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 Forerunners and rivals of Christianity, b 
 
 3 1924 005 845 551 
 
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FORERUNNERS AND RIVALS 
 OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
CAMBBIDGE UNIVEESITY PRESS 
 
 C. F. CLAY, Manageb 
 
 Eonlron: FETTEB LANE, B.C. 
 
 ffininburgb: 100 PEINCES STEEET 
 
 i^eta gorft: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 IScmtaH anU Calcutta: MACMTTT.AN AND CO., Ijtd. 
 
 SCotanto: J. M. DENT AND SONS, I/td. 
 
 EofSBo: THE MAETJZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
FORERUNNERS AND RIVALS 
 OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 BEING 
 STUDIES IN RELIGIOUS HISTORY 
 
 FROM 330 B.C. TO 330 A.D. 
 
 BY 
 
 F. LEGGE, F.S.A. 
 
 (Honorary) Foreign Secretary Society of Biblical Archaeology, 
 
 Member of Council Royal Asiatic Society, 
 
 Member of Committee Egypt Exploration Fund, &c. 
 
 "The ghosts of words and dusty dreams" 
 "Old memories, faiths infirm and dead" 
 
 Swinburne, FMse. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 VOL. I 
 
 Cambridge : 
 
 at the University Press 
 
 1915 
 
 E.V. 
 
J^-U%€r- 
 
 atamttiSsse: 
 
 PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. 
 AT THE UNIVEBSITY PRESS 
 
 i9 y?^ 
 
PREFACE 
 
 npHE following pages are a modest attempt to bring before 
 the public certain documents of great importance for 
 tke understanding of the growth, and development of the 
 Christian religion. They are not new, almost all of them 
 having been translated at one time or another into English, 
 French, German, or Italian: but they are all practically 
 unknown save to scholars, are all fragmentary, and with 
 hardly an exception, are difficult to uaderstand without a 
 running commentary. In these circumstances, I have ventured 
 to follow, not for the first time, the advice given by Sir Gaston 
 Maspero to his pupils in one of his luminous lectures at the 
 College d« France. "If" said in effect that great master of 
 archaeology, "you find yourselves in the presence of scattered 
 and diverse examples of any monument you cannot understand 
 — funerary cones, amulets of unusual form, hypocephali, or 
 anything else — make a collection of them. Search museums, 
 journals of Egyptology, .proceedings of learned societies, until 
 you think they have no more novelties of the kind to offer you. 
 Then put those you have collected side by side and study them. 
 The features they have in common will then readily appear and 
 in a little time you will find that you will perceive not only the 
 use of the objects in question, but also the history of their 
 development, their connexion with each other, and their 
 relative dates." This has been the end aimed at in this book; 
 and although, like most aims in this world, it has not been 
 perfectly achieved, it may, I think, be said with confidence 
 
vi Preface 
 
 that these documents explain and supplement one another in 
 a remarkable degree, and that in the majority of cases sense 
 can now be read into what at first sight seemed to be nonsense. 
 As more fragments of the same kind come to light, also, one 
 has fair reason to hope that those points which are stiU obscure 
 may be made clear. 
 
 The system of references adopted perhaps calls for some 
 explanation. As I have no right to expect my readers to take 
 what I say for gospel, I should have preferred to give my 
 authority for every statement made by me in the text. But 
 there are often many authorities supporting the same statement, 
 and some discrimination between them was necessary unless 
 these two volumes were to be swollen to an intolerable length. 
 The same consideration for brevity, too, has often led me to 
 quote at second or third hand rather than at first. References 
 to well-known passages in the more widely read classical writers 
 and Christian Fathers are not needed by scholarly readers, 
 while to others they are difficult to check or verify. I have 
 therefore dehberately and of choice preferred the less recondite 
 sources to the more recondite, and have never hesitated to 
 refer the reader to encyclopaedias, popular lectures, and the 
 works avowedly addressed to the general public of writers 
 like Renan and MahafEy, rather than to the sources from which 
 they have themselves drawn their information. In so doing, 
 however, I have never consciously failed to check the statement 
 quoted with the original source, and to see, so far as in me lay, 
 that it correctly represents its purport. A fairly long experience 
 has convinced me that to many readers the "ApoU. Rhod. 
 ac Nigid. Schuster, p. 41" and the "Clemens de div. serv. 
 Su 20" dear to certain German professors and their English 
 admirers mean very little, and to the greater public nothing 
 at all. For the translations which appear in the text or notes 
 I have gleaned from all sources, but, except where expressly 
 
Preface vii 
 
 mentioned, I must personally accept all responsibility for them, 
 and in cases in which any doubt seemed possible I have generally 
 added the words of the original document. 
 
 Finally, I have not attempted to impress my own opinion 
 on my readers, but merely to give them the material on which 
 they can form their own; and where I have found myself in 
 doubt as to what the facts of the case really were, I have never 
 scrupled to say so. This is not a counsel of perfection, but 
 the one which on the whole seemed to me best. If by doing 
 so I have succeeded in sending to the documents themselves 
 a few readers hitherto ignorant of them, I shall think I have 
 not wasted my time. 
 
 F. LEGGE. 
 
 6 Gbat's Inn Square, 
 Jvly 1914. 
 
 P.S. The outbreak of the war has caused the publication 
 of this book to be postponed. I regret the delay the less that 
 it has enabled me to make use of several works and studies 
 which have appeared during the last twelve months. 
 
 F. L. 
 
ERRATA 
 
 Vol. I. 
 
 p. 121, 1. 5, for Xerxes read Darius. 
 
 p. 141, n. 4, for Prof. C. R. B. Weidmann read Prof. Carl Robert. 
 
 Vol. II. 
 
 p. 18, n. 2, for cc. m, xxxi. Justin Martyr read cc. m, xxxi; Justin 
 
 Martyr. 
 p. 36, n. 1, for Isidore Loeb, La Cahhale juive, p. 587. F. Herman KJniger, 
 
 La Qrande Encydopddie, s.v. Gnosticisme read Isidore Loeb, La 
 
 Orande Encydopidie, s.v. La Cabbale juive; ibid. P. Herman Bxiiger, 
 
 s.v. Gnosticisme. 
 p. 37, n. 1, for Thou the King, the Aeon of Aeons read Thou King, Aeon 
 
 of Aeons, 
 p. 38, n. 3, for Introduction (pp. xx — ^xxiii) read Introduction (pp. 1x1 — 
 
 Ixiii). 
 p. 69, n. 3, for natSEJ'n '■e«(2 nSDtJTl. 
 p. 72, 1. 4, for boundless read thoughtless. 
 p. 102, 1. 22, for Ecolesiasticis read Ecclesiasticus. 
 p. 129, n. 3, /or Canons read Canon, 
 p. 146, 1. 17, for its read Its. 
 p. 146, n. 2, for the Five Words, translated in the text read the five 
 
 words translated in the text, 
 p. 166, n. 2, for 18 Eons read 18 Aeons, 
 p. 174, 1. 1, for die read dies, 
 p. 183, 1. 10, for Books read TeaU. 
 p. 200, 1. 10, for Pistis Sophia read Texts of the Saviour. 
 p. 338, n. 2, for Journal des Savants read Journal des Savans. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Table op Dates ..... Pages xiii-xxvii 
 Books and Articles referred to . . xxviii-xlviii 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Importance of study of Christian origins — Cause of popular miscon- 
 ceptions on the subject — Change of standpoint with progress of science of 
 religions — Definition of science and religion — ^Apparent dilemma of ortho- 
 dox — Christianity seems to follow evolutionary law like other faiths — 
 Rivals of infant Christianity — Judaism, classical Paganism, and philo- 
 sophy ruled out — Real competitors. Oriental religions. Gnosticism, and 
 Manichaeism — Certain features common to surviving documents of aU 
 these faiths — Possibihty of common origin — Question insoluble tUl origin 
 and dates of Zoroastrianism ascertained . . . Pages xUx-lxiii 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE CONQUESTS OP ALEXANDER 
 
 The extent of the Persian Empire and its government — ^Alexander's 
 aim, the marriage of Europe and Asia, attained after his death — Greek 
 becomes common language — Importance of this for History of Religions 
 — ^Ideas of antiquity about gods — ^Monotheism of philosophers, and of 
 Hebrew Prophets — ^Aristotle's dictum that reUgion follows form of temporal 
 government — ^Alexander, perfect type of monarch — ^Adoption of mon- 
 archical government by his Successors — ^Identification of Greek with 
 barbarian gods — Worship of Syrian and other foreign gods in Athens 
 — Increase of foreign worships after Alexander — ^Deification of Alexander 
 and his Successors leads to Euhemerism — Change of reUgious views 
 among Greeks — ^Age of innovation in religion — The missions of Asoka — 
 Religious associations in Greece, their composition and influence — Low 
 character of their priests and members — ^Alexander of Abonoteichos — 
 Impulse given by associations to proselytism — Summary . , 1-27 
 
X Contents 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE ALEXANDRIAN DIVINITIES 
 Alexander's Egypt and the poUoy of the Ptolemies— The Egyptian 
 priesthoods and their disastrous rule— Popularity of worship of Osiris- 
 Legend of Osiris according to Plutarch— Its composite character, totem- 
 igtic and historical elements— The Dying God of the Eastern Mediter- 
 ranean—The Eleusinian Mysteries— Resemblance of Eleusis legend to 
 Osirian— Ptolemy's new religion— The Alexandrian triad, Serapis, Isis, 
 and HoruB— Refusal of Egyptians to accept Ptolemy's religion— Its 
 success in the West culminates under the Antonines— Causes of its 
 triumph — Its monarchical principle, or monotheistic pantheism — ^The 
 Fatherhood of God— Hope for future life— The Mysteries of the Alex- 
 andrian Religion described — Degrees of initiation — Popular and external 
 Ceremonies: Daily Services in Temples, Opening, and Closing — Other 
 Ceremonies : The Herculaneum Frescoes — Adoration of the Sacred Water 
 —The Finding of Osiris— The Ship of Isis— Modem character of these 
 Festivals — ^The Isiac Priesthood — Recluses of Serapeum — Decline of 
 Alexandrian Religion with rise of Christianity — Superiority of Christianity 
 — Last days of Alexandrian Rehgion — Destruction of Serapeum at 
 Alexandria in 391 a.d. — Borrowings of Christianity from Alexandrian 
 Religion — ^Ritual, Worship of Virgin, and Monachism — Likeness of 
 sacramental usages — And, more doubtfully, of doctrines — Transition 
 probably effected through Gnostic heresies .... 28-89 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF GNOSTICISM 
 Religion and Magic — Knowledge chief necessity in magic — Origin of 
 myths, cosmogonies, and apocalypses — Spells and charms — Examples from 
 Magic Papyri, Sumerian invocation of Persephone, etc. — Letter of Nephotes 
 to Psammeticus with process of lecanomancy — Egyptian magicians deal 
 with devils — Polyglot spell of Alleius Craeonius invokes Jehovah with 
 heathen gods — Spread of magic in late Pagan and early Christian centuries 
 — ^Magic ceremonies not all imposture — Hypnotism employed in magic — 
 Influence of these ideas on evolution of Gnostic sects — Leads to develop- 
 ment of ritual in worship, especially in Egypt — Effect of Gnostic ideas 
 if not checked — Their early appearance in Greece — The rise of astrology — 
 Its origin in Babylonia — Introduces new ideas in religion — ^Astrological 
 tablets in Assurbanipal's library — Construction of calendar — System of 
 correspondences — Planetary influence — Change in astrology when united 
 to Greek mathematics — Religion and Magic ahke adopt astral theories — 
 Increased importance of Sun worship — Impulse given by astral theories to 
 Gnosticism — Entry into it of predestinarian ideas . 90-120 
 
