CHAPTER II

THE WORLD OF THE SATIRIST

Juvenal and Tacitus compared—Social position and experience of Juvenal—Juvenal and Martial deal with the same features of society—Their motives compared—Character of Martial—The moral standard of Juvenal—His humanity and his old Roman prejudices—He unites the spirit of two different ages—His rhetorical pessimism—His sweeping generalisations—Abnormal specimens become types—Roman luxury at its height—Yet similar extravagance is denounced for five centuries—Such judgments need qualification—The great social changes depicted by Juvenal, some of which he misunderstands—Roman respect for birth—The decay of the aristocracy and its causes—Aristocratic poverty and servility—How the early Emperors lowered senatorial dignity—Aristocratic gladiators and actors—Nero made bohemianism the fashion—“The Legend of Bad Women”—Its untrustworthiness and defects of treatment—High ideals of womanhood among contemporaries of Juvenal—He is influenced by old Roman prejudice—Juvenal hates the “new woman” as much as the vicious woman—The emancipation of women began in the second century B.C.—Higher culture of women and their growing influence on public affairs—Juvenal’s dislike of the oriental worships and their female devotees—This is another old movement—The influence of Judaism at Rome, even in the Imperial household—Women in Juvenal’s day were exposed to serious dangers—The corruptions of the theatre and the circus—Intrigues with actors and slaves—The invasion of Hellenism—Its history—The Hellenism of the Emperors—The lower Hellenism which Juvenal attacks—Social and economic causes of the movement—Greek tutors and professors—The medical profession chiefly recruited from foreigners—The character of the profession in those days—The astrologer and the parasite—The client of the early Empire—His degradation and his hardships—General poverty—The contempt for trade and industry—The growth of captation—The worship of wealth—The cry of the poor

Pages 58-99

CHAPTER III

THE SOCIETY OF THE FREEDMEN

The rise of the freedmen a great movement—Roman prejudice against them expressed in the literature of the age—Economic and social causes of the movement—Trade and industry despised—The freedmen occupied a vacant place—Causes of the contempt for them—Their many vices and vulgar taste—Yet their rise was a hopeful sign—The freedmen in imperial office—The policy of the early Emperors to employ freedmen in their bureaux—Vitellius the first Emperor to employ Equites as imperial secretaries—Hadrian confined the three great ministries to men of equestrian rank—The great imperial freedmen—Polybius, Claudius Etruscus, and Abascantus—Their career and their immense power described by Statius—The[pg xi] intrigues and crimes of the freedmen of Claudius—The insolence of Pallas—The wealth of the freedmen and its sources—Their luxurious display—The baths of Cl. Etruscus and the gardens of Entellus—Yet the freedmen were seldom admitted to equal rank with the aristocracy—The Senate flattered and despised them—The doubtful position of freedwomen—Plebeian Aspasias—The influence of Acte, Caenis, and Panthea—Manumission—It was often not a very abrupt change—The better side of slave life—Trusted and favourite slaves—How they could obtain their freedom—Slaves employed in offices of trust—The growing peculium—The close tie between patron and freedman—The freedman gets a start in trade—His rapid rise in wealth—His vulgar ostentation—The Satiricon of Petronius—Theories as to its motive, date and authorship—Its author probably the C. Petronius of Nero’s reign—His character in Tacitus—His probable motive—The literary character and scene of the Satiricon—The character of the Greek adventurers—Trimalchio’s dinner, to which they are invited—Sketch of Trimalchio’s career—The dinner—Carving to music—Dishes descend from the ceiling—Wine 100 years old—Confused recollections of Homer—Hannibal at the Trojan war—Rope-dancers and tales of witchcraft—The manners of Fortunata—The conversation of some of the guests—True bourgeois vulgarity—Grumbling about the management of the aediles—“Everything is going back—It all arises from neglect of religion”—The coming gladiatorial show, when there will be plenty of blood—The education of a freedman’s son—“You learn for profit”—Fast and furious—The ladies get drunk, and Trimalchio gives an unflattering account of his wife’s history—He gives directions to his friend, the stone-cutter, for the erection of his monument—He has himself laid out for dead, and the horn-blowers sound his lament

