Yet, although there is a very decided tendency to monotheism in the Alexandrian religion, a tendency which appealed strongly to minds like Plutarch, it did not succeed in altogether breaking with polytheism and its attendant superstitions. The attempted alliance of religion and philosophy was far from complete. Philosophy, indeed, had substituted abstract theory for the poetry of legend. It struggled hard to assert the essential unity of the Divine nature. And Plutarch, in his treatise on Isis, declares that God is one and the same in all lands under whatever names He may be worshipped.[2953] But the [pg 573]treatise shows at the same time how vague and unsettled still was the theology of Alexandria, and how hard it found the task of wedding Platonism to the haunting tradition of old idolatry. Physics, metaphysics, etymology, are all employed with infinite ingenuity to recover the secret meaning which it is assumed that ancient wisdom had veiled under the forms of legend. But arbitrary fancy plays far too large a part in these random guesses, and system there is none, to bridge the gulf between the Platonist eclectic and the superstitious masses. Isis worship was in practice linked with all the reigning superstitions, with divination, magic, astrology, oneiromancy. Manetho, who was one of the founders of the worship of Serapis, wrote a treatise for the Greek world on the influence of the stars on human destiny.[2954] Egyptian astrologists were always in great demand. The emperors Otho and M. Aurelius carried them in their train.[2955] Many Roman ladies in sickness would not take food or medicine till the safe hour had been determined by inspecting the Petosiris.[2956] The Isiac devotee was an enthusiastic believer in dreams sent by his favourite deities. On many inscriptions the record may be read of these warnings of the night.[2957] In the syncretism of the time, Serapis came to be identified with the Greek god of healing, and patients sleeping in Egyptian temples received in dreams inspired prescriptions for their maladies.[2958] Sometimes the deity vouchsafed to confer miraculous powers of cure on a worshipper. The sceptical good sense of Vespasian was persuaded by medical courtiers at Alexandria to try the effect of his touch on the blind and paralytic, who had a divine monition to seek the aid of the emperor.[2959] The cultivated Aristides had a firm faith in these heaven-sent messages. He even believed that Serapis could call back the dead to life.[2960]
Yet Aristides, in his prose hymn to Serapis, gives us a glimpse of the better side of that religion. After all, the superstitions which clustered round it were the universal [pg 574]beliefs of the age, prevalent among the most cultivated and the most ignorant. The question for the modern student is whether these Alexandrian worships provided real spiritual sustenance for their devotees. And, in spite of many appearances to the contrary, the impartial inquirer must come to the conclusion that the cult of the Egyptian deities, through its inner monotheism, its ideal of ascetic purity, its vision of a great judgment and a life to come, was a real advance on the popular religion of old Greece and Rome. Isis and Serapis, along with Mithra, were preparing the Western world for the religion which was to appease the long travail of humanity by a more perfect vision of the Divine. It is impossible for a modern man to realise the emotion which might be excited by a symbolism like that of Demeter, or Mithra, or Isis, with its roots in a gross heathen past. But no reader of Apuleius, Plutarch, or Philostratus should fail to realise the surging spiritual energy which, in the second and third centuries, was seeking for expression and appeasement. It struck into strange devious tracks, and often was deluded by phantasms of old superstition glorified by a new spirit. But let us remember the enduring strength of hereditary piety and ancient association, and, under its influence, the magical skill of the religious consciousness to maintain the link between widely severed generations, by purifying the grossness of the past and transforming things absurd and offensive into consecrated vehicles of high spiritual sentiment. No one, who has read in Apuleius the initiation of Lucius in the Isiac mysteries, can doubt that the effect on the votary was profound and elevating. Pious artistic skill was not wanting to heighten emotion in Isis worship, as it is not disdained in our Christian churches. But the prayer of thanksgiving offered by Lucius might, mutatis mutandis, be uttered by a new convert at a camp-meeting, or a Breton peasant after her first communion. It is the devout expression of the deep elementary religious feelings of awe and gratitude, humility and joy, boundless hope and trust. In the same tone, Aristides sings his prose canticle to Serapis. There is not a memory of the brute gods of the Nile. The Alexandrian god is now the equal or counterpart of Zeus, the lord of life and death, who cares for mortal men, who comforts, relieves, sustains. He is [pg 575]indeed a most awful power, yet one full of loving-kindness, tenderness, and mercy.[2961] In Plutarch we reach perhaps an even more spiritual height. Osiris, who in old legend represented the Nile, or the coarse fructifying powers of nature, passes into the Eternal Love and Beauty, pure, passionless, remote from any region of change or death, unapproachable in His ethereal splendour, save, as in moments of inspired musing, we may faintly touch Him as in a dream.
