Part 8

As we see, the Ptolemies had given their new religion a literary and artistic shape that was capable of attracting the most refined and cultured minds. But the adaptation to the Hellenic feeling and thinking was not exclusively external. Osiris, the god whose worship was thus renewed, was more adapted than any other to lend his authority to the formation of a syncretic faith. At a very early period, in fact before the time of Herodotus, Osiris had been identified with Dionysus, and Isis with Demeter. M. Foucart has {77} endeavored to prove in an ingenious essay that this assimilation was not arbitrary, that Osiris and Isis came into Crete and Attica during the prehistoric period, and that they were mistaken for Dionysus and Demeter[8] by the people of those regions. Without going back to those remote ages, we shall merely say with him that the mysteries of Dionysus were connected with those of Osiris by far-reaching affinities, not simply by superficial and fortuitous resemblances. Each commemorated the history of a god governing both vegetation and the underworld at the same time, who was put to death and torn to pieces by an enemy, and whose scattered limbs were collected by a goddess, after which he was miraculously revived. The Greeks must have been very willing to adopt a worship in which they found their own divinities and their own myths again with something more poignant and more magnificent added. It is a very remarkable fact that of all the many deities worshiped by the Egyptian districts those of the immediate neighborhood, or if you like, the cycle of Osiris, his wife Isis, their son Harpocrates and their faithful servant Anubis, were the only ones that were adopted by the Hellenic populations. All other heavenly or infernal spirits worshiped by the Egyptians remained strangers to Greece.[9]

In the Greco-Latin literature we notice two opposing attitudes toward the Egyptian religion. It was regarded as the highest and the lowest of religions at the same time, and as a matter of fact there was an abyss between the always ardent popular beliefs and the enlightened faith of the official priests. The Greeks and Romans gazed with admiration upon the splendor of the temples and ceremonial, upon the fabulous {78} antiquity of the sacred traditions and upon the erudition of a clergy possessed of a wisdom that had been revealed by divinity. In becoming the disciples of that clergy, they imagined they were drinking from the pure fountain whence their own myths had sprung. They were overawed by the pretensions of a clergy that prided itself on a past in which it kept on living, and they strongly felt the attraction of a marvelous country where everything was mysterious, from the Nile that had created it to the hieroglyphs engraved upon the walls of its gigantic edifices.[10] At the same time they were shocked by the coarseness of its fetichism and by the absurdity of its superstitions. Above all they felt an unconquerable repulsion at the worship of animals and plants, which had always been the most striking feature of the vulgar Egyptian religion and which, like all other archaic devotions, seems to have been practised with renewed fervor after the accession of the Saite dynasty. The comic writers and the satirists never tired of scoffing at the adorers of the cat, the crocodile, the leek and the onion. Juvenal says ironically: "O holy people, whose very kitchen-gardens produce gods."[11] In a general way, this strange people, entirely separated from the remainder of the world, were regarded with about the same kind of feeling that Europeans entertained toward the Chinese for a long time.

A purely Egyptian worship would not have been acceptable to the Greco-Latin world. The main merit of the mixed creation of the political genius of the Ptolemies consisted in the rejection or modification of everything repugnant or monstrous like the phallophories of Abydos, and in the retention of none but {79} stirring or attractive elements. It was the most civilized of all barbarian religions; it retained enough of the exotic element to arouse the curiosity of the Greeks, but not enough to offend their delicate sense of proportion, and its success was remarkable.