Pages 100-137

BOOK II

CHAPTER I

THE CIRCLE OF THE YOUNGER PLINY

The contrast between the pictures of society in Juvenal and in Pliny—They belonged to different worlds—They were also of very different temperaments—Moral contrasts side by side in every age—There were puritan homes in Italy, even in the worst days—Influence of old Roman tradition and country life—The circle at Como—Pliny’s youth and early training—Character of the Elder Pliny—His immense industry—Retreats of old Roman virtue—The character and reforms of Vespasian—His endowment of education—The moral influence of Quintilian on Roman youth—Pliny’s student friends—His relations with the Stoic circle—His reverence for Fannia—His career at the Bar—He idealises the practice in the Centumviral court—Career of M. Aquilius Regulus, the great delator and advocate—Pliny’s passion for fame—The crowd of literary amateurs in his day—Pliny and Martial—Pliny’s relation to the literary movement of his time—His [pg xii]admiration for Cicero—His reverence for Greece—He once wrote a Greek tragedy—His apology for his loose verses—His ambition as an orator, and canons of oratorical style—Pliny’s Letters compared with Cicero’s—The merits and fame of the Letters—Their arrangement—They are a memorial of the social life and literary tone of the time—The character of Silius Italicus—Literary coteries—Pliny’s friendship with Suetonius—The devotion of literary amateurs to poetic composition and its causes—The influence of the great Augustan models read at school—Signs of decay in literature—The growing love of the archaic style—Immense literary ambition of the time—Attempts of Nero and Domitian to satisfy it by public literary competitions—The plague of recitations—Pliny believes in the duty of attending them—The weariness and emptiness of life in the capital—The charm of the country—Roman country seats on the Anio or the Laurentine and Campanian shores—The sites of these villas—Their furniture and decorations—Doubtful appreciation of works of art—The gardens of the villa—The routine of a country gentleman’s day—The financial management of an estate—Difficulties with tenants—Pliny’s kindness to freedmen and slaves—The darker side of slavery—Murder of a master—Pliny’s views on suicide—Tragedies in his circle—Pliny’s charity and optimism—The solidarity of the aristocratic class—Pliny thinks it a duty to assist the career of promising youth—The women of his circle—His love for Calpurnia and his love letters—The charity and humanitarian sentiment of the age—Bene fac, hoc tecum feres—The wealthy recognise the duties of wealth—Charitable foundations of the emperors—Pliny’s lavish generosity, both private and public—Yet he is only a shining example among a crowd of similar benefactors in the Antonine age

Pages 141-195

CHAPTER II

MUNICIPAL LIFE

Little known of country town life from Roman literature—Yet the love of the country was strong—A relief from the strain of the capital, which, however, always maintained its attraction—The Empire a realm of cities—Immense development of urban life in the first two centuries—The rise of Thamugadi in Numidia—Great tolerance of municipal freedom under the early Empire—Yet there was a general drift to uniformity of organisation—Influence of the capital—The rage for travel—Travelling became easy and luxurious—Posting facilities on the great roads—The speed of travelling by land and sea—Growth of towns—Many sprang from the canabae legionis—History of Lambesi—Aristocratic or timocratic character of municipal organisation—Illustrated by the album Canusii—The sharp demarcation of social grades—Yet, in the first century, the Commons had still considerable power—Examples from Pompeii—The magistracies and popular election—The honorarium payable on admission to office—The power of the duumvirs—Position of the Curia—The mode of filling its ranks—Local Equites—The origin and position of the Augustales—Their organisation and their importance in the Roman world—Municipal finance—Direct taxation in the first century almost unknown—Sources of municipal [pg xiii]revenue—The objects of expenditure—Municipal mismanagement, as in Bithynia—Signs of decay in Trajan’s reign—First appointment of Curatores—Immense private munificence—Examples from Pompeii, which was only a third rate town—Other instances—Pliny—The Stertinii—Herodes Atticus, the prince of benefactors—Testimony of the Inscriptions—Example of imperial liberality—The public works of the Flavian and Antonine Emperors—Feasts to the populace—Distributions of money, graduated according to social rank—The motives of this munificence were mixed—Yet a high ideal of the duties of wealth—The better side of municipal life—Local patriotism and general kindly feeling—But there is another side to the picture—Immense passion for amusement, which was often debasing—Games and spectacles on 135 days in the year—Description of a scene in the amphitheatre in the Antonine age—Passion for gladiatorial shows especially in Campania—Remains of gladiatorial barracks at Pompeii—Advertisements of games—Pictures on tombs and on the walls—The shows in small country towns—Shows at Cremona a few days after the battle of Bedriacum—Greece was little infected with the taste—The feeling of the philosophers—Statistics as to the cost of a gladiatorial show—How the ranks of the profession were recruited—Its attractions—Organisation of the gladiatorial schools—The gladiator in retirement—How municipal benefactors were honoured—Municipal life begins to lose its attractions—The causes of this—Plutarch on municipal duty—The growth of centralisation—The beginning of the end

