Forerunners and rivals of Christianity, Vol. I (of 2)

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Title: Forerunners and rivals of Christianity, Vol. I (of 2)
Author: Legge, Francis
Language: English
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CHRISTIANITY, VOL. I (OF 2) ***

FORERUNNERS AND RIVALS OF CHRISTIANITY

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
C. F. CLAY, MANAGER
London: FETTER LANE, E.C.
Edinburgh: 100 PRINCES STREET

New York: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Bombay and Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
Toronto: J. M. DENT AND SONS, LTD.
Tokyo: THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA

_All rights reserved_

FORERUNNERS AND RIVALS OF CHRISTIANITY

BEING

STUDIES IN RELIGIOUS HISTORY
FROM 330 B.C. TO 330 A.D.

BY
F. LEGGE, F.S.A.

(Honorary) Foreign Secretary Society of Biblical Archaeology,
Member of Council Royal Asiatic Society,
Member of Committee Egypt Exploration Fund, &c.

“The ghosts of words and dusty dreams”
“Old memories, faiths infirm and dead”

SWINBURNE, _Félise_.

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I

Cambridge:
at the University Press
1915

Cambridge:
PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

PREFACE

The following pages are a modest attempt to bring before the public
certain documents of great importance for the understanding of the
growth and development of the Christian religion. They are not new,
almost all of them having been translated at one time or another into
English, French, German, or Italian: but they are all practically
unknown save to scholars, are all fragmentary, and with hardly an
exception, are difficult to understand without a running commentary. In
these circumstances, I have ventured to follow, not for the first time,
the advice given by Sir Gaston Maspero to his pupils in one of his
luminous lectures at the Collège de France. “If” said in effect that
great master of archaeology, “you find yourselves in the presence of
scattered and diverse examples of any monument you cannot
understand—funerary cones, amulets of unusual form, hypocephali, or
anything else—make a collection of them. Search museums, journals of
Egyptology, proceedings of learned societies, until you think they have
no more novelties of the kind to offer you. Then put those you have
collected side by side and study them. The features they have in common
will then readily appear and in a little time you will find that you
will perceive not only the use of the objects in question, but also the
history of their development, their connexion with each other, and their
relative dates.” This has been the end aimed at in this book; and
although, like most aims in this world, it has not been perfectly
achieved, it may, I think, be said with confidence that these documents
explain and supplement one another in a remarkable degree, and that in
the majority of cases sense can now be read into what at first sight
seemed to be nonsense. As more fragments of the same kind come to light,
also, one has fair reason to hope that those points which are still
obscure may be made clear.

The system of references adopted perhaps calls for some explanation. As
I have no right to expect my readers to take what I say for gospel, I
should have preferred to give my authority for every statement made by
me in the text. But there are often many authorities supporting the same
statement, and some discrimination between them was necessary unless
these two volumes were to be swollen to an intolerable length. The same
consideration for brevity, too, has often led me to quote at second or
third hand rather than at first. References to well-known passages in
the more widely read classical writers and Christian Fathers are not
needed by scholarly readers, while to others they are difficult to check
or verify. I have therefore deliberately and of choice preferred the
less recondite sources to the more recondite, and have never hesitated
to refer the reader to encyclopaedias, popular lectures, and the works
avowedly addressed to the general public of writers like Renan and
Mahaffy, rather than to the sources from which they have themselves
drawn their information. In so doing, however, I have never consciously
failed to check the statement quoted with the original source, and to
see, so far as in me lay, that it correctly represents its purport. A
fairly long experience has convinced me that to many readers the “Apoll.
Rhod. ac Nigid. Schuster, p. 41” and the “Clemens de div. serv. Su 20”
dear to certain German professors and their English admirers mean very
little, and to the greater public nothing at all. For the translations
which appear in the text or notes I have gleaned from all sources, but,
except where expressly mentioned, I must personally accept all
responsibility for them, and in cases in which any doubt seemed possible
I have generally added the words of the original document.

Finally, I have not attempted to impress my own opinion on my readers,
but merely to give them the material on which they can form their own;
and where I have found myself in doubt as to what the facts of the case
really were, I have never scrupled to say so. This is not a counsel of
perfection, but the one which on the whole seemed to me best. If by
doing so I have succeeded in sending to the documents themselves a few
readers hitherto ignorant of them, I shall think I have not wasted my
time.

F. LEGGE.

6 GRAY’S INN SQUARE,
_July 1914_.

P.S. The outbreak of the war has caused the publication of this book to
be postponed. I regret the delay the less that it has enabled me to make
use of several works and studies which have appeared during the last
twelve months.

F. L.

ERRATA

Transcriber’s Note:

The following author’s corrections have already been applied to the
e-books for this Volume and for Volume 2.

VOL. I.

p. 121, l. 5, _for_ Xerxes _read_ Darius.

p. 141, n. 4, _for_ Prof. C. R. B. Weidmann _read_ Prof. Carl
Robert.

VOL. II.

p. 18, n. 2, _for_ cc. III, xxxi. Justin Martyr _read_ cc. III,
xxxi; Justin Martyr.

p. 36, n. 1, _for_ Isidore Loeb, _La Cabbale juive_, p. 587. F.
Herman Krüger, _La Grande Encyclopédie_, _s.v._ Gnosticisme _read_
Isidore Loeb, _La Grande Encyclopédie_, _s.v._ La Cabbale juive;
_ibid._ F. Herman Krüger, _s.v._ Gnosticisme.

p. 37, n. 1, _for_ Thou the King, the Aeon of Aeons _read_ Thou
King, Aeon of Aeons.

p. 38, n. 3, _for_ Introduction (pp. xx-xxiii) _read_ Introduction
(pp. lxi-lxiii).

p. 69, n. 3, _for_ השטבה _read_ חשטפה.

p. 72, l. 4, _for_ boundless _read_ thoughtless.

p. 102, l. 22, _for_ Ecclesiasticis _read_ Ecclesiasticus.

p. 129, n. 3, _for_ Canons _read_ Canon.

p. 146, l. 17, _for_ its _read_ Its.

p. 146, n. 2, _for_ the Five Words, translated in the text _read_
the five words translated in the text.

p. 166, n. 2, _for_ 18 Eons _read_ 18 Aeons.

p. 174, l. 1, _for_ die _read_ dies.

p. 183, l. 10, _for_ Books _read_ Texts.

p. 200, l. 10, _for_ Pistis Sophia _read_ Texts of the Saviour.

p. 338, n. 2, _for_ Journal des Savants _read_ Journal des Savans.

CONTENTS

TABLE OF DATES . . . Pages xiii-xxvii

BOOKS AND ARTICLES REFERRED TO . . . xxviii-xlviii

INTRODUCTION

Importance of study of Christian origins—Cause of popular misconceptions
on the subject—Change of standpoint with progress of science of
religions—Definition of science and religion—Apparent dilemma of
orthodox—Christianity seems to follow evolutionary law like other
faiths—Rivals of infant Christianity—Judaism, classical Paganism, and
philosophy ruled out—Real competitors, Oriental religions, Gnosticism,
and Manichaeism—Certain features common to surviving documents of all
these faiths—Possibility of common origin—Question insoluble till origin
and dates of Zoroastrianism ascertained . . . Pages xlix-lxiii

CHAPTER I

THE CONQUESTS OF ALEXANDER

The extent of the Persian Empire and its government—Alexander’s aim, the
marriage of Europe and Asia, attained after his death—Greek becomes
common language—Importance of this for History of Religions—Ideas of
antiquity about gods—Monotheism of philosophers, and of Hebrew
Prophets—Aristotle’s _dictum_ that religion follows form of temporal
government—Alexander, perfect type of monarch—Adoption of monarchical
government by his Successors—Identification of Greek with barbarian
gods—Worship of Syrian and other foreign gods in Athens—Increase of
foreign worships after Alexander—Deification of Alexander and his
Successors leads to Euhemerism—Change of religious views among
Greeks—Age of innovation in religion—The missions of Asoka—Religious
associations in Greece, their composition and influence—Low character of
their priests and members—Alexander of Abonoteichos—Impulse given by
associations to proselytism—Summary . . . 1-27

CHAPTER II

THE ALEXANDRIAN DIVINITIES

Alexander’s Egypt and the policy of the Ptolemies—The Egyptian
priesthoods and their disastrous rule—Popularity of worship of
Osiris—Legend of Osiris according to Plutarch—Its composite character,
totemistic and historical elements—The Dying God of the Eastern
Mediterranean—The Eleusinian Mysteries—Resemblance of Eleusis legend to
Osirian—Ptolemy’s new religion—The Alexandrian triad, Serapis, Isis, and
Horus—Refusal of Egyptians to accept Ptolemy’s religion—Its success in
the West culminates under the Antonines—Causes of its triumph—Its
monarchical principle, or monotheistic pantheism—The Fatherhood of
God—Hope for future life—The Mysteries of the Alexandrian Religion
described—Degrees of initiation—Popular and external Ceremonies: Daily
Services in Temples, Opening, and Closing—Other Ceremonies: The
Herculaneum Frescoes—Adoration of the Sacred Water—The Finding of
Osiris—The Ship of Isis—Modern character of these Festivals—The Isiac
Priesthood—Recluses of Serapeum—Decline of Alexandrian Religion with
rise of Christianity—Superiority of Christianity—Last days of
Alexandrian Religion—Destruction of Serapeum at Alexandria in 391
A.D.—Borrowings of Christianity from Alexandrian Religion—Ritual,
Worship of Virgin, and Monachism—Likeness of sacramental usages—And,
more doubtfully, of doctrines—Transition probably effected through
Gnostic heresies . . . 28-89

CHAPTER III

THE ORIGIN OF GNOSTICISM

Religion and Magic—Knowledge chief necessity in magic—Origin of myths,
cosmogonies, and apocalypses—Spells and charms—Examples from Magic
Papyri, Sumerian invocation of Persephone, etc.—Letter of Nephotes to
Psammeticus with process of lecanomancy—Egyptian magicians deal with
devils—Polyglot spell of Alleius Craeonius invokes Jehovah with heathen
gods—Spread of magic in late Pagan and early Christian centuries—Magic
ceremonies not all imposture—Hypnotism employed in magic—Influence of
these ideas on evolution of Gnostic sects—Leads to development of ritual
in worship, especially in Egypt—Effect of Gnostic ideas if not
checked—Their early appearance in Greece—The rise of astrology—Its
origin in Babylonia—Introduces new ideas in religion—Astrological
tablets in Assurbanipal’s library—Construction of calendar—System of
correspondences—Planetary influence—Change in astrology when united to
Greek mathematics—Religion and Magic alike adopt astral
theories—Increased importance of Sun worship—Impulse given by astral
theories to Gnosticism—Entry into it of predestinarian ideas . . .
90-120

CHAPTER IV

PRE-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS: THE ORPHICI

The Orphic poems and the Pythagoreans—The Orphic Theology and Legend of
Dionysos—Orphics first to connect this with man’s fate in next
world—Asceticism of Orphic ideal—Initiation a substitute for
asceticism—Gold Plates of Italian Orphics and their likeness to Egyptian
funerary literature—Orphic propaganda at first confined to
Rhapsodists—Orphics seize upon worships of foreign gods—Demosthenes’
oration against Aeschines and its explanation—Orphics probably form
_thiasi_ and other religious associations—The Orpheotelestae, wandering
charlatans—The Orphic Hymns—Hymns to Persephone and Dionysos and their
explanation—Influence of Orphics upon later religions—Orphism leads to
spread of syncretism, magic, and external conformity—Summary of Orphism
and its influence upon Gnosticism . . . 121-148

CHAPTER V

PRE-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS: THE ESSENES

Contrast between religious ideas of Greeks and Jews—Fate of Jews under
Alexander’s Successors and Maccabaean Wars—Josephus’ account of the
Essenes—Its accuracy shown by Philo and others—Improbable views as to
their origin—Essenes essentially Gnostics—Their secret teaching—The
Enochian Apocalypses described—The Messianic delusions of the Jews in
Roman times—Books of Enoch, etc.—Essene method of interpreting
Scripture, isopsephism, and Cabala—Later history of Essenes—Survival of
their exegetical methods among Gnostics . . . 149-171

CHAPTER VI

PRE-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS: SIMON MAGUS

Adherence of Jews to Mosaic Law—Inconvenience of this to rich, and
necessity for compromise between Judaism and Hellenism—System of Philo
Judaeus and formation of secret sects among Jews—Simon Magus in
the New Testament—Position of Samaritans _temp._ Christ
intermediate between Jews and heathen—Account of Simon in
Clementines untrustworthy—Hippolytus’ quotations from the _Great
Announcement_—Simon’s First Cause and Six Roots—His system of
correspondences or paradigms—His bisexual Deity—Parallels between
systems of Simon and of Orphics—Simon’s account of creation
of man—Simon’s views on origin of evil and redemption not
clear—Contradiction among Fathers as to Simon’s doctrines—Simon’s
redemption through union of sexes and Platonic affinity—Simon’s view of
end of world—Later history of Simon’s sect; their indifference in
external matters and changes—Fathers’ ascription of all subsequent
heresy to borrowing from Simon examined and partly confirmed . . .
172-202

TABLE OF DATES

N.B. The dates which follow are only approximate, no attempt having here
been made to harmonize the system of chronology lately adopted by the
professors of the Berlin school with those formerly in use. For the
dates of the reigns of the Egyptian and Asiatic Successors of Alexander,
I have mainly relied upon the excellent work of M. Bouché-Leclercq as
given in his French version of Droysen’s _Hellenismus_, his _Histoire
des Lagides_ and (especially) his _Histoire des Séleucides_, the second
volume of which, containing the chronological tables, maps, and indexes,
has appeared at the close of this year (1914). The dates of the Parthian
and Bactrian kings are given with all reserve and are in effect
conjectures based on the slipshod statements of compilers like Justin,
Quintus Curtius, and Trogus Pompeius. For the Parthian dates I have
followed, though without any confidence in its accuracy, the chronology
of Prof. Eduard Meyer, and for the Bactrian, those given in Mr. H. C.
Rawlinson’s _Bactria_.

The dates in Vol. II, which deals with the centuries after Christ, are
for the most part fairly well ascertained, and those given in Prof.
Bury’s edition of Gibbon have been used wherever possible. For matters
not mentioned in Gibbon, such as the lives of the obscurer Christian
Fathers and leaders of sects, recourse has generally been had to Smith
and Wace’s _Dictionary of Christian Biography_ and other books of the
kind. The only serious discrepancy here noticeable arises from the habit
still prevalent among certain Continental writers of beginning the
Christian Era four years earlier than others, so as to increase all
subsequent dates by 4. Thus M. Cumont, in his _Mystères de Mithra_ and
elsewhere, invariably gives the date of the Carnuntum inscription
proclaiming Mithras the Protector of the Roman Empire, as 307 A.D.,
although he asserts that the _Iovii et Herculi religiosissimi Augusti_
responsible for the inscription are Diocletian and Galerius. Diocletian,
however, resigned the purple, and retired into private life in the year
305 A.D., by the reckoning of Prof. Bury and others, and it is plain
therefore that M. Cumont puts the date too far forward according to our
ideas. To bring it into line, I have therefore ventured to alter the
date of the inscription quoted by him to 304 A.D., which would moreover
coincide with the persecution of the Christians, which he thinks may
have owed some of its severity to the rivalry of the Mithraic faith. The
same procedure has been followed in one or two other cases.

336. Accession of Alexander.

340 to 260. Zeno of Citium (founder of Stoic school) flourished.

340 to 288. Pyrrho of Elis flourished.

334 to 322. Aristotle and first Peripatetic School flourished.

331. Foundation of Alexandria.

Alexander transports many Jews to Alexandria and gives them equal
rights with Macedonians.

330. Death of Darius.

326. Alexander conquers Punjab.

324. Alexander at Susa celebrates marriage of Europe and Asia.

323. Death of Alexander and first division of Empire.

Ptolemy, son of Lagos, made satrap of Egypt.

321. Second division of Alexander’s Empire at Triparadisus.

320. Ptolemy captures Jerusalem and transports many Jews to Alexandria.

_Circa_ 316. Euhemerus of Messene flourished.

312. Ptolemy and Seleucus defeat Demetrius Poliorcetes at Gaza.

Ptolemy seizes Syria, but evacuates it when defeated by Demetrius
near Myontes.

Many Jews voluntarily emigrate to Egypt.

312. Seleucus conquers Media and Persia, and enters Babylon in triumph.
Beginning of Seleucid Era.

310. Antigonus Monopthalmos by treaty abandons Eastern Provinces to
Seleucus.

307. Demetrius Poliorcetes at Athens.

Demetrius of Phalerum leaves Athens for Alexandria.

Probable foundation of Museum.

306 to 270. Epicurus flourished.

306. Ptolemy I Soter proclaims himself King of Egypt.

302. Coalition against Antigonus. Ptolemy invades Syria, and Lysimachus
Asia Minor.

301. Battle of Ipsus, and further division of Empire between Seleucus,
Lysimachus, and Cassander.

300 to 220. Cleanthus of Assos (Stoic philosopher) flourished.

298. Cession of Valley of Indus by Seleucus to Chandragupta.

297. Destruction of Samaria by Demetrius Poliorcetes.

294. Seleucus transports many Jews from Babylon to Antioch and other
Syrian cities.

293. Many Jewish colonies founded in Cyrene and Libya.

292. Seleucus gives his wife Stratonice and the Eastern Provinces to his
son Antiochus.

288. Coalition against Demetrius Poliorcetes.

Accession of Bindusara (Amitrochates) to Chandragupta’s Indian
Kingdom.

283. Accession of Ptolemy II Philadelphus.

283. Demetrius Poliorcetes dies a prisoner in the hands of Seleucus.

282. Seleucus conquers Asia Minor from Lysimachus.

281. Lysimachus defeated and slain at Corupedion.

Accession of Antiochus I Soter on assassination of Seleucus.

280.? Establishment of Greek worship of Serapis, Isis, and Horus at
Alexandria.

280 to 207. Chrysippus of Soli (Stoic philosopher) flourished.

280. Pyrrhus invades Italy.

Invasion of Thrace by Celtic tribes.

278. Pyrrhus’ campaign in Italy.

277. Settlement of Celtic tribes (Galatae) in Asia.

276. Translation of Pentateuch into Greek by order of Ptolemy
Philadelphus.

274. First Syrian War. Ptolemy Philadelphus against Antiochus Soter and
Magas of Cyrene.

273. Ptolemy Philadelphus sends embassy to Rome to conclude alliance.

265. Accession of Asoka, grandson of Chandragupta.

264. Asoka’s missions to Greek Kings.

First Punic War.

261. Accession of Antiochus II Theos.

258. Second Syrian War. Ptolemy Philadelphus against Antiochus Theos.

252. Diodotus revolts against Antiochus Theos and founds Kingdom of
Bactria.

250. Association of Greek Sarapiasts at Athens.

249. Arsaces revolts against Antiochus Theos and founds Arsacid Kingdom
of Parthia.

248. Accession of Tiridates on death of his brother, Arsaces of Parthia.

247. Accession of Seleucus II Callinicus on death of his father,
Antiochus Theos.

246. Accession of Ptolemy III Euergetes.

Third Syrian War. Ptolemy Euergetes against Seleucus Callinicus.

245.? Accession of Diodotus II on death of his father, Diodotus of
Bactria.

244. Ptolemy Euergetes overruns Upper Asia as far as Susa.

241. War between Seleucus Callinicus and his brother Antiochus Hierax.

Accession of Attalus as dynast of Pergamum.

238. Ptolemy Euergetes and his wife Berenice II deified. Decree of
Canopus.

Attalus defeats Galatae and proclaims himself King of Pergamum.

230. Euthydemus of Magnesia seizes throne of Bactria on death of
Diodotus II.

229. Rome first intervenes in affairs of Greece on behalf of
Acarnanians.

226. Accession of Seleucus III Soter on death of his father, Seleucus
Callinicus.

225. Attalus of Pergamum, “Friend of Rome,” defeats Seleucus Soter and
seizes Syrian Asia Minor.

222. Accession of Antiochus III the Great, on assassination of his
father, Seleucus Soter.

221. Accession of Ptolemy IV Philopator on death of his father, Ptolemy
Euergetes.

219. Antiochus the Great reconquers Asia Minor.

Antiochus the Great captures Jerusalem from Ptolemy Philopator.

217. Antiochus the Great transports 2,000 Jewish families from Babylon
to Phrygia and Lydia.

Ptolemy Philopator defeats Antiochus the Great at Raphia and
recaptures Jerusalem and Samaria.

Second Punic War.

216. Worship of Greek Sarapis and Isis established in Boeotia.

211. Accession of Artabanus I to throne of Parthia on death of his
father Tiridates.

210. Artabanus of Parthia attacked by Antiochus the Great, who besieges
his capital, but finally makes alliance with him.

First Macedonian War. Romans and Aetolians against Philip.

205. Accession of Ptolemy V Epiphanes.

Antiochus the Great seizes Palestine.

204. Statue of Great Mother brought from Pessinus to Rome.

Scopas reconquers Palestine for Ptolemy Epiphanes and Jews revolt
to latter.

200. Second Macedonian War.

198. Antiochus the Great defeats Scopas at Panion and reoccupies
Jerusalem and Samaria.

197. Accession of Eumenes II on death of his father, Attalus of
Pergamum.

Philip defeated by Romans at Cynoscephalae.

196. Coronation of Ptolemy Epiphanes at Memphis. Rosetta Stone set up.

191. Ptolemy Epiphanes sends embassy to Rome to offer alliance.

190. Romans defeat Antiochus the Great at Magnesia.

Accession of Demetrius on death of Euthydemus of Bactria.

Accession of Priapatius on death of Artabanus of Parthia.

187. Accession of Seleucus IV Philopator on death of his father,
Antiochus the Great.

182. Accession of Ptolemy VI Eupator.

181. Accession of Ptolemy VII Philometor.

180. Serapeum at Delos in existence.

175. Demetrius of Bactria annexes Cabul and Punjab.

Accession of Antiochus IV Epiphanes on death of his brother,
Seleucus Philopator.

175. Eucratides rebels against Demetrius of Bactria and seizes throne.

173. Antiochus Epiphanes seizes Judaea and Coele-Syria.

172. Third Macedonian War.

171. Antiochus Epiphanes invades Egypt and defeats Ptolemy Philometor at
Pelusium.

170. Antiochus Epiphanes plunders Temple of Jerusalem.

Ptolemy Philometor and Ptolemy Euergetes II made joint kings by
Romans.

Accession of Mithridates I to throne of Parthia.

168. Antiochus Epiphanes’ second invasion of Egypt stopped by Romans.
Circle of Popilius Laena.

166. Antiochus Epiphanes again pillages Temple and persecutes Jewish
religion.

Samaritans make peace with Antiochus Epiphanes and accept
Hellenization.

Revolt of Maccabees against Syria.

164. Accession of Antiochus V Eupator on death of his father, Antiochus
Epiphanes.

162. Judas Maccabaeus besieged in Jerusalem by Lysias for Antiochus
Eupator. Peace made on Philip’s attempt to seize regency.

Romans send embassy to Antiochus Eupator which compels him to burn
his ships and kill his elephants.

Demetrius escapes from Rome and invades Syria.

161. Romans recognize Demetrius as King of Syria with title of Demetrius
I Soter.

Judas Maccabaeus sends embassy to Rome, is attacked by Demetrius
Soter, and slain. Judaea, under his brother Jonathan, submits to
Syria.

Timarchos, Satrap of Media, and Ptolemy, dynast of Commagene,
proclaim themselves Kings, and are recognized by Romans.

160. Ptolemy Philometor expelled from Egypt by Euergetes II, but
restored by Romans.

Ptolemy, son of Glaucias, a recluse in Serapeum of Memphis.

159. Accession of Attalus II Philadelphus on death of his brother,
Eumenes of Pergamum.

154. Ptolemy Euergetes II made King of Cyrene.

Foundation of Jewish Temple or Oneion at Leontopolis in Egypt.

152. Alexander Bala, pretender to throne of Syria, recognized by Romans
as son of Antiochus Epiphanes.

151. Coalition of Egyptian and Asiatic Kings with Romans against
Demetrius Soter of Syria.

150. Demetrius Soter defeated and slain by coalition of Egyptian and
Asiatic kings. Alexander Bala succeeds to throne of Syria, and marries
Cleopatra Thea, daughter of Ptolemy Philometor.

149. Third Punic War.

145. Ptolemy Philometor invades Syria and defeats Alexander Bala at
Oenoparas. Ptolemy killed in battle and Alexander by Nabathaeans.

Accession of Ptolemy IX (Euergetes II) Physcon as sole king of
Egypt.

Accession of Demetrius II Nicator to throne of Syria. Civil war
between Demetrius and Diodotus (Trypho) as regent for infant
Antiochus VI Epiphanes Dionysos.

144. Ptolemy Physcon expels philosophers from Museum.

142. Simon Maccabaeus succeeds as High Priest Jonathan slain by Trypho.

Simon Maccabaeus proclaims independence of Judaea.

141. Simon Maccabaeus sends embassy to Romans who receive Jews as
“Friends of Rome.”

140. Mithridates I of Parthia seizes part of Bactria, Media, Susiana,
and Persia.

139. Demetrius Nicator invades Parthia and is taken prisoner by
Mithridates.

Beginning of Era of Arsacides.

Antiochus VI Epiphanes Dionysos murdered by Trypho, who is made
King by army.

138. Accession of Attalus III Philometor on death of his father, Attalus
II of Pergamum.

Accession of Phraates II to throne of Parthia.

137. Antiochus VII Sidetes, brother of Demetrius Nicator, takes throne
of Syria.

135. Antiochus Sidetes defeats Trypho, who commits suicide, at Apamea.

John and Judas Maccabaeus, sons of Simon, defeat, at Modein, army
of Antiochus Sidetes.

Simon Maccabaeus assassinated by his son-in-law Ptolemy.

John Hyrcanus succeeds his father Simon as High Priest.

Hierocles, last Greek King of Bactria, after invasion of Sacae,
transfers his capital to Sialkôt.

Attalus of Pergamum bequeaths his kingdom to Romans.

134. Siege of Jerusalem by Antiochus Sidetes. Jews made tributaries to
Syria.

130. Antiochus Sidetes invades Parthia and reconquers Babylonia and
Media.

Menander (the Milinda of Buddhists) King of Cabul and Punjab.

129. John Hyrcanus sends embassy to Rome for help against Syria.

Medes rebel against Antiochus Sidetes, who is defeated by Phraates
II of Parthia and commits suicide.

Restoration of Demetrius Nicator to throne of Syria. Phraates II of
Parthia slain in battle against Scythians.

129. Accession of Artabanus II of Parthia.

126. Demetrius Nicator defeated and slain by pretender, Alexander
Zabina.

125. Destruction of Samaria by John Hyrcanus.

124. Accession of Mithridates II the Great on death of Artabanus II in
battle against Tocharians.

122. Accession of Antiochus VIII Grypus, son of Demetrius Nicator, who
with the help of Egypt defeats and slays Alexander Zabina.

120. Accession of Mithridates Eupator as King of Pontus.

117. Accession of Cleopatra III and Ptolemy X Lathyrus.

Civil war in Syria between Antiochus Grypus and Antiochus IX
Cyzicenus, son of Antiochus Sidetes. Division of Syria between
them.

113. Antiochus Cyzicenus invades Judaea, and is ordered by Romans to
withdraw.

106. Accession of Ptolemy XI Alexander.

Aristobulus succeeds his father, John Hyrcanus, as High Priest, and
proclaims himself King.

105. Municipality of Puteoli builds Serapeum.

Aristobulus of Judaea annexes Iturea.

Alexander Jannaeus succeeds, as King, his brother Aristobulus.

98. Alexander Jannaeus, trying to annex Ptolemais and Gaza, is defeated
by Ptolemy Lathyrus, then King of Cyprus.

Alexander Jannaeus makes league with Cleopatra III, who compels
Ptolemy to withdraw.

96. Alexander Jannaeus captures Gaza and massacres inhabitants.

Accession of Seleucus VI Epiphanes Nicator on assassination of his
father, Antiochus Grypus.

95. Antiochus X Pius, son of Antiochus Cyzicenus, defeats and slays
Seleucus Epiphanes near Mopsuestia.

94. Division of Syria. Antiochus Pius reigns in Upper Syria, Philip I
and Demetrius III Eucaerus, sons of Antiochus Grypus, in Coele-Syria.

93. Antiochus Pius slain in battle against the Parthians in Commagene.

Ariobarzanes, King of Cappadocia, expelled by Mithridates Eupator of
Pontus, but reinstated by Romans under Sulla.

89. Alexander Jannaeus crucifies 800 Pharisees at Bethome and restores
peace in Judaea.

88. Demetrius Eucaerus invades Judaea and defeats Alexander Jannaeus at
Sichem, but is taken prisoner by Parthians and dies in captivity.

Interregnum in Parthia.

First Mithridatic War.

87. Antiochus XII Dionysos, son of Antiochus Grypus, crowned King of
Syria at Damascus.

84. Sulla makes peace with Mithridates.

Antiochus Dionysos defeated and slain at Motho by Aretas the
Philhellene, King of Nabathaeans.

83. Tigranes, King of Armenia, becomes King of Syria.

82. Sulla dictator.

81. Accession of Ptolemy XII Alexander II.

Accession of Ptolemy XIII Auletes.

_Circa_ 80. College of Pastophori of Greek Isis at Rome founded.

79. Death of Alexander Jannaeus, and accession of his widow, Salome
Alexandra.

78. Death of Sulla.

77. Tigranes builds Tigranocerta, and transports thither many peoples of
different race.

76. The Arsacid Sinatroces, captive among the Scyths, released by them
to become King of Parthia.

75. Second Mithridatic War.

74. Nicomedes of Bithynia bequeaths his kingdom to Mithridates Eupator
of Pontus.

Third Mithridatic War.

72. Mithridates, defeated by Lucullus, takes refuge with his son-in-law
Tigranes.

70. Accession of Phraates III of Parthia.

69. Tigranes invades Palestine, but is bought off by Salome Alexandra.
Tigranes defeated and Tigranocerta taken by Lucullus.

Antiochus XIII Asiaticus, son of Antiochus Pius, made King of Syria.

Death of Salome Alexandra, and accession of her son Aristobulus as
King, with John Hyrcanus II as High Priest.

67. Pompey suppresses the Cilician pirates. Reported introduction of
Mysteries of Mithras into Italy.

66. Phraates III of Parthia, Friend of Rome, invades Armenia.

Tigranes submits to Pompey, and is allowed to retain Great Armenia.

Civil war in Palestine between Aristobulus and John Hyrcanus II.

65. Siege of Jerusalem by Nabathaeans and Pharisees, raised by command
of Pompey’s lieutenant Scaurus.

64. Ariarathes, King of Cappadocia, receives from Romans Lesser Armenia,
Gordyene, and Sophene.

Osrhoene and Edessa made into separate kingdom under Arab prince
Ariamne.

Syria becomes Roman province.

63. Death of Mithridates Eupator.

Death of Antiochus Asiaticus.

61. Pompey captures Jerusalem, and puts an end to Maccabaean Kingdom.
Aristobulus sent captive to Rome.

Samaria and all forcibly Judaized communities regain their autonomy.

58. Ptolemy Auletes, expelled from Egypt, flies to Rome.

Statues of Isis at Rome thrown down by order of Consul, A. Gabinius.

57. Alexander, son of Aristobulus of Judaea, rebels, and is defeated by
Gabinius, Proconsul of Syria.

56. Aristobulus escapes from Rome and heads new revolt in Judaea.

55. Accession of Orodes I to throne of Parthia.

Fresh revolt of Jews under Alexander suppressed by Gabinius, who
makes Antipater the Idumean ruler of Judaea.

Ptolemy Auletes restored to throne of Egypt by Gabinius.

53. Crassus and Roman army defeated by Parthians at Carrhae.

52. Fresh revolt of Jews suppressed by Cassius.

51. Accession of Cleopatra VI and Ptolemy XIV.

50. Temple of Isis at Rome destroyed by Consul, L. Aemilius Paulus.

48. Julius Caesar and Cleopatra besieged in Alexandria by Egyptian
rebels. Death of Ptolemy XIV.

Temples of Isis near Capitol thrown down at bidding of augurs.

47. Cleopatra made queen jointly with Ptolemy XV.

Antipater and Jewish troops take part in raising of siege of
Alexandria.

Julius Caesar repeals Jewish tribute and liability to military
service, and gives Jews religious liberty and self-government.

John Hyrcanus II made hereditary ethnarch of Judaea.

46. Herod, son of Antipater, enters Roman army and is made military
governor of Coele-Syria.

45. Death of Ptolemy XV. Cleopatra makes her son Caesarion coregent with
her as Ptolemy XVI.

Hermaeus last Greek ruler in India.

44. Assassination of Julius Caesar.

Fresh revolt of Jews on Caesar’s death suppressed by Cassius, who
makes Herod Procurator of Coele-Syria.

43. Triumvirs Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus decree temple to Isis and
Serapis.

42. Battle of Philippi and division of Roman world between Mark Antony
and Octavian.

41. Death of Antipater of Judaea. Mark Antony makes Herod and his
brother Phasael joint tetrarchs under John Hyrcanus II.

40. Pacorus, prince of Parthia, invades Palestine, and takes John
Hyrcanus II and Phasael away captive.

39. Parthians driven out of Palestine by P. Ventidius Bassus.

Herod proclaimed King of Judaea by Romans.

38. Caius Sossius, Legate of Syria, captures Jerusalem, and puts Herod
on throne.

31. Battle of Actium. Herod deserts Mark Antony.

30. Herod makes submission to Octavian, and receives increase of
territory.

Death of Cleopatra and Caesarion. Egypt becomes Roman province.

Octavian becomes Emperor with title of Augustus.

28. Augustus orders all temples of Alexandrian gods outside _Pomoerium_.

21. M. Vipsanius Agrippa, the consul, forbids celebration of Egyptian
rites within 1 mile of Rome.

20. Phraates IV of Parthia sends Augustus his four sons as hostages, and
returns Roman standards captured with Crassus.

Herod rebuilds Temple of Jerusalem.

4. Death of Herod. Fresh revolt of Jews suppressed by Varus.

Augustus divides Herod’s Kingdom between the tetrarchs Archelaus,
Antipas, and Philip.

A.D.

2. Accession of Phraates V or Phraataces on murder of his father,
Phraates IV of Parthia.

5. Accession of Orodes II of Parthia.

6. Archelaus deposed and banished. Judaea becomes a Roman province.

8. Accession of Vonones I of Parthia.

14. Accession of Tiberius.

16. Vonones expelled from Parthia by Artabanus, King of Media.

Artabanus makes war on Rome, and is in turn expelled.

19. Expulsion of Jewish colony from Rome.

Tiberius destroys Temple of Isis and throws statues into the Tiber.

24. Death of Philip, Jewish tetrarch.

26. Pontius Pilate appointed Procurator of Judaea.

36.? John the Baptist put to death by Antipas.

Interregnum in Parthia. Struggle between pretenders, Tiridates II,
Cumianus, and Bardanes I.

37. Accession of Caligula.

Antipas defeated by Aretas, King of Nabathaeans.

Agrippa receives Philip’s tetrarchy with title of King.

39. Antipas deposed and banished. His tetrarchy added to Agrippa’s
kingdom.

41. Judaea added to Agrippa’s kingdom.

Accession of Claudius.

44. Death of Agrippa. Cuspius Fadus made Procurator of Judaea.

47. Tiberius Alexander (nephew of Philo) succeeds Cuspius as Procurator.

47. Gotarzes, son of Artabanus of Media, having been expelled from
Parthia by his brother Bardanes, retakes crown on Bardanes’ death.

48. Revolt of Jews. Tiberius Alexander replaced by Cumanus.

_Circa_ 50. Clement of Rome born: died about 95 A.D.

51. Accession of Vonones II to throne of Parthia followed immediately by
that of Vologeses I.

War between Rome and Parthia.

Temple of Isis at Rome rebuilt.

52. Ummidius Quadratus, Legate of Syria, deposes Cumanus, and appoints
Felix Procurator of Judaea.

54. Accession of Nero.

55. Nero makes worship of Greek Isis _religio licita_.

60. Porcius Festus succeeds Felix as Procurator of Judaea.

62. Death of Porcius. Albinus succeeds him.

Persecution of Christians by Ananus, the High Priest.

Martyrdom of James the Just.

63. Vologeses I of Parthia, defeated by Corbulo, signs treaty of peace.

64. Gessius Florus succeeds Albinus as Procurator of Judaea.

66. Tiridates invested King of Armenia by Nero.

Revolt of the Jews. Roman garrison of Jerusalem massacred after
surrender. Cestius Gallus, Legate of Syria, attacks Jerusalem, but
is beaten off.

67. First Jewish War. Vespasian replaces Cestius as Legate.

68. Accession of Galba.

69. Accession of Otho.

Otho appears in public in dress of priest of Isis.

Domitian escapes from Capitol in similar dress.

Accession of Vitellius.

Vespasian consults oracle, and works miraculous cures, in Temple of
Isis at Alexandria.

70. Accession of Vespasian.

Siege and sack of Jerusalem by Titus. Burning of Herod’s Temple.

70-107. St Ignatius flourished.

72. Vespasian deposes Antiochus IV of Commagene, last of Seleucides.

77. Accession of Vologeses II of Parthia. Many pretenders, some of whom
reign concurrently with him till his death.

79. Accession of Titus.

80. Domitian rebuilds Temple of Isis which had been burned.

Statius mentions Mithraic Tauroctony in his _Thebaid_.

81. Accession of Domitian.

_Circa_ 83. Earliest Mithraic Inscription known.

96. Accession of Nerva.

98. Accession of Trajan.

_Circa_ 100. Marcion born; died about 165.

Menander, Simon Magus’s successor, flourished.

102. Earliest dated Mithraic Inscription by T. Claudius Livianus,
Praetorian Prefect.

113-117. War between Rome and Parthia.

116. Revolt of Jews throughout East suppressed by Lucius Quietus.

117. Accession of Hadrian.

117-138. Basilides the Egyptian flourished.

_Circa_ 120. Hadrian places in his _lararium_ images of Greek Serapis
and Isis.

120-160. Tatian flourished.

121. Justin Martyr born: martyred about 151.

_Circa_ 125. Saturninus of Antioch flourished.

130. Hadrian rebuilds Jerusalem and names it Aelia Capitolina.

_Circa_ 130. Apelles the Marcionite born: died about 180.

132. Revolt of Jews, under the Messiah Bar Cochba, and War of
Extermination.

138. Accession of Antoninus Pius.

138-160. Valentinus the Gnostic flourished.

_Circa_ 140. Cerdo the Syrian flourished.

147. Irenaeus of Lyons born: died about 202.

Vologeses III restores Parthian Kingdom, and collects books of
Avesta.

150. Tertullian born: died about 220 A.D.

_Circa_ 150. Marcus the magician flourished.

_Hermas Pastor_ appears.

155. Clement of Alexandria born: died about 211.

Bardesanes or Ibn Daisan born: died about 223.

162. War between Rome and Parthia. Parthian Kings substitute Aramaic for
Greek on their coins.

164. Destruction of Parthian capital, Seleucia on the Tigris, by Avidius
Cassius.

170. Heracleon the Valentinian born: died about 210.

_Circa_ 170. Lucian the Marcionite flourished.

Ptolemy the Valentinian flourished.

170-183. Theophilus of Antioch flourished.

179. Pantaenus founds Christian school at Alexandria.

180. Accession of Commodus.

185. Origen of Alexandria born: died about 253.

191. Accession of Vologeses IV to throne of Parthia.

193. Accession of Pertinax. Murder of Pertinax, and sale of Empire by
Praetorians to Didius Julianus.

Accession of Septimius Severus.

195. War between Rome and Parthia.

_Circa_ 200. Axionicus the Valentinian flourished.

209. Accession of Artabanus IV of Parthia.

211. Accession of Caracalla and Geta.

216. Birth of Manes: died 275.

War between Rome and Parthia.

217. Accession of Macrinus.

219. Accession of Heliogabalus.

221. Alexander Severus proclaimed Caesar.

222. Accession of Alexander Severus.

War between Rome and Parthia.

_Circa_ 222. Hippolytus of Porta Romana flourished.

226. Ardeshîr, son of Sassan, conquers Artabanus IV of Parthia, and
founds Sassanid dynasty of Persia.

230. War between Rome and Persia.

235. Accession of Maximin.

Persecution of Christians.

238. Accession and death of the two Gordians.

Maximus and Balbinus proclaimed Emperors with Gordian III as
Caesar, but are murdered by Praetorians.

Accession of Gordian III.

Manes begins to teach.

241. Accession of Sapor (Shapûr) I of Persia on death of his father
Ardeshîr.

242. War between Rome and Persia.

244. Accession of Philip the Arabian.

246. M. Julius Philippus proclaimed Augustus jointly with his father,
Philip the Arabian.

249. Accession of Decius.

Persecution of Christians.

251. Accession of Gallus.

253. Accession of Valerian.

Gallienus proclaimed Augustus jointly with his father Valerian.

254. First appearance of Franks, who attack Rhine and invade Spain and
Africa.

260. War between Rome and Persia.

Valerian taken prisoner by Sapor, and dies in captivity.

260-268. Reign of Gallienus and the Thirty Tyrants.

Right of Church to hold property recognized.

268. Accession of Claudius.

270. Accession of Aurelian.

St Anthony introduces monachism into Church.

272. Accession of Hormisdas (Ormuz) I of Persia.

273. Aurelian captures Palmyra, and puts an end to Zenobia’s Kingdom.

Aurelian decides case of Paul of Samosata, and affirms primacy of
Roman Church.

273. Accession of Varanes (Bahram) I of Persia.

275. Manes put to death by Varanes I.

Accession of Tacitus.

276. Accession of Varanes II of Persia.

Accession of Probus.

282. Accession of Carus.

283. Carinus proclaimed Augustus jointly with his father Carus.

284. Numerian proclaimed Augustus jointly with his brother Carinus on
death of Carus.

Accession of Diocletian.

286. Maximian proclaimed Augustus jointly with Diocletian.

287. Edict of Diocletian against Manichaeans. Teachers to be burned:
Hearers’ goods to be confiscated.

292. Constantius Chlorus and Galerius proclaimed Caesars under the two
Augusti.

293. Accession of Varanes III of Persia followed by that of Narses.

296. War between Rome and Persia.

_Circa_ 300. Alexander of Lycopolis flourished.

302. Accession of Hormisdas II of Persia.

303. Persecution of Christians. Era of Martyrs.

304. Mithras declared at Carnuntum Protector of Roman Empire.

305. Abdication of Diocletian and Maximian.

Constantius Chlorus and Galerius become Augusti.

Maximin and Severus proclaimed Caesars.

306. Death of Constantius Chlorus. Constantine proclaimed Augustus by
army, but allowed title of Caesar only by Galerius.

Severus proclaimed Augustus in place of Constantius Chlorus.

Maximian and Maxentius, his son, rebel.

307. Severus, besieged in Ravenna by Maximian, surrenders and commits
suicide.

Maximian gives his daughter Fausta to Constantine, and proclaims
him Augustus jointly with himself.

War of Augusti, Maximian, Maxentius, and Constantine, against
Galerius, who proclaims Licinius and Maximin Augusti jointly with
himself.

308. Maximian plots against Constantine, who puts him to death.

Ephrem Syrus born: died 373.

310. Accession of Sapor II of Persia.

311. Death of Galerius; Licinius and Maximin divide Eastern provinces
between them.

312. War between Constantine and Maxentius, who is defeated at Turin,
Verona, and Saxa Rubra, and slain.

Edict of Toleration by Constantine and Licinius.

313. Maximin declares war against Licinius, but is defeated at Heraclea
and slain.

314. War between Constantine and Licinius, who is defeated and makes
peace.

315. Pachomius groups monks together in monasteries and institutes
common life.

316?. Death of Diocletian.

320. Epiphanius of Constantia born: died about 400 A.D.

323. War between Constantine and Licinius, who is defeated and put to
death.

Constantine becomes sole Emperor.

Constantine issues renewed edict of toleration.

324?. Constantine directs enquiry into Manichaean doctrines by
Musonianus (Strategius), Praetorian Prefect of the East.

325. Constantine summons Council of Nicaea.

327. Foundation of Constantinople and transfer of capital of Empire
thither.

337. Baptism and death of Constantine.

BOOKS AND ARTICLES REFERRED TO IN TEXT OR NOTES

N.B.—The works of the better-known classical writers (e.g. Livy) and of
Fathers of the Church (e.g. St Augustine) have been omitted from the
following list. Authors included in the first category are quoted either
from the collection Müller-Didot or from Teubner’s series; those in the
second, from Migne’s _Patrologia_. The place of publication, when not
specially mentioned, is London, and the edition quoted is, subject to
the same reservation, the last published. In the body of the book, the
full title, date, and other particulars of the work referred to are
given the first time of mention only, abbreviations being used in
subsequent references.

ABANO, PETER DE. Heptameron, seu Elementa Magica. Paris, 1567.

ABEL, EUGENIUS. Orphica. Lipsiae, 1885.

ASU RAIHÂN, called AL BÎRÛNÎ. Chronology of Ancient Nations. Translated
from the Arabic by Dr C. Edward Sachau. 1879. See also AL-BÎRÛNÎ,
_infra_.

Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres. Comptes-Rendus des Séances.
4e Série. Paris, 1873, etc. In progress.

_The Academy._ 1869, etc. In progress.

_Ägyptische Sprache, Zeitschrift für._ See _Zeitschrift, infra_.

AL-BÎRÛNÎ. Alberuni’s India. An English Edition with Notes and Indices
by Dr Edward C. Sachau. 2 vols. 1910.

ALLINE, M. See _Xenia_.

AMÉLINEAU, E. Essai sur le Gnosticisme Égyptien. Paris, 1887. (_Annales
du Musée Guimet_, t. XIV.)

—— Les Actes Coptes du martyre de St Polycarpe. 1888. See _Proceedings
of Society of Biblical Archaeology_, vol. X.

—— Notice sur le Papyrus Gnostique Bruce. Paris, 1891. (Notices et
Extraits des MSS. de la Bibliothèque Nationale et autres Bibliothèques,
t. XXIX, 1^{ère} p^{tie}.)

AMELUNG, W. Le Sarapis de Bryaxis. 1903. See _Revue Archéologique_, 4^o
série, t. II, p^{tie} ii.

Anon. Cerinthus and the Gnostics. 1886. See the _London Quarterly
Review_ for October, 1886.

Ante-Nicene Christian Library. Edited by Alexander Roberts and James
Donaldson. 24 vols. and 1 additional volume. Edinburgh, 1868 to 1897.

Antiquaires de France, see Société Nationale des A. de F.

_Archaeologia_: Miscellaneous Tracts relating to Antiquity. See Society
of Antiquaries of London.

ARCHELAUS, Bishop of Caschar. Acta (wrongly attributed to). See
HEGEMONIUS.

_Archiv für wissenschaftliche Erforschung des alten Testaments._ Halle,
1869-1872.

Asiatic Society. See Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain, etc.

Association pour l’encouragement des Études grecques. See _Revue des
Études grecques_.

AVEZOU, CH., et PICARD, CH. Bas-relief Mithriaque. 1911. See _Revue de
l’Histoire des Religions_, t. LXIV.

AURELIUS AUGUSTINUS. Augustini librum de Haeresibus ad Quodvultdeum. See
Oehler, Corpus Haereseologicum, vol. I.

BADHAM, F. B. The Word Monogenes. See _The Academy_, 5 Sept., 1896.

BARRETT, FRANCIS. The Magus or Celestial Intelligencer, being a Complete
System of Occult Philosophy, 1801.

BAUR, FERDINAND CHRISTIAN. Das Manichäische Religionssystem. Tübingen,
1831.

BEAUSOBRE, ISAAC DE. Histoire critique de Manichée et du Manichéisme.
Amsterdam, 1734-9. 2 vols.

BENN, ALFRED WILLIAM. The Philosophy of Greece. 1898.

BERGER, PHILIPPE, Membre de l’Institut. Études des Documents nouveaux
fournis sur les Ophites par les Philosophoumena. Nancy, 1873.

—— Les Stèles Puniques de la Bibliothèque Nationale. See _Gazette
Archéologique_, 11^e année (1876).

BERNARD, J. H., Bishop of Ossory. The Odes of Solomon. Translated from
the Syriac Text. Cambridge, 1912. (Cambridge Texts and Studies, vol.
III.)

Biblical Archaeology. See Society of Biblical Archaeology.

BISSING, Freiherr F. W. von. Cult of Isis in Pompeian Paintings. Oxford,
1908. See _Transactions of 3rd International Congress of Religions_.

BÖHMER, HEINRICH. Les Jésuites. Traduit de l’Allemand par Gabriel Monod.
Paris, 1910.

BOUCHÉ-LECLERCQ, AUGUSTE. Histoire de la Divination. Paris, 1879-1882. 4
vols.

—— L’Astrologie grecque. Paris, 1899.

—— La Politique religieuse de Ptolémée Soter et le culte de Serapis. See
_Revue de l’Histoire des Religions_, t. XLVI, 1902.

—— Les Reclus du Serapéum de Memphis. Paris, 1903. See PERROT, Mélanges.

—— Histoire des Lagides. Paris, 1903-1907. 4 vols.

—— L’Intolérance Religieux et Politique. Paris, 1912. (Bibliothèque de
Philosophie Scientifique.)

BOURIANT, U. L’Évangile de St Pierre (Fragments Grecs du livre d’Énoch).
See Mémoires de la Mission Archéologique Française du Caire, t. IX,
fasc. 1 (1892).

BOUSSET, WILHELM. Hauptprobleme des Gnosis. Göttingen, 1907.
(Forschungen zur Religion und Litteratur des Alten und Neuen Testaments.
Herausg. von Dr Bousset und Dr Hermann Gunkel.)

BRANDT, A. J. H. WILHELM. Die Mandäische Religion, ihre Entwickelung und
geschichtliche Bedeutung. Leipzig, 1889.

BREASTED, JAMES HENRY, Ph.D. Ancient Records. Chicago, 1906. 4 vols.

—— The History of Egypt. New York, 1909.

BRÉHIER, ÉMILE. La Cosmologie Stoicienne à la Fin du Paganisme. See
_Revue de l’Histoire des Religions_, t. LXIV, 1911.

BROOKE, ALAN ENGLAND. Fragments of Heracleon. Cambridge, 1891.
(Cambridge Texts and Studies, vol. I.)

BRUNET DE PRESLE, CHARLES MARIN WLADIMIR. Le Serapéum de Memphis. Paris,
1865. (Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions. Mémoires présentés par
divers savants. Série I, t. 2.)

—— Les Papyrus grecs du Musée du Louvre. Paris, 1865. (Notices et
Extraits des MSS. de la Bibliothèque Nationale et des autres
Bibliothèques, publiés par l’Institut de France, t. XVIII, Pt. 2.)

BUDGE, ERNEST ALFRED THOMPSON WALLIS, Litt.D., etc. The Papyrus of
Nesi-Amsu. See _Archaeologia_, vol. LXII, Pt. 2 (1890).

—— The Book of the Dead. 1898. 3 vols.

—— The History of Egypt. 1902. 8 vols.

—— The Gods of the Egyptians. 1904. 2 vols.

—— Egyptian Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum. 1910.

—— Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection. 1911. 2 vols.

BUDGE, E. A. T. WALLIS, KING, L. W., and THOMPSON, R. CAMPBELL. The
Sculptures and Inscriptions of Darius the Great at Behistun. 1907.

BUNSEN, CHRISTIAN CARL JOSIAS (Baron). Hippolytus and his Age. 1852. 4
vols.

BURROWS, RONALD. Discoveries in Crete. 1907.

CALLISTHENES, Pseudo-. The History of Alexander the Great. Translated
from the Syriac by E. A. Wallis Budge. Cambridge, 1887.

CARNOY, A. Armaiti-Ârmatay. Louvain, 1912. See _Le Muséon_, n.s. t. XIII
(1912).

CASARTELLI, LOUIS CHARLES, Bishop of Salford. La Philosophie Religieuse
de Mazdéisme. Paris, 1884.

CHABAS, JEAN MARIE FRANÇOIS. Le Papyrus Magique Harris. Traduction et
commentaire d’un MS. Égyptien. Chalon-sur-Saône, 1860.

CHANOT, E. DE. Statues Iconiques de Chypre. Paris, 1878. See _Gazette
Archéologique_, 1878.

CHARLES, R. H., D.D., etc. Apocalyptical Literature. See Hastings,
Dictionary of the Bible, _s.h.v._

—— Apocalyptical Literature, 1899. See Cheyne’s Encyclopaedia Biblica,
_s.h.v._

—— The Book of Enoch. Translated from the Ethiopic. Oxford, 1893.

—— The Apocalypse of Baruch. Translated from the Syriac. 1896.

—— The Assumption of Moses. Translated from the Latin. 1897.

—— A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life in Israel, in
Judaism, and in Christianity. 1899. (The Jowett Lectures.)

—— The Ascension of Isaiah. Translated from the Ethiopic. 1900.

—— The Book of Jubilees. Translated from the Ethiopic. 1902.

—— The Testaments of the XII Patriarchs. Translated from the Greek.
1908.

—— The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. Edited by R.
H. Charles. Oxford, 1913. 2 vols.

CHAVANNES, EDOURARD, et PELLIOT, PAUL. Un Traité Manichéen retrouvé en
Chine. Paris, 1913. (Extrait du _Journal Asiatique_, 1911-1913.
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CHEYNE, THOMAS KELLY, D.D., etc. Prophecies of Isaiah. A new
translation. 1889. 2 vols.

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CHEYNE, T. K., and BLACK, J. SUTHERLAND. See Encyclopaedia Biblica.

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. Clemens Alexandrinus. Edidit Otto Stählin,
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COOK, STANLEY A. David. 1899. See Cheyne’s Encyclopaedia Biblica,
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COURDAVEAUX, V. Clément d’Alexandrie. Paris, 1892. See _Revue de l’Hist.
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COWLEY, A. E. Samaritans. 1903. See Cheyne’s Encyclopaedia Biblica,
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CROOKE, W. The Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India.
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—— Catalogue of the Coptic MSS. in the British Museum. 1905.

CUMONT, FRANZ. Textes et Monuments relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra.
Bruxelles, 1896, 1899. 2 vols.

—— Hypsistos. See _Revue de l’Instruction Publique en Belgique_, 1897.

—— Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum. Bruxelles, 1898, etc. In progress.

—— Les Religions Orientales dans le Paganisme Romain. Paris, 1906.
(_Annales du Musée Guimet._ Bibliothèque de Vulgarisation, t. XXIV.)

—— Recherches sur le Manichéisme. Bruxelles, 1908, etc. In progress.

—— L’Aigle funéraire des Syriens et l’apothéose des Empereurs. Paris,
1910. See _Revue de l’Histoire des Religions_, t. LXII (1910).

—— Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans. Translated from
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DAREMBERG, CHARLES VICTOR, et SAGLIO, EDMOND. Dictionnaire des
Antiquités grecques et romaines. Paris, 1873, etc. In progress.

DARMESTETER, JAMES. Ormuzd et Ahriman. Paris, 1877. (Bibliothèque de
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—— The Zend Avesta. Oxford, 1880-1887. 3 parts. (Sacred Books of the
East.)

—— Essais Orientaux. Paris, 1883.

—— Le Zend Avesta. Paris, 1893. 3 vols. (_Annales du Musée Guimet_, tt.
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DAVIDS, T. W. RHYS, Buddhist India. 1903. (Story of the Nations Series.)

DECHARME, P. Cybele. See DAREMBERG et SAGLIO, Dictionnaire des
Antiquités, _s.h.v._

DEISSMANN, ADOLF, D.D. New Light on the New Testament from records of
the Graeco-Roman Period. Translated from the German by Lionel R. M.
Strachan. Edinburgh, 1907.

DELAGE, YVES, et GOLDSMITH, M. Les Théories de Évolution. Paris, 1909.
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DEUBNER, LUDWIG. De Incubatione capita quatuor. Lipsiae, 1900.

Deutsche Orient. Gesellschaft. _Mitteilungen._ Berlin, 1898, etc. In
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DIETERICH, ALBRECHT, Prof. Abraxas: Studien zur Religionsgeschichte.
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—— De Hymnis Orphicis. Marburg, 1891.

DILL, Sir SAMUEL. Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western
Empire. 1899.

—— Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius. 1904.

DÖLLINGER, JOHANN JOSEPH IGNAZ, D.D., etc. The Gentile and the Jew in
the Courts of Christ. Translated from the German by N. Darnell. 1902. 2
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—— First Age of Christianity and the Church. Translated from the German
by H. N. Oxenham, 1906. (German title: Christentum und Kirche in der
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DREXLER, A. Isis. See Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie, _s.h.v._

DROYSEN, JOHANN GUSTAV. Histoire de l’Hellénisme. Paris, 1883. 3 vols.
Traduite de l’Allemande sous la direction de A. Bouché-Leclercq. (German
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DUCHESNE, Monsignor LOUIS, Membre de l’Institut, etc. Early History of
the Christian Church from its Foundation to the end of the third
century. Translated from the French. 1909, etc. In progress. (French
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DUFOURCQ, ALBERT. De Manichaeismo apud Latinos. Paris. 1900.

DUSSAUD, RENÉ. Les Papyrus judéo-araméens d’Elephantine. See _Revue de
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DYER, LOUIS. The Gods in Greece. 1891. (Lowell Lectures.)

Egypt Exploration Fund. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. 1898, etc. In progress.

—— _The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology_, 1914, etc. In progress.

Encyclopédie, La Grande. Paris, 1887, etc. In progress.

Encyclopaedia Biblica. Edited by T. K. Cheyne and J. Sutherland Black.
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ERMAN, ADOLF, Ph.D., etc. Die Ägyptischen Beschwörungen. See _Ägyptische
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Handbook of the Egyptian Religion. Translated from the German. 1905.
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Etymologicum Magnum. Oxon. 1848.

EVANS, Sir ARTHUR, P.S.A., etc. The Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult and
its Mediterranean Relations. 1901.

_The Expositor_, series 5. 1895, etc. In progress.

FAYE, EUGÈNE DE. Introduction à l’Étude du Gnosticisme au II^e et au
III^e Siècle. Paris, 1903. (Also in _Rev. de l’Histoire des Religions_,
tt. XLV and XLVI.)

—— Formation d’une Doctrine de Dieu au II^e Siècle. See _Revue de
l’Histoire des Religions_, t. LXIV (1911).

—— Gnostiques et Gnosticisme, Étude critique des documents du
Gnosticisme Chrétien aux II^e et III^e siècles. Paris, 1913.
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FFOULKES, EDMUND SALUSBURY. Chiliasts. See Smith’s Dictionary of
Christian Biography; _s.h.v._

FIVEL, LÉON. Le Dieu Glycon à Nicomédie. Paris, 1879. See _Gazette
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FLEET, J. F., Ph.D., etc. The Day on which Buddha died. 1909. See
_Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, 1909.

FLÜGEL, GUSTAV, Ph.D., etc. Mani, seine Lehre und seine Schriften.
Leipzig, 1862.

FOAKES-JACKSON, F. J., B.D., etc. Some Christian Difficulties in the
Second and Twentieth Centuries. Cambridge, 1903. (Hulsean Lectures.)

FORSHALL, JOSIAH. Description of the Greek Papyri in the British Museum.
1839.

FOSSEY, CHARLES. Les Fouilles Allemandes à Boghaz-Keui. Paris, 1909. See
_Journal des Savans_, 1909.

FOUCART, GEORGE. Histoire des Religions et Méthode Comparative. Paris,
1912.

FOUCART, PAUL, Membre de l’Institut, etc. Les Associations Religieuses
chez les Grecs. Paris, 1873.

—— Recherches sur l’origine et la nature des Mystères d’Éleusis. Paris,
1895. (_Id._, t. XXXV.)

—— Les Grands Mystères d’Éleusis. Paris, 1900. (Extrait des Mémoires de
l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, t. XXXVII.)

—— Le Culte de Dionysos en Attique. Paris, 1904. (_Id._, t. XXXVII.)

FRANCK, ADOLPHE. La Kabbale. Paris, 1843.

—— Le Gnosticisme Égyptien. See _Journal des Savans_, Avril, 1888.

FRAZER, Sir J. G., D.C.L., etc. The Golden Bough. 1913-1915. 12 vols.

FREEMAN, EDWARD AUGUSTUS, D.C.L., etc. Historical Essays. 1871-1892. 4
vols.

FRIEDLÄNDER, M. Der vorchristliche jüdische Gnosticismus. Göttingen,
1898.

FULLER, JOHN MEE. Ebionites. See Smith’s Dictionary of Christian
Biography, _s.h.v._

FULLER, JOHN MEE. Tatianus. See _ibid._ _s.h.v._

GARDNER, PERCY, Litt.D., etc. The Coins of the Greek and Scythic kings
of Bactria and India in the British Museum. 1884.

GARRUCCI, RAFFAELE. Les Mystères du syncrétisme Phrygien dans les
catacombes Romaines de Prétextat. Paris, 1854.

GASTER, MOSES, Ph.D., etc. The Apocalypse of Abraham. 1893. See
_Transactions of Society of Biblical Archaeology_, vol. IX. pt 1 (1893).

—— The Oldest Version of Midrash Megillah. Berlin, 1897. See Kohut’s
Semitic Studies.

_Gazette Archéologique._ Paris. 1875-1887.

GIBBON, EDWARD. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Edited by J.
B. Bury, Litt.D., etc. 1897-1900. 7 vols.

GIRAUD, FRANÇOIS, M.S.T., etc. Ophitae. Dissertatio historica theologica
de eorum origine, placitis, ac fatis. Paris, 1884.

GLEICHEN, ALFRED EDWARD WILFRID, Count. The Anglo-Egyptian Soudan. 1905.

GOBLET D’ALVIELLA, Le Comte. Ce que l’Inde doit à la Grèce. Paris, 1897.

GRAUX, CH. Mélanges: Recueil dedié à la mémoire de C. G. Paris. 1884.

GRIFFITH, F. LL., M.A., etc. Stories of the High Priests of Memphis.
Oxford, 1900.

—— The old Coptic Magical Texts of Paris. Leipzig, 1900. (Extract from
_Ägyptische Zeitschrift_, Bd XXXVIII. 1900.)

GRIFFITH, F. LL., and THOMPSON, Sir HERBERT, Bart. The Demotic Magical
Papyrus of London and Leiden. 1904.

GROTE, GEORGE. A History of Greece. 1888. 10 vols.

GRÜBER, JOHANN NEPOMUC. Die Ophiten. Würzburg, 1864. 2 vols.

GUIGNEBERT, CHARLES. L’Évolution des Dogmes. Paris, 1910. (Bibliothèque
de Philosophie Scientifique.)

GUIGNIAUT, JOSEPH DANIEL. Les Religions de l’Antiquité. Traduit de
l’Allemand par L. F. A. Maury et E. Vinet. Paris, 1825, etc. tt. 4.
(German title: Symbolik, von A. F. Creuzer.)

HAHN, AUGUST. Antitheses Marcionis gnostici. Königsberg, 1823.

—— Evangelium Marcionis ex auctoritate veterum monumentorum descripsit
Augustus Hahn. Lipsiae, 1832. (Thilo’s Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti,
t. I.)

HALÉVY, JOSEPH. Recherches Bibliques, Pt 1. Le Tétragramme. Paris, 1884.
See _Revue des Études juives_, t. IX. 1884.

HARNACK, ADOLF, D.D., etc. Über das gnostische Buch Pistis Sophia.
Leipzig, 1891. (Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der
Altchristlichen Literatur von Oscar von Gebhardt und Adolf Harnack.)

—— Outlines of the History of Dogma. Translated from the German by Neil
Buchanan. 1894. 7 vols. (German title: Dogmengeschichte.)

HARNACK, ADOLF, D.D., etc. What is Christianity? Translated from the
German by T. B. Saunders. 1904. (German title: Das Wesen des
Christentums.)

—— The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries.
Translated from the German by James Moffatt. 1908. 2 vols. (German
title: Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten Drei
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—— Marcion. See Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed. _s.h.v._

HARNACK, A., and CONYBEARE, F. C. Manichaeans. See _ibid._ _s.h.v._

HARRISON, Miss JANE. Prolegomena to History of Greek Religion. 1903.

HARTLAND, EDWIN SIDNEY, F.S.A., etc. Ritual and Belief: Studies in the
History of Religion. 1914.

HASTINGS, JAMES, D.D., etc. A Dictionary of the Bible. Edinburgh,
1900-1904. 5 vols.

HATCH, EDWIN, D.D., etc. The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon
the Christian Church. 1890. (Hibbert Lectures.)

HAUSRATH, ADOLF. A History of New Testament Times. Translated from the
German by C. T. Poynting and P. Quenzer. 1878, etc. In progress. (German
title: Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte.)

HEGEMONIUS. Acta Archelai. Edited by Charles Henry Beeson of Chicago.
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HERMATHENA. A series of Papers on Literature, Science, and Philosophy,
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HIERONYMUS, Pseudo-. Indiculus de Haeresibus. See Oehler, Corpus
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HILD, J. A. Étude sur les Démons dans la littérature et la religion des
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HILGENFELD, ADOLF. Kritische Untersuchungen über die Evangelien Justins,
der Clementinischen Homilien und Marcions. Halle, 1850.

—— Das Apostolikon Marcions. Gotha, 1855. See _Zeitschrift für hist.
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—— Novum Testamentum extra canonem receptum. Lipsiae, 1884. 4 vols.

—— Die Ketzergeschichte des Urchristentums. Leipzig, 1884.

HIPPOLYTUS, Bishop of Porte Romana. Philosophoumena, sive Haeresium
omnium confutatio. E codice Parisino productum recensuit Latine vertit,
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HOGARTH, DAVID G. Philip and Alexander of Macedon. 1897.

HOLDICH, Sir THOMAS, K.C.M.G. The Gates of India. 1910.

HORT, FENTON JOHN ANTHONY, D.D., etc. Colarbasus. See Smith’s Dictionary
of Christian Biography, _s.h.v._

HORT, FENTON JOHN ANTHONY, D.D., etc. Bardaisan. _Ibid._, _s.h.v._

—— Barbelo. _Ibid._, _s.h.v._

HOWERTH, IRA W. What is Religion? See _International Journal of Ethics_.
1903.

HUBERT, H., et MAUSS, M. Esquisse d’une théorie générale de la Magie.
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HUTTON, FREDERICK WOLLASTON, F.R.S. Darwinism and Lamarckism. 1899.

HYVERNAT, H. Album de Paléographie Copte. Paris, 1868.

INGE, WILLIAM RALPH, D.D., Dean of St Paul’s. Christian Mysticism, 1899.
(Bampton Lectures.)

