The fish was sacred to Atargatis, who undoubtedly had been represented in that shape at first, as Dagon always was.^[34] The fish were kept in ponds in the proximity of the temples.^[35] A superstitious fear prevented people from touching them, because the goddess punished the sacrilegious by covering their bodies with ulcers and tumors.^[36] At certain mystic repasts, however, the priests and initiates consumed the forbidden food in the belief that they were absorbing the flesh of the divinity herself. That worship and its practices, which were spread over Syria, probably suggested the ichthus symbolism in the Christian period.^[37]

However, over this lower and primordial stratum that still cropped out here and there, other less rudimentary beliefs had formed. Besides inanimate objects and animals, the Syrian paganism worshiped personal divinities especially. The character of the gods that were originally adored by the Semitic tribes has been ingeniously reconstructed.^[38] Each tribe had its Baal and Baalat who protected it and whom only its members were permitted to worship. The name of Ba‘al, "master," summarizes the conception people had of him. In the first place he was regarded as the sovereign of his votaries, and his position in regard to them was that of an Oriental potentate towards his subjects; they were his servants, or rather his slaves.^[39] The Baal was at the same time the "master" or proprietor of the country in which he resided and which he made fertile by causing springs to gush from its soil. Or his domain was the firmament and he was the dominus caeli, whence he made the waters fall to the roar of tempests. He was always united with a celestial or earthly "queen" and, in the third place, he was the "lord" or husband of the "lady" associated with him. The one represented the male, the other the female principle; they were the authors of all fecundity, and as a consequence the worship of the divine couple often assumed a sensual and voluptuous character.

As a matter of fact, immorality was nowhere so flagrant as in the temples of Astarte, whose female servants honored the goddess with untiring ardor. In no country was sacred prostitution so developed as in Syria, and in the Occident it was to be found practically only where the Phœnicians had imported it, as on Mount Eryx. Those aberrations, that were kept up until the end of paganism,^[40] probably have their explanation in the primitive constitution of the Semitic tribe, and the religious custom must have been originally one of the forms of exogamy, which compelled the woman to unite herself first with a stranger.^[41]

As a second blemish, the Semitic religions practised human immolations longer than any other religion, sacrificing children and grown men in order to please sanguinary gods. In spite of Hadrian's prohibition of those murderous offerings,^[42] they were maintained in certain clandestine rites and in the lowest practices of magic, up to the fall of the idols, and even later. They corresponded to the ideas of a period during which the life of a captive or slave had no greater value than that of an animal.

These sacred practices and many others, on which Lucian complacently enlarges in his opuscule on the goddess of Hierapolis, daily revived the habits of a barbarous past in the temples of Syria. Of all the conceptions that had successively dominated the country, none had completely disappeared. As in Egypt, beliefs of very different date and origin coexisted, without any attempt to make them agree, or without success when the task was undertaken. In these beliefs zoolatry, litholatry and all the other nature worships outlived the savagery that had created them. More than anywhere else the gods had remained the chieftains of clans^[43] because the tribal organizations of Syria were longer lived and more developed than those of any other region. Under the empire many districts were still subjected to the tribal régime and commanded by "ethnarchs" or "phylarchs."^[44] Religion, which sacrificed the lives of the men and the honor of the women to the divinity, had in many regards remained on the moral level of unsocial and sanguinary tribes. Its obscene and atrocious rites called forth exasperated indignation on the part of the Roman conscience when Heliogabalus attempted to introduce them into Italy with his Baal of Emesa.

How, then, can one explain the fact that in spite of all, the Syrian gods imposed themselves upon the Occident and made even the Cæsars accept them? The reason is that the Semitic paganism can no more be judged by certain revolting practices, that perpetuated in the heart of civilization the barbarity and puerilities of an uncultivated society, than the religion of the Nile can be so judged. As in the case of Egypt we must distinguish between the sacerdotal religion and the infinitely varied popular religion that was embodied in local customs. Syria possessed a number of great sanctuaries in which an educated clergy meditated and expatiated upon the nature of the divine beings and on the meaning of traditions inherited from remote ancestors. As their own interests demanded, that clergy constantly amended the sacred traditions and modified their spirit when the letter was immutable, in order to make them agree with the new aspirations of a more advanced period. They had their mysteries and their initiates to whom they revealed a wisdom that was above the vulgar beliefs of the masses.^[45]

Frequently we can draw diametrically opposite conclusions from the same principle. In that manner the old idea of tabu, that seems to have transformed the temples of Astarte into houses of debauchery, also became the source of a severe code of morals. The Semitic tribes were haunted with the fear of the tabu. A multitude of things were either impure or sacred because, in the original confusion, those two notions had not been clearly differentiated. Man's ability to use the products of nature to satisfy his needs, was thus limited by a number of prohibitions, restrictions and conditions. He who touched a forbidden object was soiled and corrupted, his fellows did not associate with him and he could no longer participate in the sacrifices. In order to wipe out the blemish, he had recourse to ablutions and other ceremonies known to the priests. Purity, that had originally been considered simply physical, soon became ritualistic and finally spiritual. Life was surrounded by a network of circumstances subject to certain conditions, every violation of which meant a fall and demanded penance. The anxiety to remain constantly in a state of holiness or regain that state when it had been lost, filled one's entire existence. It was not peculiar to the Semitic tribes, but they ascribed a prime importance to it.^[46] And the gods, who necessarily possessed this quality in an eminent degree, were holy beings (ἅγιοι)^[47] par excellence.