Pages 196-250

CHAPTER III

THE COLLEGES AND PLEBEIAN LIFE

The plebs of the municipal town chiefly known from the Inscriptions—Great development of a free proletariat—The effects of manumission—The artisan class in the Inscriptions—Their pride in their callings—Emblems on their tombs—Early history of the Collegia—Rigorous restraint of their formation by Julius and Augustus—The evidence of Gaius—Dangers from the colleges not imaginary—Troubles in the reign of Aurelian—Yet the great movement could not be checked—The means of evading the law—Extended liberty in reigns of M. Aurelius and Alexander Severus—The social forces behind the movement of combination—The wish for funeral rites and lasting remembrance—Evidence of the Inscriptions—The horror of loneliness in death—The funerary colleges—That of Lanuvium shows how the privilege granted to them might be extended—Any college might claim it—Description of the college at Lanuvium—Its foundation deed—The fees—The grants for burial—The college of Aesculapius and Hygia—Its organisation for other objects than burial—Any college might assume a quasi-religious character—The influence of religion on all ancient social organisation—The colleges of traders—Wandering merchants organise themselves all over the world—And old soldiers—Colleges of youth for sporting purposes—Every branch of industry was organised in these societies—Evidence from Ostia, Lyons, and Rome, in the Inscriptions—Clubs of slaves in great houses, and in that of the Emperor—They were [pg xiv]encouraged by the masters—The organisation of the college was modelled on the city—Its officers bear the names of republican magistrates—The number of members limited—Periodical revision of the Album—Even in the plebeian colleges the gradation of rank was observed—Patrons carefully sought for—Meeting-place of the college—Description of the Schola—Sacred associations gathered round it—Even the poorest made presents to decorate it—The poor college of Silvanus at Philippi—But the colleges relied on the generosity of patrons—Their varying social rank—Election of a patron—A man might be a patron of many colleges—The college often received bequests to guard a tomb, and perform funerary rites for ever—The common feasts of the colleges—The division of the sportula by ranks—Regulations as to decorum at college meetings—The college modelled on the family—Mommsen’s opinion—Fraternal feeling—The slave in the college, for the time, treated as an equal—Yet the difference of rank, even in the colleges, was probably never forgotten—Were the colleges really charitable foundations?—The military colleges—Their object, not only to provide due burial, but to assist an officer throughout his career—The extinction of a college—The college at Alburnus in Dacia vanishes probably in the Marcomannic invasion