Institut Français d’Archéologie orientale. _Mémoires publiés par les
membres de l’Institut._ Le Caire, 1902, etc. In progress.

International Congress of Religions, Third. _Transactions._ Oxford,
1908. 2 vols.

_International Journal of Ethics._ Philadelphia, 1890, etc. In progress.

IRENAEUS, Bishop of Lyons. Sancti Irenaei episcopi Lugdunensis libros
quinque adversus Haereses. Edidit W. Wigan Harvey, S.T.B., etc.
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ISIDORE OF SPAIN. Isidorus Hispalensis de Haeresibus. See Oehler, Corpus
Haereseologicum, vol. I.

JACOBI, H. G. The Antiquity of Vedic Culture. 1909-1910. See _Journal of
the Royal Asiatic Society_, 1909, 1910.

JAMES, MONTAGUE RHODES, Litt.D., etc. The Greek Apocalypse of Baruch.
Cambridge, 1897. See (Apocrypha Anecdota) Cambridge Texts and Studies,
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JANET, PIERRE, Membre de l’Institut. L’Automatisme Psychologique. Paris,
1899.

JASTROW, MORRIS, Ph.D., etc. The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria.
Boston, U.S.A., 1898.

JELLINEK, ADOLF, Ph.D., etc. Über das Buch der Jubiläen und das
Noah-Buch. Leipzig, 1855.

JENSEN, P., Ph.D., etc. Die Kosmologie der Babylonien. Strassburg, 1890.

JÉQUIER, GUSTAVE. Le Livre de ce qu’il y a dans l’Hadès. Paris, 1894.

JEVONS, FRANK BYRON, Litt.D. Introduction to the Study of Comparative
Religion. New York, 1908. (Hartford-Lamson Lectures on the Religions of
the World.).

_Jewish Quarterly Review._ London, 1888, etc. In progress.

JOHNSON, SAMUEL. Oriental Religions and their relation to universal
religion: Persia. 1885.

JOHNSON, WALTER. Byways of British Archaeology. 1912.

_Journal des Savans._ Paris, 1816 etc. In progress.

_Journal of Egyptian Archaeology._ See Egypt Exploration Fund.

_Journal of Hellenic Studies._ See Society for the Promotion of Hellenic
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_Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society._ See Royal Asiatic Society of
Great Britain and Ireland.

JULICHER, A., D.D., etc. Essenes. See Cheyne’s Encyclopaedia Biblica,
_s.h.v._

—— Gnosis. _Ibid._, _s.h.v._

KEIM, CARL THEODOR. Celsus’ Wahren Wort. Zurich, 1873.

KENYON, Sir FREDERIC GEORGE, K.C.B. Greek Papyri in the British Museum.
Catalogue with Texts. 1893.

—— Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. 1912.

KERN, OTTO, Ph.D., etc. De Orphei, Epimenidis, Pherecydis, Theogoniis
Quaestiones criticae. Berlin, 1888.

—— Die Herkunft des orphischen Hymnenbuchs. 1910. See Carl, Robert,
Genethliakon.

KESSLER, KONRAD, Ph.D., etc. Forschungen über die Manichäische Religion.
Berlin, 1889. Bd I (all published).

KHÔNI, THEODORE BAR, Bishop of Kashgar. Scholia. 1898. See Pognon,
Inscriptions Mandaïtes.

KING, C. W. The Gnostics and their Remains. 1887.

KING, LEONARD WILLIAM, Litt.D. The Seven Tablets of Creation. 1902. 2
vols.

—— Chronicles of Early Babylonian Kings. 1907. 2 vols.

KOHLER, KAUFMANN. Pre-Talmudic Haggadah. 1895. See _Jewish Quarterly
Review_, 1895.

KOHUT, GEORGE ALEXANDER. Semitic Studies by various authors in memory of
Rev. Dr Alexander Kohut. Berlin, 1897.

KÖSTLIN, K. R., D.D., etc. Über das gnostische System des Buchs Pistis
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KRALL, JAKOB, Ph.D., etc. Tacitus und der Orient. Wien, 1880. 4 vols.
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KRÜGER, T. HERMANN. Gnosticismus. See La Grande Encyclopédie, _s.h.v._

KUENEN, ABRAHAM, D.D., etc. The Religion of Israel. Translated from the
Dutch by A. H. May. 1874. 3 vols. (Dutch title: De Godsdienst van Israel
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LAFAYE, GEORGES. Isis. See Daremberg et Saglio, Dict. des Antiquités,
_s.h.v._

—— Histoire du Culte des Divinités d’Alexandrie hors de l’Égypte. Paris,
1884. (Bibliothèque des Écoles Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome. Fasc.
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—— L’Initiation Mithriaque. Paris, 1906. (Conférences au Musée Guimet.
Bibl. de Vulgarisation, t. XVIII (1906).)

LANE, EDWARD WILLIAM. Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians.
Paisley, 1896.

LANGDON, STEPHEN, Ph.D., etc. A Preliminary Account of a Sumerian Legend
of the Flood and the Fall of Man. 1914. See _Proceedings of the Society
of Biblical Archaeology_, vol. XXXVI (1914).

LANGLOIS, VICTOR. Collection des Historiens anciens et modernes de
l’Arménie. Paris, 1868, etc. 2 vols.

LAYARD, Sir AUSTIN HENRY. Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and
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LEA, HENRY CHARLES. A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages.
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LE COQ, A. von. A Short Account of ... the First Royal Prussian (Second
German) Expedition to Turfan in Chinese Turkestan. 1909. See _Journal of
the Royal Asiatic Society_, 1909.

—— Exploration Archéologique à Tourfan. Paris, 1910. (Conférences au
Musée Guimet. Bibl. de Vulgarisation, t. XXXV (1910).)

—— Turkish Khuastuanift from Tun-huang, 1911. See _Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society_ for 1911.

—— Chôtscho. Facsimile-Wiedergaben der wichtigeren Funde der Ersten Kgl.
Preussen Expedition nach Turfan. Berlin, 1913. Bd 4.

LEEMANS, CONRAD, Litt.Hum.D., etc. Papyri Graeci Musei Antiquarii
Publici Lugduni Batavi. Lugduni Batavorum, 1883-1885. 2 vols.

LEFÉBURE, EUGÈNE. L’Importance du Nom chez les Ègyptiens. See _Sphinx_,
vol. I (1897).

LEGGE, F. Witchcraft in Scotland. Paisley, 1891. See _Scottish Review_,
vol. XX (1891).

—— Some Heretic Gospels. 1893. _Ibid._ vol. XXII (1893).

—— Devil Worship and Freemasonry. 1896. See _The Contemporary Review_,
1896.

—— The Sign Nutir or Neter. 1899. See _Proceedings of Society of
Biblical Archaeology_, vol. XXI (1899).

—— Divination in the XVIIth Century. 1899. See _National Review_ for
1899.

—— The Names of Demons in the Magic Papyri. 1900. See _Proceedings of
Society of Biblical Archaeology_, vol. XXII (1900).

—— The Titles of the Thinite Kings. 1908. See _Proceedings of Society of
Biblical Archaeology_, vol. XXX (1908).

—— The Legend of Osiris. 1911. _Ibid._, vol. XXXIII (1911).

—— The Lion-headed God of the Mithraic Mysteries. 1912. _Ibid._, vol.
XXXIV (1912).

—— Western Manichaeism and the Turfan Discoveries. 1913. See _Journal of
the Royal Asiatic Society_ for 1913.

—— The Greek Worship of Serapis and Isis. 1914. See _Proceedings of
Society of Biblical Archaeology_, vol. XXXVI (1914).

LENORMANT, FRANÇOIS. Dionysos Zagreus. Paris, 1879. See _Gazette
Archéologique_, 1879.

—— Baubo. See Daremberg et Saglio, Dict. des Antiq., _s.h.v._

—— Eleusinia. _Ibid._, _s.h.v._

LÉVI, SYLVAIN. Bouddhisme et les Grecs. Paris, 1891. See _Revue de
l’Histoire des Religions_, t. XXIII (1891).

LÉVY, ISIDORE, Directeur anc^{n.} à l’École des Hautes Etudes. Sarapis.
Paris, 1913. Extrait de la _Revue de l’Histoire des Religions_ (1911,
1913).

LIGHTFOOT, JOSEPH BARBER, Bishop of Durham. Epistles to Colossians and
Philemon. 1876.

—— The Apostolic Fathers: revised texts with Introductions and English
translations. 1891.

LILLIE, ARTHUR. Buddhism in Christendom, or Jesus the Essene. 1887.

—— Buddha and Buddhism. Edinburgh, 1900.

LIPSIUS, RICHARD ADALBERT, D.D., etc. Gospels Apocryphal. 1880. See
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Literature, see Royal Society of, _infra_.

LOBECK, CHRISTAN AUGUST. Aglaophamus, sive de Theologiae mysticae
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LOEB, ISIDORE. La Cabbale juive. See La Grande Encyclopédie, _s.h.v._

London _Quarterly Review_, New series. 1899, etc. In progress.

LORET, VICTOR. Les Enseignes Militaires des Tribus et les Symboles
Hiéroglyphiques des Divinités. Paris, 1902. See _Revue Égyptologique_
for 1902.

—— Quelques idées sur la forme primitive de certaines Religions
Égyptiennes. Paris, 1904. See _idem_ for 1904.

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INTRODUCTION

The worships, beliefs, and religious practices of the age which saw the
birth and infancy of Christianity must always be the most interesting of
all subjects to the student of history, nor are there many more
deserving the attention of the general reader. The opponent, quite as
much as the adherent of Christianity, must admit that the early
struggles of the faith which is professed by nearly a third of the human
race, which for fifteen centuries wielded unchallenged sway over the
whole of Europe, and which has grown with the growth of European
colonization until it now has a firm settlement in every quarter of the
inhabited world, must ever possess surpassing interest for humanity. Yet
the popular ideas on the subject are not only vague but erroneous. A
general notion that, shortly before the coming of Christ, the Pagans had
tired of their old gods, and, lost to all sense of decency, had given
themselves up to an unbridled immorality founded on atheistic ideas, is
probably about as far as the man who has given no special study to the
subject would venture to go. Such a view, founded perhaps on somewhat
misty recollections of the Roman satirists and a little secondhand
knowledge of the denunciations of the early Christian writers, is almost
the reverse of the truth. There has probably been no time in the history
of mankind when all classes were more given up to thoughts of religion,
or when they strained more fervently after high ethical ideals, than in
the six centuries which have been taken for the subject of this book[1].

The cause of this misconception is, however, clear enough. Half a
century ago, the general public was without guide or leader in such
matters, nor had they any materials on which to form opinions of their
own. The classical education which was all that the majority of men then
got, carefully left all such matters as the origins of Christianity on
one side. The treatises of the Fathers of the Church, for the most part
written in late and inelegant Greek, were held to be too corrupting to
the style of scholars reared on the texts of the purest period to be
attempted by any but professional theologians, by whom indeed they were
often very imperfectly understood. Nor was much to be gathered from the
profane historians of the early Christian centuries, who maintained such
an obstinate silence with regard to Christianity as to give rise to the
theory that they must have conspired to ignore the new religion of the
lower classes as something too barbarous for ears polite[2]. Moreover,
the ruling maxim of education, especially of English education until the
end of the XIXth century, was that it was better to know one thing
thoroughly than to acquire a smattering of a great many, and that a
scholar was better served by an intimate knowledge of second aorists
than by any wide extent of reading; while the comparative method of
study was still confined to sciences of analysis like anatomy and
philology[3]. Above all, what has been called the catastrophic view of
the Christian religion was still in fashion. Although our spiritual
pastors and masters were never tired of reminding us that God’s ways
were not as our ways, they invariably talked and wrote on the assumption
that they were, and thought an Omnipotent Creator with eternity before
Him must needs behave like a schoolboy in control of gunpowder for the
first time. Hence “the remarkable victory” which, in the words of
Gibbon, the Christian faith obtained over “the established religions of
the earth” was in the view of the orthodox chiefly due to the miraculous
powers placed at the disposal of the primitive Church, and it was
considered impious to look further for the cause of the despotic rule
which in a comparatively brief space of time it succeeded in
establishing over the minds of men.

From this state of things, the foundation of what is known as the
science of religions did much to deliver us. When non-Christian faiths,
such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Mohammedanism, came to
be systematically studied without preconceived hostility or desire to
jeer at their absurdities, it was seen that the same atmosphere of
miracle and legend had gathered round their infancy as round that of the
Christian Church. Outside the regular or canonical scriptures—if the
phrase may be used—of all of these faiths, there had evidently grown up
a vast literature of uncertain date and authorship in which the same
stories were repeated and the same episodes introduced as in the
Christian Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, and Lives of the Saints. It began to
dawn upon us that, as the human mind under the same conditions generally
works in the same way, it was possible that all religions, whether true
or false, might have gone through the same or similar stages of
development[4].

That this view of the case was in itself a great step in advance,
everyone will readily admit who can remember the horror with which any
proposal to equate or even compare Christianity with any other religion
was once received. It was much helped, however, by another novel
hypothesis which about that time had got over its period of obloquy and
was rapidly coming to the front, namely, the theory of evolution. When
Darwin in his _Origin of Species_ enunciated the truth that as more
animals and plants than the earth can support come into existence every
year, it is only those varieties which are best fitted to their
environment which survive the consequent struggle for existence, he
practically gave us a new standpoint from which to contemplate Nature.
Herbert Spencer, quickly grasping this principle and carrying its
application much further than Darwin had ventured to do, showed that it
governed the development not only of animal forms but of the
intellectual and moral faculties of man, of political and social
institutions, and even of what he called “ecclesiastical institutions,”
which included religions themselves. With the general acceptance of this
view, it followed that the success in point of popularity of any creed
at any period of the world’s history was not due to any sudden or
capricious exercise of the Divine will, but to the normal working of a
universal and irresistible law.

But, at this point, we must stop a little to define what is meant by the
science of religions. Science, in this sense, has so far departed from
its strict and etymological signification of knowledge, as to connote
exact knowledge based upon ascertained fact, while a science is
generally held to mean an organized system in which the largest possible
number of related facts are gathered together with reference to one
common subject of study. At first sight, it appears that nothing can be
more rigidly excluded by this definition than religion, which has been
defined as “the effective desire to be in right relation to the power
manifesting itself in the universe[5].” This, which in some quarters
would be called the religion “of the heart,” can never form the subject
of study based upon exact knowledge, because the relations between any
human being and the power manifesting itself in the universe can be
known only, so far as we can see, to that being and to that power. But
in the science under consideration, there is no question of religion
generally, but of religions, which is a very different thing. By a
religion, we generally mean the assembly of beliefs, traditions, and
forms of worship which go to make up a faith or cult, and this, as it
must, according to the experience of all history, have come into being
through the agency of some man or men, should go through the same
evolutionary process as all other human institutions. Hence there is at
first sight a considerable probability that all religions whatever will
be found on examination to follow the same law of development by the
survival of those best fitted to their environment that we have seen
operative in the case of animal forms.

Here, however, the Christian—or for that matter, the adherent of any
faith which claims to have been founded by a special revelation—finds
himself in the presence of a dilemma. His own faith, whether it be
Christianity or another, is in his eyes true, as being not the work of
man, but of God, and all others are false. How therefore are they to be
compared? Is the Jew, who believes the Law to have been delivered to his
people “among the thunders of Sinai,” the Parsi who is taught the
special inspiration of Zoroaster by the “Omniscient Lord” Ahura Mazda,
or the Mohammedan who thinks that Mohammed received the Koran from Allah
himself, to be told that his faith has developed according to the same
laws as that of the Christian, who is convinced that his has no other
source than the teaching of the Divine Founder of Christianity?

To this it may be said that the dilemma is more apparent than real, and
is due to a like confusion of thought with that which seized upon many
when the evolutionary theory was first promulgated. No argument was then
more common than that the Divine creation of the animals, including man,
was authoritatively revealed once for all in the first chapter of
Genesis, and that the bare formulation of the idea that man’s bodily
form had developed by a long process of evolution and selection from
those of the lower animals was therefore a blasphemy that could only be
uttered by atheistic men of science[6]. There is no occasion to go here
into the tissue of sophistries and misconceptions with which Mr
Gladstone, when confronted with this argument in controversy with M.
Albert Réville, one of the founders of the science of religions, and
with M. Réville’s champion Prof. Huxley, tried to prove that the
assertion of the doctrine of evolution was to be found in the Book of
Genesis. It is sufficient to say that Darwin never affirmed that natural
selection or the survival of the fittest was the cause of the variation
of animal forms, but simply that it was the mode in which that
variation, however caused, operated[7]. In like manner, it may be said
that the science of religions by no means attempts to discuss the causes
which lead to the institution of any particular religion, but deals
merely with the laws underlying its development when once instituted.
The Christian religion, like those of Moses, Zoroaster, and Mohammed,
however Divine its origin, was, like them, propagated by men who founded
the Church, handed on the traditions, and gave form to the ceremonies.
Is there, therefore, any reason why the same law of development should
not apply to this as well as to its rivals?

That the answer to this must be in the negative is at last beginning to
be generally admitted. Prof. Tiele, writing in 1897, was obliged to
confess that “the new science of religions was in many quarters regarded
with suspicion[8],” but Dr Jevons, when lecturing at Hartford in 1908,
was able to say that “the time has happily gone by when the mere idea of
comparing Christianity with any other religion would have been rejected
with horror as treasonous and treacherous[9].” Yet it may be doubted
whether the clouds have rolled completely away, and it is fairly certain
that the many learned and able Catholic priests who have done so much to
elucidate the origins and tendencies of ancient religions other than
their own have until lately avoided the discussion of their relations
with the earliest forms of Christianity. This is the more to be
regretted, because they are in many cases peculiarly fitted for the
investigation, and their acquaintance with the extra-Canonical Christian
writers before Constantine, hitherto much neglected by Protestant
theologians, would make their conclusions upon it especially valuable.
Yet it is along these lines that future inquiry will probably advance;
and if, as most of us believe, the Christian religion has outdistanced
and survived all its early competitors because it was better fitted than
they to its environment, it is of great importance even from the point
of view of the most rigid orthodoxy, that we should have a clear
conception of what that environment was. Fortunately the gaps in our
knowledge have been in great measure filled by the work of Continental
scholars outside the pale of the Catholic Church, who have been
indefatigable of late years in discovering documents, editing texts, and
publishing monuments which throw great light on the history of the
religions which at the outset competed with Christianity for the favour
of the Graeco-Roman world. A summary of these labours is one of the
objects aimed at in the following pages.

If, now, we attempt to examine what these competitors were, we find at
the outset that a good number of those which we once thought formidable
may be eliminated from the list. Judaism, for instance, although the
matrix in which Christianity was formed, was never at any time in
effective rivalry with it. The words of the Gospel as to the Pharisees
compassing sea and land to make one proselyte have misled the unwary
into supposing that the number of Jewish proselytes was at one time or
another large[10]; but it must be remembered that it was the Sadducees
and not the Pharisees who were the dominant party in the Jewish State,
and that these last formed but a very small part of the total population
of Judaea[11]. The Sadducees from their Hellenizing tendencies were much
more likely to go over to the faith of the Gentiles than to make any
great effort for their conversion, and both they and the Essenes, who
formed in Josephus’ day the third party among the Jews, were too much
set on procuring, by different means, the temporal supremacy of Israel,
to care much about admitting any proselyte to share in it[12]. Although
a few undistinguished persons of Gentile blood may have become converts
to Judaism between the birth of Christ and the fall of the Temple, their
number can never have been at any time important; and after 69 A.D., the
furious hostility that arose between Jew and Gentile made any further
conversions to the Jewish faith practically impossible. Never, so far as
we know, did Judaism aim at becoming, and certainly never had the
slightest chance of appearing as, a world-religion.

Not less hopeless, in this respect, was the case of the Graeco-Roman
pantheon. The late Mr Long’s picture of “Diana or Christ,” representing
a young woman called upon by a sympathetic Roman magistrate to choose
between sacrificing to the statue of the many-breasted Artemis of
Ephesus and condemnation to death as a Christian, attained great
popularity in its day, and shows with fair clearness the view of the
relations between Paganism and early Christianity supposed at the end of
the last century to have been current in the first. Yet hardly anything
could give a falser idea of the religious history of the period. The
officials of the Roman Empire in time of persecution sought to force the
Christians to sacrifice, not to any of the heathen gods, but to the
Genius of the Emperor and the Fortune of the City of Rome; and at all
times the Christians’ refusal was looked upon not as a religious but as
a political offence[13]. For the rest, the worship of the Olympian gods
had, when Christianity came to the surface, almost entirely died out,
and both Greek and Latin writers bear witness to the contempt with which
it was regarded by both races at the beginning of our era. Cicero, while
admitting that the world is governed by the providence of the gods,
rejects all the myths attached to them as impious, and declares that the
“Deity who is diffused in every part of Nature” appears as the earth
under the name of Ceres, as the sea under that of Neptune, and so
on[14]. Plutarch, too, is plainly a monotheist, who worships “the one
eternal, passionless Spirit far removed from the world of chance and
change and earthly soilure” of Greek philosophy[15]; and, while
lamenting the decay of faith which has led to the cessation of oracles,
thinks that all the manifestations of the Divine providence are the work
of no great deity, but of a crowd of inferior powers or demons who are
hardly in a greater superiority of position to man than the fairies of
our childhood[16]. Whatever rivalry the Christian Church had to face in
its infancy, it had none to fear from the deities of Olympus.

It has been said, however, and to a certain extent accepted, that the
first efforts of Christianity were sorely hindered by the followers of
the great Greek philosophers. In this there is a certain amount of
truth, for the Neo-Platonic school did indeed enter into an alliance
with the few remaining worshippers of the Pagan gods which forced them
into an attitude of opposition to Christianity. But this was at a date
some time after the compact with Constantine, and consequently later
than that within the scope of this book. Nor is it likely that at an
earlier date philosophy and Christianity appealed to the same class of
minds, and that they thus entered into serious competition with each
other. As the late Dr Hatch has said, “the earliest forms of
Christianity were not only outside the sphere of Greek philosophy, but
they also appealed on the one hand, mainly to the classes which
philosophy did not reach, and on the other hand, to a standard which
philosophy did not recognize[17].” Faith, not reason, was the quality
that the Apostles and their immediate successors sought in their
hearers, and Celsus was probably not far wrong when he said that the
rule of admission into the infant Church was “Let no educated man enter,
no wise man, no prudent man, for such things we deem evil; but whoever
is ignorant, whoever is unintelligent, whoever is simple, let him come
and be welcome[18].” To this state of mind the password of the early
Christian communities, _Maran atha_, is a sufficient key. The confident
expectation of the nearness of the Parusia or Second Advent for the
primitive Christian overwhelmed all other considerations. “The Lord is
at hand and His reward” was the one fact that he wished to keep before
him. What need to trouble about the Highest Good or the hundred other
questions that vexed the souls of the philosophers?

The religions competing with Christianity which are left after this
elimination may be classed in three categories. First come the Oriental
religions native to countries lying to the south and east of the
Mediterranean and therefore mainly outside the sphere of Hellenic
culture until after the conquests of Alexander. These religions, born or
nurtured in Asia Minor, Persia, and Egypt, so soon as Alexander had
carried out his project of the marriage of Europe and Asia, poured
westward in a flood which a Roman satirist compared to the Orontes
emptying itself into the Tiber, and gained, according to a well-known
law in the history of religions, a far greater influence over the minds
of men than they had exercised in their native home. The second category
comprises the many strange sects which the first Fathers of the Church
grouped together under the generic name of Gnostics. The faith which
these professed was not, as it is sought to show later, one founded on
religion at all but rather on magic, and had long been present in germ
as a sort of heresy or alternative belief underlying the worship of the
gods of Olympus. Finally, there arose the ambitious religion of Manes,
which aimed at sweeping into one vast synthesis or eclectic church the
three religions of Zoroaster, Buddha, and Christ, which at the time of
its institution divided between them the allegiance of the civilized
world.

Each of these categories shall be dealt with in turn; but before doing
so, it may be well to say something upon the state of our knowledge
concerning them. Until lately, it was a commonplace of religious history
that the Catholic Church had destroyed as far as possible all traces of
the religions that she had supplanted, which was picturesquely expressed
in the phrase that in her victory she had burned the enemy’s camp. That
this was her conscious policy may be gathered from the advice given by a
Pope of the VIIth century, to “break the idols and consecrate the
temples” of the heathen[19]; but of late many relics of the ancient
faiths which had before escaped us have been disinterred by the care of
scholars. During the last century, the lost heresiology of Hippolytus
and considerable fragments of works by Gnostic authors were brought to
light in circumstances to be described in their place[20], while the
present decade has not only added to our stock of Gnostic fragments, but
has revealed to us on the western frontier of China a hoard of
Manichaean documents rich beyond our hopes[21]. These are not only
valuable by reason of the information they afford, but give us ground
for the belief that, as the interest in such matters becomes more widely
spread, many more documents throwing light upon the subject will appear.

One word may be said in conclusion as to the relations of these rival
religions between themselves. Whoever studies the documents here
described cannot fail to be struck by the fact that certain ideas,
phrases, and even words, seem common to them all. At the time that these
documents were written this similarity excited no remark from the
orthodox, as it was at once disposed of by the theory that these
religions were one and all the invention of the Devil, and therefore
naturally bore traces of their common origin. This explanation, however
convenient, does not satisfy the demands of modern criticism, and it is
therefore necessary to look further. One way of accounting for the
phenomenon is to suppose that many if not all of the analogies noticed
are due to the mistakes of scribes and translators, who, when dealing
with expressions unfamiliar to them, were naturally inclined to repeat
the same phrases over and over again. This, as all know who have had to
do with ancient manuscripts, is accountable for much, and it is
extremely likely that a monk of the Vth or VIth century transcribing an
account of the opinions of, for instance, the Ophites who flourished in
Phrygia before the birth of Christ at the same time with those of the
Manichaeans found in Rome three centuries later, would not hesitate to
express views essentially different by the same phrases and even the
same words. Add to this the jumble that persons untrained in philology
naturally make between names in a foreign language and those of similar
sound in their own tongue, coupled with the fixed idea of finding in the
traditions of the heathen a confirmation of the historical truth of the
Hebrew Scriptures, and you have some explanation of the cause which
makes many proper names recur unexpectedly in otherwise unrelated
documents. Thus the Armenian bishop, Moses of Chorene, in narrating the
story which he says he obtained from Berossus, the Chaldaean historian
who wrote at the beginning of our era, says that “Before the building of
the Tower of Babel and the multiplication of tongues among the human
race, after the navigation of Xisuthros [_i.e._ Hasis-adra, the
Babylonian Noah] in Armenia, Zervan, Titan, and Japhet were princes of
the land. These persons,” he adds, “seem to be Shem, Ham, and
Japhet[22].” Zervan is the name given by a late sect of Zoroastrians to
the “Boundless Time” whom they placed at the origin of all things, while
Titan belongs to the Hellenic mythology, and Japhet may either be
Saturn’s brother Iapetus, or the patriarch of the Book of Genesis. It is
to be conjectured that Berossus did not use these three names in the
apposition quoted or probably at all, and we can only guess vainly at
the real names which are concealed under those which Moses of Chorene
here gives.

But when all allowance is made for mistakes like these, there remains a
fund of ideas common to all or many of the religions hereafter treated
of, which cannot be explained away by any theory of verbal
inaccuracy[23]. As an instance of this, let us take the notion of an
archetypal or heavenly man created ages before the appearance upon earth
of terrestrial man, who was nevertheless made in the image and after the
likeness of his predecessor. This idea, as will be shown later, is met
with among the Phrygian Ophites, where “a Man and a Son of Man” were
said to be the origin of all subsequent things, as in the Avestic
literature of Persia where Gayômort, the son, according to one story, of
the Supreme God Ahura Mazda by his daughter Spenta-armaiti, is made at
once the pattern and the source of the whole human race. The borrowings
of Zoroastrianism from Babylonia were not few, and we might conceive
this to be the survival of some old Babylonian tradition, such as that
which modern critics believe to have been the origin of the Creation and
Flood stories of Genesis; and this theory is strengthened by the
predominant part which this “First Man” plays in Manichaeism, itself a
Babylonian faith, where the Turkestan MSS. show him as a sort of
intermediary between the gods of light and this earth. But how shall we
account for the fact that in one of the earliest documents of the
_Pistis Sophia_, the collection of Gnostic writings hereafter
described[24], a great angel named Jeû, who is spoken of many times as
the “overseer of the light” and the arranger of the Cosmos, is also
alluded to as the “First Man,” in a way which shows that the writer did
not doubt that the allusion would be comprehended by his readers without
further explanation[25]? The _Pistis Sophia_, although doubtless written
in Greek in the first instance, comes to us in a Coptic dress, and the
documents therein contained show more affinities with the Egyptian than
with the Persian religion. How therefore can we account for the same
idea appearing at almost the same time in countries between the peoples
of which there was always bitter hostility, and which were separated
moreover by the Arabian Desert and the whole breadth of Asia Minor?

It seems to the present writer that no solution of this and of the
numerous other difficulties of which this is but one example can be
profitably suggested, until we know more than we do at present about the
origin and dates of Zoroastrianism. Although this religion is still with
us in the beliefs of the modern Parsis, there is none about the origin
of which we know less, or concerning the antiquity of which there is
greater discrepancy between ancient and modern writers. Thus, while
Plutarch, quoting as is generally supposed Theopompos of Chios who
flourished in the IVth century B.C., declares that Zoroaster himself
wrote 5000 years before the Trojan War[26], modern writers of authority,
like Prof. Williams-Jackson and Mdlle Menant, are inclined to bring down
the date of the eponymous prophet or reformer of the Persian religion to
700 B.C.[27] The discrepancy is too great to be bridged over by any
compromise, and the question has been further complicated by the
discovery a few years ago of inscriptions which show that Mithras, the
Persian god whose worship formed the most dangerous rival to that of the
Christian Church immediately before its alliance with Constantine, was
one of the most exalted deities of the presumably Aryan Hittites or
Mitannians at a date not later than 1272 B.C.[28] Signs are not wanting
that discovery in the near future may take this line of advance, and if
it should turn out that the religion which Zoroaster reformed was
established in Northern Mesopotamia before the Homeric age, we may have
to reconstruct all our ideas of the origin of the Greek religion. There
seems no use therefore in dilating upon hypotheses which the course of
research may in a very few years prove to be entirely erroneous[29].

In the meantime, the thing of immediate importance seems to be to get
the documentary evidence already at our disposal as far as possible
before the public, and this is attempted in the pages which follow. The
different religions are there arranged in the chronological order of
their greatest activity in the West with the belief that this course
will prove most convenient to the reader.

Footnote 1:

For the pre-Christian centuries, the rise of ethical religions like
that of the Greek Isis (see Chap. II _infra_) and of Mithras (see
Chap. XII) is perhaps sufficient proof of this. For the
post-Christian, see Tertullian’s remarks as to the interest excited
among the heathens by problems like the origin of evil (_de
Praescript._ c. VII.). As to their striving after morality, see Eugène
de Faye, “Formation d’une Doctrine de Dieu au IIme Siècle,” _Rev.
Hist. Rel._ t. LXIII. (Jan.-Fev. 1911) pp. 1, 2, for authorities. See,
too, Hatch, _Hibbert Lectures_, 1890, pp. 291, 292 and Harnack as
there quoted.

Footnote 2:

W. M. Ramsay, _The Church in the Roman Empire_, 1893, pp. 263, 264.

Footnote 3:

Tiele, in his Gifford Lectures delivered in 1895, remarks on the
ridicule with which the learned Hellenists of his youth received the
efforts of those whom they called the _comparativi_. See _Elements of
the Science of Religion_, 1897, vol. I. p. 7.

Footnote 4:

No better proof can be given of the change in public opinion in such
matters than the comparison of Gibbon’s words with regard to “the
miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive Church” (_Decline and
Fall_, Bury’s edition, vol. II. p. 2) and the way the subject is
treated in the article “Wonders” in Cheyne’s _Encyclopedia Biblica_,
1903.

Footnote 5:

The definition is that of Ira W. Howerth, _International Journal of
Ethics_, 1903, p. 205.

Footnote 6:

See Tiele, _op. cit._ vol. I. pp. 5 _sqq._ The controversies raging
round Darwin’s theory when first put forward are well summarized by F.
W. Hutton in his _Darwinism and Lamarckism_, 1899, _passim_. Cf.
Delage and Goldsmith, _Les Thèoriesé de l’Évolution_, Paris, 1909, pp.
28, 29.

Footnote 7:

See Hutton, _op. cit._ p. 111.

Footnote 8:

Tiele, _op. cit._ vol. I. p. 11.

Footnote 9:

F. B. Jevons, _Introduction to the Study of Comparative Religion_,
1908, p. 18.

Footnote 10:

Like the late Dean Stanley, who in his Lectures on the _History of the
Jewish Church_, talked about the synagogue of the Jewish settlement in
Rome under the first Emperors “fascinating the proud Roman nobles by
the glimpse it gave of a better world” (vol. III. p. 410).

Footnote 11:

According to Josephus (_Antiq._ XVIII. i. 3, 4) they did not amount to
more than 6000 men distributed throughout the whole of Palestine.
Morrison thinks that “the Pharisaic party had no attraction for the
great bulk of the population,” _The Jews under Roman Rule_ 1890, p.
307.

Footnote 12:

See Chap. V _infra_.

Footnote 13:

See Neander, _General Hist. of the Christian Religion and Church_,
Eng. ed. 1853, vol. I. p. 126.

Footnote 14:

_De Natura Deorum_, c. XXVIII. The statement is put into the mouth of
Balbus whose arguments Cicero declares to have in his opinion “the
greater probability.” See also Athenagoras, _Legatio_, c. XXII. and
Minucius Felix, c. XIX. With such interpretations or mythoplasms,
Philo of Alexandria was familiar. Cf. F. C. Conybeare, _Apology of
Apollonius_, 1894, p. 9.

Footnote 15:

Dill, _Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius_, 1904, p. 419.

Footnote 16:

_De Iside et Osiride_, c. XXV.

Footnote 17:

Hatch, _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 124.

Footnote 18:

Origen, _contra Celsus_, t. III. c. 44. Cf. Hatch, where last quoted.

Footnote 19:

Cf. Dill, _Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire_,
1899, p. 38, n. 4. See also the edict of Constantine quoted in the
concluding chapter, _infra_. The steps which led up to the policy are
well summarized by Walter Johnson, _Byways of British Archaeology_,
1912, p. 25.

Footnote 20:

See Chap. VII _infra_.

Footnote 21:

See Chap. XIII _infra_.

Footnote 22:

Langlois, _Collection des Historiens de l’Arménie_, Paris, 1868, t. I.
p. 388.

Footnote 23:

The late Dr Salmon’s theory that writers like Hippolytus may have been
taken in by a forger who made one document do duty for many different
sects is given in Chap. VII _infra_, but the arguments in its favour
are not conclusive.

Footnote 24:

See Chap. X _infra_.

Footnote 25:

Sir Gaston Maspero, “Sur l’Ennéade,” _R.H.R._ Jan.-Fev. 1892, p. 8,
says that the Egyptians regarded Osiris as the First Man, and Jéquier
repeats the statement in his _Livre de ce qu’il y a dans l’Hadès_,
Paris, 1894, pp. 9-10. Yet there seems no evidence that the Egyptians
ever knew him under that name.

Footnote 26:

_De Is. et Os._ c. XLVI.

Footnote 27:

See (Mdlle) D. Menant, “Parsis et Parsisme,” _Conférences au Musée
Guimet_, 1904, and Prof. Williams-Jackson as there quoted. The same
date is accepted with some hesitation by Prof. Hope Moulton in his
_Early Zoroastrianism_ (Hibbert Lectures), 1913, pp. 17 _sqq._

Footnote 28:

See H. G. Jacobi, “The Antiquity of Vedic Culture,” _Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society_, 1909, pp. 720 _sqq._, where the texts relied
upon are given and discussed. The correspondence which followed upon
this paper (see _J.R.A.S._ 1909, 1910) is full of interest. Fossey,
“Les Fouilles Allemandes à Boghaz-Keui,” _Journal des Savans_, July,
1909, p. 316, would make the date of the inscription about 1900 B.C.

Footnote 29:

After this was in print, there came to hand Mr Stephen Langdon’s
translation of the Sumerian tablet from Nippur found by him at
Philadelphia, which narrates in a new and modified form the earliest
Babylonian legend of the Creation. From this it appears that the
goddess Nin-harsag, either on her own account or as the agent of the
god En-ki or Ea, “created two creatures with heads, feet, and face as
a model for mankind.” See Mr Langdon’s Preliminary Note in the
_Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology_, 1914, p. 196, n.
23. A full transliteration and translation is promised later in the
_P.S.B.A._ If Mr Langdon’s reading of the tablet is accepted, this may
well prove to be the origin of all the “First Man” legends mentioned
on p. lxi, _supra_.

CHAPTER I
THE CONQUESTS OF ALEXANDER

A glance at the map of Asia at the coming of Alexander will convince us
that all but a corner of the world known to the ancients was then ruled
by a single power. The Persian Empire, sprawling like a huge octopus
over the centre of the continent, dominated it from its four capitals at
the head of the Persian Gulf, and stretched without a break from the
Caspian Sea to the Indian Ocean. In its eastern provinces were comprised
what is now Russian Turkestan from Krasnovodsk to Kashgar, with the
Khanates and the Pamirs, all Afghanistan, Seistan, Baluchistan, the
North-West Province, and part of the Punjab. On the western side of the
Great Central Desert came the countries which we now call Persia and
Turkey in Asia containing in themselves a territory half the size of the
Continent of Europe, together with the rich province to the south of the
Caucasus which has lately passed into the grip of Russia. From here one
long tentacle had stretched across the Sinaitic Peninsula and had seized
Egypt; and, although another had shrunk back hurt from its attack on
Greece, it yet held positions on the Bosphorus and the Hellespont which
formed a standing menace that the raid might be repeated. Apart from the
Greek States which, as has been well said, the Great King found easier
to control through their own venal orators than to conquer by his
soldiers, there remained outside his sway only the trading republic of
Carthage and the Italian cities just rising into prominence. Travellers’
tales, more than usually improbable and untrustworthy, were, indeed,
told of great countries swarming with men and fabulous monsters lying
beyond the African and Indian deserts on the southern, and the great
ranges of mountains on the eastern, frontier of the Empire[30]; but
these gave as little concern to its rulers as did the fringe of
barbarian tribes, Cimmerians, Hyperboreans, Gauls, and Scyths, who
filled up the space between the civilized world and the imaginary ring
of waters which was called the Outer Ocean.

That this vast dominion should be loosely compacted was of the nature of
things. The twenty or more provinces into which it was divided enjoyed a
large measure of self-government, and had preserved, for the most part,
their native laws and customs unaltered. Each of these divisions was
ruled by a satrap who, like a Chinese viceroy, was allowed to maintain
armies and even fleets of his own. But a check, imperfect no doubt but
still existent, was exercised over his proceedings by the presence of a
Royal Secretary in each satrapy, whose business it was to supervise the
accounts, and to send up regular reports to the capital of the doings,
of his coadjutor[31], while the troops were under the command of a
general appointed directly by the Crown. From time to time, also, a
Royal Commissioner called the King’s Eye visited the province with a
strong guard to hear complaints and to see that all was in order[32].
The satrap, too, only held his post during his master’s pleasure, and
was liable at any moment to be removed to another province, degraded, or
put to death, on the strength of a simple letter bearing the Royal Seal;
and the tribute which each satrapy had to pay to the Great King being
settled at a fixed and known amount, there was less chance than under
some similar systems of devolution that the satrap might squeeze out of
his subjects a sum far greater than that which he transmitted to the
Treasury[33]. Above all, the Persians were of Aryan stock, and early
showed signs of the talent for governing older races which seems to have
stuck to the Aryans throughout their history. They made excellent roads,
and established swift running posts that did much to make communication
easy between the most important parts of their empire; while, as the
satraps’ standing armies were composed either of native Persians or
hired mercenaries, the subject populations had an opportunity, rare
enough in the ancient world, of peacefully developing their internal
resources without constant fear of disturbance by foreign enemies, or
forced participation in wars of aggression[34]. It was only when the
word went forth from Babylon or Susa, Ecbatana or Persepolis, for the
calling-out of the Ban of the whole Empire that the other than Persian
subject of Artaxerxes or Darius had to join the levy of his satrapy,
and, on orders given to him through an interpreter, to assist the Great
King in crushing some rebellious satrap or repelling foreign invasion.
At other times, he must have known him only as a kind of divinity,
having power to throw down and to set up, to whom he might cry, not
always in vain, against the oppression of his own immediate ruler. Those
writers are no doubt justified who say that the government of the
Persian Empire was to the humbler classes of Asiatics a great
improvement upon any that had preceded it[35], and that the rule of the
Great King never awoke the fierce resentment in its subjects aroused by
the tyranny of the Semitic Assyrians, or of the Chaldeans who were, in
great part, of Mongoloid blood [36]. It was doubtless the memory of this
golden age, glorified as remembrances generally are by the lapse of
centuries, that brought about the reaction to the Persian form of
government and culture which we shall have to discuss later in the
countries bled white by the Roman proconsuls.

Throughout this vast realm, Alexander’s coming brought about a change
such as the civilized world has never seen before or since. Among the
world-conquerors who have been hailed as heroes in after times,
Alexander—surely the greatest individual known to history—stands
distinguished by the loftiness of his aims and the swiftness with which
they were attained. It is wonderful that a boy of twenty with an army
that cannot have exceeded 50,000 men all told should succeed in
overcoming practically the whole of Asia in less time than it took the
British Empire with the third of a million to break down the armed
resistance of a few thousand Boers. More wonderful is it that he should
a little later contrive to transport a force of about 100,000,
comprising infantry, cavalry and artillery, over the three thousand
miles that separate Macedonia from Karachi, at the same time preserving
such perfect communication with his base that he seems never to have
remained for long without letters from Europe, while the stream of
recruits that reached him from the same source must have been continuous
and unchecked[37]. Such a feat which, with all the aid which steam and
electricity can give us, would still tax to the utmost the powers of our
greatest modern generals, becomes almost miraculous when we think that
the greater part of his line of communications must have lain through
recently subjugated lands, and that his own advance led him into
countries unmapped and known only to him by the half fabulous tales of
his enemies[38]. But the most astonishing thing about these exploits is
that they were all performed with the conscious aim of making Asia
Greek[39], and in this respect, as in all others, they were both
original and successful. Everywhere that Alexander passed, he left
behind him cities peopled by a mixture of his own veterans, of those
camp followers which, then as now, have always stuck to a European army
on the march, and of natives of the country either found on the spot or
drawn from some other part of Asia; and the permanence of these
foundations still bears witness to the foreseeing eye of their founder.
Alexandria in Egypt, Candahar, Secunderabad, all preserve to this day
the memory of his royal name, and the continued importance of Khojend,
Samarcand, Herat, Merv, and Cabul out of the many other Alexandrias that
he established on his conquering way show that his statesmanlike
perception of the chief markets of the East was as sure as his
strategical insight[40]. Nor did he neglect other means of carrying out
the great design that he had at heart. In the great feast at Susa, which
he celebrated on his return from India, the “marriage of Europe and
Asia,” which had always formed his guiding idea, took visible shape. He
had already wedded—it is said for love—the beautiful Roxana, a princess
from Bactria in the Eastern (or Upper) Provinces of his new Empire[41],
and now he took as a second consort Statira, the daughter of Darius,
who, as the scion of the last native king of Persia, may be taken as the
representative of its western centre. Nearly a hundred of his superior
officers and some ten thousand of his humbler followers hastened to
follow his example and to receive Asiatic brides with the rich dowries
assigned them by the Conqueror[42]. Moreover the thirty thousand
youthful recruits from his new conquests, whom he had ordered five years
before to be trained in the Macedonian discipline and the Greek
language, now arrived[43], and Alexander set to work with his usual
energy to diffuse through his European army strong drafts of his Asiatic
subjects in order to cement still further the alliance between the two
Continents. Had he lived, it would have been a mixed army of Asiatics
and Europeans that he would have led the following year to the conquest
of the western world[44].

Destiny, however, is, as men would have said in those days, stronger
than the immortal gods, and Alexander’s early death put an instant stop
to all ideas of further conquest. It is idle, until we know the causes
of things, to speculate on what might have been; but it seems probable
that if Nearchus’ expedition had sailed, the Conqueror’s warlike plans
would once again have proved to have been perfectly laid, that he would
have crushed Carthage as easily as Thebes and Tyre, and that the Italian
States would have received the same master as the Bactrians and
Indians[45]. Yet so far as our immediate purpose is concerned,
Alexander’s work was done once for all, and the policy typified as the
marriage of Europe and Asia was perhaps as well served by his death as
by his life. During Persian times, the Court of the Great King had
always proved a magnet drawing to itself with irresistible force the
ever-restless Greeks, and the road to Susa was trodden in turn by
politicians like Alcibiades, leaders of mercenaries like Xenophon, and
Greek philosophers, artists, and courtezans innumerable. The traffic in
mercenaries alone must have been enormous when we find Greek troops
forming the stiffening of those huge armies of Darius which Alexander
overthrew at the Granicus, Issus, and Arbela[46]; while as for the other
sex, Themistocles, when turning his back on his own country, could find
no better or safer mode of approaching the Persian Court than in a
closed litter supposed to be conveying a Greek woman to the harem of the
Great King[47]. But when the century-long wars for the succession to
Alexander broke out upon his death, there straightway appeared five
courts where before there had been but one, and these were now ruled
over by Greek and not by Persian kings. Mercenaries of all kinds were in
urgent demand in every one of them, while the setting free of the
millions in bullion and specie found by Alexander in the Persian
capitals caused an outbreak of luxury like that which followed in
Germany the payment of the French milliards. Soon every Greek who had
strength, beauty, or talents to sell was on foot to seek his or her
fortune in Asia, and with them went everywhere the petty Greek trader,
as enterprising and as fearless in pursuit of gain as those countrymen
of his whose booths Lord Kitchener saw set up on the field of Omdurman
before the rout of the Mahdists was complete, and whose _locandas_ still
greet one in the smallest villages on the Nile. The stream of
fortune-hunters, now in full flood, quickly overflowed from the ancient
capitals to the numerous Antigonias, Antiochias, Lysimachias,
Nicomedias, and Seleucias which the new kings everywhere founded in
imitation of their dead master, and even the most distant provinces
began to receive their quota of Greek citizens and Greek culture. As has
happened more than once in history, Asia woke suddenly from her sleep,
and acquired a veneer of foreign manners in hardly longer time than it
has taken Japan in our own days to adopt European armaments, teaching
and dress. When the Parthians overcame Crassus, the Roman captives found
the barbarian victors amusing themselves with the plays of
Euripides[48]; while the Bactrian and Indian provinces, which the rise
of the Parthian power cut off from the western part of Alexander’s
Empire, conceived such a taste for Greek art that the statues of Buddha
with which their capitals were afterwards decorated were carved
according to Greek instead of Hindu canons[49]. The so-called Indo-Greek
kings of these parts, the Euthydemi, Diodoti, and Eucratidae, of whom we
know hardly more than the names, no more thought of using other than
Greek designs and inscriptions for their coins than did the rulers of
Pergamum or Antioch[50]. The generation that had seen Alexander face to
face was hardly in its grave before the marriage of Europe and Asia had
become a very real and pregnant fact.

The importance of this for the history of religions can hardly be
exaggerated. Greek was spoken everywhere throughout Asia, and for the
first time in the world’s history the inhabitants of the civilized part
of the earth had a common tongue in which they could communicate their
ideas to each other. No doubt the language spoken by the offspring of
Greek colonists and their native spouses was not the tongue of Sophocles
or of Demosthenes any more than it was “the strong-winged music of
Homer”; but it was a better medium for the transmission of metaphysical
theories than the founder of any world-religion has ever had at his
disposal before or since. The missionaries whom modern nations send into
the distant parts of the earth for the propagation of the Christian
faith find one of their worst difficulties in the impossibility of
rendering its doctrines into the languages of peoples at another stage
of culture from themselves; but no such barrier between teacher and
taught existed in the empire created by Alexander’s genius. The result
of this possibility of intercommunication of ideas was at once apparent.
Anxious to show that they too had a pedigree, the older nations of the
world seized the opportunity to inform their new masters of their own
history and traditions; and, as all history was in those days sacred
history, they thus introduced to the Greeks their gods and their beliefs
as to the divine governance of the world. The sacred books of the
Chaldeans, of the Egyptians, of the Jews, and no doubt of many other
peoples whose records are now lost to us, were translated into Greek;
and thus the science of the history of religions was born. Writers like
Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch are still our chief guides for the
religions of the earliest populated parts of the ancient world; but how
could these compilers have handed down to us the traditions they have
preserved save for writers like Berossus, Manetho, and Philo of Byblus,
who themselves wrote in Greek? Plutarch tells us that when he spent a
year in Rome during the reign of Trajan, he did not find it necessary to
learn Latin, his native tongue being apparently understood by everybody.
One may wonder how much of the sayings and doings of the Founder of
Christianity would have come down to us, had they not been first
recorded in the κοινή or _lingua franca_ of the whole East[51].

There were, however, other ways in which Alexander’s conquests prepared
the way for a religion which could make appeal to men of every nation
and language. Nothing is more difficult for those brought up in a
monotheistic faith, with its inbred contempt for the worshippers of many
gods, than to realize how the ancients regarded the Divine. The peoples
of classical antiquity seem to have everywhere believed in the gods of
their neighbours as absolutely as they did in their own, for they
imagined that their deities had, like men, only a limited sphere of
action, or, to put it scientifically, were subject to the same
conditions of space as their worshippers. Thus, the Syrians thought that
Yahweh of Israel was a mountain god, who could not help his people when
fighting in the plains[52], and the Philistines believed that the ark in
which he lived would bring prosperity or disaster to the place in which
it happened to be for the time being[53]. This is almost an exact
parallel to the tale of the prince of Bactria, whose daughter was freed
from demoniacal possession by an image of the Egyptian god Khonsu sent
into Asia _ad hoc_, whereupon he decided that it would be wise to keep
so powerful a god in his own country, and did so until frightened by a
dream into sending the statue back[54]. But such ideas, however natural
they may be to isolated or backward peoples, soon lost their hold upon
the acute and logical Greeks, when they came into contact with civilized
nations having pantheons differing widely from their own. The
philosophers, indeed, by dint of hard reasoning on the subject, had
formed before the time of Alexander a conception of the Supreme Being
which does not differ materially from that of the educated Christian of
the present day. “Loyal,” says Pater, “to the ancient beliefs, the
ancient usages, of the religions of many gods which he had found all
around him, Socrates pierces through it to one unmistakable Person, of
perfect intelligence, power, and goodness who takes note of him[55]”;
and the same thing might be said with even greater certainty of the
deductions of Aristotle[56], whose declared monotheism caused him to be
adopted in the Middle Ages as one of the Doctors of the Church. But
there is no reason to believe that such lofty conceptions ever
influenced in the slightest the beliefs of the common people, who alone
count for anything in the evolution of the organized body of beliefs and
practices which we call a religion. Socrates so successfully concealed
his opinions in this respect from everybody but Plato, that the clear
and practical mind of Xenophon seems to have never seen in him anything
but a polytheist[57]: and that Aristotle’s monotheistic teachings were
not intended for the common herd may be judged from the correspondence,
whether actual or imaginary, between him and Alexander himself, in which
the hero reproaches his former tutor for having published doctrines
which should only be taught by word of mouth, and learns in reply that
his metaphysical theories would be unintelligible save to those whom he
had himself instructed in philosophy[58].

It is evident, therefore, that the great mass of Alexander’s subjects,
whether Asiatics, Egyptians or Greeks, would require something more than
the sublime theorizing of the philosophers before their religious ideas
could be turned in the direction of monotheism. Nine hundred years
before, Amenhotep IV of Egypt had indeed been led by his adoration of
the material sun to put forward a religious reform which had as its
principal feature the proclaiming abroad that there was only one God, in
whose sight all mankind was equal; but the sole effect of this premature
attempt to elevate the religion of his people was the loss of the
external possessions of Egypt, and the posthumous branding of his own
memory as that of a criminal. Possibly, too, the Hebrew Psalmists and
Prophets had formed a like conception of the Deity when they asserted
that among the gods there was none like unto Yahweh[59]; but that this
idea seldom penetrated to their hearers is plain from their incessant
denunciation of these last for “whoring after” other gods. The mere
announcement of the unity of God had therefore in itself an insufficient
attraction for the masses, and for the doctrine to be popular they had
to be led to it by other ways than those of argument or authority. Now
Aristotle noted with his usual shrewdness of observation that the form
of religion in a state generally follows with fair closeness that of its
temporal government[60], so that men will be more inclined to believe in
what the Greeks called “monarchy,” or the active rule of One First
Cause, if they live under a despot or absolute king than if they are
members of a democracy. But when did the world either before or after
his time see such a beneficent and godlike despot as Alexander? The
robber-kings of Assyria had been accustomed to sweep across Western Asia
leaving behind them, as they boasted in their inscriptions, a trail of
vassal rulers impaled or flayed alive, of burnt cities, and of plundered
peoples. The Persians, as has been said, had more idea of the rights of
their inferiors, and did not regard their subject territories as mere
fields for exploitation; but the life of sensual luxury into which their
kings sooner or later subsided had its natural outcome in harem
intrigues and assassinations which deprived the central power of a great
part of its otherwise effective control over its satraps. But Alexander
was in this, as in all other respects, the perfect type of the
benevolent master who thinks more of his servants’ welfare than of his
own personal gratification. Neither his mother Olympias, domineering and
masterful as she was, nor his first mistress Barsine the widow of
Memnon, nor his wife Roxana of whom he is said to have been enamoured,
nor the Persian princess Statira to whom he gave his hand out of policy,
could boast that they ever influenced by one hairsbreadth the direction
of his sovereign will. As for his justice, the swift punishment that he
measured out on his return from India to those of his officers whom he
found guilty of oppression and malversation showed that under his
far-seeing eye there would be none of those abuses of delegated power
from which the satrapial system had suffered under his predecessors[61].
Modern historians have sometimes called him cruel; but in political
matters severity is often the truest mercy, and the blood that he shed
at Thebes and in Bactria probably saved a hundred times the number of
lives which unchecked rebellion would have made it necessary to
sacrifice; while the accidental and unpremeditated death of Clitus may
well be pardoned to one who found not only his dignity as man but his
royal authority wantonly outraged by a friend whom he had distinguished
by exceptional marks of kindness. In every other respect his record is
stainless. Although opposed at every step of his short career by orators
and demagogues who saw in him the only obstacle to their unrestrained
plunder of the fatherland, no legend has survived to his dishonour. On
the contrary, all that we hear of him shows us for the first time in the
world’s history a conqueror who was at the same time a just and wise
ruler, merciful to his fallen foe, scorning even in war to take mean
advantage[62], and chivalrous to the weak to a degree that his age could
neither understand nor imitate[63]. And with all this, he united in his
own person those superficial advantages which have always been quick to
win for their possessor the devotion of the mob. To a talent for
generalship which neither Hannibal, Caesar, nor any modern general has
equalled, he joined a personal bravery which often reached the level of
recklessness and was always to be found in the forefront of the hottest
battle. Whether we see him charging at the head of the Companion cavalry
in the three great battles with Darius, pursuing with a handful of his
guard the routed Persian army after Arbela, or first over the wall at
Mooltan, Alexander is always performing these feats of hardihood which
in a leader strike more than anything the imagination of his soldiers.
Add to this a generosity which made him willing to strip himself of his
possessions to enrich his friends, a personal delight in that pomp and
pageantry which forms the most direct road to the hearts of the
proletariat, and a form, face and figure so distinguished that their one
defect was for centuries after imitated by all who wished to be thought
models of manly beauty[64], and we can no longer wonder that his
contemporaries looked upon him as more than human. This wise and
provident ruler of the world that he had conquered was at the same time
a youth beautiful as Apollo, chivalrous as Bayard, clean as Galahad. Is
it surprising that his name alone of all the conquerors of the East has
endured through all changes of creed and culture, that the fierce chiefs
of the Central Asian tableland still boast of him as their progenitor,
and that the whole Mahommedan world still hold him the king of the
believing Genii? No Caesar, Attila, or Genghiz Khan has ever thus
impressed the imagination of future ages[65].

Thus Alexander’s coming gave an enormous impulse to that monarchical
principle of government which from his time onward was to reign supreme
for nearly two thousand years. Philosophers and sophists hastened to
declare that democracy—as was indeed the fact—had proved itself
incapable of governing, and that in the rule of one man was to be found
the natural order of things and the only security for a well-ordered
State[66]. Every one of the Diadochi or Successors of Alexander hurried
in turn to assume the diadem, and Rome had no sooner contrived to crush
her rival republic of Carthage than she too fell under the sway, first
of dictators whose power was admittedly despotic, and then of emperors
whose constitutional limitations were about the same as those of
Alexander. That this was certain in time to react upon the universal
conception of the Divine, followed directly from the law underlying
religious phenomena which had been enunciated by Aristotle: but, before
this could make way among the Greeks, thus suddenly promoted to the
position of the ruling race, it was necessary that their own gods should
be assimilated to those of their eastern fellow-subjects, or in other
words, should be shown to be the same divinities under different names.
Now, a movement with this object, even before Alexander’s coming, had
been set on foot in Greece itself, and was in fact the natural outcome
of the ideas as to the origin and governance of the universe brought
there by the philosophers of Ionia[67]. It was all very well for the
masses—then as now, much given to pragmatism or the reduction of every
abstract idea to its most material and practical expression—to believe
that the power of every god was limited to an area of so many square
feet surrounding his image or sanctuary; but how could such a notion be
held by philosophers who had sought out the causes of things, by
travellers who had visited neighbouring countries in pursuit of
knowledge, or by soldiers who had fought there, and had found it
necessary to pay reverence to gods other than their own? It is said that
in naturalistic religions like those of Greece, there is always a
tendency to consider as identical divinities with the same or like
characteristics—to consider for instance all gods with solar attributes
as but different forms of the sun-god—and the Greeks of the fourth
century B.C. had thus taken many foreign gods into their pantheon. It
was, as Socrates found out to his cost, an offence to bring the worship
of new gods into the city; but the difficulty was got over by the theory
that the foreign divinity was only another form of some god already
worshipped by the citizens[68], and by keeping his cult as private as
possible. Later, when the popularity of the new deity seemed to be
assured, an oracle of Delphi was generally secured authorizing the
adoption of his worship under the name of his nearest Greek analogue,
and in this way many foreign worships were brought into Athens
itself[69]. Bendis, the moon-goddess of Thrace, had there from early
times a temple or Bendideion[70], and the Syrian Adonis was publicly
wailed for in the city when Alcibiades was setting out for Sicily[71].
This, too, was the more natural because the Greeks always acknowledged
that their older divinities originally came to them from foreign parts.
The myths in which the traditions of their origins were preserved gave
Crete or Asia Minor as the birthplace of Zeus, an island in the Aegean
as that of Apollo and Artemis, and the whole scene of the earthly trials
of Demeter and Persephone was laid partly in Eleusis and partly in
Asia[72]. As for Africa, Herodotus boldly asserts that the “names” of
almost all the gods worshipped by the Greeks came from Egypt[73], and,
although this is certainly not literally true, it gave him an excuse for
identifying all the Egyptian deities of whom he had any knowledge with
the Greek divinities whom he thought they resembled. But when
Alexander’s conquests had made the different subject nations really
acquainted with each other’s religion, the process of _theocrasia_ or
the fusion of one god with another received an impulse that carried it
beyond all bounds[74]. The divinities of Asia Minor were naturally the
first to be taken into the Greek pantheon, especially by the Athenians,
always mindful of their Ionian kinship; and the many-breasted goddess of
Ephesus, Cybele of Pessinus with her consort Atys or Attis, and the
Sidonian Astarte, were all worshipped in Greece after identification
with different Greek deities in the manner that had served to naturalize
the “Thracian” or Thessalian Dionysos, and the (probably) Egyptian
Hermes[75]. As we shall see later, the Phrygian Sabazius and the Cretan
Zagreus had already preceded them in secret, and Persian, Jewish, and
perhaps Indian gods were to follow. From Greece, the passion for
_theocrasia_ spread both eastward and westward. The Greek kings of Upper
India found it necessary to identify on their monuments the gods of
their native subjects with the divinities of Homer[76], and those of the
Central Provinces and of Asia Minor did the same with such effect that
it is almost impossible for us to distinguish their many Artemises,
Aphrodites, and different forms of Zeus from the gods worshipped under
similar names in ancient Greece[77]. As for the West, the Romans, even
before they became the masters of the world, took over the Greek
pantheon _en bloc_ by the simple process of calling their own Italian
deities by Greek names; and if we still speak of Zeus as Jupiter, Athena
as Minerva, Ares as Mars, and Hermes as Mercury, it is by reason of the
syncretism brought into fashion by Alexander’s conquests.

Neither must we forget that the deification of Alexander during his
lifetime brought an entirely new conception of the Divine into the
European world. The divinization of the king was indeed no new thing in
Egypt, where the Pharaoh from the earliest times was looked upon after
his enthronement as the living form of the sun-god Horus; but to the
religious ideas of the Greeks it was evidently a surprising shock. The
distinguishing attribute of a Greek god was his deathlessness or
incorruptibility; and although heroes like Theseus and Heracles were
fabled to have become immortal and therefore fit subjects for worship,
this was only because they were in the natural way the progeny of the
gods themselves, and as such were taken into heaven by their fathers
after death and the purging away of their mortal nature[78]. Alexander,
on the other hand, demanded from the Greeks as from his other subjects
divine honours during his life, and these were accorded to him with
servile readiness by the governments of Athens and other Greek
city-states, the Spartans not excepted[79]. What he meant exactly by
this demand it would be hard to say, because his supposed sonship to
Amen on which it was ostensibly based, was, as Sir Gaston Maspero has
shown, merely the form by which, on a change of dynasty, the priests of
Amen were accustomed to legitimize the accession to the throne of a king
who could show no right thereto but force[80]. It is evident, too, that
Alexander did not himself take his deification very seriously, since he
allowed its propriety to be discussed before him at a wine-party[81];
and his apologists, Arrian and Plutarch, are possibly well-founded when
they declare that it was a mere political device to secure the grudging
obedience of his Macedonian countrymen[82]. But his successors in this
matter went far beyond him. Ptolemy and Arsinoe, without any pretence of
divine descent, were proclaimed “Saviour-gods” for their Greek as well
as for their Egyptian subjects quite apart from any identification of
themselves with Horus or any other native deity. Antigonus, when
claiming to be the _strategos_ or generalissimo of the whole Empire, was
hailed as a god, which drew from the rough old king a repartee more
pointed than decent[83]. So, too, was his son, Demetrius the City Taker,
although at the time of his deification he had not even an independent
kingdom of his own, but was merely ruling Greece as the viceroy of his
father. And the barriers between the Divine and the human being thus
broken down, men’s minds soon became so familiar with the idea that they
not only thought men might become gods, but declared that the gods were
only deified men. The Athenians in the hymns that they sang to Demetrius
declared that he was the only true god, and that the others were either
asleep or too far off to be taken into account, or were not really gods
at all[84]. But it is not with impunity that the religious ideas of a
people can be thus suddenly and violently affronted. Within a few years
from Alexander’s death, Cassander’s friend and envoy Euhemerus put
forward, with the aid of a literary fraud something like that of
Psalmanazar, the theory that all the gods worshipped by the Greeks had
once been kings or at least distinguished men and women upon earth[85]—a
doctrine that was received with as much enthusiasm in the Rome of the
Republic as it once evoked in our own days among the followers of
Herbert Spencer[86]. Later, the Epicurean philosophy, with its happy
gods neither interfering with nor caring about the doings of mankind,
came to the assistance of this rather crude atheism. Although the Stoic
philosophers in their turn tried to introduce a more lofty idea of the
Deity, it was probably not until late Roman times that they ever
obtained anything like a grip on the people. Whether for good or ill, it
is certain that the Greeks after Alexander’s death never returned to the
simple faith in their national gods which had sufficed for their
forefathers.

This is a point that it is important to remember, because without it, it
is hard to understand the passion for innovation in religious matters
which seems for the next three centuries to possess unchecked sway over
mankind. It appeared as if Alexander, who indeed had made all things
new, had set free the gods of the ancient world to wander from one end
of his Empire to the other, and the desire to proselytize appears for
the first time in the world’s history. Buddhism must have been prevalent
in India for nearly a century before Alexander; but when it became the
religion of the state in the reign of Asoka, grandson of that
Chandragupta or Sandracottus who had talked with Alexander face to face,
the Indian king boasted that he had sent out missionaries for the
propagation of his new faith to the courts of Antiochus of Syria,
Ptolemy of Egypt, Antigonus of Macedonia, Magas of Cyrene and Alexander
of Epirus[87]. Whether the Indian missionaries ever reached the kings to
whom they were sent may be doubted, and it is certain that these last
did not pay the attention to them that Asoka claims; but it is quite
possible that to the impulse given by such missions may be attributed
some of the practices of the Jewish sect of the Essenes, and perhaps the
monastic seclusion affected by certain worshippers of the Alexandrian
god Serapis[88]. But if Buddhism could thus find its way westward from
so distant a country as India, how much more must this have been the
case with the other Oriental religions with which the Greeks had already
some slight acquaintance, and which, as we shall see in the sequel,
poured into Europe in such a flood that Juvenal compared it to the
Orontes emptying itself into the Tiber. That the Greeks, ever eager for
some new thing, were quick to avail themselves of the new ideas thus
thrust upon them was only to be expected. But this rage for novelty was
too violent to be content to follow the slow process of assimilation or
_theocrasia_ which was prevalent before Alexander. Religious
associations for the worship of foreign gods were formed in which we
may, if we like, see the first germs of the Christian Church[89]. In
these each member had to pay a subscription towards the expenses of the
cult, and the office-bearers instead of being appointed by the State
were either taken from the members in rotation or chosen by lot. That
these confraternities, as we should now call them, were at first
composed of natives of countries other than Greece is shown by their
clustering in the port of the Piraeus as the quarter where foreigners
naturally congregated[90]; and their male members for the most part
consisted of slaves, freedmen, and stranger merchants, who thus found a
meeting-place in what was to them a foreign country. Their worship too
was secret or rather was confined to members of the confraternity only,
while its correctness of form was preserved by means of written books or
rituals, thereby presenting many points of resemblance to that of the
later Gnostics. But the superstitious, and especially the women who were
always in Greece much addicted to _theoxenia_ or the reception of
strange gods, were early attracted by them, and they soon spread to
every great city in the Empire. Thus we see for the first time in
history bodies of men and women banded together, irrespective of
nationality and social rank, for the purpose of religious observances,
and religion becoming recognized as the affair of the individual rather
than of the state, while each member of the association was directly
interested in its extension. In this way, the Greeks became worshippers
not only of their own sufficiently numerous deities but of those of well
nigh the whole East as well. Their inscriptions show that Persian,
Phrygian, and Lydian gods were worshipped by these associations,
together with a whole crowd of Semitic deities among whom, if M. Cumont
is right, there may even have been included the God of Israel[91].