In this way principles of conduct and dogmas of faith have frequently been derived from instinctive and absurd old beliefs. All theological doctrines that were accepted in Syria modified the prevailing ancient conception of the Baals. But in our present state of knowledge it is very difficult indeed to determine the shares that the various influences contributed, from the conquests of Alexander to the Roman domination, to make the Syrian paganism what it became under the Cæsars. The civilization of the Seleucid empire is little known, and we cannot determine what caused the alliance of Greek thought with the Semitic traditions.^[48] The religions of the neighboring nations also had an undeniable influence. Phœnicia and Lebanon remained moral tributaries of Egypt long after they had liberated themselves from the suzerainty of the Pharaohs. The theogony of Philo of Byblos took gods and myths from that country, and at Heliopolis Hadad was honored "according to Egyptian rather than Syrian rite."^[49] The rigorous monotheism of the Jews, who were dispersed over the entire country, must also have acted as an active ferment of transformation.^[50] But it was Babylon that retained the intellectual supremacy, even after its political ruin. The powerful sacerdotal caste ruling it did not fall with the independence of the country, and it survived the conquests of Alexander as it had previously lived through the Persian domination. The researches of Assyriologists have shown that its ancient worship persisted under the Seleucides, and at the time of Strabo the "Chaldeans" still discussed cosmology and first principles in the rival schools of Borsippa and Orchoë.^[51] The ascendancy of that erudite clergy affected all surrounding regions; it was felt by Persia in the east, Cappadocia in the north, but more than anywhere else by the Syrians, who were connected with the Oriental Semites by bonds of language and blood. Even after the Parthians had wrested the valley of the Euphrates from the Seleucides, relations with the great temples of that region remained uninterrupted. The plains of Mesopotamia, inhabited by races of like origin, extended on both sides of an artificial border line; great commercial roads followed the course of the two rivers flowing into the Persian Gulf or cut across the desert, and the pilgrims came to Babylon, as Lucian tells us, to perform their devotions to the Lady of Bambyce.^[52]

Ever since the Captivity, constant spiritual relations had existed between Judaism and the great religious metropolis. At the birth of Christianity they manifested themselves in the rise of gnostic sects in which the Semitic mythology formed strange combinations with Jewish and Greek ideas and furnished the foundation for extravagant superstructures.^[53] Finally, during the decline of the empire, it was Babylon again from which emanated Manicheism, the last form of idolatry received in the Latin world. We can imagine how powerful the religious influence of that country on the Syrian paganism must have been.

That influence manifested itself in various ways. First, it introduced new gods. In this way Bel passed from the Babylonian pantheon into that of Palmyra and was honored throughout northern Syria.^[54] It also caused ancient divinities to be arranged in new groups. To the primitive couple of the Baal and the Baalat a third member was added in order to form one of those triads dears to Chaldean theology. This took place at Hierapolis as well as at Heliopolis, and the three gods of the latter city, Hadad, Atargatis and Simios, became Jupiter, Venus and Mercury in Latin inscriptions.^[55] Finally, and most important, astrolatry wrought radical changes in the characters of the celestial powers, and, as a further consequence, in the entire Roman paganism. In the first place it gave them a second personality in addition to their own nature. The sidereal myths superimposed themselves upon the agrarian myths, and gradually obliterated them. Astrology, born on the banks of the Euphrates, imposed itself in Egypt upon the haughty and unapproachable clergy of the most conservative of all nations.^[56] Syria received it without reserve and surrendered unconditionally;^[57] numismatics and archeology as well as literature prove this. King Antiochus of Commagene, for instance, who died 34 B. C., built himself a monumental tomb on a spur of the Taurus, in which he placed his horoscope, designed on a large bas-relief, beside the images of his ancestral divinities.^[58]

The importance which the introduction of the Syrian religions into the Occident has for us consists therefore in the fact that indirectly they brought certain theological doctrines of the Chaldeans with them, just as Isis and Serapis carried beliefs of old Egypt from Alexandria to the Occident. The Roman empire received successively the religious tribute of the two great nations that had formerly ruled the Oriental world. It is characteristic that the god Bel whom Aurelian brought from Asia to set up as the protector of his states, was in reality a Babylonian who had emigrated to Palmyra,^[59] a cosmopolitan center apparently predestined by virtue of its location to become the intermediary between the civilizations of the Euphrates and the Mediterranean.

The influence exercised by the speculations of the Chaldeans upon Greco-Roman thought can be asserted positively, but cannot as yet be strictly defined. It was at once philosophic and religious, literary and popular. The entire neo-Platonist school used the names of those venerable masters, but it cannot be determined how much it really owes to them. A selection of poems that has often been quoted since the third century, under the title of "Chaldaic Oracles" (Λόγια Χαλδαϊκά) combines the ancient Hellenic theories with a fantastic mysticism that was certainly imported from the Orient. It is to Babylonia what the literature of Hermes Trismegistus is to Egypt, and it is equally difficult to determine the nature of the ingredients that the author put into his sacred compositions. But at an earlier date the Syrian religions had spread far and wide in the Occident ideas conceived on the distant banks of the Euphrates. I shall try to indicate briefly what their share in the pagan syncretism was.

We have seen that the gods from Alexandria gained souls especially by the promise of blessed immortality. Those from Syria must also have satisfied doubts tormenting all the minds of that time. As a matter of fact the old Semitic ideas on man's fate in after-life were little comforting. We know how sad, dull and hopeless their conception of life after death was. The dead descended into a subterranean realm where they led a miserable existence, a weak reflection of the one they had lost; since they were subject to wants and suffering, they had to be supported by funeral offerings placed on their sepulchers by their descendants. Those ancient beliefs and customs were found also in primitive Greece and Italy.

This rudimentary eschatology, however, gave way to quite a different conception, one that was closely related to the Chaldean astrology, and which spread over the Occident towards the end of the republic. According to this doctrine the soul returned to heaven after death, to live there among the divine stars. While it remained on earth it was subject to all the bitter necessities of a destiny determined by the revolutions of the stars; but when it ascended into the upper regions, it escaped that fate and even the limits of time; it shared equally in the immortality of the sidereal gods that surrounded it.^[60] In the opinion of some, the soul was attracted by the rays of the sun, and after passing through the moon, where it was purified, it lost itself in the shining star of day.^[61] Another more purely astrological theory, that was undoubtedly a development of the former, taught that the soul descended to earth from the heights of heaven by passing through the spheres of the seven planets. During its passage it acquired the dispositions and qualities proper to each planet. After death it returned to its original abode by the same route. To get from one sphere to another, it had to pass a door guarded by a commandant (ἄρχων).^[62] Only the souls of initiates knew the password that made those incorruptible guardians yield, and under the conduct of a psychopompus^[63] they ascended safely from zone to zone. As the soul rose it divested itself of the passions and qualities it had acquired on its descent to the earth as though they were garments, and, free from sensuality, it penetrated into the eighth heaven to enjoy everlasting happiness as a subtle essence.

