Part 19

However, the reign of the evil powers was not to last forever. According to common opinion the universe would be destroyed by fire after the times had been fulfilled. All the wicked would perish, but the just would be revived and establish the reign of universal happiness in the regenerated world.

The foregoing is a rapid sketch of the theology of paganism after three centuries of Oriental influence. From coarse fetichism and savage superstitions the learned priests of the Asiatic cults had gradually produced a complete system of metaphysics and eschatology, as the Brahmins built up the spiritualistic monism of the Vedanta beside the monstrous idolatry of Hinduism, or, to confine our comparisons to the Latin world, as the jurists drew from the traditional customs of primitive tribes the abstract principles of a legal system that governs the most cultivated societies. This religion was no longer like that of ancient Rome, a mere collection of propitiatory and expiatory rites performed by the citizen for the good of the state; it now pretended to offer to all men a world-conception which gave rise to a rule of conduct and placed the end of existence in the future life. It was more unlike the worship that Augustus had attempted to restore than the Christianity that fought it. The two opposed creeds moved in the same intellectual and moral sphere, and one could actually pass from one to the other without shock or interruption. Sometimes when {211} reading the long works of the last Latin writers, like Ammianus Marcellinus or Boethius, or the panegyrics of the official orators, scholars could well ask whether their authors were pagan or Christian. In the time of Symmachus and Praetextatus, the members of the Roman aristocracy who had remained faithful to the gods of their ancestors did not have a mentality or morality very different from that of adherents of the new faith who sat with them in the senate. The religious and mystical spirit of the Orient had slowly overcome the whole social organism and had prepared all nations to unite in the bosom of a universal church.

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NOTES.

PREFACE.

1 We are indebted for more than one useful suggestion to our colleagues Messrs. Charles Michel and Joseph Bidez, who were kind enough to read the proofs of the French edition.

2 An outline of the present state of the subject will be found in a recent volume by Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie, 1906, pp. 1606 ff., whose views are sharply opposed to the negative conclusions formulated, with certain reservations, by Harnack, Ausbreitung des Christentums, II, pp. 274 ff. Among the latest studies intended for the general reader that have appeared on this subject, may be mentioned in Germany those of Geffcken (Aus der Werdezeit des Christentums, Leipsic, 1904, pp. 114 ff.), and in England those of Cheyne (Bible Problems, 1904), who expresses his opinion in these terms: "The Christian religion is a synthesis, and only those who have dim eyes can assert that the intellectual empires of Babylonia and Persia have fallen."--Very useful is the new book of Clemen, Religionsgeschichtliche Erklaerung des Neuen Testaments, Giessen, 1909.

3 Mon. myst. Mithra, I, p. 342, n. 4; see the new texts commented on by Usener, Rhein. Museum, LX, 1905, pp. 466 ff.; 489 ff., and my paper "Natalis Invicti," C. R. Acad. des inscr., 1911.

4 See page 70. Compare also Mon. myst. Mithra, I, p. 341. The imitation of the church is plain in the pagan reform attempted by the emperor Julian.

5 See Harnack, Militia Christi, 1905.

6 I have collected a number of texts on the religious "militias" in Mon. myst. Mithra, I, p. 317, n. 1. Others could certainly be discovered: Apuleius, Metam., XI, 14: E cohorte {214} religionis unus (in connection with a mystic of Isis);--Vettius Valens (V, 2, p. 220, 27, Kroll ed.): [Greek: Stratiotai tes heimarmenes]; (VII, 3, p. 271, 28) [Greek: Sustrateuesthai tois kairois gennaios]. See Minucius Felix, 36, Sec. 7: Quod patimur non est poena, militia est.--We might also mention the commonplace term militia Veneris, which was popular with the Augustan poets (Propertius, IV, 1, 137; see I, 6, 30; Horace, Od., III, 26, and especially the parallel developed by Ovid, Amor., I, 9, 1 ff., and Ars amat., III, 233 ff.)--Socrates, in Plato's Apologia (p. 28 E), incidentally likens the philosophic mission imposed on him by the divinity to the campaigns he waged under the orders of the archons, but the comparison of God with a "strategus" was developed especially by the Stoics; see Capelle, "Schrift von der Welt," Neue Jahrb. fuer das klass. Altert., XV, 1905, p. 558, n. 6, and Seneca, Epist., 107, 9: Optimum est Deum sine murmuratione comitari, malus miles est qui imperatorem gemens sequitur.--See now also Reitzenstein, Hellenistische Mysterienreligion, 1910, p. 66.

7 See Rev. des etudes grecques, XIV, 1901, pp. 43 ff.

8 This has been clearly shown by Wendland in connection with the idea of the [Greek: soteria], Zeitschrift fuer neutest. Wiss., V, 1904, pp. 355 ff. More recently he has thrown light on the general influence of Hellenistic civilization on Christianity (Die hellenistisch-roemische Kultur in ihren Beziehungen zum Judentum und Christentum, Tuebingen, 1908). A first attempt to determine the character of Hellenistic mysteries is to be found in Reitzenstein's Hellenistische Mysterienreligion, 1910.