The influence that these confraternities exercised in familiarizing the
minds of the Greek citizens with the religious practices and tenets of
foreign countries must have been very great. Every such association had
a temple of its own, in which it offered sacrifices to its own
particular god. But, after providing for this, the greater part of the
subscriptions went in providing a periodical banquet at which its
members could meet for social intercourse, and to which they were no
doubt sometimes allowed to bring guests. But at these gatherings, as
apparently at all others of the confraternity, all were equal, and there
were no distinctions of rank. Moreover, in addition to the foreign
members for whom the institution was originally designed, they must
early have begun to admit Greeks; and these were generally, though not
always, persons who were in the first instance led to them by a leaning
to foreign superstitions, and particularly to that orgiastic ritual with
which the worship of the Asiatic gods was generally associated in Greek
minds. It is noteworthy that among the Greek names inscribed upon the
stelae containing the lists of members that have come down to us, those
of women are far more numerous than those of men. Yet they seldom seem
to have been of the highest class in their own community, and it is
difficult to conceive of a Greek matron leaving her gynaeceum to take
part with slaves and freedmen in nocturnal feasts or orgies. Among those
whom we know otherwise as belonging to these confraternities are Phryne
the celebrated courtezan, Tryphera and Aristion, who followed the same
manner of life[92], and Glaucothea the mother of Æschines and a
perfume-seller, a trade then considered as disreputable as in the reign
of Louis XIV[93]. On the other hand, it seems to follow from what
Plutarch says, that King Philip of Macedon first saw and loved Olympias,
mother of Alexander, at a meeting of one of these confraternities[94],
and it is possible that outside Greece proper they lost something of
their disreputable associations.

It must not be supposed, however, that these associations concerned
themselves entirely with what we now call religion. The state, in cities
like Athens, regarded them with great jealousy, and did its best to
prevent them from forming a hierarchy by stipulating that their officers
should only hold office for a year. This naturally prevented any
continuity of policy such as a corporation like the priesthood of Amen
could pursue, and set their chiefs upon making hay while the sun shone.
Ignorant and degraded as most of their members were, and generally
engaged in the pursuit of gain, it is not astonishing that they should
thus have lent themselves to the worst and most dangerous because most
profitable superstitions. The priests and especially the priestesses of
the confraternities were always ready to lend themselves to the
practices of divination and magic, to the sale of love-philtres and
poisons[95], the interpretations of dreams and miraculous cures. To
these charlatans came everyone who wanted his or her fortune told, or
who wished to get rid of a rival, or to obtain the favour of a
disdainful lover, or was simply tormented with idle fears or by some
bodily disease incurable by regular means.

“The set of charlatans and market-men who hang about and wait round
the altars of the Great Mother and Serapis; and who manufacture
oracles either out of their own heads or by haphazard out of certain
books for the benefit of house-slaves and silly women”

is the contemptuous way in which Plutarch describes these impostors[96].
Yet even in this way much was doubtless done to spread the knowledge of
foreign religions; for many must have resorted to the foreign temples
for magic or divination who would never have thought of joining the
association by which they were maintained, and in magic it is always the
least known gods and those worshipped by the races of lowest culture who
are thought to be the most powerful. Moreover, many of these
associations in time purified themselves by a sort of process of
elimination from these undesirable accessories, and, so soon as they
succeeded in attracting the adhesion of a sufficient number of
respectable people, managed to get the god they were formed to worship
enrolled among the native deities of the state or city. It was in this
way that foreign gods like Serapis and Mithras, from being the
divinities of a handful of foreign slaves, merchants or hostages, came,
as we shall see, to occupy the highest places in the national worship of
the Roman Empire. Thus Lucian tells us the story of the impostor
Alexander of Abonoteichos, who with the help of a tame serpent with a
cardboard mask gave himself out as the priest of an incarnation of
Asklepios the Greek god of healing, and founded an association for its
worship in Nicomedia in Bithynia. Later, he persuaded one Rutilianus, a
man of consular rank who seems to have had influence at the Court of
Marcus Aurelius, to join him in the propagation of his new cult and even
to marry his daughter[97]. But the worship that he thus set up must have
afterwards been recognized by the city of Nicomedia, for we find the
representation of its god Glycon upon a Nicomedian coin of the time of
the Emperor Gordian, the husband of Tranquillina[98].

It was apparently in these associations that the new spirit now manifest
in the religion of the ancient world began to take organized shape.
Among the Persians and Egyptians the priests were officers of state
living on the property of their several corporations, and therefore with
a natural leaning, except in the rare cases where their privileges or
property were threatened by the Crown, against all innovations and
interference with the established order of things. Among the Greeks,
both in Hellas itself and in her colonies oversea, the priests with a
very few exceptions were chosen from the native-born citizens at large
either for their personal beauty, or for the wealth which enabled them
to give in honour of the gods magnificent pageants and other
festivals[99]. In no case did they regard themselves as having any
teaching or pastoral mission, and were in no way interested in
increasing the number of the worshippers of the god to whose service
they were elected for a short term. Hence, their chief preoccupation was
to keep strictly to precedent in the celebration of the public acts of
worship entrusted to them, and they would have looked with horror on any
alteration of the traditional rites. But in the associations founded for
the worship of foreign gods, affairs were conducted on utterly different
lines. There seems to have been a healthy spirit of emulation among the
successive holders of the priestly office, for the vote of thanks
inscribed on marble and displayed in the temple for the admiration of
the confraternity was the distinction most sought after by them, and the
deprivation of it was the most serious penalty exacted for dereliction
of duty[100]. In order to obtain these rewards, it is plain that the
officers had to carry out to the full the Apostolic injunction to be all
things to all men, and there is actually a case on record where a
priestess is praised because during her term of office she has offended
nobody. This complaisance seems to have extended itself from the
officials to the deities worshipped, who seem often to have been quite
willing to fulfil a double office, and to appear as Aphrodite or Astarte
to the Syrian and as Cybele to the Phrygian members of the
association[101]. By these means, they made it possible for several
nationalities to belong to the same association.

There was probably, however, a more intellectual side to this spirit of
accommodation. All, or nearly all, of these associations celebrated
mysteries or sacred dramas based on the same lines as the Eleusinian and
setting forth, it would seem, the passion, death, and resurrection of
some god. These plays, when we consider the relatively slender number of
the initiates and the limited means at their disposal, must generally
have been acted with maimed and abbreviated rites in which a good deal
was left to the imagination of the beholder. But this very fact must
have set the always curious and inquisitive Greeks upon enquiry into the
nature and origin of the scenes thus indicated rather than acted, and
this in its turn must have led to many discussions and explanations of
the gods there portrayed. For such conversations, too, there must have
been far greater opportunities in the case of those _thiasi_,
_orgeones_, or _erani_ (as these associations were called), where
members were few and in the habit of meeting each other daily than with
the Eleusinian rites which were celebrated only once or twice a year and
then in the presence of a huge crowd dispersed immediately after to the
different parts of the Hellenic world. It is hardly putting it too
strongly to say that anything like propagandism must have been confined
to the smaller societies.

To sum up, then, Alexander united the whole civilized world for the
first time under a single head and gave to it a common language and
culture. By the natural gifts of his extraordinary personality, he at
the same time set before it a perfect model of kingship and thus ensured
the persistence of the monarchical principle for two millenia. This, his
conscious work, had a direct effect on the evolution of monotheism,
while in other respects his conquests proved the turning point in the
history of religions. By breaking down the barriers which racial and
lingual divisions had hitherto set up between different nations of the
earth, these conquests led to a great fusion of the religions hitherto
professed by them, and thus opened the door to the world-religions which
were afterwards to share between them his vast Empire. Before his coming
we see the ancient world divided into separate communities each with its
own pantheon and forms of worship and neither knowing nor caring greatly
about those of its neighbours. But immediately after, all this is
changed. The interchange of ideas between East and West has thrown the
different religions of the world as it were into a melting-pot, in which
the germs of a different grouping of the human race are dimly visible.
The spirit of proselytism is abroad, and man now wants to impress his
own ideas of the Divine upon his fellows. Above all, we see the
beginning of those great associations of mankind for religious purposes
which are henceforth to be the principal factors in the world’s history,
and whose evolution has continued unchecked down to the present day. All
those that followed Alexander were in this respect nothing more than his
conscious or unconscious imitators. The great princes and generals who
after his death parted his Empire among them, and the Romans who
gradually ate up the fragments left to these princes’ effete
descendants, could but carry on the work set on foot by the Great
Conqueror. As Mr Hogarth has said, very little that he did was ever
undone, and for good or ill, he has taken his place among the
immortals[102]. Thus, from the scientific point of view, there is none
among the forerunners of Christianity who did more to prepare and make
ready its way than Alexander.

Footnote 30:

Such as the Arimaspi or one-eyed inhabitants of Russia, about whom
Herodotus (Bk III. c. 116) quotes the legend that they stole gold from
its griffin guardians, and those _myrmeces_ or great ants whom
Megasthenes (Strabo, Bk XV. c. 1, § 44) and other writers describe as
digging for gold on the Thibetan frontier—a story of which more than
one rationalistic explanation has been suggested.

Footnote 31:

Rawlinson’s _Herodotus_ (1862 edition), II. p. 462 for authorities.

Footnote 32:

Maspero, _Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient_, Paris, 1904, p.
706. Rawlinson, _op. cit._ p. 463, thinks this practice lapsed early,
but Xenophon seems clear that it was in force in his time
(_Cyropaedia_, Bk VIII. c. 6).

Footnote 33:

He was probably allowed a reasonable sum for the maintenance of his
court and government; but if he exceeded this, was liable to severe
punishment. This appears from the execution by Alexander, on his
return from India, of the satraps who had been guilty of extortion. He
seems to have purposely preserved the Persian laws and customs on this
point unaltered.

Footnote 34:

This is the opinion of Rawlinson, _op. cit._ pp. 460 _sqq._

Footnote 35:

Rawlinson, _op. cit._ p. 464; Winwood Reade, _Martyrdom of Man_, 1910,
p. 56; Sayce, _Ancient Empires of the East_, 1884, pp. 250, 251;
Maspero, _op. cit._ p. 721.

Footnote 36:

Oppert, _Le Peuple et la Langue des Mèdes_, Paris, pp. 17 _sqq._;
Maspero, _op. cit._ p. 559, n. 11.

Footnote 37:

Sir Thomas Holdich, in his excellent book _The Gates of India_ (p.
104), says that when he defeated the Aspasians or Yusufzai in the
Kuner Valley he sent the pick of their cattle back to Macedonia to
improve the native breed. Arrian, _Anabasis_, Bk IV. c. 25, however,
in quoting the story from Ptolemy, says only that Alexander “wished to
send them” to till the soil. It seems impossible that they could have
survived the journey before the days of steamships. Still more
incredible is the story in Plutarch, _Life of Alexander_, c. L. that
when Alexander was at Prophthasia (probably Farrah in Seistan), he
received some grapes grown on the coast of Greece. But such stories,
although coloured by age, may serve to show how perfect his
communications were always thought to have been.

Footnote 38:

Holdich, _op. cit._ _passim_, says that he must have had information
from Persian sources, and that his route must have been laid
beforehand. Sir Thomas’ opinion, as that of a soldier as well as a
student, is entitled to much respect. Yet the instances of Genghiz
Khan and other Oriental invaders are perhaps against any such
necessity.

Footnote 39:

Freeman, _Historical Essays_, 1873, second series, pp. 192, 193.

Footnote 40:

Khojend was probably Alexandria _eschata_ or the furthest (East).
Samarcand, of which the ancient name was Maracanda, is said by Baber
to be a foundation of Alexander’s. Herat was Alexandria Ariana, and
Merv probably Alexandria Margiana, while Cabul seems to have been
Ortospana. Among the other Alexandrias which have retained their old
importance are Alexandria Arachosiana or Candahar, Alexandria
Caucasiana or Begram, and Alexandria Sogdiana or Hyderabad. See J. W.
McCrindle, _Invasion of India by Alexander the Great_, 1896, pp. 36
_sqq._, and Droysen, _Histoire de l’Hellénisme_, (French edition),
Paris, 1883, I. pp. 408 _sqq._

Footnote 41:

Droysen, _op. cit._ p. 481.

Footnote 42:

See last note. The second marriage is dramatically described by
Droysen, _op. cit._ I. pp. 638, 639. Cf. Arrian, _Anabasis_, Bk VII.
c. 4; Plutarch, _Alexander_, c. LXX.

Footnote 43:

Arrian, _op. cit._ Bk VII. c. 6; Plutarch, _Alexander_, c. LXXI. Cf.
Droysen, _op. cit._ I. p. 646.

Footnote 44:

Droysen, _op. cit._ I. p. 660. It was probably the fear of this
mixture that caused the quarrel between him and his Macedonians at
Opis. See Arrian, _op. cit._ Bk VII. c. 8; Plutarch, _Alexander_, c.
LXXI.

Footnote 45:

Droysen, _op. cit._ II. p. 34. Mahaffy, _Alexander’s Empire_, 1887, p.
38, thinks that the Romans could never have withstood Alexander’s
cavalry and siege artillery, although he notes that Livy patriotically
decided otherwise.

Footnote 46:

Droysen, _op. cit._ I., pp. 186, 240, 333. There were 30,000 Greek
mercenaries fighting on the side of Darius at Issus, and 4000 of these
remained faithful till his death. _Ibid._ I. p. 368.

Footnote 47:

Plutarch, _Themistocles_, c. XXVI.

Footnote 48:

Plutarch, _Crassus_, c. XXXIII. The play acted was the _Bacchae_, and
a Greek tragic actor, one Jason of Tralles, had been imported for the
principal part. In the essay _De Alex. fortitudine_, I. c. 5, Plutarch
says that no sooner had Alexander subdued Asia than Homer became a
favourite reading-book, and Persian, Susianan, and Gedrosian boys
learned to chant the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides.

Footnote 49:

Droysen, _op. cit._ III. pp. 244, 255.

Footnote 50:

Sylvain Lévi, “Bouddhisme et les Grecs,” _Revue de l’Histoire des
Religions_, 1891, p. 2; Percy Gardner, _Catalogue of Bactrian and
Indian Coins in British Museum_. Arts other than the plastic also
received attention. Amitrochates, son of the famous Chandragupta or
Sandracottus, wrote to Antiochus (Soter?) to buy him some sweet wine,
dried figs, and a sophist. He received the other commodities, but was
told that it was not lawful to sell sophists in Greece. See Athenaeus,
_Deipnosophistae_, Bk XIV. c. 67 quoting Hegesander.

Footnote 51:

Droysen, _op. cit._ III. p. 66. Cf. the _Omnis Oriens loquitur_ of St
Jerome _Prol. ad Epist. ad Galatas_; and Deissmann, _New Light on the
New Testament_ (English edition), 1907, p. 30.

Footnote 52:

1 Kings xx. 23.

Footnote 53:

1 Sam. iv. 6, 7.

Footnote 54:

Maspero, “La Fille du Prince de Bakhtan” in _Contes Populaires de
l’Ancienne Égypte_, Paris, p. 159.

Footnote 55:

Pater, _Plato and Platonism_, 1901, pp. 85, 86.

Footnote 56:

Aristotle, _Metaphysica_, Bk XI. c. 6.

Footnote 57:

Xenophon, _Memorabilia_, Bk I. c. 1, § 1-5.

Footnote 58:

Plutarch, _Alexander_, c. VII.

Footnote 59:

So F. H. Woods, _The Hope of Israel_, Edinburgh, 1896, p. 205, where
he speaks of the religion of the Prophets and Psalmists, as “giving,
on the whole, by far the most perfect and, as compared with other
ancient literature, practically a unique example of monotheism.” Yet
as Winwood Reade points out, Solomon must have thought there were
other gods than Yahweh, because he worshipped other gods; _op. cit._
_supra_, p. 201.

Footnote 60:

Aristotle, _Politica_, Bk I. c. 2, § 7. Cf. Max Müller, _Religions of
India_ (Hibbert Lectures), 1880, p. 292.

Footnote 61:

Arrian, _op. cit._ Bk VI. c. 27.

Footnote 62:

See his repudiation of the night attack advised at Arbela: οὐ κλέπτω
τὴν νίκην, “I steal no victory!” Plutarch, _Alexander_, c. XXXI.

Footnote 63:

Plutarch, _op. cit._ c. XXI. and c. XXX.

Footnote 64:

The wry neck or, in Mr Hogarth’s words, “the famous inclination of his
beautiful head towards the left shoulder” was imitated by dandies as
late as the time of Severus. For authorities see Hogarth, _Philip and
Alexander of Macedon_, 1897, p. 278, n. 2.

Footnote 65:

Droysen, _op. cit._ I. p. 218 and p. 479, n. 1. Major P. H. Sykes
lately found an inscription in Khorassan to Sulayman Shah who reigned
from 1667-1694 A.D. containing the words “His audience-chamber is the
Sun; his Army the Stars; his authority is like Alexander’s,” _Journal
of the Royal Asiatic Society_, 1910, pp. 1152, 1153.

Footnote 66:

Bouché-Leclercq, _Hist. des Lagides_, Paris, t. I. p. 130, n. 2,
points out that there was hardly a philosopher during the next three
centuries who did not write a treatise Περὶ τῆς βασιλείας.

Footnote 67:

A parallel movement seems to have taken place in Babylonia, where all
the gods were at one period identified with Marduk or Merodach. See
Pinches, “Religious Ideas of the Babylonians,” _Transactions of the
Victoria Institute_, 1893, p. 10.

Footnote 68:

Maury, _Histoire des Religions de la Grèce Antique_, Paris, 1857, III.
p. 73.

Footnote 69:

Demosthenes, _v. Midias_, p. 53; Herodotus, Bk VII. c. 189. Such gods
were called by the peculiar epithet of πυθόχρηστοι. See inscription
from Smyrna quoted by Rayet, _Revue Archéologique_, 1877, pp. 115-128.

Footnote 70:

Xenophon, _Hellenica_, Bk II. c. 4.

Footnote 71:

Plutarch, _Alcibiades_, c. CXVIII. Cf. Aristophanes, _Lysistrata_, ll.
387 _sqq._

Footnote 72:

Homeric _Hymn to Demeter_, _passim_.

Footnote 73:

Herodotus, Bk II. c. 50.

Footnote 74:

Droysen, _op. cit._ I. p. 698.

Footnote 75:

See Maury, _Rel. de la Grèce_, t. III. cc. 15, 16. Aristophanes,
_Horae_ fragment 1 of Didot, and _Aves_, l. 874, is practically the
earliest witness for their introduction into Athens. Cf. the Scholiast
upon the last passage quoted, for their identification with Greek
deities. M. Paul Foucart, _Les Associations Religieuses chez les
Grecs_, Paris, 1873, pp. 57 and 85, shows the great rush of foreign
gods into Attica after the Persian War and the mode in which their
worship was propagated.

Footnote 76:

Percy Gardner, _Catalogue of Coins_, etc., _passim_. Goblet
d’Alviella, _Ce que l’Inde doit à la Grèce_, Paris, 1897, p. 73, notes
that these coins reproduce “the usual type of the classical divinities
Hercules, Dionysos, Poseidon, Helios, Pallas, Artemis, Niké.”

Footnote 77:

Droysen, _op. cit._ III. p. 73.

Footnote 78:

Callisthenes appears to have used this argument against the
deification of Alexander during his lifetime, Arrian, _Anabasis_, Bk
IV. c. 11. Cf. Budge, _Pseudo Callisthenes’ History of Alexander the
Great_, Cambridge, 1889, Bk III. c. 19, p. 135; Plutarch, _Pelopidas_,
c. XVI.

Footnote 79:

Droysen, _op. cit._ I. p. 668.

Footnote 80:

Maspero, “Comment Alexandre devenait Dieu.” _Annuaire de l’École des
Hautes Études_, Paris, 1897; _id._ _Ét. Égyptol._ t. VI. pp. 286
_sqq._

Footnote 81:

Mr Hogarth, _Philip and Alexander_, pp. 197 _sqq._, rightly points out
that he never instituted any cult of himself, as did Demetrius
Poliorcetes.

Footnote 82:

Plutarch, _Alexander_, c. XXVIII.; Arrian, _Anabasis_, Bk VII. c. 29.

Footnote 83:

Plutarch, _de Is. et Os._ c. XXIV.; _id. Apophthegmata Antigon_. 7.
Cf. Droysen, _op. cit._ II. p. 295. Mr Tarn in his _Antigonos
Gonatas_, Oxford, 1913, p. 251, would transfer the story to his
grandson, but his reasoning is not convincing.

Footnote 84:

Athenaeus, _Deipnosoph_. Bk VI. c. 62.

Footnote 85:

Droysen, _op. cit._ III. p. 22 and note 2.

Footnote 86:

Euhemerus’ work was one of the first Greek books to be translated into
Latin. See Cicero, _De Nat. Deor._ c. 42.

Footnote 87:

Droysen, _op. cit._ III. p. 341, n. 3. Rhys Davids, _Buddhist India_,
1903, p. 298, thinks it possible that the missions although duly
recorded on stone were never sent.

Footnote 88:

See Chapter II _infra_.

Footnote 89:

Foucart, _Les Associations Religieuses_, etc., pp. 66-84. Cf. Maury,
_Rel. de la Grèce_, II. p. 427. The composition of hymns was
peculiarly the care of these associations; Foucart, _op. cit._ p. 114.

Footnote 90:

Foucart, _op. cit._ p. 85.

Footnote 91:

Franz Cumont, “Hypsistos,” _Revue de l’Instruction publique en
Belgique_, 1897, pp. 5-6; _id._ _Les Religions Orientales dans le
Paganisme Romain_, Paris, 1906, p. 155 and note.

Footnote 92:

Foucart, _Ass. Rel._ pp. 135, 136, 158.

Footnote 93:

See Chapter IV _infra_.

Footnote 94:

Plutarch, _Alexander_, c. II.

Footnote 95:

See Foucart, _op. cit._ p. 158, for the cases of Ninos and Theoris,
priestesses who were condemned for such traffic.

Footnote 96:

Plutarch, _Pythian Responses_, c. XXV.

Footnote 97:

Lucian, _Alexander or Pseudomantis_, _passim_. The story is well
summarized by Sir Samuel Dill, in _Nero to Marcus_, pp. 473 _sqq._

Footnote 98:

Léon Fivel, “Le Dieu Glycon à Nicomédie,” _Gazette Archéol._ 1879, p.
186.

Footnote 99:

Maury, _Rel. de la Grèce_, II. pp. 418 _sqq._ Cf. Döllinger,
_Judenthum und Heidenthum_ (English edition), I. p. 214.

Footnote 100:

Foucart, _Ass. Rel._ pp. 33-35.

Footnote 101:

_Id._ _op. cit._ pp. 150, 151.

Footnote 102:

Hogarth, _Philip and Alexander_, pp. 277, 282. Cf. Bouché-Leclercq in
Droysen, _op. cit._ I. p. vii.

CHAPTER II
THE ALEXANDRIAN DIVINITIES

When Alexander’s marshals began immediately after his death to divide
his Empire among them, and Ptolemy the son of Lagos claimed and received
for his share the province of Egypt, his more ambitious fellows must
have smiled at his moderation. Egypt was an acquisition that had never
been properly assimilated by the Persians, and although subjugated by
Cambyses very early in their history, had more than once broken out into
successful rebellion. Its inhabitants, then as now, were a race
separated from the rest of the world by peculiarities of climate,
devotedly attached to their own traditional institutions, and bitterly
and obstinately hostile to the foreigner. Moreover, the enormous
resources of the country were undeveloped, the importance of its new
capital of Alexandria as the natural entrepôt of trade between East and
West[103] had not then been made manifest, and the agricultural wealth
which was afterwards to make Egypt the granary of Europe had been ruined
by civil commotions and foreign invasions. Although Alexander was hailed
by the Egyptians as a deliverer, and, like other conquerors before and
after him, found little difficulty in coming to terms with the colleges
of greedy and unpatriotic priests who were ready to welcome any foreign
master so long as their own position was assured[104], he seems to have
felt less interest in the unwarlike and servile _fellahin_ than in the
free warriors of Bactria and India who had fought so gallantly against
him. Hence, he paid little attention to their government, and Cleomenes,
the ruler he had set over Egypt, thus found himself free to practise
extortion on a scale which would certainly have brought down upon him
the condign vengeance of his master had it taken place further
east[105]. Or perhaps the Great Conqueror, among whose gifts the habit
of attending to everything in its turn must certainly be reckoned,
thought it well to let all things grow together till the harvest, in the
consciousness that the campaign in Arabia, on which he was bent when
struck down by the fatal fever, would bring him close to the confines of
Egypt and therefore in a position to investigate on the spot the
complaints against Cleomenes which had already come to his ears. Be this
as it may, one of Ptolemy’s first acts on reaching his satrapy was to
seize Cleomenes and to put him to death, a proceeding which had, we
learn, the full approval of his new subjects. This was but the earliest
of a long list of benefits which his rule was to confer upon them, and
which under his successors were to raise Egypt to a greater height of
prosperity than she had ever enjoyed under her native Pharaohs.

It soon became evident also, that in choosing Egypt for his portion
Ptolemy knew very well what he was about. While its western frontier was
the Libyan desert and its southern was guarded by the cataracts, its
northern coast was so badly off for harbours as to make it difficult to
attack by sea, and it was practically unassailable from the east save at
the Pelusiac or Port Said mouth of the Nile, and then only by an enemy
marching through Syria[106]. Ptolemy, therefore, had ample time to
consolidate his power by annexing Cyrene, making friends in his turn
with the Egyptian priesthoods, and spending the money raised by
Cleomenes’ exactions in the enlistment of an army of mercenaries[107].
He also waylaid the body of Alexander on its way to the tombs of the
Macedonian kings at Aegae, and installed it in a splendid sepulchre
called the Sema at Alexandria, thereby securing to himself, in the
opinion of the time, a talisman of great power[108]. It was not long
before the wisdom of these preparations was put to the proof; for, two
years after Alexander’s death, Perdiccas, the Regent of the Empire, had
the new satrap tried in his absence for treason, and led a great army
out of Asia Minor by way of Damascus to attack him. He found Ptolemy
waiting for him in force at Pelusium, and after some of the royal troops
had gone over to the enemy, and those under Perdiccas in person had
suffered a severe repulse near Bubastis, Perdiccas was deposed and
murdered[109]. The new settlement of the Empire which followed at
Triparadeisos confirmed Ptolemy in the possession of Egypt, and left him
in comparative peace to organize a kingdom which only ended three
centuries later with Cleopatra[110].

Of the able and statesmanlike measures which Ptolemy took towards this
end, only one need concern us here. The plan may have been Alexander’s
own, for no one was more likely to know Alexander’s later mind than
Ptolemy, who had been his master’s companion from his youth, had shared
his exile when banished by Philip, and had distinguished himself in
India as one of his most trusted lieutenants. It is not impossible that
among Alexander’s plans for the government of his Empire, a religion
common to both Greek and barbarian may have been included; for it is
difficult otherwise to explain the active part that he took in the
different religious observances of all his subjects, while the constant
inquisitiveness concerning them which he showed can hardly have been
merely archaeological[111]. At all events, soon after Ptolemy found
himself secure in the possession of Egypt, he set himself to work to
found a religion that should unite both his Greek and his Egyptian
subjects in the bonds of a common faith. At first sight, no two things
can seem more dissimilar than the religions of the two nations; but
there was one point where they drew very near to each other, and it was
to this that Ptolemy addressed himself.

Now religion in Egypt had always been very much in the hands of a
professional priesthood who here, as elsewhere in Africa, formed
organized corporations greedy for political sway, and sometimes proved
more powerful than the king himself[112]. So far as the monuments show,
the first of these corporations in point of time was that of the
worshippers of the sun-god Ra, the chief seat of whose worship was Annu,
On, or Heliopolis in the Delta. Its members were apparently the
religious advisers of the Vth or Pyramid-building Dynasty, and to them
must be attributed the earliest or Heliopolitan recension of the _Book
of the Dead_ engraved on the walls of the chambers in the Saqqarah
Pyramids. This corporation seems to have flourished unchecked until the
Hyksos conquest, but was succeeded, when the invaders were cast out, by
that of the priests of Amen of Thebes who, after crushing the “heresy”
or religious revolt of King Amenhotep IV, gradually became the supreme
power in the state, and established the theocracy or rule of the
priest-kings, under which Egypt went rapidly down the hill. The
decadence was stayed for a time by an uprising of the Libyan
mercenaries, who placed their leader Sheshonq or Shishak, Solomon’s
suzerain, upon the throne, and thus founded the XXIInd Dynasty. The
deposed corporation of Amen thereupon transferred themselves to Ethiopia
or Nubia, where they established a theocracy on the model of that at
Thebes, and whence they returned later with an army of Sudanese to again
enslave their native country. But Piankhi and his Ethiopians found
themselves unable to rule Egypt from Napata, and when they finally
retired behind the Cataracts, there was a brief but brilliant revival of
old Egyptian ideas under the Saite or Philhellene kings of the Delta,
who called in Greek and Carian mercenaries to the support of their
throne. It was in their time that Herodotus visited the country, and
Egypt began again to play its part in the stirring events then fast
coming upon Western Asia. It seems probable also that under them, the
religious corporations, among whom the priests of Ptah of Memphis, one
of the oldest of the gods of Egypt, for the first time take a prominent
place, regained the influence which they had never wholly lost. Then
came the Persian invasion, and although Egypt made more than one
successful attempt to shake off the yoke of the foreigners, it was at
last riveted firmly on her neck. After the flight of Nectanebo, the last
king of the XXXth Dynasty, she was never again ruled by a prince of
Egyptian blood[113].

During this long period—which is often quoted, not without reason, as
the classic instance of the evils attending the Priest in Power—the mass
of the Egyptian people had clung firmly to the worship of one god whose
vogue goes back to very early times. While the rich and powerful were
raising temples to Ra and Amen and showering wealth upon their
priesthoods, the poorer classes remained faithful to Osiris and the gods
of his cycle with such effect that most of the other divinities found it
necessary to include him in their own cults. In the very earliest
recension of the _Book of the Dead_, we find Osiris invoked together
with Ra in a way that gives no hint that one has any superiority over
the other[114]; in the great recension of the XVIIIth Dynasty, Osiris
and Ra, already made into the “king of the gods” by his union with Amen,
are said to have “joined souls” and become one[115]; and in the Saitic
period, Osiris became united with Ptah and a very ancient divinity
called Seker, in a triune deity called Ptah-Seker-Osiris to whom
everyone looked for happiness after death[116]. So, when the bull Apis
came to be adored, he was said to be the “life of Osiris,” meaning
probably his earthly incarnation[117], and there is fairly good evidence
that Osiris had long before absorbed into himself the personality of
several older deities, such as Khent-Amentit “Lord of Amenti,” and Apuat
“the opener of the ways[118].” It is plain, therefore, that the practice
of _theocrasia_ which we have seen rife among the Greeks was known to
the Egyptians from the very earliest times[119]. Yet, all this was
effected without there ever having been a special priesthood or college
of priests of Osiris such as undoubtedly existed in the case of Ra,
Amen, and probably Ptah. It seems really a case of the survival of the
fittest, or, in other words, of the choice by the Egyptian people of the
worship of the god best suited to their wants, in spite of the
well-meant attempts of their rulers to draw their attention to other
deities.

The reason for this obstinacy of choice is perhaps to be found in the
legend or myth of Osiris, which was at once more consistent and more
direct in its appeal to human sympathies than those handed down
concerning the other gods of Egypt. We are told that Osiris was the
first-born of Nut the sky-goddess by Geb the earth-god, that he appeared
upon earth as a man among men, and became king of Egypt, which he ruled
wisely and well, teaching the Egyptians the art of agriculture, giving
them just laws, and instructing them in the proper worship of the gods.
Later, he travelled over the whole earth, civilizing and subduing the
nations not by force of arms but by persuasion and especially by the art
of music which he took with him. On his return, he was entrapped and
murdered by his jealous brother Set or Typhon who, with the aid of
seventy-two conspirators and an Ethiopian queen called Aso, shut him up
in a coffin and threw him into the Nile, by which his body was carried
out to sea. We further learn that his sister-wife Isis, who had reigned
in his stead during his absence, mourned greatly for his loss and
wandered far and wide seeking and lamenting him, until she heard from
some children that the coffin containing his remains had been carried
away by the Tanitic mouth of the Nile. Following this, she found that it
had been washed ashore at Byblus in Phoenicia and had been overgrown by
a magnificent tamarisk, which the king of the country had had cut down
and made into the roof-tree or pillar supporting his house. Then Isis
disguised herself as a servant and became the nurse of the king’s son,
whom she would have made immortal but for the timidity of his mother,
who cried out when she saw the child surrounded by the flames which were
to burn away his mortality. On this, the goddess revealed herself, took
away the pillar containing the coffin, and attempted to revive the
corpse that it contained by her embrace. Afterwards, she gave birth to
her son Horus, whom she destined from his cradle to be the avenger of
his father. Meanwhile, the murderer Set had seized the throne of Egypt,
and while hunting by moonlight came across the corpse of Osiris, which
he tore into fourteen pieces, and scattered them throughout the land.
Consequently Isis, who was at the time visiting Horus at nurse in her
city of Buto, had to begin again her wanderings, sailing over the swamps
in a boat of papyrus, and burying the fragments of the body of Osiris
wherever she found them. One part, however, she could not find, this
having been thrown into the Nile and devoured by fishes; and henceforth
Osiris became king of the Underworld, where he rules for ever over the
dead, welcoming those who successfully win through the ordeal of the
judgment that all must undergo, and providing for them a happy life like
that which the rich live on earth, in which agriculture plays a
prominent part. Then Horus grew up to man’s estate, and having provided
himself with horse, fought three desperate battles with Set, many of
whose followers came over to him. But, although he defeated his foe, he
did not put an end to his existence, and Set still lives, haunting the
deserts and wild places, and even, according to one variant of the
story, ruling for a time over the south of Egypt (or perhaps only a part
of it), while the sway of Horus over the north remained unchallenged. As
for the other gods of the cycle, Nephthys, the twin sister and
reflection of Isis, was the wife of Set, but preferred to throw in her
lot with Osiris, by whom she had a son, Anubis the jackal, the messenger
of Osiris, who possessed many of the attributes of the Greek Hermes. So,
too, Thoth, the ibis, was the judge who pronounced, or perhaps merely
recorded, the final partition or arrangement between Horus and Set, and
most of the other members of the Egyptian Pantheon were brought into the
cycle one way or the other.

This is the legend of Osiris, as we find it in the tract _de Iside et
Osiride_, which is generally attributed to Plutarch and was certainly
written in the first century A.D. It has not been met with earlier in a
connected form; but its main incidents are sufficiently corroborated by
the monuments of the time to convince us that it fairly represents the
popular belief of the Egyptians during the Ptolemaic period[120].
Plutarch, or the writer who assumed his name, gives us more than one
explanation of it coupled with analogies drawn from other mythologies,
which exhibit considerable archaeological knowledge and show us how far
the comparative study of religions had proceeded even in his time. When
he fails, it is generally from lack of acquaintance with the earlier
forms of the religions of Egypt, which had evidently become in those
days as much a mystery to the priests as to their flocks, and which the
labours of modern Egyptologists have but recently begun to recover for
us. Looked at by their light, and stripped of its many transparent
inconsistencies and anachronisms, it seems plain that the story is not
simple but compound, and represents an attempt to fuse together the
religious ideas either of different peoples or of the same people at
different stages of culture[121]. In the first place, we see in it the
animal gods of Egypt—Horus the falcon, Set the unknown animal or _scha_
sacred to him, Anubis the jackal, and Thoth the ibis—whom we now know to
have been the totems or rallying-signs of the different tribes who
invaded Egypt, probably from other parts of Africa, in predynastic
times. The _Sches-Hor_ or Followers of Horus are so often alluded to in
early dynastic texts that there can be no doubt that the tribe who had
the falcon for their banner were originally the royal or leading tribe
of these invaders. The memory of this fact was preserved in the custom,
going back to the beginning of the Ist Dynasty, which assigned to the
ruler of Egypt on his coronation a special name differing from that by
which he was usually known, and borne in a rectangle representing the
façade or front of a palace surmounted by a hawk[122]. Recent
excavations at Abydos in Upper Egypt have shown that this custom was
only once broken in the long course of Egyptian history, when a king of
the IInd or IIIrd Dynasty, whose name is read Perabsen, cast out the
falcon from above the _srekh_ or rectangle containing his “hawk” or
Horus name, and crowned it instead with the animal representing Set.
This breach of conventional usage—whether significant of a political or
a religious revolution or of some predominating foreign influence cannot
be exactly determined—was healed by his immediate successor Khasekhmui,
who bore both the falcon and the Set-animal above his _srekh_ with an
inscription proclaiming himself “He who has caused the two gods to be at
peace”; after which the rulers of Egypt returned to the hawk-crowned
_srekh_, which was never again abandoned down to the last-known example
under the Roman emperors. We may assume then that the fundamental
stratum of the Osiris legend was a tradition more or less historical
which preserved the memory of a struggle for supremacy occurring in the
earliest historical times between the tribes represented by Horus and
Set respectively. As the horse was a late comer into Egypt, and seems to
have been introduced there by the Bedouins of the Sinaitic peninsula,
where Perabsen’s predecessors left their inscriptions, we may even read
into it the statement that, while the Horus or falcon tribe were helped
in the war by Bedouin cavalry, the followers of Set sought aid from the
Nubian or “Ethiopian” tribes above the Cataracts[123].

To this foundation, however, there must have been added a myth conceived
by a race in possession of a much higher degree of culture and greater
imaginative powers than any with which the predynastic or protodynastic
Egyptians can be credited. The earliest gods of Egypt of whom we have
any record were, as we have seen, either animals or inanimate objects, a
fact which is sufficiently explained by their totemic origin[124]. But
spread throughout the basin of the Mediterranean, we find from the
earliest times the worship of a god who was from his birth never
anything but a man and a man who suffered a veritable death and passion
before his resurrection and deification. Thus, in Crete we have the
legend of the infant Zagreus, son of Zeus and Persephone, who was
treacherously seized by the earth-born Titans, torn in pieces, and
devoured, but was afterwards reborn as Dionysos to reign over gods and
men[125]. So, too, in Cyprus, Syria, and Phoenicia, we hear of Adonis,
the lover of Aphrodite, done to death by the boar’s tusk, but returning
yearly from the shades to spend part of the year with his mistress. In
Asia Minor, again, was told the story of Atys, lover of Cybele, mother
of the gods, who fatally mutilated himself in a fit of madness, but
after death was resuscitated, and thereafter reigned with Cybele over
all Nature. All these three legends bear too close a resemblance to that
of Osiris for the four to have grown up independently, and although the
point is not free from doubt, it is improbable that Egypt was the source
from which the others were derived[126]. No direct connection in ancient
times can be traced between Egypt and the inland country of Phrygia,
which seems to be the birthplace of the majority of these legends; while
it is of great importance to remember that Isis, Osiris’ queen and
sister, is represented in the early Egyptian myths as merely a magician
or witch cunning in spells[127], whereas in the Phrygian and Syrian
legends the consort of the dying god is the “mother of all living” or in
other words Nature herself. It seems therefore probable that the legend
of Osiris, like so many other things in Egypt, was African as to its
body, but Asiatic or European as to its head.

It was therefore natural that in this legend of Osiris, Ptolemy should
find the desired point of contact between the religions of the Egyptians
and the Greeks. The religious institution which commanded the most
respect among the Greeks of his time was undoubtedly the Mysteries of
Eleusis[128], which were yearly celebrated with a circumstance that drew
upon them the attention of the whole Hellenic world. Messengers went
forth every year from Eleusis to all countries where Athenians could be
found, to proclaim the Sacred Truce that was to ensure peace during the
celebration of the Mysteries. Then on the appointed day in September,
enormous numbers of Greeks from all parts of the world gathered together
in Athens for a festival that lasted for nearly two weeks. First came
the assembly of the worshippers and the proclamation of the hierophant
that none but those unpolluted by crime and of intelligible speech
(_i.e._ not barbarians) might take part in the Mysteries. Then followed
the solemn procession when the sacred objects, upon which none but the
initiated might look, were brought from Eleusis under strong guard and
lodged in the Eleusinion at the foot of the Acropolis, their arrival
being formally notified to the priestess of Athena, the tutelary deity
of the city. Next was made the proclamation of “To the sea, the
initiates!” when all who were to take part in the ceremonies descended
to the harbour of Phalerum[129] to wash themselves and the animals
intended for sacrifice in the salt water, in the belief that, as
Euripides said, “Sea-waves wash away all sin.” After a time spent in
sacrificing and austerities very proper for bringing the worshippers
into a receptive state of mind, there was formed the long procession
which paced the Sacred Way, twelve miles long, from Athens to Eleusis,
beguiling the road with hymns and choruses addressed to Iacchos, the
infant Dionysos[130], who was supposed to lead the procession from his
Athenian temple, the Iaccheion, with a pause at the bridge over the
Cephisus, where the crowd exchanged coarse jokes and sarcasms in a
manner peculiarly Attic. Then came the arrival by night of the
procession at the Telesterion or Hall of Initiations at Eleusis, the sky
above which was made light by the glare of the torches[131]. There,
after more sacrifices, a sacred banquet, in which it is not impossible
that the mystic _cyceon_ or consecrated drink was partaken of, and
sacrifices in the temples of Demeter, of Hades, and of Persephone with
which the Hall was surrounded, the initiates were shown a sacred drama,
like the mystery-plays of the Middle Ages, acted by the priests of the
cult, whose office, contrary to the custom of Greek cults generally, was
confined to two families in which it was hereditary and highly paid.
This drama, the details of which were kept strictly secret and can only
be gathered from hints appearing in writers of a comparatively late
date, seems to have set forth the Rape of Persephone, daughter of
Demeter the earth-goddess, who was known and worshipped throughout
Greece and her colonies as the teacher of agriculture and giver of laws
to mortals. The initiates saw “with their own eyes” the capture of
Persephone, when playing with her companions in the sunny fields of
Eleusis[132], by Hades or Pluto the king of the dead, who takes her to
his own gloomy abode beneath the earth, and the wanderings of Demeter in
search of her lost child. Then they were shown how Demeter came to the
house of Celeus, king of Eleusis, how she became nurse to the king’s
child Demophoon, and was detected by his mother attempting to burn away
his mortal part in the way which the Egyptian legend attributed to
Isis[133]. The next act, probably reserved for epopts or initiates of
the second year only, exhibited the union of Zeus with Demeter[134], and
the birth from the latter of a mysterious child in whom some see the
Iacchos who conducted the procession from Athens to Eleusis, but who was
certainly Dionysos in one or other of his forms[135]. We know also that
the initiates took part in wanderings in dark passages and over
obstacles and difficulties, which were supposed to give them an idea of
the sufferings of the uninitiated dead in the next world, and that they
were then restored to upper air in a blaze of brilliant light, were
shown the mysterious objects brought with such care from Eleusis to
Athens and back again, were given a glimpse of the beatitudes awaiting
the dead who had been initiated in their lifetime, and were at the same
time instructed in certain mysterious phrases or formulas which it seems
fair to conclude they were to treasure as passwords through the realms
of Hades[136]. It seems probable from this that the initiates were
supposed to accompany Hermes the Psychopomp or “leader of souls” as the
messenger of Zeus to the underworld, there to accomplish the deliverance
of Persephone and to witness her restoration to the heavenly regions
where she was again united to her sorrowing mother. Finally, there
appeared Triptolemus, Celeus’ son and Demeter’s pupil, setting out in
his car drawn by serpents to spread the knowledge of agriculture
throughout the world, “an ear of corn reaped in silence” being, as we
learn from a Christian writer, the “mighty and wonderful and most
perfect mystery” exhibited to the highest degree of initiates[137].

It will be noticed that we have spoken hitherto of initiates; for none
might enter the Telesterion unless they had previously been initiated,
and two young Acarnanians who unwittingly did so were formally tried for
sacrilege and put to death[138]. This initiation, or entry into the
ranks of those privileged to behold these wonderful sights, began at the
Little Mysteries, which were celebrated six or seven months before the
Great or Eleusinian Mysteries properly so called, at Agra on the left
bank of the Ilissus. These mysteries of Agra were under the control of
the same sacred families as the Mysteries of Eleusis, for which they
formed a necessary preparation. They were kept, if possible, even more
strictly secret than the Great Mysteries, and the only direct evidence
that has come down to us as to their nature tells us that they also took
the form of a sacred drama, and that the scenes there enacted were taken
from the legend of Dionysos[139]. This Dionysos, however, was not in the
first instance the Theban god of wine born from Semele and celebrated by
the poets, but his Cretan namesake Dionysos Zagreus or “the hunter,” who
was said to have been begotten by Zeus in the form of a serpent upon his
own daughter Persephone, and while still a child was, as has been
mentioned above, torn in pieces by the earth-born Titans from jealousy
at hearing that the child was to be made the ruler of the world. It was
also said that the scattered members of the baby-god were collected by
Demeter, put together and revivified, a myth which late researches seem
to show was alluded to in the Anthesteria, a festival celebrated in the
Dionysion at Athens in the same Anthesterion or “flower month” as the
Little Mysteries. There is much reason to think that the Anthesteria
showed forth in a manner unintelligible to the beholders unless
otherwise acquainted with the details of the legend, the
putting-together of the different members—said to be fourteen in
number—of the infant Dionysos, his subsequent resurrection, and his
marriage with a priestess called “the Queen” who doubtless represented
Demeter or Persephone. The inference seems unavoidable that it was some
part of this legend that was acted in a manner impossible to
misunderstand or mistake before the eyes of those admitted to the Little
Mysteries[140].

We see then that between the legend of Osiris as told by Plutarch and
the legend of Eleusis as set forth in the Mysteries there were
resemblances so close as to make it almost impossible that one should
not be derived from the other, unless we are prepared to consider them
as having a common origin. As Osiris was torn into fourteen pieces, so
was Dionysos, the difference in the agents of this “diaspasm,” as it was
called, being due to the exigencies of Egyptian traditional history. The
wanderings of Isis, again, find an exact parallel in those of Demeter,
the object of the search differing slightly in the two cases, while the
mysterious birth of Horus, the successor of Osiris, corresponds point
for point with that of Dionysos in his second form of Iacchos. That both
stories may have had their source in the folk-lore explaining the
phenomena of the annual decay and rebirth of vegetation, Dr Frazer has
shown with great attention to detail in _The Golden Bough_ and
elsewhere[141] to be possible; but this was too philosophical an idea
for the sixth century B.C., when the Mysteries of Eleusis were founded
or reduced to order[142]. Herodotus, a century later, no doubt expressed
the views of the learned of his day when he asserted that the worship of
Dionysos was brought into Greece from Egypt[143], and among modern
scholars M. Foucart, who has done more than anyone to collate the few
relics that remain to us of the Eleusinian worship, fully supports him
in this. It is therefore plain that the resemblances between the
Dionysiae and the Egyptian worship were many and salient. Hence Ptolemy
found his way clear when he invited Timotheos the Eumolpid, a member of
one of the sacred families in which the Eleusinian priesthood was, as
has been said, hereditary, and associated with him the Egyptian priest
Manetho in the task of founding a religion which should be common to
Egyptians and Greeks alike[144].

In framing this new religion, the first care of the king and his
advisers was evidently to avoid shocking the religious and artistic
feelings of the Greeks. Ptolemy Soter’s position seems to have been much
like that of a modern Governor-General of India; for, while he was not
only tolerant but careful of the religious susceptibilities of the
native Egyptians, his own Court remained in everything predominantly or
exclusively Greek. In Alexandria, the site of which under the native
Pharaohs had been the small fishing village of Rhacotis, he had
practically virgin soil, in which it is doubtful whether any Egyptian
temple existed, and it was consequently, as Alexander intended it should
be, in all respects a Greek city. Greek was the language there spoken,
and it was to the care taken by Alexandrian scholars to preserve the
language and literature of Hellas in its native purity, that we are
indebted for most of what we know of the classic tongue at its best. Its
large garrison consisted almost entirely of Greek soldiers drilled and
armed in the Macedonian fashion, and to the great University or Museum,
which Ptolemy’s munificence founded for the sustentation of scholars,
there flocked learned men from every part of the Hellenic world[145].
Here, indeed, was the first instance of the endowment of research; and
the experiment had important results for most of the modern sciences,
not excluding that transmutation of metals which made such wild work
among some of the best brains of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, but
which Sir William Ramsay has lately shown to be more capable of
accomplishment than could have been expected from an alchemist’s dream.
At the Museum, Eratosthenes, “the Inspector of the Earth,” first set on
foot the serious study of geography, Hipparchus laid the sure
foundations of the modern science of astronomy, and Hero invented the
first steam engine. The investigation of those secondary laws by which
their insight perceived nature to be governed was indeed the constant
occupation of King Ptolemy’s “stuffed capons,” as Timon of Phlya
contemptuously called them[146]. But these philosophers would have been
the first to receive with scorn the proposition that anyone should be
asked to worship the “brutish gods” of Egypt under those animal forms in
which they had long been known to the more simple minded Egyptians.
Osiris, the “bull of Amenti,” as he is called in the early texts, was
worshipped under the actual form of the bull Apis at Memphis and as a
ram or goat at Mendes. Isis was often portrayed with the cow’s head
which commemorated one of the incidents of her myth as set forth by
Plutarch. Horus, who was in fact an older god than either of them, was,
as the totem of the royal tribe of the first invaders, worshipped at
Edfu and elsewhere as a hawk, and although the Egyptian priests kept up
as long as possible the distinction between this “Horus the elder” and
Horus the son of Isis, it is certain that their Greek worshippers saw no
difference between the two. While Timotheos was doubtless willing to
recognize the Eleusinian deities, of whose worship his family were the
traditional guardians, in the Egyptian triad of Osiris, Isis, and Horus,
he must have been sure that he could not ask his art-loving countrymen
to do them homage in the guise of beasts or birds.

The difficulty was got over in a way that was characteristic enough.
The _theocrasia_ or fusion of one god with another which we have
seen playing such a prominent part in the religion of both Egyptians
and Greeks, was of the very essence of the religion of Eleusis. At
no time from the earliest mention of the Eleusinian worship onwards,
is it possible to draw any sharp dividing line between Demeter and
her daughter Persephone, or as Mr Louis Dyer rather flamboyantly
puts it, Demeter and Persephone were at Eleusis “regarded as one,
being so filled with mutual love that all barriers between them
melted away[147].” “Excepting,” he says again, “in her days of
thoughtless youth, Demeter’s Persephone is Demeter’s self twice
told,” and the same dogma seems to have been prematurely revealed by
Xenophanes of Colophon, who was exiled for his declaration that all
the gods of his fellow-countrymen were but varying forms of the one
deity. This identity of the goddesses of Eleusis must have been
constantly present to the mind of the Greeks, who hardly ever spoke
of Demeter and Persephone save as “the Goddesses Twain” or as the
Mother-and-Daughter. But this was only the first step in what was
called without circumlocution the “mystic _theocrasia_[148],” which
went so far as to include in the persons of the Eleusinian deities
nearly all the gods of the Hellenic pantheon. In the original Cretan
legend, the infant Dionysos is the son of Zeus, whom he is destined
to succeed upon his throne, as Zeus had succeeded in the Homeric
myths his father Kronos, and this last, _his_ father Ouranos. But
the Zeus of Eleusis was by no means the Zeus of Olympos whom Homer
hails as “father of gods and men,” but who had to yield the empire
of the seas to his brother Poseidon and that of the netherworld to
his brother Hades. Originally known at Eleusis as “the God” only, as
Demeter with or without her daughter was called “the Goddess,” the
Eleusinian god was also invoked as Zeus Chthonios or the infernal
Zeus, called by euphemism Zeus Eubuleus (Zeus of Good Counsel),
Pluto (Bringer of Riches) and other similar names[149]. But by
whatever name he was called, he was always the king of the dead, and
was thus again brought near to Dionysos, whom Heraclitus of Ephesus,
two centuries before Alexander, had declared to be the same god as
Hades, lord of the netherworld[150]. In this double capacity,
Dionysos was therefore the brother, father, and spouse of his
consort Demeter, of whom he was also the child. He might therefore
be considered one of the first instances known in the history of
religions as a god who was, according to the way in which he was
regarded, either father or son[151]. Nor did the _theocrasia_ stop
here. The Asiatic forms of Dionysos, whether we call them Atys,
Adonis or by any other name, were often represented as of both
sexes, a doctrine which is also denoted by Dionysos’ Orphic epithet
of Mise, and led to his being portrayed in effeminate shape[152].
Hence, Dionysos and Demeter or Persephone might be regarded as the
God under both the male and female aspect. Moreover, Zeus was said
to have ordered the corpse of Dionysos to be buried at Delphi, where
secret ceremonies were celebrated in connection with it by five
priests called Hosioi; and this seems to have led to the idea common
to the classic poets Pindar, Aeschylus, and Euripides, that Dionysos
and Apollo were different forms of the same god, a theory which is
expressly confirmed by Plutarch[153]. But Apollo “the Far-Darter”
was always to the Greeks a sun-god, and Horus from the first had the
same character among the Egyptians, the emblem of the sun-disk being
often added to the Horus-hawk of their protocol by the Pharaohs of
the New Empire. Thus the identification of the gods of the Osiris
cycle with their Greek analogues was complete. It was agreed that
Osiris was to be represented as the Greek Hades, Isis as Demeter,
and the child Horus as Apollo. Herodotus and probably other Greek
writers had long before made the same identifications[154].

This settled, the question of the material forms under which the triad
was to be worshipped by Ptolemy’s new subjects became easy. A convenient
dream, so runs the story told in Roman times, revealed to the king the
existence of a statue of Hades or Pluto at Sinope in Pontus that was
exactly fitted to his purpose[155]. It is said to have been of colossal
size, the work of Bryaxis, the fellow-worker of Scopas, and to have been
composed of a mixture of the most precious metals with fragments of
gems, the whole being coloured with a dark varnish. This statue was
given up by—or according to another version was stolen from—the city of
Sinope, and was installed with great pomp in the magnificent temple or
Serapeum built for it at Alexandria, which for centuries formed one of
the wonders of the Hellenistic world. It doubtless formed the model for
all the later representations of the new god called henceforth Serapis
(in Egyptian, Asar-hapi or Osiris in his manifestation as Apis), which
resemble each other in all important particulars. They show a bearded
man of mature age, whose features have much of the majesty and dignity
of the Phidian Zeus. On his head he wears the _modius_, a crown of
basket-work on which are sometimes represented olive trees and which is
said to be a reproduction of the _calathos_ or consecrated basket
carried in the sacred procession to Eleusis, and doubtless possessed for
the initiated some mystical or symbolical meaning[156]. He is generally
represented with an eagle at his feet, and by the side of him appears a
triple monster which may perhaps represent the classical Cerberus with a
serpent twisted round its body and equipped with the heads of a lion, a
dog, and a wolf. It seems, therefore, that in choosing this statue the
founders of the Alexandrian religion had quite turned their backs on the
lighter and more joyous aspects of the mystic Dionysos, and intended to
regard him as the god of the dead merely[157]. The same was not the case
with his consort Isis, who is generally represented as a young matron of
stately appearance having sometimes the crescent moon on her head, and
sometimes a crown of lotus flowers interspersed with ears of corn. She
is dressed in a fringed tunic reaching to her feet, having over her
shoulders a mantle tied by its ends between the breasts in a peculiar
knot. In one hand she bears the _sistrum_ or rattle used in her worship,
and in the other a horn of abundance or other emblem, while the head is
frequently covered by a long veil. Both the attitude and the dress are
always of the strictest modesty, and the features wear an expression of
gentle benevolence, in which it is possible to see a trace of
melancholy. The Alexandrian Horus is seldom represented otherwise than
in child form, the type being taken from the Egyptian Horus known as
Har-pa-khrat (Horus the Child) of which the Alexandrians made
Harpocrates. In this form he was represented with his finger in his
mouth in accordance with the usual Egyptian ideogram for childhood, and
this gave rise to the story among the Greeks that he was the god of
silence. Sometimes he is shown with wings like the classical Eros,
frequently seated on the lotus or with the lotus flower on his head, and
very often with the hawk which formed his proper emblem[158]. He was
seldom represented in a group containing Serapis, although bas-reliefs
and statues showing Serapis and Isis together are common; but groups
representing Isis suckling Horus have been found in some numbers.
Generally it may be said that the _modius_ on the head is the
distinguishing mark of the figure of Serapis, the peculiar breast-knot
that of Isis, while Horus can seldom be recognized with certainty save
by the gesture of the forefinger in the mouth or, as the Greek artists
preferred to represent it, on the lips. From this time forward, the
Alexandrian Greeks could worship the chief deities of their native
fellow-citizens under forms which they felt to be worthy of the Divine.

Thus, the worship of the great Egyptian triad under their Greek forms
was inaugurated, as was our own English Reformation in the sixteenth
century, as a measure of statecraft, by a king who hardly cared to
conceal that in doing so he had only his own interest to serve. Yet it
may be said at once, that so far as its political purpose was concerned,
the Alexandrian religion was from the outset foredoomed to failure. The
Egyptians of Philhellenic times were of all the nations of the earth at
once the most superstitious and the most fanatically attached to their
traditional modes of worship. Although until the rise of the theocracy,
the importation of foreign gods was not unknown, under the Ethiopians,
the Persians, and Alexander, the Egyptians had not scrupled to sacrifice
their nationality to their religion, and to accept a foreign governor so
long as the worship of their native gods under types that had been
observed by them for more than four millennia remained untouched. How
then could they be expected to recognize their native deities in forms
beautified and dignified by Greek art indeed, but so foreign to all
their traditional ideas that nothing distinctly Egyptian about them
remained?

To this question there could be but one answer, and it is not
extraordinary that the native Egyptians proved as recalcitrant to their
new king’s endeavour to unite them in a common worship with their Greek
masters as the Jews did under the somewhat similar attempt of Antiochus
Epiphanes. The Egyptian priests allowed Ptolemy to set up at Memphis,
which had become since the ruin of Thebes the religious capital of the
country, a Serapeum, doubtless modelled on that of Alexandria, by the
side of the native temple established for the delectation of the living
Apis and for the solemn burial of his predecessors: but they took care
that it should be separated from the Egyptian Serapeum by a long avenue
of sphinxes, and that no Greek prayers should ever be allowed to defile
the purity of the native Egyptian sanctuary[159]. Moreover, Egypt,
resembling in this perhaps all countries with strongly marked
geographical characteristics, has exhibited through all ages a wonderful
power of conquering her conquerors, or, in other words, of forcing her
foreign rulers to accept the ideas that they found there, instead of
adopting at their instance innovations on customs consecrated by
centuries of usage. Hence the Ptolemies, as time went on, found it
necessary to pay ever more and more attention to the native Egyptian
religion, and Ptolemy V Epiphanes was crowned at Memphis, as is recorded
on the Rosetta Stone, with all the religious ceremonies that made him in
the eyes of the Egyptians the living Horus, son of the sun-god, the
beloved of Ptah and the rest, as fully as any of the ancient
Pharaohs[160]. All the Ptolemies, too, seem to have spent very
considerable sums on the restoration and keeping-up of the temples in
Egypt dedicated to such thoroughly native gods as Amon of Thebes and
Horus of Edfu, besides those at Philae and elsewhere raised not to the
Alexandrian but to the Egyptian Osiris and his cycle. What truth there
is in the statement of Macrobius that Ptolemy Soter compelled by
“tyranny” the Egyptians to take Serapis into their temples, it is
impossible to say; but as his image in Greek form has never been found
in any of them, it is plain that the priests must have found some way of
evading the royal order, if it were really given[161].

Ptolemy, however, was building better than he knew, and the hybrid cult
which the provident old soldier had fashioned as an instrument of
government turned out to be the first, and not the least successful, of
the world-religions for which Alexander’s conquests left clear the way.
During the wars of the Diadochi, all the powers who at any time found
themselves Ptolemy’s pawns in the mighty war game then played on a board
stretching from India to Thrace, thought to curry favour with their rich
ally by giving countenance to his new religion. An association of
Sarapiasts or worshippers of Serapis held their meetings in the Piraeus
not long after the institution of the Alexandrian cult[162]; and before
the death of Ptolemy Soter, a Serapeum was built in Athens over against
the Acropolis itself[163]. Cyprus, Rhodes, Antioch, Smyrna, and
Halicarnassus were not long in following suit, and before the end of the
century several of the islands of the Ægean together with Boeotia, which
was said by some to be the native country of Dionysos, had adopted the
new worship. In the second century B.C., the temples of the Alexandrian
gods were to be found in Delos, Tenedos, Thessaly, Macedonia and the
Thracian Bosphorus in Europe, and in Ephesus, Cyzicus and Termessus
among other places in Asia Minor[164]. But their greatest triumph was
awaiting them further west. Invited by Hiero II into Sicily, they were
not long in working their way up the coast, and a hundred years before
our era a temple to Serapis was in existence at Puteoli[165]. It was
evidently no new foundation and had probably been built some fifty years
earlier, at which date perhaps the first Isium at Pompeii was also in
existence[166]. Somewhere about 80 B.C., the Alexandrian worship was
introduced into Rome itself, and thereafter no action of the authorities
was able to expel it[167]. Its temples were more than once thrown down
by order of the consuls; but they were always rebuilt, and in 43 B.C.,
the aedile Marcus Volusius, who had been proscribed by the triumvirs,
found the linen robe and the dog’s head mask of a priest of Isis the
most efficient disguise in which to escape Sulla’s bravos[168]. Under
the Empire, the temple of Isis in the Campus Martius became one of the
fashionable resorts of the Roman youth; and, although Tiberius seized
the occasion of a real or pretended scandal in connection with it to
exile a large number of the faithful to Sardinia, his successors were
themselves initiated into the faith; while under Nero the worship of the
Alexandrian gods was formally recognized by the state[169]. From that
time, it followed the Roman arms into every quarter of the ancient
world, and its monuments have been found in Morocco, Spain, France,
Great Britain, Germany, and the Danube provinces. Ridicule was as
powerless to stop its march as persecution, and the satire of Juvenal
and Martial had no more effect on it than the banter of the New Comedy,
which was quick to observe that even in Menander’s day the gilded youth
of Athens swore “by Isis” or “by Horus[170].” Under the Antonines, it
probably reached its apogee, when the Emperor Commodus appeared in the
processions of the cult among the bearers of the sacred images, and few
Romans seem to have been aware that the Alexandrian gods were not Roman
from the beginning. Like Ptolemy’s master, Ptolemy’s gods might have
boasted that they commanded the allegiance of the whole civilized
world[171].

The causes of this astonishing success must be looked for within the
religion itself. No name has come down to us of any prophet or priest of
the Alexandrian religion possessing a commanding personality like St
Paul, Mohammed, Luther, or Calvin; and we must therefore conclude that
it was its own intrinsic merits which thus commended it to so many
widely-differing peoples[172]. Foremost among these was, it would seem,
its extraordinary timeliness. Alexander’s conquests had broken down the
barriers that speech and race had set up between neighbouring peoples,
and had at the same time united many hundreds of jealous and discordant
states under a single head. In the many royal courts which had been set
up as a result of the partition of Alexander’s Empire, philosophers of
every school were chanting the political advantages of an enlightened
monarchy over the greedy scramble for place and power inseparable from
democracy, and the doctrine was bound sooner or later to be applied to
religion[173]. We have seen how far both Egyptians and Greeks had before
then carried the practice of _theocrasia_, but the founders of the
Alexandrian religion were not slow in pushing it to its only legitimate
conclusion. Serapis, unlike the Greek Zeus, from the first declined to
brook any partition of his empire over nature. “Wouldst thou know what
god I am,” said his oracle at the Alexandrian Serapeum to Nicocreon, the
Cypriote king. “I myself will tell thee. The heavenly cosmos is my head;
the sea my belly. My feet are the earth; my ears are in the aether. My
far-beaming eye is the radiant light of the sun[174].” In other words,
Serapis is himself the universe, which is probably the meaning to be
attached to the name given to Osiris in the _Book of the Dead_ which
Egyptologists translate “Lord of Totality.” But Aeschylus had already
said the same thing about Zeus[175], and as the gods of the Greeks were
never anything else than the powers of nature, Serapis thus comprised in
his single person the whole Greek pantheon. Hence “Serapis alone is
Zeus” came to be a sort of watchword in the Alexandrian religion to be
endlessly repeated on statues, gems, and all the other material relics
of the cult[176]. A little later and we find Serapis drawing to himself
the worship of all the Mediterranean gods who had a common origin with
Osiris and Dionysos. Adonis, as appears from the beautiful idyll of
Theocritus, in the reign of Ptolemy Soter’s successor was worshipped as
another form of Osiris in the royal palace itself[177]. Atys, Cybele’s
lover, was also identified with him[178]; and, as the Stoic philosophy,
which taught that all the gods were but different forms of the one
Divine energy, came into fashion, Serapis was equated with the numerous
sun-gods whose worship poured in from the Semitic east. “The eternal
sun” came to be one of his most-used epithets, and he is often invoked
as the equivalent of the Greek Helios and of the Persian sun-god
Mithras[179]. Nor did his consort long remain behind him. “I, the parent
of the works of nature” is the style in which Isis announces herself to
her votary Lucius in Apuleius’ romance,

“queen of all the elements, earliest offspring of the ages, highest
of godheads, sovereign of the Manes, first of the heavenly ones,
one-formed type of gods and goddesses. The luminous heights of
heaven, the health-giving breezes of the sea, the sad silences of
the lower world, I govern by my nod. I am she whose godhead, single
in essence, but of many forms, with varied rites and under many
names, the whole earth reveres. Hence the Phrygians, first born of
men, call me Pessinuntica, Mother of the Gods; here the first
inhabitants of Attica, Cecropian Minerva, there the wave-rocked
Cypriotes, Paphian Venus; the arrow-bearing Cretans, Diana Dictynna;
the three-tongued Sicilians, Stygian Proserpine; the Eleusinians,
the ancient goddess Ceres;—others Juno, others Bellona, these
Hecate, those Rhamnusia; and they who are lighted by the first rays
of the sun-god on his rising, the Ethiopians, the Africans, and the
Egyptians skilled in the ancient teaching, worshipping me with
ceremonies peculiarly my own, call me by my true name, Queen
Isis[180].”

As we shall see later (p. 64, _infra_) her spouse Osiris claimed also to
be the highest of godheads; and the final unity of the Divine essence to
which the μυστικὴ θεοκρασία was logically bound to lead could hardly be
stated in clearer language[181].