Pages 251-286

BOOK III

CHAPTER I

THE PHILOSOPHIC DIRECTOR

The great change in the motive and character of philosophy—The schools forsook metaphysical speculation, and devoted themselves to the cultivation of character—Why faith in abstract thought declined, and the conduct of life became all important—The effect of the loss of free civic life and the establishment of world-empires—The commonwealth of man—The great ars vivendi—Spiritual directors before the imperial times—They are found in every great family—The power of Seneca as a private director of souls—How his career and experience prepared him for the office—He had seen the inner life of the time, its sensuality, degradation, and remorse—He was himself an ascetic, living in a palace which excited Nero’s envy—His experience excited an evangelistic passion—His conception of philosophy as the art of saving souls—His contempt for unpractical speculation—Yet he values Physics for its moral effect in elevating the mind to the region of eternal truth—Curious examples of physical study for moral ends—The pessimism of Seneca—Its causes in the inner secrets of his class—It is a lost world which must be saved by every effort—Stoicism becomes transfigured by moral enthusiasm—Yet can philosophic religion dispense with dogma?—Empirical rules of conduct are not enough—There must be true theory of conduct—Seneca not a rigorous dogmatist—His varying conceptions of God—Often mingles Platonic conceptions with old Stoic [pg xv]doctrine—But all old Stoic doctrine can be found in him—“The kingdom of Heaven is within”—Freedom is found in renunciation, submission to the Universal Reason—Whence comes the force of self-reform?—The problem of freedom and necessity—How man may attain to moral freedom—The struggle to recover a primeval virtue—Modifications of old Stoic theory—The ideal sapiens—Instantaneous conversion—Ideas fatal to practical moral reform—For practical purposes, Stoic theory must be modified—The sapiens a mythical figure—There may be various stages of moral progress—Aristotelian ideas—Seneca himself far from the ideal of the Stoic sage—The men for whom Seneca is providing counsel—How their weaknesses have to be dealt with—The “ars vitae” develops into casuistry in the hands of the director—Obstacles in the way to the higher life—Seneca’s skill in dealing with different cases—His precepts for reform—Necessity of confession, self-examination, steadiness of purpose, self-denial—Vivere militare est—The real victor—The mind can create its own world, and triumph even over death—Seneca’s not the Cynic ideal of moral isolation—Competing tendencies in Stoicism—Isolated renunciation and social sympathy—A citizen of two cities—The great commonwealth of humanity—The problem of serving God and man variously solved by the Stoics—Seneca’s ideas of social duty—Social instinct innate—Duty of help, forgiveness, and kindness to others—The example of the Infinite Goodness—The brotherhood of man includes the slave—Seneca’s attitude to slavery—His ideal of womanhood—Women may be the equals of men in culture and virtue—The greatness of Seneca as a moral teacher—He belongs to the modern world, and was claimed by the Church—A pagan Thomas À Kempis

Pages 289-333

CHAPTER II

THE PHILOSOPHIC MISSIONARY

Seneca the director of an aristocratic class—The masses needed a gospel—Their moral condition—The Antonine age produced a great movement for their moral elevation—Lucian’s attitude to the Cynics—His kindred with them—Detached view of human life and its vanity—Gloomy view of the moral state of the masses—The call for popular evangelism—Can philosophy furnish the gospel?—Lucian’s Hermotimus—The quarrels of the schools—Yet they show real agreement on the rule of life—The fashionable sophist—Rhetorical philosophy despised by more earnest minds—Serious preaching—The sermons of Apollonius of Tyana—Sudden conversions—The preaching of Musonius, Plutarch, and Maximus of Tyre—The mystic fervour of Maximus—Dion’s view of the Cynic preacher—The “mendicant monks of paganism”—Lucian’s caricature of their vices—Many vulgar impostors adopt the profession—It offered a tempting field—Why the charges against the Cynics must be taken with reserve—S. Augustine’s testimony—Causes of the prejudice against Cynicism—Lucian’s treatment of Peregrinus—The history of Peregrinus—The credibility of the charges which Lucian makes against him—He is about to immolate himself at Olympia when Lucian arrives—Lucian treats the self-martyrdom as a piece [pg xvi]of theatrical display—Yet Peregrinus may have honestly desired to teach contempt for death—Stoic suicide—The scene at the pyre—The last words of Peregrinus—Lucian creates a myth and sees it grow—Testimony of A. Gellius as to Peregrinus—The power of the later Cynicism—The ideal Cynic in Epictetus—An ambassador of God—Kindred of Cynicism and Monasticism—Cultivated Cynics—The character of Demetrius, a leader of the philosophic opposition—Cynic attitude to popular religion—Oenomaus a pronounced rationalist—Disbelief in oracles—The character of Demonax—His great popular influence—Prosecuted for neglect of religious observances—His sharp sayings—Demonstrations of reverence for him at his death—The career of Dion Chrysostom—His conversion during his exile—Becomes a preacher with a mission to the Roman world—The character of his eighty orations—He is the rhetorical apostle of a few great truths—His idea of philosophy—His pessimism about the moral state of the world—A materialised civilisation—Warning to the people of Tarsus—Rebukes the feuds of the Bithynian cities—A sermon at Olbia on the Black Sea—The jealousies of the Asiatic towns—Prusa and Apamea—Sermon on civic harmony—He assails the vices and frivolity of the Alexandrians—His prose idyll—Simple pastoral life in Euboea—The problems and vices of city life exposed—Dion on true kingship—The vision of the Two Peaks—The ideal king—The sermon at Olympia inspired by the Zeus of Pheidias—Its majesty and benignity—Sources of the idea of God—The place of art in religion—Relative power of poetry and sculpture to express religious truth—Pheidias defends his anthropomorphism—His Zeus a God of mercy and peace