In the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, the goddess who appears in a vision to Lucius promises that, when his mortal course is run, he shall find her illumining the Stygian gloom. And, next to the maternal love with which she embraced her votaries in this life, the great attraction of her cult was the promise of a blessed future, through sacramental grace, which she offered for the world to come. Serapis, too, is from the beginning a god of the under world, a “guide of souls,” as he is also their judge at the Great Assize.[2962] The Orphic lore, the mysteries of the Eleusinian goddesses and Dionysus, had for ages taught a dim doctrine of immortality, under the veil of legend, through the scenic effects of their dramatic mysteries. They first revealed to the Greek race that the life to come was the true life, for which the present was only a purgatorial preparation. They taught, in whatever rude fashion, that future beatitude could only be secured by a purification from the stains of time.[2963] The doctrine may have been drawn from Egypt, and Egypt once more gave it fresh meaning and force. The Alexandrian worship came with a deeper faith and more impressive ritual, with dreams and monitory visions, with a mystic lore, and the ascetic preparation for the holy mysteries, with the final scene in the inner sanctuary, when the votary seemed borne far beyond the limits of space and time into ethereal distances.[2964] The soul might, indeed, have to pass through many bodies and mortal lives before it reached the life eternal. But the motto of the Isiac faith, inscribed on many tombs, was εὐψύχει, “be of good courage,” [pg 576]“may Osiris give the water of refreshment.”[2965] Everywhere the lotus, image of immortality, in its calix opening at every dawn, appears on symbols of the worship. And Harpocrates, the god who has triumphed over death, appears as the child issuing from the mystic flower. The Roman practice of burning the dead might seem to separate for ever the fate of the body from the spirit, although it is really a question of more or less rapid resolution of the mortal frame into its original elements. But, as we have seen, the man of the early Empire became more and more anxious to preserve undisturbed the “handful of white dust” rescued from the pyre, and would invoke the wrath of Isis against the desecrator.[2966] The great object of many of the colleges was to secure their humble members a niche in the columbarium. The Alexandrine faith in immortality, by the grace of Isis and Serapis, probably did not inquire too curiously into the manner of the resurrection.
Undoubtedly another secret of the popularity of the Egyptian worships lay in their impressive ritual, the separation of their clergy from the world, and in the comradeship of the guilds in which their votaries were enrolled. Apuleius has left us, in the initiation of Lucius at Cenchreae, and again at Rome, a priceless picture of the Isiac ritual. Everything in the ceremonial tends to kindle pious enthusiasm. Sophocles and Pindar had extolled the blessedness of those who had seen the mystic vision.[2967] The experience of Lucius would seem to confirm the testimony of the Greek poets. When the goddess has promised him deliverance from brutish form, and pledged him to strict obedience, Lucius is inspired with the utmost ardour to join in “the holy warfare.” He takes up his abode in the sacred precincts, he begs to be admitted to full communion. But the venerable pontiff requires him to await the sign of the divine will. Lucius continues in fasting and prayer till the sign at last comes; when it comes he hastens to the morning sacrifice. The scrolls, covered with symbols of ancient Egypt, are brought in, and then, before a crowd of the faithful, he is plunged in the sacred font. Returning to the temple, as he lies prostrate [pg 577]before the image of the goddess in prayer, he has whispered to him “the unutterable words.” Ten days more are spent in strictest retreat and abstinence from pleasures of the flesh; and then came the crowning rite, the solemn vigil in the inner sanctuary. There, as at Eleusis, a vivid drama of a divine death and resurrection probably passed before his eyes, in flashing radiance and awful visions, amid gloom and the tones of weird music. But the tale of what he saw and heard could never be fully unfolded to mortal ear.