Perhaps this doctrine, undoubtedly of Babylonian origin, was not generally accepted by the Syrian religions, as it was by the mysteries of Mithra, but these religions, impregnated with astrology, certainly propagated the belief that the souls of those worshipers that had led pious lives were elevated to the heights of heaven, where an apotheosis made them the equals of the luminous gods.^[64] Under the empire this doctrine slowly supplanted all others; the Elysian fields, which the votaries of Isis and Serapis still located in the depths of the earth, were transferred into the ether bathing the fixed stars,^[65] and the underworld was thereafter reserved for the wicked who had not been allowed to pass through the celestial gates.

The sublime regions occupied by the purified souls were also the abode of the supreme god.^[66] When it transformed the ideas on the destiny of man, astrology also modified those relating to the nature of the divinity. In this matter the Syrian religions were especially original; for even if the Alexandrian mysteries offered man just as comforting prospects of immortality as the eschatology of their rivals, they were backward in building up a commensurate theology. To the Semitic races belongs the honor of having reformed the ancient fetichism most thoroughly. Their base and narrow conceptions of early times to which we can trace their existence, broaden and rise until they form a kind of monotheism.

As we have seen, the Syrian tribes worshiped a god of lightning,^[67] like all primitive races. That god opened the reservoirs of the firmament to let the rain fall and split the giant trees of the woods with the double ax that always remained his emblem.^[68] When the progress of astronomy removed the constellations to incommensurable distances, the "Baal of the Heavens" (Ba‘al šamîn) had to grow in majesty. Undoubtedly at the time of the Achemenides, he was connected with the Ahura-Mazda of the Persians, the ancient god of the vault of heaven, who had become the highest physical and moral power, and this connection helped to transform the old genius of thunder.^[69] People continued to worship the material heaven in him; under the Romans he was still simply called Caelus, as well as "Celestial Jupiter" (Jupiter Caelestis, Ζεὺς Οὐράνιος),^[70] but it was a heaven studied by a sacred science that venerated its harmonious mechanism. The Seleucides represented him on their coins with a crescent over his forehead and carrying a sun with seven rays, to symbolize the fact that he presided over the course of the stars;^[71] or else he was shown with the two Dioscuri at his side, heroes who enjoyed life and suffered death in turn, according to the Greek myth, and who had become the symbols of the two celestial hemispheres. Religious uranography placed the residence of the supreme divinity in the most elevated region of the world, fixing its abode in the zone most distant from the earth, above the planets and the fixed stars. This fact was intended to be expressed by the term Most-High (Ὕψιστος) applied to the Syrian Baals as well as to Jehovah.^[72] According to this cosmic religion, the Most High resided in the immense orb that contained the spheres of all the stars and embraced the entire universe which was subject to his domination. The Latins translated the name of this "Hypsistos" by Jupiter summus exsuperantissimus^[73] to indicate his preeminence over all divine beings.

As a matter of fact, his power was infinite. The primary postulate of the Chaldean astrology was that all phenomena and events of this world were necessarily determined by sidereal influence. The changes of nature, as well as the dispositions of men, were controlled according to fate, by the divine energies that resided in the heavens. In other words, the gods were almighty; they were the masters of destiny that governed the universe absolutely. The notion of their omnipotence resulted from the development of the ancient autocracy with which the Baals were credited. As we have stated, they were conceived after the image of an Asiatic monarch, and the religious terminology was evidently intended to display the humility of their priests toward them. In Syria we find nothing analogous to what existed in Egypt, where the priest thought he could compel the gods to act, and even dared to threaten them.^[74] The distance separating the human and the divine always was much greater with the Semitic tribes, and all that astrology did was to emphasize the distance more strongly by giving it a doctrinal foundation and a scientific appearance. In the Latin world the Asiatic religions propagated the conception of the absolute and illimitable sovereignty of God over the earth. Apuleius calls the Syrian goddess omnipotens et omniparens, "mistress and mother of all things."^[75]

The observation of the starry skies, moreover, had led the Chaldeans to the notion of a divine eternity. The constancy of the sidereal revolutions inspired the conclusion as to their perpetuity. The stars follow their ever uncompleted courses unceasingly; as soon as the end of their journey is reached, they resume without stopping the road already covered, and the cycles of years in which their movements take place extend from the indefinite past into the indefinite future.^[76] Thus a clergy of astronomers necessarily conceived Baal, "Lord of the heavens," as the "Master of eternity" or "He whose name is praised through all eternity"^[77]—titles which constantly recur in Semitic inscriptions. The divine stars did not die, like Osiris or Attis; whenever they seemed to weaken, they were born to a new life and always remained invincible (invicti).

Together with the mysteries of the Syrian Baals, this theological notion penetrated into Occidental paganism.^[78] Whenever an inscription to a deus aeternus is found in the Latin provinces it refers to a Syrian sidereal god, and it is a remarkable fact that this epithet did not enter the ritual before the second century, at the time the worship of the god Heaven (Caelus)^[79] was propagated. That the philosophers had long before placed the first cause beyond the limits of time was of no consequence, for their theories had not penetrated into the popular consciousness nor modified the traditional formulary of the liturgies. To the people the divinities were beings more beautiful, more vigorous, and more powerful than man, but born like him, and exempt only from old age and death, the immortals of old Homer. The Syrian priests diffused the idea of a god without beginning and without end through the Roman world, and thus contributed, along lines parallel with the Jewish proselytism, to lend the authority of dogma to what had previously been only a metaphysical theory.