Pages 334-383

CHAPTER III

THE PHILOSOPHIC THEOLOGIAN

The pagan revival and the growth of superstition called for a theodicy—Old Roman religion was still powerful—But there was an immense accretion of worships from the conquered countries—And an immense growth in the belief in genii, dreams, omens, and oracles—Yet amid the apparent chaos, there was a tendency, in the higher minds, to monotheism—The craving for a moral God in sympathy with man—The ideas of Apuleius, Epictetus, M. Aurelius—The change in the conception of God among the later Stoics—God no longer mere Force or Fate or impersonal Reason—He is a Father and Providence, giving moral support and comfort—The attitude of the later Stoics to external worship and anthropomorphic imagery—How was the ancient worship to be reconciled with purer conceptions of the Divine?—God being so remote, philosophy may discover spiritual help in all the religions of the past—The history of Neo-Pythagoreanism—Apollonius of Tyana—His attitude to mythology—His mysticism and ritualism—Plutarch’s associations and early history—His devotion to Greek tradition—His social life—His Lives of the great Greeks and Romans—He is a moralist rather than a pure philosopher—The tendency of philosophy in his day was towards the formation of character—The eclecticism of the time—Plutarch’s attitude to Platonism and Stoicism—His own moral system was drawn from various schools—Precepts for the formation of character—[pg xvii]Plutarch on freedom and necessity—His contempt for rhetorical philosophy—Plutarch on Tranquillity—How to grow daily—The pathos of life—The need for a higher vision—How to reconcile the God of philosophy with the ancient mythology was the great problem—Plutarch’s conception of God—His cosmology mainly that of the Timaeus—The opposition between the philosophic idea of God and the belief of the crowd was an old one—Yet great political and spiritual changes had made it a more urgent question—The theology of Maximus of Tyre—His pure conception of God, combined with tolerance of legend and symbolism—Myth not to be discarded, but interpreted by philosophy, to discover the kernel of truth which is reverently veiled—The effort illustrated by the treatise of Plutarch on Isis and Osiris—Its theory of Evil and daemonic powers—The Platonist daemonology—The history of daemons traced from Hesiod—The conception of daemons justified by Maximus—The daemonology of the early Greek philosophers—The nature of daemons as conceived by Maximus and Plutarch—The ministering spirits of Maximus—The theory of bad daemons enabled Plutarch to explain the grossness of myth and ritual—The bad daemons a damnosa hereditas—The triumphant use made of the theory by the Christian Apologists—The daemonology of Plutarch was also used to explain the inspiration or the silence of the ancient oracles—“The oracles are dumb”—Yet in the second century, to some extent, Delphi revived—Questions as to its inspiration debated—The quality of Delphic verse—The theory of inspiration—Concurrent causes of it—The daemon of the shrine may depart—The problem of inspiration illustrated by a discussion on the daemon of Socrates—What was it?—The result of the inquiry is that the human spirit, at its best, is open to influences from another world