Contents xi 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS: THE ORPHICI 
 
 The Orphic poems and the Pythagoreans — The Orphic Theology and 
 Legend of Dionysos — Orphics first to connect this with man's fate in next 
 world — ^Asceticism of Orphic ideal — ^Initiation a substitute for asceticism — 
 Gold Plates of Italian Orphics and their likeness to Egyptian funerary 
 literature — Orphic propaganda at first confined to Rhapsodists — Orphics 
 seize upon worships of foreign gods — ^Demosthenes' oration against 
 Aeschines and its explanation — Orphics probably form thiasi and other 
 religious associations — ^The Orpheotelestae, wandering charlatans — The 
 Orphic Hymns — ^Hymns to Persephone and Dionysos and their explana- 
 tion — Influence of Orphics upon later religions — Orphism leads to 
 spread of syncretism, magic, and external conformity — Summary of 
 Orphism and its influence upon Gnosticism .... 121-148 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS: THE ESSENES 
 
 Contrast between religious ideas of Greeks and Jews — ^Fate of Jews 
 under Alexander's Successors and Maccabaean Wars — Josephus' account 
 of the Essenes — Its accuracy shown by Philo and others — ^Improbable 
 views as to their origin — ^Essenes essentially Gnostics — ^Their secret teaching 
 — The Enochian Apocal3rpses described — The Messianic delusions of the 
 Jews in Roman times — ^Books of Enoch, etc. — ^Essene method of in- 
 terpreting Scripture, isopsephism, and Cabala — ^Later history of Essenes 
 —Survival of their exegetical methods among Gnostics . 149-171 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS: SIMON MAGUS 
 
 Adherence of Jews to Mosaic Law — ^Inconvenience of this to rich, and 
 necessity for compromise between Judaism and Hellenism — System of 
 Philo Judaeus and formation of secret sects among Jews — Simon Magus 
 in the New Testament — ^Position of Samaritans temp. Christ intermediate 
 between Jews and heathen — Account of Simon in Clementines untrust- 
 worthy — ^Hippolytus' quotations from the Great Announcement — Simon's 
 First Cause and Six Roofs — ^His system of correspondences or paradigms 
 
xii Contents 
 
 — ^His bisexual Deity — Parallels between systems of Simon and of Orphics — 
 Simon's aocoimt of creation of man — Simon's views on origin of evil and 
 redemption not clear — Contradiction among Fathers as to Simon's doctrines 
 — Simon's redemption through union of sexes and Platonic affinity — 
 Simon's view of end of world — ^Later history of Simon's sect; their 
 indifference in external matters and changes — ^Fathers' ascription of all 
 subseqoient heresy to borrowing from Simon examined and partly con- 
 firmed 172-202 
 
TABLE OF DATES 
 
 N.B. The dates which follow are only approximate, no attempt 
 having here been made to harmonize the system of chronology lately 
 adopted by the piofessors of the Berlin school with those formerly in use. 
 For the dates of the reigns of the Egyptian and Asiatic Successors of 
 Alexander, I have mainly rehed upon the excellent work of M. Bouch6- 
 Lecleroq as given in his French version of Droysen's Hdlenismue, his 
 Histdre des Lagides and (especially) his Histoire des Sdeucides, the second 
 volume of which, containing the chronalogical tables, maps, and indexes, 
 has appeared at the close of this year (1914). The dates of the Parthian 
 and Baotrian kings are given with all reserve and are in effect conjectures 
 based on the slipshod statements of compilers like Justin, Quintus Curtius, 
 and Trogus Pompeius. For the Parthian dates I have followed, though 
 without any confidence in its accuracy, the chronology of Prof. Eduard 
 Meyer, and for the Bactrian, those given in Mr H. C. Rawlinson's Bactria. 
 The dates in Vol. n, which deals with the centuries after Christ, are 
 for the most part fairly well ascertained, and those given in Prof. Bury's 
 edition of Gibbon have been used wherever possible. For matters not 
 mentioned in Gibbon, such as the lives of the obsciu'er Christian Fathers 
 and leaders of sects, recourse has generally been had to Smith and Wace's 
 Dictionary af Christian Biography and other books of the kind. The only 
 serious discrepancy here noticeable arises from the habit still prevalent 
 among certain Continental writers of beginning the Christian Era four 
 years earlier than others, so as to increase all subsequent dates by 4. Thus 
 M. Cumont, in his Mysteres de Mithra and elsewhere, invariably gives the 
 date of the Carnuntum inscription proclaiming Mithras the Protector of 
 the Roman Empire, as 307 A.D., although he asserts that the lovii et 
 Herculi religioaissimi Augiisti responsible for the inscription are Diocletian 
 and GaleriTis. Diocletian, however, resigned the purple, and retired into 
 private life in the year 305 A.D., by the reckoning of Prof. Bury and others, 
 and it is plain therefore that M. Cumont puts the date too far forward 
 according to our ideas. To bring it into line, I have therefore ventured to 
 alter the date of the inscription quoted by him to 304 A.D., which would 
 moreover coincide with the persecution of the Christians, which he thinks 
 may have owed some of its severity to the rivalry of the Mithraic faith. 
 The same procedure has been followed in one or two other cases. 
 
xiv Table of Dates 
 
 B.C. 
 
 336. Accession of Alexander. 
 
 340 to 260. Zeno of Citium (founder of Stoic school) flourished. 
 
 340 to 288. Pyrrho of Elis flourished. 
 
 334 to 322. Aristotle and first Peripatetic School flourished. 
 
 331. Foundation of Alexandria. 
 
 Alexander transports many Jews to Alexandria and gives them 
 equal rights with Macedonians. 
 330. Death of Darius. 
 326. Alexander conquers Punjab. 
 
 324. Alexander at Susa celebrates marriage of Europe and Asia. 
 ^^ 323. Death of Alexander and first division of Empire. 
 Ptolemy, son of Lagos, made satrap of Egypt. 
 321. Second division of Alexander's Empire at Triparadisus. 
 320. Ptolemy captures Jerusalem and transports many Jews to Alexandria. 
 Circa 316. Euhemerus of Messene fiourished. 
 312. Ptolemy and Seleucus defeat Demetrius Poliorcetes at Gaza. 
 
 Ptolemy seizes Syria, but evacuates it when defeated by Demetrius 
 
 near Myontes. 
 Many Jews voluntarily emigrate to Egypt. 
 312. Seleucus conquers Media and Persia, and enters Babylon in triumph. 
 
 Beginning of Seleucid Era. 
 310. Antigonus Monopthalmos by treaty abandons Eastern Provinces to 
 
 Seleucus. 
 307. Demetrius Poliorcetes at Athens. 
 
 Demetrius of Phalerum leaves Athens for Alexandria. 
 Probable foundation of Museum. 
 ^.^06 to 270. Epicurus flourished. 
 
 306. Ptolemy I Soter proclaims himself King of Egypt. 
 
 302. Coalition against Antigonus. Ptolemy invades Syria, and Lysi- 
 
 machus Asia Minor. 
 301. Battle of Ipsus, and further division of Empire between Seleucus, 
 
 Lysimachus, and Cassander. 
 300 to 220. Cleanthus of Assos (Stoic philosopher) flourished. 
 298. Cession of Valley of Indus by Seleucus to Chandragupta. 
 297. Destruction of Samaria by Demetrius Poliorcetes. 
 294. Seleucus transports many Jews from Babylon to Antioch and other 
 
 Syrian cities. 
 293. Many Jewish colonies foimded in Cyrene and Libya. 
 292. Seleucus gives his wife Stratonice and the Eastern Provinces to his 
 
 son Antioohus. 
 288. Coalition against Demetrius Pohorcetes. 
 
 Accession of Bindusara (Amitrochates) to Chandragupta's Indian 
 Kingdom. 
 283. Accession of Ptolemv H PhUadelphus. 
 
Table of Dates xv 
 
 B.C. 
 
 283. Demetrius Poliorcetes dies a prisoner in the hands of Seieucus. 
 282. Seieucus conquers Asia Minor from Lysimachus. 
 281. Lysimachus defeated and slain at Corupedion. 
 
 Accession of Antiochus I Soter on assassination of Seieucus. 
 ^280.? Establishment of Greek worship of Serapis, Isis, and Horus at 
 
 Alexandria. 
 280 to 207. Chrysippus of Soli (Stoic philosopher) flourished. 
 280. Pyrrhus invades Italy. 
 
 Invasion of Thrace by Celtic tribes. 
 278. Pyrrhus' campaign in Italy. 
 277. Settlement of Celtic tribes (Galatae) in Asia. 
 276. Translation of Pentateuch into Greek by order of Ptolemy Phil- 
 
 adelphus. 
 274. First Syrian War. Ptolemy Philadelphus against Antiochus Soter 
 
 and Magas of Cyrene. 
 273. Ptolemy Philadelphus sends embassy to Rome to conclude alliance. 
 265. Accession of Asoka, grandson of Chandragupta. 
 264. Asoka's missions to Greek Kings. 
 
 First Punic War. 
 261. Accession of Antiochus II Theos. 
 
 258. Second Syrian War. Ptolemy PhUadelphus against Antiochus Theos. 
 252. Diodotus revolts against Antiochus Theos and founds Kingdom of 
 
 Bactria. 
 ^ 250. Association of Greek Sarapiasts at Athens. 
 249. Arsa<!es revolts against Antiochus Theos and founds Arsacid Kingdom 
 
 of Parthia. 
 248. Accession of Tiridates on death of his brother, Arsaces of Parthia. 
 247. Accession of Seieucus II CaUinicus on death of his father, Antiochus 
 
 Theos. 
 246. Accession of Ptolemy III Euergetes. 
 
 Third Syrian War. Ptolemy Euergetes against Seieucus CaUinicus. 
 245. ? Accession of Diodotus II on death of his father, Diodotus of 
 
 Bactria. 
 244. Ptolemy Euergetes overruns Upper Asia as far as Susa. 
 241. War between Seieucus CaUinicus and his brother Antiochus Hierax. 
 