The Baals were universal as well as eternal, and their power became limitless in regard to space as it had been in regard to time. These two principles were correlative. The title of "mar‘olam" which the Baals bore occasionally may be translated by "Lord of the universe," or by "Lord of eternity," and efforts certainly have been made to claim the twofold quality for them.^[80] Peopled with divine constellations and traversed by planets assimilated to the inhabitants of Olympus, the heavens determined the destinies of the entire human race by their movements, and the whole earth was subject to the changes produced by their revolutions.^[81] Consequently the old Ba‘al šamîn was necessarily transformed into a universal power. Of course, even under the Cæsars there existed in Syria traces of a period when the local god was the fetich of a clan and could be worshiped by the members of that clan only, a period when strangers were admitted to his altars only after a ceremony of initiation, as brothers, or at least as guests and clients.^[82] But from the period when our knowledge of the history of the great divinities of Heliopolis or Hierapolis begins, these divinities were regarded as common to all Syrians, and crowds of pilgrims came from distant countries to obtain grace in the holy cities. As protectors of the entire human race the Baals gained proselytes in the Occident, and their temples witnessed gatherings of devotees of every race and nationality. In this respect the Baals were distinctly different from Jehovah.

The essence of paganism implies that the nature of a divinity broadens as the number of its votaries increases. Everybody credits it with some new quality, and its character becomes more complex. As it gains in power it also has a tendency to dominate its companion gods and to concentrate their functions in itself. To escape this threatening absorption, these gods must be of a very sharply defined personality and of a very original character. The vague Semitic deities, however, were devoid of a well-defined individuality. We fail to find among them a well organized society of immortals, like that of the Greek Olympus where each divinity had its own features and its own particular life full of adventures and experiences, and each followed its special calling to the exclusion of all the others. One was a physician, another a poet, a third a shepherd, hunter or blacksmith. The Greek inscriptions found in Syria are, in this regard, eloquently concise.^[83] Usually they have the name of Zeus accompanied by some simple epithet: kurios (κύριος, Lord), aniketos (ἀνίκητος, invincible), megistos (μέγιστος, greatest). All these Baals seem to have been brothers. They were personalities of indeterminate outline and interchangeable powers and were readily confused.

At the time the Romans came into contact with Syria, it had already passed through a period of syncretism similar to the one we can study with greater precision in the Latin world. The ancient exclusiveness and the national particularism had been overcome. The Baals of the great sanctuaries had enriched themselves with the virtues^[84] of their neighbors; then, always following the same process, they had taken certain features from foreign divinities brought over by the Greek conquerors. In that manner their characters had become indefinable, they performed incompatible functions and possessed irreconcilable attributes. An inscription found in Britain^[85] assimilates the Syrian goddess to Peace, Virtue, Ceres, Cybele, and even to the sign of the Virgin.

In conformity with the law governing the development of paganism, the Semitic gods tended to become pantheistic because they comprehended all nature and were identified with it. The various deities were nothing but different aspects under which the supreme and infinite being manifested itself. Although Syria remained deeply and even coarsely idolatrous in practice, in theory it approached monotheism or, better perhaps, henotheism. By an absurd but curious etymology the name Hadad has been explained as "one, one" (‘ad ‘ad).^[86]

Everywhere the narrow and divided polytheism showed a confused tendency to elevate itself into a superior synthesis, but in Syria astrology lent the firmness of intelligent conviction to notions that were vague elsewhere. The Chaldean cosmology, which deified all elements but ascribed a predominant influence to the stars, ruled the entire Syrian syncretism. It considered the world as a great organism which was kept intact by an intimate solidarity, and whose parts continually influenced each other.

The ancient Semites believed therefore that the divinity could be regarded as embodied in the waters, in the fire of the lightning, in stones or plants. But the most powerful gods were the constellations and the planets that governed the course of time and of all things.

The sun was supreme because it led the starry choir, because it was the king and guide of all the other luminaries and therefore the master of the whole world.^[87] The astronomical doctrines of the "Chaldeans" taught that this incandescent globe alternately attracted and repelled the other sidereal bodies, and from this principle the Oriental theologians had concluded that it must determine the entire life of the universe, inasmuch as it regulated the movements of the heavens. As the "intelligent light" it was especially the creator of human reason, and just as it repelled and attracted the planets in turn, it was believed to send out souls, at the time of birth, into the bodies they animated, and to cause them to return to its bosom after death by means of a series of emissions and absorptions.

Later on, when the seat of the Most-High was placed beyond the limits of the universe, the radiant star that gives us light became the visible image of the supreme power, the source of all life and all intelligence, the intermediary between an inaccessible god and mankind, and the one object of special homage from the multitude.^[88]

Solar pantheism, which grew up among the Syrians of the Hellenistic period as a result of the influence of Chaldean astrolatry, imposed itself upon the whole Roman world under the empire. Our very rapid sketch of the constitution of that theological system shows incidentally the last form assumed by the pagan idea of God. In this matter Syria was Rome's teacher and predecessor. The last formula reached by the religion of the pagan Semites and in consequence by that of the Romans, was a divinity unique, almighty, eternal, universal and ineffable, that revealed itself throughout nature, but whose most splendid and most energetic manifestation was the sun. To arrive at the Christian monotheism^[89] only one final tie had to be broken, that is to say, this supreme being residing in a distant heaven had to be removed beyond the world. So we see once more in this instance, how the propagation of the Oriental cults levelled the roads for Christianity and heralded its triumph. Although astrology was always fought by the church, it had nevertheless prepared the minds for the dogmas the church was to proclaim.

PERSIA.