It was adopted wherever the authority or the prestige of the Lagides was felt, and wherever the relations of Alexandria, the great commercial metropolis, extended. The Lagides induced the rulers and the nations with whom they concluded alliances to accept it. King Nicocreon introduced it into Cyprus after having consulted the oracle of the Serapeum,[12] and Agathocles introduced it into Sicily, at the time of his marriage with the daughter-in-law of Ptolemy I (298).[13] At Antioch, Seleucus Callinicus built a sanctuary for the statue of Isis sent to him from Memphis by Ptolemy Euergetes.[14] In token of his friendship Ptolemy Soter introduced his god Serapis into Athens, where the latter had a temple at the foot of the Acropolis[15] ever after, and Arsinoë, his mother or wife, founded another at Halicarnassus, about the year 307.[16] In this manner the political activity of the Egyptian dynasty was directed toward having the divinities, whose glory was in a certain measure connected with that of their house, recognized everywhere. Through Apuleius we know that under the empire the priests of Isis mentioned the ruling sovereign first of all in their prayers.[17] And this was simply an imitation of the grateful devotion which their predecessors had felt toward the Ptolemies.

Protected by the Egyptian squadrons, sailors and merchants propagated the worship of Isis, the goddess of navigators, simultaneously on the coasts of Syria, {80} Asia Minor and Greece, in the islands of the Archipelago,[18] and as far as the Hellespont and Thrace.[19] At Delos, where the inscriptions enable us to study this worship somewhat in detail, it was not merely practised by strangers, but the very sacerdotal functions were performed by members of the Athenian aristocracy. A number of funereal bas-reliefs, in which the deified dead wears the _calathos_ of Serapis on his head, prove the popularity of the belief in future life propagated by these mysteries. According to the Egyptian faith he was identified with the god of the dead.[20]

Even after the splendor of the court of Alexandria had faded and vanished; even after the wars against Mithridates and the growth of piracy had ruined the traffic of the Ægean Sea, the Alexandrian worship was too deeply rooted in the soil of Greece to perish, although it became endangered in certain seaports like Delos. Of all the gods of the Orient, Isis and Serapis were the only ones that retained a place among the great divinities of the Hellenic world until the end of paganism.[21]

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It was this syncretic religion that came to Rome after having enjoyed popularity in the eastern Mediterranean. Sicily and the south of Italy were more than half Hellenized, and the Ptolemies had diplomatic relations with these countries, just as the merchants of Alexandria had commercial relations with them. For this reason the worship of Isis spread as rapidly in those regions as on the coasts of Ionia or in the Cyclades.[22] It was introduced into Syracuse and Catana during the earliest years of the third century by {81} Agathocles. The Serapeum of Pozzuoli, at that time the busiest seaport of Campania, was mentioned in a city ordinance of the year 105 B. C.[23] About the same time an Iseum was founded at Pompeii, where the decorative frescos attest to this day the power of expansion possessed by the Alexandrian culture.

After its adoption by the southern part of the Italian peninsula, this religion was bound to penetrate rapidly to Rome. Ever since the second century before our era, it could not help but find adepts in the chequered multitude of slaves and freedmen. Under the Antonines the college of the _pastophori_ recalled that it had been founded in the time of Sulla.[24] In vain did the authorities try to check the invasion of the Alexandrian gods. Five different times, in 59, 58, 53, and 48 B. C., the senate ordered their altars and statues torn down,[25] but these violent measures did not stop the diffusion of the new beliefs. The Egyptian mysteries were the first example at Rome of an essentially popular religious movement that was triumphant over the continued resistance of the public authorities and the official clergy.

Why was this Egyptian worship the only one of all Oriental religions to suffer repeated persecutions? There were two motives, one religious and one political.

In the first place, this cult was said to exercise a corrupting influence perversive of piety. Its morals were loose, and the mystery surrounding it excited the worst suspicions. Moreover, it appealed violently to the emotions and senses. All these factors offended the grave decency that a Roman was wont to {82} maintain in the presence of the gods. The innovators had every defender of the _mos maiorum_ for an adversary.

In the second place, this religion had been founded, supported and propagated by the Ptolemies; it came from a country that was almost hostile to Italy during the last period of the republic;[26] it issued from Alexandria, whose superiority Rome felt and feared. Its secret societies, made up chiefly of people of the lower classes, might easily become clubs of agitators and haunts of spies. All these motives for suspicion and hatred were undoubtedly more potent in exciting persecution than the purely theological reasons, and persecution was stopped or renewed according to the vicissitudes of general politics.