There indeed are some sordid and suspicious traits in the history of this worship. As in the case of the taurobolium,[2968] the mysteries of Isis and Serapis could not be enjoyed without a considerable outlay. And Lucius found a difficulty in meeting the expense.[2969] But, whether in heathendom or Christendom, a regular priesthood and an elaborate ritual cannot be supported without the offerings of the faithful. There has probably never been a religion in which the charge of venality has not been levelled against the priests. But Lucius finds here no stumbling-block. No material offering can repay the goodness and love of the goddess. He feels towards her not only reverence and gratitude, but the love of a son to a Divine mother. Ascetic isolation has produced the natural result of imaginative ecstasy and mystic exaltation. The long, quiet hours of rapt devotion before the sacred figure in the stillness of the shrine, the spectral visions of the supreme hour of revelation, made a profound impression on a soul which was deeply tainted by other visions of old-world sin.
The daily ritual of Isis, which seems to have been as regular and complicated as that of the Catholic Church, produced an immense effect on the Roman mind. Every day there were two solemn offices, at which white-robed, tonsured priests, with acolytes and assistants of every degree, officiated.[2970] The morning litany and sacrifice was an impressive service. The crowd of worshippers thronged the space before the chapel at the early dawn. The priest, ascending by a hidden stair, drew apart the veil of the sanctuary,[2971] and offered the holy image [pg 578]to their adoration. He then made the round of the altars, reciting the litany, and sprinkling the holy water “from the secret spring.” At two o’clock in the afternoon the passers by could hear from the temple in the Campus Martius the chant of vespers.[2972] A fresco of Herculaneum gives us a picture of the service. It is the adoration of the holy water, representing in symbol the fructifying and deathless power of Osiris. A priest, standing before the holy place, raises breast high a sacred urn for the adoration of the crowd. The sacrifice is smoking on the altar, and two choirs are chanting to the accompaniment of the seistron and the flute.[2973] Another fresco from Herculaneum exhibits a bearded, dark-skinned figure, crowned with the lotus, in the attitude of dancing before a throng of spectators to the sound of music. It is plausibly conjectured that we have here a pantomimic representation of the passion of Osiris and its joyful close.[2974] There was much solemn pomp and striking scenic effect in this public ceremonial. But it is clear from Apuleius, that an important part of worship was also long silent meditation before the image of the goddess. The poets speak of devotees seated thus before the altar, and in the temple at Pompeii a bench has been found which, from its position, was probably occupied by such silent worshippers.[2975]
The great festivals of the Egyptian worship were the blessing of the sacred vessel on the fifth of March, and the celebration of the quest and finding of Osiris in November. The anniversary of the death and rising again of the god was strictly observed by large numbers, especially among women. Pagan and Christian writers have alike ridiculed the theatrical grief and joy for a god so often found, so often lost.[2976] The death of Osiris at the hands of Typhon, the rending of the divine form, and the dispersion of the lacerated remains, were passionately lamented in sympathy with the mourning Isis. With effusive grief the devotees beat their breasts and lacerated their arms, and followed in eager search. When on the [pg 579]third day the god had been found and restored, the joyful event was hailed with extravagant gladness, and celebrated by a banquet of the initiated. For some of these holy days the rubrics prescribed a long preparation of fasting and ascetic restraint. But that a general strictness of life was not required of the Isiac votary, at least under the early Empire, may be inferred from the fact that the frail Cynthias and Delias in Propertius and Tibullus were among the most regular in ritual observance.[2977] The festival of the holy vessel of Isis, which marked the opening of navigation, and received the benediction of the goddess, was, in the early Empire, observed with solemn pomp and enthusiasm by the coast towns of the Mediterranean. A brilliantly vivid description of such a scene at Cenchreae has been left by Apuleius. It was a great popular carnival, in which a long procession, masquerading in the most fantastic and various costumes, conducted the sacred ship to the shore. Women in white robes scattered flowers and perfumes along the way. A throng of both sexes bore torches and tapers, to symbolise the reign of the Mother of the stars. The music of flute and pipe meanwhile filled the air with sacred symphonies, and a band of youths in snow-white vestments chanted a hymn. Wave upon wave came the throng of those who had been admitted to full communion, all clad in linen, and the men marked with the tonsure. They were followed by the priests, each bearing some symbol of the many powers and virtues of the goddess, the boat-shaped lamp, the “altars of succour,” the palm of gold, the wand of Mercury. In a pix were borne the holy mysteries, and, last of all, the most venerable symbol, a small urn of shining gold and adorned in subtle workmanship with figures of Egyptian legend.[2978] This holy vase, containing the water of the sacred river, which was an emanation from Osiris,[2979] closed the procession. Arrived at the margin of the sea, the chief priest consecrated the sacred vessel with solemn form and litany, and named it with the holy name. Adorned with gold and citrus wood and pictures of old legend, it spread its white sails to the breeze, and bore [pg 580]into the distance the vows and offerings of the faithful for the safety of those upon the deep.