The dominant historical fact in western Asia in ancient times was the opposition between the Greco-Roman and Persian civilizations, which was itself only an episode in the great struggle that was constantly in progress between the Orient and the Occident in those countries. In the first enthusiasm of their conquests, the Persians extended their dominion as far as the cities of Ionia and the islands of the Ægean Sea, but their power of expansion was broken at the foot of the Acropolis. One hundred and fifty years later, Alexander destroyed the empire of the Achemenides and carried Hellenic culture to the banks of the Indus. After two and a half centuries the Parthians under the Arsacid dynasty advanced to the borders of Syria, and Mithradates Eupator, an alleged descendant of Darius, penetrated to the heart of Greece at the head of his Persian nobility from Pontus.

After the flood came the ebb. The reconstructed Roman empire of Augustus soon reduced Armenia, Cappadocia and even the kingdom of the Parthians to a kind of vassalage. But after the middle of the third century the Sassanid dynasty restored the power of Persia and revived its ancient pretensions. From that time until the triumph of Islam it was one long duel between the two rival states, in which now one was victorious and now the other, while neither was ever decisively beaten. An ambassador of king Narses to Galerius called these two states "the two eyes of the human race."^[1]

The "invincible" star of the Persians might wane and vanish, but only to reappear in greater glory. The political and military strength displayed by this nation through the centuries was the result of its high intellectual and moral qualities. Its original culture was always hostile to such an assimilation as that experienced in different degrees by the Aryans of Phrygia, the Semites of Syria and the Hamites of Egypt. Hellenism and Iranism—if I may use that term—were two equally noble adversaries but differently educated, and they always remained separated by instinctive racial hostility as much as by hereditary opposition of interests.

Nevertheless, when two civilizations are in contact for more than a thousand years, numerous exchanges are bound to occur. The influence exercised by Hellenism as far as the uplands of Central Asia has frequently been pointed out,^[2] but the prestige retained by Persia throughout the ages and the extent of area influenced by its energy has not perhaps been shown with as much accuracy. For even if Mazdaism was the highest expression of Persian genius and its influence in consequence mainly religious, yet it was not exclusively so.

After the fall of the Achemenides the memory of their empire long haunted Alexander's successors. Not only did the dynasties which claimed to be descended from Darius, and which ruled over Pontus, Cappadocia and Commagene, cultivate political traditions that brought them nearer to their supposed ancestors, but those traditions were partly adopted even by the Seleucides and the Ptolemies, the legitimate heirs of the ancient masters of Asia. People were fond of recalling the ideals of past grandeur and sought to realize them in the present. In that manner several institutions were transmitted to the Roman emperors through the agency of the Asiatic monarchies. The institution of the amici Augusti, for instance, the appointed friends and intimate counselors of the rulers, adopted in Italy the forms in use at the court of the Diadochi, who had themselves imitated the ancient organization of the palace of the Great Kings.^[3]

The custom of carrying the sacred fire before the Cæsars as an emblem of the perpetuity of their power, dated back to Darius and with other Persian traditions passed on to the dynasties that divided the empire of Alexander. There is a striking similarity not only between the observance of the Cæsars and the practice of the Oriental monarchs, but also between the beliefs that they held. The continuity of the political and religious tradition cannot be doubted.^[4] As the court ceremonial and the internal history of the Hellenistic kingdoms become better known we shall be able to outline with greater precision the manner in which the divided and diminished heritage of the Achemenides, after generations of rulers, was finally left to those Occidental sovereigns who called themselves the sacrosanct lords of the world as Artaxerxes had done.^[5] It may not be generally known that the habit of welcoming friends with a kiss was a ceremony in the Oriental formulary before it became a familiar custom in Europe.^[6]

It is very difficult to trace the hidden paths by which pure ideas travel from one people to another. But certain it is that at the beginning of our era certain Mazdean conceptions had already spread outside of Asia. The extent of the influence of Parseeism upon the beliefs of Israel under the Achemenides cannot be determined, but its existence is undeniable.^[7] Some of its doctrines, as for instance those relating to angels and demons, the end of the world and the final resurrection, were propagated everywhere in the basin of the Mediterranean as a consequence of the diffusion of Jewish colonies.

On the other hand, ever since the conquests of Cyrus and Darius, the active attention of the Greeks had been drawn toward the doctrines and religious practices of the new masters of the Orient.^[8] A number of legends representing Pythagoras, Democritus and other philosophers as disciples of the magi prove the prestige of that powerful sacerdotal class. The Macedonian conquest, which placed the Greeks in direct relations with numerous votaries of Mazdaism, gave a new impetus to works treating that religion, and the great scientific movement inaugurated by Aristotle caused many scholars to look into the doctrines taught by the Persian subjects of the Seleucides. We know from a reliable source that the works catalogued under the name of Zoroaster in the library of Alexandria contained two million lines. This immense body of sacred literature was bound to attract the attention of scholars and to call forth the reflections of philosophers. The dim and dubious science that reached even the lower classes under the name of "magic" was to a considerable extent of Persian origin, as its name indicates, and along with physician's recipes and thaumaturgic processes it imparted some theological doctrines in a confused fashion.^[9]

This explains why certain institutions and beliefs of the Persians had found imitators and adepts in the Greco-Oriental world long before the Romans had gained a foothold in Asia. Their influence was indirect, secret, frequently indiscernible, but it was certain. The most active agencies in the diffusion of Mazdaism as of Judaism seem to have been colonies of believers who had emigrated far from the mother country. There was a Persian dispersion similar to that of the Israelites. Communities of magi were established not only in eastern Asia Minor, but in Galatia, Phrygia, Lydia and even in Egypt. Everywhere they remained attached to their customs and beliefs with persistent tenacity.^[10]

When Rome extended her conquests into Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, the influence of Persia became much more direct. Superficial contact with the Mazdean populations began with the wars against Mithradates, but it did not become frequent and lasting until the first century of our era. During that century the empire gradually extended its limits to the upper Euphrates, and thereby absorbed all the uplands of Anatolia and Commagene south of the Taurus. The native dynasties which had fostered the secular isolation of those distant countries in spite of the state of vassalage to which they had been reduced disappeared one after another. The Flavians constructed through those hitherto almost inaccessible regions an immense network of roads that were as important to Rome as the railways of Turkestan or of Siberia are to modern Russia. At the same time Roman legions camped on the banks of the Euphrates and in the mountains of Armenia. Thus all the little Mazdean centers scattered in Cappadocia and Pontus were forced into constant relation with the Latin world, and on the other hand the disappearance of the buffer states made the Roman and Parthian empires neighboring powers in Trajan's time (98-117 A. D.).

