158

THE LATER AGES OF HEATHEN PHILOSOPHY.

THE history of the later ages of the heathen philosophy is not sufficiently attractive to be in general very accurately known. To those who have contemplated the unwearied struggle after truth, which was maintained by the gigantic intellect of Plato, Aristotle, or Cicero, it may seem to present but a pitiable spectacle of human imbecility. Yet even these perverse aberrations form an interesting æra, not only in the progress of the human mind, but in the history of the Christian church; and to a literary inquirer they have a peculiar interest, as pointing out the channels by which the superstitious notions of sorcery were derived into the legends and romances of the middle ages. It was certainly a singular æra in the history of the human mind, when, not only all the religions of polytheism were amalgamated into one incoherent mass, and almost all the jarring sects of philosophy were forced into union, but this multifarious superstition and this syncretistic philosophy, instead of being opposed to one another, were blended into one religious system; and the disciples of those speculators, who had attained to the sublime height of monotheism, or trembled on the verge of atheism, became the most zealous worshippers of a host of innumerable gods. It was a singular æra in the history of the Christian religion; for against the Christian religion this combination was formed and not only was an opposition thus provided for its theology and morality, but an attempt was made to rival even its evidence. The philosophic polytheism also claimed its peculiar revelations and miracles; and sages and priests enjoyed familiar intercourse with gods and dæmons, and were the professors of the arts of natural and theurgic magic.

The gradual diffusion of eastern superstitions was one of the causes which prepared the public mind for this remarkable period. After the elegant observations of Gibbon, in the second chapter of his history, it will be sufficient merely to recall to the recollection of the reader the accommodating temper of the ancient Polytheism. The earlier Greeks, in the simplicity of their national prejudices, seem scarcely to have conceived it possible that the theogony of any nation should be essentially different from their own; and the student of antiquity is frequently amused and perplexed by the facility with which Herodotus adapts the names of the Grecian divinities to the objects of Assyrian, Egyptian, and Phoenician worship. When Alexander had extended his empire over the regions of

the east, it became his peculiar purpose to unite the subjects of his various provinces into one great people; and no step in the execution of this design seemed more necessary than the union of their religions. That the same policy, though with less political wisdom, was followed by his successors, we have sufficient evidence in the persecutions directed by the kings of Syria against the inflexible monotheism of the Jews and Persians. Nor must we forget the magnificent temple and luxurious grove, in which Apollo and Daphne were naturalized on the banks of the Orontes *. From Tacitus† we have an interesting account of two local deities of Sinope, to whom even Grecian theologians found some difficulty in assigning a prototype in their national creed; but it was believed that they were best described under the titles of Jupiter Dis and Proserpine. It seems that the male divinity was dissatisfied with his humble residence, or possibly with his consort; for he appeared in repeated visions to Ptolemy Lagides, requesting that he might be translated to Alexandria, and enrolled in the catalogue of Egyptian gods. There he was received with great devotion, and identified with Serapis, the Egyptian Pluto; and the deity thus raised from obscurity became the object of more sumptuous worship than even Isis and Osiris. It was probably the design of Ptolemy to connect himself with some object of national superstition; and the loyalty of the people was strongly secured, when they were made the zealous votaries of the king's peculiar god. We are informed by Arrian, from the Royal Day-book §, that during the last illness of Alexander, when the fate of the civilized world was depending on the alternations of an ague, seven of his principal officers passed the night in the temple of Serapis, to inquire of the god, if, within his precincts, deliverance might be found for their beloved monarch. We cannot learn whether the same deity were in fact common to the Egyptians and Chaldæans, or whether the worship of Serapis in Babylon arose from the desire of Alexander to unite all his subjects in one common superstition. But at least it is strongly indicative of the comprehensive nature of the Grecian religion, that on such an occasion such men should consult the oracle of a Chaldæan or Egyptian god.