 Accession of Attains as dynast of Pergamum. 
 238. Ptolemy Euergetes and his wife Berenice II deified. Decree of 
 
 Canopus. 
 Attains defeats Galatae and proclaims himself King of Pergamum. 
 230. Euthydemus of Magnesia seizes throne of Bactria on death of 
 
 Diodotus II. 
 229. Borne first intervenes in affairs of Greece on behalf of Acarnanians. 
 226. Accession of Seieucus III Soter on death of his father, Seieucus 
 
 Callinic\is. 
 
xvi Table of Daies 
 
 B.C. 
 
 225. Attains of Pergajnum, "Friend of Borne," defeats Seleucus Soter 
 
 and seizes Syrian Asia Minor. 
 222. Accession of Antioohus III the Great, on assassination of his fath^, 
 
 Seleucus Soter. 
 221. Accession of Ptolemy IV Philopator on death of his father, Ptolemy 
 
 Euergetes. 
 219. Antiochus the Great reconquers Asia Minor. 
 
 Antiochus the Great captmes Jerusalem from Ptolemy Philopator. 
 217. Antiochus the Great transports 2,000 Jewish fanulies from Babylon 
 to Phrygia and Lydia. 
 Ptolemy Philopator defeats Antiochus the Great at Baphia and 
 
 recaptures Jerusalem and Samaria. 
 Second Punic War. 
 216. Worship of Greek Sarapis and Isis established in Boeotia. 
 211. Accession of Artabanus I to throne of Parthia on death of his father 
 
 Tiridates. 
 210. Artabanus of Parthia attacked by Antiochus the Great, who besieges 
 his capital, but finally makes alliance with him. 
 First Macedonian War. Bomans and Aetolians against Philip. 
 205. Accession of Ptolemy V Epiphanes. 
 Antiochus the Great seizes Palestine. 
 ' 204. Statue of Great Mother brought from Pessinus to Bome. 
 
 Scopas reconquers Palestine for Ptolemy Epiphanes and Jews 
 revolt to latter. 
 200. Second Macedonian War. 
 198. Antiochus the Great defeats Scopas at Panion and reoccupies 
 
 Jerusalem and Samaria. 
 197. Accession of Eumenes II on death of his father. Attains of Per- 
 gamum. 
 Phihp defeated by Bomans at Cynoscephalae. 
 196. Coronation of Ptolemy Epiphanes at Memphis. Bosetta Stone 
 
 set up. 
 191. Ptolemy Epiphanes sends embassy to Bome to offer aUiance. 
 190. Bomans defeat Antiochus the Great at Magnesia. 
 
 Accession of Demetrius on death of Euthydemus of Baotria. 
 Accession of Priapatius on death of Artabanus of Parthia. 
 187. Accession of Seleucus IV Philopator on death of his father, Antiochus 
 
 the Great. 
 182. Accession of Ptolemy VI Eupator. 
 181. Accession of Ptolemy VII Philometor. 
 180. Serapeum at Delos in existence. 
 175. Demetrius of Bactria annexes Cabul and Punjab. 
 
 Accession of Antiochus IV Epiphanes on death of his brother 
 Seleucus Philopator. ' 
 
Table of Dates xvii 
 
 B.C. 
 
 175. Eucratides rebels against Demetrius of Bactria and seizes throne. 
 
 173. Antiochus Epiphanes seizes Judaea and Coele-Syria. 
 
 172. Third Macedonian War. 
 
 171. Antiochus Epiphanes invades Egypt and defeats Ptolemy Philo- 
 
 metor at Pelusium. 
 170. Antiochus Epiphanes plunders Temple of Jerusalem. 
 
 Ptolemy Philometor and Ptolemy Euergetes II made joint kings by 
 
 Komans. 
 Accession of Mithridates I to throne of Parthia. 
 168. Antiochus Epiphanes' second invasion of Egypt stopped by Romans. 
 
 Circle of Popilius Laena. 
 166. Antiochus Epiphanes again pillages Temple and persecutes Jewish 
 rehgion. 
 Samaritans make peace with Antiochus Epiphanes and accept 
 
 HeUenization. 
 Revolt of Maccabees against Syria. 
 164. Accession of Antiochus V Eupator on death of his father, Antiochus 
 
 Epiphanes. 
 162. Judas Maooabaeus besieged in Jerusalem by Lysias for Antiochus 
 Eupator. Peace made on Philip's attempt to seize regency. 
 Romans send embassy to Antiochus Eupator which compels him to 
 
 burn his ships and kill his elephants. 
 Demetrius escapes from Rome and invades Syria. 
 161. Romans recognize Demetrius as King of Syria with title of Demetrius 
 I Soter. 
 Judas Maccabaeus sends embassy to Rome, is attacked by Demetrius 
 Soter, and slain. Judaea, imder his brother Jonathan, submits 
 to Syria. 
 Timarchos, Satrap of Media, and Ptolemy, dynast of Commagene, 
 proclaim themselves Kings, and are recognized by Romans. 
 
 160. Ptolemy Philometor expelled from Egypt by Euergetes II, but 
 
 restored by Romans. 
 Ptolemy, son of Glaucias, a recluse in Serapeum of Memphis. 
 159. Accession of Attains II PhOadelphus on death of his brother, 
 
 Eumenes of Pergamum. 
 154. Ptolemy Euergetes II made King of Cjrene. 
 
 Foundation of Jewish Temple or Oneion at LeontopoUs in Egypt. 
 152. Alexander Bala, pretender to throne of Syria, recognized by Romans 
 as son of Antiochus Epiphanes. 
 
 161. Coalition of Bgjrptian and Asiatic Kings with Romans against 
 
 Demetrius Soter of Syria. 
 150. Demetrius Soter defeated and slain by coalition of Egyptian and 
 Asiatic kings. Alexander Bala succeeds to throne of Syria, and 
 marries Cleopatra Thea, daughter of Ptolemy Philometor. 
 L. b 
 
xviii Table of Dates 
 
 B.C. 
 
 149. Third Punic War. 
 
 145. Ptolemy Philometor invades Syria and defeats Alexander Bala at 
 Oenoparas. Ptolemy killed in battle and Alexander by Naba- 
 tbaeans. 
 Accession of Ptolemy IX (Euergetes II) Physcon as sole king of 
 
 Egypt. 
 Accession of Demetrius II Nicator to throne of Syria. Civil war 
 between Demetrius and Diodotus (Trypho) as regent for infant 
 Antiochus VI Epiphanea Dionysos. 
 144. Ptolemy Physcon expels philosophers from Museum. 
 142. Simon Maccabaeus succeeds as High Priest Jonathan slain by Trypho. 
 
 Simon Maccabaeus proclaims independence of Judaea. 
 141. Simon Maccabaeus sends embassy to Romans who receive Jews as 
 
 "Friends of Rome." 
 140. Mithridates I of Parthia seizes part of Bactria, Media, Susiana, and 
 
 Persia. 
 139. Demetrius Nicator invades Parthia and is taken prisoner by 
 Mithridates. 
 Beginning of Era of Arsacides. 
 
 Antiochus VI Epiphanes Dionysos miurdered by Trypho, who is 
 made King by army. 
 138. Accession of Attalus III Philometor on death of his father, Attalus II 
 of Pergamum. 
 Accession of Phraates II to throne of Parthia. 
 137. Antiochus VII Sidetes, brother of Demetrius Nicator, takes throne 
 
 of Syria. 
 135. Antiochus Sidetes defeats Trypho, who commits suicide, at Apamea. 
 John and Judas Maccabaeus, sons of Simon, defeat, at Modein, army 
 
 of Antiochus Sidetes. 
 Simon Maccabaeus assassiuated by his son-in-law Ptolemy. 
 John Hyrcanus succeeds his father Simon as High Priest. 
 Hierocles, last Greek King of Bactria, after invasion of Sacae, 
 
 transfers his capital to Sialkdt. 
 Attalus of Pergamum bequeaths his kingdom to Romans. 
 134. Siege of Jerusalem by Antiochus Sidetes. Jews made tributaries to 
 
 Syria. 
 130. Antiochus Sidetes invades Parthia and reconquers Babylonia and 
 Media. 
 Menander (the Milinda of Buddhists) King of Cabul and Punjab. 
 129. John Hyrcanus sends embassy to Rome for help against Syria. 
 Medes rebel against Antiochus Sidetes, who is defeated by Phraates II 
 
 of Parthia and commits suicide. 
 Restoration of Demetrius Nicator to throne of Syria. Phraates II 
 of Parthia slain in battle against Scythians. 
 
Table of Dates xix 
 
 B.C. 
 
 129. Accession of Artabanus II of Parthia. 
 
 126. Demetrius Nicator defeated and slain by pretender^ Alexander 
 
 Zabina. 
 126. Destruction of Samaria by John Hjrrcanus. 
 124. Accession of Mithridates II the Great on death of Artabanus II 
 
 in battle against Tocharians. 
 122. Accession of Antiochus VIII Grypus, son of Demetrius Nicator, 
 who with the help of Egypt defeats and slays Alexander 
 Zabina. 
 120. Accession of Mithridates Eupator as King of Pontus. 
 117. Accession of Cleopatra III and Ptolemy X Lathyrus. 
 
 CSvil war in S3rria between Antiochus Gr3rpus and Antiochus IX 
 Cyzicenus, son of Antiochus Sidetes. Division of Syria between 
 them. 
 113. Antiochus Cyzicenus invades Judaea, and is ordered by Romans to 
 
 withdraw. 
 106. Accession of Ptolemy XI Alexander. 
 
 Aristobulus succeeds his father, John Hyrcanus, as High Priest, and 
 proclaims himself King. 
 105. Municipality of PnteoU builds Serapeum. 
 Aristobulus of Judaea annexes Iturea. 
 
 Alexander Janna«us succeeds, as King, his brother Aristobulus. 
 98. Alexander Jannaeus, trying to annex Ptolemais and Gaza, is 
 defeated by Ptolemy Lathyrus, then King of Cyprus. 
 Alexander Jannaeus makes league with Cleopatra III, who compels 
 Ptolemy to withdraw. 
 96. Alexander Jannaeus captures Gaza and massacres inhabitants. 
 Accession of Seleuous VI Epiphanes Nicator on assassination of his 
 father, Antiochus Grypus. 
 95. Antiochus X Pius, son of Antiochus Cyzicenus, defeats and slays 
 
 Seleucus Epiphanes near Mopsuestia. 
 94. Division of Syria. Antiochus Pius reigns in Upper Syria, Philip I 
 and Demetrius III Euoaerus, sons of Antiochus Grjrpus, in 
 Coele-Sjrria. 
 93. Antiochus Pius slain in battle against the Parthians in Commagene. 
 Ariobarzanes, King of Gappadocia, expelled by Mithridates Eupator 
 of Pontus, but reinstated by Romans under SuUa. 
 89. Alexander Jannaeus crucifies 800 Pharisees at Bethome and restores 
 
 peace in Judaea. 
 88. Demetrius Eucaerus invades Judaea and defeats Alexander Jan- 
 naeus at Sichem, but is taken prisoner by Parthians and dies in 
 captivity. 
 Interregnum in Parthia. 
 First Mithridatic War. 
 