From these conquests and annexations in Asia Minor and Syria dates the sudden propagation of the Persian mysteries of Mithra in the Occident. For even though a congregation of their votaries seems to have existed at Rome under Pompey as early as 67 B. C., the real diffusion of the mysteries began with the Flavians toward the end of the first century of our era. They became more and more prominent under the Antonines and the Severi, and remained the most important cult of paganism until the end of the fourth century. Through them as a medium the original doctrines of Mazdaism were widely propagated in every Latin province, and in order to appreciate the influence of Persia upon the Roman creeds, we must now give them our careful attention.

However, it must be said that the growing influence of Persia did not manifest itself solely in the religious sphere. After the accession of the Sassanid dynasty (228 A. D.) the country once more became conscious of its originality, again resumed the cultivation of national traditions, reorganized the hierarchy of its official clergy and recovered the political cohesion which had been wanting under the Parthians. It felt and showed its superiority over the neighboring empire that was then torn by factions, thrown upon the mercy of manifestoes, and ruined economically and morally. The studies now being made in the history of that period show more and more that debilitated Rome had become the imitator of Persia.

In the opinion of contemporaries the court of Diocletian, prostrating itself before a master who was regarded as the equal of God, with its complicated hierarchy and crowd of eunuchs that disgraced it, was an imitation of the court of the Sassanides. Galerius declared in unmistakable terms that Persian absolutism must be introduced in his empire,^[11] and the ancient Cæsarism founded on the will of the people seemed about to be transformed into a sort of caliphate.

Recent discoveries also throw light upon a powerful artistic school that developed in the Parthian empire and later in that of the Sassanides and which grew up independently of the Greek centers of production. Even if it took certain models from the Hellenic sculpture or architecture, it combined them with Oriental motives into a decoration of exuberant richness. Its field of influence extended far beyond Mesopotamia into the south of Syria where it has left monuments of unequalled splendor. The radiance of that brilliant center undoubtedly illuminated Byzantium, the barbarians of the north, and even China.^[12]

The Persian Orient, then, exerted a dominant influence on the political institutions and artistic tastes of the Romans as well as on their ideas and beliefs. The propagation of the religion of Mithra, which always proudly proclaimed its Persian origin, was accompanied by a number of parallel influences of the people from which it had issued. Never, not even during the Mohammedan invasions, had Europe a narrower escape from becoming Asiatic than when Diocletian officially recognized Mithra as the protector of the reconstructed empire.^[13] The time when that god seemed to be establishing his authority over the entire civilized world was one of the critical phases in the moral history of antiquity. An irresistible invasion of Semitic and Mazdean conceptions nearly succeeded in permanently overwhelming the Occidental spirit. Even after Mithra had been vanquished and expelled from Christianized Rome, Persia did not disarm. The work of conversion in which Mithraism had failed was taken up by Manicheism, the heir to its cardinal doctrines, and until the Middle Ages Persian dualism continued to cause bloody struggles in the ancient Roman provinces.

Just as we cannot understand the character of the mysteries of Isis and Serapis without studying the circumstances accompanying their creation by the Ptolemies, so we cannot appreciate the causes of the power attained by the mysteries of Mithra, unless we go far back to their origin.

Here the subject is unfortunately more obscure. The ancient authors tell us almost nothing about the origin of Mithra. One point on which they all agree is that he was a Persian god, but this we should know from the Avesta even if they had not mentioned it. But how did he get to Italy from the Persian uplands?

Two scant lines of Plutarch are the most explicit document we have on the subject. He narrates incidentally that the pirates from Asia Minor vanquished by Pompey in 67 performed strange sacrifices on Olympus, a volcano of Lycia, and practiced occult rites, among others those of Mithra which, he says, "exist to the present day and were first taught by them."^[14] Lactantius Placidus, a commentator on Statius and a mediocre authority, also tells us that the cult passed from the Persians to the Phrygians and from the Phrygians to the Romans.^[15]

These two authors agree then in fixing in Asia Minor the origin of this Persian religion that later spread over the Occident, and in fact various indications direct us to that country. The frequency of the name Mithradates, for instance, in the dynasties of Pontus, Cappadocia, Armenia and Commagene, connected with the Achemenides by fictitious genealogies, shows the devotion of those kings to Mithra.

As we see, the Mithraism that was revealed to the Romans at the time of Pompey had established itself in the Anatolian monarchies during the preceding period, which was an epoch of intense moral and religious unrest. Unfortunately we have no monuments of that period of its history. The absence of direct testimony on the development of Mazdean sects during the last three centuries before our era prevents us from gaining exact knowledge of the Parseeism of Asia Minor.

None of the temples dedicated to Mithra in that religion have been examined.^[16] The inscriptions mentioning his name are as yet few and insignificant, so that it is only by indirect means that we can arrive at conclusions about this primitive cult. The only way to explain its distinguishing features in the Occident is to study the environment in which it originated.

During the domination of the Achemenides eastern Asia Minor was colonized by the Persians. The uplands of Anatolia resembled those of Persia in climate and soil, and were especially adapted to the raising of horses.^[17] In Cappadocia and even in Pontus the aristocracy who owned the soil belonged to the conquering nation. Under the various governments which followed after the death of Alexander, those landlords remained the real masters of the country, chieftains of clans governing the canton where they had their domains, and, on the outskirts of Armenia at least, they retained the hereditary title of satraps through all political vicissitudes until the time of Justinian, thus recalling their Persian origin.^[18] This military and feudal aristocracy furnished Mithradates Eupator a considerable number of the officers who helped him in his long defiance of Rome, and later it defended the threatened independence of Armenia against the enterprises of the Cæsars. These warriors worshiped Mithra as the protecting genius of their arms, and this is the reason why Mithra always, even in the Latin world, remained the "invincible" god, the tutelary deity of armies, held in special honor by warriors.