The oriental religions of the imperial period were distinguished from the native religion of Latium by the possession of a numerous and highly organised priesthood, and an intensely sacerdotal spirit.[2980] In an age of growing religious faith, this characteristic gave them enormous power. The priest became a necessary medium of intercourse with God. It is also one of the many traits in the later paganism, which prepared and softened the transition to the reign of the mediaeval Church. It would be tedious and unprofitable to enumerate the various grades of the Isiac priesthood. There were high priests of conspicuous dignity, who were also called prophetae.[2981] But ordinary priests could perform many of their functions.[2982] There were interpreters of dreams, dressers and keepers of the sacred wardrobe of the goddess,[2983] whose duties must have been onerous, if we may judge from the list of robes and jewels and sacred furniture preserved in inscriptions or recovered from the ruins of Isiac shrines.[2984] It has been remarked that the roaming Visigoths in southern Gaul must have had a rare spoil if they had the fortune to light on one of the great temples of Isis. The scribe of the Pastophori, in Apuleius, is also an important officer. He summons the sacred convocation, and recites the “bidding prayer” for the Emperor and all subjects, in their several places and stations.[2985] Music took a large part in the ritual; there was hymn-singing to the sound of flutes, harp, and cymbal; and the chanters and paeanists of Serapis formed an order by themselves.[2986] The prayer which Lucius offers to the goddess, in Apuleius, has been arranged as a metrical litany.[2987] Women often appear in inscriptions and in our texts as priestesses, and had a prominent place in all solemn ritual.[2988] And it is evident that, with all its sacerdotalism, the worship gave full recognition to devout wor[pg 581]shippers of every degree and sex. All who are devoted to the service have their place and function. The initiated might even wear the tonsure in the ordinary lay life. To do this, indeed, needed some courage, in the face of Roman ridicule. But the religious were, from the earliest times in Greece and Italy, associated for mutual support in sacred guilds, designated by various names, Isiaci or Pastophori or Anubiaci. In the third century B.C., such societies are found in Ceos and Peiraeus.[2989] On the walls of Pompeii they have left their appeals to the electors to vote on behalf of candidates for the aedileship.[2990] They were organised on the usual lines of the ancient colleges, divided into decuries, with a director and a treasurer, a “father” or a “mother,” or a patron at their head.[2991] The Isiac guilds must have had a powerful influence in the diffusion of the religion of Alexandria. But they also were probably one cause of the suspicion so long entertained for that worship by the Republican government, and they only asserted their full strength in the second century, when the colleges in general received the tacit sanction of the emperors. That the emperors felt little fear of these foreign sacred corporations became clear when an emperor actually took the tonsure of Isis.[2992]
The Isiac system was energetic and self-assertive, but it can hardly be called dangerous or revolutionary. It threw many of the old gods into the shade, but its syncretism also found a place for many of them. Its inner monotheism, after the fashion of those days, had open arms of charity for all the ancient gods. One of the priests of Isis might be called Iacchagogus or Mithra;[2993] statues of Dionysus and Venus and Priapus stood in the court of the Isium at Pompeii.[2994] The Isis of Apuleius proclaims her identity with nearly all the great powers of classical legend, and gathers them into herself. But Isis identifies only to conquer and absorb. And her priesthood formed an aggressive and powerful caste. The sacerdotal colleges of the Latin religion were never, except in [pg 582]the case of the Vestals, separated from ordinary life. The highest pontificate was held by busy laymen, by consuls or emperors or great soldiers. After the performance of his part in some great rite, the Roman priest returned to his civic place and duties. And in Greece, in the third and second centuries B.C., even the Isiac priesthood was held only for a year, or even for a month; and the sacred processions at one time needed the authorisation of the local council at Samos.