Thus, we see that what has been called a monotheistic pantheism instead
of an incoherent mass of local worships was one of the advantages of the
Alexandrian cult. But in the religion of the crowd, feeling plays a more
important part than reason, and the idea which it first gave mankind of
what would be now called the “fatherhood of God” was probably by far its
most alluring feature. It has frequently been said that the Greeks
although they feared, did not love their gods, and so far as the Homeric
deities are concerned, it is difficult to see why they should. Apollo
openly expresses his contempt for “pitiful mortals, who like unto leaves
now live in glowing life, consuming the fruit of the earth, and now
again pine unto death[182],” Hera does not hide her scorn for “the
creatures of a day,” and the help that Athena gives the Greeks in their
war against Troy is expressly said to be due to no kindlier feeling than
rage at the slight which Paris had put upon her beauty[183]. As for the
Egyptian religion, if it ever exhibited the lofty conceptions and
sublime ideas with which the earlier Egyptologists were inclined to
credit it, it had long before Ptolemy’s time lost all trace of them, and
had degenerated into “a systematized sorcery” in which the gods were
compelled to grant merely material benefits directly they were demanded
with the proper ritual[184]. But when we turn from the Greek and
Egyptian creeds to the new faith which was compounded from the two, we
are at once struck by the complete change which seems to have come over
the worshippers’ conception of the Divine. Isis, from the wily magician
of Pharaonic Egypt, has now become “the haven of peace and the altar of
pity[185].”

“O thou holy and eternal protectress of the race of men”

are the terms with which Lucius addresses her,

“thou who ever givest good gifts to comfort-needing mortals, thou
dost bestow upon the lot of the wretched the sweet affection of a
mother. There is no day nor night nor smallest moment which is not
occupied with thy good deeds. Thou dost protect mankind by sea and
land, and scattering the storms of life dost stretch forth to them
thy saving hand, with which thou dost even spin anew the hopelessly
twisted web of the Fates, and dost temper the blasts of fortune and
restrain the hostile courses of the stars[186].”

So Ælius Aristides in his encomium of Serapis written after having been
saved from shipwreck, as he considered, by the direct intervention of
the god, tells us that Serapis is the god who “purifies the soul with
wisdom, and preserves the body by giving it health[187],” that he alone

“is adored by kings as by private persons, by the wise as by the
foolish, by the great as by the small, and by those on whom he has
bestowed happiness as well as those who possess him alone as a
refuge from their trouble[188],”

that he is “the protector and saviour of all men[189],” “the most loving
of the gods towards men[190],” “greatly turned towards mercy[191],” and
“the light common to all men[192].” We hardly want his elaborate
demonstration that Serapis alone of all the gods is ready to assist him
who invokes him when in need, to convince us that the reign of the
warlike gods and goddesses of Homer—always, as Renan says, brandishing a
spear from the top of an acropolis—is over, and that instead of them man
has at last found

... “Gods, the friends of man
Merciful gods, compassionate”

who would certainly “answer him again,” as a father would his children.

The providence and beneficence of the Alexandrian gods towards man,
moreover, extended beyond the grave. In Homer, we find a conception of
the next world which for dreariness and hopelessness is only paralleled
by the Jewish ideas concerning Sheol. “Nay, speak not comfortably to me
of death, great Odysseus,” says the shade of Achilles to the hero who
has called him up from Hades. “Rather would I live upon the soil as the
hireling of another, even with a landless man who had no great
livelihood, than bear sway among all the dead who are no more[193].” But
the Eleusinian Mysteries were hailed as giving deliverance from these
horrors, and as robbing death of much of its terrors for those who had
been initiated. “Blessed is he,” says Pindar in a passage in which
commentators agree to see a direct allusion to the Mysteries, “who has
seen the things that are under the earth. He has seen the end of life;
he has seen also the God-sent beginning[194].” “Thrice blessed,” says
Sophocles, “are they among mortals, who after having beheld these
mysteries, go to the house of Hades: for it is theirs alone there to
live, but to the others there will arrive all ills[195].” The Homeric
_Hymn to Demeter_, which may be about a century earlier than Pindar, is
as emphatic as he as to the saving grace of initiation. “Happy,” it
says, “is the man on earth who has seen these things. But he who has not
been initiated in these holy rites, who has not shared in them, never
has the same lot, when he has utterly faded away in the dark
gloom[196].” Those who believe with M. Foucart in the Egyptian origin of
the Eleusinian rites will doubtless see in this a direct borrowing from
the Egyptian views regarding the beatitude awaiting the justified or
“triumphant” dead who in life had been worshippers of Osiris. How much
or how little of the Osirian faith as to the state of these worshippers
in the next world passed into the Alexandrian religion cannot now be
said; but it is certain that the protection of Isis and Serapis was held
to be as powerful in the life beyond the tomb as in this.

“When the term of thy life is spent,”

says the apparition of the goddess to Apuleius’ Lucius,

“and thou at length descendest to the lower regions, there also,
even in the subterranean hemisphere, thou, dwelling in Elysian
fields, will often adore me who art propitious to thee, and whom
thou shalt see shining among the shades of Acheron and reigning over
the secret places of Styx[197].”

So, too, Aristides says of Serapis, that he is “the Saviour and leader
of souls, leading souls to the light and receiving them again[198],”
that “he raises the dead, he shows forth the longed-for light of the sun
to those who _see_, whose holy tombs contain endless numbers of sacred
books[199],” and that “we can never escape from his sway, but he will
save us, and even after death we shall be the objects of his
providence[200].” We may imagine, if we please, although there is really
no proof of any connection between the two, that in its assertion of the
fatherhood of God as in earthly matters, the Alexandrian religion owed
something to the Stoic philosophy; but it is fairly certain that in the
glimpses it afforded of the next world, its inspiration must have been
drawn either from Eleusis or from Egypt.

What we know, too, of the actual worship of the Alexandrian triad shows
that it was designed to attract the devotion of the multitude with a
skill that argues the existence behind it of many centuries of
priestcraft. It is still a moot point whether Herodotus was well-founded
when he asserted the existence of “mysteries” in the Egyptian
religion[201]; and it is quite clear that the scenes in the earthly life
of Osiris and the gods of his cycle which in the case of their Greek
counterparts were carefully concealed from all but initiates, were in
Egypt openly portrayed on the walls of the temples[202]. But Timotheos
and Manetho must have been too well aware of the prestige attaching
throughout the Hellenic world to the secret worships of such centres of
religion as Eleusis and Samothrace to forgo its advantage for their new
religion; and the Alexandrian gods too had a system of initiation which
seems to have been modelled upon that of the “Goddesses Twain.” Thanks
to Apuleius we can, up to a certain point, follow the Alexandrian course
of initiation step by step. Those whom Isis singled out as fitted for
her service[203]—which we may without uncharitableness interpret as
meaning those whom the priests thought likely to be of use to the
religion—were assigned a “mystagogue” who no doubt gave them such
instructions as he thought fit in the meaning of the rites which he saw
performed in the temple, and the incidents in the life of the gods to
which they were attached. When after a course of such instruction, which
was of varying length, the mystagogue was convinced of the soundness of
the aspirant’s vocation, the formal initiation began. In strict
accordance with a ritual which Apuleius assures us was written down in
Egyptian characters and carefully preserved in the secret places of the
sanctuary (_opertis adyti_), the aspirant underwent a solemn lustration
with water or baptism at the hands of the priest, and was ordered to
abstain from all food which had had life, from wine and from the company
of the other sex for a space of ten days[204]. This period was doubtless
spent as far as possible within the temple precincts, much importance
being attached to the prolonged contemplation of the statue of the
goddess, which was, as we have seen, fashioned in a manner worthy of
Greek art, and was further adorned with rich robes and jewels after the
manner of the Catholic images of the Virgin. At the expiration of the
ten days’ retreat, the candidate was clothed in a linen garment and was
exhibited to the general body or congregation of the faithful who
presented him with gifts. The secret ceremonies were then performed
before him, the nature of which are only revealed to us in the guarded
words of Apuleius’ hero:

“I approached the bounds of death, and, borne through all the
elements, returned again to the threshold of Proserpine which I had
already trod. I saw at midnight the sun shining with pure light, I
came before the Gods of the Upper and Lower World, and I worshipped
them from anigh[205].”

Collating these hints—which Apuleius tells us are all that it is lawful
for him to give—with what we know of the origin of the Alexandrian
religion and with the scraps of information that have come down to us
regarding other ceremonies of a like nature, we may gather from this
that the candidate underwent a mock death, being probably made to enact
in his own person the passion of Osiris and his shutting-up in a
coffin[206], that he was shown the happy lot of the initiated and the
correspondingly miserable fate of the uninitiated in the life after
death, that he was subjected to certain “trials,” or proofs of his
courage and sincerity, by fire, water, earth, and air, and that he was
finally shown in a brilliant light the glorious company of the gods
represented either by their images, or by priests arrayed with their
best-known attributes. Nothing seems to have been omitted that could
impress the imagination of the neophyte, and when the night of
initiation was at length over, he was again displayed before the
congregation of worshippers clothed in what was known as the Olympian
garment (_stola Olympiaca_) consisting of a dress of byssus or linen
embroidered with flowers, over which was cast a rich mantle decorated
with figures of fabulous animals, and bearing in his right hand a
flaming torch, while on his head was a crown of palm-leaves with leaves
projecting, as he says, “like rays of light.” In this costume he was
placed in a wooden pulpit before the statue of the goddess in the public
portion of the temple, and was thus exhibited for the adoration of the
crowd, when the ceremony of opening took place[207]. As the last stage
of the secret rite seems to have been the successive imposition upon the
initiate of twelve robes, doubtless typifying the twelve signs of the
Zodiac, we hardly want the rayed crown, and the explicit words of
Apuleius to inform us that in this costume he was intended to represent
the material sun (_exornatus instar Solis et in vicem simulacri
constitutus_)[208]. The sun-god, however, was in the later phases of the
Egyptian religion not Osiris but either Ra or Horus[209], and this
last-named god was in the Alexandrian triad equated with the Greek
Apollo. It therefore seems likely that the initiate represented here the
child of Isis begotten, as has been said, by Osiris after his death and
passion, and this corresponds with the statement put into the mouth of
Isis and preserved by Proclus: “I am that which has been, is, and will
be. My garment none has lifted. The fruit which I bore has become the
sun[210].” It is significant that the later and especially the Christian
writers speak of Osiris and not Horus as the son of Isis; but the
distinction between father and son in the Egyptian triads was never
sharply defined, and there are many signs that Horus, the son of Isis,
was looked upon as Osiris re-born[211].

The initiation strictly so-called was concluded with a banquet provided
by the initiate in which he celebrated what he was henceforth to regard
as his natal day, as his formal entry into the religion was considered
by him as a re-birth. Nor was this all. Twelve months after his
initiation into the first degree or Mysteries of Isis, Apuleius’ hero is
summoned to undergo a further initiation, this time into the mysteries
“of the Great God and highest progenitor of the Gods, the unconquered
Osiris (_magni dei deumque summi parentis, invicti Osiris_),” of which
we are only told that a further preparation of ten days was necessary
and that the aspirant was in addition “enlightened by the nocturnal
orgies of the princely god Serapis (_insuper etiam Serapis principalis
dei nocturnis orgiis illustratus_)[212].” Very shortly after this a
_third_ initiation was prescribed to Lucius and was backed up by a dream
in which Osiris “the God of the great Gods, or rather the Highest of the
Greater Gods and the Greatest of the Highest and the Ruler of the
Greatest (_deus deum magnorum potior et majorum summus et summorum
maximus et maximorum regnator Osiris_)” appears to him; but we learn
nothing of the nature of this fresh initiation, save that it was
preceded like the two others by a ten-days’ fast[213]. No other text or
monument that has yet come to light gives any hint as to the revelations
made in these two last degrees or initiations; but it seems likely from
the words above quoted that they were concerned with the true nature of
Osiris[214], and that he must have been finally proclaimed to the
initiate as the one and only Source of Being. The apparent inconsistency
between this and Isis’ own statement given above that she is herself the
“highest of godheads ... first of the heavenly ones, one-formed type of
gods and goddesses” can perhaps be got over by supposing that the
Supreme Being was supposed to be at once the father and mother of the
inferior gods, an idea of which there are many traces in the Egyptian
myths of later Pharaonic times[215]. Some connection between Osiris in
his Egyptian form and the Greek wine-god Bacchus may be implied by the
dream which heralded the second initiation showing “one clothed in
consecrated linen robes, and bearing thyrsi, ivy and certain things
which I may not mention[216]”; but M. Baillet has found a bronze statue
of the Ptolemaic period in which Osiris is represented with grapes and a
vine-shoot[217], and it is therefore unlikely that any identification of
the kind formed part of the secrets reserved for initiates[218].

This, therefore, seems to be all that can be usefully said about the
secret part of the worship of the Alexandrian gods. But the founders of
the cult must have always borne in mind that while in every religion
there are a few devotees who are prepared to go all lengths in theology
or enquiry into the nature of their gods, the majority are attracted to
it more from a vague desire to enter into amicable relations with the
spiritual world than from any other feeling. Even with the Mysteries of
Eleusis, it is fairly certain that only a very small proportion of those
who attended the ceremonies really grasped the full meaning of what they
saw and heard. “Many are the thyrsus-bearers,” quotes Plato in this
connection, “but few are the mystes[219]”; and it is plain that, as the
Telesterion at Eleusis could at the outside accommodate three thousand
persons, the greater part of the huge crowd in the Iacchos procession
must have come only to look on[220]. But even this more or less careless
multitude did much to spread the fame of the Eleusinian religion, while
it was doubtless from their ranks in the first instance that the true
initiates were drawn. With this in view, the Alexandrian priests laid
themselves out to cater for the half-convinced crowd as well as for
their real devotees, and did so with a success which put the Eleusinian
Mysteries entirely in the shade. In this, they were much helped by the
practice of the native Egyptian temples in Pharaonic times which has
been clearly set forth by M. Moret. Every day in every temple in Egypt
there seems to have been a solemn Service of Opening when the statue of
the god was taken from its resting-place, purified with incense,
dressed, and anointed before the doors were opened, and the public, or
perhaps only the king as representing mankind in general, were admitted
to adore the god[221]. This practice was copied with great fidelity in
the worship of the Alexandrian gods, and “the morning opening of the
temple” (_templi matutinas apertiones_) became an elaborate ceremony in
which the white curtains which hid the statue of Isis from the gaze of
the worshippers were drawn back (_velis candentibus reductis_), and it
was displayed blazing with actual robes, gems, and ornaments, like a
Madonna in Southern Europe at the present day[222]. We also learn from
Apuleius that prayers to the goddess were offered at the same time,
while one of the priests made the circuit of the different altars within
the temple, pouring before each of them a libation of Nile water, and
“the beginning of the First Hour” was solemnly proclaimed, with chants
and shouts which have been compared to the muezzin of the Mahommedans,
but which more probably resembled the choral singing of a morning hymn
by the assembled congregation[223]. We know also from a casual allusion
in one of Martial’s Epigrams, that the eighth hour was also celebrated
by a chant of the priests, and it seems likely that this announced the
closing of the temple to the profane, and was attended by similar
solemnities to those of the opening[224]. But it is abundantly plain
that between these hours the temple remained open for what may be called
private worship, and that this took the form of meditation or silent
adoration before the statue of Isis. Apuleius’ Lucius repeatedly speaks
of the pleasure that he derived even before his initiation from the
prolonged contemplation of the goddess’s image[225], and the Roman poets
are full of allusions to the devout who passed much of their time seated
before her statue on benches, the place of which is clearly marked out
in Isiac temples like that of Pompeii[226]. That such “meditations” were
thought to have in them a saving grace is apparent from a passage in
Ovid, where he tells us that he had seen one who had offended “the
divinity of the linen-clad Isis” sitting before her altar[227], and it
also seems to have been part of the necessary preparation for those who
sought initiation. When we consider that the Eleusinian festivals were
celebrated at the most but twice a year, and then only in one part of
Greece, we see how greatly the daily services and frequentation of the
temples in nearly every large town in the West must have operated in
drawing to the Alexandrian worship the devotion of the citizens.

In addition to these, however, there were far more elaborate ceremonies
of which we obtain a passing glimpse. At Herculaneum, were found early
in last century two mural frescoes portraying scenes in the worship of
Isis, and of an Isis who, from the style of the paintings and the place
where they were found, can be no other than the Alexandrian goddess. One
of these, now in the Museum at Naples, shows a temple surrounded by
trees, the porch of which is approached by a staircase and is guarded by
two sphinxes[228]. Before the door and at the head of the stairs stands
a priest with the shaven crown of the Alexandrian priesthood, holding
with both hands an urn breast-high, while behind him are two others, one
of whom (probably a woman) is completely clothed, wears long hair, and
shakes a sistrum, while the other is naked to the waist and has his head
shaved like the central figure. At the foot of the staircase is another
priest bearing a sistrum in his left hand and a sort of pointed baton or
hiltless sword in his right[229], with which he seems to be commanding a
body of persons of both sexes, who from the shaven crowns of the men are
evidently a congregation or college of initiates, and are ranged in two
rows upon the steps. In the foreground are three altars, the middle one
with a fire burning on it, which an attendant is fanning, while on the
right of this is a flute-player seated on the ground, having in front of
him a priest with a wand like that before described in either hand, and
on the left a man and a woman shaking sistra. The scene evidently
represents a religious service of some kind, and this may possibly be,
as M. Lafaye suggests, the Adoration of the Sacred Water or water of the
Nile, which as Plutarch and Apuleius both hint, was considered the
emblem of Osiris[230]. If so, we may further suppose that the initiates
are here singing antiphonally, or in two choirs, the hymn to Serapis, a
particular air on the flute being, as we shall see, sacred to that god.
The other fresco shows a temple porch like its fellow, although the
steps leading up to it are fewer in number and the two sphinxes on
either side of the opening are here replaced by two Doric pillars
ornamented with garlands. The central figure is a bearded man of black
complexion, crowned with the lotus and a chaplet of leaves. One hand
rests on his hip, and the other is raised in the air, which attitude,
perhaps from its likeness to that of the statue known as the Dancing
Faun, has given rise to the idea that it is a sacred dance which is here
represented[231]. Behind this figure are two women, one of whom plays a
tympanum or tambourine, two children, and a priest or initiate with
shaven crown, sistrum in hand, and naked to the waist. In the foreground
is the altar seen in the other fresco, with a flame rising from it, and
standing to the right of it a priest with a sistrum and another musical
instrument in his hands, a flute-player, a child, a kneeling man, a
woman clothed in a long garment and bearing, besides the sistrum, a
palm-branch, and other worshippers. On the left is a priest with a
sistrum, a child bearing in one hand a basket and in the other a small
urn, while a woman crowned with leaves, with a sistrum and a dish filled
with fruits, kneels at the head of the steps. From the black complexion
of the principal figure, M. Lafaye considers that he may represent
Osiris himself and that he is here shown at the moment of resurrection,
a scene which he considers, not without reason, may have formed the
concluding act in one of the sacred dramas or mystery-plays undoubtedly
associated with the worship of the god. If so, it is unlikely that it
formed part of the initiation into the Mysteries, the particulars of
which were carefully concealed from the profane and would hardly have
been painted on the walls of temples or dwelling-houses. It seems more
probable that the scene in question, whatever be its meaning, was acted
in pantomime in, or rather before, the temple at a particular period of
the year, that the uninitiated were allowed to be present at it as well
as at the Adoration of the Sacred Water, and that these two therefore
were familiar and attractive objects to the populace throughout the
Roman world.

That the Passion—as it was distinctly called—and Resurrection of Osiris
were yearly and openly celebrated by the worshippers of the Alexandrian
gods with alternate demonstrations of grief and joy, the classical poets
have put beyond doubt. The celebration took place in the month of
November and began with a ten-day fast on the part of all the faithful
which was often spent in the temples. Then followed the representation
of the passion of and the seeking for Osiris, and its result, which a
Christian writer of the IIIrd century A.D.[232] thus sums up:

“You behold the swallow[233] and the cymbal of Isis, and the tomb of
your Serapis or Osiris empty, with his limbs scattered about....
Isis bewails, laments and seeks after her lost son[234], with her
Cynocephalus[235] and her bald-headed priests; and the wretched
worshippers of Isis beat their breasts, and imitate the grief of the
most unhappy mother. By and by, when the little boy is found, Isis
rejoices, and the priests exult. Cynocephalus the discoverer boasts,
and they do not cease year by year either to lose what they find, or
to find what they lose.”

“These,” he says, “were formerly Egyptian rites, and now are Roman
ones”; and it is plain that all the incidents of which he speaks were
perfectly familiar to the Roman people. Juvenal[236] speaks of the
bald-headed multitude uttering lamentations and running to and fro, and
of their exultant cries when Osiris is found; and the banquets in the
temples and great festivals and public games which celebrated the
“Finding of Osiris” when the Alexandrian worship was recognized by the
state must have made the recurrence of this chief festival of the
Alexandrian religion familiar to every one[237].

How many lesser festivals than these formed part of its public
ceremonial we do not know, but they were probably numerous enough. The
Roman calendars tell us of a festival of Isis Pharia, probably in her
capacity of tutelary goddess of Alexandria, and of another of Serapis,
both in the month of April, while Plutarch speaks of the Birth of Horus
celebrated, as was natural with a sun-god, after the vernal equinox,
when nature awakens and the sun begins to show forth his power. But
there was another spring festival which took place on the 5th of
March[238] to mark the reopening of navigation and commerce after the
departure of winter, in which the faithful went in procession to the sea
(or probably in its absence to the nearest water), and there set afloat
a new ship filled with offerings which was known as the vessel of Isis.
Apuleius has left us a description of this festival at once so lively
and so imbued with the spirit of the devout Isiacist, that it may be
pardonable to quote from it at some length. The procession, which in the
case he is describing sets forth at dawn from the gates of Cenchreae the
eastern port of Corinth, is heralded by a carnival in which burlesque
representations of magistrates, gladiators, hunters, and fishermen
jostle with caricatures of ancient Greek heroes and demigods like
Bellerophon and Ganymede. After this had dispersed, “the procession
proper of the Saviour Goddess,” he says, set itself in motion, and may
be described in his own words[239]:

“Women shining in white garments displayed their joy by divers
gestures, and crowned with spring blossoms strewed from their laps
flowers upon the road over which marched the holy throng. Others,
with glittering mirrors held behind them, showed to the advancing
Goddess their ready service. Others, who bore ivory combs, by the
motion of their arms and the twining of their fingers represented
the combing of her royal hair, while yet others sprinkled the ways
with drops of sweet-smelling balsam and other unguents. A great
crowd also of both sexes followed with lamps, torches, candles and
other kinds of lights making propitious with light the source of the
heavenly stars. Thereafter came gentle harmonies, and reeds and
flutes sounded with sweetest modulations. A graceful choir of chosen
youths followed, shining in snowy dresses of ceremony and singing a
beautiful hymn which by grace of the Muses a skilful poet had set to
music, although its theme recalled the prayers of our forefathers.
Then came flute-players consecrated to the great Serapis, who on the
slanted reed held under the right ear, repeated the air usual in the
temple of the God, in order that everyone might be warned to make
room for the passage of the holy things. Then pressed on the
multitude of those who had been initiated into the divine mysteries,
both men and women of every rank and age, shining in the pure
whiteness of their linen robes, the women with hair moist with
perfume and covered with a transparent veil, the men with closely
shaven hair and glistening heads. Earthly stars of the great
religion were these, who made a shrill tinkling with brazen silver
or even gold sistra. Then came the priests of the holy things, those
distinguished men who, tightly swathed in white linen from the
breast-girdle to the feet, displayed to view the noble emblems of
the most mighty God. The first held forth a lamp shining with clear
light, not exactly resembling those which give light to nocturnal
banquets, but in the form of a golden boat and emitting a broader
flame through its central opening. The second, clothed in the same
way as the first, carried in his two hands the little altars, _i.e._
the _auxilia_ to which the helping foresight of the high Goddess has
given a peculiar name. The third bore a palm-tree with tiny golden
leaves, and likewise the _caduceus_ of Mercury. The fourth exhibited
the emblem of Equity, a left hand represented with outstretched
palm, which from its inborn disinclination to work, and as being
endowed with neither skill nor expertness, seems better suited to
typify Equity than the right. He also bore a golden vase in the
rounded shape of a female breast, from which he poured libations of
milk. The fifth carried a winnowing-fan composed of golden wires,
and yet another an amphora.

“Without interval, the Gods who have deigned to walk with the feet
of men go forward. Here—dread sight!—is he who is the messenger
between the supernal and the infernal deities. Upright, of a
complexion black in some parts, golden in others, Anubis raises on
high his dog’s head, bearing in his left hand the _caduceus_, and
shaking in his right the budding palm-branch[240]. Close upon his
footsteps, follows a cow, held on high in an erect posture—the cow,
fertile image of the Goddess who brings forth all things—which one
of the blessed ministry with pantomimic steps bears seated on his
shoulders. The chest containing the mysteries was carried by
another, thus wholly concealing the hidden things of the sublime
religion[241]. Yet another bore within his happy bosom the revered
likeness of the Supreme Divinity, resembling neither a domestic
animal, nor bird, nor wild beast, nor even man himself; but yet to
be revered in the highest degree alike for its skilful invention,
and for its very novelty, and also as that unspeakable evidence of
the religion which should be veiled in complete silence. As to its
outward form, it was fashioned in glittering gold—an urn hollowed
out with perfected art with a round base and carved externally with
the marvellous images of the Egyptians. Its mouth was not much
raised and jutted forth in an extended spout with a wide stream;
while on the opposite side was attached the handle bent far out with
a wide sweep, on which sate an asp in wreathed folds uplifting the
swollen stripes of his scaly neck.”

This description will leave little doubt on the mind of the reader as to
the supreme importance in the religion of the urn which is being held up
for the adoration of the faithful in the fresco from Herculaneum before
described; and this is borne out by a bas-relief in the Vatican in which
a similar urn to that described by Apuleius is represented as being
carried in procession[242]. “They say,” says Hippolytus speaking of the
worshippers of Isis, “that Osiris is water,” and Celsus, according to
Origen, confirms him in this[243]. According to this last, Isis
represented the earth, and the doctrine may therefore be an allegory
representing the fertilization of the land by the Nile. It is more
likely, however, that it is to be attributed to one of the older
cosmogonies current in Egypt, wherein water, personified by the god Nu,
is the origin of everything[244]. The main point to note for our present
purpose is that an urn or vase containing liquid, was, in the public
ceremonies of the Alexandrian religion, the recognized symbol of the
Supreme Being.

Apuleius next describes the procession as having reached the seashore
where the images of the gods were arranged in order[245]:

“Then the Chief Priest, pouring forth with chaste mouth the most
solemn prayers, consecrated and dedicated to the goddess, after
having thoroughly purified it with a lighted torch, an egg, and some
sulphur, a ship made with the highest art and painted all over with
the wonderful pictures of the Egyptians. The shining sail of this
blessed bark had the words of a prayer woven in it; and these words
reiterated the petition that the navigation then commencing might be
prosperous. And now the mast was stepped, a round piece of pine,
lofty and smooth, and conspicuous from the handsome appearance of
its truck, and the poop with its twisted goose-neck shone covered
with gold-leaf, while the whole hulk was gay with polished citron
wood. Then all the people, both the religious and the profane,
heaped emulously together winnowing-fans laden with spices and such
like offerings, and poured upon them crumbled cakes made with milk,
until the ship, filled with magnificent gifts offered in fulfilment
of vows, was loosed from its moorings and put to sea with a gentle
breeze that seemed to spring up on purpose. After her course became
indistinct to us by reason of the distance that she was from our
eyes, the bearers of the holy things again took up each his own
load, and joyfully returned to the fane in the same solemn
procession as before. But when we arrived at the temple, the Chief
Priest and the bearers of the divine effigies, and those who have
been already initiated into the ever to be revered secrets, entering
into the chamber of the Goddess put away the breathing images with
due ceremony. Then one of them, whom men call the Scribe, standing
before the doors and having called together as if for a discourse
the company of the Pastophori[246]—which is the name of this
sacrosanct college—forthwith recited from a lofty pulpit prayers
written in a book for the Great Prince, the Senate, the Equestrian
Order, and the whole Roman people, their sailors and ships, and all
who are under the sway of our native land, and then closed the
address according to the Greek rite thus: ‘Let the people
depart[247].’ Which announcement was followed by a shout of the
people showing that it was favourably received by all. Then the
multitude, rejoicing exceedingly and bearing olive-branches,
laurel-twigs, and chaplets, after having kissed the feet of a statue
of the goddess fashioned in silver which stood on steps [within the
porch?], departed to their own homes.”

What most strikes one in this account by an eye-witness, which must have
been written about the year 170 A.D., is the entirely modern tone of it
all. In the scene that passes under Lucius’ eyes, there is hardly
anything that might not be seen at an Italian _festa_ at the present
day. The joyous crowd, respectful rather than devout, and not above
introducing a comic or rather a burlesque element into the day’s
rejoicing, the images and sacred vessels carried solemnly along, the
crowd of tonsured priests, and the chants and hymns sung in chorus, the
return to the temple, with its prayers for Church and State, and its
dismissal of the people—all these are paralleled every day in countries
where the Catholic Church is still dominant. Not less modern, too, is
the way in which Lucius alludes to the faith of which all these things
illustrate the power. For him, there is no other god than Isis—“thou who
art all[248],” as one of her votaries calls her on his tombstone, in
whom “single in essence, though with many names[249],” all other gods
are contained. Hence, he can think of no other religion than her
worship. It is always with him “the holy” or “the sublime religion,” and
the goddess is she whom the whole earth adores. It is she in whom one
can trust not only for happiness beyond the tomb, but for present help
in all the troubles of this life, and to devote oneself to her service,
to thoroughly learn, to understand her nature, is the proudest lot which
can befall man while upon earth. Hence all her initiates were “earthly
stars,” her priests were all happy or blessed in that they were allowed
to be near and even to carry and handle the divine images, and the
religion was a real bond which united people of all ranks and ages. We
feel that we have here got a very long way from the time when the power
of each god was supposed to be limited to the small space surrounding
his sanctuary.

That this change had been brought about by the work of the Isiac
priesthood, there can be little doubt. Between the foundation of the
Alexandrian religion by Ptolemy and the date at which Apuleius wrote, a
space of five centuries elapsed, and this must have seen many changes in
the constitution of what may be called the Isiac Church. The Greeks
always set their faces against anything like a priestly caste set apart
from the rest of the community, and the priests of the Hellenic gods
were for the most part elected, like modern mayors of towns, for a short
term only, after which they fell back into the ranks of the laity with
as little difficulty as do municipal officers at the present day. The
Eleusinian Mysteries were indeed committed to certain families in whom
their priesthood was hereditary; but no professional barriers existed
between these families and the rest of the citizens; and we find
Callias, the “torch-bearer” and one of the highest officials at the
Mysteries, not only fighting in the ranks at Marathon, but
distinguishing himself by his “cruelty and injustice” in retaining an
unfair share of the plunder for himself[250]. The Eumolpidae and
Lycomidae of Eleusis, also, were probably maintained not by any
contribution from the state, but by the revenues of the temple lands and
by the fee of a few obols levied from each initiate. But the Alexandrian
Church in Egypt must from the first have been endowed and probably
established as well. To judge from the analogous case of the dynastic
cult or worship of the sovereign, which Ptolemy Soter set up, the
“sublime religion” was in its native Egypt maintained by a tax on the
revenues of those _wakf_ or temple lands held in mortmain with which the
native gods of Egypt were so richly provided from the earliest times.
When the Alexandrian religion became a missionary faith and established
itself in Athens and other parts of the Hellenic world, it no doubt
depended in the first instance on the voluntary contributions of the
associations of Sarapiasts or Isiaci founded for its maintenance. But we
may be sure that politic princes like the first three Ptolemies, who
were besides the richest and most opulent of all the Successors of
Alexander, did not let these outposts of their empire languish for lack
of funds, and we may guess that the subscriptions of their members were
supplemented in case of need by large donations from the King of Egypt
or from those who wished to stand well with him. When the faith passed
into Western Europe and into territories directly under Roman sway, it
had already attained such fame that a large entrance-fee could be
demanded from the initiates, and Apuleius tells us more than once that
the amount of this was in every case fixed by a special revelation of
the goddess, and was no doubt only limited by the length of the
aspirant’s purse and the strength of his vocation[251]. Like other Greek
priests of the time, also, the ministers of the Alexandrian religion
found a way of adding to their income by the practice of divination or
foretelling the future, and the oracle of Serapis at Alexandria soon
became as celebrated in the Hellenistic world as that of Delphi. There
were probably more ways than one of consulting this; but the one which
seems to have been specially its own, and which afterwards spread from
Egypt into all the temples of the faith in other countries, was by the
practice of _incubatio_ which meant sleeping either personally or by
deputy in the precinct of the god until the consultant had a dream in
which the god’s answer was declared. Such a practice seems to date from
the dream sent to Ptolemy Soter at the foundation of the religion, and
doubtless formed a great source of revenue to its priesthood[252]. The
highest personages in the Roman Empire deigned to resort to it, and
Vespasian was vouchsafed a divine vision in the temple of Serapis when
he consulted the god about “the affairs of the Empire[253].” Not
unconnected with this were the miraculous cures with which Serapis,
originally perhaps by confusion with Asklepios the Greek god of
healing[254], was credited. The sick man was given a room in the temple
precincts, where he doubtless lived the regular and orderly life of a
modern hospital, and before long dreamed of a remedy for the malady on
which his thoughts were concentrated. As the mind sometimes influences
the body, and a belief in the healing power of the medicine is often of
more importance than its nature, he very often recovered, and was no
doubt expected to be generous in his offerings to the god who had
intervened in his cure. Nor were worse means of raising money unknown to
the Alexandrian priests, unless they have been greatly belied. They are
said to have acted as panders and procurers for the rich, and it was the
seduction of a noble Roman lady by a lover who assumed the garb of the
god Anubis which led to their expulsion from the Pomoerium under
Tiberius[255]. Astrology, too, which depended entirely on mathematical
calculations and tables, was peculiarly an Alexandrian art, and the same
Manetho who had been one of the persons consulted at the founding of the
Alexandrian religion was said to have taught its principles to the
Greeks. Whether this be so or not, it is certain that in Ovid’s time the
Alexandrian priests used to beg in the streets of Rome after the fashion
of the Buddhist monks from whom they may have indirectly borrowed the
practice, and that it was thought “unlucky” to reject their
importunities[256].

It is plain, however, that, by the time Apuleius wrote, the necessity
for any such shifts had passed away. The Alexandrian religion had then
become a state religion, and was served by a fully organized and
powerful priesthood. As there were not less than seven temples of Isis
in Rome itself, the number of the Roman faithful must have been very
considerable, and on their offerings and the gifts of the state, a large
staff of priests was maintained. We hear not only of a high priest in
each temple to whom all the lesser ministers of the cult were apparently
subject[257], but of hierophants, scribes, stolists or wardrobe-keepers,
singing-men and singing-women, and a host of subordinate functionaries
down to the _neocoros_ or temple-sweeper and the _cliduchos_ or guardian
of the keys. Women as well as men were eligible for some of these
offices, and the inscriptions tell us of a female _oneirocrites_ or
interpreter of dreams and of several _canephorae_ or carriers of the
sacred basket, besides many priestesses whose functions are not
defined[258]. The high priest and the more important officers lived in
the temple and probably devoted their whole time to its service[259];
but the lesser offices seem to have been capable of being held
concurrently with lay occupations, like that of the churchwardens at the
present day. But one and all were devoted to the faith and its
propagation, and formed in the words of Apuleius “a sacred soldiery” for
its extension and defence. It is probable that they were all drawn in
the first instance from the ranks of the initiates only.

These were what may be called the secular clergy of the Alexandrian
Church; but there was in addition a body of devotees attached to it
whose mode of life singularly reminds us of that afterwards adopted by
the Christian monks. A lucky chance has revealed to us some fragments of
papyrus found on the site of the Serapeum at Memphis, which contain
among other things the petitions of a Macedonian named Ptolemy the son
of Glaucias to King Ptolemy VI Philometor about the year 166 B.C.[260]
From these it is evident that there were at that time a body of recluses
lodged in the Serapeum who were vowed to a seclusion so complete that
they might not stir forth from their cells under any pretence, and when
the king visited Memphis he had to speak with his namesake and
petitioner through the window of the latter’s chamber. These recluses
were in some way devoted to the service of the god, and their stay in
the temple was to all appearance voluntary, although in Ptolemy’s case,
it had at the time he wrote lasted already fifteen years. He does not
seem to have been driven to this by poverty, as he speaks of a
considerable property left him by his father; and as the object of his
petitions is to champion the rights of two priestesses of Serapis who
had been wrongfully deprived of their dues of bread and oil by the
officials of the temple, he seems to have been in some sort given to the
performance of “good works.” How he otherwise occupied his time, and
whether his title or description of κάτοχος implied any connection with
the oracle of Serapis is still a disputed point. Yet the correspondence
in which his name appears shows clearly the existence within the
Serapeum of a large population of both men and women living at the
expense of the temple revenues, some of whom took part in the ritual of
the services there celebrated, while others were fixed by their own vows
in the strictest seclusion. Whichever way the controversy alluded to
above is decided, it seems plain that there is here a parallel between
the practice of the Catholic Church with its division of the clergy into
regular and secular and the Alexandrian religion, which until the
discovery of the papyri some fifty years ago was entirely unsuspected.

It has been said above that the Alexandrian religion reached its apogee
in the time of the Antonines. How it came to decline in power cannot be
traced with great exactness, but it seems probable that it only lost its
hold on the common people from the greater attractions presented by
other religions competing with it for the popular favour. Other cults
began to press in from the East, including the worship of Mithras, which
in the time of Diocletian finally supplanted it in the favour of the
state, and acquired perhaps a stronger hold on the army from reasons to
be examined in detail when we come to deal with the Mithraic religion.
But the rise of Christianity is in itself sufficient to account for its
decline in popularity among the lower classes of the Empire. To them the
Catholic Church, purged and strengthened by a sporadic and intermittent
persecution, offered advantages that the Alexandrian religion could
never give. In this last, the possession of wealth must always have
assured its possessor a disproportionate rank in the religion, and
without the expenditure of a large sum of money, it was impossible, as
we have seen, to arrive at its most cherished secrets. Nor do we find in
any of the few documents of the faith that have come down to us any
parallel to that wide and all-embracing spirit of charity which in its
early days made the Christian Church a kind of mutual benefit society
for all who were willing to enter into her fold. To the poorest as to
the wealthiest, the Catholic Church, too, always held out the promises
of a faith to be understood by all and free from the mystery with which
the cardinal doctrines of the Alexandrians were shrouded from all but
the highest initiates. Its promises of happiness beyond the grave also
were extended to even the most degraded, and the fulfilment of them was
taught to be dependent on conduct within the reach of even the pauper or
the repentant criminal rather than on the long, difficult and expensive
course of instruction which its rival demanded. Nor were more material
inducements neglected. The highest offices within the Church were open
to the lowest of its members, and it was quite possible for a slave or a
freedman to ascend the chair of Peter, there to negotiate on equal terms
with emperors and proconsuls. Unlike the religions of the ancient world
which were first converted by Alexander’s conquests from national into
universal cults, the Christian religion was from its foundation
organized on the democratic lines laid down in the text: “He that is
greatest among you shall be your servant[261].” Moreover, the
predictions of the Christian missionaries as to the immediate coming of
the Second Advent began to spread among the masses outside the Church,
and found a soil ready to receive them in the minds of superstitious men
trampled on by the rich, harried by the tax-gatherers, and torn this way
and that by constant insurrections and civil wars stirred up, not by the
Roman mob (kept quiet as it was with State doles) but by its too
ambitious masters. Quite apart from the spiritual comfort that it
brought to many, and from the greater unity and simplicity of its
doctrines, we can hardly wonder that the proletariat everywhere turned
eagerly to the new faith.

The effect of this upon the Alexandrian religion must have been fatal.
Unfortunately the destruction of pagan literature has been so great that
we know hardly anything about its decline from the mouths of its
adherents[262]. What we are able to perceive is that the persons who
adhered to the Alexandrian faith after the time of the Antonines
generally practised many other religions as well. Alexander Severus had
in his palace a _lararium_ or private chapel in which, like most of the
later Roman emperors, he placed statues of the gods whose worship he
particularly affected. We find there Serapis and Isis, indeed, but
surrounded with a great crowd of other divinities together with the
images of philosophers like Socrates and Apollonius of Tyana, and—if the
Augustan History is to be believed—that of the Founder of Christianity
Himself[263]. So, too, the funeral inscription of Ulpius Egnatius
Faventinus, an augur of high rank who flourished in the reign of Valens
and Valentinian, records that the dead nobleman was a priest of Isis,
but a hierophant of Hecate, a hieroceryx of Mithras, and a “chief
Herdsman” of Bacchus as well. So, again, Fabia Aeonia Paullina, wife of
Vettius Praetextatus, a Prefect and Consul Designate of about the same
period, describes herself on her tombstone as consecrated at Eleusis to
Dionysos, Demeter, and Persephone, and a hierophantis of Hecate, but
merely a worshipper of Isis[264]. We see here a great change from the
exclusive fervour of Apuleius’ Lucius, who thinks it only just that Isis
should require him to devote his whole life to her service.

But a violent end was soon to be put even to the public exercise of the
Alexandrian religion. The conversion of Constantine had left it
unharmed, and we find Julian writing to the Alexandrians during his
brief reign as if the supremacy of their religion in Egypt’s capital at
any rate was assured[265]. But under Theodosius, an order was obtained
from the Emperor for the demolition of the “heathen” temples at
Alexandria, and Theophilus, “the perpetual enemy of peace and
virtue[266],” who was bishop of the city at the time, was not the man to
allow the decree to remain a dead letter. According to the
ecclesiastical historians[267], he began operations on the temple of
Dionysos, which he converted into a Christian church. In the course of
doing so, he professed to have discovered certain emblems of virility
which seem to have been used in the Mysteries to illustrate the legend
of the Diaspasm or tearing in pieces of the god, and these he had
paraded through the city as evidence of what the heathens, according to
him, worshipped in secret. The same emblems were also used in the
worship of Isis, where they probably were shown to initiates as
explaining the loss of the generative power by Osiris after his death
and passion[268]. Hence their profanation was in the highest degree
offensive to the last adherents of the Alexandrian religion, who, few in
number but formidable from their position and influence, threw
themselves into the world-famed Serapeum and determined to resist the
decree by force of arms. The Christian mob of Alexandria, hounded on by
the bishop and his monks, assaulted the temple which the philosopher
Olympius and his followers had converted into a temporary fortress, and
many attacks were repulsed with loss of life to the besiegers. At
length, a truce having been negotiated until the Emperor could be
communicated with, a fresh decree was obtained in which the defenders of
the temple were promised a pardon for their share in the riot, if the
Serapeum were quietly given up to the authorities. This offer was
accepted, and Theophilus had the pleasure of seeing Bryaxis’ colossal
statue of Serapis demolished under his own eyes without the event being
followed by the predicted earthquake and other catastrophes which we are
told the Christians as well as the heathens confidently expected. The
magnificent Serapeum with all its wealth of statues and works of art was
destroyed, and a church dedicated to the Emperor Arcadius was afterwards
erected on its site.

Thus in the year 391, the chief seat and place of origin of the
Alexandrian religion was laid waste, and the religion itself perished
after a successful reign of seven centuries. Ecclesiastical writers say
that this was followed by the conversion of several of the “Hellenists”
or adherents of the worship of Serapis and Isis to Christianity[269],
and there seems every likelihood that the story is founded on fact. Is
this the reason why we find so many of the external usages of
Isis-worship preserved in or revived by the Catholic Church? Macaulay,
in speaking of the contest between Catholicism and Protestantism at the
Reformation compares it to the fight between Hamlet and Laertes where
the combatants change weapons. The comparative study of religions shows
that the phenomenon is more widespread than he thought, and that when
one religion finally supplants another, it generally takes over from its
predecessor such of its usages as seem harmless or praiseworthy. The
traditional policy of the Catholic Church in this respect was declared
by Saint Gregory the Great, when he told the apostle to the Saxon
heathens that such of their religious and traditional observances as
could by any means be harmonized with orthodox Christianity were not to
be interfered with[270], and this was probably the policy pursued with
regard to the converts from the worship of Serapis. Gibbon[271] has
painted for us in a celebrated passage the astonishment which “a
Tertullian or a Lactantius” would have felt could he have been raised
from the dead to witness the festival of some popular saint or martyr in
a Christian church at the end of the fifth century. The incense, the
flowers, the lights, and the adoration of the relics of the saint would
all, we are told, have moved his indignation as the appanage of
heathenism. Yet none of these things would have been found in a temple
like that of Delphi, where probably no more than one worshipper or
sacred embassy penetrated at a time, and where nothing like
congregational worship was known. It was, however, the mode of worship
to which the Hellenistic world had become daily accustomed during the
seven centuries that the Alexandrian religion had endured, and it is not
to be wondered at that the converts brought it with them into their new
faith. The worship of the Virgin as the Theotokos or Mother of God which
was introduced into the Catholic Church about the time of the
destruction of the Serapeum, enabled the devotees of Isis to continue
unchecked their worship of the mother goddess by merely changing the
name of the object of their adoration, and Prof. Drexler gives a long
list of the statues of Isis which thereafter were used, sometimes with
unaltered attributes, as those of the Virgin Mary[272]. The general use
of images, the suspension in the churches of _ex voto_ representations
of different parts of the human body in gratitude for miraculous cures
of maladies[273], and the ceremonial burning of candles, may also be
traced to the same source; while the institution of monachism which had
taken a great hold on Christian Egypt, is now generally attributed to St
Pachomius, who had actually been in his youth a recluse of Serapis[274].
Prof. Bury, who thinks the action of the earlier faith upon the later in
this respect undeniable, would also attribute the tonsure of the
Catholic priesthood to a reminiscence of the shaven crowns of the
initiates of Isis, to which we may perhaps add the covering of women’s
heads in churches[275].

These instances are for the most part fairly well known, and some have
been made use of in controversy between Protestants and Catholics; but
it is probable that there were also many resemblances between the
external usages of the two faiths which would, when they flourished side
by side, strike even the superficial observer, but the traces of which
are now well nigh lost[276]. “Those who worship Serapis are Christians,
and those who call themselves bishops of Christ are vowed to Serapis,”
wrote the Emperor Hadrian[277] from Alexandria on his visit there in
A.D. 124, and this would possibly explain the respectful and almost
mournful tone in which, as Renan noted, the Christian Sibyl announces to
Serapis and Isis the end of their reign[278]. It is not impossible that
the resemblance which thus deceived the Emperor was connected with the
celebration of the Eucharist among certain sects of Christians[279]. The
Adoration of the Sacred Water as the emblem of Osiris, which we have
seen represented on the Herculaneum fresco, has many points in common
with the exhibition of the Sacrament of the Mass to the people, and it
is possible that the words of consecration were not altogether different
in the two cases. “Thou art wine, yet thou art not wine, but the members
of Osiris,” says a magic papyrus in the British Museum in the midst of
an address to “Asklepios of Memphis,” the god Esculapius being one of
the gods with whom Serapis in his day of power was most often
confounded[280]. So, too, M. Revillout has published an _amatorium_ or
love-charm in which the magician says, “May this wine become the blood
of Osiris[281].” It is true he sees in it a blasphemous adaptation of
the Christian rite; but this is very unlikely. It has been shown
elsewhere[282] that many—perhaps all—of the words used in the ceremonial
magic of the period are taken from the rituals of religions dying or
extinct, and the papyrus, which dates somewhere about the IVth century
A.D., may possibly have here preserved for us a fragment of the ritual
in use in the Alexandrian temples. “Give him, O Osiris, the cooling
water” is the epitaph often written by the worshippers of Isis on the
tombs of the dead[283], and it may seem that we have here a hint of
mystic communion with the deity brought about by the drinking of his
emblem.

The resemblances between the Alexandrian and the Christian religion thus
sketched, refer, however, merely to matters which are either external or
superficial, or which, like the worship of the Virgin, the use of images
and relics, and the institution of monachism, could be abandoned, as was
the case at the German Reformation, without necessarily drawing with
them the repudiation of the cardinal tenets of Christianity. That the
Christian Church owed at her inception any of her more fundamental
doctrines to the Alexandrian religion is not only without proof, but is
in the highest degree unlikely. The Apostles and missionaries of the
Apostolic Age, living as they did in daily expectation of the return of
their Risen Lord, had no need to go to an alien faith for the assertion
of His divinity, of the truth of His resurrection, or of His power of
salvation; nor do the Fathers of the Ante-Nicene Church speak of Serapis
and Isis as entitled to any peculiar reverence or as differing in any
respect from the other gods of the heathen. Whether the tenets of the
Alexandrian religion may not have had some influence on the discussions
which raged round the definition of the Divine nature and attributes at
the earlier Ecumenical and other Councils of the Church is another
matter. The conception of the Supreme Being as a triune god was a very
old one in Egypt, and reappeared, as we have seen, unchanged in the
worship of Serapis, Isis, and Horus. “Thus from one god I became three
gods,” says Osiris in his description of his self-creation in a papyrus
dated twelve years after the death of Alexander[284]; and the
dividing-line between the three persons of the Alexandrian triad is so
often overstepped that it is plain that their more cultured worshippers
at one time considered them as but varying forms of one godhead[285].
Hence, the Trinitarian formulas set out in the Creeds of Nicaea and of
St Athanasius would be less of a novelty to those familiar with the
Alexandrian religion than to those brought up in the uncompromising
monotheism of the Jews. Too little is known of the steps by which the
full assertion of the doctrine of the Trinity was reached for any
discussion of the matter to be here profitable[286]. The deepest
influence that the Alexandrian religion exercised upon the Church was
probably not direct, but through those scattered and heretical sects
which, although finally condemned and anathematized by her, yet ever
acted as feeders by whom she obtained converts from among the heathen.
To these we may now turn our attention.

Footnote 103:

Bouché-Leclercq, _Histoire des Lagides_, Paris, 1903, etc. t. I. p.
121. Dr Mahaffy, _Empire of the Ptolemies_, 1895, p. 11, thinks
differently, but the importance of the city to the present day is
against him.

Footnote 104:

Bouché-Leclercq, _op. cit._ t. I. p. 104. Cf. Mahaffy, _E.P._ p. 4.

Footnote 105:

Droysen, _Hist. de l’Hellénisme_, t. II. p. 96; Bouché-Leclercq, _op.
cit._ t. I. pp. 13, 14; Mahaffy, _E.P._ p. 25.

Footnote 106:

As Demetrius the City-Taker, found to his cost. Cf. Mahaffy, _E.P._ p.
57.

Footnote 107:

Droysen, _op. cit._ I. p. 14; Bouché-Leclercq, _op. cit._ I. p. 15.

Footnote 108:

Droysen, _op. cit._ II. p. 103.

Footnote 109:

Bouché-Leclercq, _Hist. des Lag._ I. pp. 24, 25.

Footnote 110:

_Ibid._ I. p. 26.

Footnote 111:

Droysen, _op. cit._ I. pp. 346, 699, 670. Cf. D. G. Hogarth, _Philip
and Alexander_, p. 144.

Footnote 112:

As when they seized the throne of Egypt at the close of the XXth
Dynasty. So in Nubia in the time of the Ptolemies, the king was a mere
puppet in the hands of the priests, who used to send him word when
they thought that he had reigned long enough. For the story of
Ergamenes (Ark-amen), who put an end to their rule, see Diodorus
Siculus, III. 6. 3, or Budge, _History of Egypt_, 1899, vol. VIII. pp.
166 _sqq._

Footnote 113:

See Breasted, _History of Egypt_, New York, 1909, _passim_; cf. Budge,
_op. cit._

Footnote 114:

Wiedemann, _The Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of the Immortality of the
Soul_, 1895, p. viii; Maspero, _Ét. Égyptol._ I. pp. 123, 167; _ibid._
II. p. 196, n. 1.

Footnote 115:

Budge, _Gods of the Egyptians_, 1904, I. pp. 148, 149; Erman,
_Handbook of Egyptian Religion_, 1906, p. 81.

Footnote 116:

Erman, _op. cit._ p. 188. The fusion of Osiris with Ptah and Seker was
a good deal older than the Saites. Cf. Wiedemann, _Religion of the
Ancient Egyptians_, 1897, pp. 134, 135; Budge, _Osiris and the
Egyptian Resurrection_, New York, 1911, I. p. 45.

Footnote 117:

Budge, _Gods of the Egyptians_, II. p. 196.

Footnote 118:

Budge, _G.E._ II. pp. 118, 156, 264. So Naville, _Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology_, 1914, pp. 7, 8. M. Maspero thinks Apuat was originally
god of Siut and only a temple-companion of Osiris at Abydos, _Rev.
Critique_, 1904, pt. 2, pp. 194, 195.

Footnote 119:

Steindorff, _Religion of the Ancient Egyptians_, New York, 1905, p.
53; Erman, _H.E.R._ pp. 56, 57; Naville, _The Old Egyptian Faith_,
1906, pp. 146, 147.

Footnote 120:

Amélineau, _Essai sur le Gnosticisme Égyptien_, Paris, 1887, p. 144;
Budge, “Papyrus of Nesi-Amsu,” in _Archaeologia_, 1890, pt 2, p. 404;
Maspero, _The Dawn of Civilization_, 1894, pp. 172-174; Erman,
_H.E.R._ p. 32; Budge, _G.E._ II. p. 150. Manifest allusions to the
legend are to be found in the Pyramid Texts. Cf. Maspero, _Les
Inscriptions des Pyramides de Saqqarah_, Paris, 1894, pp. 105 _sqq._

Footnote 121:

This idea is treated at length in “The Legend of Osiris” in the
_Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology_, 1911, pp.
139-154. See also “The Greek Worship of Serapis and Isis,” _P.S.B.A._
1914, pp. 79 _sqq._

Footnote 122:

See “The Titles of the Thinite Kings” in _P.S.B.A._ 1908, pp. 86-94,
121-128, 163-177.

Footnote 123:

In Plutarch’s time the Ethiopians had a queen called Candace as in
Acts viii. 27. Cf. Strabo, Bk XVII. c. 1, § 54. One wonders whether
Plutarch in speaking of Aso did not confuse this title with an epithet
of Thueris, the hippopotamus-goddess and wife of Set, who is called in
a late magical text “Thueris, the great of sorcery, cat of Ethiopia.”
See Griffith and Thompson, _Stories of the High Priests of Memphis_,
Oxford, 1900, p. 91.

Footnote 124:

This is most clearly shown by M. Victor Loret in _L’Égypte au Temps du
Totémisme_, Paris, 1906, _passim_. Cf. the same author’s articles in
_Rev. Égyptol._ 1902 and 1904.

Footnote 125:

See Chapter IV, _infra_.

Footnote 126:

See “The Greek Worship of Serapis and Isis,” _P.S.B.A._ 1914, pp.
94-98, for this culture god of the Eastern Mediterranean. The original
home of the myth was, possibly, Babylonia. Cf. “Legend of Osiris” in
_P.S.B.A._ 1911, quoted above.

Footnote 127:

See the story of Ra and Isis, Budge, _G.E._ pp. 360 _sqq._

Footnote 128:

By far the best and most consistent account of the Eleusinian
Mysteries is that given by M. Paul Foucart in his three memoirs,
_Recherches sur l’origine et la nature des Mystères d’Éleusis_, _Les
Grands Mystères d’Éleusis_, and _Le Culte de Dionysos en Attique_. All
these appeared in the _Mémoires_ of the Académie des Inscriptions, tt.
XXXV. (1895), XXXVII. (1900), and XXXVIII. (1904) respectively.

Footnote 129:

Foucart, _Les Grands Mystères_, p. 113.

Footnote 130:

Iacchos was identified with Dionysos at least as early as the time of
Sophocles. Cf. _Antigone_, ll. 1130 _sqq._, and Dyer, _The Gods in
Greece_, 1891, p. 133. Very likely, as M. Foucart suggests, he was
originally the personification of the cry repeated by the procession
of the initiated. See _Grds. Myst._ p. 122.

Footnote 131:

It had an opening in the roof for this purpose. Foucart, _Grds. Myst._
p. 137.

Footnote 132:

So Clement of Alexandria, _Protrepticus_, c. II. The scene of the Rape
is laid in many different places. The Homeric _Hymn to Demeter_ calls
it “the Mysian plain,” meaning probably Mysia in Asia Minor. A
scholiast on Hesiod puts it in Sicily, Bacchylides in Crete, Orpheus
in “the parts about Ocean,” Phanodemus in Attica, Demades in “woodland
glades.” See Abel, _Orphica_, Fragm. 212, p. 239. Cf. Maury,
_Religions de la Grèce Antique_, t. I. p. 479.

Footnote 133:

Homeric _Hymn to Demeter_.

Footnote 134:

Foucart, _Myst. d’Él._ p. 49; _id._ _Grds. Myst._ pp. 68, 69.

Footnote 135:

M. Foucart, _Culte de Dion._ pp. 55-60, will not allow that Iacchos
was ever identified with Dionysos and believes him to have been only
the genius that led the procession. Dyer, on the other hand (_op.
cit._ p. 128), makes Iacchos the young or second Dionysos born of
Semele. But Aristophanes, _Frogs_, l. 321, and Strabo, Bk X. c. 10 (p.
402 Didot), both give him a higher position in the Mysteries than M.
Foucart would assign to him, and the older opinion that he was the
child whose birth was there shown seems to hold good. Cf. Maury, _Rel.
de G. A._ t. II. p. 341, and Arrian, _Anabasis_, Bk II. c. 16, § 3 (p.
50, Didot). So Stephani, _Compte Rendu de la Commission Imperiale
Archéologique_, 1859 (St Petersburg), p. 37, where monumental evidence
is given in its support. Cf. Daremberg and Saglio, _Dict. des
Antiquités_, _s.v._ Eleusinia (by F. Lenormant); Clem. Alex.
_Protrept._ c. II.; Libanius, ὑπὲρ Ἀριστοφάνους, vol. I. pp. 447, 448
(Reiske).

Footnote 136:

Foucart, _Myst. d’Él._ p. 66.

Footnote 137:

Hippolytus, _Philosophumena_, Bk V. c. 1, p. 171, Cruice. The whole
drama is described by Foucart, _Myst. d’Él._ pp. 43-74 q.v.

Footnote 138:

Livy, XXXI. 14. Cf. Foucart, _Grds. Myst._ p. 94. They betrayed
themselves by asking questions which showed they had not been
initiated. Hence the ἱερά or sacred objects could hardly have been
statues, as some have thought.

Footnote 139:

Foucart, _Culte de Dion._ p. 68; Stephen of Byzantium in Hesychius,
_Etymologium Magnum_, _s.v._ Ἄγραι. Cf. Maury, _Rel. de la Grèce Ant._
II. p. 324. All that Stephen says is that here was acted a pantomime
(μίμημα) of the things that happened to Dionysos.

Footnote 140:

All these ceremonies of the Anthesteria are reconstructed and
described by M. Foucart, _Culte de Dion._ pp. 107-163. That the
tearing in pieces of Dionysos and the consequent origin of man was
taught in the Little Mysteries seems to follow from Pindar’s words
(_Threnoi_ Frag. X. 7, p. 102, Cod. Bö.) that those who have been
initiated have seen “the God-given beginning of life.” Transmigration
seems to have been also taught in them (see Plutarch, _Consolatory
Letter_, § X.). There were therefore three degrees of initiation at
Eleusis: (1) The Little Mysteries showing the history of Dionysos, (2)
The Great Mysteries with the Rape of Persephone and the Wanderings of
Demeter, and (3) The Epopsy (open to initiates of the second year
only), showing the marriage of Zeus and Demeter and the birth of the
new Dionysos.

Footnote 141:

Frazer, _The Golden Bough_ (third edition), Part IV, c. 5; Part V,
vol. i, pp. 12, 263.

Footnote 142:

The end of the Athenian monarchy and flight of the Pisistratids took
place about 500 B.C. (see Chapter IV, _infra_). The Eleusinia were
probably reformed not long before.

Footnote 143:

Herodotus, Bk II. c. 49; Diod. Sic. Bk I. c. 96, § 4 _sqq._ It may, on
the other hand, have been introduced from Asia Minor or the
Mediterranean Islands, where it was certainly prevalent at a very
early date. See articles in _P.S.B.A._ for 1911 and 1914 above quoted.

Footnote 144:

Plutarch, _de Is. et Os._ c. XXVIII; Tacitus, _Hist._ IV. cap. 83, 84.
Plutarch calls Timotheos the “exegete,” _i.e._ the interpreter or
dragoman; so that his being a Eumolpid would seem to rest on the
testimony of Tacitus only; but there were “exegetes” attached to the
Eumolpids at Eleusis, see Foucart, _Grds. Myst._ pp. 79 _sqq._
Bouché-Leclercq, _Hist. des Lagides_, I. p. 118, thinks the names
Timotheos and Manetho only cover the fact that the new religion was
compounded from the Eleusinian and the Osirian cult.

Footnote 145:

Bouché-Leclercq (_Hist. des Lagides_, I. p. 129, n. 2) thinks the
tradition that the Museum was founded by Ptolemy II Philadelphus
erroneous. The date of Demetrius of Phalerum’s leaving Athens to take
charge of it marks it as the foundation of Ptolemy Soter. Cf. Mahaffy,
_Empire of Ptolemies_, pp. 91, 92.

Footnote 146:

See Mahaffy, _op. cit._ p. 98.

Footnote 147:

Dyer, _Gods in Greece_, pp. 178, 179, and pp. 73, 74. An inscription
making the identification has been found at Smyrna. See O. Rayet in
the _Rev. Archéologique_ for 1877, pp. 175-178, where its date is put
at the middle of the third century B.C., and the vases of Gerhard
there quoted. Cf. Maury, _Rel. de la Grèce_, II. p. 362; F. Lenormant
in Daremberg and Saglio’s _Dict. des Antiquités_, _s.v._ Eleusinia, p.
549, and authorities there quoted.

Footnote 148:

Damascius, _Vit. Isidor_, § 106. For definition of term, see _ibid._
§§ 3, 5.

Footnote 149:

Foucart, _Myst. d’Él._ p. 34. He suggests that the real names were
“ineffable,” _i.e._ only revealed to initiates. Xenocrates, whose date
may be put at 396-314 B.C., seems to have known of a supernal and
infernal Zeus (Clem. Alex. _Strom._ Bk V. c. 11), and a fragment
attributed to Euripides identifies Zeus with Hades (_id._ _loc.
cit._).

Footnote 150:

Plutarch, _de Is. et Os._ c. XXVIII.; Clem. Alex. _Protrept._ c. II.

Footnote 151:

This was noticed by Clement of Alexandria, who (_Strom._ Bk V. c. 14)
says that Homer and Orpheus both “show forth” the Christian doctrine
in this respect. The verse he quotes from Orpheus makes Dionysos both
the father and son of Zeus. Cf. Abel’s _Orphica_, Frag. 237.

Footnote 152:

As in the Orphic verse: “Zeus is a male, Zeus is an immortal virgin,”
Abel, _Orphica_, Fr. 46. Hatch, _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 140, points out
that Xenocrates and the Stoics both made the same assertion. Cf.
authorities quoted by him and Euripides, _Bacchae_, ll. 330-350. A
statue from Smyrna showing a markedly effeminate type of Dionysos is
to be seen at the Ashmolean Museum.

Footnote 153:

Macrobius, _Saturnalia_, lib. I. c. 18, for authorities; also Pindar,
_Threnoi_, X. 8, p. 116 (Bergk); Plutarch, _On the E at Delphi_, c.
IX.

Footnote 154:

Lafaye, _Culte des Divinités d’Alexandrie_, Paris, 1884, pp. 6-12, and
authorities there quoted. Cf. Foucart, _Culte de Dion._ pp. 66, 67.

Footnote 155:

So Plutarch and Tacitus where before quoted. The conflicting
traditions on the subject have been reconciled by Krall, _Tacitus und
der Orient_, Th. I. Bd iv. 83, 84. Cf. Bouché-Leclercq, _Hist. de la
Divination_, t. III. p. 378, n. 1; _id._ _Hist. de Lagides_, t. I. p.
118; Lafaye, _Culte_, etc. pp. 16, 17. There is little doubt that the
statue of Bryaxis represented Asklepios as Bouché-Leclercq (_Rev.
Hist. Rel._ 1902, pp. 26, 27) surmises. Isidore Lévy sums up the whole
question in the _Revue_ last quoted, 1911, pp. 146, 147, and 1913, pp.
308 _sqq._ So Ad. Reinach, _Rev. cit._ pt 2, p. 69. The statue is
described by Rufinus Aquilensis, _Hist. Eccl._ Bk II. c. 23. Cf.
Dionysius, _Periegetes_, ll. 254, 256 (Didot, _Geogr. Gr. mi._ t. II.
p. 116); Amelung, _Rev. Archéol._, 1903, pt 2, pp. 187-204.

Footnote 156:

Probably it had some reference to his character as god of vegetation,
as shown by his epithet of “Frugifer.” The explanation of Macrobius,
_Saturnalia_, I. c. 20, which refers it to the sun, is absurd. Perhaps
it may be connected with his epithet of πολυδέγμων “receiver of many.”
So Æl. Aristides speaks of him as the receiver of souls. See p. 60
_infra_.

Footnote 157:

See last note. The eagle was adopted as a kind of family crest by the
Ptolemies and appears on all their coins. See examples in Mahaffy,
_Emp. of the Ptolemies_, _passim_. What is probably a reproduction of
Bryaxis’ statue is now at Naples and is described by Lafaye, _op.
cit._ p. 274.

Footnote 158:

See Lafaye, pp. 259, 260. Except in amulets, representations of
Harpocrates are not very common. Cf. _P.S.B.A._ 1914, p. 92.

Footnote 159:

Maury in _Revue des Deux Mondes_, Sept. 1855, p. 1073; Mariette, _Le
Sérapeum de Memphis_, ed. Maspero, Paris, 1882, I. pp. 114, 115, 124.

Footnote 160:

Bouché-Leclercq, _Hist. des Lagides_, I. pp. 232, 233. Cf. Mahaffy,
_Empire of Ptolemies_, pp. 204 _sqq._ The Egyptianizing tendencies of
the later Ptolemies shown by the decrees of the priests on the Rosetta
and Canopus Stones were first pointed out by Revillout in the _Revue
Archéologique_, 1877, pp. 331 _sqq._ A new decree of the same kind
under Epiphanes has been published by M. Daressy, _Recueil de Travaux_
etc., 1911, pp. 1 _sqq._

Footnote 161:

Macrobius, _Saturn._ Bk I. c. 7.

Footnote 162:

Foucart, _Les Associations Religieuses_, p. 207, Inscr. 24; _C.I.G._
No. 120. The tablet is now in the British Museum.