 62 
 
XX Table of Dates 
 
 B.C. 
 
 87. Antiochus XII Dionysos, son of Antiochus Grypus, crowned King 
 
 of S3rria at Damascus. 
 84. Sulla makes peace with Mithridates. 
 
 Antiochus Dionysos defeated and slain at Motho by Aretas the 
 PhUheUene, King of Nabathaeans. 
 83. Tigranes, King of Armenia, becomes King of Syria. 
 82. Sulla dictator. 
 
 81. Accession of Ptolemy XII Alexander II. 
 Accession of Ptolemy XIII Auletes. 
 ^Circa 80. College of Pastophori of Greek Isis at Rome founded. 
 79. Death of Alexander Jannaeus, and accession of his widow, Salome 
 
 Alexandra. 
 78. Death of Sulla. 
 77. Tigranes builds Tigranooerta, and transports thither many peoples of 
 
 different race. 
 76. The Arsacid Sinatrooes, captive among the Scyths, released by them 
 
 to become King of Parthia. 
 75. Second Mithridatic War. 
 
 74. Nicomedes of Bithjnoia bequeaths his kingdom to Mithridate 
 Eupator of Pontus. 
 Third Mithridatic War. 
 72. Mithridates, defeated by LucuUus, takes refuge with his son-in-law 
 
 Tigranes. 
 70. Accession of Phraates III of Parthia. 
 
 69. Tigranes invades Palestine, but is bought off by Salome Alexandra. 
 Tigranes defeated and Tigranocerta taken by Luoullus. 
 Antiochus XIII Asiaticus, son of Antiochus Pius, made King of 
 
 Syria. 
 Death of Salome Alexandra, and accession of her son Aristobulus 
 as King, with John Hyrcanus II as High Priest. 
 67. Pompey suppresses the CSlician pirates. Reported introduction of 
 
 Mysteries of Mithras into Italy. 
 66. Phraates III of Parthia, Friend of Rome, invades Armenia. 
 
 Tigranes submits to Pompey, and is allowed to retain Great Armenia. 
 
 CivU war in Palestine between Aristobulus and John Hyrcanus II. 
 
 65. Siege of Jerusalem by Nabathaeans and Pharisees, raised by command 
 
 of Pompey's heutenant Scaurus. 
 64. Ariarathes, King of Cappadocia, receives from Romans Lesser 
 Armenia, Gtordyene, and Sophene. 
 Osrhoene and Edessa made into separate kingdom under Arab 
 
 prince Ariamne. 
 Syria becomes Roman province. 
 63. Death of Mithridates Eupator. 
 Death of Antiochus Asiaticus. 
 
Table of Dates xxi 
 
 B.C. 
 
 61. Pompey captuies Jerusalem, and puts an end to Maccabaean 
 Kingdom. Aristobulus sent captive to Rome. 
 Samaria and all forcibly Judaized communities regain their 
 autonomy. 
 58. Ptolemy Auletes, expelled from Bgjrpt, flies to Rome. 
 
 Statues of Isis at Rome thrown down by order of Consul, A. Gabinius. 
 57. Alexander, son of Aristobulus of Judaea, rebels, and is defeated by 
 
 Gabinius, Proconsul of Syria. 
 56. Aristobulus escapes from Rome and heads new revolt in Judaea. 
 55. Accession of Orodes I to throne of Parthia. 
 
 IVesh revolt of Jews under Alexander suppressed by Gabinius, 
 
 who makes Antipater the Idumean ruler of Judaea. 
 Ptolemy Auletes restored to throne of Egypt by Gabinius. 
 53. Crassus and Roman army defeated by Parthians at Carrhae. 
 52. Fresh revolt of Jews suppressed by Cassius. 
 51. Accession of Cleopatra VI and Ptolemy XIV. 
 50. Temple of Isis at Rome destroyed by Consul, L. AemUius Paulus. 
 48. Julius Caesar and Cleopatra besieged in Alexandria by Egyptian 
 rebels. Death of Ptolemy XIV. 
 Temples of Isis near Capitol thrown down at bidding of augurs. 
 47. Cleopatra made queen jointly with Ptolemy XV. 
 
 Antipater and Jewish troops take part in raising of siege of 
 
 Alexandria. 
 Julius Caesar repeals Jewish tribute and Uability to military service, 
 
 and gives Jews religious liberty and self-government. 
 John Hyrcanus II made hereditary ethnarch of Judaea. 
 46. Herod, son of Antipater, enters Roman army and is made military 
 
 governor of Coele-Syria. 
 45. Death of Ptolemy XV. Cleopatra makes her son Caesarion co- 
 regent with her as Ptolemy XVI. 
 Hermaeus last Greek ruler in India. 
 44. Assassination of Julius Caesar. 
 
 Fresh revolt of Jews on Caesar's death suppressed by Cassius, who 
 makes Herod Procurator of Coele-Syria. 
 43. Triumvirs Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus decree temple to Isis and 
 
 Serapis. 
 42. Battle of PhiUppi and division of Roman world between Mark 
 
 Antony and Octavian. 
 41. Death of Antipater of Judaea. Mark Antony makes Herod and 
 
 his brother Phasael joint tetrarchs under John Hjnroanus II. 
 40. Pacorus, prince of Parthia, invades Palestine, and takes John 
 
 Hyrcanus II and Phasael away captive. 
 39. Parthians driven out of Palestine by P. Ventidius Bassus. 
 Herod proclaimed King of Judaea by Romans. 
 
xxii Table of Dates 
 
 B.C. 
 
 38. Caius Sossius, Legate of Syria, captures Jerusalem, and puts Herod 
 
 on throne. 
 31. Battle of Aotium. Herod deserts Mark Antony. 
 30. Herod makes submission to Octavian, and receives increase of 
 territory. 
 Death of Cleopatra and Ca^sarion. Egypt becomes Roman pro- 
 vince. 
 Qctavian becomes Emperor with title of Augustus. 
 28. Augustus orders all temples of Alexandrian gods outside Pomoerium. 
 21. M. Vipsanius Agrippa, the consul, forbids celebration of Egyptian 
 
 rites within 1 mile of Rome. 
 20. Phraates IV of Parthia sends Augustus his four sons as hostages, 
 and returns Roman standards captured with Crassus. 
 Herod rebuilds Temple of Jerusalem. 
 4. Death of Herod. Fresh revolt of Jews suppressed by Varus. 
 
 Augustus divides Herod's Blingdom between the tetrarchs Archelans, 
 Antipas, and Philip. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 2. Accession of Phraates V or Phraataces on murder of his father, 
 
 Phraates IV of Parthia. 
 6. Accession of Orodes II of Parthia. 
 6. Archelaus deposed and banished. Judaea becomes a Roman 
 
 province. 
 8. Accession of Vonones I of Parthia. 
 14. Accession of Tiberius. 
 16. Vonones expelled from Parthia by Artabanus, King of Media. 
 
 Artabanus makes war on Rome, and is in turn expelled. 
 19. Expulsion of Jewish colony from Rome. 
 
 Tiberius destroys Temple of Isis and throws statues into the Tiber. 
 24. Death of Philip, Jewish tetrarch. 
 26. Pontius Pilate appointed Procurator of Judaea. 
 ^ 36. ? John the Baptist put to death by Antipas. 
 
 Interregnum in Parthia. Struggle between pretenders, Tiridates II, 
 Cumianus, and Bardanes I. 
 37. Accession of Caligula. 
 
 Antipas defeated by Aretas, King of Nabathaeans. 
 Agrippa receives Philip's tetrarchy with title of King. 
 
 39. Antipas deposed and banished. His tetrarchy added to Agrippa's 
 
 kingdom. 
 
 41. Judaea added to Agrippa's kingdom. 
 Accession of Claudius. 
 
 44. Death of Agrippa. Cuspins Fadus made Procurator of Judaea. 
 
 47. Tiberius Alexander (nephew of Philo) succeeds Cuspius as Pro- 
 curator. 
 
Table of Dates xxiii 
 
 A.D. 
 
 47. Gotarzes, son of Artabanus of Media, having been expelled from 
 
 Parthia by his brother Bardanes, retakes crown on Bardanes' 
 death. 
 
 48. Revolt of Jews. Tiberius Alexander replaced by Cumanus. 
 Circa 50. Clement of Rome born: died about 95 A.D. 
 
 51. Accession of Vonones II to throne of Parthia followed immediately 
 
 by that of Vologeses I. 
 War between Rome and Parthia. 
 ^^ Temple of Isis at Rome rebuilt. 
 
 52. Ummidius Quadratus, Legate of Syria, deposes Cumanus, and 
 
 appoints Felix Procurator of Judaea. 
 54. Accession of Nero. 
 ^ 55. Nero makes worship of Greek Isis rdigio licita. 
 60. Porcius Pestus succeeds Pehx as Procurator of Judaea. 
 
 62. Death of Porcius. Albinus succeeds him. 
 Persecution of Christians by Ananus, the High Priest. 
 Martyrdom of James the Just. 
 
 63. Vologeses I of Parthia, defeated by Corbulo, signs treaty of peace. 
 
 64. Gtessius Floras succeeds Albinus as Procurator of Judaea. 
 
 66. Tiridates invested King of Armenia by Nero. 
 
 Revolt of the Jews. Roman garrison of Jerusalem massacred 
 after surrender. Cestius Gallus, Legate of Syria, attacks 
 Jerusalem, but is beaten off. 
 
 67. First Jewish War. Vespasian replaces Cestius as Legate. 
 
 68. Accession of Galba. 
 
 69. Accession of Otho. 
 
 Otho appears in public in dress of priest of Isis. 
 Domitian escapes from Capitol in similar dress. 
 Accession of ViteUius. 
 
 Vespasian consults oracle, and works miraculous cures, in Temple of 
 Isis at Alexandria. 
 
 70. Accession of Vespasian. 
 
 Siege and sack of Jerusalem by Titus. Burning of Herod's Temple. 
 70-107. St Ignatius flourished. 
 
 72. Vespasian deposes Antiochus IV of Commagene, last of Seleucides. 
 77. Accession of Vologeses II of Parthia. Many pretenders, some of 
 whom reign concurrently with him till his death. 
 
 79. Accession of Titus. 
 
 80. Domitian rebuilds Temple of Isis which had been burned. 
 Statins mentions Mithraic Tauroctony in his Thebaid 
 
 81. Accession of Domitian. 
 
 Circa 83. Earliest Mithraic Inscription known. 
 96. Accession of Nerva. 
 98. Accession of Trajan. 
 
xxiv Table of Dates 
 
 A.D. 
 
