Part 10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Isis was not a very austere goddess at the time she entered Italy. Identified with Venus, as Harpocrates was with Eros, she was honored especially by the women with whom love was a profession. In Alexandria, the city of pleasure, she had lost all severity, and at Rome this good goddess remained very indulgent to human weaknesses. Juvenal harshly refers to {91} her as a procuress, and her temples had a more than doubtful reputation, for they were frequented by young men in quest of gallant adventures. Apuleius himself chose a lewd tale in which to display his fervor as an initiate.

But we have said that Egypt was full of contradictions, and when a more exacting morality demanded that the gods should make man virtuous, the Alexandrian mysteries offered to satisfy that demand.

At all times the Egyptian ritual attributed considerable importance to purity, or, to use a more adequate term, to cleanliness. Before every ceremony the officiating priest had to submit to ablutions, sometimes to fumigations or anointing, and to abstain from certain foods and from incontinence for a certain time. Originally no moral idea was connected with this purification. It was considered a means of exorcising malevolent demons or of putting the priest into a state in which the sacrifice performed by him could have the expected effect. It was similar to the diet, shower-baths and massage prescribed by physicians for physical health. The internal status of the officiating person was a matter of as much indifference to the celestial spirits as the actual worth of the deceased was to Osiris, the judge of the underworld. All that was necessary to have him open the fields of Aalu to the soul was to pronounce the liturgic formulas, and if the soul declared its innocence in the prescribed terms its word was readily accepted.

But in the Egyptian religion, as in all the religions of antiquity, the original conception was gradually transformed and a new idea slowly took its place. The sacramental acts of purification were now {92} expected to wipe out moral stains, and people became convinced that they made man better. The devout female votaries of Isis, whom Juvenal pictures as breaking the ice to bathe in the Tiber, and crawling around the temple on their bleeding knees, hoped to atone for their sins and to make up for their shortcomings by means of these sufferings.

When a new ideal grew up in the popular conscience during the second century, when the magicians themselves became pious and serious people, free from passions and appetites, and were honored because of the dignity of their lives more than for their white linen robes, then the virtues of which the Egyptian priests enjoined the practice also became less external. Purity of the heart rather than cleanliness of the body was demanded. Renunciation of sensual pleasures was the indispensable condition for the knowledge of divinity, which was the supreme good. No longer did Isis favor illicit love. In the novel by Xenophon of Ephesus (about 280 A. D.) she protects the heroine's chastity against all pitfalls and assures its triumph. According to the ancient belief man's entire existence was a preparation for the formidable judgment held by Serapis after death, but to have him decide in favor of the mystic, it was not enough to know the rites of the sect; the individual life had to be free from crime; and the master of the infernal regions assigned everybody a place according to his deserts. The doctrine of future retribution was beginning to develop.

However, in this regard, as in their conception of the divinity, the Egyptian mysteries followed the general progress of ideas more than they directed it. {93} Philosophy transformed them, but found in them little inspiration.

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How could a religion, of which neither the theology nor the ethics was really new, stir up at the same time so much hostility and fervor among the Romans? To many minds of to-day theology and ethics constitute religion, but during the classical period it was different, and the priests of Isis and Serapis conquered souls mainly by other means. They seduced them by the powerful attraction of the ritual and retained them by the marvelous promises of their doctrine of immortality.

To the Egyptians ritual had a value far superior to that we ascribe to it to-day. It had an operative strength of its own that was independent of the intentions of the officiating priest. The efficacy of prayer depended not on the inner disposition of the believer, but on the correctness of the words, gestures and intonation. Religion was not clearly differentiated from magic. If a divinity was invoked according to the correct forms, especially if one knew how to pronounce its real name, it was compelled to act in conformity to the will of its priest. The sacred words were an incantation that compelled the superior powers to obey the officiating person, no matter what purpose he had in view. With the knowledge of the liturgy men acquired an immense power over the world of spirits. Porphyry was surprised and indignant because the Egyptians sometimes dared to threaten the gods in their orations. In the consecrations the priest's summons compelled the gods to come and animate their {94} statues, and thus his voice created divinities, as originally the almighty voice of Thoth had created the world.

The ritual that conferred such superhuman power developed in Egypt into a state of perfection, completeness and splendor unknown in the Occident. It possessed a unity, a precision and a permanency that stood in striking contrast to the variety of the myths, the uncertainty of the dogmas and the arbitrariness of the interpretations. The sacred books of the Greco-Roman period are a faithful reproduction of the texts that were engraved upon the walls of the pyramids at the dawn of history, notwithstanding the centuries that had passed. Even under the Caesars the ancient ceremonies dating back to the first ages of Egypt, were scrupulously performed because the smallest word and the least gesture had their importance.

This ritual and the attitude toward it found their way for the most part into the Latin temples of Isis and Serapis. This fact has long been ignored, but there can be no doubt about it. A first proof is that the clergy of those temples were organized just like those of Egypt during the period of the Ptolemies. There was a hierarchy presided over by a high priest, which consisted of prophetes skilled in the sacred science, stolistes, or ornatrices, whose office it was to dress the statues of the gods, pastophori who carried the sacred temple plates in the processions, and so on, just as in Egypt. As in their native country, the priests were distinguished from common mortals by a tonsure, by a linen tunic, and by their habits as well as by their garb. They devoted themselves entirely to their ministry and had no other profession. This {95} sacerdotal body always remained Egyptian in character, if not in nationality, because the liturgy it had to perform remained so. In a similar manner the priests of the Baals were Syrians, because they were the only ones that knew how to honor the gods of Syria.