Footnote 163:

Lafaye, _Culte_, etc. p. 35; Pausanias, Bk I. c. 18, 4.

Footnote 164:

Lafaye, _op. cit._ pp. 35-388; _id._ _Dictionnaire des Antiquités_ of
Daremberg and Saglio, _s.v._ Isis; Drexler in Roscher’s _Lexikon der
Mythologie_, _s.v._ Isis, esp. p. 379.

Footnote 165:

Lafaye, _op. cit._ p. 40; _C.I.L._ I. 577.

Footnote 166:

Lafaye, see last note.

Footnote 167:

Lafaye, _op. cit._ pp. 44 _sqq._

Footnote 168:

Lafaye, _op. cit._ pp. 44-47. For the story of Marcus Volusius see
Appian, _de Bello Civili_, Bk IV. c. 6, § 47.

Footnote 169:

Tibullus, _Elegiacs_, I. iii. 23; _ibid._ I. vii. 27; Ovid, _Am._ II.
xiii. 7; _id._ _op. cit._ II. xiv. The story of the expulsion is told
by Josephus, _Antiquities_, XVIII. c. 3. Cf. Lafaye, _op. cit._ chap.
III _passim_.

Footnote 170:

_Comicor. Graecor. Fragmenta_ of Didot, pp. 517 and 629, and Lafaye,
_op. cit._ p. 31.

Footnote 171:

Lafaye, _op. et loc. cit._ and especially p. 62.

Footnote 172:

So Parisotti, _Ricerche sul culto de Iside e Serapide_, Roma, 1888, p.
52 _sqq._; and Dill, _Nero to Marcus_, pp. 564, 565: “The history of
the Isiac cult at Rome from Sulla to Nero is really the history of a
great popular religious movement....”

Footnote 173:

See Chapter I, _supra_, pp. 12, 14. Cf. Droysen, _op. cit._ II. p.
471.

Footnote 174:

Macrobius, _Saturn._ Bk I. c. 20. Bouché-Leclercq (_R.H.R._ 1902, t.
XLVI. p. 19, n. 1) says these lines are a forgery of late date. Krall,
_Tacitus_, etc. Th. I, Bk iv., is of the contrary opinion. Nicocreon
of Cyprus was certainly a contemporary of Ptolemy Soter, and helped
him against Perdiccas.

Footnote 175:

Clem. Alex. _Strom._ Bk V. c. 14. So Ælius Aristides, _in Serapidem_,
p. 91 (Dindorf), says that Serapis “is present in all things and fills
the universe.”

Footnote 176:

Lafaye, _Culte_, etc., pp. 306, 307, 324, 325, for examples. Cf.
Inscription from Kios in Bithynia given by Robiou in _Mélanges Graux_,
Paris, 1884, pp. 601, 602; Parisotti, _op. cit._ p. 55.

Footnote 177:

Theocritus, _Idyll_, XV.; Damascius, _Vit. Isidor._ 106; Socrates,
_Hist. Eccl._ Bk III. c. 23. In _Le Culte d’Adonis-Thammuz_, Paris,
1901 (pp. 51-54, 69, 109), M. Ch. Vellay has shown the fusion in early
Christian times of the legends of Adonis, Atys and Osiris.

Footnote 178:

Frazer, _Golden Bough_, Part IV, p. 357 and n. 1; cf. Stephen of
Byzantium, _s.v._ Ἀμαθοῦς; Döllinger, _Jud. und Heid._ I. p. 145;
Decharme in Daremberg and Saglio, _s.v._ Cybele for authorities.

Footnote 179:

Julian, _ad Reg. Sol._ Orat. IV. cc. 135, 136; Eusebius, _Praep. Ev._
Bk III. c. 15; Kenyon, _Greek Papyri in British Museum_, 1893, p. 65;
Wessely, _Griechische Zauberpapyri von Paris_, etc., Wien, 1888, pp.
61 _sqq._; Leemans, _Papyri Graeci Mus. Ant. Pub. Lugduni-Batavi_,
Leyden, 1885, II. pp. 26, 27; Parthey, _Zwei griech. Zauberpapyri_,
Berlin, 1866, p. 127.

Footnote 180:

Apuleius, _Metamorphoses_, Bk XI. c. 5.

Footnote 181:

So Ramsay, _Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia_, Oxford, 1895, I. p. 92,
says that “the essential idea” of the mysteries was that all the gods
there worshipped were but different forms of the one. In the “Greek
Worship of Serapis and Isis,” I have endeavoured to show how this idea
was elaborated in the cult of the Alexandrian divinities.

Footnote 182:

Homer, _Iliad_, XXI. 462 (translation by Lang, Leaf and Myers).

Footnote 183:

Cf. Penelope’s speech on the jealousy of the gods, _Odyssey_, XXIII.
208.

Footnote 184:

Sayce, _Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia_ (Gifford Lectures),
Edin. 1902, p. 201; Naville, _The Old Egyptian Faith_, pp. 308, 309;
Maspero, _Ét. Égyptol_. I. p. 163 and II. p. 277.

Footnote 185:

Apuleius, _Met._ Bk XI. c. 15.

Footnote 186:

_Ibid._ c. 25.

Footnote 187:

Aristides, _in Serapid._ p. 89.

Footnote 188:

_Ibid._ _loc. cit._

Footnote 189:

_Ibid._ p. 90.

Footnote 190:

_Ibid._ p. 97.

Footnote 191:

_Ibid._ _loc. cit._

Footnote 192:

_Ibid._ p. 100.

Footnote 193:

_Odyssey_, XI. 491 _sqq._ (Butcher and Lang’s translation).

Footnote 194:

Pindar, _Threnoi_, Frag. X. p. 102, Cod. Bö.

Footnote 195:

Sophocles, _Triptolemus_ (Plutarch, _de Audiendis Poetis_, 21 F),
Frag. 348 of Didot.

Footnote 196:

Homeric _Hymn to Demeter_, ll. 480 _sqq._ So an inscription on the
statue of a hierophant quoted by M. Foucart, _Myst. d’El._ p. 55, says
that death to the initiated is not an evil but a good.

Footnote 197:

Apuleius, _Met._ Bk XI. c. 6.

Footnote 198:

Aristides, _in Serapid._ p. 93.

Footnote 199:

_Ibid._ p. 95.

Footnote 200:

_Ibid._ p. 96.

Footnote 201:

Maspero says (“Les Hypogées Royaux de Thebes,” _Ét. Égyptol._ II. p.
178) that “if ever there were in Pharaonic Egypt mysteries and
initiates, as there were in Greece and Greek Egypt,” it was in the
time of decay evidenced by the rare books preserved in the tombs of
the kings of the XXth and later Dynasties. Later, _ibid._ p. 180, he
says that they must have been confined to a very small class. Cf.
_ibid._ p. 278.

Footnote 202:

_E.g._ the mystic marriage of Zeus or Dionysos with Demeter, which
according to Hippolytus, _Philosophumena_, Bk V. c. 1, § 8, p. 171,
Cruice, and Clement of Alexandria, _Protrept._ c. II., formed the
crowning scene of the Eleusinian Mysteries. At Dendera, the
corresponding union of Osiris and Isis, from which, according to M.
Foucart, the Eleusinian legend was derived, was depicted in the most
realistic way on the temple walls. See Mariette, _Dendérah_, Paris,
1875, t. IV. pl. 65 _sqq._, or Budge, _G.E._ pp. 132-137.

Footnote 203:

Apuleius, _Met._ Bk XI. c. 21, _queis tamen tuto possint magna
religionis committi silentia, numen deae soleat elicere_.

Footnote 204:

_Ibid._ cc. 22, 23.

Footnote 205:

_Op. cit._ end of c. 23.

Footnote 206:

Perhaps this is the meaning of the formula said by Clement of
Alexandria, _Protrept._ c. II., to be repeated by the initiates at
Eleusis: “I have fasted ... I have drunk of the cyceon ... I have
entered into the chest (παστός).”

Footnote 207:

Apuleius, _Met._ c. 24.

Footnote 208:

See last note.

Footnote 209:

Ra was always the material sun; while Horus was probably in ancient
times the god of the sky: Maspero, _Ét. Égyptol._ t. II. p. 229. With
the Middle Empire the emblem of Ra began to be added to that of Horus
as the “crest” of the Pharaoh’s cognizance, showing that the king was
himself regarded as the representative of a composite divinity,
Horus-Ra. Cf. “Titles of Thinite Kings,” _P.S.B.A._ 1908, p. 89.

Footnote 210:

Proclus, _in Timaeum Platonia_, I. 30 D. (Schneidewin).

Footnote 211:

Minucius Felix, _Octavius_, c. XXI.; Arnobius, _adv. Gentes_, Bk I. c.
36; Athenagoras, _Presbeia_, c. XXII. Cf. also Griffith and Thompson,
_Stories of High Priests of Memphis_, pp. 107, 121; Maspero, _Ét.
Égyptol._ II. p. 246, and especially p. 361; _P.S.B.A._ 1914, pp. 92,
93.

Footnote 212:

Apuleius, _Met._ Bk XI. c. 27.

Footnote 213:

_Op. cit._ c. 28.

Footnote 214:

Ælius Aristides (_in Serapid._ p. 88) refuses to discuss this; but
Athenagoras (see note 5 p. 63, _supra_) says that when the members of
the body of Osiris were found, they were presented to Isis with the
remark that they were the fruits of the vine Dionysus and that Semele
was the vine itself. But see p. 65, _infra_. Plutarch, _de Is. et Os._
c. LXXIX. says that “the priests of these days,” meaning, as is
evident from the context, the priests of the Alexandrian divinities,
“try to conceal” the fact that Osiris rules over the dead. The old
religion of Egypt never did; but perhaps this, too, was part of the
secret teaching of the Alexandrian Mysteries.

Footnote 215:

Maspero, _Ét. Égyptol._ II. pp. 254-255, 361, 446; _P.S.B.A._ 1914, p.
92.

Footnote 216:

Apuleius, _Met._ c. 27.

Footnote 217:

“Osiris-Bacchus” in _Ägypt. Zeitschr._ 1878, p. 106.

Footnote 218:

Unless we suppose that the statue was one of those used in the
mysteries, see note 3 p. 64, _supra_. Plutarch, however, in his
address to Klea makes no secret of the identification. See _de Is. et
Os._ c. XXXV.

Footnote 219:

Plato, _Phaedr._ in Abel’s _Orphica_, Fragm. 228. Olympiodorus says
that the verse comes from Orpheus.

Footnote 220:

Dyer, _Gods in Greece_, p. 209. He thinks the crowd sometimes numbered
30,000, relying upon the story in Herodotus, Bk VIII. c. 65, of the
Spartan who before the battle of Marathon heard the Iacchos-song sung
“as if by 30,000 persons.” Cf. Foucart, _Les Gds. Myst._ p. 136.

Footnote 221:

Moret, _Le Culte Divin Journalier en Égypte_, Paris, 1902, p. 9.

Footnote 222:

Apuleius, _Met._ c. 20. Lafaye, _Culte_, etc. p. 136, gives the
“trousseau” of a statue of Isis found in Spain including earrings,
necklaces, etc.

Footnote 223:

See the scene in the Herculaneum fresco described on p. 68, _infra_.

Footnote 224:

Martial, Bk X. Epig. 48. Apuleius, _Met._ c. 17, describes the
ceremonies which included a solemn dismissal of the people, and the
kissing by them of the feet of a silver statue of the goddess.

Footnote 225:

Apuleius, _Met._ c. 19.

Footnote 226:

Lafaye, _Culte_, etc. pp. 118, 119, and Plate facing p. 192. Cf. Ovid,
Propertius and Tibullus, where quoted by Lafaye, _op. cit._ p. 120.

Footnote 227:

Ovid, _Pontic. Epist._ Bk I. Ep. 1, v. 51.

Footnote 228:

The Baron von Bissing thinks this is a copy of the Serapeum of
Alexandria. See _Transactions_ of the Third International Congress of
Religions, Oxford, 1908, I. pp. 225 _sqq._

Footnote 229:

Is this the _bacchos_ or short rod carried by the faithful in the
Iacchos-procession at Eleusis? See Scholiast in _Knights_ of
Aristophanes, l. 408 (p. 48 of Didot).

Footnote 230:

Hippolytus puts it quite plainly: “Now Osiris is water.” See
_Philosophumena_, Bk V. c. 7, p. 149, Cruice. Cf. Lafaye, _Culte_,
etc. p. 115. So Origen, _c. Cels._ Bk V. c. 38, says that the fables
of Osiris and Isis lead men to worship cold water and the moon.

Footnote 231:

von Bissing in the paper quoted in note 1 p. 68, _supra_, suggests
that this is the dance of the god Bes.

Footnote 232:

Minucius Felix, _Octavius_, c. 21.

Footnote 233:

The swallow refers to the story that Isis changed herself into a
swallow who flitted round the pillar containing the coffin of Osiris.
Plutarch, _de Is. et Os._ c. XVI.

Footnote 234:

Evidently a confusion between Horus and Osiris which would have been
impossible had not the Isiacists looked upon Horus as Osiris re-born.
Cf. Lactantius, _Institutes_, Bk I. c. 21, where the same confusion
occurs; _P.S.B.A._ 1914, p. 93.

Footnote 235:

The “dog-headed” Anubis.

Footnote 236:

Juvenal, _Satir._ VI. l. 533; _ibid._ VIII. l. 30.

Footnote 237:

Lafaye, _Culte_, etc. p. 128.

Footnote 238:

Lafaye, _Culte_, etc. p. 120.

Footnote 239:

Apuleius, _Met._ cc. 9, 10, 11.

Footnote 240:

Is this the “golden bough” of initiation? Cf. Baillet,
“Osiris-Bacchus,” cited p. 65, _supra_.

Footnote 241:

Probably the _pudendum_ of Osiris. See Hippolytus, _Philosophumena_,
Bk V. c. 7, p. 149, Cruice; Socrates, _Hist. Eccl._ Bk V. c. 16; Clem.
Alex. _Protrept._ c. II., says the Corybantes did the same thing with
that of Bacchus.

Footnote 242:

Lafaye in Daremberg and Saglio’s _Dict. des Antiq._ _s.v._ Isis.

Footnote 243:

See note 3 p. 68, _supra_. Cf. Leemans, _Papyri Gr._ pp. 26, 27.

Footnote 244:

Maspero, _Ét. Égyptol._ II. p. 345, says this Nu was “neither the
primordial water, nor the sky, but a very ancient god, common to all
humanity,” whom he compares to the Thian of the Chinese, the Dyaus of
the pre-Vedic, and the Uranos-Oceanos of the pre-Hellenic peoples. “At
the beginning,” he continues, “he is himself the Celestial Ocean.”

Footnote 245:

Apuleius, _Met._ Bk XI. c. 16.

Footnote 246:

The bearers of the sacred Pastos (box or coffin?). He says elsewhere
that this particular college dated from “the days of Sulla,” _i.e._
87-84 B.C.

Footnote 247:

The reading has been contested, but is well established. Cf. the
concluding words of the Mass: “Ite, missa est.”

Footnote 248:

“_Una quae es omnia_,” _C.I.N._ 3580. The stone was found at Capua.

Footnote 249:

Apuleius, _Met._ Bk XI. c. 5.

Footnote 250:

Plutarch, _Aristides_, c. V.

Footnote 251:

Apuleius, _Met._ cc. 21, 28, 30.

Footnote 252:

See p. 48, _supra_. Oracles given in dreams were, however, an old
institution in Egypt. See the dream of Thothmes IV concerning the
Sphinx, Breasted, _History of Egypt_, p. 325, and _Ancient Records_,
Chicago 1906, vol. II. No. 815.

Footnote 253:

Tacitus, _Hist._ Bk IV. cc. 81, 82.

Footnote 254:

Asklepios or Esculapius was one of the gods absorbed by Serapis. It is
most probable that the great statue by Bryaxis in the Alexandrian
Serapeum was originally an Asklepios. See Bouché-Leclercq, _Rev. de
l’Hist. des Rel._ 1902, pp. 26, 27, 28. There seems also to have been
a chapel to him in the Greek Serapeum at Memphis. See Brunet de
Presle, “Le Sérapéum de Memphis,” Paris, 1865, pp. 261-263. Cf.
Forshall, _Greek Papyri in the British Museum_, 1839, p. 33, and note
1 p. 80, _infra_.

Footnote 255:

Josephus, _Antiquities_, Bk XVIII. cc. 3, 4.

Footnote 256:

Lovatelli, _Il Culto d’Iside in Roma_, Roma, 1891, p. 174; Ovid,
_Pontic. Epist._ Bk I. Ep. I.

Footnote 257:

As M. Lafaye (_Culte_, etc. p. 132) points out, the hierophant in
Apuleius calls the other priests “his company,” _suus numerus_ (_Met._
c. 21).

Footnote 258:

For all these, see Lafaye, _op. cit._ chap. VII: _Le Sacerdoce_.

Footnote 259:

Lafaye, _op. cit._ p. 150.

Footnote 260:

These fragments are scattered among the different European museums.
Some are in the Vatican Library and were published by Mgr. Angelo Mai
in 1833 (Brunet de Presle, “Les Papyri Grecs du Louvre,” _Mém. de
l’Acad. des Inscript._ XVIII. pt 2 (1865), p. 16), others in the
Leyden Museum (Leemans, _Papyri Graeci_, I. pp. 6 _sqq._), others in
the Louvre (Brunet de Presle, _op. cit._ p. 22), and the largest
number in the British Museum (Kenyon, _Greek Papyri_, p. 1). The whole
story, so far as it has been ascertained, is told by Brunet de Presle,
_op. cit._ pp. 261-263, and by Sir Frederic Kenyon, _op. cit._ pp.
1-5, and the questions arising out of it are admirably summed up by M.
Bouché-Leclercq in his article, “Les Reclus du Sérapéum de Memphis” in
_Mélanges Perrot_, Paris, 1903, p. 17.

Footnote 261:

Matth. xxiii. 11. Cf. the Pope’s title of “Servant of the Servants of
God” (_Servus servorum Dei_).

Footnote 262:

Julian in his letters (_Ep._ 52) speaks of Alexandria even in his time
as being given up to the worship of Serapis. It is probable that in
this, as in other matters, the philosophic Emperor believed what he
wished to believe. Yet his contemporary, Ammianus Marcellinus, _Hist._
Bk XXII. c. 16, § 20, speaks of the elements of the sacred rites being
still preserved there in secret books, by which he seems to be
referring to the worship of the Alexandrian divinities.

Footnote 263:

See Renan, _Hibbert Lectures_, 1884, p. 197, for authorities.

Footnote 264:

Orelli, _Inscript. Latin. select._ pp. 406-412. All these have now
been transferred to the _Corp. Inscr. Latin._ _q.v._

Footnote 265:

See note 2 p. 82, _supra_.

Footnote 266:

Gibbon, _Decline and Fall_ (Bury’s edition), III. p. 200.

Footnote 267:

Theodoret, _Hist. Eccl._ Bk V. c. 23; Socrates, _Hist. Eccl._ Bk V. c.
16 Sozomen, _Hist. Eccl._ Bk VII. c. 15.

Footnote 268:

See note 1 p. 73, _supra_.

Footnote 269:

Socrates, _op. cit._ Bk V. c. 17.

Footnote 270:

Renan, _Marc Aurèle_, Paris, 1882, p. 630, for authority. Cf. Gibbon,
_Decline and Fall_ (Bury’s edn.), IV. pp. 78, 79.

Footnote 271:

Gibbon, _op. cit._ III.

Footnote 272:

Drexler in _Roscher’s Lexikon_, _s.v._ Isis. Cf. Maury, _Rel. de la
Grèce_, t. II. p. 222.

Footnote 273:

Amm. Marcell. _op. cit._ Bk XXII. c. 13. According to Deubner, _De
incubatione_, Leipzig, 1900, c. IV. Cyril of Alexandria had to
establish the worship of two medical saints in the Egyptian hamlet of
Menuthis near Canopus to induce the people to forget the miraculous
cures formerly wrought there in the sanctuary of Isis.

Footnote 274:

Bury in Gibbon, _op. cit._ vol. IV. Appendix 3, p. 527.

Footnote 275:

Cf. Apuleius’ description of the veiling of the women’s heads in the
Isis procession, p. 72, _supra_.

Footnote 276:

A writer in Maspero’s _Recueil de Travaux_ for 1912, p. 75, mentions
that the Isiac _sistrum_ or rattle is still used by the Christians of
Abyssinia.

Footnote 277:

Vopiscus, _Saturninus_ (_Hist. August. Scriptor._ VI. t. II. pp.
718-730). The authenticity of the letter has been defended by
Lightfoot, _Apostolic Fathers_, 1891, I. p. 481. The date is fairly
well fixed by the death of Antinous in 122 A.D., and Hadrian’s visit
to Syria a few years later. Ramsay (_Church in Roman Empire_, 1903, p.
336) makes it 134 A.D.

Footnote 278:

Renan, _Marc Aur._ p. 433.

Footnote 279:

In the Catholic Church at this period the Eucharist was celebrated, if
we may judge from the _First Apology_ of Justin Martyr (c. LVI), in a
very simple manner, but apparently in the presence of all the
faithful. In that part of the Apostolical Constitutions (Bk VIII. c.
66), which is probably later in date than Justin, the catechumens,
heterodox, and unbelievers are directed to be excluded before
consecration (see Hatch, _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 301). It does not
follow that the ceremonial was as simple with the Gnostics. Marcus is
said by Irenaeus (Bk I. c. 6, pp. 116, 117, Harvey) to have made the
mixture of wine and water in the cup to appear purple and to overflow
into a larger vessel; while similar prodigies attend the celebration
in the _Pistis Sophia_ and the _Bruce Papyrus_, for which see Chap. X,
_infra_. As such thaumaturgy was intended to astonish the onlookers,
it is probable that the elements were displayed before the whole
congregation. That the later form of the ritual of the Christian
sacraments was taken from the Gnostics, see Hatch, _Hibbert Lectures_,
pp. 295-305, and 307-309, and de Faye, _Introduction à l’Ét. du
Gnosticisme_, Paris, 1903, pp. 106, 107.

Footnote 280:

Kenyon, _Greek Papyri_, p. 105. Sir Frederick Kenyon questions the
_theocrasia_ of Serapis and Esculapius, but see Bouché-Leclercq, _Rev.
Hist. Rel._ 1902, p. 30.

Footnote 281:

Revillout, _Rev. Égyptol._ 1880, p. 172.

Footnote 282:

“The Names of Demons in the Magic Papyri,” _P.S.B.A._ 1901, pp. 41
_sqq._

Footnote 283:

Lafaye, _Culte_, etc. p. 96, and inscriptions there quoted.

Footnote 284:

Budge, “Papyrus of Nesi-Amsu,” p. 442.

Footnote 285:

See “The Greek Worship of Serapis and Isis,” _P.S.B.A._ 1914, pp. 93,
94.

Footnote 286:

That the Trinitarian doctrine of the Creed of Nicaea evolved gradually
will now, I suppose, be admitted by all. Mr Conybeare, _Apology of
Apollonius_, 1894, p. 14, probably goes too far when he says that “the
doctrine of the Trinity in Unity” is not met with till the end of the
third century. So Guignebert, _L’Évolution des Dogmes_, Paris, 1910,
pp. 293, 294, tells us how in his opinion the dogma followed “at some
distance” the assertion of the Divinity of Christ. Harnack, _Expansion
of Christianity_, Eng. ed. 1904, II. pp. 257, 258, seems to attribute
the first formulation of the dogma to Tertullian who, according to
him, owed something to the Gnostics. It is at any rate plain that
neither Hermas, nor the Apologists, nor Irenaeus, nor Clement of
Alexandria, nor Origen were in accord with later orthodoxy on the
point. Monsignor Duchesne, _Early History of the Christian Church_,
Eng. ed. 1909, p. 20, puts the matter very frankly when he suggests
that the average Christian troubled himself very little about it.
“This is the Christian doctrine of the Trinity,” he says after
defining it, “not certainly as it was formulated later in opposition
to transient heresies, but as it appeared to the general conscience of
the early Christians.... The generality of Christians in the first
century even in apostolic days stood here almost exactly at the same
point as present-day Christians. Theologians knew, or at any rate
said, far more about it.”

CHAPTER III
THE ORIGIN OF GNOSTICISM

The worship of the Alexandrian gods was in every sense a religion. Not
only did it form a common bond between men and women of different rank
and origin, but it had its roots in the idea of propitiating the
spiritual world. In the belief of its votaries, the blessings of health,
of riches, of long life, and of happiness in this world and the next,
were the gifts of Serapis and Isis, which they might extend to or
withhold from mortals as seemed to them good[287]. But now we approach
beliefs and practices, for the most part formed into organized cults,
which were founded on the opposite idea. Those treated of in this and
the seven succeeding chapters all have as their common root the notion
that it is possible instead of propitiating to compel the spiritual
powers. If these beings, greater and stronger than man as they were
thought to be, were once invoked by their real names and with the proper
ceremonies, it was said that the benefits demanded of them would follow
as a matter of course without regard to the state of mind of the
applicant and without the volition of the invisible ones themselves
entering into play. This idea appears so early in the history of
religions that it is thought by some to be the very source and origin of
them all. A number of able writers, of whom Lord Avebury[288] was one of
the earliest, and Dr Frazer[289] is one of the latest examples, contend
that there was a time in the history of mankind when man trusted
entirely to his supposed powers of compulsion in his dealings with the
invisible world, and that the attempt to propitiate it only developed
out of this at a later period. It may be so, and the supporters of this
theory are certainly not wrong when they go on to say that the same idea
probably inspired those earliest attempts at the conquest of Nature
which formed the first gropings of man towards natural science[290]. Up
till now, however, they have failed to produce any instance of a people
in a low state of culture who practise magic—as this attempted
compulsion of the spiritual world is generally called—to the exclusion
of every form of religion; and until they do so, their thesis cannot be
considered as established. On the contrary, all researches into the
matter lead to the conclusion that magic generally begins to show itself
some time after the religious beliefs of a people have taken an
organized shape, and most prominently when they have passed their period
of greatest activity[291]. This is particularly noticeable in the case
of Ancient Egypt, which affords, as M. George Foucart has lately shown
with much skill[292], a far more lively and complete picture of the
evolution of religious ideas than can be found in the beliefs of
savages. Here we see beliefs and practices, once religious in every
sense of the term, gradually becoming stereotyped and petrified until
all memory of their origin and reason is lost, and the religion itself
lapses into the systematized sorcery before referred to.

This phenomenon appears with great regularity in history; and it is an
observation very easily verified that the practice of magic generally
spreads in places and times where the popular religion has become
outworn[293]. As, moreover, enquiry shows us that words taken from the
rituals of dead faiths play the chief part in all ceremonial magic[294],
we might be led to conclude that magic was but an unhealthy growth from,
or the actual corruption of, religion. But if this were the case, we
should find magicians despoiling for their charms and spells the rituals
of cults formerly practised in their own countries only; whereas it is
more often from foreign faiths and languages that they borrow. The
tendency of all peoples to look upon earlier and more primitive races
than themselves as the depositaries of magical secrets is one of the
best known phenomena[295]. Thus, in modern India, it is the aboriginal
Bhils and Gonds who are resorted to as sorcerers by the Aryans who have
supplanted them[296], while the Malays seem to draw their magic almost
entirely from the beliefs of their Arab conquerors[297]. So, too, in
Egypt we find that the magicians of the XIXth Dynasty made use in their
spells of foreign words which seem to be taken from Central African
languages[298], and those of early Christian times use Hebrew phrases
with which they must for the first time have become acquainted not very
long before[299].

At the same time there are many proofs that magic is something more than
a by-product of religion. No people, however backward, who do not
practise magic in some or other of its forms, have yet been discovered;
while at the same time it has always persisted among those nations who
consider themselves the most highly civilized. Thus, we find the
Mincopies who inhabit the Andaman Islands and are thought by some to be
the lowest of mankind, threatening with their arrows the spirit that is
supposed to cause tempests, and lighting fires on the graves of their
dead chiefs to drive him away[300]. At the other end of the scale we
have the story of the Scottish Covenanter,

“John Scrimgeour, minister of Kinghorn, who, having a beloved child
sick to death of the crewels, was free to expostulate with his Maker
with such impatience of displeasure, and complaining so bitterly,
that at length it was said unto him, that he was heard for that
time, but that he was requested to use no such boldness in time
coming”:

and a similar story is told of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the
Jesuits[301]. It seems then that magic is so inextricably intertwined
with religion that the history of one of them cannot be effectually
separated from that of the other, and neither of them can be assigned
any priority in time. This does not mean, however, that they are
connected in origin, and it is probable that the late Sir Alfred Lyall
was right when he said that magic and religion are in their essence
antagonistic and correspond to two opposing tendencies of the human
mind[302]. The same tendencies lead one man to ask for what he wants
while another will prefer to take it by force, and it is even possible
that the same alternative of choice is sometimes manifested in the lower
animals[303].

Now it is evident that in the practice of cults where the idea of the
compulsion of the invisible powers is prominent, the essential factor
will be the _knowledge_ of the proper means to be adopted to attain the
end sought. But this does not at once strike the observer, because at
first sight these appear to be the same as those used in the cults which
rest on the idea of propitiation. Prayers and sacrifices indeed appear
in magical quite as often as in the case of propitiatory rites, but the
reason of them is entirely different. Prayer in a religion—could any
such be found—entirely free from all admixture of magic or compulsion,
would be based on the attempt to move the pity of the divinity invoked
for the miserable and abased state of the suppliant, or by some other
means. A striking example of this can be found in the Assyrian prayers
from the palace of Assur-bani-pal, which might be, as the rubric informs
us, made to any god[304]. Says the suppliant:

“O my god my sins are many, my transgressions are great.
I sought for help, and none took my hand.
I wept, and none stood by my side;
I cried aloud, and there was none that heard me.
I am in trouble and hiding, and dare not look up.
To my god, the merciful one, I turn myself, I utter my prayer.
The feet of my goddess I kiss and water with tears....
O Lord, cast not away thy servant....”

The same spirit may be noticed in the early religions of the Greeks,
although here the worshipper uses, as his means of propitiation,
flattery rather than entreaty, as when the Achilles of the _Iliad_ tries
to move Zeus by an enumeration of his different titles, addressing him
as “Father Zeus, that rulest from Ida, most glorious, most great[305],”
and Athena is appealed to by Nestor in the _Odyssey_ as “Daughter of
Zeus, driver of the spoil, the maiden of Triton[306]” and so on. As,
however, magical ideas come to the front, we find these prayers giving
way to others containing neither appeals for mercy nor flattery, but
merely long strings of names and attributes, all designed to show an
acquaintance with the antecedents and supposed natural disposition of
the divinity addressed, and inspired by the fear that the one name which
might exert a compelling effect upon his answer might accidentally have
been omitted[307]. So, too, the sacrifices, which in early times were
chosen on the sole principle of giving to the god what was best and
costliest, came later to be regulated by the supposed knowledge of what
was especially appropriate to him for reasons based on sympathetic magic
or the association of ideas. Thus, swine were sacrificed to Demeter,
he-goats to Dionysos, cattle and horses to Poseidon, and rams to
Heracles[308], instead of the animals, chosen only for their youth and
beauty and with or without gilded horns, that we read about in the
_Iliad_ and _Odyssey_[309]. Clearly such distinctions necessitate a much
closer knowledge of the divine nature than where the answer to prayer or
sacrifice depends merely on the benevolence of the deity.

It is also evident that such ideas will give rise to curiosity with
regard to the nature and history of the gods, to their relations with
one another, and to the extent and division of their rule over Nature,
which would hardly affect those who think that all events depend simply
upon the nod of the super-human powers[310]. Hence it is evident that
one of the first consequences of a large admixture of magic in a
religion will be a great increase of myths and legends in which the
actions of the gods will be recounted with more or less authority, and
some observed natural phenomenon will be pointed to as evidence of the
truth of the stories narrated[311]. Moreover, the means by which the
consequence of any voluntary or involuntary transgression of the
supposed commands of the gods can be averted will be eagerly sought
after, and these, whether they take the form of purifications,
lustrations, or other expiatory rites, will all be strictly magical in
character, and will generally consist in the more or less detailed
representation of some episode in their history, on the well-known
principle of magic that any desired effect can be produced by imitating
it[312]. In all these cases it is knowledge and not conduct which is
required, and thus it is that _gnosticism_ or a belief in the importance
of acquaintance with the divine world, its motives, and the influences
to which it is subject, enters into religion. Then it comes about that
man begins to trouble himself about the origin of the universe and its
end, the cause of his own appearance upon the earth, and the position
that he occupies in the scale of being. Hence theogonies or tales
relating how the gods came into existence, and their kinship to one
another, cosmogonies or accounts of the creation of the world, and
apocalypses or stories professing to reveal the lot of man after death
and the fate to which our universe is destined, take shape to an extent
unknown to religions which remain merely or chiefly propitiatory.

There is, however, another and a less sublime kind of knowledge which is
everywhere associated with the appearance of gnosticism. This is the
knowledge of ceremonies and formulas, of acts to be done and of words to
be said, which are thought to exercise a compelling effect on the
supra-sensible world, and which we may class together under the generic
name of ceremonial magic. Our acquaintance with these at the period
under discussion has lately been much enlarged by the decipherment and
publication of the so-called Magic Papyri found for the most part in
Egypt and now scattered throughout the principal museums of Europe[313].
These turn out on investigation to be the manuals or handbooks of
professional sorcerers or magicians, and to range in date from the IIIrd
century before to the IVth or Vth after Christ. They contain, for the
most part without any order or coherence, details of the different
ceremonies used for the personal aggrandizement of the user, for gaining
the love of women and (conversely) for putting hate between a man and
his wife; for healing disease and casting out devils; for causing
dreams, discovering thieves, and gaining knowledge of the thoughts of
men and of things past and to come; and for obtaining, by other than
direct means, success in athletic competitions. In others, we find
directions for evoking gods or spirits who may thus be bound to the
service of the magician, for raising the dead for necromantic purposes,
and for the destruction of enemies, mingled with technical recipes for
making ink and for the compounding of drugs. A feature common to nearly
all these charms is their illustration by certain roughly-drawn pictures
and formulas which seem at first to be mere strings of letters without
sense.

A few specimens of these charms may help to make this description
clearer. In a papyrus now in the British Museum which is said from the
writing to date from the IVth century A.D.[314], we find the following
charms for obtaining an oracular response in a dream:

“Take of the inner leaves of the laurel and of virgin earth and
wormwood seeds flour and of the herb cynocephalium (and I have heard
from a certain man of Heracleopolis [now Ahnas el-Medineh] that he
takes of the leaves of an olive-tree newly sprouted).... It is
carried by a virgin boy ground up with the materials aforesaid and
the white of an ibis’ egg is mixed with the whole compound. There
must also be an image of Hermes clad in the chlamys, and the moon
must be rising in the sign of Aries or Leo or Sagittarius. Now let
Hermes hold the herald’s wand, and do thou write the spell on
hieratic paper. And take a goose’s windpipe, as I also learned from
the Heracleopolite, and insert it into the figure so as to be able
to blow into it. When you wish for an oracular answer, write the
spell and the matter in hand, and having cut a hair from your head,
wrap it up in the paper and tie it with a Phoenician knot, and put
it at the feet of the caduceus, or, as some say, place it upon it.
Let the figure be in a shrine of limewood, and when you wish for an
oracular answer place the shrine with the god at your head, and make
invocation, offering frankincense on an altar and some earth from a
place where there is growing corn, and one lump of sal ammoniac. Let
this be placed at your head and lie down to sleep after first saying
this, but giving no answer to anyone who may address you:

“Hermes, lord of the world, inner circle of the moon
Round and square, originator of the words of the tongue
Persuading to justice, wearer of the chlamys, with winged sandals
Rolling an ethereal course under the lower parts of the earth
Guide of spirits, greatest eye of the sun
Author of all manner of speech, rejoicing with lights
Those mortals whose life being finished are under the lower parts of
the earth.
Thou art called the foreknower of destinies, and the divine vision
Sending oracles both by day and by night.
Thou dost heal all the ills of mortals with thy medicines.
Come hither, blessed one, greatest son of perfect memory
Appear propitious in thy own shape, and send a propitious form
That by the excellence of thy divining art I, a hallowed man, may
receive what I need.
O Lord grant my prayer, appear and grant me a true oracle!

“Make the adjuration at the risings of the sun and moon.” (The
inscription to be written on the paper wrappings of the figure.)

“_Huesemigadôn, Orthô Baubô, noê odêre soire soire
Kanthara, Ereschchigal, sankistê, dodekakistê_” etc.

In this charm we have nearly all the typical elements of the magic of
the period. The windpipe of a goose or other long-necked animal was, we
learn from Hippolytus, inserted into the hollow head of the metal statue
of the god, in order that the priest might use it as a speaking tube,
and thus cause the statue to give forth oracular responses in a hollow
voice[315]. Hence its use would be thought particularly appropriate when
an oracle was sought, although in circumstances where it would be
ineffective for purposes of deceit. The fragment of a hymn in hexameter
verse to a god whom it addresses as Hermes is doubtless of great
antiquity and taken from the ritual of some half-Greek, half-Oriental
worship such as we may imagine to have been paid to the Cabiri, in which
a god identified by the Greeks with their own Hermes was particularly
honoured. The words of the spell to be written on the paper are by no
means the mere gibberish they seem, although they have been so corrupted
that it is almost impossible to recognise even the language in which
they are written. The word _Huesemigadôn_ is, however, an epithet or
name of Pluto the ruler of Hades, and occurs in that connection, as has
been shown elsewhere, in many of these magic spells[316]. The _Orthô
Baubô_ which follows it is generally found in the same context and seems
to cover the name of that Baubo who plays a prominent part in the
Mysteries of Eleusis and appears to have been confused in later times
with Persephone, the spouse of Pluto[317]. _Ereshchigal_ [Eres-ki-gal],
again, is a word borrowed from the first or Sumerian inhabitants of
Babylonia, and means in Sumerian “the Lady of the great (_i.e._ the
nether) world,” being a title frequently used for Allat the goddess of
hell, who appears in the very old story of the Descent of Ishtar and is
the Babylonian counterpart of Persephone[318]. Why she should have been
called _dodekakistê_ or the 12th cannot now be said; but it is possible
that we have here a relic of the curious Babylonian habit of giving
numbers as well as names to the gods, or rather of identifying certain
numbers with certain divinities[319]. On the whole, therefore, it may be
judged that the words of the spell once formed part of the ritual of a
Sumerian worship long since forgotten and that they travelled across
Western Asia and were translated as far as might be into Greek, when
that language became the common tongue of the civilized world after
Alexander’s conquests.

This may be taken for a spell having its origin in, or at any rate
depending for its efficacy upon, the relics of some Western Asiatic
faith. The following taken from another papyrus now in the Bibliothèque
Nationale at Paris shows acquaintance with the Egyptian
religion—probably through the Alexandrian or Isiacist form of it
described in Chapter II—and is perhaps a more salient example of the
compulsive element common to all magic, but particularly associated with
the Egyptian magicians. It is given in the shape of a letter purporting
to be addressed by a certain Nephotes to the Pharaoh Psamtik whom the
Greeks called Psammetichos, and who managed, as has been said above, to
drive out the Ethiopians and to rule Egypt by the help of Greek
mercenaries. There is no reason to suppose that this attribution is
anything more than a charlatanic attempt to assign to it a respectable
origin; but it is probable from certain indications that it was really
taken from an earlier hieratic or demotic MS. of pre-Christian times. It
has been published by Dr Karl Wessely of Vienna[320] and is written in
Greek characters of apparently the IIIrd century A.D.

“Nephotes to Psammetichos king of Egypt, the ever living, greeting.
Since the great god [Serapis?] has restored to thee an eternal
kingdom, and Nature has made thee an excellent adept, and I am also
willing to show forth to thee the love of art which is mine—I have
sent to thee this ceremony, a holy rite made perfect with all ease
of working, which having tested, you will be amazed at the
unexpected nature of this arrangement. You will see with your own
eyes in the bowl in what day or night you will and in what place you
will. You will see the god in the water, receiving the word from the
god in what verses you will. [It will reach also?] the world-ruler
and if you ask a question of him he will speak even of all the other
things you seek. [A description of the ointment to be used doubtless
once followed, but has been omitted in the Paris MS.[321]] Having
thus anointed yourself and having put together before the rising of
the sun in this form (?) what things you will, when the third day of
the moon has come, go with the mystagogue upon the roof of the
house, and spread upon the earth a clean linen cloth, and having
crowned yourself with black ivy at the 5th hour after noon, lie down
naked on the linen cloth, and order him [the mystagogue] to bind
your eyes with a bandage of black linen; and having laid yourself
down like a corpse [or, on your back?], close your eyes, making the
sign of consecration towards the sun with these words:—

“O mighty Typhon of the sceptre on high, sceptred ruler, God of
Gods. King _Aberamenthôu_[322], hill shaker, bringer of thunder,
hurricane, who lightens by night, hot-natured one, rock shaker,
destroyer of wells, dasher of waves, who disturbs the deep with
movement. _Io erbêt autauimêni._ I am he who with thee has
uprooted the whole inhabited world and seeks out the great Osiris
who brought thee chains. I am he who with thee fights on the side
of the gods (some say against the gods). I am he who has shut up
the twin sides of heaven, and has lulled to sleep the invisible
dragon, and who has established the sea [and?] the red springs of
rivers. Until thou shall no longer be lord of this dominion, I am
thy soldier, I was conquered [and hurled] headlong by the gods. I
was thrown down by [their] wrath in vain [or, because of the
void]. Awake! I come as a suppliant, I come as thy friend, and
thou wilt not cast me out, O earth-caster. King of the gods.
_aemonaebarôtherreethôrabeaneïmea_[323]. Be strong, I entreat!
Grant me this grace that, when I shall command one of the gods
themselves to come to my incantations, I may see them coming
quickly! _Naïne basanaptatou eaptou mênô phaesmê paptoumênôph
aesimê trauapti peuchrê, trauara ptoumêph, mouraianchouchaphapta
moursaaramei. Iaô aththarauimênoker boroptoumêth attaui mêni
charchara ptoumai lalapsa trauei trauei mamôphortoula[324] aeêio
iou oêôa eai aeêiôi iaô aêi ai iaô_[325]. On your repeating this
three times, there will be this sign of the alliance[326]. But you
having the soul of a magician will be prepared. Do not alarm
yourself, for a sea-hawk hovering downwards will strike with his
wings upon your body[327]. And do thou having stood upon thy feet
clothe thyself in white garments, and in an earthen censer scatter
drops of frankincense speaking thus: ‘I exist in thy sacred form.
I am strong in thy sacred name. I have lighted upon the
flowing-forth of thy good things, O Lord, God of Gods, king demon.
_Atthouin thouthoui tauanti laôaptatô’._ Having done this, you may
descend like a god, and will command the [order?][328] of Nature
through this complete arrangement of autoptic [_i.e._ clairvoyant]
lecanomancy. It is also a way of compelling the dead to become
visible. For when you wish to enquire concerning [any] events, you
must take a brazen jar or dish or pan, whichever you will, and
fill it with water, which if you are invoking the celestial gods
must be living [Qy. running or sparkling?]; but, if the
terrestrial divinities, from the sea; and if Osiris or Sarapis,
from the river [Nile?]; and, if the dead, from a well. Take the
vessel upon your knees, pour upon it oil made from unripe olives,
then bending over the vessel repeat the following invocation and
invoke what god you will and an answer will be given to you and he
will speak to you concerning all things. But if and when he shall
have spoken, dismiss him with the dismissal which you will wonder
at, using the same speech.

“Speech to be said over the vessel. _Amoun auantau laimoutau riptou
mantaui imantau lantou laptoumi anchômach araptoumi._ Hither, such
and such a god! Be visible to me this very day and do not appal my
eyes. Hither to me such and such a god! giving ear to my race [?].
For this is what _anchôr anchôr achachach ptoumi chancho charachôch
chaptoumê chôraharachôch aptoumi mêchôchaptou charach ptou chanchô
charachô ptenachôcheu_, a name written in a hundred letters, wishes
and commands. And do not thou, most mighty king, forget the
magicians among us; because this is the earliest name of Typhon, at
which tremble the earth, the abyss, Hades, heaven, the sun, the
moon, the place of the stars and the whole phenomenal universe. When
this name is spoken, it carries along with its force gods and
demons. It is the hundred-lettered name, the same name as last
written. And when thou hast uttered it, the god or the dead person
who hears it will appear to thee and will answer concerning the
things you ask. And when you have learned all things, dismiss the
god only with the strong name, the one of the hundred letters,
saying ‘Begone, Lord, for thus wills and commands the great god!’
Say the name and he will depart. Let this treatise, O mighty king,
be kept to thyself alone, being guarded from being heard by any
other. And this is the phylactery which you should wear. It should
be arranged on a silver plate. Write the same name with a brazen pen
and wear it attached with a strip of ass’s skin[329].”

The purpose of the charm just given is, as will be seen, to produce
apparitions in a bowl containing liquid after the fashion still common
in the near East[330]. It amply bears out the remark of Iamblichus that
the Egyptian magicians, differing therein from the Chaldaean, were
accustomed in their spells to threaten the gods[331], and many other
instances of this can be found in other passages of the magic papyri.
But it should be noticed that in this case the magician is dealing with
a power thought to be hostile alike to man and to the beneficent gods.
Typhon, who is, as Plutarch tells us, the Greek equivalent of the
Egyptian Set, was looked upon in Hellenistic times as essentially a
power of darkness and evil, who fights against the gods friendly to man
with the idea of reducing their ordered world to chaos. Yet the magician
avows himself on his side, and even speaks of his name as being able to
compel the heavenly gods, to whom he must therefore be superior.
Iamblichus tries to explain this, and to refine away the obvious meaning
of such spells, but their existence certainly justifies the accusation
of trafficking with devils brought by the early Christian Fathers
against the practisers of magic.

Another charm may be quoted for the purpose of showing the acquaintance,
superficial though it was, with the religions of all nations in the
Hellenistic world and the indifference with regard to them which the
practice of magic necessitated. It appears in the papyrus in the British
Museum last quoted from and is directed to be spoken over “the lamp”
which plays so great a part in all magical processes[332]. Of its real
or supposed author, Alleius Craeonius, nothing is known:

“A spell of Allêius Craeonius spoken over the lamp. _Ôchmarmachô_,
the _nouraï chrêmillon_ sleeping with eyes open, _nia_, Iaô
equal-numbered[333] _soumpsênis siasias_, Iaô who shakes the whole
inhabited world, come hither unto me and give answer concerning the
work [_i.e._ the matter in hand] _kototh phouphnoun nouebouê_ in the
place prepared for thy reception [?]. Take an inscription[334] with
on the obverse Sarapis seated holding the royal sceptre of Egypt and
upon the sceptre an ibis. On the reverse of the stone, carve the
name and shut it up and keep it for use. Take the ring in your left
hand, and a branch of olive and laurel in your right, shaking it
over the lamp[335], at the same time uttering the spell seven times.
And, having put it (the ring) upon the Idaean finger[336] of your
left hand, facing and turning inwards [Qy. away from the door of the
chamber?] and having fastened the stone to your left ear, lie down
to sleep returning no answer to any who may speak to you:

“‘I invoke thee who created the earth and the rocks [_lit._ the
bones] and all flesh and spirit and established the sea, and shakes
the heavens and did divide the light from the darkness, the great
ordering mind, who disposes all, the everlasting eye, Demon of
Demons, God of Gods, the Lord of Spirits, the unwandering Æon. Iao
ouêi [Jehovah?] hearken unto my voice. I invoke thee the ruler of
the gods, high-thundering Zeus, O king Zeus Adonai, O Lord Jehovah
[?]. I am he who invokes thee in the Syrian tongue as the great god
_Zaalaêr iphphou_[337] and do thou not disregard the sound in Hebrew
_ablanathanalba_[338] _abrasilôa_. For I am _silthachôouch lailam
blasalôth_ Iaô ieô _nebuth sabiothar bôth arbath iaô_ Iaôth Sabaoth
_patourê zagourê Baruch adonai elôai iabraam_[339] _barbarauô
nausiph_, lofty-minded, everliving, having the diadem of the whole
ordered world, _siepê saktietê_ of life (twice) _sphê nousi_ (twice)
_sietho_ (twice). _Chthethônirinch ôêaêêol aôê Iaô asial Sarapêolsô
ethmourêsini sem lau lou lurinch._’

“This spell loosens chains, blinds, brings dreams, causes favours,
and may be used for any purposes you wish.”

In this spell, we have Zeus and Yahweh associated with Serapis in the
apparent belief that all three were the same god. Although the magician
parades his learning by using the name of one of the Syrian Baals, and
it is possible that some of the unintelligible words of the invocation
may be much corrupted Egyptian, he is evidently well acquainted with
Hebrew, and one of the phrases used seems to be taken from some Hebrew
ritual. It is hardly likely that he would have done this unless he were
himself of Jewish blood; and we have therefore the fact that a Jewish
magician was content to address his national god as Zeus and to make use
of a “graven image” of him under the figure of the Graeco-Egyptian
Serapis in direct contravention of the most stringent clauses in the Law
of Moses. A more striking instance of the way in which magicians of the
time borrowed from all religions could hardly be imagined.

The uncertain date of the charms under discussion prevent any very
cogent argument as to their authorship being drawn from them; but there
are other grounds for supposing that the use of magic was never so
wide-spread as in the last three centuries before and the first three
centuries after the birth of Christ, and that this was mainly due to the
influx of Orientals into the West. One of the indirect effects of
Alexander’s conquests was, by substituting Greek kings for the native
rulers who had till then governed the countries lying round the Nile and
the Euphrates, to break up the priestly colleges there established, and
thus to set free a great quantity of the lower class of priests and
temple-servants who seem to have wandered through the Hellenistic world,
selling their knowledge of curious arts, and seeking from the credulity
of their fellows the toilless livelihood that they had till then enjoyed
at the expense of the state. The names given to the most famous of these
charlatans in the early Roman Empire—Petosiris, Nechepso,
Astrampsuchos[340], and Ostanes[341]—are in themselves sufficient to
show their origin; and “Chaldaicus” passed into the common language of
the time as the recognized expression for the professional exponent of
curious arts. Even in the time of Sulla there seems to have been no lack
of persons who, if not magicians, were at all events professional
diviners capable of interpreting the Dictator’s dreams[342], and the
writers of the Augustan age allude frequently to magic, such as that
taught by the papyri just quoted, as being generally the pursuit of
foreigners. The Thessalian magicians are as celebrated in the Roman
times which Apuleius describes as in those of Theocritus. The Canidia or
Gratidia of Horace had also a Thessalian who assisted her in her
incantations[343]. But these, like the Chaldaean and Egyptian sorcerers
just mentioned, were at the head of their profession, and in many cases
made large sums out of the sale of their services. The taste for magic
of the poorer classes, slaves, and freedmen, was catered for by the
crowd of itinerant magicians, among whom the Jews (and Jewesses) seem to
have been the most numerous, who used to hang about the Circus
Maximus[344]. Renan is doubtless perfectly right when he says that never
were the Mathematici, the Chaldaei, and the Goetae of all kinds so
abundant as in the Rome of Nero[345]. Their prevalence in the great
cities of the eastern provinces of the Empire may be judged from the
frequency of their mention in the New Testament[346].

It would, of course, be very easy to consider all such practices as the
result of deliberate and conscious imposture. This is the course taken
by Hippolytus in the _Philosophumena_, in which the heresiologist bishop
gives a description of the tricks of the conjurors of the IIIrd century
accompanied by rationalistic explanations which sometimes make a greater
demand on the credulity of the readers than the wonders narrated[347].
These tricks he accuses the leaders of the Gnostics of his time of
learning and imitating, and the accusation is therefore plainly dictated
by the theological habit of attempting by any means to discredit the
morals of those who dissent from the writer’s own religious
opinions[348]. But a study of the magic papyri themselves by no means
supports this theory of conscious imposture. The spells therein given
were evidently written for the use of a professional magician, and seem
to have been in constant employment. Many of them bear after them the
note written in the hand of the scribe that he has tested them and found
them efficacious. The pains, too, which the author takes to give
variations of the process recommended in them—as for example in the
quotations from a “man of Heracleopolis” in the first of the spells
given above—all show that he had a more or less honest belief in the
efficacy of the spells he is transcribing. The recording in the same
papyri of what would be now called “trade secrets” such as recipes for
the manufacture of ink all point the same way, and go to confirm the
view that the magicians who made use of them, although willing to sell
their supposed powers over the supernatural world for money, yet
believed that they really possessed them.

This is the more likely to be true because many of the phenomena which
these spells are intended to produce are what would now be called
hypnotic. The gods and demons invoked are supposed to appear sometimes
in dreams, but more generally to a virgin boy gazing fixedly either at a
lamp or at the shining surface of a liquid. This is, of course, the form
of “crystal-gazing” or divination by the ink-pool still used throughout
the East, a graphic description of which is given in Lane’s _Modern
Egyptians_[349]. In this case as in the charms for the healing of
disease—especially of epilepsy and other nervous maladies—given in the
same papyri, the active agent seems to be the power of suggestion,
consciously or unconsciously exercised by the operator or magician. A
full but popular explanation of these phenomena from the standpoint of
modern science will be found in the lectures on “Hypnotisme et
Spiritisme” delivered at Geneva by Dr Émile Yung in 1890[350], while the
subject has been treated more learnedly and at greater length by a great
number of writers, among whom may be specially mentioned M. Pierre
Janet[351], the successor and continuator of the researches of the
celebrated Charcot at the Salpêtrière.

The influence that such practices exercised upon the development of the
post-Christian sects or schools generally classed together under the
name of Gnostic is not very clearly defined. It may, indeed, be said
that the great diffusion of the magical rites that took place during the
centuries immediately preceding, as in those immediately following, the
birth of Christ, predisposed men’s minds to the search for a cosmogony
or theory of the universe which should account for its evolution as part
of an orderly and well-devised system rather than as the capricious and,
as it were, incoherent creation of the gods. That some such force was at
work may be gathered from the fact that magical beliefs and practices
seem to have crept into the religion of the whole civilized world at
this period. But that the schools calling themselves Gnostic owed their
development directly or exclusively to them is an idea that must be
repudiated. Hippolytus, as has been said, does, indeed, make some such
charge, but only in general terms and without any evidence in its
support. When later he goes through the sects _seriatim_, he only
reiterates it in the cases of Simon Magus, of his successor Menander,
and of Carpocrates of Antioch; and it is probable from the context that
in all these cases he is only referring to what seemed to him the
superstitious attention paid by the “heretics” in question to the
externals of worship, such as the use of pictures and statues, lights
and incense, which seem in many cases to have been borrowed directly
from paganism.

This attention to the details of ritual, however, did in itself contain
the germ of a danger to the survival of any organized cult in which it
was present in excess, which was to receive full illustration in the
later forms of Egyptian Gnosticism properly so-called. As will be shown
in its place, the seed of Gnosticism fell in Egypt upon soil encumbered
with the débris of many older faiths which had long since passed into
the stage of decay. Nor could the earnestness or the philosophic insight
of the great Gnostics of Hadrian’s time, who started their propaganda
from Alexandria, contend for long with the inherited preconceptions of a
degraded and stubborn peasantry who had learned for millennia to regard
all religion as sorcery. Here Gnosticism degenerated quickly into magic
of the least enlightened and basest kind, and thus lost all right to be
considered in any sense a religion[352]. The case was different in other
parts of the Roman Empire, where a better intellectual equipment and the
practical syncretism or fusion of worships offered more favourable
ground for the development of new faiths not appealing to the members of
one nationality only.

That this idea of Gnosticism or of the importance of knowledge—were it
only the knowledge of charms and spells—in dealing with the spiritual
and invisible world was bound to play a prominent part in the evolution
of the world-religions which Alexander’s conquests had rendered possible
is therefore evident. Some writers have gone further and have declared
that Christianity itself may be “only an episode—though a very important
episode—in the history of Gnosticism[353].” But to say this, as will
presently be shown, is to go too far, and Christianity, although she
obtained many converts from those Gnostic sects with which the Church of
the Apostolic and sub-Apostolic ages found itself in competition[354],
yet proved in the long run to be the most bitter enemy of Gnosticism.
From the first, the Catholic Church seems to have recognized that the
ideas which lay at the root of Gnosticism—to which word I have ventured
here to give a meaning more extended than that which it connotes in
heresiological writers—were opposed to religion altogether; and if
allowed to triumph would have had their end in the development of a
science, which, if not absolutely atheistic, would at least reduce the
necessary action of the spiritual world upon this to the vanishing
point[355]. It would indeed be quite possible to argue that such ideas
must always appear when a people of inferior culture, but of vigorous
intellect, come into frequent contact for the first time with a material
civilization higher than their own. It is sufficient for the present
purpose to have shown that they were widely spread during the centuries
which immediately preceded the appearance of Christianity, and that they
count for something in the evolution of the many heretical sects who
came to trouble most seriously the peace of the Catholic Church in the
early centuries of our era. The same causes, however, must have been at
work some time before, and it is impossible to explain some of the
features of Gnosticism in its more extended sense without going back to
an early period of Greek history. For it was in Greece that the Orphic
teaching first appeared, and it is to this that most of the
post-Christian Gnostic heresies or sects attributed, not untruly, their
own origin.

Connected in practice with, yet entirely different in origin from, this
magic was the astrology or star-lore which after the conquest of the
Euphrates valley by the Persians began to make its way westwards. It
would seem that its birthplace was the plains of Chaldaea, where the
clear air brings the starry expanse of the sky nearer, as it were, to
the observer than in the denser and more cloudy atmosphere of Europe,
while the absence of rising ground not only enables him to take in the
whole heaven at a glance, but gives him a more lively idea of the
importance of the heavenly bodies. There the careful and patient
observation of the Sumerian priests at a period which was certainly
earlier than Sargon of Akkad (_i.e._ 2750 B.C.) established the fact
that certain groups of stars appeared and disappeared at regular
intervals, that others moved more swiftly than their fellows, and that
the places of both with reference to the apparent path of the sun varied
in a way which corresponded with the recurrence of the seasons.
Primitive man, however, does not distinguish between _post hoc_ and
_propter hoc_, or rather he assumes unhesitatingly that, if any natural
phenomenon occurs with anything like regularity after another, the first
is the cause of the second. Hence the swifter stars soon came to be
clothed in the minds of the early astronomers with attributes varying
with the phenomena of which they were supposed to be the cause. Thus,
the planet or “wandering” star which we call Jupiter came to be known as
the “god of good winds,” the Hyades and Pleiades were looked upon as the
bringers of rain, and the stars whose appearance ushered in the cold and
darkness of winter were considered as hostile to man[356]. As time
progressed, however, these observations accumulated—largely, one would
think, because of the imperishable material on which they were
recorded—and it then began to be perceived that the movement of the
heavenly bodies were not due to their individual caprice or will, but
were dictated by an inexorable and unchangeable law. In the drawing of
this conclusion, the patient and logical mind of the Mongoloid
inhabitants of Sumer, ever mindful at once of the past and the future of
the race, no doubt played its full part.

The effect of this change in the mental attitude of man towards the
universe was to introduce an entirely new conception into religion. At
first the Babylonians, pushing, as man generally does, the application
of their last discovery further than the facts would warrant, declared
that all events happened in a regular and prearranged order; and that
man could therefore predict the happening of any event directly he knew
its place in the series. Thus in the “astrological” tablets preserved in
the palace of Assur-banipal at Nineveh, some of which certainly go back
to the reign of Sargon of Akkad[357], we read:

“In the month of Nisan 2nd day, Venus appeared at sunrise. There
will be distress in the land.... An eclipse happening on the 15th
day, the king of Dilmun is slain, and someone seizes his throne....
An eclipse happening on the 15th day of the month Ab the king dies,
and rains descend from heaven, and floods fill the canals.... An
eclipse happening on the 20th day, the king of the Hittites in
person seizes the throne.... For the 5th month an eclipse on the
14th day portends rains and the flooding of canals. The crops will
be good, and king will send peace to king. An eclipse on the 15th
day portends destructive war. The land will be filled with corpses.
An eclipse on the 16th day indicates that pregnant women will be
happily delivered of their offspring. An eclipse on the 20th day
portends that lions will cause terror and that reptiles will appear;
an eclipse on the 21st day that destruction will overtake the riches
of the sea[358].”

These events are evidently predicted from a knowledge of what happened
immediately after the occurrence of former eclipses and other celestial
phenomena, and it is perhaps characteristic of the lot of man that most
of them are unfavourable and that the disasters greatly outnumber the
good things. But it is plain that as time went on, the observers of the
stars would begin to perceive that even such unusual celestial phenomena
as eclipses occurred at intervals which, although long compared with the
lifetime of a man, could yet be estimated, and that the element of
chance or caprice could therefore be in great measure eliminated from
their calculation. Then came about the construction of the calendar, and
the formation of tables extending over a long series of years, by which
the recurrence of eclipses and the like could be predicted a long time
in advance. All this tended to the formation of different ideas of the
laws which, it was now seen, governed man’s life, and the shape which
these now took were equally erroneous, although at first sight more
rational than those held by the first observers.

This new idea was in effect that system of “correspondences” which
occupied a prominent place in nearly all religious systems from the time
of Assyria’s apogee to the triumph of Christianity, and which through
the mediaeval Cabala may be said to retain to the present day some
shadow of its former power over the minds of the superstitious. This was
the notion that the earth in effect is only a copy of the heavens, and
that the events which happen here below are nothing but a copy of those
which are taking place above[359]. If any great catastrophe such as the
fall of an empire like that of Assyria or the sudden death of a man
distinguished above his fellows like Alexander occurs, it is because of
some conjunction or meeting of hostile stars; and if some great and
unexpected benefit such as universal peace or an abundant harvest smiles
upon mankind, it is because those stars most generally favourable to him
have recovered temporary sway. The result was a sort of mapping-out of
the heavens into regions corresponding to those of the earth, and the
assigning of a terrestrial “sphere of influence” to each[360]. But as
the predictions made from these alone would have been too speedily and
too evidently falsified in most cases by the march of events, it became
necessary to attribute a predominant influence to the planets, whose
swifter and more irregular movements introduced new factors into the
situation. These planets were decided to be seven in number, Uranus and
Neptune not having yet been discovered, and the Sun and Moon being
included in the list because they were thought like the others to move
round the earth. Hence all terrestrial things were assumed to be divided
into seven categories corresponding to the seven planets, the Moon,
Mercury, Venus, Mars, the Sun, Jupiter, and Saturn, and to be in an
especial way under the influence of the heavenly bodies of which they
were the earthly representatives.

Into the details of the so-called science of astrology thus founded, it
is not our purpose to enter. To do so would occupy a greater space than
is at our disposal, and would involve besides the discussion of a great
many documents only just beginning to come to light, and the exact
meaning of which is still uncertain[361]. But it may be mentioned here
that astrology entirely changed its character when it came into contact
with the dawning science of mathematics, which is perhaps the most
enduring monument which bears witness to the fertility and inventiveness
of the Greek mind. So soon as the observations of the Babylonians were
placed at their disposal, the Greek mathematicians set to work in real
earnest to discover the laws of the universe and established the science
of astronomy pretty much on the basis on which it stands at the present
day. The discovery of the Metonic cycle, of the trigonometrical method
of measuring the celestial sphere, and of the precession of the
equinoxes all followed in succession, and the prediction of eclipses,
conjunctions of stars, and other celestial phenomena which had before
been more or less a matter of guesswork, now became a matter of
calculation presenting no mystery to anyone versed in mathematics. The
heavens were mapped out, the stars catalogued, and tables were produced
which enabled the place of any particular star to be found at a given
moment without the actual inspection of the heavens[362].

The result of this improved state of things was not long in reacting
both upon religion, and its congener, magic. On the first of these, the
effect was much the same as that produced by the discoveries of
Copernicus in the XVIth century and those of Darwin in the XIXth. We do
not know enough of the history of thought at the time to be aware if the
Greek additions to the ascertained laws of Nature aroused the same
resentment in priestly minds as did those of the Prussian and the
English philosophers; but it is evident that if they did so, the quarrel
was speedily made up. Every religion in the Graeco-Roman world which
sought the popular favour after the discoveries of Hipparchus, took note
of the seven planetary spheres which the geocentric theory of the
universe supposed to surround the earth, and even those known before his
time, like Zoroastrianism and Judaism, hastened to adopt the same view
of the universe, and to modify the details of their teaching to accord
with it. The seven stoles of Isis are as significant in this respect as
the seven-stepped ladder or the seven altars in the mysteries of
Mithras, while the seven Amshaspands of the Avesta and the attention
paid to the seven days of the week by the Jews go to show how even the
most firmly held national traditions had to bow before it. As for magic,
the sevenfold division of things which implied that each planet had its
own special metal, precious stone, animal, and plant, placed at the
disposal of the magicians an entirely new mode of compulsion which lent
itself to endless combinations; while, for the same reason, special
conjurations were supposed, as we have seen, only to exercise their full
influence under certain positions of the stars. Perhaps the climax of
this state of things is reached in one of the Gnostic documents
described later, where the salvation of Christian souls in the next
world is said to be determined by the entry of one of the beneficent
planets into one or other of the signs of the Zodiac[363].

One of the most important results of this impulse was the sudden
importance thus given to the worship of the material sun, which
henceforth forms the centre of adoration in all non-Christian religions.
As we have seen, in the worship of Isis, the newly-made initiate was
made to personify the daystar in the public, as no doubt he had done in
the secret, ceremonies of the cult. All the post-Alexandrian legends of
the gods were turned the same way, and Serapis, Mithras, Attis were all
identified with the sun, whom philosophers like Pliny and Macrobius
declared to be the one supreme god concealed behind the innumerable
lesser deities of the Graeco-Roman pantheon[364]. Even the Christians
could not long hold out against the flood, and the marks of the
compromise to which the Catholic Church came in the matter may perhaps
be seen in the coincidence of the Lord’s Day with Sunday and the
Church’s adoption of the 25th day of December, the birthday of the
Unconquered Sun-God, as the anniversary of the birth of Christ[365]. It
is certainly by no accident that the emperors whose reigns immediately
preceded the establishment of Christianity all turned towards the
worship of the sun-god who was looked upon as the peculiar divinity of
the family to which Constantine belonged[366].

