The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism

Part 1

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Transcriber's note: A few typographical errors have been corrected: they are listed at the end of the text.

Some short Greek renderings in the main text were printed as page footnotes. To avoid confusion with the links to the scholarly notes, these have been moved to parentheses next to the English renderings.

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The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism

Franz Cumont

With an Introductory Essay by Grant Showerman

Authorized Translation

Chicago The Open Court Publishing Company

London Agents Kegan Paul, Trench, Truebner & Co.

1911

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COPYRIGHT BY THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO. 1911

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TO MY TEACHER AND FRIEND

CHARLES MICHEL

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TABLE OF CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.--The Significance of Franz Cumont's Work, By Grant Showerman ... v

PREFACE ... xv

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION ... xxv

I. ROME AND THE ORIENT ... 1

Superiority of the Orient, 1.--Its Influence on Political Institutions, 3.--Its Influence on Civil Law, 5.--Its Influence on Science, 6.--Its Influence on Literature and Art, 7.--Its Influence on Industry, 9.--SOURCES: Destruction of Pagan Rituals, 11.--Mythographers, 12.--Historians, 13.--Satirists, 13.--Philosophers, 14.--Christian Polemicists, 15.--Archeological Documents, 16.

II. WHY THE ORIENTAL RELIGIONS SPREAD ... 20

Difference in the Religions of the Orient and the Occident, 20.--Spread of Oriental Religions, 22.--Economic Influences, 23.--Theory of Degeneration, 25.--Conversions are of Individuals, 27.--Appeal of the Oriental Religions to the Senses, 28.--Appeal to the Intelligence, 31.--Appeal to the Conscience, 35.--Inadequacy of the Roman Religion, 35.--Skepticism, 37.--Imperial Power, 38.--The Purification of Souls, 39.--Hope of Immortality, 42.--Conclusion, 43.

III. ASIA MINOR ... 46

Arrival of Cybele at Rome, 46.--Her Religion in Asia Minor, 47.--Religion at Rome under the Republic, 51.--Adoption of the Goddess Ma-Bellona, 53.--Politics of Claudius, 55.--Spring Festival, 56.--Spread of the Phrygian Religion in the Provinces, 57.--Causes of Its Success, 58.--Its Official Recognition, 60.--ARRIVAL OF OTHER CULTS: Men, 61.--Judaism, 63.--Sabazius, 64.--Anahita, 65.--The Taurobolium, 66.--Philosophy, 70.--Christianity, 70.--Conclusion, 71.

Part 2

IV. EGYPT ... 73

Foundation of Serapis Worship, 73.--The Egyptian Religion Hellenized, 75.--Diffusion in Greece, 79.--Adoption at Rome, 80.--Persecutions, 82.--Adoption Under Caligula, 84.--Its History, 85.--Its Transformation, 86.--Uncertainty in Egyptian Theology, 87.--Insufficiency of Its Ethics, 90.--Power of Its Ritual, 93.--Daily Liturgy, 95.--Festivals, 97.--Doctrine of Immortality, 99.--The Refrigerium, 101.

{iv} V. SYRIA ... 103

The Syrian Goddess, 103.--Importation of New Gods by Syrian Slaves, 105.--Syrian Merchants, 107.--Syrian Soldiers, 112.--Heliogabalus and Aurelian, 114.--Value of Semitic Paganism, 115.--Animal Worship, 116.--Baals, 118.--Human Sacrifice, 119.--Transformation of the Sacerdotal Religion, 120.--Purity, 121.--Influence of Babylon, 122.--Eschatology, 125.--THEOLOGY: God is Supreme, 127.--God is Omnipotent, 129.--God is Eternal and Universal, 130.--Semitic Syncretism, 131.--Solar Henotheism, 133.

VI. PERSIA ... 135

Persia and Europe, 135.--Influence of the Achemenides, 136.--Influence of Mazdaism, 138.--Conquests of Rome, 139.--Influence of the Sassanides, 140.--Origin of the Mysteries of Mithra, 142.--Persians in Asia Minor, 144.--The Mazdaism of Anatolia, 146.--Its Diffusion in the Occident, 149.--Its Qualities, 150.--Dualism, 151.--The Ethics of Mithraism, 155.--The Future Life, 158.--Conclusion, 159.

VII. ASTROLOGY AND MAGIC ... 162

Prestige of Astrology, 162.--Its Introduction in the Occident, 163.--Astrology Under the Empire, 164.--Polemics Powerless Against Astrology, 166.--Astrology a Scientific Religion, 169.--The Primitive Idea of Sympathy, 171.--Divinity of the Stars, 172.--Transformation of the Idea of God, 174.--New Gods, 175.--Big Years, 176.--Astrological Eschatology, 177.--Man's Relation to Heaven, 178.--Fatalism, 179.--Efficacy of Prayer, 180.--Efficacy of Magic, 182.--Treatises on Magic, 182.--Idea of Sympathy, 183.--Magic a Science, 184.--Magic is Religious, 185.--Ancient Italian Sorcery, 186.--Egypt and Chaldea, 187.--Theurgy, 188.--Persian Magic, 189.--Persecutions, 191.--Conclusion, 193.

VIII. THE TRANSFORMATION OF ROMAN PAGANISM ... 196

Paganism Before Constantine, 196.--Religion of Asia Minor, 197.--Religion of Egypt and Syria, 198.--Religion of Persia, 199.--Many Pagan Religions, 200.--Popular Religion and Philosophy, 201.--Christian Polemics, 202.--Roman Paganism Become Oriental, 204.--Mysteries, 205.--Nature Worship, 206.--Supreme God, 207.--Sidereal Worship, 208.--The Ritual Given a Moral Significance, 209.--The End of the World, 209.--Conclusion, 210.