Pages 384-440

BOOK IV

CHAPTER I

SUPERSTITION

Superstition a term of shifting meaning—Plutarch’s treatise on Superstition—Why it is worse than atheism—Immense growth of superstition in the first century, following on a decay of old religion—Forgotten rites and fallen temples—The revival of Augustus—The power of astrology—The Emperors believed in it and dreaded it—Tiberius and Thrasyllus at Capreae—The attitude of Nero, Otho, and Vitellius to astrology—The superstition of the Flavian Emperors—And of Hadrian and M. Aurelius—The superstition of the literary class—The Elder Pliny—Suetonius—Tacitus—His wavering treatment of the supernatural—How it may be explained by the character of the age—Epictetus on divination—The superstition of Aelian of Praeneste—His credulity and his anathemas on the sceptics—P. Aelius Aristides—His history and character—His illness of thirteen years—Was he a simple devotee?—The influence of [pg xviii]rhetorical training on him—The temples of healing in his time—Their organisation and routine—Recipes by dreams in the temples of Asclepius, Isis, and Serapis—Medical skill combined with superstition—The amusements and cheerful social life of these temple-hospitals were powerful healers—The ailments of Aristides and his journeys in quest of health—Strange divine prescriptions astonish the medical attendants—Their own heroic remedies—Epiphanies of the Gods—The return of his rhetorical power—The debt is repaid in the Sacred Orations—The treatise on dreams by Artemidorus—His idea of founding a science of dreams—His enormous industry in collecting materials—His contempt for less scientific interpreters—His classification of dreams and methods of interpretation—The new oracles—The failure of the old was not so complete as it is sometimes represented—The revival of Delphi—The history of the oracle of Alexander of Abonoteichos—His life and character—How he played on the superstition of the Paphlagonians—The business-like management of the oracle—Its fees and revenue—Its secret methods—Its fame spreads everywhere—Oracles in many tongues—Rutilianus, a great noble, espouses Alexander’s daughter—The Epicureans resist the impostor, but in vain—The mysteries of Glycon—Alexander, a second Endymion—Immense superstition of the time—Apotheosis in the air—The cult of Antinous—And of M. Aurelius—In Croton there were more gods than men!—The growing faith in daemons and genii—The evidence of inscriptions as to the adoption of local deities all over the world—Revived honours of classic heroes—The belief in recurring miracle—Christian and pagan were equally credulous—The legend of the “Thundering Legion”—Sorcery in Thessaly—The lawless romance of Apuleius

Pages 443-483

CHAPTER II

BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY

The conception of immortality determined by the idea of God—Religion supplies the assurance denied by philosophy—Vagueness of the conception natural and universal—“It doth not yet appear what we shall be”—Confused and various beliefs on the subject in the Early Empire—The cult of the Manes in old Italian piety—The guardianship of the tomb, and call for perpetual remembrance—The eternal sleep—The link between the living and the dead—The craving for continued human sympathy with the shade in its eternal home—The Lemures and the Lemuria—Visitations from the other world—The Mundus in every Latin town—The general belief in apparitions illustrated from the Philopseudes of Lucian, from the Younger Pliny, Suetonius, Dion Cassius, and Maximus of Tyre—The eschatology of Virgil a mixture of different faiths—Scenes from the Inferno of the Aeneid—Its Pythagorean elements—How Virgil influenced later conceptions of the future state—Scepticism and credulity in the first century—Perpetuity of heathen beliefs—The inscriptions, as to the future state, must be interpreted with care and discrimination—The phrases often conventional, and springing from different orders of belief—Inscriptions frankly atheistic or sensualist—Ideas of immortality among the cultivated class—The influence of [pg xix]Lucretius—The Stoic idea of coming life, and the Peripatetic—The influence of Platonism—In the last age of the Republic, and the first of the Empire, educated opinion was often sceptical or negative—J. Caesar, the Elder Pliny, Tacitus—The feeling of Hadrian—Epictetus on immortality—Galen—His probable influence on M. Aurelius—The wavering attitude of M. Aurelius on immortality—How he could reconcile himself by a saintly ideal to the resignation of the hope of a future life—His sadness and pessimism fully justified by the circumstances of the time—“Thou hast come to shore, quit the ship”—Change in the religious character long before M. Aurelius—Seneca’s theology as it moulded his conception of immortality—A new note in Seneca—The influence of Pythagorean and Platonic conceptions in modifying Stoicism—The revival of Pythagoreanism in the first century—Its tenets and the secret of its power—Apollonius of Tyana on immortality—His meeting with the shade of Achilles—Plutarch and Maximus of Tyre on immortality—Plutarch’s arguments for the faith in it—The Delays of Divine Vengeance—But, like Plato, Plutarch feels that argument on such a subject must be reinforced by poetic imagination—The myths of Thespesius of Soli and Timarchus in Plutarch—Mythic scenery of the eternal world