From the earliest intercourse of Greece and Rome the deities of the two nations became completely identified; yet it would be easy to show, that although their mythologies were undoubtedly derived from one common source, the more

* Gibbon's Decline and Fall, chap. xxiii.

Plutarch. de Iside et Osiride.

Hist. iv. 83, 84.

See Mitford's Hist. of Greece, vol. x. chap 57, and Appendix.

poetical imagination of Greece had made to itself gods and heroes and innumerable genii of woods and streams and seas, who had no inheritance in the ancient religion of Latium; and it might not be difficult to point out the distinctions which exist between Cronus and Saturn, Hephaestus and Vulcan, Artemis and Diana. In the progress of time, when the Romans approached to the empire of the world, the mutual adoption of religious faith took place yet more extensively. At an early period of their history they had solemnly invited Esculapius from Epidaurus to deliver them from the ravages of a pestilence; and had been deluded into a belief of the visible presence of the god in the form of a snake, almost as grossly as the inhabitants of Pontus in after times by the arts of the impostor Alexander †. At a later age they had imported from the east the Phrygian goddess, the great mother of the gods; and it is singular that the oracle should have directed the selection of the best man in Rome to receive the divinity, whose orgies afterwards became infamous for the most disgusting impurity §; and that the first manifestation of her power should have been a miracle in vindication of calumniated chastity. It appears from Lucian || that the worship of this goddess travelled westward from the banks of the Euphrates; and none was more universally diffused throughout the Roman empire. The worship of the Egyptian gods was soon naturalized in the metropolis of the world; and we learn from Apuleius T, that the sacred College of the Pastophori, or Priests of Isis and Osiris, had been established in the time of Sylla. Gibbon, in a note to his second chapter, has given the references from which we may gather, the various fortunes of this superstition. It may be sufficient to remark, that, with other eastern fashions, it seems to have been most in vogue with the weaker sex and the more ignorant classes of the people. When Ovid describes the haunts in which the professors of the Art of Love may with most advantage watch for the fair objects of their pursuit, he adds,

Nec te prætereat Veneri ploratus Adonis,
Cultaque Judæo septima sacra Syro:

Neu fuge linigeræ Memphitica templa juvencæ;
Multas illa facit, quod fuit ipsa Jovi.

De Arte Am. L. I. v. 75.

The obsequies of Adonis, and the rites of the Venus by whom he was beloved, were entirely eastern in their origin.

* Liv. Epit. Lib. xi.

Liv. Lib. xxix. cap. 10, 11, 14. Ovid. Fast. IV. 179-372.

Lucian. Alexander, sive Pseudo-Mantis.

T Metam. Lib. xi. in fine.

§ Juv. Sat. ii. Sat. vi. Apul. Metam. Lib. viii. Lucian. De Syria Dea.

Cicero, in the curious mythological chapters in which he describes the manner in which deities of the same name had been multiplied, enumerates four who had borne the title of Venus: 66 Quarta Syria, Tyroque concepta, quæ Astarte vocatur, quam Adonidi nupsisse proditum est *" The erudition of Milton has made us familiar with these rites of Thammuz :

Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured

The Syrian damsels to lament his fate
In amorous ditties all a summer's day,
While smooth Adonis from his native rock
Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood
Of Thammuz yearly wounded.