[2995] But when we come to the days of Apuleius, all this is changed. The chief priest at Cenchreae is evidently a great ecclesiastic, bearing the sacred Eastern name of Mithra.[2996] He has given up ordinary civic life, and has probably abandoned his Greek name to take a new name “in religion.” Every day two solemn services at least have to be performed in the temple, besides the private direction of souls, which had evidently become a regular part of the priestly functions. Attached to the great temples, and close to the altar, there is a “clergy house” where the ministers are lodged. It is called the Pastophorion, and its chambers have been traced in the débris of the temple at Pompeii.[2997] One of these presbyteries was the scene of the seduction which convulsed the religious world in the reign of Tiberius, and which sent so many pious exiles to the solitudes of Sardinia. The ministers of Isis and Serapis are marked off by the tonsure and the Isiac habit, which meet us in the pages of poets from Tibullus to Juvenal,[2998] and in the frescoes of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The abstinence, which was required as a preparation for communion in ordinary votaries, was a lifelong obligation on the priest. The use of woollen garments, of wine, pork, fish, and certain vegetables, was absolutely forbidden to them.[2999] Chastity was essential in the celebrant of the holy mysteries, and even Tertullian holds up the priests of Isis as a reproachful example of continence to professing followers of Christ. The priesthood is no longer a secondary concern; it absorbs a man’s [pg 583]whole life, sets him apart within the sanctuary as the dispenser of sacred privileges, with the awful power of revealing the mystery of eternity, and preparing souls to meet the great ordeal.
It does not need much imagination to understand the fascination of Isis and Serapis for a people who had outgrown a severe and sober, but an uninspiring faith. They came to the West at the crisis of a great spiritual and political revolution, with the charm of foreign mystery and the immemorial antiquity of a land whose annals ran back to ages long before Rome and Athens were even villages. But with antique charm, the religion combined the moral and spiritual ideas of generations which had outgrown the gross symbolism of Nature worship. The annual festivals might preserve the memory of the myth, which in its grossness and brutal tragedy once pictured the fructifying influence of the mysterious river on the lands which awaited his visitations, or the waning force of vegetative power and solar warmth. But Serapis, the new god of the Ptolemies, became the lord of life and death, the guide and saviour of souls, the great judge of all in the other world, an awful power, yet more inclined to mercy than to judgment.[3000] And Isis rose to equally boundless sway, and one of greater tenderness. Powers above and powers below alike wait on her will: she treads Tartarus under her feet, and yet she embraces all, and specially the weak and miserable, in the arms of her charity.[3001] Above all, she has the secret of the unseen world, and can lighten for her worshipper the Stygian gloom. But the Isiac, like the Orphic revelation, while it gave a blessed promise for the life to come, attached grave conditions to the pledge. In this brief time of probation, the soul must prepare itself under ghostly guidance for the great trial. Sacrament and mystery lent their aid to fortify the worshipper in the face of death, but, to derive their full virtue, he must exercise himself in temperance, abjure the pleasures of the senses, and purify himself for the vision of God.[3002] The sacred ritual of the Egyptian might captivate the senses and imagination by its pomp and music, its steaming altars, and many-coloured symbolism. But in the stillness of the sanctuary the worshipper was trained to find his moments [pg 584]of purest and most exalted devotion in silent meditation before the Queen of heaven and the shades. The lonely, the weak, and the desolate found in the holy guilds succour and consolation, with a place in the ritual of her solemn seasons, which bound each to each in the love of a Divine Mother.