Pages 484-528

CHAPTER III

THE OLD ROMAN RELIGION

The decay of old religion in the last age of the Republic—Its causes—Influence of Greek philosophy and rationalism—Distinction drawn between the religion of philosophy and that of the State—The moral and religious results—Sceptical conformity or desuetude of ancient rites—The religious revival of Augustus—How far a matter of policy—Ancient temples and worships restored—The position of Pontifex Maximus—How the Emperors utilised the dignity and kept a firm hold on the old religion—The religious character of the early Emperors—The force of antiquarian sentiment in the second century—The Inscriptions plainly show that the popular faith in old Latin religion was still strong—The revival of the Arval brotherhood—Its history and ritual described—A stronghold of imperial power—How the Arval College supported and flattered the Emperors—How the cultivated class reconciled themselves to the rudest forms of the ancient religion—The philosophic reconciliation—The influence of patriotism in compelling men to support a religion which was intertwined with all social and political life—The sentiment powerful down to the end of paganism—But other religious ideas were in the air, preparing the triumph of the cults of the East

529-546

CHAPTER IV

MAGNA MATER

The fascination of the worship of the Great Mother—It was still powerful in the days of S. Augustine—Its arrival from Pessinus in 204 B.C.—The [pg xx]history of its growing influence—The taurobolium in the second century—The legend and its interpretations—The Megalesia in spring—The priesthood—The sacred colleges of the worship—Evidence of the Inscriptions—The worship in country places—Vagabond priests in Thessaly described by Apuleius—Picture of their wild orgies—The problem of these eastern cults—From a gross origin, they became transmuted into a real spiritual power—The elevation of Magna Mater—The rite of the taurobolium—Its history in Asia Minor—Its immense influence in the last age of the Empire—A challenge to the Church—The history of the taurobolium in the West from the Inscriptions—Description of the scene from Prudentius—The connection of Magna Mater with Mithra and other deities

Pages 547-559

CHAPTER V

ISIS AND SERAPIS

Their long reign in Europe—Established at Peiraeus in the fourth century B.C.—And in Asia Minor—How the Egyptian cults had been transformed under Greek influences—Greek settlers, soldiers, and travellers in Egypt from the seventh century B.C.—Greek and Egyptian gods identified—The new propaganda of the Ptolemies—Theories of the origin of Serapis—The new Egyptian Trinity—The influence of Greek mysticism—The worship probably established in Campanian towns before 150 B.C.—The religious excitement in Italy in the early part of the second century B.C.—The Bacchanalian scandal—The apocryphal books of Numa—Efforts of the Government in the first century B.C. to repress the worship—A violent struggle with varying fortunes—The triumvirs in 42 B.C. erect a temple of Isis—Persecution of eastern worships in the reign of Tiberius—Thenceforth there was little opposition—Attitude of the Flavian Emperors—Domitian builds a temple of Isis, 92 A.D.—The Egyptian worship propagated from Alexandria by slaves, officials, philosophers, and savants—Votaries in the imperial household—Spread of Isiac worship through Europe—It reaches York—The secret of its fascination—The cult appealed to many kinds of mind—Its mysticism—Its charm for women—Its pomp and ceremonial—How a religion originally gross may be transformed—The zoolatry of Egypt justified as symbolism by Greek philosophers—But there is little trace of it in the Isiac worship of the West—Isis becomes an all-embracing spiritual power—And Serapis is regarded by Aristides as sovereign lord of life—Yet the worship never broke away from the traditions of idolatry—It fostered an immense superstition—The Petosiris—But there was undoubted spiritual power in the worship—The initiation of Lucius—The faith in immortality—Pages 560-584