Lucian, in a style of exquisite irony, in the antiquated Ionic
dialect well befitting his assumed gravity as a devout believer,
has detailed the ceremonies of the Byblian Venus, or Astarte,
the supposition of the identity of Adonis with Osiris, and the
annual miracle of the floating of a severed head, from the
mouths of the Nile to the Phoenician coast; and at the same
time has hinted with much apparent hesitation and timidity,
the natural cause of the change of colour in the sacred
river +. It cannot be doubted that the Paphian Venus, whose
priesthood was hereditary in the family of Cinyras, was the
same as the Astarte of the neighbouring continent, the Ash-
toreth, the goddess of the Zidonians, whose licentious idolatry
seduced the old age of Solomon. The form under which she
was represented, a twisted cone, though approved by Ho-
garth as the perfect emblem of beauty, is evidently the off-
spring, not of Grecian, but of oriental taste§. We must not,
however, lose sight of the worship of Isis. The fashion of
the days of Ovid had gained strength in those of Juvenal, and
the Roman Temple of Isis was the resort of licentious love||.
To Isis the Roman merchant and sailor returned thanks for
their preservation ¶ and the sistrum of Isis was dreaded by
the Roman Swindler**. But it is in the sixth satire of Juve-
nal, in that tremendous invective which is poured forth almost
with the fury of inspiration against half the human race, that
we have the strongest testimony to the empire assumed by
the Egyptian priests over the consciences of the Roman Ladies.
-Si candida jusserit Io,
Ibit ad Ægypti finem, calidaque petitas
A Meroe portabit aquas, ut spargat in ædem
Isidis, antiquo quæ proxima surgit ovili.

V. 525.

De Nat. Deor. Lib. iii. c. 23.

1 Kings, ch. xi. v. 5.

Sat. ix. v. 22.

VOL. II. PART I.

I Sat. xii. v. 23.

De Syria Dea.

§ Tacit. Hist. 1. ii. c. 3.
**Sat. xiii. v. 93.
M

Credit enim ipsius domina se voce moneri.

En animam et mentem, cum qua Di nocte loquantur!
Ergo hic præcipuum summumque meretur honorem,
Qui grege linigero circumdatus, et grege calvo
Plangentis populi, currit derisor anubis.
Ille petit veniam, quoties non abstinet uxor
Concubitu sacris observandisque diebus ;
Magnaque debetur violato pœna cadurco ;
Et movisse caput visa est argentea serpens.
Illius lacrymæ meditataque murmura præstant,
Ut veniam culpæ non abnuat, ansere magno
Scilicet et tenui popano corruptus, Osiris.

In the eleventh book of the Metamorphosis of Apuleius, in which his licentious and humorous adventures are brought to so solemn a conclusion, and the veil of allegory is half withdrawn from the grotesque forms that have passed before our eyes, we have an elaborate detail of the magnificence with which the rites of Isis were in his age celebrated at Corinth: and in the vision, in which the goddess, whom he has worshipped as the moon, declares to him her true nature and titles, we have a singular instance of the manner in which the philosophers even then began to intermingle and confound the discordant mythologies of polytheism :

"En adsum tuis commota, Luci, precibus, rerum Natura parens, elementorum omnium domina, sæculorum progenies initialis, summa numinum, regina Manium, prima cœlitum, deorum dearumque facies uniformis; quæ cœli luminosa culmina, maris salubria flamina, inferorum deplorata silentia, nutibus meis dispenso; cujus numen unicum, multiformi specie, ritu vario, nomine multijugo, totus veneratur orbis. Me primigenii Phryges Pessinunticam nominant Deûm Matrem: hinc Autochthones Attici Cecropiam Minervam ; illinc fluctuantes Cyprii Paphiam Venerem; Cretes sagittiferi Dictynnam Diánam; siculi trilingues Stygiam Proserpinam; Eleusinii vetustam deam Cererem; Junonem alii, alii Bellonam, alii Hecaten, Rhamnusiam alii; et qui nascentis dei Solis inchoantibus radiis illustrantur Æthiopes Ariique, priscaque doctrina pollentes Ægyptii, cærimoniis me prorsus propriis percolentes, appellant vero nomine reginam Isidem!!"

For a short period, the objects of eastern worship overshadowed even the gods of the capitol. When the youthful Priest of the Sun was removed from Emisa to the palace of the Cæsars, he erected at Rome a magnificent temple to the deity whose Syrian title he had himself assumed. The senate in Asiatic vestments paid homage to the god of their sovereign; and the nuptials of Elagabalus and Astarte, or the sun and moon, were celebrated throughout the Roman empire*.

* Gibbon, chap. vi.