Besides the Persian nobility a Persian clergy had also become established in the peninsula. It officiated in famous temples, at Zela in Pontus and Hierocæsarea in Lydia. Magi, called magousaioi or pyrethes (firelighters) were scattered over the Levant. Like the Jews, they retained their national customs and traditional rites with such scrupulous loyalty that Bardesanes of Edessa cited them as an example in his attempt to refute the doctrines of astrology and to show that a nation can retain the same customs in different climates.^[19] We know their religion sufficiently to be certain that the Syrian author had good grounds for attributing that conservative spirit to them. The sacrifices of the pyrethes which Strabo observed in Cappadocia recall all the peculiarities of the Avestan liturgy. The same prayers were recited before the altar of the fire while the priest held the sacred fasces (bareçman); the same offerings were made of milk, oil and honey; and the same precautions were taken to prevent the priest's breath from polluting the divine flame. Their gods were practically those of orthodox Mazdaism. They worshiped Ahura Mazda, who had to them remained a divinity of the sky as Zeus and Jupiter had been originally. Below him they venerated deified abstractions (such as Vohumano, "good mind," and Ameretat, "immortality") from which the religion of Zoroaster made its Amshaspends, the archangels surrounding the Most High.^[20] Finally they sacrificed to the spirits of nature, the Yazatas: for instance, Anahita or Anaites the goddess of the waters—that made fertile the fields; Atar, the personification of fire; and especially Mithra, the pure genius of light.

Thus the basis of the religion of the magi of Asia Minor was Mazdaism, somewhat changed from that of the Avesta, and in certain respects holding closer to the primitive nature worship of the Aryans, but nevertheless a clearly characterized and distinctive Mazdaism, which was to remain the most solid foundation for the greatness of the mysteries of Mithra in the Occident.

Recent discoveries^[21] of bilingual inscriptions have succeeded in establishing the fact that the language used, or at least written, by the Persian colonies of Asia Minor was not their ancient Aryan idiom, but Aramaic, which was a Semitic dialect. Under the Achemenides this was the diplomatic and commercial language of all countries west of the Tigris. In Cappadocia and Armenia it remained the literary and probably also the liturgical language until it was slowly supplanted by Greek during the Hellenistic period. The very name magousaioi (μαγουσαῖοι) given to the magi in those countries is an exact transcription of a Semitic plural.^[22] This phenomenon, surprising at first sight, is explained by the history of the magousaioi who emigrated to Asia Minor. They did not come there directly from Persepolis or Susa, but from Mesopotamia. Their religion had been deeply influenced by the speculations of the powerful clergy officiating in the temples of Babylon. The learned theology of the Chaldeans imposed itself on the primitive Mazdaism, which was a collection of traditions and rites rather than a body of doctrines. The divinities of the two religions became identified, their legends connected, and the Semitic astrology, the result of long continued scientific observations, superimposed itself on the naturalistic myths of the Persians. Ahura Mazda was assimilated to Bel, Anahita to Ishtar, and Mithra to Shamash, the solar god. For that reason Mithra was commonly called Sol invictus in the Roman mysteries, and an abstruse and a complicated astronomic symbolism was always part of the teachings revealed to candidates for initiation and manifested itself also in the artistic embellishments of the temple.

In connection with a cult from Commagene we can observe rather closely how the fusion of Parseeism with Semitic and Anatolian creeds took place, because in those regions the form of religious transformations was at all times syncretic. On a mountain top in the vicinity of a town named Doliche, a deity was worshiped who after a number of transformations became a Jupiter Protector of the Roman armies. Originally this god, who was believed to have discovered the use of iron, seems to have been brought to Commagene by a tribe of blacksmiths, the Chalybes, who had come from the north.^[23] He was represented standing on a steer and holding in his hand a two-edged ax, an ancient symbol venerated in Crete during the Mycenean age and found also at Labranda in Caria and all over Asia Minor.^[24] The ax symbolized the god's mastery over the lightning which splits asunder the trees of the forest amidst the din of storms. Once established on Syrian soil, this genius of thunder became identified with some local Baal and his cult took up all the Semitic features. After the conquests of Cyrus and the founding of the Persian domination, this "Lord of the heavens" was readily confounded with Ahura Mazda, who was likewise "the full circle of heaven," according to a definition of Herodotus,^[25] and whom the Persians also worshiped on mountain tops. When a half Persian, half Hellenic dynasty succeeded Alexander in Commagene, this Baal became a Zeus Oromasdes (Ζεῦς Ὠρομάσδης, Ahura Mazda) residing in the sublime ethereal regions. A Greek inscription speaks of the celestial thrones "on which this supreme divinity receives the souls of its worshipers."^[26] In the Latin countries "Jupiter Caelus" remained at the head of the Mazdean pantheon,^[27] and in all the provinces the temples of "Jupiter Dolichenus" were erected beside those of Mithra, and the two remained in the closest relations.^[28]

The same series of transformations took place elsewhere with a number of other gods.^[29] The Mithra worship was thus formed, in the main, by a combination of Persian beliefs with Semitic theology, incidentally including certain elements from the native cults of Asia Minor. The Greeks later translated the names of the Persian divinities into their language and imposed certain forms of their mysteries on the Mazdean cult.^[30] Hellenic art lent to the Yazatas that idealized form in which it liked to represent the immortals, and philosophy, especially that of the Stoics, endeavored to discover its own physical and metaphysical theories in the traditions of the magi. But in spite of all these accommodations, adaptations and interpretations, Mithraism always remained in substance a Mazdaism blended with Chaldeanism, that is to say, essentially a barbarian religion. It certainly was far less Hellenized than the Alexandrian cult of Isis and Serapis, or even that of the Great Mother of Pessinus. For that reason it always seemed unacceptable to the Greek world, from which it continued to be almost completely excluded. Even language furnishes a curious proof of that fact. Greek contains a number of theophorous (θεοφόρος, god-bearing) names formed from those of Egyptian or Phrygian gods, like Serapion, Metrodoros, Metrophilos—Isidore is in use at the present day—but all known derivations of Mithra are of barbarian formation. The Greeks never admitted the god of their hereditary enemies, and the great centers of Hellenic civilization escaped his influence and he theirs.^[31] Mithraism passed directly from Asia into the Latin world.

