cult of Asklepios, the idea was developed of a deity who as Healer and Saviour called all mankind to himself; and it was this significant cult-phenomenon that induced Kerkidas in the above-mentioned passage to include Παιάν, the ‘Healer,’ among the true divinities whose worship ought to supplant that of the older gods. In the treatise called ‘Asclepios’ of the pseudo-Apuleius a long address and prayer to this deity are preserved of which the tone is strikingly Christian.[148.1] “We rejoice in thy divine salvation, because thou hast shown thyself wholly to us; we rejoice that thou hast deigned to consecrate us to eternity, while we are still in these mortal bodies.… We have known thee, oh, true life of the life of man.… Adoring thy goodness we make this our only prayer… that thou wouldst be willing to keep us all our lives in the love of thy knowledge.”
Non-Hellenic mysteries.—The phenomenon here indicated attests the stronger vitality at this period of personal or individual, as distinct from tribal or political religion; and this was quickened also by the growth of certain non-Hellenic mysteries in the Mediterranean area in the latter centuries of Paganism, notably by the Samothracian, those of Attis and the Great Mother, the Egyptian Isis, and finally in the last period of all of Mithras. In most of these the records allow us to discover many interesting ideas that reappear in early Christianity, such, for instance, as communion with the divinity through sacrament, the mystic death and rebirth of the Catechumen, the saving efficacy of baptism and purification. These rites could satisfy the craving of the mortal to attain to the conviction of immortality and to the ecstatic consciousness of complete or temporary self-absorption in God. But in the mysteries of Sabazios and Cybele and possibly in others this sense of divinity was conveyed to the ‘mystes’ by the simulation of a holy marriage or sex-communion with the God or Goddess; and for this reason the Pagan mysteries were generally attacked by the Christian Fathers as obscene; the charge was unjust on the whole, though the psychic effect of the special act of ritual just alluded to was probably detrimental to the moral imagination.
Hermetic literature.—The strangest and most interesting manifestation that the ancient records have preserved for us of this fusion of Hellenic culture and Oriental religious sentiment is presented by the Hermetic literature. The origins of this fantastic product of the human mind are traced by Professor Petrie[149.1] back to the sixth or fifth centuries B.C. But, though much of it is pre-Christian, its philosophic diction proves that it cannot be earlier than 300 B.C., and the bulk of it is probably later.[149.2] A frequent Hermetic formula, addressed to the deity—ἐγώ εἰμι σὺ καὶ σὺ ἐγώ, “I am Thou and Thou art I”—may be taken as the master-word of these hieratic writings. This unnatural alliance between Greek philosophy and Oriental mystic theosophy is a momentous phenomenon of later Paganism; and the study of the origins of Christian metaphysic is much concerned with it.
Such theosophy had a natural affinity with magic; and magic, always a power in an age of intellectual decay, begins to be most powerful in this latest age of Hellenism. It is a just reproach that Augustine brings against Porphyry, the most notable of the Neoplatonists that he ‘wavered between philosophy and a sacrilegious curiosity,’ that is, a vicious interest in the black art.[149.3]
In these strange forms of faith and speculation the clearness and sanity of the pure Hellenic intellect appear clouded and troubled, the lineaments of the old types of the Hellenic thought and imagination almost effaced. And the learning and science of the Hellenistic age stood mainly aloof from the religious forces that moved the masses of the people.
Daimonism.—The mystic and theosophic literature of the Hellenistic and Græco-Roman period was markedly ‘daimonistic,’ being infected with the polydaimonism of the East and positing the existence of good and evil ‘daimones’ as a metaphysic dogma. We can trace a corresponding change in the popular Hellenic imagination. In the earlier period, as has been shown, the native Hellene was, as compared with other races, fairly strong-minded in respect of the terrors of the demon-world; but the later people of the Greek area were certainly tainted in some degree with this unfortunate superstition of the East, and various forms of exorcism, conjuration and evocation became more prevalent. The modern Greek temperament appears to be morbidly possessed with this disease[150.1]; and we may suppose that the germs have been inherited and developed from this last period of the old civilisation.
Eschatology.—But another feature that we mark in these mystic worships and mystic societies of the Hellenistic world indicates a higher aspect of religion and marks an epoch in religious aspiration. Most of them, if not all, proclaimed the immortality of the soul, a happy resurrection, a divine life after death. The Hellene who had been initiated into the Osiris faith hoped to attain immortal happiness in and through Osiris, availing himself of Egyptian ideas and Egyptian spell-formulæ. The priest of certain mysteries, probably of Attis, comforts the congregation of the faithful, sorrowing over the death of their God, with words that aver the certainty of his resurrection and by implication the hope of their own—
θαρρεῖτε μύσται τοῦ θεοῦ σεσωσμένου
ἔσται γὰρ ἡμῖν ἐκ πόνων σωτηρία.[151.1]
“Be of good cheer, ye of the mystery of the saved God, for after our troubles there shall be to us salvation.”