The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism

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...

By reason of their intellectual bent and education the theologians were for a long time more inclined to consider the continuity of the Jewish tradition than the causes that dis...

In the austere temple of law the Orient held as yet only a minor position; everywhere else its authority was predominant. The practical mind of the Romans, which made them excel...

When, during the fourth century, the weakened empire split asunder like an overburdened scale whose beam is broken, this political divorce perpetuated a moral separation that ha...

But, you will say, since in the classic age philosophy also claimed to lead to morality through instruction and to acquaint man with the supreme good, why did it yield to Orient...

What was this Asiatic religion that had suddenly been transferred into the heart of Rome by an extraordinary circumstance? Even then it could look back upon a long period of dev...

In the inscriptions of the fourth century, Attis bears the cognomen of _menotyrannus_. At that time this name was undoubtedly understood to mean "lord of the months," because At...

First of all, the liturgic language was no longer the native idiom but Greek. This was a radical change. The philosopher Demetrius of Phalerum, who had been cured of blindness b...

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: He...

We all remember the unedifying descriptions of her itinerant priests that Lucian and Apuleius[1] have left. Led by an old eunuch of dubious habits, a crowd of painted young men...

However, over this lower and primordial stratum that still cropped out here and there, other less rudimentary beliefs had formed. Besides inanimate objects and animals, the Syri...

The essence of paganism implies that the nature of a divinity broadens as the number of its votaries increases. Everybody credits it with some new quality, and its character bec...

Recent discoveries[21] of bilingual inscriptions have succeeded in establishing the fact that the language used, or at least written, by the Persian colonies of Asia Minor was n...

Of all the Oriental cults none was so severe as Mithraism, none attained an equal moral elevation, none could have had so strong a hold on mind and heart. In many respects it ga...

The traditional outlines that we reproduce on our celestial maps are the fossil remains of a luxuriant mythological vegetation, and besides our classic sphere the ancients knew...

The Chaldeans[65] also were past masters of sorcery, well versed in the knowledge of presages and experts in conjuring the evils which the presages foretold. In Mesopotamia, whe...

However, we would be tempted to believe that there had been no change in the Roman faith, were we to read certain authors that fought idolatry in those days. Saint Augustine, fo...

14. The sacred formulas have been collected by Alb. Dieterich, _Eine Mithrasliturgie_, pp. 212 ff. He adds [Greek: Doiê soi Osiris to psuchron hudôr], {217} _Archiv für Religion...

34. Their meaning has been revealed through an inscription at Pergamum published by Schröder, _Athen. Mitt._, 1904, pp. 152 ff.; cf. _Revue archéologique_, 1905, I, pp. 29 ff.--...

89. We find similar wishes on the Egyptian monuments, frequently at least since the Middle Empire. "Donnez-moi de l'eau courante à boire.... Mettez-moi la face au vent du nord s...

46. On the Semitic notion of purity, W. Robertson Smith has written admirably and convincingly (pp. 446 ff. and _passim_). The question has been taken up from a different point...

82. Cf. W. Robertson Smith, 75 ff., _passim_. In the Syrian religions as in that of Mithra, the initiates regarded each other as members of the same family, and the phrase "dear...

54. We have explained this theory above, p. 125. It was foreign to the religion of Zoroaster and was introduced into the mysteries of Mithra with the Chaldean astrology. Moreove...

[Greek: Toutous] (sc. [Greek: tous daimonas]) [Greek: malista kai ton proestôta autôn] (c. 42, [Greek: hê proestôsa autôn dunamis] = Ahriman) [Greek: ektimôsin hoi ta kaka dia t...

Cadiz, Isis of, 96. _Caelestis, Jupiter_, 128. _Caelus_, 128, 130, 175; Jupiter, 147. See also "Sky" and "Zeus Ouranios." Calendars, 173; Alexandrian, 84. Caligula, 55, 84, 198....