As we have stated, the chapels consecrated to Isis were demolished in the year 48 B. C. After Cæsar's death, the triumvirs decided in 43 B. C. to erect a temple in her honor out of the public funds, undoubtedly to gain the favor of the masses. This action would have implied official recognition, but the project appears never to have been executed. If Antony had succeeded at Actium, Isis and Serapis would have entered Rome in triumph, but they were vanquished with Cleopatra; and when Augustus had become the master of the empire, he professed a deep aversion for the gods of his former enemies. Moreover, he could not have suffered the intrusion of the Egyptian clergy into the Roman sacerdotal class, whose guardian, restorer and chief he was. In 28 B. C. an ordinance was issued forbidding the erecting of altars to the Alexandrian divinities inside the sacred enclosure of the _pomerium_, and seven years later Agrippa extended this prohibitive regulation to a radius of a thousand paces around the {83} city. Tiberius acted on the same principle and in 19 A. D. instituted the bloodiest persecution against the priests of Isis that they ever suffered, in consequence of a scandalous affair in which a matron, a noble and some priests of Isis were implicated.

All these police measures, however, were strangely ineffectual. The Egyptian worship was excluded from Rome and her immediate neighborhood in theory if not in fact, but the rest of the world remained open to its propaganda.[27]

With the beginning of the empire it slowly invaded the center and the north of Italy and spread into the provinces. Merchants, sailors, slaves, artisans, Egyptian men of letters, even the discharged soldiers of the three legions cantoned in the valley of the Nile contributed to its diffusion. It entered Africa by way of Carthage, and the Danubian countries through the great emporium of Aquileia. The new province of Gaul was invaded through the valley of the Rhone. At that period many Oriental emigrants went to seek their fortunes in these new countries. Intimate relations existed between the cities of Arles and Alexandria, and we know that a colony of Egyptian Greeks, established at Nimes by Augustus, took the gods of their native country thither.[28] At the beginning of our era there set in that great movement of conversion that soon established the worship of Isis and Serapis from the outskirts of the Sahara to the vallum of Britain, and from the mountains of Asturias to the mouths of the Danube.

The resistance still offered by the central power could not last much longer. It was impossible to dam in this overflowing stream whose thundering waves struck the {84} shaking walls of the _pomerium_ from every side. The prestige of Alexandria seemed invincible. At that period the city was more beautiful, more learned, and better policed than Rome. She was the model capital, a standard to which the Latins strove to rise. They translated the works of the scholars of Alexandria, imitated her authors, invited her artists and copied her institutions. It is plain that they had also to undergo the ascendancy of her religion. As a matter of fact, her fervent believers maintained her sanctuaries, despite the law, on the very Capitol. Under Cæsar, Alexandrian astronomers had reformed the calendar of the pontiffs, and Alexandrian priests soon marked the dates of Isis holidays upon it.

The decisive step was taken soon after the death of Tiberius. Caligula erected the great temple of Isis Campensis on the Campus Martius probably in the year 38.[29] In order to spare the sacerdotal susceptibilities, he founded it outside of the sacred enclosure of the city of Servius. Later Domitian made one of Rome's most splendid monuments of that temple. From that time Isis and Serapis enjoyed the favor of every imperial dynasty, the Flavians as well as the Antonines and the Severi. About the year 215 Caracalla built an Isis temple, even more magnificent than that of Domitian, on the Quirinal, in the heart of the city, and perhaps another one on the Coelian. As the apologist Minucius Felix states, the Egyptian gods had become entirely Roman.[30]

The climax of their power seems to have been reached at the beginning of the third century; later on the popular vogue and official support went to other divinities, like the Syrian Baals and the Persian {85} Mithras. The progress of Christianity also deprived them of their power, which was, however, still considerable until the end of the ancient world. The Isis processions that marched the streets of Rome were described by an eye witness as late as the year 394,[31] but in 391 the patriarch Theophilus had consigned the Serapeum of Alexandria to the flames, having himself struck the first blow with an ax against the colossal statue of the god that had so long been the object of a superstitious veneration. Thus the prelate destroyed the "very head of idolatry," as Rufinus put it.[32]