To Gnosticism, whether we use the word in the sense in which it has been
used in this chapter, or in its more restricted connotation as the
generic name of the earlier heresies which afflicted the nascent Church,
the development of astrology came as a source of new life. Henceforth to
the knowledge of the history of the personal dispositions and of the
designs of the gods, had to be added that of the laws governing the
movements of the stars. Moreover, the new theory introduced into
Gnosticism an element which had hitherto been foreign to it, which was
the idea of destiny or of predetermined fate[367]. If all things, as the
astrologers said, happened in a certain regular order of which the
movements of the stars were at once the cause and the symbol, it follows
that their course is determined beforehand, and may possibly be capable
of being ascertained by man. Hence came in all the ideas as to the
predestination of certain souls to happiness and of others to misery
both in this world and the next, which play such an important part in
the religions of the centuries under consideration, and the influence of
which is by no means extinct at the present day. It is true that, as M.
Cumont has recently pointed out, man is never rigidly true to his
beliefs, and has generally invented some compromise by which either the
favour of the gods or his own conduct is supposed to free him from the
worst effects of a predetermined fate. Such compromises appear furtively
here and there in Christian Gnosticism, but without sufficient
prominence to take away the effect of the general notion that man’s fate
in the next world is determined before his birth in this.

The general effect of these considerations is, it is thought, that the
Gnosticism which came to trouble the peace of the Christian Church
during its infancy and adolescence had its roots, first in the decay of
the earlier faith, which showed itself in the popular taste for
cosmogonical and other myths, until then wholly or partly absent from
the ideas of the more civilized nations of the Persian Empire. On the
top of this, came the great spread of ceremonial magic which seems to
have followed the first introduction of something like upright and just
government by the Aryan conquerors of the East; and then the idea of a
universe ruled not by the unchecked will of capricious gods, but by the
regular and ordered movement of the stars. The predestinarian view of
the fate of the individual which naturally follows from this last
conception, as has just been said, was subject to exceptions and
compromises, but yet appears as a kind of background or framework to all
the religions (orthodox Christianity excepted) which came into
prominence during the six centuries to which our survey is limited. But
before dealing with those hitherto unnoticed, it is necessary that we
should glance at those pre-Christian forms of Gnosticism, the earliest
of which was perhaps that which appeared simultaneously in most parts of
the Greek world at the beginning of the Vth century before Christ and is
generally known as Orphism.

Footnote 287:

Thus an Orphic verse, preserved by a commentator on Plato, says that
Dionysos “releases whom he wills from travail and suffering.” See
Abel’s _Orphica_, Fr. 208, p. 237. Servius in his commentary on
Virgil’s First Georgic, after declaring that Dionysos or “Liber Pater”
is identical with the Osiris torn in pieces by Typhon, says that he is
called Liber because he liberates. Cf. fragment and page quoted.

Footnote 288:

Lubbock, _Origin of Civilisation_, 5th ed., pp. 332, 333, and 349.

Footnote 289:

_The Golden Bough_, 3rd ed. pt I. vol. I. p. 226, n. 2. Cf. Hubert and
Mauss, _Esquisse d’une Théorie générale de la Magie_, Paris, 1904, p.
8. Goblet d’Alviella, reviewing Dr Frazer’s 2nd edition, _Rev. Hist.
Rel._ t. XLVIII. (July-Aug. 1903), pp. 70, 79 rebuts his theory. Mr E.
S. Hartland, at the British Association’s Meeting in 1906, propounded
the view that both magic and religion were based on the conception of
a transmissible personality or _mana_. Cf. _id._ _Ritual and Belief_,
1914, pp. 49 _sqq._

Footnote 290:

Hubert and Mauss, _op. cit._ p. 7.

Footnote 291:

Thus the German Reformation, which (whatever be its merits) was
certainly accompanied by a general questioning of ideas till then
considered the very basis of all religion, was followed by the
terrible outbreak known as the Witch Mania of the XVIth century. See
Mackay, _Extraordinary Popular Delusions_, 1869, pp. 101-191. Other
authorities are quoted in “Witchcraft in Scotland,” _Scottish Review_,
1891, pp. 257-288.

Footnote 292:

_Histoire des Religions et Méthode Comparative_, Paris, 1912, pp.
21-61.

Footnote 293:

See note 4 on p. 91, _supra_. Cf. also the great increase of magical
practices which followed the attempted overthrow of religion by the
philosophers after Alexander.

Footnote 294:

Some instances, such as “hocus-pocus” (_hoc est corpus meum_), are
given in _P.S.B.A._ XX. (1898), p. 149. An excellent example is found
in a spell to cause invisibility in a magic papyrus at Berlin where
the magician is directed to say among other words _anok peusire penta
set tako_ “I am that Osiris whom Set murdered”—evidently a phrase from
some Egyptian ritual extinct centuries before the papyrus was written.
See Parthey, _Zwei griechische Zauberpapyri_, 1866, p. 127, l. 252.
Cf. Erman, “Die Ägyptischer Beschwörungen” in _Ägyptische
Zeitschrift_, 1883, p. 109, n. 1.

Footnote 295:

Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, 1871, I. pp. 102-104. Cf. Crookes,
_Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India_, 1896, II. p. 283;
Hubert and Mauss, _op. cit._ pp. 26, 27; A. Réville, _Religion des
Peuples non-civilisés_, 1883, II. p. 173.

Footnote 296:

Crookes, _op. cit._ II. p. 261, says that witchcraft in Northern India
is at present almost specialized among the Dravidian, or aboriginal
people—of which fact Mr Rudyard Kipling makes great use in his
charming story “Letting in the Jungle.”

Footnote 297:

W. W. Skeat, _Malay Magic_, 1900, pp. 533 _sqq._

Footnote 298:

Chabas, _Le Papyrus Magique Harris_, 1860, pp. 151, 162 _sq._ Erman,
_Life in Ancient Egypt_, Eng. ed. p. 355, while admitting that the
Egyptians thought the words in question belonged to a foreign tongue,
says that they were “pure inventions.” He is certainly wrong, for some
of them can be identified.

Footnote 299:

Leemans, _Papyri Graeci Mus. Antiq. Lugduni-Batavi_; Wessely,
_Griechische Zauberpapyrus von Paris und London_, and _Neue
Griechische Zauberpapyri_, Wien, 1893, _passim_. Cf. Kenyon, _Greek
Papyri in the British Museum_, p. 62. So in mediaeval magic, the words
in the spells unintelligible to the magician are generally Greek. See
Reginald Scot, _Discovery of Witchcraft_ (1651), p. 168.

Footnote 300:

Réville, _Rel. des Peuples non-civilisés_, II. p. 164.

Footnote 301:

Scott in the _Heart of Midlothian_ quotes the first story, I think,
from Peter Walker, but I have not been able to find the passage. For
Ignatius Loyola, see Böhmer, _Les Jésuites_, French ed. 1910, p. 10.
Cf. Alphandéry, _R.H.R._ 1911, p. 110.

Footnote 302:

_Asiatic Studies_, 1882, p. 77.

Footnote 303:

_E.g._ well-fed dogs who worry sheep, and cats who steal fish and
other delicacies rather than have them given to them. The actions of
the animals show in both cases that they know that what they are doing
is displeasing to their owners.

Footnote 304:

Sayce, _Gifford Lectures_, pp. 420 _sqq._ For these penitential psalms
generally, see Jastrow, _The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_,
Boston, 1898, chap. XVIII.

Footnote 305:

_Il._ III. ll. 280 _sqq._ (Lang, Leaf, and Myers trans. p. 57).

Footnote 306:

_Odyss._ III. ll. 373 _sqq._ (Butcher and Lang trans. p. 43).

Footnote 307:

According to Maspero, _Ét. Égyptol._ I. p. 163, this was always the
case in Egypt, at least in historic times. “Prayer,” he says, “was a
formula of which the terms had an imperative value, and the exact
enunciation of which obliged the god to concede what was asked of
him.”

Footnote 308:

Maury, _Religions de la Grèce Antique_, II. pp. 97 _sqq._

Footnote 309:

_Il._ X. l. 292; _Odyss._ XI. l. 30, and where before quoted.

Footnote 310:

Perhaps it is to this last view that we should attribute the
well-known indifference of the Semitic peoples to mythology and
science.

Footnote 311:

_E.g._ the Rainbow in Genesis ix. 12-16. Erman, in his _History of
Egyptian Religion_, p. 31, points out that Egyptian mythology is found
only in magical books.

Footnote 312:

Frazer, _Golden Bough_, 3rd ed. pt I. vol. I. p. 52.

Footnote 313:

The principal collections of these are indicated in note 3 on p. 93,
_supra_. Cf. “The Names of Demons in the Magic Papyri,” _P.S.B.A._
1901.

Footnote 314:

Kenyon, _Gk. Pap. in Brit. Mus._ p. 77. This is the date of the MS.
The spells themselves are probably much older.

Footnote 315:

_Philosophumena_, Bk IV. c. 28. Hippolytus is probably wrong in
thinking this a conscious imposture. The magician, like his clients,
does not connect cause and effect in such cases. Sir Alfred Lyall told
Lord Avebury that he had often seen Indian sorcerers openly mixing
croton oil with the ink in which their charms were written so as to
produce a purgative effect when the ink was washed off and swallowed.
See Lubbock, _Origin of Civilization_, p. 24.

Footnote 316:

_P.S.B.A._ XXII. (1900), pp. 121 _sqq._ An explanation of the name is
attempted by Giraud, _Ophitae_, Paris, 1884, p. 91, n. 5.

Footnote 317:

Daremberg and Saglio, _Dict. des Antiq._ _s.v._ Baubo. The name Ortho
perhaps suggests that of the very ancient goddess later called Artemis
Orthia, whose original name seems to have been Orthia only. Cf. M. S.
Thompson’s paper “The Asiatic or Winged Artemis” in _J.H.S._ vol.
XXIX. (1909), pp. 286 _sqq._, esp. p. 307.

Footnote 318:

_P.S.B.A._ XXII. (1900), p. 121, and see Griffith and Thompson,
_Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden_, p. 61 and note.

Footnote 319:

Probably, however, it refers to the number of letters in the name in
some more or less fantastic spelling or cryptogram. When Hippolytus
speaks of the Demiurge Ialdabaoth as “a fiery God, a fourth number”
(_Philosophumena_, Bk V. c. 7, p. 153, Cruice), there can be little
doubt that he is referring to the Tetragrammaton or four-lettered name
of Jehovah. Cf. the “hundred-lettered” name of Typhon, p. 104,
_infra_.

Footnote 320:

_Griechische Zauberpapyri von Paris und London_, pp. 24-26.

Footnote 321:

The use of ointment for magical purposes is well known, and it was the
incautious use of an ointment of this kind which changed Lucius, the
hero of Apuleius’ romance, into an ass. The use of ointments which had
the property of translating the user to the Witches’ Sabbath
frequently occurs in the witch-trials of the Renaissance, and it has
been suggested that drugs producing hallucinations were thus applied.
The word κοινή often found in these spells seems to point to some
ointment or preparation used in _all_ the magic ceremonies described.

Footnote 322:

_Aber-amenti_: “Lord (lit. Bull) or Conqueror of Amenti,” the Egyptian
Hades. The name is of frequent occurrence in all these spells. Jesus,
in one of the later documents of the _Pistis Sophia_, is called
_Aberamenthô_, in circumstances that would make the title peculiarly
appropriate.

Footnote 323:

A palindrome containing the same word or sentence written both
forwards and backwards. The phrase here given (_aemonaebarôth_) is
probably Hebrew, which the scribe may have known was written the
reverse way to most European languages. It is noteworthy that a
mistake in transcription is made when the phrase is written backwards.

Footnote 324:

This sentence was probably once Egyptian from the frequent recurrence
of _p_ and _t_ as the initial letters of words. They are the masculine
and feminine forms of the definite article in Coptic.

Footnote 325:

These “boneless strings of vowels,” as C. W. King calls them in his
_Gnostics and their Remains_, 1887, p. 320, are thought by him to
cover the name of Jehovah. Another theory is that they are a musical
notation giving the tone in which the spell is to be pronounced.

Footnote 326:

Σύστασις. The text gives the most usual meaning of the word: but it
may here mean something like the “materialization” spoken of by
spiritualists.

Footnote 327:

The word used (πλάσμα) properly means image. But no image or idol has
been mentioned. It is curious that in the Mithraic mysteries, we hear
of the initiates, apparently during the reception of a candidate,
“striking [him?] with birds’ wings.” Cf. the text attributed
(doubtfully) to St Augustine in Cumont, _Textes et Monuments relatifs
aux Mystères de Mithra_, Bruxelles, 1896, t. II. p. 8.

Footnote 328:

Some word like οἰκονομία seems to have been omitted by the scribe.

Footnote 329:

Because the ass was considered a Typhonic animal.

Footnote 330:

The form of hypnotism known as crystal-gazing. A full description is
given in Lane’s _Modern Egyptians_, 1896, pp. 276 _sqq._ Cf.
“Divination in the XVIIth Century,” _National Review_, 1899, pp.
93-104, for its practice in England.

Footnote 331:

See the letter of Porphyry to Anebo quoting Chaeremon. That this
practice was peculiar to the Egyptian magicians is stated by
Iamblichus, _de Mysteriis_, Bk IV. c. 7. A good instance is given by
Maspero, “Sur deux Tabellae Devotionis” in _Ét. Égyptol._ 1893, t. II.
p. 297, where a magician threatens, if his prayer be not granted, to
go down into the secret places of Osiris and destroy his shroud.

Footnote 332:

Kenyon, _Greek Papyri in the British Museum_, pp. 79-81.

Footnote 333:

Or isopsephic, _i.e._ composed of letters having an equal numerical
value. One of the many forms of juggling with words and letters
current in the early Christian centuries. The “number of the beast” in
Revelation xiii. 18, where, as is now generally admitted, 666 covers
the name of Nero Caesar which has that numerical value in Hebrew, is
the most familiar instance. Other instances can be found in the
Epistle of Barnabas, c. 9, Hilgenfeld, _N.T. extra Canonem receptum_,
Lips. 1884, and Hippolytus, _Philosophumena_, Bk VI. c. 48, p. 318,
Cruice.

Footnote 334:

The context shows that a scarab set in a ring is indicated.

Footnote 335:

A rude drawing representing the magician in this attitude often
appears in the margin of papyri such as that quoted in the text. See
Wessely, _Griech. Zauberp._ p. 118.

Footnote 336:

Doubtless the index, because the Idaean Dactyli were said to be the
_first_ of men.

Footnote 337:

This seems to be a corruption of some name like Baal-zephon. The
confusion of ζ for β in these papyri is very common.

Footnote 338:

A Hebrew name meaning “Thou art our father.” It was thought especially
valuable because it could be read either way.

Footnote 339:

Of these words, _Iaoth Sabaoth_ is “Jehovah of hosts”; _patoure
zagoure_, “who openeth and shutteth” (cf. Revelation i. 8); _Baruch
adonai eloai iabraam_, “Blessed be the Lord God of Abraham.” All are
fairly good Hebrew not very much corrupted.

Footnote 340:

Astrampsuchos appears, oddly enough, as the name of one of the
celestial guardians of a heaven in one of the documents of the
Bodleian Bruce Papyrus which is described in Chap. X, _infra_. See
Amélineau, _Le Papyrus Gnostique Bruce_, Paris, p. 109, who
transcribes it Etrempsuchos, while Schmidt (_Koptisch-gnostische
Schriften_, Leipzig, 1905, Bd. I. p. 345) writes Strempsuchos.
Hippolytus gives the name as that of one of the Powers worshipped by
the Peratae, _v. Philosophumena_, Bk V. c. 14, p. 196, Cruice.

Footnote 341:

M. Maspero contends that this name is a corruption of an epithet of
Thoth. See _Ét. Égyptol._ V. p. 259.

Footnote 342:

See Plutarch, _Sulla_, _passim_, especially cc. IX. XXVIII. and
XXXVII. from which last it appears that he consulted “the Chaldaeans.”

Footnote 343:

Horace, _Epode_, V.

Footnote 344:

Juvenal, _Sat._ VI.

Footnote 345:

Renan, _L’Antéchrist_, Paris, 1873, p. 28, n. 4, for authorities.

Footnote 346:

Acts xiii. 8; _ibid._ xix. 13-19. Cf. Renan, _op. cit._ p. 421.

Footnote 347:

Book IV. c. 4, _passim_, especially the device for making sheep cut
off their own heads by rubbing their necks against a sword, or for
producing an earthquake by burning upon coals the dung of an ichneumon
mixed with magnetic ore (pp. 99, 111, Cruice). Tertullian, _de
Praescript._ c. 43, accuses the Gnostics of frequenting magicians and
astrologers.

Footnote 348:

_Philosophumena_, Bk IV. c. 15, pp. 112, 113, Cruice.

Footnote 349:

Paisley, 1896, pp. 277-284.

Footnote 350:

_Hypnotisme et Spiritisme_, Genève, 1890, _passim_.

Footnote 351:

_L’Automatisme Psychologique_, Paris, 1899, _passim_.

Footnote 352:

This is treated more fully in Chap. X, _infra_.

Footnote 353:

Cf. “Cerinthus and the Gnostics” in the _London Quarterly_, Oct. 1886,
p. 132.

Footnote 354:

Thus Epiphanius had been a Nicolaitan, St Ambrose of Milan a
Valentinian, and St Augustine a Manichaean before joining the Catholic
Church.

Footnote 355:

So Hippolytus objects not only to the astrology of his time, but to
the arithmetical calculations on which it was professedly based. The
estimates attributed to Archimedes of the relative distances of the
earth from the sun, moon and planets are marked out by him for special
condemnation. Cf. _Philosophumena_, Bk IV. c. 1, pp. 67-76, Cruice.

Footnote 356:

P. Jensen, _Die Kosmologie der Babylonier_, Strassburg, 1890, pp. 140
_sqq._ and especially p. 295.

Footnote 357:

See the tablets made for this king and published by Sir Henry
Rawlinson in the _Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia_, vol. III.
Many of these are translated by Sayce in “The Astronomy and Astrology
of the Babylonians,” _Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch._ vol. III. (1874), pp.
145-339. I have taken the lowest date for Sargon, on the authority of
Mr King, _Chronicles of Early Babylonian Kings_, 1907, I. p. 17,
although the well-known text of Nabonidus would make him a thousand
years earlier. The origin of Babylonian astronomy is discussed by
Jastrow, _Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_, chap. XXIII. The immense
antiquity attributed to the Babylonian observations by the classical
authorities quoted in Sayce’s paper may be considerably reduced if we
substitute lunar for solar years; yet there seems little doubt that
the star worship which arose from them went back to the “oldest period
of Babylonia.” Cf. Sayce, _Gifford Lectures_, 1902, p. 480.

Footnote 358:

Jastrow, _op. cit._ pp. 365 _sqq._

Footnote 359:

Among modern German archaeologists Winckler and Jeremias have pushed
the effect of this “astral theory” of the universe beyond all limits.
Their position is at once exposed and refuted by Rogers in _The
Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_, 1908, pp. 212 to end. Yet such a
view of the universe as is given in the text was undoubtedly held by
many during the six centuries here treated of, and can be seen as it
were underlying most of the religions of the time. That it had its
origin in Babylonia seems most probable. See Cumont, _Astrology and
Religion among the Greeks and Romans_, 1912, pp. 1-26, and authorities
there quoted.

Footnote 360:

Cumont (work last quoted), p. 18. The idea appears plainly enough in
astrological works like Ptolemy’s _Tetrabiblos_. It was not confined
to Babylonia, for the Egyptians thought the earthly Nile corresponded
to a heavenly one.

Footnote 361:

Cumont’s _Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum_ of which 10
volumes have been published will be of great use in this respect. See
also Kroll’s _Vettii Valentis Anthologiarum Libri_, 1908.

Footnote 362:

Cumont, _Astrology and Rel._ pp. 12, 13. Cf. Theon of Alexandria’s
_Commentary on the IIIrd book of the Almagest_ (Abbé Halma’s ed.),
1813, t. I. p. 1.

Footnote 363:

In the _Pistis Sophia_ (for which see Chapter X, _infra_) the soul of
a sinless man who has not found the mysteries has to wait until the
planets Jupiter and Venus come into a certain aspect with the sun,
“Saturn and Mars being behind them.” It is then reincarnated and wins
for itself life eternal, pp. 387, 389 (Copt.).

Footnote 364:

Pliny, _N.H._ Bk II. c. 4. Macrobius, _Saturnalia_, Bk I. cc. 18-23.

Footnote 365:

Goblet d’Alviella in _Rev. Hist. Rel._ LXV. (May-June, 1912), p. 381.

Footnote 366:

Aurelian and Diocletian each instituted a worship of the sun-god, the
deity of the second Flavian family.

Footnote 367:

Cumont, _Astrology and Rel._ pp. 28, 29. He is probably right when he
points out that irregular phenomena like comets and shooting stars
gave a loophole for the opponents of a rigid predestinarianism of
which they were not slow to avail themselves.

CHAPTER IV
PRE-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS: THE ORPHICI

All scholars seem now agreed that the legendary Orpheus never really
existed[368], and that the many verses and poems attributed to him were
the work of various hands, one of the earliest of their authors being
Onomacritos of Athens, who fled with the Pisistratids to the court of
Darius at Susa in the first decade of the Vth century B.C.[369] Yet
there is little doubt that the peculiar myths alluded to in these poems
were known at an early date in Crete, whence they probably found their
way into Athens with Epimenides, the Cretan wizard or wise man who was
sent for to purify the city from the guilt incurred by the murder of
Cylon[370]. This event evidently marks a turning on the part of the
Greeks towards purifications and other magical rites unknown in Homer’s
time[371]; but the tendency, to whomever due in the first instance,
undoubtedly received a great impulse from the break-up of the
Pythagorean school in Italy about 500 B.C.[372] This event, which in its
effects may be compared to the dispersion of the priestly corporations
of Babylon and Egypt which followed Alexander’s conquests, sent
wandering a great number of speculative philosophers trained in the
formation of associations for political and other purposes, and they
probably joined forces with a previously existing Orphic sect, nearly
all the early Orphic poems being ascribed, with more or less likelihood,
to Pythagoreans[373]. There are certain features in these poems which,
if we met with them after the reform of the Zoroastrian religion by the
Sassanian kings, we should certainly attribute to Persian influence; but
this can hardly be done so long as we remain ignorant of what the
Persian religion was in the time of the Achaemenides. The most probable
account of the matter is that the religious teaching attributed to
Orpheus was of Asiatic and particularly of Phrygian provenance, that it
had long been current in Crete and the other islands of the
Mediterranean, that a part of it came into Greece through Thrace in the
time of the Pisistratids, and that it was finally put into an organized
and consistent shape by those Pythagorean philosophers who made their
way back to Greece after the overthrow of their political power in Magna
Graecia[374]. It found in Pindar a warm adherent, and was well known to
and spoken of with reverence by the three great tragic poets Aeschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides[375]. Its greatest influence, however, was
probably exerted through the Eleusinian and other mysteries which it
captured and transformed. It continued to dominate them from before the
time of Herodotus down to the prohibition of these secret rites by the
Christian emperors, and Orpheus was thus said by everyone to be their
founder[376].

The whole of this teaching centred round the legend of Dionysos who is
described by Herodotus as the youngest—that is to say the
last-adopted—of the great gods of Greece[377]. This Orphic Dionysos was
the Cretan form of the god worshipped all round the Mediterranean, who
was always represented in human form, and as suffering a violent death
and then rising again from the dead. But to this nucleus, the Orphic
poets added at different times and by degrees a great quantity of other
myths which together formed a complete body of doctrine setting forth
the origin of the world, and of man, and his life after death. First,
they said, existed Chronos or Time “who grows not old,” from whom sprang
Aether and the formless Chaos. From these was formed a silver egg which,
bursting in due time, disclosed Eros, or Phanes the first born, a
shining god, with wings upon his shoulders, at once male and female, and
having within himself the seeds of all creatures. Phanes creates the Sun
and Moon and also Night, and from Night begets Uranos and Gaea (Heaven
and Earth). These two give birth to the Titans, among whom is Kronos,
who emasculates his father Uranos and succeeds to his throne. He is in
turn deposed by Zeus, who swallows Phanes, and thus becomes the father
of gods and men[378].

This part of the Orphic story comes to us almost entirely from
Neo-Platonic sources, and possesses several variants. It is so
manifestly an attempt to reconcile the popular theology of Greece found
in Homer and Hesiod with different Oriental ideas of the origin of the
world that we might consider it to have been concocted in post-Christian
times, were it not that Aristophanes had evidently heard about Chaos and
the mundane egg, and its production of Eros and Night, which confused
genealogy he burlesques in _The Birds_[379]. It is probable also, as
Alfred Maury pointed out, that this legend was first taken by the
Orphics from the philosophers of Ionia, and especially from that
Pherecydes of Syros who is said to have been Pythagoras’ master[380].
Attempts have been made to derive it from Indian, Egyptian, Chaldaean,
and even Jewish sources; but its resemblances to parallel beliefs among
some or all of these nations are too few and sparse for any useful
conclusion to be drawn from them. One of its most marked features is its
succession of divine rulers of the universe, which the Orphics made use
of to exalt their own god Dionysos to the highest rank. The story they
told of this Dionysos was that he was originally the Phanes whom Zeus
swallowed, but that at his second birth he became the offspring of Zeus
by Persephone, the daughter whom Zeus had himself begotten on one of the
earth-goddesses who is sometimes called Rhea, sometimes Cybele, and
sometimes Demeter. Persephone, described by the Orphics as the
“especial” or “single” daughter of Zeus[381], was seduced by her father
in the form of a serpent, and in due course brought to light Dionysos,
sometimes called Zagreus or “the Hunter.” This god, who had the horns of
a bull[382], became the darling of his father, who destined him for his
successor and allowed him, while yet a child, to sit on his throne and
to wield the thunder-bolts[383]. But the Titans, the monstrous sons of
Earth, either spurred on by jealousy at the child being given the
sovereignty of the world, or incited thereto by Hera, laid a plot for
his destruction. Beguiling him with childish toys such as a top, a hoop,
and a mirror, they stole upon him unawares with blackened faces, and, in
spite of his struggles and his transformation into many shapes, tore him
limb from limb, cooked his several members in a cauldron, and ate them.
The heart, however, was saved from them by Pallas Athene, who bore it to
Zeus, who swallowed it, and it thus passed into the Theban Dionysos, son
of Zeus and Semele, who was in turn Zagreus re-born. Zeus also blasted
the Titans with his lightning, while he ordered Apollo to collect the
uneaten members of the little god and to bury them at Delphi. A variant
or perhaps a continuation of the story makes Demeter, having, as the
earth goddess, received the members of the little god, put them together
and revivify them, and join herself in marriage with the resuscitated
corpse, whence the infant Iacchos is born[384].

In this part of the story, also, the desire of the authors to fit it in
with the existing mythology is manifest. At Eleusis from very early
times there had been worshipped with mysterious rites a divine couple
who were known only as “the God” and “the Goddess[385].” This pair were,
as we may guess from an allusion in Hesiod, otherwise called Zeus
Chthonios or the infernal Zeus, god of the underworld, and Demeter[386],
the ancient earth-goddess, who was worshipped with her lover under the
various names of Ma, Cybele, Astarte, Rhea and Isis throughout Asia
Minor, Syria, Phoenicia and Egypt. As the lover of the earth-goddess in
all these cases suffered death and resurrection, the Orphics had to work
these episodes into the history of their Dionysos Zagreus. But they
carried the idea further than any of their predecessors by connecting
this death and re-birth with the origin of man and his survival after
death[387]. Man, they said, was made out of the ashes of the Titans, and
was therefore born to sorrow, his soul being buried in his body as in a
charnel-house[388]. But he also had within him a spark of the life of
Zagreus, the infant ruler of the universe[389], and this enables him to
purify himself from the guilt of the earthborn Titans, and so to leave
the circle of existence and cease from wickedness. For that the soul of
man after leaving his body went, unless purified, to inhabit the bodies
of other men and even animals, passing from one to the other as in a
wheel or endless chain, was a dogma which the Orphics had taken over
from the Pythagoreans[390]. How now was this purification to be
obtained?

The answer that the earlier Orphics gave to this question must have
astonished the pleasure-loving and artistic Greeks. The true Orphic,
they were told, must make his whole earthly life a preparation for the
next. He must partake at least once of a mystic sacrifice, in which a
living animal was, in memory of the fate of Zagreus, torn in pieces and
eaten raw; but thereafter he must never again eat any food that has had
life nor even eggs, and he must observe perfect chastity[391], and wear
only linen garments even at his burial, nor must he go near a sepulchre.

“We aim at a holy life, whence I am become a mystes of Idaean
[_i.e._ Cretan] Zeus,” says the Orphic in a surviving fragment of
Euripides’ _Cretenses_, “and having completed the life of
night-wandering Zagreus and the raw flesh-devouring feasts, I
uplifted the torches of the mountain mother, and having been
purified by expiatory offerings, I was hailed as Bacchus by the
Curetes.... But now clothed in white garments, I fly the generation
of mortals, and to a corpse I draw not nigh, and I shun the eating
of things which have had life[392].”

The meaning of this is fairly plain and is in everything a great deal
more magical than religious. By a well-known rule common to nearly all
people in a low state of culture, the victim sacrificed to a god becomes
a god himself[393]; and, as the eating of the victim makes him part of
the eater, it has the same effect on the votary as the swallowing of
Phanes by Zeus had upon this last, the Dionysiac soul in the participant
of the sacrifice is thereby strengthened, and he becomes so far
identified with the god as to bear his name. Henceforth, however, he
must have no further dealings with Titanic matter, and in particular
must shun the corpse which represents the Titanic part of man without
the Dionysiac, and must do nothing which can start another being on “the
ceaseless round of changing existences[394].” If he were successful in
observing these austerities to the end, he might hope that, when his
soul was released from its prison house, it would be reunited to
Dionysos, and rest for ever free from the stains of matter. This was in
effect the formal teaching of Pythagoras with regard to the
transmigration of souls, and depended on the view that the soul, or
incorporeal part of man, had once formed part of the soul of the
universe diffused throughout Nature. “I have heard,” says Cicero, “that
Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans ... never doubted but that we possess
minds plucked from the universal divine mind”; a phrase that he explains
in discussing the nature of the gods by saying that Pythagoras “thought
there was a mind spread through and pervading the whole nature of things
whence our minds are plucked[395].” A similar doctrine of transmigration
appears clearly in Pindar[396], who was one of the first to give voice
to the Orphic teaching, which his lays did much to diffuse. The addition
that the Orphic poets made to the doctrine was doubtless the attribution
to Dionysos and the Eleusinian goddess of the task of presiding over and
arranging these rebirths.

Yet the austerities prescribed by the Orphic life, however fitted to a
philosophic school, could hardly be practised by people engaged in the
business of the world. It was impossible, as the Pythagoreans had
probably found, for people to devote themselves entirely to the welfare
of their souls, and yet to live among their fellows. Hence some other
means by which man could be assured a happy lot after death had to be
devised, and there seems no doubt that the post-Pythagorean Orphics
taught that this was to be found in participation in the mysteries or
secret rites already in existence in Greece before the commencement of
their teaching. Whether the Eleusinian Mysteries were in their inception
anything more than the worship of the Chthonian or infernal deities, as
the gods presiding over agriculture and vegetation considered as a
symbol of generation and death, is still undecided[397]; but there can
be no doubt that under Orphic influence they underwent a complete
change. Dionysos, identified with Hades or Zeus Chthonios, begins, after
the break-up of the Pythagorean school, to take part in them by the side
of Demeter and Persephone, and the story of his mysterious birth from
the goddess, and his identification as Zagreus with Iacchos, the
child-god leading the procession, seems from this period onwards to have
been told in them[398]. But the mode in which the Mysteries were
regarded by the Greeks in general materially altered after the
introduction of the Orphic teaching, and this also can hardly be
attributed to anything else than the direct influence of its professors.
We are told on all sides that no religious teaching formed part of the
Mysteries of Eleusis, and that on the contrary the initiates were simply
shown certain scenes and objects, and heard certain mysterious words on
which they were left to put their own interpretation[399]. But the
Orphics discovered in them a sacramental or purifying grace which was
thought to have a kind of magical effect on the lot alike in this life
and after death of those who took part in them. It was enough to have
_seen_ these mysteries, as the poets aver[400], for man’s place in the
next world to be changed for the better, and thus it is the knowledge
thus obtained, and not conduct or favour, which is thought to influence
his destiny. The doctrine thus baldly stated moved to indignation
Diogenes the Cynic, who pointed out that Patecion the brigand, who had
been initiated, had earned for himself by this one act happiness after
death, while Epaminondas, best of patriots, by the fact that he had not
been initiated, was condemned to be plunged in mud and to undergo other
tortures[401].

The very important part in Orphic practice played by this belief in the
magical power of initiation has lately been put beyond doubt by the
discovery of certain inscriptions in the tombs of worshippers of the
Orphic deities at places so far apart as Petelia in Magna Graecia,
Calabria, Eleutherna in Crete, Naples, and Rome. On palaeographic
grounds their dates are said to range over at least three centuries, the
earliest having apparently been made in the IVth or IIIrd century B.C.,
and the latest in the Ist or IInd century of our era. They are all
engraved on thin gold plates, are in Greek hexameter verse, and in the
opinion of scholars are all taken from the same ritual, and therefore
afford evidence of the permanence and fixity as well as of the wide
spread of the Orphic teaching[402]. They contain instructions to the
dead as to the things to be done and avoided by him or her in the next
world and also the formulas to be repeated to the powers there met with,
which will have the effect of magically procuring for the deceased an
exalted rank among its inhabitants. One of the earliest in date, found
at Petelia and now in the British Museum, runs thus:

“Thou shalt find to the left of the House of Hades a well-spring
And by the side thereof standing a white cypress.
To the well-spring approach not near;
But thou shalt find another by the Lake of Memory.
Cold water flowing forth, and there are guardians before it.
Say: I am a child of Earth and of Starry Heaven[403]
But my race is of Heaven (above). This you know yourselves.
And lo! I am parched with thirst and I perish, Give me quickly
The cold water flowing forth from the Lake of Memory[404].
And of themselves they will give me to drink from the Holy
Well-Spring.”

Another set of plates from tombs at Eleutherna, now in the National
Museum at Athens, is to this effect:

“I am parched with thirst and I perish.—Nay, drink of Me
The well-spring flowing for ever on the right where the cypress is
Who art thou?...
Whence art thou? I am the son of Earth and of Starry Heaven.”

The magical and gnostical purport of this is plain. As in the Egyptian
_Book of the Dead_, to which these plates bear a great resemblance,
their aim was to give the deceased person in whose tomb the inscription
was buried[405], the _knowledge_ of the infernal or subterranean regions
which was to make his entry into them safe and profitable. That his soul
or immaterial part was a part of Dionysos, the descendant of Uranos and
Gê[406], and more directly the offspring of Demeter the earth-goddess by
Zeus, the god of the sky, had already been shown to the dead on his
initiation. But it was necessary that he should prove to the gods of
death and generation that he _knew_ this, when they would have no
alternative but to admit him to all the privileges attached to his high
descent and the rank he had attained in the scale of being by
initiation. This is made plainer still by the statements put into the
mouth of the dead by the gold plates from Naples, now in the Naples
Museum, which read thus:

“Out of the Pure I come, Pure Queen of those Below,
And Eukles and Eubouleus[407] and other Gods and Demons;
For I also avow that I am of blessed race.
And I have paid the penalty for deeds unrighteous
Whether it is that Fate laid me low, or the Gods Immortal,
Or [that Zeus has struck me?] with star-flung thunderbolt
I have flown out of the sorrowful weary Wheel;
I have passed with eager feet to the Circle desired;
I have sunk beneath the bosom of Despoena[408], Queen of the
Underworld
I have passed with eager feet to [_or_ from] the Circle desired;
And now I come a suppliant to Holy Persephone
That of her grace she receive me to the seats of the Hallowed.”

Then comes Persephone’s answer

“Happy and Blessed One, Thou shalt be God instead of Mortal,”

while a prose formula “A kid I have fallen into milk” which seems to
have been a password among the Orphics is written in the midst of the
verses and appears upon this and several of the other plates[409].

In the Naples plate, we have the teaching, more or less dimly indicated
in the quotations from the Orphic poems which occur in classical and
patristic writers, brought to a focus. The dead has during his earthly
life taken part in the mystic rites which have told him whence life
comes and whither it is tending. He now has the right to demand from the
deities who preside over the death and rebirth of mortals that he be
relieved from the endless round of incarnations; and he backs up this
request by proof of the knowledge he possesses of their nature and his
own origin, at the same time uttering passwords which he has received on
his initiation. The effect of this, although out of reverence
represented as an act of grace on the part of the divinities addressed,
is in fact magical or automatic. The powers addressed perforce grant the
request of the dead and he becomes like them a god[410], freed from the
necessity for any further deaths and rebirths. The same idea is
traceable throughout the whole of the Egyptian _Book of the Dead_ from
which it may have been directly derived[411], and also in other
religions with which it would seem the Orphic teaching can have had no
connection[412]. But the point to remember at present is that it appears
henceforward in all the cults or sects to which we have given the
generic name of Gnostic[413].

How this idea was propagated in Greece and her colonies is a question
over which still hangs a great deal of obscurity. There exist a great
number of quotations from poems attributed to Orpheus, which were
clearly the composition of the Orphic school, and all these are, like
the gold plates, in hexameter verse. These, as Damascius implies, were
recited by professional declaimers called Rhapsodists[414] at the
different games and festivals held in honour of the gods, as were once
the so-called Homeric Hymns and the poems of Pindar, which they perhaps
succeeded and displaced. In this way they doubtless became familiar to
many thousands who would otherwise never have heard of the Orphic
teaching, and our conviction on this point is strengthened when we see
how very numerous the festivals in which the Chthonian gods were
celebrated really were. Besides Eleusis, we hear of the worship of
Dionysos, Demeter and Persephone as infernal deities in Achaea, in the
Argolid, in Arcadia, in Messenia, in Sparta, and in other parts of the
Peloponnesus[415]. It also spread through Boeotia, where the national
cult of Dionysos no doubt ensured it a good reception, and thence early
passed into the islands of the Aegean. Crete had, as we have seen,
practised it even before it came to Athens; and Demeter and Persephone
were not only worshipped in Sicily, but were taken to be the tutelary
gods of the island. The Ionian colonists also took the worship of the
Eleusinian triad with them into Asia and they were adored in parts of
Asia Minor as far distant from Greece as Cyzicus[416]. At all, or nearly
all, these places, mysteries were celebrated having more or less
likeness to those of Eleusis, and were followed by games and festivals
like the Eleusinia, at which the songs of the Rhapsodists would be
heard[417]. The frequent Dionysia, or festivals of Dionysos, scattered
all over the Greek-speaking world, but especially in its Northern or
Balkan provinces, no doubt offered an even better opportunity for making
known these poems.

The Orphic poets, also, by no means confined their songs to the worship
of the deities adored at Eleusis. The Thracians, including in that name
the inhabitants of Macedonia and Thessaly, always had extraordinary
ideas about the future life, and Herodotus describes how they used to
gather weeping round the new-born child, bewailing his entry into this
miserable world, while they rejoiced over the death of any of their
fellows, declaring that he had thus obtained a happy deliverance from
his troubles[418]. These, however, were the very doctrines of the
Orphics, who declared that the body was the grave of the soul, and that
the life of the world to come was the only one worth living. Hence the
mythical Orpheus was said to have been a Thracian, and the worship of
Bacchus or the Theban Dionysos as the god of wine to have come into
Attica from Thrace by way of Boeotia, a theory which derives some colour
from the orgiastic dances and ravings of the Maenads and Bacchanals, who
seem therein to have reproduced the rites of the savage Thracians[419].
When the Phrygian divinities—Cybele the Mother of the Gods, and her
consort Attis—were brought into Greece, the Orphics seized hold of their
legends also, and so transformed them that it is now impossible for us
to tell how much of them is Asiatic, and how much is the result of
Orphic interpolation[420]. The same thing may be said of the worship of
the Syrian Adonis, whose mystic death turned him into the spouse of
Persephone, and enabled the Orphics to identify him with Eubuleus or the
infernal Zeus or Dionysos, and of that of the Thracian moon-goddess
Bendis, early worshipped in Athens, whom an Orphic verse preserved by
Proclus declares to be Persephone herself[421].

The foreign god, however, in whose worship the Orphic doctrine is most
plainly visible was Sabazius, who also seems originally to have come
from Phrygia. He is described in an early Greek inscription as “Lord of
all[422]” and said later to be the son of Cybele. The Greeks, however,
quickly identified him with Dionysos Zagreus[423], and an orgiastic
worship of him penetrated into Athens some time before Alexander’s
conquests. This seems to have been well known to Aristophanes, who
declaims in the _Lysistrata_ against the “wantonness” of the Athenian
women, who gave themselves up to the pursuit of this god and the Syrian
Adonis[424]. But the associations formed for the worship of these
divinities seem to have been recruited almost entirely from among the
courtezans of the Piraeus and the trades dependent on them, and more
than one of its priestesses were put to death for “impiety” or
interference with the religion of the State. The low estimation in which
it was generally held may be judged from the invective of Demosthenes
against his rival Aeschines, whose mother Glaucothea was a priestess of
Sabazius, and who had himself in his youth assisted her in her
duties[425]:

“When you became a man, you knew by heart the books of your mother
and helped her to make up others; and you nightly gave the initiated
the _nebride_ (fawn-skin) and baptized them and purified them,
wiping off the clay and bran, and raising them after the
purifications, teaching them to say ‘I have shunned evil. I have
found good.’... By day you led fine _thiasi_ (confraternities)
through the streets crowned with leaves of fennel and poplar, you
heading the procession and squeezing the broad-jawed serpents,
waving them above your head while you shouted _Evoe Saboï_ and
danced _Hyes Attis, Attis Hyes_; and the old women hailed you as
leader of the dance, and chief, and chest-bearer, and sieve-bearer,
and with such like titles; while you received from them as your pay
sops and twisted loaves and cakes. Who would not think himself lucky
with such a life!”

The whole of this tirade may be explained by reference to the Orphic
teaching about Dionysos Zagreus. The fawn-skin or _nebride_ was worn, as
appears on thousands of vases, in the Dionysiac rites as in those
relating to the burial of Osiris. The clay and bran are thought to refer
to the disguise which the Titans assumed when stealing upon the infant
god, and the speech about shunning evil apparently denotes the putting
away of the Titanic nature and the resolution in future to cultivate the
Dionysiac soul. The serpents are explained by a custom peculiar to the
Sabazian rites of putting a live serpent into the bosom of the
initiate’s garment and taking it out at the foot in memory of the shape
in which Zeus begot Dionysos on his daughter Persephone. The mystic cry
of “Evoe” is a well known feature of the orgiastic worship of Dionysos;
while “Saboï” seems to cover some name or epithet of Sabazius[426], and
the phrase “Hyes Attis” shows the connection with Attis, whose identity
with Dionysos forms the subject of more than one Orphic Hymn[427]. In
all this also it may be noticed that there is no pretence of considering
conduct as influencing the destiny of the initiate or even of
conciliating the divinity invoked. The whole of the rites described are
entirely magical, and owe all their efficacy to the knowledge of the
right means to be used to compel the spiritual world to perform the
votaries’ will. It is obvious that people with such ideas will be in no
great hurry to extend the advantage of their discoveries to others less
lucky than themselves and will on the contrary do much to keep them a
secret confined to a few[428].

Did the Orphics, however, at any time form themselves into a church or
brotherhood pledged to mutual support and the propagation of the faith?
Some writers of authority have thought so[429]; but there seems to be no
evidence available to warrant the supposition. Although the worshippers
of Cybele, Attis, Adonis, Dionysos, the Eleusinian deities, and
Sabazius, were by no means averse from announcing the nature of their
faith on their tombstones, we nowhere find any funeral inscriptions
declaring the dead to have belonged to any body of worshippers calling
themselves Orphici. A more likely theory is that the Orphics were banded
together in the small independent associations known as Thiasi, Erani,
or Orgeones[430], like those which we have seen founded at Athens and
elsewhere for the worship of foreign gods. It would seem probable
enough; but as yet all documentary evidence is entirely lacking.
Records, generally in the shape of stelas or tablets containing the
lists of members and the regulations of the associations, have been
found in some numbers for the _thiasi_ of nearly all the gods honoured
by the Orphic poets who were not the gods of the Greek States; but among
them no association calling itself Orphic has yet been discovered. What
we do know is, that in the days of Plato, there was a class of strolling
charlatans called Orpheotelestae who were accustomed to haunt the doors
of the rich with a heap of books said to have been written by Orpheus,
out of which they offered, in exchange for money, to perform ceremonies
of purification and initiation which they affirmed would purge from the
recipient all trace of personal or inherited guilt and assure him a
happy lot in the next world[431]. They also told fortunes, offered to
dispose of enemies, and sometimes gathered together in some numbers so
as to make a more vivid and imposing representation of the pains of the
uninitiated in Hades, and thus induce the superstitious to pay the price
of their charms[432]. They had a certain amount of success, and
Theophrastus in his _Characters_ exhibits his _Deisidaemon_ or
Superstitious Man as going to them with his wife and family to be
purified once a month[433]. Such vagabonds could hardly have made a
living had there been any organized body ready to render like services
in a regular way, and the fact of their existence and the contempt with
which they are spoken of by the writers of the period go some way to
show that no more regular Orphic brotherhood or sect was ever known in
Greece.

There have nevertheless come down to us upwards of eighty hymns
attributed to Orpheus which all bear a certain likeness to each other
and were evidently intended by the compiler for use in some religious or
magical ceremony[434]. They are, like all the fragments of Orphic poems
that we have, in hexameter verse, and most of them conclude with an
invocation to the divinity to whom they are addressed to be present or
to aid in the accomplishment of some “work,” while this invocation often
alludes to “mysteries” and “initiates.” More than one text of these
hymns exist, and the differences between them are so small that it is
plain that their contents must for a long time have been known and
settled. Much variety of opinion exists among the learned as to their
date, the theory of their first modern commentator being that they were
the actual hymns used in the Eleusinian Mysteries[435], while Petersen
thought that they were composed in the Ist or IInd century of our era,
although he admitted that some eight or nine of them were probably
older[436]. One of the latest and best opinions seems to be that of
Prof. Albrecht Dieterich, who thinks that the collection dates from the
period between 200 B.C. and the birth of Christ, and that it was
probably made on the sea-coast of Asia Minor and that of Egypt near
Alexandria[437]. That the hymns were brought together for some religious
or magical use associated with the Orphic teaching, is evident from the
Preface, which purports to be an address to Musaeus, the legendary son
of Orpheus, although it is really an invocation to all the gods
worshipped by the Orphics, including several who are not specially
addressed in the hymns which follow. Of the 87 or 88 hymns common to
most of the codices, all but nine bear after their titles a
specification of the particular perfume—frankincense, myrrh, spices and
the like—to be burnt while they are sung or recited. Most of the texts
bear also an endorsement in another hand reading “Comrade! use [it] with
good fortune!” and this has induced Prof. Dieterich and others to
conclude that the collection was made for the liturgic use of some
confraternity or _thiasus_ professing Orphic doctrines[438]. The
following Hymn to Persephone will perhaps give a fair notion of the
lines upon which these hymns are framed:

HYMN TO PERSEPHONE[439].

“Persephone, daughter of great Zeus, come, thou beloved one,
Only-begotten[440] goddess, accept the offerings well pleasing to
thee.
Much-honoured consort of Pluto, dear giver of life,
Praxidice, decked with love-locks, chaste offspring of Deo.
Giver of birth to the Eumenides, queen of those below the earth,
Virgin whom Zeus begot in unspeakable nuptials[441]
Mother of the loud-shouting, many-formed Eubuleus[442].
Playfellow of the Hours, light-bringer of glorious form,
Dread ruler of all, virgin teeming with fruit
Brilliant-rayed, horned-one, the sole desire of mortals.
Vernal one, who rejoicest in the breath of the meadows
Who dost bring to light the sacred shape of green fruit buds.
Who in autumn time wast wedded in a ravished bed:
Who art alone the life and death of much-enduring mortals.
Persephone! For thou dost ever nourish and slay all things.
Hear, blessed goddess, and send up fruits from the earth
Granting us in abundance peace and gentle-handed health
And a life of happiness, such as leads old age untroubled
To thy realm, O queen, and to dread Pluto.”

By the side of this we may perhaps put the Hymn to Dionysos in the same
collection. It is probably later than the other in date, the syncretism
which equates Persephone with Aphrodite, Cybele, and Isis pointing to a
post-Alexandrian origin.

[HYMN] OF MISE—PERFUME: STORAX[443].

“I invoke the law-giving, rod-bearing, Dionysos
The never-to-be-forgotten seed, Eubuleus of many names
Who art[444] sacred and sacrosanct Mise, ineffable queen!
Male and female, of double nature, the redeemer [_or_
curse-loosing][445] Iacchos
Whether thou art delighting in the sweet-smelling temple of Eleusis
Or art solemnizing mysteries with the Mother in Phrygia,
Or art rejoicing in Cyprus with the fair-crowned Cytherea,
Or dost exult in the pure wheat-bearing plains
With thy mother divine, black-robed, august Isis
And thy busy nurses[446] near the Egyptian stream,
Be gracious and come thou benevolent to accomplish our tasks.”

Whatever date be assigned to these hymns, it is at least admitted by all
commentators that they were composed for the use of persons professing
Orphic doctrines, and we shall be on safe grounds if we assume that they
represent the later state of the Orphic teaching. Collating them with
the fragments of Orphic verses preserved in the quotations of writers
during the late Pagan and early Christian centuries, we are able to
reconstitute the whole Orphic creed, as it was known shortly before the
triumph of Christianity. We see from this that the Orphics attributed
the actual beginning of the universe to their god Dionysos, who first
appeared from the egg formed from Night or Chaos. In that manifestation,
he was bisexual[447], and thus mother, as well as father, of all the
gods and goddesses of the popular pantheon, the swallowing of his heart
by Zeus making him one with the Homeric “father of gods and men.” His
second birth was due to the ineffable, or mystic, union of Zeus and
Demeter, and he was in infancy torn in pieces and eaten by the Titans as
narrated above. From the ashes of these last, men were born, while
Dionysos himself became Hades, the King of the Dead, over whom he rules
with his consort Persephone, the daughter, as Dionysos is the son, of
Zeus and Demeter, and perhaps known to the initiate as only the female
form of her consort[448]. This pair preside over the life and death of
mortals, the soul or Dionysiac spark within each man or woman having to
pass repeatedly through the bodies of other human beings and animals
until finally purified, when it will be united with Dionysos and thus
become god[449]. But the process can be made easier and shorter by the
saving grace of the Mysteries, which by the knowledge they confer on the
initiate of the constitution and ramification of the divine nature, of
the geography, so to speak, of the next world, and of the magical words
and formulas to be there repeated, give him a vast advantage over his
less favoured fellows[450]. The third incarnation of Dionysos, god of
wine, begotten by the father of gods and men on Semele, daughter of
Cadmus, after the heart of the infant Zagreus had been sewn in his
thigh, must be looked upon as a concession to the popular belief in a
different mythology. To those initiated, whether in the Eleusinian or in
other mysteries, the last incarnation of Dionysos was that brought about
by the union of Zeus in serpent shape[451] with Persephone, and he must
have been the child whose mystic birth was acted in the Mysteries of
Eleusis where he was identified with Iacchos, the leader of the
procession.

The effect of this creed, the real symbol of the greatest movement which
ever took place within the religion of the pre-Christian Greeks, upon
the religions that followed its appearance, remains to be considered. In
the first place, Orphism went a great way towards weaning the minds of
men from the idea of separate gods for different nations, and towards
teaching them that all their national and local deities were but
different forms of one great Power, who was himself the source of all
being. There can be little doubt that the Orphics thus regarded their
god Dionysos, whom they made one with his father Zeus, and hailed as
being in himself female as well as male, and the common type of all
goddesses as well as of all gods. By their readiness to identify him
alike with the chthonian god of Eleusis, and with all the foreign
gods—Adonis, Attis, Sabazius, and Osiris—with whom they were brought in
contact, they showed how far they were willing to go in the path of
syncretism; and, but for the rise of Christianity and other religions,
there can be little doubt but that the whole of the Graeco-Roman deities
would eventually have merged in Dionysos[452]. Yet although in this, as
well as in their sanguine idea of the perfectibility of man’s nature,
the Orphics may seem to have done somewhat towards elevating and
purifying religion, it seems plain that their influence was on the whole
hostile to it, and had they ever aimed at and attained supreme power,
would have ended in the negation of all religion whatever. Whether the
Orphics originally demanded from their followers any moral as well as
material purification cannot now be said; but the proceedings of the
Orpheotelestae show us how very early in their teaching all such ideas
were dropped, and the magical theory of the efficacy of the Mysteries as
a means of salvation came to outweigh everything else in the eyes of
their votaries. The compulsion of the gods, however, is an idea that,
once rooted in the mind of man, is sure to bring forth most unwholesome
fruit; and Orphism seems to have brought with it from the beginning all
the worst practices of magic. The Orpheotelestae did not scruple, as has
been said, to undertake to rid their initiates of an inconvenient
adversary[453]; and although this may not at the outset have implied
anything worse than idle curses, it was at any rate murder in intention,
and in Greece, as everywhere else, early led to the calling-in of the
aid of poison. Magical rites, too, generally bring with them a more or
less pronounced worship of devils or evil beings as such, and there are
many signs that the Orphics by no means confined their invocations to
powers supposed to be friendly to man. Among the Orphic Hymns may be
found an invocation to the Titans, who were the legendary enemies of
Zeus Dionysos and all the celestial gods, and it is probable that this
instance is not a solitary one[454]. The worship of gods given up to
evil generally results in the depravation of the morals of their
votaries, and the purposes for which they are invoked are seldom
sublime. Most of this evil sorcery seems to have centred round the cult
of Hecate, herself a mystery goddess revered at Eleusis and especially
dear to the Orphics[455]. Down to the very end of paganism, and indeed,
onward through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Hecate remained the
mistress of magicians and the patron saint of sorcerers[456].

One other consequence of the Orphic teaching deserves to be noted. The
syncretistic tendency, which led the true Orphic to regard Zeus, Apollo,
Hades, and all the gods and goddesses of the popular pantheon as so many
varying forms of his own Dionysos, must have always rendered him
indifferent as to what deity received his public devotions. Secure in
the sacramental grace bestowed upon him by the mere participation in the
Mysteries, and fortified by the knowledge of the formulas which were by
themselves sufficient to ensure him a happy lot in the next world, it is
plain that he must always have held himself at liberty to adore any god
or goddess worshipped by those among whom he found himself, and that he
must have been ready to conform outwardly to any religion which seemed
to offer him any personal advantage. Knowledge, not faith, was to him
the one thing needful to the soul, and he would be as little likely to
think of enduring persecution for opinion’s sake as to approve of
inflicting it. The secret rites and the secret formulas comprised the
whole of his religion.

To sum up, then, the practical result of their speculations, the Orphics
taught that the universe had passed through several stages of evolution
since it was formed from chaos by its First God or Divine Workman. Each
of these stages was described as the reign of a fresh ruler or supreme
divinity, who was the “son” of the foregoing or, as it would seem, a new
incarnation of him. Man came into being through the mystic death and
dispersion throughout the universe of one of the last of these
incarnations, and therefore contains within himself a spark of the
Divine nature which is capable of purification from the contamination of
soulless matter. This is effected in the ordinary way by a succession of
deaths and rebirths in the course of which man’s soul would pass into
that of other animals and human beings. But the process was thought to
be shortened by participation in certain mysteries or secret rites
handed down by tradition, wherein the hidden constitution and purpose of
Nature were disclosed to the initiate, and he was equipped with
mysterious names and formulas thought to possess magical power. These,
by their mere utterance, gave him the right to demand his release from
the painful circle of rebirths which was the common lot of mankind, and
in effect turned him into a being superior to man. The possession of
this wonder-working knowledge or gnosis was not however granted
indiscriminately to all, but remained a secret confined to a favoured
few, who were pledged under sufficiently severe sanctions not to
disclose it. That all religions professed by mankind were equal and
indifferent in the eyes of the Orphic seems to follow logically from
this, as does the position that he might himself profess any of them
that seemed to him expedient. We shall find all these features present
in the many sects of post-Christian Gnostics.

Footnote 368:

Lobeck in his _Aglaophamus_, Königsberg, 1829, vol. I. pp. 233-1104,
makes this clear. It was also the opinion of Aristotle according to
Cicero (_de Nat. Deor._ Bk I. c. 38). Other authorities are collected
by Purser in his article “Orphica” in Smith’s _Dict. of Greek and
Roman Antiquities_, 1890, vol. II. who quotes with approval Preller’s
remark that Orpheus was “eine litterarische Collectivperson.” See also
Paul Monceaux in Daremberg and Saglio’s _Dict. des Antiq._ _s.v._
Orphica.

Footnote 369:

Herodotus, Bk VII. c. 6. Tatian, _adv. Graecos_, c. XLI.; Clem. Alex.
_Strom._ Bk I. c. 21; Sext. Emp. _Pyrrh. Hypotyp._ III. p. 115 B. Cf.
Purser, _art. cit._

Footnote 370:

K. O. Müller, _Hist. of the Literature of Ancient Greece_, Eng. ed.
vol. I. pp. 308, 309; and authorities quoted by O. Kern, _de Orphei,
Epimenidis Pherecydis Theogoniis_, Berlin, 1888, p. 6.

Footnote 371:

The first mention of such rites is said to have been made by Arctinus
of Miletus in his _Æthiopis_, where he describes Ulysses as purifying
Achilles for the murder of Thersites. See Grote’s _History of Greece_,
4th ed. vol. I. pp. 23, 24.

Footnote 372:

K. O. Müller, _op. cit._ I. pp. 310, 311.

Footnote 373:

Clem. Alex. _Strom._ Bk I. c. 21.

Footnote 374:

The search for its original home seems hopeless at present. It might
easily be connected with Babylonian beliefs, and the Orphic Dionysos
has too many features in common with Tammuz, the lover of Ishtar, for
the resemblance to be entirely accidental. But other elements in the
story, such as the mundane egg, are found in the Vedas, and may point
to an Indian origin. The discovery a few years ago at Boghaz Keui in
Cilicia of inscriptions showing that the Vedic gods were worshipped in
Asia Minor at least as early as 1270 B.C., makes it very difficult to
say whether the Vedic gods may not have reached India from Asia Minor
or _vice versa_. In this case, it is possible that Onomacritos may
have learned some of the legends at the Court of the Great King at
Susa.

Footnote 375:

Pindar, _Isthm._ VI. i. 3; Aeschyl. _Sisyphus Drapetes_, fr. 242 of
Didot; Sophocles, _Antigone_, ll. 1121 _sqq._; Euripides, _Rhesus_,
ll. 942 _sqq._ Cf. Döllinger, _Jud. und Heid._ Eng. ed. vol. I. p.
259.

Footnote 376:

Demosthenes, _adv. Aristog._ I. p. 773. Cf. Maury, _Rel. de la Grèce_,
II. p. 320; Daremberg and Saglio, _Dict. des Antiq._ _s.v._ Orphica
and Eleusinia, for other authorities.

Footnote 377:

Herodotus, Bk II. cc. 145, 146.

Footnote 378:

This is the “Theogony of the Rhapsodists,” which seems to have been
the most popular of all the Orphic theogonies. The different texts in
which it is preserved have been collected by Abel, _Orphica_, Lips.
1885, pp. 48-140. It is well summarized by Purser in Smith’s _Dict. of
Antiq._ where before quoted. Cf. Daremberg and Saglio, _s.v._ Orpheus.

Footnote 379:

Aristoph. _Aves_, ll. 691-706.

Footnote 380:

_Religions de la Grèce_, t. III. p. 310.

Footnote 381:

Μουνογένεια. See Orphic Hymn on p. 142, _infra_. Persephone has also
Zeus for her father in the Homeric _Hymn to Demeter_, l. 396. The
epithet cannot imply that she was his only daughter, as he had other
daughters among the Homeric gods, such as Athena and Aphrodite, but
rather that she was “unique,” or one of a kind. The mistaking of the
word Μονογενής for μονογέννητος by Christian and Jewish writers has
led to much confusion; and Renan (_L’Église Chrétienne_, Paris, 1879,
p. 200, n. 2) notes that George the Syncellus calls Bar Coziba, the
Jewish Messiah, Μονογενής. See the story of the begettal of Persephone
which Maury, _op. cit._ III. pp. 321, 322, quotes from Clement of
Alexandria and Arnobius. Both authors derive from it the name of Brimo
given to Demeter in the Mysteries. Cf. Chap. VIII, _infra_.

Footnote 382:

Orphic Hymn XXX in Abel’s _Orphica_, where he is called
“First-begotten, of a double nature, thrice-born, Bacchic king,
Hunter, Ineffable One, Hidden One, two horned, and of double form.”
Cf. his epithet “bull-faced” in Orphic Hymn XLV. So Clement of
Alexandria quotes a verse from some unnamed poet that “the bull has
begotten a serpent, the serpent a bull,” _Protrept._ c. II.

Footnote 383:

As in the statue at Megalopolis in Arcadia described by Pausanias, Bk
VIII. c. 31, where Polycleitos portrayed the young god with a cup and
a _thyrsos_, besides wearing _cothurni_, but with the eagle and the
name of Zeus Φιλίος. Ael. Aristides, _in Dionysum_, says that Dionysos
is Zeus himself, a doctrine which Justin Martyr, _Cohort._ c. XV,
attributes to Orpheus.

Footnote 384:

The story with full references to authorities is given by Maury, _Rel.
de la Grèce Antique_, t. III. pp. 342 _sqq._; Purser in Smith’s _Dict.
of Greek and Roman Antiquities_, 1890, _s.v._ Orphica; Cecil Smith,
“Orphic Myths on Attic Vases,” _J.H.S._ 1890, pp. 343-351; Dyer, _The
Gods in Greece_, 1891, p. 128; Paul Monceaux in Daremberg and Saglio’s
_Dict. des Antiq._ _s.v._ Orphica. The eating of a god or other being
in order to obtain possession of the victim’s qualities is a common
idea among primitive peoples, as is set forth at length in Frazer,
_Golden Bough_, 3rd ed. pt V, vol. II. ch. 10. It was familiar to the
Egyptians, as is seen in the Pyramid Texts of the VIth Dynasty, where
the glorified King Unas is represented as chasing, catching, cooking,
and eating the gods in the next world in order to assimilate their
powers. See Maspero, _Les Pyramides de Saqqarah_, pp. 67 _sqq._ So in
a magic papyrus now at Leyden, the magician threatens the god Set whom
he is invoking, that if he is not obedient, he will speak to “the
Great God” (Serapis?) who will tear Set “limb from limb and give his
powers to a mangy dog sitting on a dung-hill to eat.” See Leemans,
_Papyri Graeci_, vol. II. pp. 18, 19.

Footnote 385:

Foucart, _Myst. d’Él._ pp. 27, 28.

Footnote 386:

Foucart, where last quoted; Hesiod, _Works and Days_, l. 465 (p. 39,
Didot).

Footnote 387:

Such ideas may, however, have been current in the religions of the
Eastern Mediterranean long before Orphic times. Dr Budge in his book
_Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection_, I. p. 28, reiterates what he
has before stated elsewhere, _i.e._ that Osiris was to his worshippers
“the god-man, the first of those who rose from the dead,” and that his
death and resurrection were therefore supposed to be in some way
beneficial to mankind. This is very likely, but I know of no Egyptian
text that in any way connects the creation of man with the death of
Osiris. On the contrary, a text which Dr Budge has himself published
makes men and women to come into being from the tears which came forth
from the eye of the god Khepera, here probably to be identified with
Nu, the primaeval Ocean or Deep. See Budge, _The Gods of the
Egyptians_, vol. I. p. 299. The Zoroastrian religion, in the late form
in which we have it in the _Bundahish_ (see West, _S.B.E._ Oxford,
1880, _Pahlavi Texts_, pt I.), does indeed make man spring from the
death of Gayomort, the First or Primaeval Man, slain by Ahriman. If we
choose to suppose that this conception went back to the times of
Zoroaster himself, that is to say, about 700 B.C., Onomacritos might
easily have found this part of the story at the Court of Susa. Cf.
Bousset, _Hauptprobleme der Gnosis_, Göttingen, 1907, pp. 215-223. It
is significant that, according to Pausanias, Bk VIII. c. 37, it was
Onomacritos who first made the Titans evil powers, or as he says
“contributing to the sufferings of Dionysos.”

Footnote 388:

Clement of Alexandria, _Strom._ Bk III. c. 3, quotes this expression
from “Philolaos the Pythagorean.” Athenaeus, _Deipnosophistae_, Bk IV.
p. 157 C (Teubner) from “Euxitheus the Pythagoric.” It evidently went
back to the earliest Orphic teaching reduced to writing.

Footnote 389:

See Lobeck, _Aglaophamus_, I. p. 566, for authorities.

Footnote 390:

κύκλου τ’ ἀλλῦσαι καὶ ἀναψῦξαι κακότητος. The line is attributed to
Orpheus by Simplicius in his Commentary on Aristotle, _de Caelo_, II.
p. 168 (ed. Karsten). According to Proclus, _in Plat. Tim._ V. 380 A,
B, it was part of a prayer which Orphics used when being initiated in
the mysteries of “Demeter and Cora.” The Pythagorean doctrine of
transmigration and its adoption by the Orphics are well set out by
Luebbert in his _Commentatio de Pindaro dogmatis de migratione
animarum cultore_, Bonn, 1887, _q.v._

Footnote 391:

All these prohibitions persisted, and we meet with them in nearly all
the religions hereafter described including the Manichaean. The
filiation may well be direct, as such sects as the Valentinians grew
up in an atmosphere of Orphic teaching. If, however, it should appear
that the Orphic notions on this subject were derived from some Western
Asiatic source, it is plain that the Ophites and Manichaeans may have
drawn theirs from the same fount and independently.

Footnote 392:

Euripides, _Cretenses_, p. 733 (Didot). The fragment is found in
Porphyry, _de Abstinentia_, Bk IV. c. 19. Cf. Euripides, _Hippolytus_,
l. 952.

Footnote 393:

See Frazer and Maspero as quoted in note 3 p. 125, _supra_.

Footnote 394:

That this was the regular Orphic phrase is plain from the verse quoted
above, note 3 p. 127. Cf. the gold plates of Naples, p. 133, _infra_.

Footnote 395:

Cf. Luebbert, _op. cit._ p. v. The confusion in Cicero between
_animus_ and _anima_, or mind and soul, is curious. Cf. Olympiodorus,
_Comment. ad Plat. Phaed._ as given in Fr. 225 of Abel’s _Orphica_ (p.
245).

Footnote 396:

Orpheus is mentioned in the IVth Pythian ode as the “father of songs,”
and in fragments of the _Threnoi_ as “the golden-sworded son of
Oiagreus,” p. 116 (Bergk). In the VIth Isthmian ode, Dionysos is made
the temple-companion or assessor (πάρεδρος) of Demeter. The delights
of the blessed dead are set forth in fragments of the _Threnoi_ (see
Fragment X. 1, 2, 3, 4 of Teubner, pp. 95, 96, Cod. Boeckh); their
reincarnation as heroes in a fragment from the same poem: _ibid._
Frag. X. 4, p. 98, Cod. Bö.