NOTES ... 213

Preface, 213.--I. Rome and the Orient, 214,--II. Why the Oriental Religions Spread, 218.--III. Asia Minor, 223.--IV. Egypt, 228.--V. Syria, 241.--VI. Persia, 260.--VII. Astrology and Magic, 270.--VIII. The Transformation of Paganism, 281.

INDEX ... 289

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INTRODUCTION.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FRANZ CUMONT'S WORK.

Franz Cumont, born January 3, 1868, and educated at Ghent, Bonn, Berlin, and Paris, resides in Brussels, and has been Professor in the University of Ghent since 1892. His monumental work, Textes et monuments figures relatifs aux mysteres de Mithra, published in 1896 and 1899 in two volumes, was followed in 1902 by the separate publication, under the title Les Mysteres de Mithra, of the second half of Vol. I, the Conclusions in which he interpreted the great mass of evidence contained in the remainder of the work. The year following, this book appeared in the translation of Thomas J. McCormack as The Mysteries of Mithra, published by the Open Court Publishing Company. M. Cumont's other work of prime interest to students of the ancient faiths, Les religions orientales dans le paganisme romain, appeared in 1906, was revised and issued in a second edition in 1909, and is now presented in English in the following pages.

M. Cumont is an ideal contributor to knowledge in his chosen field. As an investigator, he combines in one person Teutonic thoroughness and Gallic intuition. As a writer, his virtues are no less pronounced. Recognition of his mastery of an enormous array of detailed learning followed immediately on the publication {vi} of Textes et monuments, and the present series of essays, besides a numerous series of articles and monographs, makes manifest the same painstaking and thorough scholarship; but he is something more than the mere savant who has at command a vast and difficult body of knowledge. He is also the literary architect who builds up his material into well-ordered and graceful structure.

Above all, M. Cumont is an interpreter. In The Mysteries of Mithra he put into circulation, so to speak, the coin of the ideas he had minted in the patient and careful study of Textes et Monuments; and in the studies of The Oriental Religions he is giving to the wider public the interpretation of the larger and more comprehensive body of knowledge of which his acquaintance with the religion of Mithra is only a part, and against which as a background it stands. What his book The Mysteries of Mithra is to his special knowledge of Mithraism, The Oriental Religions is to his knowledge of the whole field. He is thus an example of the highest type of scholar--the exhaustive searcher after evidence, and the sympathetic interpreter who mediates between his subject and the lay intellectual life of his time.

And yet, admirable as is M. Cumont's presentation in The Mysteries of Mithra and The Oriental Religions, nothing is a greater mistake than to suppose that his popularizations are facile reading. The few specialists in ancient religions may indeed sail smoothly in the current of his thought; but the very nature of a subject which ramifies so extensively and so intricately into the whole of ancient life, concerning itself with practically all the manifestations of ancient {vii} civilization--philosophy, religion, astrology, magic, mythology, literature, art, war, commerce, government--will of necessity afford some obstacle to readers unfamiliar with the study of religion.

It is in the hope of lessening somewhat this natural difficulty of assimilating M. Cumont's contribution to knowledge, and above all, to life, that these brief words of introduction are undertaken. The presentation in outline of the main lines of thought which underlie his conception of the importance of the Oriental religions in universal history may afford the uninitiated reader a background against which the author's depiction of the various cults of the Oriental group will be more easily and clearly seen.

M. Cumont's work, then, transports us in imagination to a time when Christianity was still--at least in the eyes of Roman pagans--only one of a numerous array of foreign Eastern religions struggling for recognition in the Roman world, and especially in the city of Rome. To understand the conditions under which the new faith finally triumphed, we should first realize the number of these religions, and the apparently chaotic condition of paganism when viewed as a system.

"Let us suppose," says M. Cumont, "that in modern Europe the faithful had deserted the Christian churches to worship Allah or Brahma, to follow the precepts of Confucius or Buddha, or to adopt the maxims of the Shinto; let us imagine a great confusion of all the races of the world in which Arabian mullahs, Chinese scholars, Japanese bonzes, Tibetan lamas and Hindu pundits should all be preaching fatalism and {viii} predestination, ancestor-worship and devotion to a deified sovereign, pessimism and deliverance through annihilation--a confusion in which all those priests should erect temples of exotic architecture in our cities and celebrate their disparate rites therein. Such a dream, which the future may perhaps realize, would offer a pretty accurate picture of the religious chaos in which the ancient world was struggling before the reign of Constantine."

But it is no less necessary to realize, in the second place, that, had there not been an essential solidarity of all these different faiths, the triumph of Christianity would have been achieved with much less difficulty and in much less time. We are not to suppose that religions are long-lived and tenacious unless they possess something vital which enables them to resist. In his chapter on "The Transformation of Roman Paganism," M. Cumont thus accounts for the vitality of the old faiths: "The mass of religions at Rome finally became so impregnated by neo-Platonism and Orientalism that paganism may be called a single religion with a fairly distinct theology, whose doctrines were somewhat as follows: adoration of the elements, especially the cosmic bodies; the reign of one God, eternal and omnipotent, with messenger attendants; spiritual interpretation of the gross rites yet surviving from primitive times; assurance of eternal felicity to the faithful; belief that the soul was on earth to be proved before its final return to the universal spirit, of which it was a spark; the existence of an abysmal abode for the evil, against whom the faithful must keep up an unceasing struggle; the destruction of the universe, {ix} the death of the wicked, and the eternal happiness of the good in a reconstructed world."

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