 Circa 100. Maroion born; died about 165. 
 
 Menander, Simon Magus's successor, flourished. 
 102. Earliest dated Mithraio Inscription by T. Claudius Livianus, 
 
 Praetorian Prefect. 
 113-117. War between Eome and Parthia. 
 
 116. Revolt of Jews throughout East suppressed by Lucius Quietus. 
 
 117. Accession of Hadrian. 
 
 117-138. Basilides the Egyptian flourished. 
 
 Circa 120. Hadrian places in his lararium images of Greek Serapis and Isis. 
 120-160. Tatian flourished. 
 121. Justin Martyr bom: martyred about 151. 
 Circa 125. Saturninus of Antiooh flourished. 
 130. Hadrian rebuilds Jerusalem and names it AeUa Capitolina. 
 Circa 130. Apelles the Marcionite born: died about 180. 
 132. Revolt of Jews, under the Messiah Bar Cochba, and War of Ex- 
 termination. 
 138. Accession of Antoninus Pius. 
 138-160. Valentinus the Gnostic flourished. 
 Circa 140. Cerdo the Syrian flourished. 
 147. Irenaeus of Lyons born: died about 202. 
 
 Vologeses III restores Parthian Kingdom, and collects books of 
 Avesta. 
 150. TertuUian born: died about 220 a.d. 
 Circa 150. Marcus the magician flourished. 
 
 Herman Pastor appears. 
 155. Clement of Alexandria born: died about 211. 
 
 Eardesanes or Ibn Daisan bom: died about 223. 
 162. War between Rome and Parthia. Parthian Kings substitute 
 
 Aramaic for Greek on their coins. 
 164. Destruction of Parthian capital, Seleucia on the Tigris, by Avidius 
 
 Cassius. 
 170. Heracleon the Valentinian bom: died about 210. 
 Circa 170. Lucian the Marcionite flourished. 
 
 Ptolemy the Valentinian flourished. 
 170-183. Theophflus of Antioch flourished. 
 
 179. Pantaenus founds Christian school at Alexandria. 
 
 180. Accession of Commodus. 
 
 185. Origen of Alexandria bom: died about 253. 
 191. Accession of Vologeses IV to throne of Parthia. 
 193. Accession of Pertinax. Murder of Pertinax, and sale of Empire by 
 Praetorians to Didius Julianus. 
 Accession of Septimius Severus. 
 195. War between Rome and Parthia. 
 Circa 200. Axionicus the Valentinian flourished. 
 
Table of Dates xxv 
 
 A.D. 
 
 209. Accession of Artabanus IV of Parthia. 
 211. Accession of Caracalla and Geta. 
 
 216. Birth of Manes: died 275. 
 
 War between Rome and Parthia. 
 
 217. Accession of Macrinus. 
 219. Accession of HeUogabalus. 
 
 221. Alexander Severus proclaimed Caesar. 
 
 222. Accession of Alexander Severus. 
 War between Rome and Parthia. 
 
 Circa 222. Hippolytus of Porta Romana flourished. 
 
 226. ArdeshJr, son of Sassan, conquers Artabanus IV of Parthia, and 
 
 founds Sassanid dynasty of Persia. 
 230. War between Rome and Persia. 
 235. Accession of Maximin. 
 
 Persecution of Christians. 
 238. Accession and death of the two Gordians. 
 
 Maximus and Balbinus proclaimed Emperors with Gordian III as 
 
 Caesar, but are murdered by Praetorians. 
 Accession of Gordian III. 
 ^■^ Manes begins to teach. 
 
 241. Accession of Sapor (Shapur) I of Persia on death of his father Ardeshir. 
 
 242. War between Rome and Persia. 
 244. Accession of Philip the Arabian. 
 
 246. M. Julius PhUippus proclaimed Augustus jointly with his father, 
 
 Philip the Arabian. 
 249. Accession of Decius. 
 
 Persecution of Christians. 
 251. Accession of Gallus. 
 
 253. Accession of Valerian. 
 
 GaUienus proclaimed Augustus jointly with his father Valerian. 
 
 254. First appearance of Franks, who attack Rhine and invade Spain and 
 
 Africa. 
 260. War between Rome and Persia. 
 
 Valerian taken prisoner by Sapor, and dies in captivity. 
 260-268. Reign of GalUenus and the Thirty Tyrants. 
 
 Right of Church to hold property recognized, 
 268. Accession of Claudius. 
 270. Accession of Aurelian. 
 
 St Anthony introduces monachism into Church. 
 
 272. Accession of Hormisdas (Ormuz) I of Persia. 
 
 273. Aurelian captures Palmyra, and puts an end to Zenobia's Kingdom. 
 Aurelian decides case of Paul of Samosata, and affirms primacy of 
 
 Roman Church. 
 273. Accession of Varanes (Bahram) I of Persia. 
 
xxvi Table of Dates 
 
 A.D. 
 
 276. Manes put to death by Varanes I. 
 
 Accession of Tacitus. 
 276. Accession of Varanes II of Persia. 
 
 Accession of Probus. 
 
 282. Accession of Carus. 
 
 283. Carinus proclaimed Augustus jointly with his father Carus. 
 
 284. Numerian proclaimed Augustus jointly with his brother Carinus on 
 
 death of Carus. 
 Accession of Diocletian. 
 
 286. Maximian proclaimed Augustus jointly with Diocletian. 
 
 287. Edict of Diocletian against Manichaeans. Teachers to be burned: 
 
 Hearers' goods to be confiscated. 
 
 292. Constantius Chlorus and Galerius proclaimed Caesars imder the 
 
 two Augusti. 
 
 293. Accession of Varanes III of Persia followed by that of Narses. 
 296. War between Rome and Persia. 
 
 Circa 300. Alexander of LycopoUs flourished. 
 
 302. Accession of Hormisdas II of Persia. 
 
 303. Persecution of Christians. Era of Mart3frs. 
 
 304. Mithras declared at Carnuntum Protector of Roman Empire. 
 
 305. Abdication of Diocletian and Maximian. 
 Constantius Chlorus and Galerius become Augusti. 
 Maximin and Severus proclaimed Caesars. 
 
 306. Death of Constantius Chlorus. Constantine proclaimed Augustus by 
 
 army, but allowed title of Caesar only by Galerius. 
 Severus proclaimed Augustus in place of Constantius Chlorus. 
 Maximian and Maxentius, his son, rebel. 
 
 307. Severus, besieged in Ravenna by Maximian, surrenders and commits 
 
 suicide. 
 Maximian gives his daughter Fausta to Constantine, and proclaims 
 
 him Augustus jointly with himself. 
 War of Augusti, Maximian, Maxentius, and Constantine, against 
 
 Galerius, who proclaims Licinius and Maximin Augusti jointly 
 
 with himself. 
 
 308. Maximian plots against Constantine, who puts him to death. 
 Ephrem Syrus bom: died 373. 
 
 310. Accession of Sapor II of Persia. 
 
 311. Death of Galerius ; Licinius and Maximin divide Eastern provinces 
 
 between them. 
 
 312. War between Constantine and Maxentius, who is defeated at Turin, 
 
 Verona, and Saxa Rubra, and slain. 
 Edict of Toleration by Constantine and Licinius. 
 
 313. Maximin declares war against Licinius, but is defeated at Heraclea 
 
 and slain. 
 
Table of Dates xxvii 
 
 A.D. 
 
 314. Wax between Constantine and Licinius, who is defeated and makes 
 
 peace. 
 
 315. Paohomius groups monks together in monasteries and institutes 
 
 common life. 
 316?. Death of Diocletian. 
 
 320. Epiphanius of Constantia born: died about 400 a.d. 
 323. War between CJonstantine and Licinius, who is defeated and put to 
 
 death. 
 Constantine becomes sole Emperor. 
 Constantine issues renewed edict of toleration. 
 324 ?. Constantine directs enquiry into Manichaean doctrines by Musoni- 
 
 anus (Strategius), Praetorian Prefect of the East. 
 325. Constantine simimons CouncU of Nicaea. 
 327. Foundation of Constantinople and transfer of capital of Empire 
 
 thither. 
 337. Baptism and death of Constantine. 
 
BOOKS AND ARTICLES REFERRED TO 
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 N.B. — The works of the better-known classical writers (e.g. Livy) 
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 Abi7 Baihan, caUed Al sfBUNi. Chronology of Ancient Nations. Trans- 
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 Alline, M. See Xenia. 
 
 Amblinbait, E. Essai sur le Gnosticisme %yptien. Paris, 1887. 
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 Notice sur le Papyrus Gnostique Bruce. Paris, 1891. (Notices et 
 
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 Amblung, W. Le Sarapis de Bryaxis. 1903. See Revue ArchMogique, 
 
 4° s6rie, t. n, p"e ji. 
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 Ante-Nioene Christian Library. Edited by Alexander Roberts and James 
 
 Donaldson. 24 vols, and 1 additional volume. Edinburgh, 1868 to 
 
 1897. 
 
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 Antiquaires de France, see Sooi6t6 Nationale des A. de P. 
 Archaeologia : Miscellaneous Tracts relating to Antiquity. See Society of 
 
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 Archiv fur imssenschaftliche Erforschung des alien Testaments. Halle, 
 
 1869-1872. 
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 Badham, F. B. The Word Monogenes. See The Academy, 5 Sept., 1896. 
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 La Politique reUgieuse de PtoMm^e Soter et le oulte de Serapis. 
 
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 Histoire des Lagides. Paris, 1903-1907. 4 vols. 
 
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 BoussBT, WiLHBLM. Hauptprobleme des Gnosis. Gottingen, 1907. (For- 
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 The History of Egypt. New York, 1909. 
 
 Bb^ihibe, il^MiLE. La Cosmologie Stoicienne k la Fin du Faganisme. 
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 Memphis. Paris, 1865. (M^moires de TAcad^mie des Inscriptions. 
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 Extraits des MSS. de la Bibliothfeque Nationale et des autres Biblio- 
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 Budge, Eenbst Axfbed Thompson Wallis, Litt.D., etc. The Papjrus 
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 The Book of the Dead. 1898. 3 vols. 
 
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 Egyptian Hieratic Papjrri in the British Museum. 1910. 
 
 Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection. 1911. 2 vols. 
 
 Budge, E. A. T. Wallis, King, L. W., and Thompson, R. Campbell. 
 The Sculptiu'es and Inscriptions of Darius the Great at Behistun. 
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 BuNSBN, Chbistian Cabl Josias (Baron). Hippolytus and his Age. 
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 BxjBEOWs, Ronald. Discoveries in Crete. 1907. 
 