Footnote 397:

The earlier idea espoused by Creuzer and others (see Guigniaut,
_Religions de l’Antiquité_, vol. III. _passim_, and especially pp.
1207, 1208) that the Chthonian gods were worshipped as the symbols of
generation and death seems a good deal nearer the truth than the
“Corn-spirit” theory set on foot by the _Golden Bough_ that they were
the gods of agriculture and vegetation. Of course both explanations
can be read into what we know of the Mysteries. Why these last should
have been kept secret even before the rise of Orphism is hard to see.
M. Paul Foucart’s view that they came originally from a foreign
country (according to him from Egypt) offers one explanation of this;
but see n. 2 p. 139, _infra_.

Footnote 398:

So F. Lenormant in Daremberg and Saglio’s _Dict. des Ant._ _s.v._
Eleusinia. See, too, his article on Dionysos Zagreus in the _Gazette
Archéologique_, 1879. So Purser in Smith’s _Dict. of Antiq._ as last
quoted (cf. article “Eleusinia”). Aeschylus, _Sisyphus Drapetes_,
frag. 242, p. 238, Didot, and Alcmaeonis, in _Etymologicum Magnum_,
_s.h.v._ both know of Zagreus, and Sophocles, _Antigone_, ll.
1140-1154 identifies Dionysos and Iacchos.

Footnote 399:

Synesius (Ptol. Episcop.), _Dion_ (Migne, _Script. Gr._ t. 66, pp.
1153-1156), says so plainly. Cf. Galen, _de Usu Partium_ (Kuhn’s
_Medici Graeci_, Claudius Galenus, vol. IV. pp. 702, 703), and
Plutarch, _de Defect. Orac._ p. 422 (_Moralia_, vol. I. p. 514,
Didot).

Footnote 400:

Sophocles, _Triptolemus_ (Frag. 348, Didot). Homeric _Hymn to
Demeter_, ll. 480 _sqq._ (p. 565, Didot). See also Chap. II, _supra_.

Footnote 401:

Plutarch, _de audiend._ _Poet._ IV. 76 (Reisk); Diogenes Laertius,
_Vit. Phil._ c. VI.

Footnote 402:

They have been many times described, especially by Kaibel and
Comparetti (for references see Monceaux in Daremberg and Saglio’s
_Dict. des Antiq._ _s.v._ Orphica). The translations in the text are
by Prof. Gilbert Murray and are taken from his Appendix to Miss Jane
Harrison’s _Prolegomena to Study of Greek Religion_, 1903, _q.v._

Footnote 403:

The same phrase is used in the Orphic Hymn XIII. with regard to
Kronos, Abel, _Orphica_, p. 66.

Footnote 404:

This idea reappears in one of the documents of the _Pistis Sophia_.
See Chap. X, _infra_.

Footnote 405:

So Aelius Aristides (_in Serapidem_, p. 98) speaks of the light of the
sun being restored by Serapis “to those whose tombs contain holy
books.”

Footnote 406:

As Foucart, _Culte de Dionysos_, p. 34, n. 3, has pointed out, this
cannot refer to the Titanic part of man, which he was enjoined by the
Orphics to mortify as far as possible. There is something to be said
for M. Foucart’s view that the dead is here shown as another Osiris,
son of the earth-god Geb and the sky-goddess Nut. It is curious that
this last is always portrayed on Egyptian monuments with a
star-spangled body, while I know of no Greek representation of Uranos
which connects him with the stars.

Footnote 407:

“Of good counsel.” A name of Dionysos, as appears from the Orphic
Hymns given later in this chapter.

Footnote 408:

A name of Demeter, Persephone, and some other Chthonian goddesses. See
Aristophanes, _Thesmophoriazusae_, l. 286. It probably means merely
“mistress.”

Footnote 409:

It has been suggested that this is a figure for the initiated dead
receiving all that they wish. It should be noted, however, that in the
Zoroastrian religion the flood of molten metal which is to burn the
wicked is to feel to the faithful like warm milk. So N. Söderblom, _La
Vie Future d’après la Mazdéisme_, Paris, 1901, p. 266, quoting the
_Dinkard_ and the _Bundahish_. The phrase is discussed by M. Salomon
Reinach in _Revue Archéol._ 1901, II. pp. 202-213, and _Cultes, Mythes
et Religions_, Paris, 1909, t. II. pp. 123-134. M. Alline, in _Xenia_,
Athens, 1912, connects it with the supposed Orphic idea that blessed
souls inhabit the Milky Way.

Footnote 410:

Perhaps not directly. There is some reason for thinking that the soul
of the true Orphic was supposed to pass through the intermediate
stages of hero and demon: see Hild, _Étude sur les Démons_, Paris,
1881, p. 144, where the subject is excellently treated. Cf. Pindar,
_Threnoi_, Frag. X. 4, p. 98, Cod. Bö. The deification of the dead was
also a Pythagorean doctrine, as appears in the _Aurea Carmina_, ll.
70, 71, ed. Gaisford.

Footnote 411:

This is the suggestion of Foucart, _Myst. d’Él._ p. 72. That the
Egyptian dead was supposed to become one with Osiris himself is an
idea that appears as early as the Pyramid Texts, cf. Maspero, _Les
Pyramides de Saqqarah_, _passim_, where the dead kings are each in
turn hailed as “this Osiris.”

Footnote 412:

Buddhism, for instance, which can hardly have reached the West before
the death of Onomacritos.

Footnote 413:

As in the _Pistis Sophia_, where Jesus says to his disciples, “Know ye
not that ye are all gods ...”, p. 247 (Copt.).

Footnote 414:

For Damascius, _Quaest. de primis principiis_, see Abel’s _Orphica_,
Frag. 48. Cf. as to Rhapsodists, Maury, _Rel. de la Grèce_, I. pp.
240, 345, 346.

Footnote 415:

See Maury, _op. cit._ II. pp. 370 _sqq._

Footnote 416:

Maury, _op. cit._ II. p. 374.

Footnote 417:

Such as the Mysteries of Samothrace, held in honour, according to one
account, of Pluto, Demeter, and Persephone, together with Hermes. See
Maury, _op. cit._ II. pp. 306 _sqq._ for authorities. It was at these
mysteries that Philip of Macedon was said to have first seen and loved
Olympias (Plutarch, _Alexander_, c. 2).

Footnote 418:

Herodotus, Bk V. c. 4.

Footnote 419:

See Maury, _Rel. de la Grèce_, II. p. 203, for authorities.

Footnote 420:

As in the Orphic Hymn to Mise given on p. 143, _infra_, where the
Eleusinian Dionysos, called also Eubuleus and Iacchos, is identified
with Cybele, the Cyprian Aphrodite, and the Egyptian Isis. See, too,
the Hymn “of the Great Mysteries” given in the _Philosophumena_ of
Hippolytus, where Dionysos is equated with Adonis, Osiris, the god of
Samothrace, Attis, and others. See n. 1 p. 139, and Chap. VIII,
_infra_.

Footnote 421:

See last note; Proclus, _in Plat. Polit._ p. 353 (Abel’s _Orphica_,
Frag. 184).

Footnote 422:

πανκοίρανος. _C.I.G._ t. II. No. 3791 (Bö.). Cf. the Aeschylean
description of Zagreus as the “Highest of All” (πανυπέρτατε πάντων)
quoted by Gaisford in his notes to _Etymologicum Magnum_ (see _Cycli
Fragmenta_ of Didot, _s.v._ Epigoni vel Alemaeonis).

Footnote 423:

Cf. the Σαβάζιε ... ὂς Βάκχον Διόνυσον of Hymn XLVIII. Abel’s
_Orphica_.

Footnote 424:

_Lysistrata_, ll. 386-390. Cf. Foucart, _Les Ass. Rel._ pp. 61-64, who
quotes nearly all the available authorities in his notes. See also
Monceaux in Daremberg and Saglio’s _Dict. des Antiq._ _s.v._ Sabazios.

Footnote 425:

Demosthenes, _de Corona_, pp. 259 _sqq._ Cf. Foucart, _Les Ass. Rel._
p. 67, n. 1.

Footnote 426:

In the Orphic Hymn to Hippa (Hymn XLIX. Abel’s _Orphica_, p. 84), the
mysteries of the “pure Sabos?” (ἁγνοῦ Σάβου) are alluded to in terms
which make it possible that the name was one of the epithets of the
Iacchos of Eleusis.

Footnote 427:

In a hymn preserved for us by Hippolytus (_Philosophumena_, Bk V. c.
1, p. 176, Cruice) the “multiform Attis,” who has just been declared
“in a hymn of the Great Mysteries” to be the god who is called Adonis,
Osiris, Adam (by the Samothracians), Corybas and Pappas, is thus
addressed: “I will sing Attis, son of Rhea, not with the sound of
trumpets, nor with the Idaean flutes in harmony with the songs of the
Curetes. But I will mingle with my lay Phoebus’ music of lutes. _Evoe
Evan_, since thou art Pan, since thou art Bacchus, since thou art the
shepherd of white stars.” In the address to Musaeus with which the
collection of Orphic Hymns begins, the Mother of the Gods, Attis, Men,
Aphrodite Urania, and Adonis are invoked together. See Abel’s
_Orphica_, p. 58. In Roman times Attis and Sabazius seem to be
identified, while Adonis is often confounded with them. See Maury,
_Rel. de la Grèce_, III. p. 102 and n. 4.

Footnote 428:

This is, perhaps, the only satisfactory reason that can be assigned
for the secrecy with which the Mysteries of Eleusis, of the Great
Mother, and the rest were surrounded. The notion put forward by the
Fathers that the mystic rites were kept secret because of their
obscenity has little weight when we consider the Phallophoria and the
Terms, or street statues of Hermes, which were publicly exhibited. The
existence of secret rites among primitive folk like the black races of
Africa and the native Australians can be explained in the same way.

Footnote 429:

Purser, _ubi cit._ _supra_, speaks of it as “an ascetic religious
brotherhood,” as did K. O. Müller, _Introduction to a Scientific
System of Mythology_ (Eng. ed.), p. 318, and _Litt. of Ant. Greece_,
I. p. 307. Döllinger, _Jud. und Heid._ I. p. 161, says truly that
there is no evidence that at any time there existed a regularly formed
association of Orphici in Greece. So Monceaux in Daremberg and Saglio,
_s.v._ Orpheus.

Footnote 430:

This was the opinion of Guigniaut, _Religions de l’Antiquité_, Paris,
1825, t. III. p. 1203.

Footnote 431:

Plato, _Republic_, Bk II. c. 7, is the classical passage. Cf.
Döllinger, _op. cit._ I. pp. 165-167, and references there given.

Footnote 432:

See Döllinger as in last note.

Footnote 433:

Theophrastus, _Characteres_, c. XVI.

Footnote 434:

There are 88 in the text published by Abel (_Orphica_, pp. 55-102).
This includes the Hymn to Ares generally classed among the Homeric
Hymns.

Footnote 435:

The celebrated Thomas Taylor the Platonist. Pausanias, Bk IX. cc. 27
and 30, says that the Hymns of Orpheus were short and few, and that
the Lycomidae knew and sung them in the Mysteries.

Footnote 436:

Abel, _Orphica_, p. 55, n. 1.

Footnote 437:

Dieterich, _de Hymnis Orphicis_, Marp. Catt. 1891. Otto Kern in the
_Festschrift_ presented to Prof. Carl Robert, 1910, points out that
there is no trace of the worship of the Emperor in the Hymns, and that
these must therefore all be anterior to the Christian era; also that
the Egyptian deities are so seldom named in them, that the collection
cannot have been made in Egypt. He thinks it comes from Asia Minor.

Footnote 438:

The collection may have been used as an oracle or divining-book like
any other poems written in hexameters. See a curious instance of this
in Kenyon, _Greek Papyri in British Museum_, pp. 83 _sqq._

Footnote 439:

This is numbered XXIX. in Abel’s text. This, and the hymns of Hecate,
Pluto, the Curetes, Dionysos Bassareus, the Ever-living Deliverer
(Bacchus), Aphrodite, Nemesis, Nomos, and the doubtful one to Ares are
the only hymns out of the original collection which have not the note
appended as to the perfume to be burnt.

Footnote 440:

Μουνογένεια, “Unique,” see n. 3 p. 124, _supra_.

Footnote 441:

So Clement of Alexandria, _Protrept._ c. II. speaks of “the mysteries
of Demeter, and Zeus’ wanton embraces of his mother and the wrath of
Demeter ... also the entreaties of Zeus, and the drink of gall, the
plucking-out of the hearts of sacrifices and deeds we dare not name.”
Arnobius, _adv. Gentes_, Bk V. cc. 20, 21, tells substantially the
same story.

Footnote 442:

See n. 2 p. 133, _supra_. In these hymns it is used always as an
epithet either of Bacchus or Hades with whom the mystic Bacchus was
identified.

Footnote 443:

No. XLII. in Abel’s _Orphica_. Persephone was called Mise Kore at
Pergamum (C. Radet, _Revue des Études anciennes_, January-March, 1911,
p. 77), which shows how closely she had become identified with her
consort. Otherwise the word is only known, I believe, as a name of
Dionysos.

Footnote 444:

τε ... τε.

Footnote 445:

Λύσειος.

Footnote 446:

Doubtless the bees, who throughout Asia Minor were said to be the
attendants of the Great Goddess. The priestesses of the Ephesian
Artemis were called Μέλισσαι or Bees, and there were Μέλισσαι at
Eleusis. See Foucart, _Grds. Myst._ pp. 66, 67. Cf. Aristophanes,
_Frogs_, l. 1274. So were those of Cybele: cf. Lactantius, _Div.
Inst._ Bk I. c. 22. Cf. also, A. B. Cook, “The Bee in Greek Mythology”
in _J.H.S._ XV. (1895), pp. 17 _sqq._

Footnote 447:

διφυῆ. See Orphic Hymn VI. in Abel’s _Orphica_.

Footnote 448:

As in the Orphic Hymn to Mise quoted above. Cf. Dyer, _op. cit._ pp.
178, 179.

Footnote 449:

That this may have been thought to be the result of the mystic union
of the initiate with Dionysos seems possible from the statement of
Plutarch, that this last was born as a man, but by his merit was
translated from this earthly and suffering body, _Life of Pelopidas_,
c. XVI. Cf. Budge, _Pseudo-Callisthenes’ Life of Alexander the Great_,
p. 135.

Footnote 450:

A sort of echo of this is perhaps to be found in the idea prevalent in
the primitive Church that martyrs for the faith passed direct to a
state of blessedness without waiting like the rest of the faithful for
the Last Judgment. Cf. Revelation vi. 9-11; Neander, _Ch. Hist._ I. p.
463.

Footnote 451:

Zeus Chthonios or the Zeus below the earth. The serpent was always to
the Orphic poets a symbol or pictorial representation of earth.

Footnote 452:

This seems to be the upshot of the remarks in Pseudo-Callisthenes
(Budge, _op. cit._ _supra_), pp. 8, 12, 40-48, 127, 135. The same idea
is specially marked in the writings of Proclus and other
Neo-Platonists and by them attributed to Orpheus. Cf. Abel’s
_Orphica_, _s.v._ Teletai, _passim_.

Footnote 453:

Plato, _Republ._ Bk II. c. 7.

Footnote 454:

No. XXXVII. in Abel’s _Orphica_, p. 78.

Footnote 455:

See Maury, _La Magie et L’Astrologie dans l’Antiquité et en Moyen
Âge_, Paris, 1860, pp. 54, 55, for authorities. The Orphic Hymns above
quoted begin with an invocation to Hecate.

Footnote 456:

As in Shakespeare’s _Macbeth_.

CHAPTER V
PRE-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS: THE ESSENES

It comes as rather a wrench to leave the graceful, if vain, speculations
of the Greeks, with their joyous and free life and their passionate
worship of beauty, which saw in every shifting aspect of nature the
revelation of some Being more perfect and glorious than man, for the
gloomy and misanthropic monotheism of the Palestinian Jews. Nor is the
change made more pleasant when we consider the contrast between the
ideas of the two nations as to the perfectibility of man’s nature and
his lot after death. While the Greeks under Orphic influence had come to
look upon their gods as usually well-disposed to mankind[457] and even
willing to share their power and place with, at any rate, a few
highly-gifted or fortunate men, the fanatics among the Jews who returned
from the Babylonian Captivity seem to have seen in their national Deity
a jealous and uncompromising tyrant, possessed with a hatred for
humanity in general, and only extending a modified favouritism to one
small nation not distinguished by any specially attractive
qualities[458]. To this nation, Yahweh had, according to their own
traditions, promised exclusive temporal advantages; but in spite of this
promise they had become in turn the slaves or tributaries of the
Egyptians, the Philistines, the Assyrians, Chaldaeans, and Persians, and
had been more than once forcibly removed by their masters from the land
that they looked upon as their God-given inheritance. Moreover, the
grace, such as it was, of the Deity they worshipped was held by them to
extend to this life only, after which they thought they would either
perish like the beasts or would lead at the best a shadowy and
colourless existence in Sheol or Hades, like that which called forth the
complaints of the Achilles of the _Odyssey_[459]. Hence the soil of
Judaea at the coming of Alexander might have seemed to anyone to be as
unlikely a field for the propagation of ideas resembling those of the
Orphics as could well be imagined. But the Jews, with all their
pragmatism and narrowness of ideal, have always shown a power of
assimilating the ideas of others and of adapting themselves to the
usages of the peoples among whom they are cast by a sort of protective
mimicry like that to which the preservation of certain insect types is
said to be due. This quality had already stood them in good stead during
their different periods of captivity in Egypt and Chaldaea, where before
Alexander’s conquests they had contrived to get a good deal of the
financial management of their captors’ affairs into their own hands, and
where they doubtless acted as spies and guides to the armies of the
Great Conqueror[460]. For these services Alexander after his fashion
royally rewarded them; but the real crisis of the nation’s fate
approached when Alexander’s work was done, and when the different
nationalities which he had forced, as it were, into the melting-pot,
became tired of acting as pieces in the war game played by his generals
and successors, and began to look favourably upon the security offered
by the Roman government. In this new order of the world, Palestine,
which had hitherto owed its autonomous existence to the fact that it
formed a useful buffer state or neutral ground separating the two great
powers Egypt and Syria and was not vehemently desired by any other
nation, saw the reason for her _quasi_-independence vanishing. Ptolemy
Soter, with his usual prescience, had early seen the advantage of
getting this borderland into his own custody, and had captured
Jerusalem, it is said, one Sabbath morning, when the superstition of the
inhabitants deterred them from defending it effectually[461]. The story,
as thus told, probably owes something to the necessity for flattering
the national vanity; but it is evident that the politic Lagides knew how
to reconcile the Jews to the easy yoke of their suzerainty, and under
the early Ptolemies the Jews remained generally faithful to Egypt. When
Egypt’s sway became enfeebled after the reign of Ptolemy IV Philopator,
Antiochus the Great seized upon Palestine, probably with the connivance
of a part of its inhabitants[462]; and although it remained fairly
contented with its new masters until Antiochus’ death, in the reign of
his successor, Antiochus Epiphanes, the Jews found themselves confronted
with a very disagreeable dilemma. For Antiochus Epiphanes, after his
successful attack upon Egypt had been frustrated by the Romans, saw
plainly enough that only an empire united and homogeneous in faith and
culture could resist for long the new power rising in the West[463], and
resolved to force on the complete Hellenization of the Jews at all
hazards. How he failed is told in the Books of the Maccabees, although
his failure brought little good to his rebellious subjects, who soon
passed with the rest of his empire into the hands of the victorious
Romans.

To this end, the splitting-up of the chosen people into warring sects
materially contributed. Josephus, writing somewhere about the year 70
A.D., tells us that there existed in his day three “philosophic” sects
among the Jews[464]. The first two of these were the Pharisees and
Sadducees familiar to everybody through their mention in the New
Testament, and the third was the “Essenes.” These Essenes—a name which
by some has been thought to mean “the Pure[465]”—he describes as a small
sect numbering not more than 4000 in all, and scattered throughout the
villages of Palestine. They lived entirely by manual labour, such as
agriculture, and were extraordinarily hospitable to other members of the
same sect, so that an Essene never found it necessary to take anything
with him on a journey, but could always obtain what he wanted from his
fellow-sectaries, even though personally unknown to them. As to their
doctrines, he tells us that though “Jews by birth” they abjured
marriage[466], and only recruited their ranks by adoption. They
practised, on the same authority, the fullest community of goods, and
forbade conversation on worldly matters before the rising of the sun, at
which they repeated certain traditional prayers, “as if they made
supplication for his rising.” Their meals were always eaten in common
and in a sacramental manner, purification in cold water and the donning
of white garments being a necessary preliminary[467]. Sobriety and
restraint in speech were, he says, among their most marked
characteristics, and they avoided the taking of judicial oaths, averring
that “he who cannot be believed without swearing by God is already
condemned.” Initiation into the sect was both long and difficult. The
novice on his first reception was presented with a hatchet, a girdle and
a white garment, but was not allowed to associate with the rest of the
order, it being held that they would be defiled if he did so. In spite
of this, he was forced to observe the austerities of the order for a
year before being allowed “the waters of purification,” and for two
years further before being admitted to full association with the other
members and the common meal[468]. After this probation, he was sworn on

“the most tremendous oaths to be just towards all men and faithful
to the order, not discovering any of their doctrines to others, no,
not though he should be compelled to do so at the risk of his life.”

Moreover, he had to swear

“to communicate their doctrines to no one in any other manner than
that in which he had received them himself; to abstain from
robbery[469] and that he would equally preserve the books belonging
to the sect and the names of the angels.”

Their doctrine concerning the future life was:

“That bodies are corruptible and that the matter of which they are
made is not permanent; but that souls are immortal, and continue for
ever; and that they come out of the most subtle air, and are united
to their bodies as in prisons, into which they are drawn by a
certain natural enticement[470]; but that when they are set free
from the bonds of the flesh, they then, as released from a long
bondage, rejoice and mount upward[471].”

Finally, Josephus tells us that the Essenes take great pains in
“studying the writings of the ancients and choose out of them what is
most for the advantage of their soul and body,” that they were much
given to the practice of medicine, and had those among them “who
undertake to foretell things to come by reading the holy books and using
several sorts of purifications, and being perpetually conversant in the
discourses of the prophets,”—a statement which is explained by another
passage[472] wherein he tells us that they believed “fate forms all
things and nothing befalls men but according to it.” From yet another
passage[473] we learn that they were excluded from the Temple worship
and offered their sacrifices for themselves instead of through the
regular Jewish priesthood[474].

That Josephus’ account of the Essenes is fairly accurate and well
informed appears from the fact that Philo of Alexandria, writing some
fifty years earlier than he, also asserts that they numbered “in his
opinion about 4000,” and explains their abstention from the Temple
worship as being due to their objection to sacrificing living
animals[475]. Philo further tells us that there were among them no
makers of warlike weapons, that they refrained from trade and had no
slaves; but that their principal study was that of the Jewish Law and
the “enquiry into the being of God and the creation of the universe.”
According to him, on the seventh or holy day when no work was done, they
were accustomed to meet together, when one

“takes up the holy volume and reads it, and another of the men of
the greatest experience [among them] comes forward and explains what
is not very intelligible, for a great many precepts are delivered in
enigmatical modes of expression and allegorically.”

He at the same time confirms Josephus’ statement as to their having all
goods in common.

Pliny in his _Natural History_ also speaks of the Essenes; but adds
little to our knowledge, except the remark that it was the irksomeness
of this present life which in his opinion gave rise to the sect[476]. Of
the Christian heresiologists, Hippolytus in his _Philosophumena_ merely
repeats the statements of Josephus with the doubtfully accurate addition
that the Essenes believed in a final conflagration of the world[477] and
the eternal punishment of the damned; while Epiphanius in his _Panarion_
shows plainly that he had no first-hand knowledge of the Essenes and did
not understand the traditional accounts of the sect which must have been
extinct a long time before he wrote[478]. Porphyry in his treatise _on
Abstinence_ avowedly quotes from Josephus only[479].

We see, then, that all we really know about the Essenes is contained in
the accounts of Josephus and Philo; but on this slender foundation there
has been raised a vast superstructure of conjecture which the
unprejudiced reader will probably consider too heavy for its base. The
Essenes have been claimed by different writers as merely a strict order
of Pharisees, as Zoroastrians, and as Buddhists. It has been argued that
St John Baptist was an Essene and even that Jesus Himself belonged to
the sect[480]. A more probable theory is that the Essenes derived some
of their tenets from the Orphics, whose views were particularly
prevalent at Alexandria in the time of the early Ptolemies, as well as
in Asia Minor under the Seleucids. From the death of Alexander the Great
until that of Antiochus Epiphanes, Palestine was, as we have seen,
successively under the sway of these two rival dynasties, and it was the
rapid progress of the Jews towards Hellenization in culture, religion,
and morals that brought about the Maccabaean uprising, in connection,
with which we first hear of the Essenes[481]. Hence this is the time
when, if ever, we should expect the Orphic teaching to affect the Jews,
and it is difficult to see whence the Essenes derived their views of the
pre-existence of the soul—if that be indeed the construction to be
placed upon the scanty and obscure words of Josephus—except from
Orphism[482]. Save for this, however, there is no very cogent reason for
attributing to this Jewish sect an Orphic origin. The use of white
garments is in a hot climate too general a practice to be really
characteristic, while the abstinence from the procreation of children
and from food that has had life, although common to the Essenes and the
Orphics[483], may easily have come to the Jews from more quarters than
one. To the Essene refusal to take oaths and to engage in trade there is
no parallel whatever in the Orphic teaching[484].

But, although there is thus little sign of a direct connection of the
Essenes with the Orphics, there can hardly be any doubt that the Jewish
sect were Gnostics in the larger sense in which the word is used above.
The one distinguishing fact which stands out from Josephus’ account of
them is that they had secret doctrines of a kind differing from the
beliefs of the rest of the Jews. This is shown by the great pains taken
by them in the choice of neophytes, the “tremendous oaths” by which
they, who forbade swearing in general, enforced secrecy upon them, and
the prohibition to confide their teaching to any save by a long and
tedious process of initiation. The only hints we have as to the nature
of these doctrines are contained in Philo’s statement that they were
given to the enquiry into the being of God and the creation of the
universe, and in that of Josephus that the initiate into these secrets
was sworn “to preserve the books of the sect and the names of the
angels.” Dr Kohler and other Jewish writers see in Philo’s statement a
reference to the speculations of the later Jewish Cabala upon what is
there called “the Mystery of the Chariot” and “the Mystery of the
Creation[485]”; or in other words how the universe came forth from God
and how it is governed. Although the proof of this is slender, it seems
probable from the tendency of the whole of the Apocryphal literature of
the time which dealt principally with the same subjects. It is evident
that the Essene interpretation of the Old Testament, then recently made
familiar to the Jews by the Alexandrian translation into Greek known as
the Septuagint, must have been different in some respects from that of
the other Jews, and that it must have been in some way likely to shock
those who held by the traditional interpretation, as otherwise there
would have been no necessity for the Essenes to bind their neophytes to
so strict a secrecy. From Philo’s language on this point it would seem
that they interpreted both the Law and the Prophets in some non-natural
manner, and it is likely enough that this took the shape of the juggling
with the numerical values of the letters of which we find at least one
instance in the Revelation of St John, and to which we shall have to
return later[486].

What now can be said in explanation of Josephus’ statement that the
Essenes were sworn to secrecy as to the “names of the angels”? The
personal name of no angel appears in the Old Testament except in the
Book of Daniel, now generally admitted to have been written in the reign
of Antiochus Epiphanes, and there is on the face of it no reason why any
Jew should wish to keep those there given—Gabriel and Michael—secret.
But the knowledge of the name of an inhabitant of the spirit world was
at the time of which we are speaking held throughout the East to give a
magician full power over the being named, and this belief was universal
in the magic of all the nations among whom the Jews had found themselves
since the Captivity[487]. There is thus every likelihood that the
Essenes used “the names of the angels” for magical purposes, and this is
borne out by the tradition that it was as exorcists of demons and
healers of disease that they were afterwards celebrated[488]. The manner
in which these names were used may be judged from the tradition among
the Jews that each tribe or order of demons was governed by an angel,
and that his subjects were bound to obey upon being addressed by his
name[489].

It was partly, and perhaps mainly, from this sect of the Essenes that
there came, according to the general opinion of scholars, the apocryphal
or secret literature which, from the name of its principal book, may be
described under the generic name of Enochian[490]. In the _Book of
Enoch_ in its various forms was set forth a vast system of teaching on
matters which the Canonical books of the Old Testament hardly touch.
Here we have a complete cosmogony in which the mundane egg[491] of the
Orphics plays its part; and the duties of the innumerable orders of
angels and their connection with the heavenly bodies, the rebellion of
Satan and his host against God, the fall of the Watchers, or angels set
over the earth, through the beauty of mortal women, and the arrangement
of the different heavens and hells all find a place in it[492]. But it
also deals at great length with that Messianic hope which had for two
centuries been dangled by the Prophets before Israel, and which, thanks
to the materialistic sense in which it was interpreted by the vast
majority of Jews, was to lead directly to their extermination as a
nation[493]. The _Book of Enoch_ and its many successors and imitators
are full of predictions of the coming of a Messiah, who should lead the
chosen race to the conquest of the world, and, what was to them probably
an even more alluring prospect, to the overthrow and enslavement of all
the other peoples in it[494]. In the earlier parts of the Ethiopic
version—which is in itself, as Dr Charles has pointed out, but “a
fragmentary survival of an entire literature that once circulated under
the name of Enoch[495]”—it is described how

“the Holy and Great One will come forth from His dwelling, the God
of the world, and going from thence He will tread on Mount Sinai and
appear with His hosts, and in the strength of His might appear from
heaven[496].”

The judgment and destruction of all but the elect is next described, and
the hurling down of the sinning angels into “the abyss of fire,” while
the elect—that is, the Jews, or perhaps only the Essenes—are to live
among millennial blessings of a material kind and in the enjoyment of
universal peace[497]. This seems to represent fairly the earlier Essene
teaching upon this point, and there is reason to suppose that it was
written before the Maccabaean struggles, after which the decadence of
the Syrian Empire under Antiochus Epiphanes—hard pressed as he was by
the Romans on one side and the Parthians on the other—allowed the Jews
to obtain a temporary independence, and to set up a kingdom of their own
for the first and last time in their history[498]. But the wine of
military success and political independence proved too strong for the
heads of the race which had hitherto been the tributaries and subjects
of the Persian, the Greek, the Egyptian, and the Syrian Empires in turn,
and, like their kinsmen the Arabs of Mohammed’s time and the Mahdists in
our own, nothing less would now satisfy the fanatical among them than
universal domination. In the later parts of the same work, the
aspirations of the writers become more bloodthirsty and less spiritual,
and we hear of a time “When the congregation of the righteous will
appear[499],” a phrase which seems to cover the coming-forth of some
sect or society till then kept in seclusion. “Then,” it goes on to say,
“will the kings and the mighty perish and be given into the hand of the
righteous and holy[500].” In another part of the same book, we hear of
angels being sent to

“the Parthians and Medes, to stir up the kings and provoke in them a
spirit of unrest, and rouse them from their thrones, that they may
break forth from their resting-places as lions and as hungry wolves
among the flocks[501].”

These are to make one final assault upon Jerusalem, and

“to tread under foot the land of His elect ones and the land of His
elect ones will be before them a threshing floor and a path. But the
city of My righteous [_i.e._ Jerusalem] will be a hindrance to their
horses, and they will begin to fight among themselves, and their
right hand will be strong against themselves, and a man will not
know his brother, nor a son his father or his mother, till the
number of corpses through their slaughter is beyond count, and their
punishment be no idle one. And in those days Sheol will open his
jaws, and they will be swallowed up therein, and their destruction
will be at an end. Sheol will devour the sinners in the presence of
the elect[502].”

This, according to the author who has made the most exhaustive study of
the Enochian literature yet attempted, must have been written after the
spirit which had inspired the Maccabaean revolt had died away under the
tyranny and luxury of the later Jewish kings[503]. It seems very
difficult, in the face of the many interpolations that the documents
have undergone at the hands of Jewish and even Christian writers, to
decide how much of these prophecies can be attributed directly to the
sect of the Essenes; but there can be little doubt that they accurately
represent the hope of supremacy over the nations which they shared with
the Pharisees and the other fanatics among the Jewish nation. Only thus
can we explain the community of goods and the very un-Jewish contempt
for money-making which formed the most singular features of Essene
practice[504]. To those who expected to be immediately put in possession
of the whole earth all desire for worldly advancement must have been a
matter of indifference. A similar conviction led to the maintenance of
the same practice in the Christian Church so long as she continued to
believe in the nearness of the Parusia or Second Coming of her
Founder[505].

From this dream of universal dominion, nothing seemed able to arouse the
poorer Jews. In vain did the Sadducees, who comprised those of the
nation who had become rich either by trading with the Gentile or by
dependence on the luxurious Jewish Court, try to persuade the people
that they had better make the best of the Hellenist culture thrust upon
them than try to arrest its progress by fighting against powers that
would crush them like glass when once sufficiently provoked[506]. In
vain did the Syrian Empire, warned by the mistakes of Antiochus
Epiphanes in Hellenizing the Jews against their will, accord them the
largest possible religious liberty and even acknowledge their right to
self-government in exchange for tribute[507]. When the Romans, whom,
according to their own account, they had called in to protect them
against their Syrian overlords, destroyed once for all their chance of
remaining an independent state, they not only gave the Jews the fullest
liberty to practise their own religion, but set over them first a vassal
king and then tetrarchs of Semitic blood, who might be supposed to
moderate the too pronouncedly Western ideas of the Roman governor of
Syria[508]. But these concessions were no more effective in inducing the
Jews to settle down quietly as the peaceful tributaries of a great
empire than had been the severities of Antiochus. They seized every
opportunity to revolt, every time with the accompaniment of horrible
atrocities committed upon those unfortunate Gentiles who for a moment
fell into their power, until, some sixty years after the Destruction of
the Temple by Titus, Hadrian had to wage against them the awful war of
extermination which extinguished their nationality for ever. At the Fair
of the Terebinth, when every able-bodied Jew left alive in Palestine was
sold into slavery, the nation must have realized at last the vanity of
its dream[509].

During this time, that is to say, between the years 168 B.C. and 135
A.D., the flood of Apocalyptic literature never ceased to pour forth.
All of it was what is called pseudepigraphical, that is to say, the
books of which it was composed were falsely attributed to Enoch, the
sons of Jacob, Moses, Job, Ezra, Baruch, and other personages of the Old
Testament. Not all of these have come down to us, but a considerable
number of books have survived. The pre-Christian ones that we have,
included, beside the Ethiopian _Book of Enoch_ quoted above, the
_Testaments of the XII Patriarchs_, the _Psalms of Solomon_, and part of
the _Sibylline Oracles_. Later probably than the beginning of our era,
appeared the _Book of the Secrets of Enoch_, which Dr Charles thinks was
written in Egypt, the _Wisdom_ literature, certainly having the same
place of origin, the _Book of Jubilees_ or little Genesis, the
_Assumption of Moses_, the rest of the _Sibyllines_, the _Apocalypse of
Baruch_, the later books of _Maccabees_, and the _Fourth Book of
Esdras_[510]. One and all of these deal with the glories before the
Jewish nation, when by supernatural help it will be able to turn the
tables on its would-be civilizers, and one and all breathe the most
virulent hatred against every body who is not a Jew[511]. They show no
consensus of opinion as to the future lot of the Gentiles; for, while
some teach that the victories of the Messiah will end in their complete
annihilation, others declare that they will be preserved to become, as
Isaiah had prophesied, the servants and hand-maidens of the Jews, to
build up the walls of Jerusalem, and to be the herdsmen, ploughmen, and
vinedressers of Israel[512]. Others again, held that the Gentiles would
be hurled into Gehenna with the sinning angels[513]—even those who were
dead being raised again for that purpose—and would there be tormented
for ever in the presence of the Jews, who were to find one of their
chief pleasures in the sight of their sufferings[514].

“And I saw all the sheep that had been left, and all the beasts of
the earth, and all the birds of the heaven,”

says the pseudo-Enoch in a vision wherein he describes under this figure
the nations which had not been destroyed by the celestial hosts of the
Messiah,

“falling down and doing homage to those sheep [_i.e._ the Jews] and
making petition to and obeying them in every thing[515].”

For the world was made for the Jews and the perversity of the Gentiles
was divinely ordained for the express purpose that their “punishment”
might be great[516].

“All this I have spoken before thee, O Lord,” says the Apocryphal
Ezra, “because thou madest the world for our sakes. As for the other
people which also came of Adam, thou hast said that they are
nothing, but are like unto spittle, and hast likened the abundance
of them unto a drop that falleth from a vessel[517]. And now O Lord
behold, these heathen, which have ever been reputed as nothing, have
begun to be lords over us, and to devour us.... If the world now be
made for our sakes, why do we not enter into possession of our
world? How long shall this endure?” And then comes Yahweh’s answer:
“Behold I will call together all the kings of the earth to reverence
me, which are from the rising of the Sun, from the South, from the
East, and Libanus: to turn themselves one against another, and repay
that they have done to thee. Like as they do yet this day unto my
chosen, so will I do also, and recompense in their bosom[518].”
“After the signs have come of which thou wast told before,” says the
_Apocalypse of Baruch_, “when the nations become turbulent, and the
time of My Messiah is come, He shall both summon all the nations,
and some of them He shall spare and some of them He shall slay.
These things therefore shall come upon the nations which are to be
spared by Him. Every nation which knows not Israel, and has not
trodden down the seed of Jacob, shall indeed be spared. And this
because some out of every nation shall be subjected to thy people.
But all those who have ruled over you, or have known you, shall be
given up to the sword[519].”

So in the _Book of Jubilees_ we are told that God

“sanctified [Israel] and gathered it from amongst all the children
of men; for there are many nations and many peoples, and all are His
and over all hath He placed spirits in authority to lead them astray
from Him. But over Israel He did not appoint any angel or
spirit[520].”

As for the delight in the sufferings of the damned Gentiles it is
poetically expressed in the _Assumption of Moses_:

“For the Heavenly One will arise from His royal throne
And He will go forth from His holy habitation
And His wrath will burn on account of His sons

*****

And the horns of the Sun will be broken and he shall be turned into
darkness;
And the moon shall not give her light, and be turned wholly into
blood
And the circle of the stars shall be disturbed

*****

For the Most High will arise, the Eternal God alone,
And He will appear to punish the Gentiles
And He will destroy all their idols
Then thou, O Israel, shalt be happy
And thou shalt mount upon the neck of the eagle[521]
And the days of thy mourning will be ended
And thou shalt look from on high and shalt see thy enemies in
Gehenna,
And thou shalt recognize them and rejoice
And thou shalt give thanks and confess thy Creator[522].”

And in what has been called the Apocalypse of Salathiel, we hear that
the righteous Jews will “have joy in seven ways”:

“First of all they shall see with great joy the glory of him who
receives them up, for they shall rest in seven orders. The first
order because they have striven with great labour to overcome ‘the
innate evil thought[523]’ which was fashioned together with them,
that it might not lead them astray from life into death. The second
order, because they see the round in which the souls of the ungodly
wander and the punishment that awaits them...[524]”

A comparison of the dates of these documents lends little support to the
view that this hatred of the Gentiles was wrung from the Jews by
oppression; and there seems grounds for supposing that it had been
present to their minds ever since their return from the Captivity[525].
Tacitus was certainly justified when he speaks of the nation as animated
by bitter enmity against the rest of the human race[526].

How far the Essenes were responsible for the whole of this later
literature, it is now impossible to say. Nearly every one of the books
above quoted have been claimed as of Essene origin by some scholar or
another[527], and those who, like Dr Charles, are inclined to reduce
Essene influence upon them to a minimum, admit that considerable
interpolations have been made in most of the documents by Essene hands.
Moreover, all those books which do not purport to be by Enoch himself
either mention his name with peculiar reverence, or give the same
account of celestial physics and other matters as the Ethiopic Book of
Enoch, or quote it directly[528]. There seems, therefore, little doubt
that all this literature came forth from the same school, and that it
was directly or indirectly the result of Essene teaching.

A point more difficult to determine is how the Essenes managed to
reconcile their secret doctrines with the reverence for the Mosaic Law
and its promulgator which they undoubtedly professed[529]. There is no
direct evidence with regard to this save Philo’s remark quoted above as
to their allegorical interpretation of Scripture. This, too, may have
had its origin in Orphic practice, for we know that the Orphics were
accustomed to carry allegory so far as to both materialize their gods,
as when they spoke of Bacchus as Wine, and to deify abstractions, as
when they made hymns to Health, Peace and other abstract conceptions as
if they were actual persons[530]. But besides this, the Essenes probably
practised a mode of interpretation peculiar to themselves, which they
kept secret or confined to members of the sect. Something of the kind
was not unknown among the Greeks, for some of the Orphic gold plates
found in Magna Graecia are intended to be read acrostically[531], and
the Graeco-Egyptian magic papyri contain many instances of a similar use
of the Homeric poems by which they could be converted into an oracle or
fortune-telling book[532]. By such means any document can of course be
made to mean anything, and the Essenes seem to have added to this the
practice of isopsephism or regarding words as equivalent in sense which
had the same numerical value. The most familiar instance of this is in
the Revelation of St John where “the number of the Beast” is said to be
“the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six”;
or, in other words, Nero Caesar, whose name written in Hebrew letters is
equivalent to the number given[533]. In like manner we read in the _Book
of Enoch_, in the story of the sinning angels:

“This is the number of Kesbeêl, who showed the head of the oath to
the holy ones when he dwelt high above in glory, and its name is
Bêqâ. And this angel requested Michael to show him the hidden name,
that they might mention it in the oath, so that those who revealed
all that was hidden to the children of men might quake before that
name and oath. And this is the power of that oath, for it is
powerful and strong, and he placed this oath Akae in the hand of
Michael[534].”

From the context, it would appear that the words Akâe and Bêqâ both
cover the Tetragrammaton or four-lettered name of JHVH, by means of
which omnific word it is said the heavens and earth were created[535].
The mysterious name of Taxo given in the _Assumption of Moses_ as that
of the protagonist against Antiochus is doubtless to be interpreted in
some such fashion[536].

Of the history of the Essenes as an organized sect, we know hardly
anything. If we accept Josephus’ account of their numbers as relating to
his own time[537], it would seem that they were flourishing at the date
of the Destruction of the Temple under Titus. This event would probably
affect them little directly, because, as we have seen, they took no part
in the Temple worship; and, scattered as they were through the villages
of Palestine, they may easily have escaped the punishment meted out by
the Romans to those towns which were the strongholds of the rebellion.
But it is extremely improbable that they can have survived the War of
Extermination under Hadrian, when the partizans of the false Messiah
kept up a futile resistance in the country as well as in the towns, and
Hadrian’s general, Severus, had in consequence to lay the land
desolate[538]. Moreover, it is not improbable that the sect may have
taken an active part in the Revolt, which they may easily have looked
upon as the fulfilment of their Messianic hopes, and may thus have
perished under the stern measures of repression which the fanaticism and
barbarities of the rebels forced upon the conquerors. At any rate, we
hear little more of the Essenes after this date. But the fantastic
method of interpreting Scriptures which they practised and probably
introduced, lingered long, and, after being used by the earliest
Christian writers[539], was revived, as has been said, by the Cabalists
of the Middle Ages, and has even survived into our own time. It was
especially high in favour with those numerous bodies of heretics who in
the first three centuries of our era asserted that knowledge was the one
thing needful for salvation and were thus called, both by themselves and
by their opponents the Fathers of the Church, by the generic and
distinctive name of Gnostics[540].

Footnote 457:

So Euripides makes Iphigenia (_I. in Taur._ l. 400) say, “I think not
that any one of the gods is bad.” Cf. J. A. Hild, _Ét. sur les
Démons_, pp. 53, 136. In sharp contrast to the Jewish idea exemplified
in Deuteronomy of a god whose “name is Jealous” is Plato’s description
of the Creator in the _Timæus_ (40 C.), “He is not jealous, for he is
good, and in him that is good no jealousy exists.”

Footnote 458:

It should be noted that what is said here of the Jews applies not to
the Hebrew race in general, but only to those members of it who
settled in Palestine after the return from the Captivity. Winwood
Reade puts the matter with no less truth than point when he says
(_Martyrdom of Man_, p. 203): “The people who did return were chiefly
the fanatics, the clergy, and the paupers. The harvest ... was worthy
of the seed.”

Footnote 459:

R. H. Charles, _A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life_
(Jowett Lectures), 1899, pp. 33-50, and authorities there quoted.

Footnote 460:

J. P. Mahaffy, _Empire of the Ptolemies_, pp. 85, 86.

Footnote 461:

Droysen, _Hellénisme_, II. p. 155.

Footnote 462:

Mahaffy, _op. cit._ p. 87 and n. 1; _ibid._ p. 293 and nn. 1 and 2.

Footnote 463:

W. D. Morrison, _Jews under Roman Rule_, pp. 5, 6.

Footnote 464:

Jos. _de Bell._ Bk II. c. 8, _passim_.

Footnote 465:

Or “the Pious.” See Morrison, _op. cit._ p. 327; A. Jülicher in
_Encyc. Bibl._ _s.v._ Essenes, col. 1397, n. 1.

Footnote 466:

There was, says Josephus, _loc. cit._ § 13, another order of Essenes
which married and had children. The reason given for the celibacy of
the first order is not the Orphic one, _ibid._ § 2.

Footnote 467:

Cf. the _Agapae_ or love-feasts of the Greek _thiasi_ and the
Christian Church. There is no authority, however, for supposing that
the meal was regarded by the Essenes as a sacrifice.

Footnote 468:

The girdle has been thought to be identical with the _kosti_ or sacred
thread of the Parsis. The use of the hatchet or pick was to bury the
_ejecta_, perhaps for sanitary reasons. The Essenes were said to be
further divided into four classes (Josephus, _loc. cit._ § 10), but
Josephus does not say what these classes were, and it is doubtful
whether there is any foundation for the statement.

Footnote 469:

_Ibid._ § 7. From the context, it would seem that “robbery” here means
the attempt to obtain possession of the secrets of the order by
stealth. In an earlier part of the same section the neophyte is said
to be sworn to “keep his hands clear from theft, and his soul from
unlawful gains.”

Footnote 470:

_I.e._ by sexual desire. The same idea is met with in the doctrines of
Simon Magus, see Chap. VI, _infra_, and in many other sects. Cf.
Cumont, _Recherches sur le Manichéisme_, Bruxelles, 1908, pt I. Appx
1, “La Séduction des Archontes” for particulars.

Footnote 471:

Dr Kohler, apparently a Rabbi of New York, gives other particulars of
the Essenic initiation, including a song describing Heaven and Hell.
This he takes from the _Testament of Job_ described by him in the
Festschrift called Kohut’s _Semitic Studies_, Berlin, 1897, pp. 265
_sqq._ Among other things, he thinks the initiate was told that Satan
was the cosmocrator, or ruler of the world, and that the sacred girdle
was an amulet which would enable him both to defy Satan’s snares, and
to see the wonders of the world of angels. But I do not see that he
brings forward any proof that either this book or what he calls the
whole Job literature is attributable to the Essenes.

Footnote 472:

Joseph. _Antiq._ Bk XIII. c. 5, § 9.

Footnote 473:

_Id._ _op. cit._ Bk XVIII. c. 1, § 5.

Footnote 474:

Their supposed sun-worship seems to resolve itself into the usual
Jewish prayer at dawn, see Cheyne, _Jewish Religious Life after
Exile_, New York, 1898, note on p. 251, and Jülicher, _Encyc. Bibl._
_s.v._ Essenes.

Footnote 475:

Philo Judaeus, _Quod Omnis Probus Liber_, c. XII.; _id._ _Apologia_ in
Eusebius, _Praep. Evang._ Bk VIII. c. 13. The authenticity of both
works has been attacked (for the controversy _v._ Morrison, _op. cit._
p. 347, n. 2) with some success. While therefore there can be no doubt
that they are from the pen of some of Philo’s school, it is not
impossible that they may be later than Josephus and have copied his
statements.

Footnote 476:

Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ Bk V. c. 15: _In diem ex aequo convenarum turba
renascitur large frequentantibus, quos vita fessos ad mores eorum
fortunae fluctus agitat._

Footnote 477:

Hippolytus, _Philosophumena_, Bk IX. c. 27, pp. 465, 466, of Cruice.
Later, he attributes the same doctrine to the Pharisees. His desire to
show that in both cases it was derived by the Jews from the
Pythagoreans or the Stoics is manifest.

Footnote 478:

Epiphanius, _Panar._ Bk I. t. I. Haer. X. c. 1 (pp. 75, 76 of Oehler,
vol. II. pt 1). Epiphanius makes them a Samaritan sect.

Footnote 479:

Porphyrius, _de Abstinentia_, Bk IV.

Footnote 480:

Jülicher in _Encyc. Bibl._ _ubi cit._ and Ritschl and Lucius there
quoted; J. B. Lightfoot, _Epistles to Colossians and to Philemon_,
1876, pp. 82-93, 348-419, and Hilgenfeld, _Die Ketzergeschichte des
Urchristenthums_, Leipzig, 1884, p. 156; Arthur Lillie, _Buddhism in
Christendom_, 1887, _passim_; _id._ _Buddha and Buddhism_, Edinburgh,
1900, pp. 159 _sqq._ Buddhism is however posterior in time to Orphism,
as Buddha did not die till B.C. 483 (see Fleet in _J.R.A.S._ 1909, p.
22), which was some years after the break-up of the Pythagorean
school.

Footnote 481:

See note 1 p. 154, _supra_.

Footnote 482:

There is no evidence of a belief in the pre-existence of the soul in
Persian religion until the rise of the worship of Mithras in the Ist
century B.C. See Chap. XII, _infra_. Marshall (Hastings’ _Dict. of
Bible_, _s.v._ Pre-existence) would find proof of the doctrine among
the Jews in the Book of Wisdom and Philo. Both are much later than
Orphism.

Footnote 483:

But see note 2 p. 152, _supra_. Jewish priests after the Exile were
forbidden to wear wool or to touch corpses, prohibitions which have an
Orphic twang. See Ezekiel xliv. 17, 23.

Footnote 484:

So far from despising wealth, many of the Orphic Hymns pray for
riches. Cf. Hymns X. XIII. XIV. XIX. XL. etc. in Abel’s _Orphica_.

Footnote 485:

K. Kohler, _Testament of Job_, in Kohut’s _Semitic Studies_, Berlin,
1897, pp. 281, 282; Isidore Loeb in _La Grande Encyclopédie_, Paris,
_s.v._ La Cabbale Juive, p. 587.

Footnote 486:

Rev. xiii. 18. A. Hausrath, _History of New Testament Times_ (Eng.
ed.), 1878, vol. I. pp. 113-117, gives all the different processes of
what is called the “Practical” Cabala with illustrations. Cf. Ad.
Franck, _La Kabbale_, Paris, 1843, p. 167, n. 2.

Footnote 487:

J. G. Frazer, _The Golden Bough_, 3rd ed. pt II. vol. I. pp. 318-334,
gives references to, I think, all the authorities for this belief,
which even at the present day is universal among primitive people.

Footnote 488:

Morrison, _op. cit._ p. 338, for authorities. Exorcism for the healing
of disease followed naturally from their demonology, which taught that
diseases were caused by demons. See Hausrath, _Hist. of N. T. Times_
(Eng. ed.), I. p. 127.

Footnote 489:

Hausrath, _op. cit._ I. pp. 124, 125; _Clementine Homilies_, Bk V. c.
5.

Footnote 490:

F. C. Porter in Hastings’ _Dict. of Bible_, _s.v._ Apocrypha, and
Wellhausen as there quoted. A list of the books comprised in the
expression used in the text with conjectural dates and authorship is
given by R. H. Charles in the same work, _s.v._ Apocalyptical
Literature. Cf. article under same heading (also by Charles) in
_Encyclopaedia Biblica_. Prof. Charles is less inclined than earlier
writers (_e.g._ Lightfoot and Kohler, _opp. cit._) to credit the
Essenes with the composition of the whole of this literature; but he
admits that part of the _Book of Enoch_, chap. cviii. 1-15, is by
Essene hands. The other parts attributed to the Essenes by Sieffert,
Tideman, and Cheyne are indicated by him in _The Book of Enoch_,
Oxford, 1893, pp. 13, 14, 21.

Footnote 491:

_The Book of the Secrets of Enoch_ (Morfill and Charles trans.),
Oxford, 1896, p. 32.

Footnote 492:

Charles, _Book of Enoch_, _cit. sup._ pp. 24-33.

Footnote 493:

_Id._ _op. cit._ chap. xc. 28-38; cf. _id._ _Crit. Hist._ p. 192.

Footnote 494:

Charles, _Book of Enoch_, xc. 30.

Footnote 495:

Charles, _Book of Enoch_, p. 24.

Footnote 496:

_Id._ _op. cit._ chap. i. 4.

Footnote 497:

_Id._ _op. cit._ chap. i. 8.

Footnote 498:

David had the Philistines for suzerain, as Solomon had Egypt, cf.
Stanley A. Cook, in _Encyc. Bibl._ _s.v._ David, and Maspero, _Hist.
anc. des Peuples de l’Orient_, 1904, pp. 391, 422. Their successors,
too, up to the Captivity seem to have always been tributaries to
Assyria, Chaldaea, or Egypt. After that event, they were of course
vassals to the Persian and Macedonian Empires.

Footnote 499:

Charles, _Book of Enoch_, chap. xxxviii. 1.

Footnote 500:

_Op. cit._ chap. xxxviii. 5. Cf. xlvi. 4, “And this Son of Man whom
thou hast seen will arouse the kings and the mighty ones from their
thrones, and will loosen the reins of the strong and grind to powder
the teeth of the sinners.”

Footnote 501:

_Op. cit._ chap. lvi. 5. This verse, which Dr Charles considers an
interpolation, was evidently written in 40 B.C., when a Parthian army
under Pacorus invaded Palestine and put a puppet of their own on the
throne of Jerusalem, and before 39 B.C., when Publius Ventidius Bassus
drove the Parthians back to their own country. Cf. Morrison, _Jews_,
etc., pp. 58-61, and authorities there quoted.

Footnote 502:

Charles, _Book of Enoch_, chap. lvi. 6-8.

Footnote 503:

Charles, _op. cit._ p. 108. He there puts the date of the Similitudes,
as this portion of the Book of Enoch is called, about a quarter of a
century before the Parthian invasion. In that case, the prediction in
the text would be about the only instance of fulfilled political
prophecy known. But the discrepancy is doubtless to be explained by
the theory of interpolation after the event.

Footnote 504:

As in the admittedly Essene portion of the _Book of Enoch_ (Charles,
_op. cit._ chap. cviii. 8): “Who loved God and loved neither gold nor
silver, nor any of the goods of the world.”

Footnote 505:

Compare with this the desire to rid themselves of this world’s goods
which seized upon the inhabitants of Western Europe in 1000 A.D., when
it was believed that the Second Advent was at hand, and donations to
the Church beginning “in view of the approaching end of the world”
were common.

Footnote 506:

Schürer, _Hist. of Jewish People_ (Eng. ed.), II. pp. 157, 158.

Footnote 507:

Josephus, _Antiq._ Bk XIII. cap. 2, 3, where the tributes and taxes
are set forth. Morrison, _op. cit._ p. 360, notes that the Jews showed
no hostility to the tribute payable to the Greek kings, and that it
was the Roman system of taxation which most embittered their feelings
against the Gentiles.

Footnote 508:

Morrison, _op. cit._ pp. 41, 42.

Footnote 509:

Renan, in _L’Église Chrétienne_, chap. XI, tells the story with as
much grace as truth. His account is largely taken from the
investigations of Hartwig Derenbourg, himself of Jewish blood. Cf.
Morrison, _op. cit._ pp. 198-206.

Footnote 510:

They are arranged in the text as near as possible in the order of
their probable dates. As to these and on the question of authorship,
see Charles, _Crit. Hist._ pp. 172-226. The Sibylline Oracles can now
be consulted in the scholarly edition of Rzach (_Sibyllina Oracula_,
1891), and in Dr Charles’ _Apocrypha of the O.T._ (see below). The
Greek text of the Psalms of Solomon with a French translation and
critical introduction has been published by Dr J. Viteau and M.
François Martin (_Les Psaumes de Salomon_, Paris, 1911). (The Odes of
Solomon recently recovered for us by Dr Rendel Harris are most
probably Christian hymns.) The Latin text of the 4th Book of Esdras is
given by Bensly and James in Cambridge _Texts and Studies_, vol. III.
No. 2, and an English translation of part of it appears in the
Apocrypha of the A. V. (see _Speaker’s Commentary_ for a good text and
commentary by Lupton). The _Wisdom Literature_, _i.e._ the _Wisdom of
Solomon_ and _Ecclesiasticus_, also appears in the Apocrypha of the
A.V., as do the Books of _Maccabees_. English versions of all the
other books with critical notes and introductions have been published
by Prof. Charles as follows: _Book of Enoch_, Oxford, 1893; _Book of
the Secrets of Enoch_, Oxford, 1896; _Apocalypse of Baruch_, 1896;
_Assumption of Moses_, 1897; _Book of Jubilees_, 1902; and _Testament
of the XII Patriarchs_, 1908. All the above appear in English dress in
Dr Charles’ _Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the O.T._, Oxford, 1913.

Footnote 511:

See note 2 p. 149, _supra_. The essentially Jewish tendency towards
hyperbole and exaggeration in language must, however, be allowed for.
As someone has said, “Jacob I have loved, and Esau I have hated,” in
the mouth of a Jew means little more than that on the whole the
speaker prefers Jacob to Esau. See also note 1 p. 163, _supra_.

Footnote 512:

Isaiah xiv. 2; lx. 10; lxi. 5. All these passages are now said to be
post-Exilic by Charles, _Crit. Hist._ p. 115.

Footnote 513:

Charles, _Apocalypse of Baruch_, chap. xxx. 4, 5; chap. xxxvi. 11; 4
Esdras vii. 87.

Footnote 514:

Charles, _Book of Enoch_, chap. xlviii. 9; lxii. 9-12.

Footnote 515:

_Op. cit._ chap. xc. 30.

Footnote 516:

See note 3 p. 166, _infra_.

Footnote 517:

Cf. Isaiah xl. 15.

Footnote 518:

4 Esdras vi. 55-59; xv. 20, 21.

Footnote 519:

Charles, _Apocalypse of Baruch_, chap. lxxii. 2-6.

Footnote 520:

Charles, _Book of Jubilees_, chap. xv. 31, 32.

Footnote 521:

_I.e._ the Roman Empire.

Footnote 522:

Charles, _Assumption of Moses_, chap. x. 3, 5, 7, 8, 10.

Footnote 523:

Evidently a reminiscence of the Zoroastrian demon who is opposed to
the Amshaspand Vohu Mano or “Good Thought.” See Chapter VI, _infra_.

Footnote 524:

4 Esdras vii. 91-93.

Footnote 525:

The earliest document quoted is the part of the _Book of Enoch_ which
Prof. Charles considers was written between 166-161 B.C.; the latest,
the _Fourth Book of Esdras_, which he puts at 90 A.D. Yet he shows
that the hatred of the Gentiles and the hope that they would be
eternally destroyed or made slaves to Israel were present many
centuries earlier and are to be found in the writings attributed to
Ezekiel, Haggai, Joel, and Zachariah, as well as in Isaiah. Cf. _Crit.
Hist._ p. 160.

Footnote 526:

Tacitus, _Historia_, Bk V. c. 5.

Footnote 527:

Thus Jellinek, _Ueber das Buch der Jubilaen und das Noah-Buch_,
Leipzig, 1855, _passim_, says that the Book of Jubilees is of Essene
origin, and Schmidt and Merx, _Archiv für wissenschaftliche
Erforschung des Alten Testaments_, I. II. (1868) pp. 111-152, make the
same claim for the _Assumption of Moses_ and so on. For the _Book of
Enoch_ itself see above.

Footnote 528:

For the quotations from Enoch in the _Testament of the XII Patriarchs_
see Charles, Introduction to that book, p. lix; for those in the _Book
of Jubilees_ see _B. of J._ pp. 13, 36, 37, 53, 62-64, 102, 134, 146,
150, 212, 213; in the _Apocalypse of Baruch_, see A. of B. p. 101 and
notes; in the _Assumption of Moses_, see _A. of M._ x. 4, 9.

Footnote 529:

Josephus, _ubi cit._ in note 4 p. 151, _supra_, says (§ 8) that they
honoured the name of Moses next after that of God Himself; and that
any who blasphemed him was punished capitally.

Footnote 530:

Cf. Abel’s _Orphica_, Fr. 160, 161, 162, 202, 203, 204. From the
Orphics the practice passed into the Mysteries and the writings of the
post-Christian Gnostics. See Hatch, _Hibbert Lectures_, 1888, pp. 69,
74-75.

Footnote 531:

Like the Gold Plate of Caecilia Secundina, Chapter IV, p. 133,
_supra_. So the Sibylline Oracles contain the acrostic ΙΧΘΥΣ which
covers the name and titles of Jesus, Renan, _L’Église Chrétienne_, p.
535 and note. The Greeks must have caught the taste for such devices,
for an acrostic is found in a treatise on astronomy by Eudoxos of
Cnidos copied in the second cent. B.C. Many other instances are given
by Brunet de Presle, _Les Papyrus Grecs du Musée du Louvre_, Paris,
1865, pp. 43, 44. He says with some reason that the practice was
borrowed by the Greeks from the Jews.

Footnote 532:

Kenyon, _Gk. Pap. in B. M._, Papyrus CXXI, pp. 83 _sqq._

Footnote 533:

Hausrath, _op. cit._ pp. 114-116, where many other instances are
given. The explanation of “Nero(n) Caesar” as the Number of the Beast
is in fact as old as Irenaeus, who remarks that the variant 616 given
in some texts is due to the omission of the final _n_ in Latin. It
does not seem to be seriously disputed by any modern theologian.
Isopsephism however was not the invention of the Essenes, but of the
Babylonians, among whom it was in use, to judge from Berossos, in the
time of Alexander. See Alexander Polyhistor in Cory, _Ancient
Fragments_, 2nd ed. p. 25.

Footnote 534:

Charles, _Book of Enoch_, chap. lxix. 13-15. Cf. _id._, _The Apoc.
etc. of the O.T._, II. p. 234, where he has made some verbal
alterations in the reading.

Footnote 535:

Hausrath, _op. et_ _loc. cit._

Footnote 536:

Charles, _A. of M._ chap. ix. 1, and the note beginning on p. 35, _op.
cit._ Hausrath, _op. cit._ _sup._ pp. 116, 117, thinks the name is
arrived at by the process called Atbash.

Footnote 537:

If the authenticity of the Fragment quoted above from Philo could be
established, it would seem probable that Josephus simply copied the
figure from this last, and that 4000 was the number of the Essenes
about 20 A.D.

Footnote 538:

Renan, _L’Église Chrétienne_, p. 209.

Footnote 539:

Hausrath, _op. cit._ pp. 116, 117, for examples. By the method called
Temura he gets _Romah hagedôlah_ for Armageddon in the Canonical
Apocalypse. So Justin Martyr, _Cohort._ c. XXIV. says that Moses is
unintelligible without mystic insight, and that the name of Christ
contains a hidden meaning (_2nd Apol._ c. VI.).

Footnote 540:

Thus Irenaeus, _Adv. Haer._ Bk I. c. XII. § 11, p. 146, Harvey, makes
Marcus the heresiarch show that Alpha and Omega, the name given to
Jesus in Revelation, means the Dove which descended upon Him at His
baptism, because it has the same numerical value (περιστερά) of 801.

CHAPTER VI
PRE-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS: SIMON MAGUS

We see, then, that the Essenes, in spite of the quietism and love of
peace that they professed, became in the long run either the instigators
of political revolt or, at best, the tools of those who thought to make
use of the fanaticism excited by their teaching in order to throw off
the yoke of the Gentiles. But these fanatics were almost exclusively the
Jews of Judaea, whose adherence to their own institutions caused them to
leave Babylon, where they were fairly well off, to be cooped up in a
land which in no time can have yielded an easy subsistence to a large
number of souls[541]. That people so circumstanced, confronted with a
power vastly superior to their own, and resolutely bent on compelling
its subjects to enter into its own system of orderly government, should
have looked to rebellion and supernatural help as their sole means of
escape, was only to be expected. But there were besides a great number
of Jews dispersed among the heathen, who had succeeded in acquiring vast
wealth together with the power which wealth brings with it; and these
were by no means inclined to upset the settled order of things which the
rise of the Roman Empire had brought into the East. To the humble
fisherman, vinedresser or husbandman of Judaea, daily vexed and harassed
by the Roman tax-gatherer and Roman police measures, the Roman peace,
the freedom from foreign conquest, and the higher standard of comfort
that came in with the legions, must have appeared far less desirable
than they did to the rich trader of Alexandria, Caesarea, or Damascus,
whose aptness in taking advantage of the foibles of his rulers had
enabled him to imitate their luxury and in some cases to share their
power[542]. Yet, with the tenacity peculiar to their nation, even these
rich Jews outside Palestine, while adopting gladly enough the material
benefits of the Graeco-Roman civilization, clung firmly to the one
exclusively national possession which remained to them, the Law of Moses
with all its observances. They were, however, quite sharp enough to see
that the rules laid down for the conduct of a loosely-compacted mass of
nomad tribes suddenly flung among hostile neighbours were unfitted to a
more settled civilization; and the thinkers among them were put to much
pains to discover some means by which they could claim their share of
Hellenistic culture without ceasing to be Jews[543]. At first this
generally took the form of pseudonymous writings bearing the name of
some author respected by the Greeks, and designed to prove that all the
Hellenistic arts, sciences, and doctrines were derived from the Hebrew
patriarchs. Thus, verses were ascribed to Orpheus and the Sibyl, and
historical works to Hecataeus of Abdera and a certain Aristaeus, having
for their object the praise of the Jewish nation, which were certainly
not written by the authors whose names were appended to them. So
Artapanus’ book “On the Jews” claimed that the Egyptians were indebted
to the Hebrews for all they knew, including even the worship of their
gods, and that this went back to the days of Abraham, who availed
himself of his stay in Egypt to teach astrology to the Pharaoh of his
time[544].