There it spread with lightning rapidity from the time it was first introduced. When the progressive march of the Romans toward the Euphrates enabled them to investigate the sacred trust transmitted by Persia to the magi of Asia Minor, and when they became acquainted with the Mazdean beliefs which had matured in the seclusion of the Anatolian mountains, they adopted them with enthusiasm. The Persian cult was spread by the soldiers along the entire length of the frontiers towards the end of the first century and left numerous traces around the camps of the Danube and the Rhine, near the stations along the wall of Britain, and in the vicinity of the army posts scattered along the borders of the Sahara or in the valleys of the Asturias. At the same time the Asiatic merchants introduced it in the ports of the Mediterranean, along the great waterways and roads, and in all commercial cities. It also possessed missionaries in the Oriental slaves who were to be found everywhere, engaging in every pursuit, employed in the public service as well as in domestic work, in the cultivation of land as well as in financial and mining enterprises, and above all in the imperial service, where they filled the offices.

Soon this foreign god gained the favor of high functionaries and of the sovereign himself. At the end of the second century Commodus was initiated into the mysteries, a conversion that had a tremendous effect. A hundred years later Mithra's power was such that at one time he seemed about to eclipse both Oriental and Occidental rivals and to dominate the entire Roman world. In the year 307 Diocletian, Galerius and Licinius met in a solemn interview at Carnuntum on the Danube and dedicated a sanctuary there to Mithra, "the protector of their empire" (fautori imperii sui).^[32]

In previous works on the mysteries of Mithra we have endeavored to assign causes for the enthusiasm that attracted humble plebeians and great men of the world to the altars of this barbarian god. We shall not repeat here what any one who has the curiosity may read either in a large or a small book according to his preferences,^[33] but we must consider the problem from a different point of view. Of all Oriental religions the Persian cult was the last to reach the Romans. We shall inquire what new principle it contained; to what inherent qualities it owed its superiority; and through what characteristics it remained distinct in the conflux of creeds of all kinds that were struggling for supremacy in the world at that time.

The originality and value of the Persian religion lay not in its doctrines regarding the nature of the celestial gods. Without doubt Parseeism is of all pagan religions the one that comes closest to monotheism, for it elevates Ahura Mazda high above all other celestial spirits. But the doctrines of Mithraism are not those of Zoroaster. What it received from Persia was chiefly its mythology and ritual; its theology, which was thoroughly saturated with Chaldean erudition, probably did not differ noticeably from the Syrian. At the head of the divine hierarchy it placed as first cause an abstraction, deified Time, the Zervan Akarana of the Avesta. This divinity regulated the revolutions of the stars and in consequence was the absolute master of all things. Ahura Mazda, whose throne was in the heavens, had become the equivalent of Ba‘al Samin, and even before the magi the Semites had introduced into the Occident the worship of the sun, the source of all energy and light. Babylonian astrology and astrolatry inspired the theories of the mithreums as well as of the Semitic temples, a fact that explains the intimate connection of the two cults. This half religious, half scientific system which was not peculiarly Persian nor original to Mithraism was not the reason for the adoption of that worship by the Roman world.

Neither did the Persian mysteries win the masses by their liturgy. Undoubtedly their secret ceremonies performed in mountain caves, or at any rate in the darkness of the underground crypts, were calculated to inspire awe. Participation in the liturgical meals gave rise to moral comfort and stimulation. By submitting to a sort of baptism the votaries hoped to expiate their sins and regain an untroubled conscience. But the sacred feasts and purifying ablutions connected with the same spiritual hopes are found in other Oriental cults, and the magnificent suggestive ritual of the Egyptian clergy certainly was more impressive than that of the magi. The mythic drama performed in the grottoes of the Persian god and culminating in the immolation of a steer who was considered as the creator and rejuvenator of the earth, must have seemed less important and affecting than the suffering and joy of Isis seeking and reviving the mutilated body of her husband, or than the moaning and jubilation of Cybele mourning over and reviving her lover Attis.

But Persia introduced dualism as a fundamental principle in religion. It was this that distinguished Mithraism from other sects and inspired its dogmatic theology and ethics, giving them a rigor and firmness unknown to Roman paganism. It considered the universe from an entirely new point of view and at the same time provided a new goal in life.

Of course, if we understand by dualism the antithesis of mind and matter, of reason and intuition, it appeared at a considerably earlier period in Greek philosophy,^[34] where it was one of the leading ideas of neo-Pythagoreanism and of Philo's system. But the distinguishing feature of the doctrine of the magi is the fact that it deified the evil principle, set it up as a rival to the supreme deity, and taught that both had to be worshiped. This system offered an apparently simple solution to the problem of evil, the stumbling block of theologies, and it attracted the cultured minds as well as the masses, to whom it afforded an explanation of their sufferings. Just as the mysteries of Mithra began to spread Plutarch wrote of them favorably and was inclined himself to adopt them.^[35] From that time dates the appearance in literature of the anti-gods (ἀντίθεοι),^[36] under the command of the powers of darkness^[37] and arrayed against the celestial spirits, messengers or "angels"^[38] of divinity. They were Ahriman's devas struggling with the Yazatas of Ormuzd.