 Callisthbnbs, Pseudo-. The History of Alexander the Great. Trans- 
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 Cabnoy, A. Armaiti-Armatay. Louvain, 1912. See Le Mus&m, n.a. 
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 Casabtblli, Louis Charles, Bishop of Salford. La Philosophic Reh- 
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Books and Articles referred to xyxi 
 
 Charles, R. H., D.D., etc. Apocalyptical Literature. See Hastings, 
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 Biblica, s.h.v. 
 
 The Book of Enoch. Translated from the Ethiopic. Oxford, 1893. 
 
 The Apocalypse of Baruch. Translated from the Syriac. 1896. 
 
 — The Assumption of Moses. Translated from the Latin. 1897. 
 
 A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life in Israel, in 
 
 Judaism, and in Christianity. 1899. (The Jowett Lectures.) 
 
 The Ascension of Isaiah. Translated from the Ethiopic. 1900. 
 
 The Book of Jubilees. Translated from the Ethiopic. 1902. 
 
 The Testaments of the XII Patriarchs. Translated from the 
 
 Greek. 1908. 
 
 The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. Edited 
 
 by R. H. Charles. Oxford, 1913. 2 vols. 
 
 Chavannes, Edoitabd, et Pblliot, Paul. Un Trait6 Manich6en retrouv6 
 
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 Chbyne, Thomas Kelly, D.D., etc. Prophecies of Isaiah. A new 
 
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 Jewish Religious life after the ExUe. New York, 1898. (American 
 
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 s.h.v. 
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 t. xxm (1891). 
 
xxxii Books and Articles referred to 
 
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 s.h.v. 
 Ceooke, W. The Popular Religion and FoIMore of Northern India. 
 
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 Catalogue of the Coptic MSS. in the British Museum. 1905. 
 
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 Bruxelles, 1896, 1899. 2 vols. 
 
 Hypsistos. See Revue de I'lnstruction Publiqu^ en Bdgique, 1897. 
 
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 Rechprches sur le Manich6isme. Bruxelles, 1908, etc. In progress. 
 
 L'Aigle fun6raire des Syriens et I'apoth^ose des Empereurg. Paris, 
 
 1910. See Revue de I'Hisloire des Religions, t. Lxn (1910). 
 
 Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans. Trans- 
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 Dabembbbg, Charles Viotoe, et Saglio, Edmond. Dictionnaire des 
 
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 Davids, T. W. Rhys. Buddhist India. 1903. (Story of the Nations 
 
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 Dechaeme, p. Cybele. See Dakembeeo et Saglio, Dictionnaire des 
 
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 Deissmann, Adole, D.D. New light on the New Testament from 
 
 records of the Graeco-Roman Period. Translated from the Gterman 
 
 by Lionel R. M. Strachan. Edinburgh, 1907. 
 Delagb, Yves, et Goldsiviith, M. Les Theories de r:fivolution. Paris, 
 
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 Deubnee, Lfdwiq. De Incubatione capita quatuor. Lipsiae, 1900. 
 
Books and Articles referred to xxxiii 
 
 Deutsche Orient. Gesellschaft. Mitteihrngen. Berlin, 1898, etc. In 
 
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 DlBTEEHCH, Albrecht, Prof. Abraxas: Studien zur Religionsgeschiohte. 
 
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 De Hymnis Orphicis. Marburg, 1891. 
 
 Dnx, Sir Samuel. Boman Society in the Last Century of the Western 
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 Roman Society from Nero to Marcus AureUus. 1904. 
 
 DoLLiNGER, JoHANN JosEPH Ignaz, D.D., ctc. The Gentile and the Jew 
 
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 1902. 2 vols. (German title: Judenthum und Heidenthum.) 
 First Age of Christianity and the Church. Translated from the 
 
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 Deexlbb, a. Isis. See Rosoher's Lexikon der Mythologie, s.h.v. 
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 3 vols. Traduite de I'Allemande sous la direction de A. Boueh6- 
 
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 Ddohesne, Monsignor Lotjis, Membre de I'lnstitut, etc. Early History 
 
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 DtTFOUECQ, Albert. De Manichaeismo apud Latinos. Paris. 1900. 
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 Egypt Exploration Fund. The Oxyrhynchus Pap37ri. 1898, etc. In 
 
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 The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 1914, etc. In progress. 
 
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 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edition, Edinburgh, 1875-1889. 
 
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 Eeman, Adoli', Ph.D., etc. Die Agyptisohen Beschworungen. See 
 
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 Life in Ancient Egypt. Translated from the Grerman by H. M. 
 
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xxxiv Books mid Articles referred to 
 
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 Pormation d'une Doctrine de Dieu au n^ SiScle. See Bevue de 
 
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 Gnostiques et Gnosticisme, :^tude critique des documents du 
 
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 Plugel, Gustav, Ph.D., etc. Mani, seine Lehre und seine Schriften. 
 
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 PoESHALli, JosiAH. Description of the Greek Papyri in the British 
 
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 PossEY, Chables. Les PouiUes Allemandes a Boghaz-Keui. Paris, 
 
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 PouCAET, Paul, Membre de I'lnstitut, etc. Les Associations Religieuses 
 
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 Le Culte de Dionysos en Attique. Paris, 1904. (Id., t. xxxvn.) 
 
 Peance, Adolphe. La Kabbale. Paris, 1843. 
 
 Le Gnosticisme ifigyptien. See Journal des Savans, Avril, 1888. 
 
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Books and Articles referred to xxxv 
 
 FuLLBB, John Mbb. Tatianus. See ibid, s.h.v. 
 
 Gabdnek, Percy, Litt.D., etc. The Coins of the Greek and Soythic 
 
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 Gaeeucci, Rajtaele. Les Myst^res du syncr6tisme Phrygien dans les 
 
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 Gasteb, Moses, Ph.D., etc. The Apocalypse of Abraham. 1893. See 
 
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 The Oldest Version of Midrash MegiUah. Berlin, 1897. See 
 
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 Gazette Archiologique. Paris. 1875-1887. 
 
 Gibbon, Edward. The Decline and Pall of the Roman Empire. Edited 
 
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 Graxtx, Ch. Melanges: Recueil dedi6 h la mSmoire de C. G. Paris. 
 
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 GBnnTH, F. Ll., M.A., etc. Stories of the High Priests of Memphis. 
 
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 Geote, George. A History of Greece. 1888. 10 vols. 
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 GuiGNXAtTT, Joseph Daniel. Les Religions de 1' Antiquity. Traduit de 
 
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 Evangeliuni Marcionis ex auctoritate veterum monumentorum 
 
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 HALivY, Joseph. Reoherches Bibliques, Pt 1. Le T^tragramme. 
 
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 c2 
 
xxxvi Books and Articles referred to 
 
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 Hatch, Edwin, D.D., etc. The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages 
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 Hauseath, Adolf. A History of New Testament Times. Translated 
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 progress. (German title: Neutestamenthche Zeitgesohichte.) 
 
 Heoemonhjs. Acta Archelai. Edited by Charles Henry Beeson of 
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 Hellenic Studies, Journal of. See Society for Promotion of Hellenic 
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 HiLGBNFELD, Adolf. Krftische Untersuchungen uber die Evangehen 
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 Das Apostolikon Marcions. Gotha, 1855. See Zeitschrift filr hist. 
 
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 4 vols. 
 
 Die Ketzergeschiohte des Urchristentums. Leipzig, 1884. 
 
 HiPPOLYTUS, Bishop of Porte Romana. Philosophoumena, sive Haeresium 
 
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 HOQAETH, David G. Philip and Alexander of Macedon. 1897. 
 HoLDiOH, Sir Thomas, K.C.M.G. The Gates of India. 1910. 
 HOBT, PbntoS John Anthony, D.D., etc. Colarbasus. See Smith's 
 
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Books and Articles referred to xxxvii 
 
 HoRT, Fbnton John Anthony, D.D., etc. Bardaiaan. Ibid., s.h.v. 
 
 Barbelo. Ibid. s.h.v. 
 
 HowEBTH, Ira W. What is Religion? See International Journal of Ethics. 
 
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 Hthbert, H., et Mauss, M. Esqviisse d'une th6orie g6n6rale de la Magie. 
 
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 Hdtton, Frederick Wouaston, F.R.S. Darwinism and Lamarckism. 
 
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 Institut Frangais d'Arch6ologie orientale. Mimoires pvbliis par les 
 
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 Intemaiional Journal of Ethics. Philadelphia, 1890, etc. In progress. 
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 Boston, U.S.A., 1898. 
 Jellinek, Adolf, Ph.D., etc. Uber das Buch der JubUaen und das 
 
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 Jensen, P., Ph. D., etc. Die Kosmologie der Babylonien. Strassburg, 1890. 
 JAqtjibr, Gtjstave. Le Livre de ce qu'U y a dans I'Hadds. Paris, 1894. 
 Jevons, Frank Byron, Litt.D. Introduction to the Study of Compara- 
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 Jewish Quarterly Review. London, 1888, etc. In progress. 
 Johnson, Samttel. Oriental Religions and their relation to universal 
 
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 Johnson, Walter. Byways of British Archaeology. 1912. 
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 Journal of Hellenic Studies. See Society for the Promotion of Hellenic 
 
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xxxviii Books and Articles referred to 
 
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 JuuccHEB, A., D.D., etc. Essenes. See Cheyne's Encyclopaedia Biblioa,s.A.i;. 
 
 Gnosis. Ibid., s.h.v. 
 
 Keim, Carl Thbodoe. Celsus' Wahren Wort. Zurich, 1873. 
 
 Kbnyon, Sir Fbedbeic Geobgb, K.C.B. Greek Papyri in the British 
 
 Museum. Catalogue with Texts. 1893. 
 
 Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. 1912. 
 
 Keen, Otto, Ph.D., etc. De Orphei, Bpimenidis, Pherecydis, Theogoniis 
 
 Quaestiones oriticae. Berlin, 1888. 
 
 Die Herkvmft des orphischen Hymnenbuchs. 1910. See Carl, 
 
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 Kesslee, Konead, Ph.D., etc. Forschungen iiber die Manichaische 
 
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 Kh6ni, Theodore Bab, Bishop of Kashgar. Scholia. 1898. See Pognon, 
 
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 King, C. W. The Gnostics and their Remains. 1887. 
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 Kball, Jakob, Ph.D., etc. Tacitus und der Orient. Wien, 1880. 4 
 
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 Histoire du Culte des Divinitfe d'Alexandrie hors de I'lSgypte. 
 
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Books and Articles referred to xxxix 
 
 Lakolois, Viotob. Collection des Historiens anciens et modemes de 
 
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 Some Heretic Gospels. 1893. Ihid. vol. xxn (1893). 
 
 Devil Worship and Freemasonry. 1896. See The Contemporary 
 
 Review, 1896. 
 
 The Sign Nutir or Neter. 1899. See Proceedings of Society of 
 
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 Divination in the xvnth Century. 1899. See National Review for 
 
 1899. 
 