History, however, was at all times much less to the taste of the Jews
than metaphysics, and the many teachers of philosophy scattered through
the Hellenistic world found in them eager scholars, who were willing to
listen respectfully to any doctrine, so long as it could be shown to be
not inconsistent with their national religion and traditions. The most
sincere attempt thus to combine Hellenic and Jewish teaching that has
come down to us is that of Philo of Alexandria, who wrote probably
shortly after the Birth of Christ. In his system[545], God is
undefinable and has no qualities that can be perceived by man. As He is
absolutely perfect, He cannot come into contact with matter, and all His
dealings with it must therefore be conducted through intermediate
beings. These intermediate beings are the powers or attributes of God,
inconsistently, as Zeller points out, figured by Philo “as at once
independent hypostases and immanent determinations of the Divine
existence[546].” All the Divine Powers are summed up in the Logos or
Word of God, who is not only their chief but their source, and the great
intermediary between God and the universe. He is neither unbegotten nor
begotten after the manner of finite things, but is the vicegerent and
ambassador of God, who constantly makes intercession for the world. As
for man, his soul is itself nothing but one of those powers of God which
in another state of existence are called angels or daemons, and it is
his material body which is the source of all evil, and the prison of the
soul. Man can only free himself from this by resisting the allurements
of the senses, which God puts it into his heart to do. By such
resistance, he can exceptionally and occasionally acquire such virtue
that, even in this life, he may attain to the Divine Vision, when he
will be “lifted above and out of himself,” and the Spirit of God will
henceforth dwell in him and “stir him like the strings of a musical
instrument.” In the ordinary way, however, his emancipation will only
take place when his soul returns to its original incorporeal condition,
a reward which is bestowed on those who have kept themselves free from
attachment to this sensuous body[547].

That people holding tenets so far removed from anything in the Law and
the Prophets should form themselves into small sects or societies[548]
and take other means for their propagation is only natural, and no doubt
many such sects of which we have lost all trace existed in secret among
the Hellenizing Jews at the beginning of the Christian era[549]. Such a
sect were probably the Sethiani described by Hippolytus, whose “entire
system,” according to the author of the _Philosophumena_, was derived
from “the ancient theologians Musaeus, Linus, and Orpheus, who
elucidates especially the ceremonies of initiation as well as the
Mysteries themselves[550].” So far as Hippolytus explains their system,
which he appears to have very imperfectly understood, it set forth three
principles, which he calls “Light, Darkness, and an intermediate one
which is Spirit”; but all the passages quoted from the “Paraphrase of
Seth,” which he declares to be the work of the sect in question, refer
for their authority to the Old Testament, which it is evident the
Sethiani received as a real revelation[551]. But the one of these
half-Jewish half-Gentile sects of which we have the most detailed
account is that which passed under the name of Simon Magus, whom the
Fathers of the Church were unanimous in describing as the parent and
origin of all later Gnosticism[552].

This Simon, the New Testament describes as a man who had formerly “used
sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself
was some great one: to whom all gave heed, from the least to the
greatest, saying ‘This man is the great power of God[553]’.” The author
of the Acts then goes on to say that Simon “believed” and was baptized
by Philip, and that when Peter and John came from Jerusalem to Samaria,
“he offered them money saying: Give me also this power, that on
whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost.” It is from this
offer, which seems to betray a desire to set up a Church of his own,
that his name, curiously enough, has since been associated in
ecclesiastical law with the offence of buying and selling benefices or
cures of souls[554]. Of Simon’s future career, however, the Acts of the
Apostles tell us nothing save that he left Peter with the request for
the Apostle’s prayers on his behalf. It is evident, from the text quoted
above, that both Simon’s sorceries and his acclamation by the people as
“the great power of God” took place before his conversion to
Christianity, whether this was real or feigned. Hence, Simon must have
been at the time already the leader of a school or sect, and as the
events narrated are in the same book set out before the Conversion of St
Paul and his preaching to the Gentiles, this sect must have been a
pre-Christian one[555].

That this sect was also one of those which sought to reconcile Judaism
with Hellenism seems antecedently probable. Samaria had been stripped of
a great part of its former inhabitants by Alexander the Great and
Ptolemy Soter, who had colonized it by “Macedonian” settlers, probably
of Syrian blood[556]. These colonists had accepted without difficulty
the religious reforms of Antiochus Epiphanes, and had offered that king,
according to Josephus, to dedicate their temple on Mt Gerizim to Zeus
Hellenios[557]. Later, on the death of Antiochus, John Hyrcanus, the
ethnarch or high-priest of the Jews, on the same authority, “revolted
from the Macedonians,” invaded Samaria, besieged its chief city and,
when he gained possession of it, entirely demolished it[558]. Gabinius,
when proconsul of Syria, rebuilt this and other cities which had been
destroyed by the Jews, and Herod the Great about 25 B.C. restored and
beautified it while renaming it Sebaste in honour of Augustus[559].
These events had intensified the hatred already existing between the
Jews and the Samaritans, and this was not diminished by the possession
by the latter of the Mt Gerizim temple which was in some sort the rival
of that of Jerusalem[560]. To judge from its later developments, the
religion of the Samaritans at the beginning of the Christian era
retained little of Judaism besides a reverence for the Pentateuch or
Five Books of Moses[561], and its other elements were apparently Greek.
We should therefore expect to find in Simon’s teaching before his
meeting with the Apostles, a leaning towards a mixed religion in which
Greek elements played the chief part, although the sanction attached to
it might be Jewish.

Such an expectation is abundantly justified by the evidence of
post-Apostolic writers. The documents known as the _Clementine Homilies_
and _Recognitions_ are now generally admitted to be a kind of religious
novel or romance composed for edification, and no consensus of opinion
exists as to their date, which has been taken by many learned critics as
ranging from the Ist to the IVth century A.D.[562]. They set forth with
much detail how Simon, after his first meeting with St Peter in Samaria,
everywhere opposed the chief of the Apostles, and followed him about on
many of his journeys, disputing with him at great length, until finally
put to flight by the superior dialectic of Peter[563]. The Apocryphal
_Acts of Peter and Paul_, which seem to be either wholly or in part
earlier than 275 A.D., further narrate that Simon attempted to convert
to his heresy the Emperor Nero, by flying over the Campus Martius at
Rome in a car drawn by demons; but was vanquished by St Peter, who by a
solemn adjuration caused him to fall violently to the earth and thus to
perish miserably[564]. This story became later the universal tradition
of the Catholic Church. All the patristic writers agree that Simon Magus
was accompanied in his missionary journeys by a woman of immoral life
whom he called the Ennoia or Thought of God, and declared to be a
reincarnation of Helen of Troy[565], while one of the Clementine
documents makes her, together with Simon, to have been among the
followers of John the Baptist[566]. There is no external corroboration
of either story; and such accusations of immorality were too frequently
bandied about between the early Christians and their adversaries for any
particular weight to be laid upon them[567]. Nor need the latest German
theory, that Simon Magus is in the Clementine literature but a pseudonym
for St Paul as the supposed opponent of St Peter, be discussed
here[568].

The first writer who gives us any authoritative account of Simon’s
pre-Christian teaching is Hippolytus, who in his _Philosophumena_ quotes
freely from a book which he attributes to Simon and calls the _Great
Announcement_[569]. Whether this be really Simon’s work or no, its
quotation in the _Philosophumena_ at least proves that a sect bearing
his name existed in the sub-Apostolic age, and that they held the
doctrines set forth in Hippolytus’ quotations from this document, which
can hardly have been due to anyone else in the first instance than Simon
himself[570]. In the _Great Announcement_ the First Cause of all things
is declared to be fire, on the strength of the statement in Deuteronomy
that “God is a burning and consuming fire[571].” This Infinite or
Boundless Power, as he calls it, Simon held to be not simple but
two-fold, having two natures, a hidden and a manifold one, so
intermingled that “the hidden one is concealed in the manifest, and the
manifest comes into being from the hidden one,” by which, as we shall
see later, he meant male and female. The manifest, again, can be
perceived by the senses like things with an actual existence, while the
hidden nature can only be apprehended by the mind, or in other words
imagined. In all this he seems at first sight to be echoing, as
Hippolytus points out[572], the notions of Plato upon the Intelligible
(τὸ νοητόν) and the Sensible (τὸ αἰσθητόν), those of Aristotle on Power
or Potentiality (δύναμις) and Actual Existence (ἐνέργεια), and, as
Hippolytus does _not_ say, those of Philo upon the First Cause and the
Logos[573]. The Cosmos or ordered universe came into being, Simon goes
on to say, from the unbegotten or self-existent fire, by means of six
“Roots” called respectively Mind (Νοῦς) and Thought (Ἔννοια)[574], Voice
(Φωνή) and Name (Ὄνομα), Reason (Λογισμός) and Desire (Ἐνθύμησις).
Although it is not here formally stated, it is noteworthy that this is a
system of couples or pairs, the name of one of each of the above pairs
being masculine and the other feminine[575]. In these six, Simon
imagined that the Boundless Power existed potentially, but not actually,
that is to say, that each of them represented one particular aspect or
quality under which the Supreme Being might be considered, but had no
existence apart from Him, while it required the addition together of all
the six to make up His entire being. A similar conception seems to
underlie the Zoroastrian idea of the six Amshaspands, from which it is
likely enough that Simon copied this part of his system[576]. It is here
that we meet for the first time in Gnosticism with the idea of emanation
or the flowing-forth of the Divine nature, which differs entirely from
that of creation, whether _e nihilo_ or from pre-existing matter,
inasmuch as the emanation still remains connected with the parent source
and never forms an entity distinct from it[577].

We see, then, that in Simon’s system, the primal world was a hebdomad or
consisted of seven Powers, being the three pairs of Roots enumerated
above together with a seventh, their source, in whom they were all
summed up[578]. But after this, and apparently created by it, is a
second or intermediate world, as to which the _Great Announcement_ thus
expresses itself:

“Unto you therefore I say what I say, and write what I write. The
writing is this. There are two stocks of all the Aeons put together,
having neither beginning nor end, springing from one Root, the which
is Power-Silence, invisible, incomprehensible (ἀκατάληπτος)[579], Of
which two stocks, one appears above, which is a great Power, the
Mind of the universes, which pervades all things, and is male: the
other [appears] below, a great Thought, is female, and gives birth
to all things. Thus, these, corresponding to one another[580], form
a pair (συζυγία), and show forth the Middle Space (διάστημα), an
incomprehensible air having neither beginning nor end. In this is
the Father who sustains (βαστάζων) all things and nourishes all
those things which have a beginning and end[581]. This is he who
standeth, hath stood, and shall stand[582], being both a male and
female power after the likeness of the pre-existing Boundless
Power[583], which has neither beginning nor end, but exists in
Oneness (Μονότης). For the Thought which came forth from the power
in Oneness became two[584]. And each of them was one. For he, when
he contained her within himself, was alone, nor was he the first,
although he existed before, but having appeared from himself, a
second came into being. But he was not called Father before
[Thought] had named him Father. Just as, then, he drawing forth
himself from himself manifested to himself his own Thought, so the
same Thought when she appeared did not create him, but, beholding
him, concealed the Father, that is to say, Power, within herself,
and [thus] there exists a male-and-female (_i.e._ hermaphrodite)
Power-and-Thought. For Power does not in any way differ from
Thought, they being one. Without the things which are above is found
Power; without those which are below, Thought. Thus, there is that,
also, which appeared from them, the which being one is found to be
two, a male-and-female containing the female within itself. This one
is Mind in Thought; for they, being one when undivided (ἀχώριστος)
from one another, are [yet] found to be Two[585].”

This statement seems at first to be merely an explanation and recitation
of what has been previously said as to the emanation of the “Roots” from
the Boundless Power, and by no means justifies the words of the _Great
Announcement_ in which it is magniloquently proclaimed to be “the Book
of the Showing-forth of Voice and Name from the Thought of the Great
Boundless Power. Wherefore it will be sealed up and hidden and veiled
and will rest in the habitation wherein the root of the worlds is
established (Θεμελιόω)[586].” But when we examine the words just quoted
by the light of the other systems said to be derived from Simon’s, we
see that they really indicate the belief of the author in a succession
of worlds, wherein every later or lower one is a reflection, as in a
glass, of that which was above it[587]. These lower worlds, like the
primal one, should each contain three pairs of “Roots,” emanating from
one source like rays from a lamp or other source of light. It also seems
that this source is, alike in the primal world and its successors, in
itself potentially both male and female, that is to say, the female
nature, which alone has the power of conception or producing new beings,
was originally concealed within the other as a thought is concealed
within the mind, and only becomes comprehensible when utterance is given
to it. Hence each of these Powers or, as Simon here calls them for the
first time, aeons, like the Supreme Being, has a double aspect. Seen
from below, that is to say, as it appears to the aeon which succeeds it,
it is female, that is to say, a source of being. To that which is above
it, or earlier in emanation, it is male, that is to say, it is the cause
of conception, and also the sustainer and director at once of the
conceiver and of that which she conceives[588].

Why now did Simon, or whoever wrote under his name, use such obscure and
at first sight unintelligible terms for his speculations on the nature
of the Supreme Being and the origin of the world? Simply, it would seem,
that he might reconcile two things which like certain chemicals found
themselves in presence of each other without any affinity for
combination. These were the Mosaic Law which, since the Captivity, both
Jew and Samaritan held themselves bound to treat as divinely
inspired[589], and the Greek “theological” ideas which then pervaded the
whole civilized world and were at the time accepted by all educated men
who thought about such subjects in much the same way as are in these
days the conclusions of physical science[590]. This forced him and
others who attempted to found a religion acceptable to both Jew and
Greek, to use language which could be interpreted in their own sense by
either. His Supreme Being is One, as Israel declared that her God was
One, but, by a not immodest metaphor, he contains within himself the
power of becoming both male and female, as Adonis, or Attis, or
Dionysos, or, to take the mythological person he most resembles, the
Orphic Phanes, was both male and female[591]. Simon also goes out of his
way to affirm that his first syzygy or pair, Mind and Thought, are in
the second world called Heaven and Earth, and thus forms a pretty close
parallel to the Orphic couple Uranos and Ge[592]. But he is careful to
mix with this explanations which shall also accord with the account of
creation given in the Book of Genesis. He who standeth, hath stood, and
will stand, _i.e._ the Eternal Being who is not liable to fall or
corruption, and is the “Father” of the “Middle Space” is no less the “I
am that I am” of Exodus than the Father of gods and men of Homer. So,
too, his companion from the beginning, called Silence, because she has
no independent existence until he gives utterance to his thought,
resembles the Nux or Night of Orpheus from whom Phanes begot Heaven and
Earth; but she is also, as Simon expressly says, the Spirit of God which
moved over the face of the waters in the Mosaic account of the
Creation[593]. If, again, Simon makes his first pair of “Roots” in the
second world Heaven and Earth, his second pair, Voice and Name, he
declares to be equivalent to the Sun and Moon, and his third, Reason and
Desire, to Air and Water[594]. This, he expressly says, is because the
Book of Genesis says that three clear days elapsed before the Sun and
Moon came into being, and these three “days” are an allusion to the
Boundless Power and the first pair Mind and Thought[595]. To a much
greater extent than Philo, therefore, Simon uses the religious
traditions of both Greeks and Hebrews to give sanction to his own
speculations.

The use of the word aeon, which our English Testament translates “age”
(_saeculum_) as the generic name of the six Roots or Powers reflected in
the second universe, seems also to have peculiar signification in this
connection. Among the Greeks, Hesiod sang of a golden age, succeeded by
others of silver, of brass, of one unnamed metal, and finally one of
iron; and the Orphics, working after their manner on older materials,
assigned the first of these ages to their god Phanes, and the others to
Night, Uranos, Kronos, and Zeus in succession, asserting that the last
age would be that of Dionysos[596]. The use of the word by Simon seems
to show that he conceived his emanations or “Roots” as succeeding one
another and perhaps depending from one another like the links of a
chain. But as he had already personified these emanations, we have the
curious result that he considered them both as persons—or, to be more
accurate, aspects of the Deity—and spaces of time. Nor was this all. The
great spread given to the Chaldaean star-worship throughout the East by
the events described in Chapter III above, had caused the stars to be
accepted by every nation in the Hellenist world as the most convenient
types of divinity[597]. The planets, including in that phrase the Sun
and Moon, were all known by the names of the most important gods in the
various pantheons of all the nations of antiquity, and were thought in
some not very clearly defined way to be identified with the divinities
whose names they bore[598]. Even before the time of Alexander, the
Platonic cosmogony had made of the stars and planets habitations where
the souls of men were supposed to rest on their way to mortal
bodies[599]; and Philo, while admitting that the stars were the rulers
of earthly things, could do no more than remind his readers that they
were not independent rulers, but only viceroys of Yahweh[600]. Hence
Simon, when he called three of his aeons by the names of Earth, Sun, and
Moon, made them places or worlds as well as persons and periods of time.
It was an extraordinary complication of ideas from which none of the
Gnostics who followed him succeeded in entirely freeing themselves[601].

To return, however, to Simon’s system of emanations. Have we any right
to consider that the Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, and Water and Air,
with which he peopled his second universe, were those which are
perceptible by our senses, or did he regard them as existing above our
ken and as merely the patterns which were in their turn reflected into
our universe? Hippolytus unfortunately breaks off his quotations from
the _Great Announcement_ at this point, and his own report of Simon’s
doctrines is neither lucid nor implicitly to be trusted. Irenaeus,
however, writing half a century before Hippolytus, declares that it was
the female aeon Thought, whom we have seen is equivalent in the second
or intermediate world to Ge or Earth, “who, comprehending the wish of
the Father, descended to the lower regions, and there produced angels
and the lower authorities (αί κάτω ἐξουσίαι) who made the universe
(κόσμος)[602].” If we believe, as seems most probable, that Simon
carried his theory of the lower world being a reflection of the upper
throughout all existing things, it follows that the second world,
containing as we have seen Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, and Air and
Water together with “the Father” in whom the six were contained, was the
pattern or paradigmatic world which was reflected in the lower universe
to which we belong. In this case it is probable that the six “Roots”
again changed their generic name, and after having been called powers
(δυνάμεις) in the primal world, and aeons in the second, were now
designated angels and authorities. If this conjecture is right, we have
here a parallel to the chain of being fabled by the Orphics which,
beginning with the gods, descended through demi-gods, heroes, and demons
down to men. An accurate knowledge of the different ranks of this
supramundane hierarchy was, as has been said, of great importance for
magical purposes such as exorcism, and its description occupied a great
part of the Enochian literature[603].

Simon, however, had still to account for the creation of man and the
part which he played in the scheme of the universe. His reverence for
Moses prevented him from directly contradicting the statement in Genesis
that Yahweh “formed man out of the dust of the ground,” and this he
echoes in the words of the Septuagint, which speaks of God moulding
(ἔπλασε) man by “taking dust (χοῦς) from the Earth (Γῆ).” The part here
played by the Yahweh of Genesis he transfers to “the Father” of his
second or intermediate world[604]; and as Genesis says that God made man
in his own image, he is also compelled to say that man was originally
made in the likeness of the Father. But “the Father” of Simon’s
intermediate world was, as we have seen, an hermaphrodite, or rather a
male containing a female power within himself[605]. Hence man was
originally both male and female, or in the words of the _Great
Announcement_ “not simple, but double according to image and
resemblance[606].” But this was clearly not the man of this world as we
know him, but the Heavenly or Archetypal Man who remained in the world
above ours, and was, as Philo held, a man-woman[607]. How did Simon
account for the separation of the sexes, and its influence upon
subsequent humanity?

The answer to this question involves Simon’s ideas as to the cause of
evil in this world and the means by which man can escape from it. Man
was, as we have seen, formed out of dust, but to make him, in the words
of Genesis, “a living soul,” it was necessary that he should be animated
by the breath (πνεῦμα) of the Divinity. So efficiently was this done
that everyone, as Simon said, has within him potentially but not in act,
“that which is blessed and incorruptible,” that is to say, “He who
standeth, hath stood and will stand,” or in other words the “Father” of
the intermediate world. “He it is,” he goes on to say, “who stood above
in the Unbegotten Power, who stands below, coming into being by
reflection (ἐν εἰκόνι) in the rush of the waters, and will stand above
by the side of the blessed and Unbegotten Power if he should receive
reflection or image (ἐὰν ἐξεικονισθῇ)[608].” For “there are three who
stand, and unless there are three aeons that stand, the unbegotten one,
who according to them [Qy. the Hebrews?] was borne over the face of the
water, is not in her proper place in the universe (οὐ κοσμεῖται)[609].
The which unbegotten one is fashioned by resemblance as perfect and
heavenly, but becomes, in regard to Thought alone, inferior to the
Unbegotten Power.” This Unbegotten Power, he goes on to say in words
that remind one of several different myths[610], is the “One power
cloven in twain above and below, who gives birth to itself, increases
itself, seeks itself, finds itself, being its own mother, its own
father, its own sister, its own spouse (σύζυγος), its own daughter, its
own son, a mother-father [and is] _one_, being the root of all the
universes[611].” It was the Thought of this Power who was charged with
bringing the Divine Spark to this world; but apparently, while she was
brooding over the face of the waters, she was seized by the angels and
authorities whom she had produced, “through motives of jealousy, because
they were unwilling to be looked upon as the progeny of any other
being[612].” These words are put into the mouth of Simon by Irenaeus,
who goes on to say that Thought was thus prevented from returning to the
Father and was shut up in a human body. At this point, the account of
Irenaeus agrees with that of the _Philosophumena_ which narrates that
(according to Simon) the world-making angels caused Thought (Ennoia) to
enter one body after another, including that of Helen of Troy (_causa
teterrima belli_), until she finally entered into the body of Simon’s
companion Helena whom he found in a brothel at Tyre[613]. Hippolytus
says, however, that Simon made up this part of the story out of shame as
regards his disciples[614] in order to explain his companying with
Helena, and it may be noticed that he nowhere quotes the _Great
Announcement_ in its support[615]. Epiphanius, who seems to have used
the same documents as Irenaeus, gives a different reason for the conduct
of the world-making angels from that of Irenaeus, and makes out that
they were seduced by the beauty of “Epinoia,” as he calls Ennoia or
Thought, the female aeon who had come down, and detained her below out
of sensual desire[616]. Both Irenaeus and Epiphanius are agreed that
Simon in some way “redeemed” Helena, although they do not say in what
way, and Hippolytus declares that Simon having purified Helena, in like
manner brought salvation to men by his own discernment[617]. Why Simon
should thus have power of salvation he does not explain directly, but
he, Irenaeus, and Epiphanius alike tell us, by what seems to be a wilful
or unconscious misinterpretation of the account in the New
Testament[618], that Simon gave himself out as the Supreme God, who,
seeing that the angels mismanaged this world from their desire for rule,
came here to put it right and descended through the different worlds,
changing his shape in each to accord with that of the rulers therein,
until he appeared here as man, “although he was not a man[619].”
Hippolytus further says, as does Irenaeus, that Simon was alleged “to
suffer in Judaea in the likeness of Jesus, although in appearance only,
and to have appeared to the Jews as Son, to the Samaritans as Father,
and to the other nations as the Holy Spirit[620].” His death he accounts
for by the story, found nowhere else in post-Christian literature, that
at some place, the name of which has slipped out of the text of the
_Philosophumena_, Simon

“taught sitting under a plane-tree. Moreover, exposure being at hand
through long delay, he said that if he were buried alive he would
rise again the third day. And a grave having been dug by his orders
by his disciples, he directed that he should be buried. His
disciples did what he commanded, but he remained there to this day.
For he was not Christ[621].”

In all this account, Hippolytus gives an entirely different account from
that of the Clementines, with the manifest purpose of holding Simon up
to obloquy as one of the “false Christs” predicted in the New Testament.
It is obvious also that, so far from giving us Simon’s pre-Christian
teaching, he is here handing down a garbled account of some tradition of
the heresiarch’s disciples after his death.

That the stories told by the Fathers, except when they are quoting
immediately from the _Great Announcement_, are not a trustworthy account
of Simon’s doctrines is evident from their manifest inconsistency. If
Simon’s disciples believed, as Hippolytus says, in the lawfulness of
promiscuous intercourse, why should he feel called upon to justify to
them by an artifice his connection with Helena? If, too, Simon, or the
Supreme Being in his likeness, came down from the highest heaven to
earth for the sake of redeeming his spouse Epinoia there held captive,
why did he not return with her when recovered, and for what purpose did
he simulate death in Judaea? Nor is there any plausible reason assigned
for the angels’ detention of Epinoia on earth by Hippolytus, which he
attributes, like Irenaeus before him, to jealousy and the desire for
rule, any more than by Epiphanius, who will have it to be caused by
their concupiscence—a story probably derived from the account of the
Watchers in the _Book of Enoch_. Hippolytus makes Epinoia come to earth
to establish, instead of taking away, the rule of the angels, who were
by his account her own progeny; and if the angels were, as Epiphanius
says, inflamed with love for her, the last thing they would be likely to
do would be to transform her out of her first and heavenly shape, and
finally place her in a brothel—as they are said to have done with
Helena, Simon’s mistress.

The key to Simon’s theory on the connexion between the salvation of
mankind and its division into sexes is probably to be found in a
paragraph in the _Philosophumena_ in which Hippolytus seems to quote
directly from the _Great Announcement_:

“And because,” he says, “the beginning of the generation of things
which are begotten[622] is from fire, he [Simon] devises (κατανόει)
a certain similar figure. Generation of all such things exists,
[and] the beginning of the desire of generation comes from fire. So,
for example, to desire changeable generation is called being
inflamed with love. But the fire, which is one, undergoes two
changes. In the man,” he says, “the blood which is hot and yellow as
typifying fire is changed into seed; but in the woman, the self-same
blood is changed into milk[623]. And the [result of the?] change of
the masculine blood is begetting; but the [result of the?] change of
the feminine, the nourishment of that which is begotten[624]. This,”
he says, “is the flaming sword turning both ways to guard the way to
the Tree of Life. For the blood turns into seed and milk, and that
power becomes [at once] mother and father of the things which are
born, and the increase of those which are nursed, having no need of
any external help and being sufficient unto itself. The Tree of
Life,” he says, “is guarded by the flaming sword turning both ways,
as we have said, [and] the seventh power which contains all things,
and which is stored up in the six powers, [comes forth?] from the
sword. For, if the flaming sword did not turn both ways, that
beautiful tree would be corrupted and destroyed. But if the Word
which is stored up potentially in them (the six powers), being the
lord of the proper place, is turned into seed and milk, within it is
born the Word of souls, beginning from the smallest spark, which
will be magnified and will increase and will become a boundless
power, unchangeable in the unchanging aeon, and it is born no more
until [it reaches?] the boundless aeon[625].”

The meaning of this very complicated and confused imagery—which we may
be sure Hippolytus has purposely made as obscure and ridiculous as
possible—seems to be this. In the two superior or heavenly worlds which
we have called the primal and the second, the “roots” are male and
female after the model of the Supreme Being. But this only means that
the female is the external manifestation of the male, _within_ whom she
has at one time been contained. No thought of sex, as we understand it,
enters into their relations, and no progeny follows from their
conjugation, the lower world coming into life after the pattern of the
upper by an impulse which, although due in the first instance to the
male, is translated into action by the female member of the first
syzygy. But with our universe and the appearance of man, a change in the
system takes place. Although our world, constituted after the heavenly
model, contains the three pairs, Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, Air and
Water, and is animated by the breath of life brought from above by
Epinoia or Ennoia, man is formed from previously-existing matter and is
therefore largely made up of an element hostile or repugnant to God.
Lest the Divine spark within him should free itself from matter and
return to the world above, each human soul has been divided, as Plato
tells us in the _Symposium_[626], and the two parts placed in different
bodies so that the male is imperfect without the female and the female
without the male, and the soul can make no effort to raise itself in the
world of being until it meets and is conjoined with its affinity. This
is probably in Simon’s view the device of the angels, who have brought
it about, according to Hippolytus, in order that Epinoia, the mother of
life, may remain longer in the world and therefore prolong their
rule[627]. But they are defeated by the Divine arrangement, which
compels the two parts of the soul, after having once entered upon the
round of mutable generation (ἡ μεταβλητὴ γένεσις), to change into one
body after another according to the Orphic theory of transmigration
until each meets with its twin. Thus did the soul of Helen of Troy pass
from one body into another until in the shape of Helena of Tyre it met
with its own affinity in the body of Simon. Then it became again
bisexual after the image of the boundless power to which it would again
rise. Thus must it be with all mankind until all the souls are thus
disentangled from matter[628]. According to Hippolytus, this event is to
coincide with the deliverance (λύσις) of the world, which seems to mean
that it is to be freed from the rule of the angels. Irenaeus and
Epiphanius twist this into the assertion that it is to be dissolved,
while one of the later Gnostic documents says that it is to be “caught
up,” that is to say, reabsorbed by the world of which it is the image.
But Hippolytus expressly includes this last doctrine among those
invented by “those who imitated the error” of Simon Magus, or in other
words by his successors[629], and it need not therefore be here
discussed.

Whence Simon derived the doctrine of which we get glimpses in the _Great
Announcement_ will probably remain in doubt until we recover more
fragments of that document. It appears likely, however, that he drew
from a number of sources. Even in his day and after the wholesale
depopulation of Samaria by the Syrians, Egyptians, and Jews, there must
have remained many of the inhabitants who were lineal descendants of
that mixed Semitic and Persian stock who “feared the Lord and served
brazen images.” Hence his speculations may well have been influenced by
the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism and Mazdeism, and some have
thought that they can see in them traces of the primitive fire worship
of the Magi[630]. Yet he need not have gone so far, for, as we have
seen, his idea of fire as the origin of all things might well be taken
from a too literal interpretation of a passage in the Samaritan
Pentateuch. So with regard to the six “roots,” although they may have
been mere copies of the Persian Amshaspands, they may also have come
from a Pythagorean or Orphic source, since Athamas the Pythagorean is
said to have taught that “there are four roots—fire, water, air, earth;
for from these is the genesis of what is produced,” and a verse of
Empedocles is preserved which makes the same assertion[631]. The
likeness of Simon’s system to Egyptian and Alexandrian teaching is even
closer. In ancient Egypt there was, as M. Maspero thinks, a well-defined
system of correspondences including three worlds, each of which was a
likeness or reflection of the preceding. At Hermopolis, too, there was
worshipped an ogdoad or family of four pairs of gods and goddesses who
on the same authority were merely attributes of one higher deity[632].
So in the tract _de Iside et Osiride_[633], we are told that genesis or
coming into being is the image or reflection in matter of that which
really exists, and that Horus, who seems here to represent the
perceptible world, is the εἰκών or image of the νοητὸς κόσμος or ideal
world, and is the child of this last world and matter. After all, there
is little more in this than an extension of Plato’s theory of ideas
which are the paradigms or patterns of perceptible things: but as Simon,
according to the Clementines[634], had studied in Alexandria he may well
have acquired such a notion either from Plato’s writings direct, or, as
is more likely, from the Alexandrian religion of Serapis and Isis as set
forth in the tract in question.

Of the history of the Simonian sect, we know very little more than has
been said. The Fathers accuse the Simonians of leading immoral lives, of
teaching the advisability of promiscuous intercourse, and of being
addicted to magic[635]. Irenaeus declares that they worshipped an image
of Simon in the likeness of Jupiter, and another of Helena in the shape
of Athena[636], to which Hippolytus adds that they were exceedingly
angry if any one ventured to call these statues either Simon or Helena
and instantly cast him forth of the sect as being ignorant of their
mysteries[637]. Eusebius—a very late witness—adds to this that they
worshipped these images with “prostrations and incense and sacrifices
and libations[638],” which taken with the other statements seems to show
that the Simonians, or perhaps only the pre-Christian followers of
Simon, really took part in the worship of the Greek gods Zeus and
Athena, possibly by way of complaisance with the Greek and Roman rulers
of Samaria, and that the likening of their statues to Simon and Helena
was only the patristic gloss on the fact. Epiphanius goes further and
attributes to them “mysteries of iniquity” and secret and obscene rites,
including the filthy parody of the Eucharist depicted by the late J. K.
Huysmans in his novel of _Là-Bas_[639]. But this also was an accusation
common to the adherents and opponents of Christianity at the time he
wrote. He also says that their sacrifices were offered to “the Father of
the Universes” (τῶν ὅλων) through the rulers and authorities[640], and
that they thought that the God of the Jews was one of the angels in this
lower universe who created man and divided the nations among them by
lot[641], an idea of which there is a trace in the Book of Daniel[642].
But it is plain that Epiphanius, in his desire to prove that Simon is
the parent of all subsequent heresy, is here mixing together the
opinions of different Gnostic sects with a result inconsistent even in
his own eyes. That the later Simonians had secret rites after the manner
of those described by Lucian in the case of Alexander of
Abonoteichos[643] is likely enough, but rests on no real proof[644].

Of the extent and persistence of the religion set on foot by Simon we
have some few indications, although these, too, hardly agree with one
another. Irenaeus declares that he was succeeded in the leadership of
the sect by Menander[645], another Samaritan, and this is confirmed by
Epiphanius, Philaster, and all the lesser writers on heresy down to and
including Eusebius[646]. Although there seems nothing new in the
doctrine which they assign to Menander, it is very probable that, after
Simon’s death, the tenets of the sect underwent a good deal of
modification. According to Theodoret, the Simonians spread chiefly in
Syria, Phrygia, and Rome[647]. Justin Martyr, writing in the reign of
Antoninus Pius, speaks of their school as still existing apparently in
Rome[648]. Origen, in the following reign, says indeed in his tract
against Celsus that there were no Simonians to be found anywhere
throughout the world[649]; but he was probably mistaken in this, as
Eusebius in the reign of Constantine speaks of them as still numerous,
although forced to hide themselves[650]. After this, and so soon as the
Church, now triumphant, began in her turn to persecute, they no doubt
either became converted to Christianity or joined other sects.

In these matters, as in many others concerning the Gnostics, the Fathers
of the Church were badly informed. The Gnostic indifference to outward
forms of religion made it very easy for any body of Gnostics to conceal
themselves in time of persecution[651], and thus to resist in the most
practical way any attempt to estimate their true strength, or the
relations of the different sects to one another. Gnosticism was, as the
Church was to find out later, a hydra, the heads of which when cut off
renewed themselves with amazing rapidity. Moreover, the very essence of
Gnosticism was secrecy for all but the initiated, and if we may judge
from the words of the _Great Announcement_ quoted above, the Simonians
took abundant care when they committed any of their doctrines to writing
that the result should be unintelligible without a good deal of previous
instruction. But if the fragments quoted are, as seems fairly certain,
the work either of Simon Magus himself or of some prominent and early
member of his school, the Fathers were abundantly justified in regarding
him as the source of all subsequent Gnosticism. The syncretic religion
which they unfold seems to have been admirably adapted to catch those
“barbarian” enquirers, of whom there were evidently many in the first
years of our era, who were trying by might and main to reconcile the
traditions of Judaism with the Greek learning and culture for the first
time brought within their reach. The system of terribly forced
interpretation of the Jewish scriptures employed by the Simonians was
probably their own invention, and would certainly never have passed
muster in a community possessed of a modicum of literary sense[652]; yet
it enabled them, as has been said, to turn their backs upon the plain
meaning of the books of the Old Testament. By their doctrine of
emanation, whether derived from Persian sources or not, they contrived,
perhaps for the first time, to bridge the huge gulf fixed by the
philosophy and physics of the time between their Supreme Being and the
gross matter which was thought to exist independently of and in
opposition to him; while their scheme of redemption, like that of the
Orphics from whom they apparently borrowed, went far, as they boasted,
to rob death of its terrors.

These features we find reproduced in the teachings of nearly every later
sect and school into which we shall have to enquire, and although our
information as to their doctrines is not exact enough to enable us to
determine the extent of the obligations of all of them to the teaching
of Simon, the chances are that in every case there was a more or less
conscious borrowing. Nor did the influence of the Samaritan _magus_
cease with the suppression of the many heresies which the Fathers
declared to be inspired by him. His speculations as to the succession of
heavens and of orders of heavenly beings passed into the teaching of the
Church[653] and obtained too firm a footing there to be dislodged until
the German Reformation. The memory of them extended even beyond its
pale, and while, in the VIIth century of our era, they came to inspire
such cosmology as is taught in the Koran, the system of Sephiroth or
successive emanations of the Deity, which underlies the farrago of
mystical nonsense called in the Middle Ages the Cabala of the Jews, is
directly derived from them. It may even be said that the influence of
Simon’s doctrines is not even now extinct in Europe, for in the writings
of Swedenborg, which still find exponents, many of his ideas seem to be
revived.

That Simon’s system as described in the _Great Announcement_ was the
result either of deep philosophic speculation or of original thought can
hardly be said. Its one novel feature was the rather clumsy fusion of
the Orphic cosmogony with the Mosaic account of creation, which reads
like a parody on Philo’s well-thought-out doctrine. Philo was born,
apparently, about 25 B.C., and was therefore in all probability a few
years older than Simon, so that such a parody is not altogether
impossible. One of the main differences between the two systems is that
to the asceticism of Philo and the Essenes Simon opposed, not perhaps a
recommendation to licence, but a theory making the union of the sexes
part of the scheme for the redemption of mankind. By so doing, he
probably made a much stronger appeal to Samaritans and Jews alike than
did the strict celibacy demanded by Orphics, Essenes, and the other
pre-Christian Gnostics. It is probable also that he included in his
propaganda some sort of thaumaturgy or wonder-working of the kind
employed, according to Lucian, by Alexander of Abonoteichos and,
according to Irenaeus, by the Jewish impostor Marcus. Although the
stories about this in the Clementines are manifestly fiction, we cannot
absolutely reject the universal testimony of the Fathers that Simon and
his followers made use of incantations and magical arts, and these are
probably the “sorceries” with which the writer of the Acts declares he
bewitched the Samaritans. Charlatanism, or more or less conscious
imposture of this kind, was rife, as will be presently shown, among the
lower classes of Palestine in his day, and would agree well with the
bombastic language of the extracts from the _Great Announcement_ which
Hippolytus has preserved for us.

Footnote 541:

The fanaticism of the Palestinian Jews in time affected their
co-religionists elsewhere, as when the Jews in Asia Minor rebelled and
committed atrocities in the reign of Trajan. See Morrison, _Jews under
Roman Rule_, p. 191, and Renan, _Les Évangiles_, Paris, 1877, p. 503.
Probably such outbreaks were condemned by those of the nation who had
anything to lose, as was certainly the case during the Revolt under
Hadrian.

Footnote 542:

Morrison, _op. cit._ p. 375; Mahaffy, _Greek Life and Thought_, 1887,
pp. 468-482; _Greek World under Roman Sway_, 1890, p. 47.

Footnote 543:

Schürer, _History of the Jewish People_, Eng. ed. II. pp. 157, 158.
One of the best proofs of this tendency is the fashion among all
classes of Jews at this period of giving their children Greek names.
See Mahaffy, _Greek Life and Thought_, p. 480. Even among the Apostles
we have Andrew and Philip.

Footnote 544:

Schürer, _op. cit._ II. pp. 206, 306, 309; Morrison, _op. cit._ p.
395.

Footnote 545:

Schürer, _op. cit._ II. pp. 369-380, following, as he tells us,
Zeller, gives an excellent and coherent account of Philo’s system,
which see. As Schürer points out (_op. cit._ II. p. 368), Philo
“hellenized” so thoroughly that practically the only Judaic elements
in his system are the assertion of monotheism, a contempt for
image-worship, and the claim that the Jews possessed through the
Mosaic revelation the highest religious knowledge.

Footnote 546:

Schürer, _op. cit._ II. p. 372. For a definition of hypostasis in this
connection and its original equivalence to οὐσία and _substantia_ (as
in the _Quicunque vult_), see Hatch, _Hibbert Lectures_, 1888, p. 275.

Footnote 547:

Were those who did not attain to this height in Philo’s opinion
annihilated or re-incarnated? His view that for the wicked this life
is the real hell (_De congr. erud. grat._ § XI.) would suit either
theory; but in _de Cherub._ § I. it is plain that he contemplates the
eternal punishment of the damned.

Footnote 548:

Secret, not from the jealous motive of the Gnostics, but because if
their opinions had become generally known they would have been cast
out of the synagogue.

Footnote 549:

So Renan, _Les Évangiles_, p. 452. It is quite possible that the sect
of the Essenes may have included many divisions.

Footnote 550:

Hippolytus, _Philosophumena_, Bk V. c. 3, p. 218, Cruice.

Footnote 551:

M. de Faye is probably right in saying (_Étude Critique des Documents
du Gnosticisme Chrétien_, Paris, 1913, pp. 352, 353) that the Sethiani
were never a very important sect. Stähelin’s theory (_Die Gnostischen
Quellen Hippolyts_, Leipzig, 1890) that Hippolytus was deceived by a
forger who drew all his “heresies” from one document (see Chapter VII,
_infra_) is too fantastic to be correct, but it has done good service
in calling attention to the family likeness between most of the
systems which he sketches. Cf. E. de Faye, _Intro. à l’Ét. du Gnost._,
Paris, 1903, p. 68. We are not likely to reach any more definite
conclusion unless some lucky discovery reveals to us the sources of
Hippolytus’ compilation.

Footnote 552:

Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 16, p. 191, Harvey; Hippolytus, _Philosophumena_,
Bk VI. c. 20, p. 267, Cruice; Augustine, _de Haeres. lib._ cc. I.,
II., III.; Praedestinatus, _de Haer._ Bk I. c. 1; Pseudo-Tertullian,
_adv. omn. Haer._ c. I. etc.

Footnote 553:

Acts viii. 9, 10.

Footnote 554:

From the story in Acts, it appears that what Simon tried to buy was
the power of ordination. The offence in modern ecclesiastical
jurisprudence seems to be the obtaining the priestly office by
purchase rather than by merit or gift.

Footnote 555:

Cf. Amélineau, _Gnosticisme Égyptien_, p. 51.

Footnote 556:

Morrison, _op. cit._ p. 351. Cowley in Cheyne’s _Encyclopaedia
Biblica_, _s.v._ Samaritans, omits this; but see Josephus, _Ant._ Bk
XII. c. 2, § 1.

Footnote 557:

Josephus, _op. cit._ Bk XII. c. 5, § 1.

Footnote 558:

_Ibid._ _op. cit._ Bk XIII. c. 10, § 3.

Footnote 559:

_Ibid._ _op. cit._ Bk XV. c. 9, § 5.

Footnote 560:

“Neither at Jerusalem, nor on this mountain [Gerizim] shall men
worship the Father,” John iv. 21.

Footnote 561:

Cowley in _Encyc. Bibl._ _s.v._ Samaritans, col. 4260. According to
Renan, _Les Évangiles_, p. 451, the Samaritans at the beginning of our
era were divided into a great number of sects, all more or less
attached to Simon. The authorities he quotes are, however, too late to
establish this satisfactorily.

Footnote 562:

The question was discussed and resolved, as far as it could be in the
then state of our information, by Salmon in Smith’s _Dictionary of
Christian Biography_, _s.v._ Clementines. Mgr. Duchesne, _Early
History of the Christian Church_, Eng. ed. 1909, p. 96, n. 2, sums up
in favour of their ultimate derivation from the _Preaching of Peter_
composed at the end of the IInd or beginning of IIIrd cent. He thinks
the Clementines orthodox save for a slight Arian tendency.

Footnote 563:

So Theodoret; but this was a common form in the patristic accounts of
such disputes. It is repeated in the dispute of Archelaus with Manes,
mentioned in Chapter XIII, _infra_, which see.

Footnote 564:

See Tischendorf’s edition, _passim_. The age of the book may be
guessed by its containing the _Quo Vadis_ story quoted by Origen.

Footnote 565:

Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 16, p. 191, Harvey; Hippolytus, Bk VI. c. 1, § 19,
p. 264, Cruice; Epiphanius, _Panar._ Bk I.; _Haer._ XXI. c. 2 (p. 125
of Oehler’s vol. II. pt. 1).

Footnote 566:

_Clementine Homilies_, II. c. 23.

Footnote 567:

Marcion and Marcus, both leaders of Gnostic sects, were both accused
by the Catholics of seduction, while the Pagans naturally put the
worst construction on the intimacy existing between confessors and
martyrs and their converts, as is evidenced by the story of Paul and
Thekla.

Footnote 568:

This seems to have been first set on foot by Baur and the Tübingen
school, and has lately been revived by Schmiedel in the _Encyc. Bibl._
_s.v._ Simon Magus. Even if we were to admit that it was well founded
with regard to the _Clementines_, it would not get rid of the
testimony of the Acts and of Justin Martyr that Simon Magus had an
actual historical existence.

Footnote 569:

Ἀπόφασις μεγάλη. “Declaration” would perhaps be a better translation
of the word; but that given in the text is the one used by most
writers on the subject.

Footnote 570:

Simon’s authorship of the book has been defended by Renan (_Les
Apôtres_, Paris, 1866, p. 267 and note) and attacked by many other
writers. Salmon, _op. cit._, Schmiedel, _op. cit._, and Stock in the
_Encyclopaedia Britannica_ (last edition), _s.v._ Simon Magus, aver
that there were two Simons, one the personage of the Acts, and the
other, a Gnostic leader of the IInd cent. to whom or to whose
followers the _Great Announcement_ is to be attributed. This theory,
although attractive, would prove too much; for Justin Martyr, himself
a Samaritan, has no doubt that Simon the heresiarch is the Simon of
the Acts, and if he is wrong in this, a matter which may well have
been within his own personal knowledge, Hippolytus is our best and
earliest authority for Simon’s doctrines.

Footnote 571:

Deut. iv. 24.

Footnote 572:

Hippolytus, _op. cit._ Bk VI. c. 1, § 9, p. 247, Cruice.

Footnote 573:

As when he says that the Logos is not God, but his reflection. See
Philo, _de Somn._ I. 41 (p. 656 of Mangey). “Just as those who cannot
gaze upon the sun may yet gaze upon a reflection of it.” Cf. Hatch,
_H. L._ p. 248.

Footnote 574:

Irenaeus and Epiphanius (where before quoted) both call this second
partner in the first pair of “Roots” Ἔννοια. Hippolytus, _op. cit._ Bk
VI. c. 1, § 13, p. 251, Cruice, has Ἐπίνοια. Does this mean
“after-thought” or “second thought” as showing her posteriority to
Nous? At any rate it is some indication that he is copying from a
different source than that of his predecessors. King (_Gnostics and
their Remains_, 2nd ed. p. 61) would translate Ἐνθύμησις by “thought,”
while he calls Ἔννοια “Intelligence.” The Abbé Cruice translates
Ἐνθύμησις “Conceptio.” It seems here to mean Desire not in a fleshly
but a mental sense.

Footnote 575:

The names of Ὄνομα and Φωνή are placed in the reverse order to the
others, inasmuch as in this pair the feminine comes first. This is
curious because in the same section they are compared to the Sun and
Moon, the sex of which is transposed in several mythologies.

Footnote 576:

The names of the Amshaspands of Zoroaster are, _Vohu Mano_, or Good
Mind, and _Asha Vahishta_, or Truth; _Khshathra Vairya_, or Right Law,
and _Spenta Armaiti_, or Wisdom; _Haurvetat_, or Good Health, and
_Ameretat_ or Immortality. The likeness between this and Simon’s
system has been noticed by, among others, Harvey the editor of
Irenaeus, in his Introduction to that author, pp. lxv _sqq._ For the
resemblance between post-exilic Judaism and Zoroastrianism, see
Cheyne, _Jewish Religious Life_, pp. 157, 210, 251, 257 _sqq._ But see
p. 197, _infra_.

Footnote 577:

Emanation is well defined by Mallet (_Culte de Neit à Saïs_, Paris,
1888, pp. 212, 213) as “a perpetual flowing-forth, which does not
imply any effort, and which consequently neither exhausts nor even
diminishes the productive principle.” Emanations, however, he goes on
to say, become weaker and less perfect the further they get from their
first source. The first mention I can find of the word is in Plutarch
(_de Is. et Os._ c. XLIX.) who says that the visible Cosmos is “the
flowing forth (ἀπορροή) and displayed image of Osiris.”

Footnote 578:

Curiously enough, the author of the _Clementine Homilies_ adopts this
notion for orthodoxy, when he makes St Peter (XVII. c. 9) declare that
God possesses six “extensions” having the nature of six infinites and
that He with them makes up the “mystery of the hebdomad.”

Footnote 579:

_I.e._ “which cannot be grasped,” “intangible,” as in the Athanasian
Creed.

Footnote 580:

ἀντιστοιχέω “set over against each other.” It seems to be a term used
in logic.

Footnote 581:

This is _not_ the Supreme Father, but the Logos or his representative
in the world succeeding his. It is with this being that Simon
according to the author of the Clementines (_Hom._ II. c. 24)
identified himself.

Footnote 582:

Ὁ ἑστώς, στάς, στησόμενος. This seems to be the expression which the
author of the Canonical Apocalypse is trying to reach in his fearful
solecism ἀπὸ ὁ ὦν καὶ ὁ ἦν καὶ ὀ ἐρχόμενος. See Revelation i. 4.

Footnote 583:

So the Supreme Being of Simon is androgyne.

Footnote 584:

The difficulty in deducing both male and female divinities from a male
or sexless Supreme being has led to some strange mythology. The
Egyptians cut the knot in an effective if coarse way. “Thus from one
god I became three gods,” says the Egyptian deity “the Lord of the
Universe,” in his account of the Creation. See Budge, “Papyrus of
Nesi-Amsu,” and _Egyptian Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum_, pp.
xiii, xiv and 14, 15. Was the author of the Apophasis acquainted with
this story? The Clementines make Simon’s associates Egyptians or
rather Alexandrians. See _Clem. Hom._ Bk IV. c. 6.

Footnote 585:

Hippolytus, _op. cit._ Bk VI. c. 1, § 18, pp. 261, 262, Cruice.

Footnote 586:

_Op. cit._ Bk VI. c. 1, § 9, p. 246, Cruice.

Footnote 587:

Amélineau, _Gnosticisme Égyptien_, p. 39, makes this perfectly clear.
Cf. Ad. Franck, “Le Gnosticisme Égyptien” in _Journal des Savans_,
Avril, 1888, pp. 212, 213. Hatch (_H.L._ p. 205) points out that it is
the doctrine of “Philo and the Platonists.”

Footnote 588:

As will be seen later, the post-Christian Gnostics of the IInd cent.
generally attributed the existence of evil to the escape of one of the
syzygies from the control of her spouse and her consequent fall into
matter. See Chapter VIII, _infra_.

Footnote 589:

The excessive reverence of the Samaritans for the Pentateuch is well
brought out by Cowley in the _Encyc. Bibl._ _s.v._ Samaritans. He says
it was the only part of the Jewish books which they took over and held
sacred (col. 4260). Simon in the _Great Announcement_ thought it
necessary to “explain” each of the Five Books separately. See
Hippolytus, _op. cit._ Bk VI. c. 1, §§ 15, 16, pp. 253-258, Cruice.

Footnote 590:

Throughout all the philosophical and religious literature of the time,
it seems to have been sufficient to quote “Orpheus and the other
theologists” to command a hearing. See Clement of Alexandria,
_passim_, for examples.

Footnote 591:

See Chapter IV, p. 123, _supra_.

Footnote 592:

See especially Fr. 239 in Abel’s _Orphica_.

Footnote 593:

Hippolytus, _op. cit._ Bk VI. c. 1, § 14, pp. 252, 253, Cruice.

Footnote 594:

_Ibid._ Bk VI. c. 1, § 13, pp. 251, 252, Cruice.

Footnote 595:

_Ibid._ _loc. cit._ Cf. Amélineau, _Gnost. Ég._ p. 39.

Footnote 596:

Abel’s _Orphica_, pp. 186, 254, 255.

Footnote 597:

“The visible and generated Gods.” So Alcmaeon of Crotona and
Xenocrates both call stars and planets gods. See Clem. Alex.
_Protrept._ c. VI.; Plato, _Timaeus_, c. XV. The prophets of the Jews,
indeed, blamed their co-religionists for “worshipping the sun towards
the east” as Ezekiel saw them doing in the Temple, or for “serving all
the host of heaven” as Jeremiah says the inhabitants of Jerusalem did;
but their reproaches make it plain that the bulk of the nation were in
this respect like their Gentile neighbours.

Footnote 598:

So Clem. Alex. _Strom._ Bk VI. c. 13, says the worship of the sun,
moon, and stars was instituted, so that the nations might not become
utterly godless.

Footnote 599:

See Bouché-Leclercq, _L’Astrologie grecque_, Paris, 1899, p. 21, for
references.

Footnote 600:

Philo, _de Monarch_. Bk I. c. 1.

Footnote 601:

Except perhaps Marcion. But we have so little literature remaining
which can with any certainty be attributed to the Marcionites that we
cannot speak with any certainty as to his phraseology. In his treatise
against the Valentinians (c. XX.) Tertullian gibes at that sect for
“thinking the different heavens intelligent, and for making angels of
them.”

Footnote 602:

Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 16, § 2, p. 192, Harvey. Theodoret, _Haer. Fab._ Bk
I. c. 5, echoes the statement, and Hippolytus, Bk VI. c. 1, § 19, p.
263, Cruice, gives what is probably the original Greek of Irenaeus.
Hatch, _H. L._ pp. 185, 186, points out that Philo held not only that
the angels were God’s instruments in making the worlds, but the
patterns after which they were made. Cf. Philo, _de Monarch._ Bk II.
c. 6.

Footnote 603:

These “orders” of supernatural beings passed into orthodox
Christianity. Cf. the εἴτε θρόνοι, εἴτε κυριότητες, εἴτε ἀρχαί, εἴτε
ἐξουσίαι of Coloss. i. 16, whence the “Thrones, Dominations, Virtues,
Princedoms, Powers” of Milton. The functions of all these different
orders are set out by Dionysius the Areopagite so-called, and present
a certain likeness to Simon’s ideas as given in the text. See Lupton
in _Dict. Christian Biog._ _s.v._ Dionysius.

Footnote 604:

That is Zeus, “Father of Gods and Men”; not the Juppiter Optimus
Maximus of later philosophy.

Footnote 605:

Possibly an allusion to the “rib” story of Genesis.

Footnote 606:

οὐχ ἁπλοῦν, ἀλλὰ διπλοῦν κατ’ εἰκόνα καὶ καθ’ ὁμοίωσιν. Hippolytus, Bk
VI. c. 1, § 14, p. 253, Cruice.

Footnote 607:

So Philo, _Legg. Allegor._ III. p. 1089, Mangey; _Quis rer. divin._ p.
503 _id._ Cf. Döllinger, _Jud. und Heid._ Eng. ed. II. p. 430.

Footnote 608:

Hippolytus, Bk VI. c. 1, § 17, p. 259, Cruice.

Footnote 609:

See last note.

Footnote 610:

So Iacchos is at once the father, son, and spouse of Persephone. Horus
is by his identification with Osiris in like manner the son, spouse
and brother of Isis. The seeking and finding seems to be an allusion
to this last pair. Cf. _P.S.B.A._ 1914, p. 93.

Footnote 611:

Hippolytus, Bk VI. c. 1, § 17, p. 259, Cruice. For the μήτηρ, πατήρ of
the text it is necessary to read μητροπάτωρ unless we are to believe
that the author is here repeating without rhyme or reason the
statement already made in the same sentence that the power he is
describing is its own mother and its own father. The expression
μητροπάτωρ is found in an address to Zeus attributed to Orpheus and
quoted by Clement of Alexandria, _Strom._ Bk V. c. 14. Cf. Frgs. 238,
239 of Abel’s _Orphica_. He remarks concerning it that, by this
μητροπάτωρ, Orpheus meant not only birth from the Μὴ ὤν, but also
“gave occasion to those who bring in the emanations and perhaps
imagine a spouse of God,”—which gives some colour to the surmise that
Clement may have been acquainted with Simon’s writings.

Footnote 612:

Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 16, § 2, p. 192, Harvey. A similar motive was
assigned by the Orphics for the murder of the infant Dionysos by the
Titans.

Footnote 613:

Hippolytus, Bk I. c. 16, § 19, pp. 263, 264, Cruice.

Footnote 614:

τοὺς μαθητὰς αἰδούμενος τοῦτον τὸν μῦθον ἔπλασεν, _loc. cit._

Footnote 615:

See _ibid._, p. 264, Cruice.

Footnote 616:

Epiphanius, _op. cit._ Bk I., _Haer._ XXI. c. 11 (p. 125 of vol. II.
pt I. of Oehler). Probably this idea is a mere echo of the story in
Genesis vi. 2, of the “sons of God” being captivated by the “daughters
of men,” which is much insisted on in the Enochian literature. Cf.
Cumont, _Recherches sur le Manichéisme_; _La Séduction des Archontes_
or Chapter XIII, _infra_ for later elaborations of the legend.

Footnote 617:

Τὴν δὲ Ἑλένην λυτρωσάμενος, οὕτως τοῖς ἀνθρώποις σωτηρίαν παρέσχε διὰ
τῆς ἰδίας ἐπιγνώσεως. See note 3 p. 190, _supra_. The ἐπίγνωσις of the
text seems to indicate that Simon discovered the way of salvation not
by any revelation from a higher power, but by his own intelligence and
examination. Cf. what he says (Hippolytus, _Phil._ Bk VI. c. 16, p.
256, Cruice) about the knowledge of Gentile writings being sufficient
for the ἐπίγνωσις τῶν ὅλων.

Footnote 618:

Acts viii. 9, 10, only says that Simon bewitched the people of
Samaria, giving himself out to be some great one (λέγων εἶναί τινα
ἑαυτὸν μέγαν); and that it was the people who said of him: “This man
is the so-called great power of God” (Οὗτός ἐστιν ἡ δύναμις τοῦ θεοῦ ἡ
καλουμένη μεγάλη). He was therefore only in the same position as Paul
and Barnabas in Phrygia when they were hailed by the populace as Zeus
and Hermes respectively. Cf. Acts xiv. 12.

Footnote 619:

Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 16, § 2, p. 193, Harvey; Epiphanius as in n. 1
_supra_. This episode of the Saviour changing his form so as not to be
recognized by the powers of the heavens through which he passes on his
way to earth, is a favourite one in the post-Christian Apocryphal
literature. Cf. R. H. Charles, _The Ascension of Isaiah_, p. 62. In
the _Pistis Sophia_ (for which see Chapter X, _infra_), Jesus in like
manner changes His appearance in each heaven on His descent to earth.
When He returns in His proper shape the spirits in every “place” into
which He enters fling themselves on their faces and cry: “How did the
Lord of the Universe change himself, so that we knew him not?”: see p.
21 Copt. _et al._ The “Docetic” theory which made the earthly body of
Jesus a phantasm or illusion appears again in the heresy of the
Valentinians and elsewhere. See Chapter IX, _infra_.

Footnote 620:

Hippolytus, _loc. cit._ p. 265, Cruice.

Footnote 621:

_Ibid._ § 20, p. 267, Cruice. The story here told is in direct
contradiction to the received tradition of the Church, that Simon met
his death when attempting to fly heavenward before the Emperor Nero.
That given in the text seems to be taken from the doings of some
Indian Yogi, and the idea of Simon teaching “sitting under a plane
tree” is distinctly Buddhistic. It is mentioned by no other writer
than Hippolytus; but Justin Martyr (_First Apolog._ c. 26) says that
he persuaded his followers that he would never die, and that some in
Justin’s day still believed this. A sort of echo of it appears in the
_Acts of Peter and Paul_, where it is said that the body of Simon
after being dashed to pieces was kept by the Emperor Nero for three
days “to see whether he would rise again.”

Footnote 622:

ἀπὸ πυρὸς ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς γενέσεως ἐστι τῶν γεννωμένων.

Footnote 623:

Clement of Alexandria (_Paedagogus_, Bk I. c. 6) says practically the
same thing.

Footnote 624:

Καὶ γίνεται ἡ τοῦ ἄρρενος τροπή, γένεσις· ἡ δὲ τῆς θηλείας τροπή,
τροφὴ τοῦ γεννωμένῳ. Note the curious jingle between τροπή and τροφή,
γένεσις and γεννωμένῳ.

Footnote 625:

Hippolytus, Bk VI. c. 1, § 17, pp. 259, 260, Cruice. That this refers
to the conjunction of man with his twin-soul or affinity is certain
from Hippolytus’ former quotation from the _Apophasis_, that man was
made by God οὐχ ἁπλοῦν, ἀλλὰ διπλοῦν κατ’ εἰκόνα καὶ καθ’ ὁμοίωσιν
“not single, but two-fold according to copy and resemblance”: and that
he will “perish with the world” unless he be made into the likeness of
the Spirit who was borne upon the face of the waters, and who was,
like that of which it was the reflection, androgyne (Hippolytus, _op.
cit._ Bk VI. c. 1, p. 253, Cruice). “But if he be made into this
likeness,” Hippolytus continues, “and is born from an indivisible
point as it is written in the _Apophasis_, that which is small will
become great. And that which is great will exist in the boundless and
incorruptible aeon, which will not be born again.” Besides the idea of
the indivisible point, which we shall meet with again in the Bruce
Papyrus (for which see Chapter X, _infra_), it seems evident that
Simon was here teaching that those who find their twin-souls will rise
in the scale of being and thus escape the cycle of changing existences
dreaded by the Orphics (see Chapter IV, _supra_). An explanation of
the metaphor of the flaming sword is suggested later. See note 3 on p.
67 of vol. II, _infra_.

Footnote 626:

Plato, _Symposium_, cc. 17, 18. Diotima later on in the same Dialogue
says that it is an old story that those who are in love are seeking
their lost half. In one of the documents of the _Pistis Sophia_, it is
said that “the servants of the Sphere of Destiny” after making the
soul of man, divide it into two parts, and give one part to a man and
another to a woman who are then bound to come together (no matter how
far apart they may be) and to unite, when a new soul is the result
(_Pistis Sophia_, p. 346, Copt.).

Footnote 627:

So in the _Pistis Sophia_ (p. 37, Copt.), Jesus says that the angels
bound in the stars were, until His coming, in the habit of turning
about and devouring their own matter, from which the souls of men and
other animals were made, in order that their rule might endure the
longer.

Footnote 628:

Probably this is the meaning of the well-known saying of Jesus,
generally quoted as coming from the _Gospel according to the
Egyptians_, in answer to Salome’s enquiry as to the time of the coming
of His kingdom: Ὅταν τὸ τῆς αἰσχύνης ἔνδυμα πατήσητε, καὶ ὅταν γένται
τά δύο ἔν, καὶ τὸ ἔξω ὡς τὸ ἔσω; καὶ τό ἄρρεν μετὰ τῆς θηλείας, οὔτε
ἄρρεν οὔτε θῆλυ. “When ye tread under foot the garment of shame, and
when the two shall be one, and the outside as the inside, and the male
with the female, neither male nor female.” See Hilgenfeld, _N.T. extra
Canon. recept._, Lipsiae, 1884, vol. IV. p. 44. “The outside as the
inside” may refer to the body and the rib which was in the Genesis
story taken out of it. So the _Pistis Sophia_ (p. 378, Copt.) speaks
of “the Light of Lights, the places of Truth and Goodness, the place
of the Holy of Holies, the place of the Holy of all Holies, the place
in which there is neither male nor female, nor shape, but Light
everlasting, unspeakable.” Hippolytus, _op. cit._ Bk V. c. 7, p. 146,
Cruice, carrying this a step further, speaks of heaven as a place
“where there is neither male nor female, but a new creature, a new man
who is androgyne (ἀρρηνόθηλυς).”

Footnote 629:

Hippolytus, Bk VI. c. 1, § 19, p. 266, Cruice; Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 16,
§ 2, p. 194, Harvey; Epiphanius, _Haer._ XXI. c. 2, p. 124, Oehler.

Footnote 630:

Franck, _Le Gnost. Ég._ p. 212.

Footnote 631:

Clem. Alex. _Strom._ VI. c. 2.

Footnote 632:

Maspero, _Ét. Égyptol._ II. pp. 187 and 385.

Footnote 633:

_de Is. et Os._ cc. LIII. LIV. and LVI.

Footnote 634:

Clem. _Hom._ II. c. 22.

Footnote 635:

Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 16, § 3, p. 194, Harvey; Hippolytus, _op. cit._ Bk
VI. c. 1, § 20, p. 266, Cruice.

Footnote 636:

Irenaeus and Hippolytus where last quoted.

Footnote 637:

Hippolytus where last quoted.

Footnote 638:

Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._ Bk II. c. 13.

Footnote 639:

Epiph. _Haer._ XXI. c. 4 (p. 125, vol. II. pt I., Oehler).

Footnote 640:

See last note.

Footnote 641:

Epiph. _Haer._ XXIV. c. 1, p. 145, Oehler. It is here attributed to
Basilides, but Epiphanius has before said that this last borrowed his
ideas from “Simon and Satornilus.”

Footnote 642:

Dan. X. 13.

Footnote 643:

Lucian, _Pseudomantis_, _passim_.

Footnote 644:

Epiphanius says that Simon taught none could be saved unless he
learned [Simon’s] system of initiation (μυσταγωγία). See Epiph.
_Haer._ XXI. c. 4, p. 127, Oehler.

Footnote 645:

Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 17, p. 195, Harvey.

Footnote 646:

Epiph. _Haer._ XXII. p. 133, Oehler; Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._ Bk III.
c. 26. Cf. Justin Martyr, _First Apol._ c. 26. Schmiedel, _s.v._ Simon
Magus in _Encyc. Bibl._, says the exact contrary—a curious slip.

Footnote 647:

Theodoret, _Haer. Fab._ I. 1.

Footnote 648:

See note 7 _supra_.

Footnote 649:

Origen, _cont. Celsus_, Bk VI. c. 11.

Footnote 650:

Eusebius, _Hist. eccl._ Bk II. c. 13.

Footnote 651:

Tertullian, _Scorpiace_, c. 1. Eusebius, _H. E._ Bk II. c. 1, says,
speaking of his own times, that those who follow Simon’s most
scoundrelly (μιαρωτύτην) heresy were baptized into the Church, and
kept their own doctrines in secret till detected and expelled. Cf.
Origen, _c. Cels._ Bk VI. c. 11.

Footnote 652:

It was of course quite different from the Cabalistic methods,
ridiculous as those were, of the Essenes and other Jews, from the
acrostics of the Orphics, and from the allegories of Philo. With a
touching belief in the verbal inspiration of the Pentateuch, Simon and
his followers claimed that every word of it must be true and a
revelation even when transferred into another context. Thus they
claimed to teach obstetrics from geographical phrases. The only modern
parallel is to be found among the Puritans of our own Civil War, who,
as Sir Walter Scott wrote, were accustomed to pervert the language of
Scripture by adapting it to modern events, and kept a Bible lying on
the Table of the House for reference as to the better conduct of its
business.

Footnote 653:

See J. Turmel, “L’Angélologie depuis le faux Denys l’Aréopagite,”
_Rev. d’Hist. et Litt. Rel._ Paris, t. IV. No. 3 (1898), pp. 219
_sqq._

END OF VOL. I.

● Transcriber’s Notes:
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○ Footnotes have been moved to follow the chapters in which they are
referenced.
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superscript “a”, are shown by the caret “^” character before the
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