As a matter of fact, idolatry received its death blow. The worship of the gods of the Ptolemies died out completely between the reigns of Theodosius and Justinian,[33] and in accordance with the sad prophecy of Hermes Trismegistus[34] Egypt, Egypt herself, lost her divinities and became a land of the dead. Of her religions nothing remained but fables that were no longer believed, and the only thing that reminded the barbarians who came to inhabit the country of its former piety, were words engraved on stone.

* * * * *

This rapid sketch of the history of Isis and Serapis shows that these divinities were worshiped in the Latin world for more than five centuries. The task of pointing out the transformations of the cult during that long period, and the local differences there may have been in the various provinces, is reserved for future researches. These will undoubtedly find that the Alexandrian worship did not become Latinized under the empire, but that its Oriental character became more and more pronounced. When Domitian restored the Iseum of the Campus Martius and that of Beneventum, he {86} transferred from the valley of the Nile sphinxes, cynocephali and obelisks of black or pink granite bearing borders of hieroglyphics of Amasis, Nectanebos or even Rameses II. On other obelisks that were erected in the propyleums even the inscriptions of the emperors were written in hieroglyphics.[35] Half a century later that true dilettante, Hadrian, caused the luxuries of Canopus to be reproduced, along with the vale of Tempe, in his immense villa at Tibur, to enable him to celebrate his voluptuous feasts under the friendly eyes of Serapis. He extolled the merits of the deified Antinous in inscriptions couched in the ancient language of the Pharaohs, and set the fashion of statues hewn out of black basalt in the Egyptian style.[36] The amateurs of that period affected to prefer the hieratic rigidity of the barbarian idols to the elegant freedom of Alexandrian art. Those esthetic manifestations probably corresponded to religious prejudices, and the Latin worship always endeavored to imitate the art of temples in the Nile valley more closely than did the Greek. This evolution was in conformity with all the tendencies of the imperial period.

By what secret virtue did the Egyptian religion exercise this irresistible influence over the Roman world? What new elements did those priests, who made proselytes in every province, give the Roman world? Did the success of their preaching mean progress or retrogression from the standard of the ancient Roman faith? These are complex and delicate questions that would require minute analysis and cautious treatment with a constant and exact observation of shades. I am compelled to limit myself to a rapid sketch, which, I {87} fear, will appear rather dry and arbitrary, like every generalization.

The particular doctrines of the mysteries of Isis and Serapis in regard to the nature and power of the gods were not, or were but incidentally, the reasons for the triumph of these mysteries. It has been said that the Egyptian theology always remained in a "fluid state,"[37] or better in a state of chaos. It consisted of an amalgamation of disparate legends, of an aggregate of particular cults, as Egypt herself was an aggregate of a number of districts. This religion never formulated a coherent system of generally accepted dogmas. It permitted the coexistence of conflicting conceptions and traditions, and all the subtlety of its clergy never accomplished, or rather never began, the task of fusing those irreconcilable elements into one harmonious synthesis.[38] For the Egyptians there was no principle of contradiction. All the heterogeneous beliefs that ever obtained in the various districts during the different periods of a very long history, were maintained concurrently and formed an inextricable confusion in the sacred books.