 The Names of Demons in the Magic Papyri. 1900. See Pro- 
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 The Titles of the Thinite Kings. 1908. See Proceedings of Society 
 
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 — — The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians. Translated from the Ger- 
 man. 1897. (German title: Die Religion der alter Agypter.) 
 Williams- Jackson, Abraham Valentine, Prof., etc. Zoroaster, the 
 
 Prophet of Ancient Iran. New York, 1901. 
 Woods, P. H., B.D. The Hope of Israel. Edinburgh, 1896. 
 Xenia. Athens, 1912. 
 Yung, ^^mele, M.D. Hypnotisme et Spiritisme: les faits positifs et les 
 
 faits pr6sum6s. Geneve, 1890. (Conferences publiques prononc^es 
 
 dans I'Aula de I'Universite de Geneve.) 
 Zaborowski, M. S. Les Peuples Aryens d'Asie et d'Euiope. Paris, 
 
 1908. 
 Zeitschrift fur Agyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde. Leipzig, 1863, etc. 
 
 In progress. (Quoted infra as A.Z.) 
 Zeitschrift fiir historische Theologie. Leipzig, 1852, etc. In progress. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE worships, beliefs, and religious practices of the age 
 which saw the birth and infancy of Christianity must 
 always be the most interesting of all subjects to the student 
 of history, nor are there many more deserving the attention of 
 the general reader. The opponent, quite as much as th© 
 adherent of Christianity, must admit that the early struggles 
 of the faith which is professed by nearly a third of the human 
 race, which for fifteen centuries wielded unchallenged sway 
 over the whole of Europe, and which has grown with the 
 growth of European colonization until it now has a firm 
 settlement in every quarter of the inhabited world, must ever 
 possess surpassing interest for humanity. Yet the popular ideas 
 on the subject are not only vague but erroneous. A general 
 notion that, shortly before the coming of Christ, the Pagans 
 had tired of their old gods, and, lost to all sense of decency, 
 had given themselves up to an unbridled immorahty founded 
 on atheistic ideas, is probably about as far as the man who has 
 given no special study to the subject would venture to go. 
 Such a view, founded perhaps on somewhat misty recollections 
 of the Roman satirists and a Httle secondhand knowledge of 
 the denunciations of the early Christian writers, is almost 
 the reverse of the truth. There has probably been no time 
 in the history of manMnd when all classes were _^more given 
 lip "Co thoughts of rehgion, or wBen™they strained more fer- 
 vently after high ethical ideals, than m the six centuries which 
 have been taken for the subject of this book\ 
 
 ^ For the pre-Christian oenturies, the rise of ethical religions like that 
 of the Greek Isis (see Chap. II infra) and of Mithras (see Chap. XII) is 
 perhaps sufficient proof of this. For the post-Christian, see TertuUian's 
 remarks as to the interest excited among the heathens by problems like the 
 origin of evil (de Praesaript. c. vn.). As to their striving after morality, see 
 Eugfene de Paye, " Formation d'une Doctrine de Dieu au nme SiSole," Bev. 
 Hist. Bel. t. Lsm. (Jan.-Fev. 1911) pp. 1, 2, for authorities. See, too. 
 Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 1890, pp. 291, 292 and Hamack as there quoted. 
 
 L. d 
 
1 Introduction 
 
 The cause of this misconception is, however, clear enough. 
 Half a century ago, the general public was without guide or 
 leader in such matters, nor had they any materials on which 
 to form opinions of their own. The classical education which 
 was all that the majority of men then got, carefully left all 
 such matters as the origins of Christianity on one side. The 
 treatises of the Fathers of the Church, for the most part written 
 in late and inelegant Greek, were held to be too corrupting to 
 the style of scholars reared on the texts of the purest period 
 to be attempted by any but professional theologians, by whom 
 indeed they were often very imperfectly understood. Nor 
 was much to be gathered from the profane historians of the 
 early Christian centuries, who maintained such an obstinate 
 silence with regard to Christianity as to give rise to the 
 theory that they must have conspired to ignore the new 
 religion of the lower classes as something too barbarous 
 for ears poUte^- Moreover, the ruling maxim of education, 
 especially of English education until the end of the xixth 
 century, was that it was better to know one thing thoroughly 
 than to acquire a smattering of a great many, and thait 
 a scholar was better served by an intimate knowledge of 
 second aorists than by any wide extent of reading ; while 
 the comparative imethod of study was still confined to 
 sciences of analysis like anatomy and philology^. Above aU, 
 what has been called the catastrophic view of the Christian 
 rehgion was still in fashion. Although our spiritual pastors 
 and masters were never tired of reminding us that God's ways 
 were not as our ways, they invariably talked and wrote on the 
 assumption that they were, and thought an Omnipotent 
 Creator with eternity before Him must needs behave like a 
 schoolboy in control of gunpowder for the first time. Hence 
 " the remarkable victory " which, in the words of Gibbon, 
 the Christian faith obtained over " the established religions 
 
 ^ W. M. Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire, 1893, pp. 263, 264. 
 
 '^ Tiele, in his GifEord Lectures delivered in 189S, remarks on the ridieule 
 with which the learned Hellenists of his youth received the efforts of those 
 whom they called the comparativi. See Elements of the Science of Religixm, 
 1897, vol.1, p. 7. 
 
Introduction li 
 
 of the earth " was in t^e view of the orthodox chiefly due 
 to the pairaculous powers placed at the disposal of |the piimitiye 
 Ghinch, and it was ,conside|i;ed impious to look fur|tl\er for the 
 cause of ,the despotic rule which in a conjiparatively br^ef space 
 of time it succeeded in .estabHshiiig over the niinds of men.- 
 
 Fi;om this state of things, the fqi^dation of what is known 
 as the science of rehgions did much to deUver us. When 
 ]aQa=Clkciatian_iaithgj._.such as Hinduism, BuddMsmj. Zproas- 
 ,t^,anijiip,...aja4,J(lpMmJSi,e4eiiusm, .c,£i,jijs . .tp .J|;!^. systematically 
 atudied j^tbout preconceived hostiUty .or desijje to jeer at 
 their absu;i;dities, it, was seen that the sg^me. atmosphere of 
 miracle 'and legend^h^gL^athered round l^eix, infancy as round 
 thatof^gT'ChTistian Church. Outside the regular or canonical 
 scilfpfuies — ^if the phrase j?iay be used — of ajll of these fajiths, 
 there iiad eyjdently grown up a vast literature of uncertain 
 date and authorship in which the same stories were repeated 
 and [Ijhe sa,me episodes introduced as in Ijl^e Chi;istian Apo- 
 cryphal iGospels, Acts, and Lives of the Saints. It began to 
 dawn upon us that, as the hunaan mind under the same con- 
 ditions generally works in the same way, it was possible that 
 all xeligipns, whether true or false, might have gone through 
 the same or similar stages of developnient^- 
 
 That this view of the case was in itself a great step in 
 advance, everyone will readily admit w^p can remenaber the 
 horror with which any proposal to ectuate or .even compare 
 Christianity with any other reUgion was once received. It 
 was much helped, hpwever, by anpther npvel hypothesis which 
 about that time h^d got over its period ,pf pbloquy and was 
 ,rapidly coming to the front, namely, the theory of eyplution. 
 When .Darwin in his Origin of Species enunciated the truth 
 that as more animals and plants than the earth can support 
 come into existence every year, it is only those varieties 
 which are ;be.st fitted to their environment which survive tlie 
 
 ^ No better proof ofl.n be given gf the change in public opinion m such 
 matters than the comparison of Gibbon's words with regard to " the 
 miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive Church " (Decline and Fall, 
 .Bury's editipn, yol. n. p. 2) andjihe way the subject is treated in the article 
 *' Wonders " in Cheyne's Encyclopedia Biblica, 1903. 
 
 d2 
 
lii Introduction 
 
 consequent struggle for existence, he practically gave us a 
 new standpoint from which to contemplate Nature. Herbert 
 Spencer, quickly grasping this principle and carrying its a^li- 
 ^CfffiorTmuch further than Darwin had ventured to do, showed 
 that it governed the development not only of animal forms 
 but of the intellectual and moral faculties of man, of political 
 and social institutions, and even of what he called " eccle- 
 siastical institutions," which included rehgions themselves. 
 With the general acceptance of this view, it followed that the 
 success in point of popularity of any creed at any period of 
 the world's history was not due to any sudden or capricious 
 exercise of the Divine will, but to the normal working of a 
 universal and irresistible law. 
 
 But, at this point, we must stop a httle to define what is meant 
 by the science of rehgions. Science, in this sense, has so far 
 departed from its strict and etymological signification of know- 
 ledge, as to connote exact knowledge based upon ascertained 
 fact, while a science is generally held to mean an organized 
 system in which the largest possible number of related facts 
 are gathered together with reference to one common subject 
 of study. At first sight, it appears that nothing can be more 
 rigidly excluded by this definition than religion, which has 
 been defined as " the efiective desire to be in right relation 
 to the puffier mantfestiffg-itself in '^he^'univefse*:*' — TMsT 
 wEteh'ih some quarters would ~bF'caIIed~TEe^reiigron " of the 
 heart," can never form the subject of study based upon exact 
 knowledge, because the relations between any human being 
 and the power manifesting itself in the universe can be known 
 only, so far as we can see, to that being and to that power. 
 But in the science under consideration, there is no question 
 of religion generally, but of religions, which is a very difEerent 
 thing. By a religion, we generally mean the assembly of 
 beliefs, traditions, and forms of worship which go to make 
 up a faith or cult, and this, as it must, according to the ex- 
 perience of all history, have come into being through the agency 
 of some man or men, should go through the same evolutionary 
 
 ' The definition is that of Ira W. Howerth, International Journal of 
 Ethics, 1903, p. 205. 
 
Introduction, liii 
 
 process as all other human institutions. Hence there is at first 
 sight a considerable probability that all religions whatever will 
 be found on examination to follow the same law of development 
 by the survival of those best fitted to their environment that 
 we have seen operative in the case of animal forms. 
 
 Here, however, the Christian — ^or for that matter, the 
 adherent of any faith which claims to have been founded by 
 a special revelation — finds himself in the presence of a dilemma. 
 His own faith, whether it be Christianity or another, is in his 
 eyes true, as being not the work of man, but of God, and all 
 others are false. How therefore are they to be compared % 
 Is the Jew, who believes the Law to have been delivered to\l 
 his people "among the thunders of Sinai," the Parsi who is I 
 taught the special inspiration of Zoroaster by the " Omniscient! 
 Lord " Ahura Mazda, or the Mohammedan who thinks that*! 
 Mohammed received the Koran from Allah himself, to be 
 told that his faith has developed according to the same laws 
 as that of the Christian, who is convinced that his has no other 
 soiirce than the teaching of the Divine Founder of Christianity? 
 