I. ROME AND THE ORIENT.

1 Renan, L'Antechrist, p. 130.

2 M. Krumbacher (Byzant. Zeitschr., XVI, 1907, p. 710) notes, in connection with the idea that I am defending here: "In aehnlicher Weise war dieser Gedanke (der Ueberfluegelung des Abendlandes durch die auf allen Kulturgebieten vordringende Regsamkeit der Orientalen) kurz vorher in meiner Skizze der byzantinischen Literatur (Kultur der Gegenwart, I, 8 , pp. 246-253) auseinandergelegt worden; es ist ein erfreulicher und bei dem Wirrsal widerstreitender Doctrinen troestlicher Beweis fuer den Fortschritt der Erkenntniss, dass {215} zwei von ganz verschiedenen Richtungen ausgehende Diener der Wissenschaft sich in so wichtigen allgemeinen Fragen so nahe kommen."

3. Cf. Kornemann, "Aegyptische Einfluesse im roemischen Kaiserreich" (Neue Jahrb. fuer das klass. Altertum, II, 1898, p. 118 ff.) and Otto Hirschfeld, Die kaiserl. Verwaltungsbeamten, 2d. ed., p. 469.

4. See Cicero's statement regarding the ancient Roman dominion (De off., II, 8): "Illud patrocinium orbis terrae verius quam imperium poterat nominari."

5. O. Hirschfeld, op. cit., pp. 53, 91, 93, etc.; cf. Mitteis, Reichsrecht und Volksrecht, p. 9, n. 2, etc. Thus have various institutions been transmitted from the ancient Persians to the Romans; see Ch. VI, n. 5.

6. Rostovtzew, "Der Ursprung des Kolonats" (Beitraege zur alten Gesch., I, 1901, p. 295); Haussoullier, Histoire de Milet et du Didymeion, 1902, p. 106.

7. Mitteis, Reichsrecht und Volksrecht in den oestlichen Provinzen, 1891, pp. 8 ff.

8. Mommsen, Gesammelte Schriften, II, 1905, p. 366: "Seit Diocletian uebernimmt der oestliche Reichsteil, die partes Orientis, auf allen Gebieten die Fuehrung. Dieser spaete Sieg des Hellenismus ueber die Lateiner ist vielleicht nirgends auffaelliger als auf dem Gebiet der juristischen Schriftstellerei."

9. De Voguee and Duthoit, L'Architecture civile et religieuse de la Syrie centrale, Paris, 1866-1877.

10. This result is especially due to the researches of M. Strzygowski, but we cannot enter here into the controversies aroused by his publications: Orient oder Rom, 1911; Hellas in des Orients Umarmung, Munich, 1902, and especially Kleinasien, ein Neuland der Kunstgeschichte, Leipsic, 1903; [cf. the reports of Ch. Diehl, Journal des Savants, 1904, pp. 236 ff. = Etudes byzantines, 1905, pp. 336 ff.; Gabriel Millet, Revue archeolog., 1905, I, pp. 93 ff.; Marcel Laurent, Revue de l'Instr. publ. en Belgique, 1905, pp. 145 ff.]; Mschatta, 1904, [cf. infra, Ch. VI, n. 12].--M. Brehier, "Orient ou Byzance?" (Rev. archeol., 1907, II, pp. 396 ff.), gives a substantial summary of the question.--In his last volume, Amida (1910), M. {216} Strzygowski tries to find the source of medieval art in Mesopotamia. For this controversy see Diehl's Manuel d'art byzantin, 1910.

11. See also Pliny, Epist. Traian., 40: "Architecti tibi [in Bithynia] deesse non possunt ... cum ex Graecia etiam ad nos [at Rome] venire soliti sint."--Among the names of architects mentioned in Latin inscriptions there are a great many revealing Greek or Oriental origin (see Ruggiero, Dizion. epigr., s. v. "Architectus"), in spite of the consideration which their eminently useful profession always enjoyed at Rome.

12. The question of the artistic and industrial influences exercised by the Orient over Gaul during the Roman period, has been broached frequently--among others by Courajod (Lecons du Louvre, I, 1899, pp. 115, 327 ff.)--but it has never been seriously studied in its entirety. Michaelis has recently devoted a suggestive article to this subject in connection with a statue from the museum of Metz executed in the style of the school of Pergamum (Jahrb. der Gesellsch. fuer lothring. Geschichte, XVII, 1905, pp. 203 ff.). By the influence of Marseilles in Gaul, and the ancient connection of that city with the towns of Hellenic Asia, he explains the great difference between the works of sculpture discovered along the upper Rhine, which had been civilized by the Italian legions, and those unearthed on the other side of the Vosges. This is a very important discovery, rich in results. We believe, however, that Michaelis ascribes too much importance to the early Marseilles traders traveling along the old "tin road" towards Brittany and the "amber road" towards Germany. The Asiatic merchants and artisans did not set out from one point only. There were many emigrants all over the valley of the Rhone. Lyons was a half-Hellenized city, and the relations of Arles with Syria, of Nimes with Egypt, etc., are well known. We shall speak of them in connection with the religions of those countries.

13. Even in the bosom of the church the Latin Occident of the fourth century was still subordinate to the Greek Orient, which imposed its doctrinal problems upon it (Harnack, Mission und Ausbreitung, II, p. 283, n. 1).