About the same state of affairs prevailed in the Occidental worship of the Alexandrian divinities. In the Occident, just as in Egypt, there were "prophets" in the first rank of the clergy, who learnedly discussed religion, but never taught a theological system that found universal acceptance. The sacred scribe Cheremon, who became Nero's tutor, recognized the stoical theories in the sacerdotal traditions of his country.[39] When the eclectic Plutarch speaks of the character of the Egyptian gods, he finds it agrees surprisingly with his own philosophy,[40] and when the neo-Platonist {88} Iamblichus examines them, their character seems to agree with his doctrines. The hazy ideas of the Oriental priests enabled every one to see in them the phantoms he was pursuing. The individual imagination was given ample scope, and the dilettantic men of letters rejoiced in molding these malleable doctrines at will. They were not outlined sharply enough, nor were they formulated with sufficient precision to appeal to the multitude. The gods were everything and nothing; they got lost in a _sfumato_. A disconcerting anarchy and confusion prevailed among them. By means of a scientific mixture of Greek, Egyptian and Semitic elements "Hermetism"[41] endeavored to create a theological system that would be acceptable to all minds, but it seems never to have imposed itself generally on the Alexandrian mysteries which were older than itself, and furthermore it could not escape the contradictions of Egyptian thought. The religion of Isis did not gain a hold on the soul by its dogmatism.

It must be admitted, however, that, owing to its extreme flexibility, this religion was easily adapted to the various centers to which it was transferred, and that it enjoyed the valuable advantage of being always in perfect harmony with the prevailing philosophy. Moreover, the syncretic tendencies of Egypt responded admirably to those that began to obtain at Rome. At a very early period henotheistic theories had been favorably received in sacerdotal circles, and while crediting the god of their own temple with supremacy, the priests admitted that he might have a number of different personalities, under which he was worshiped simultaneously. In this way the unity of the supreme being was affirmed for the thinkers, and polytheism with its {89} intangible traditions maintained for the masses. In the same manner Isis and Osiris had absorbed several local divinities under the Pharaohs, and had assumed a complex character that was capable of indefinite extension. The same process continued under the Ptolemies when the religion of Egypt came into contact with Greece. Isis was identified simultaneously with Demeter, Aphrodite, Hera, Semele, Io, Tyche, and others. She was considered the queen of heaven and hell, of earth and sea. She was "the past, the present and the future,"[42] "nature the mother of things, the mistress of the elements, born at the beginning of the centuries."[43] She had numberless names, an infinity of different aspects and an inexhaustible treasure of virtues. In short, she became a pantheistic power that was everything in one, _una quae est omnia_.[44]

The authority of Serapis was no less exalted, and his field no less extensive. He also was regarded as a universal god of whom men liked to say that he was "unique." ([Greek: Heis Zeus Sarapis]) In him all energies were centered, although the functions of Zeus, of Pluto or of Helios were especially ascribed to him. For many centuries Osiris had been worshiped at Abydos both as author of fecundity and lord of the underworld,[45] and this double character early caused him to be identified with the sun, which fertilizes the earth during its diurnal course and travels through the subterranean realms at night. Thus the conception of this nature divinity, that had already prevailed along the Nile, accorded without difficulty with the solar pantheism that was the last form of Roman paganism. This theological system, which did not gain the upper hand in the Occident until the {90} second century of our era, was not brought in by Egypt. It did not have the exclusive predominance there that it had held under the empire, and even in Plutarch's time it was only one creed among many.[46] The deciding influence in this matter was exercised by the Syrian Baals and the Chaldean astrology.

The theology of the Egyptian mysteries, then, followed rather than led the general influx of ideas. The same may be said of their ethics. It did not force itself upon the world by lofty moral precepts, nor by a sublime ideal of holiness. Many have admired the edifying list in the Book of the Dead, that rightfully or otherwise sets forth the virtues which the deceased claims to have practised in order to obtain a favorable judgment from Osiris. If one considers the period in which it appears, this ethics is undoubtedly very elevated, but it seems rudimentary and even childish if one compares it with the principles formulated by the Roman jurists, to say nothing of the minute psychological analyses of the Stoic casuists. In this range of ideas also, the maintenance of the most striking contrasts characterizes Egyptian mentality, which was never shocked by the cruelties and obscenities that sullied the mythology and the ritual. Like Epicurus at Athens, some of the sacred texts actually invited the believers to enjoy life before the sadness of death.[47]