 To this it may be said that the dilemma is more apparent 
 than real, and is due to a like confusion of thought with 
 that which seized upon many when the evolutionary theory 
 was first promulgated. No argument was then more common 
 than that the Divine creation of the animals, including man, 
 was authoritatively revealed once for aU in the first chapter 
 of Genesis, and that the bare formulation of the idea that man's 
 bodily form had developed by a long process of evolution and 
 selection from those of the lower animals was therefore a 
 blasphemy that could only be uttered by atheistic men of 
 science^. There is no occasion to go here into the tissue of 
 sophistries and misconceptions with which Mr Gladstone, when 
 confronted mth this argument in controversy with M. Albert 
 Reville, one of the founders of the science of religions, and with 
 M. Reville's champion Prof. Huxley, tried to prove that the 
 
 ^ See Tiele, op. cit. vol. i. pp. 5 sqq. The controversies raging round 
 Darwin's theory when first put forward are well summarized by F. W . 
 Hutton in his Darwinism and Lamarclcism, 1899, passim. Cf. Delage and 
 Goldsmith, Les Thirties de revolution, Paris, 1909, pp. 28, 29. 
 
liv Introduction 
 
 assertion of tte doctrine of evolution was to bfe found in the 
 Book of treiiesis. It is sufficient to say that Darwin neve* 
 affirmed that natural selection or the stirvival of the fittest 
 was the cause of the varisition of arftiinal forms, but simply that 
 it was the mode in which that variation, however caused, 
 operated^. In like rUanher, it may be said that the science 
 of religions by no means attempts to discuss the causes which 
 lead to the institution of any particular religio'n, but deals 
 mereljr with the laws underlyihg its development when onCe 
 instituted. The Christian religion, like thbse of Moses, Zoro- 
 astei, and Mohammed, however Divine its origin, was, like 
 them, pfopagd.ted by men who fdtlnded the Church, handed 
 on the traditions, and gave form to the ceremonies. Is there, 
 therefore, any reason why the same law of development should 
 not apply to this as well as to its rivals ? 
 
 That the answer to this must be in the negative is at last 
 beginning to be generally admitted. Prof. Tiele, writing in 
 l8S7, wds bbliged to confess that " the new science of religions 
 was in many quarters regarded with suspicion^," but Dr Jevons, 
 \^hen lecturing at Hartford in 1908, was able to say that " the 
 time has happily gone by when the mere idea 6f comparing 
 Christianity with any other religidn would have been rejected 
 with horror as treasonous and treacheroiis*." Yet it may be 
 doubted whether the clouds have rolled completely away, and 
 it is fairly certain that the many learned and able Catholic 
 priests who have done so much to elucidate the origins and 
 tendencies of ancient religions other than their own have 
 until lately avoided the discussion of their relations with the 
 earliest forms of Christianity. This is the more to be regretted, 
 because they are in many cases peculiarly fitted for the inves- 
 tigation, and their acquaintance with the extra-Canonical 
 christian writers before Constantine, hitherto much neglected 
 by Protestant theologians, would make their conclusions upon 
 it especially valuable. Yet it is along these lines that future 
 
 ^ See Hutton, op. cit. p. 111. 
 " Tiele, op. cit. vol. i. p. 11. 
 
 '^ P. B. Jevons, Introdiiction to the Study of Comparative Bdigion, 1908', 
 p. 18. 
 
Introduction Iv 
 
 inquiry will probably advance ; and if, aa moat of us believe, 
 the Christian religion has outdistanced and survived all its 
 early competitors because it was better fitted than they to 
 its environment, it is of great importance even from the point 
 of view of the most rigid orthodoxy, that we should have a clear 
 conception of what that environment was. Fortunately the 
 gaps in our knowledge have been in great measure filled by the 
 work of Continental scholars outside the pale of the Catholic 
 Church, who have been indefatigable of late years in dis- 
 covering documents, editing texts, and publishing monuments 
 which throw great light on the history of the religions which 
 at the outset competed with Christianity for the favour of 
 the Graeco-Eoman world. A summary of these labours is 
 one of the objects aimed at in the following pages. 
 
 If, now, we attempt to examine what these competitors 
 were, we find at the outset that a good number of those which 
 we once thought formidable may be eUminated from the list. 
 Judaism, for instance, although the matrix in which Chris- 
 tianity was formed, was never at any time in effective rivalry 
 with it. The words of the Gospel as to the Pharisees com- 
 passing sea and land to make one proselyte have misled the 
 unwary into supposing that the number of Jewish proselytes 
 was at one time or another large^ ; but it must be remembered 
 that it was the Sadducees an d not the P liajisee fi who were the 
 dominant party in the Jewish State, and that these last formed 
 but a very small part of the total population of Judaea^. The 
 Sadducees from their Hellenizing tendencies were much more < 
 likely to go over to the faith of the Gentiles than to make any 
 great effort for their conversion, and both they and the Bssenes, 
 who formed in Josephus' day the third party among the Jews, 
 
 1 Like the late Dean Stanley, who in his Lectures on the History of the 
 Jewish Church, talked about the synagogue of the Jewish settlement in 
 Rome under the first Emperors " fascinating the proud Roman nobles by 
 the glimpse it gave of a better world " (vol. m. p. 410). 
 
 ^ According to Josephus (Antiq. xvm. i. 3, 4) they did not amount 
 to more than 6000 men distributed throughout the whole of Palestine. 
 Morrison thinks that " the Pharisaic party had no attraction for the great 
 bulk of the population," The Jews under Roman Rule, 1890, p. 307. 
 
It! Introduction 
 
 were too much set on procitring, by different means, the temporal 
 supremacy of Israel, to care much about admitting any proselyte 
 to share in it^. Although a few undistinguished persons of 
 Gentile blood may have become converts to Judaism between 
 the birth of Christ and the fall of the Temple, their number 
 can never have been at any time important ; and after 69 a.d., 
 the furious hostihty that arose between Jew and Gentile made 
 any further conversions to the Jewish faith practically impos- 
 sible. Never, so far as we know, did Judaism aim at becoming, 
 and certainly never had the sHghtest chance of appearing 
 as, a world-rehgion. 
 
 Not less hopeless, in this respect, was the case of the Graeco- 
 Roman pantheon. The late Mr Long's picture of " Diana or 
 Christ," representing a young woman called upon by a sympa- 
 thetic Roman magistrate to choose between sacrificing to 
 the statue of the many-breasted Artemis of Ephesus and 
 condemnation to death as a Christian, attained great popu- 
 larity in its day, and shows with fair clearness the view of 
 the relations between Paganism and early Christianity supposed 
 at the end of the last century to have been current in the 
 first. Yet hardly anything could give a falser idea of the 
 rehgious history of the period. The officials of the Roman 
 Empire in time of persecution sought to force the Christians 
 to sacrifice, not to any of the heathen gods, but to the Genius 
 of the Emperor and the Fortune of the City of Rome ; and 
 at all times the Christians' refusal was looked upon not as a 
 religious but as a political offence^. For the rest, the worship 
 of the Olympian gods had, when Christianity came to the 
 surface, almost entirely died out, and both Greek and Latin 
 writers bear witness to the contempt with which it was re- 
 garded by both races at the beginning of our era. Cicero, 
 while admitting that the world is governed by the providence 
 of the gods, rejects all the myths attached to them as impious, 
 and declares that the " Deity who is diffused in every part 
 of Nature " appears as the earth imder the name of Ceres, 
 
 1 See Chap. V infra. 
 
 ^ See Neander, General Hist, of the Christian Religion and Church, 
 Eng. ed. 1853, vol. I. p. 126. 
 
Introduction Ivii 
 
 as the sea under that of Neptune, and so on^. Plutarch, 
 too, is plainly a monotheist, who worships " the one eternal, 
 passionless Spirit far removed from the world of chance and 
 change and earthly soilure " of Greek philosophy ^ ; and, while 
 lamenting the decay of faith which has led to the cessation of 
 oracles, thinks that all the manifestations of the Divine pro- 
 vidence are the work of no great deity, but of a crowd of inferior 
 powers or demons who are hardly in a greater superiority of 
 position to man than the fairies of our childhood^. Whatever 
 rivalry the Chri stianjChurch_had,-tQ- face in its ,ia-f a*iSyi -It JiiicT 
 nonfi-to-ffiaiT irnni.the_ da;^es j^^ljmgua^-. - 
 
 It has beeii _SMdJiowever. and to a certain extent accepted, 
 
 tM JteJst.®*f°S^SL3f-is*i^^-^^ .wEe,,.l£Wely ,^ig,d.^§d Jay 
 thfifpllowers of^e great Greek philosophers. In this there is 
 a certain amount of truth, for the 1^eo-Platonic school did | 
 indeed enter into an alliance with the few remaining wor-| 
 shippers of the Pagan gods which forced them into an attitudes 
 of opposition to Christianity. But this was at a date som4 
 time after the compact with Constantine, and consequentlj 
 later than that within the scope of this book. Nor is it hkely 
 that at an earMer date philosophy and Christianity appealed 
 to the same class of minds, and that they thus entered intq 
 serious competition with each other. As the late Dr Hatcli 
 has said, " the earliest forms of Christianity were not only 
 outside the sphere of Greek philosophy, but they also appealed 
 on the one hand, mainly to the classes which philosophy did 
 not reach, and on the other hand, to a standard which philosophy 
 did not recognize*." Faith, not reason, was the quaUty that 
 the Apostles and their immediate successors sought in their 
 hearers, and Celsus was probably not far wrong when he said 
 
 ^ De Natura Deorum, c. xxvin. The statement is put into the mouth of 
 Balbua whose arguments Cicero declares to have in his opinion " the 
 greater probabUity." See also Athenagoras, Legatio, o. xxn. and 
 Minucius Felix, c. xix. With such interpretations or mythoplasms, 
 Philo of Alexandria was familiar. Cf. V. C. Conybeare, Apology of Apol- 
 lonius, 1894, p. 9. 
 
 ^ DiU, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aureliv,s, 1904, p. 419. 
 
 ' De Iside et Osiride, c. xxv. 
 
 ' Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, p. 124. 
 
Iviii Introduction 
 
 that the rule of admisaion into the infant Church was " Let 
 no educated man enter, no wise man, no prudent man, for 
 Such things we deem evil ; but whoever is ignorant, whoever 
 is unintelligent, whoever is simple, let him come and be wel- 
 come^." To this state of mind the password of the early 
 Christian Communities, Maran atha, is a sufficient key. The 
 confident expectation of the nearness of the Parusia or Second 
 Advent for the primitive Christian overwhelmed all other con- 
 siderations. " The Lord is at hand and His reward " was 
 the one fact that he wished to keep before him. What need 
 to trouble about the Highest Good or the hundred other ques- 
 tions that vexed the souls of the philosophers ? 
 
 The religions competing with Christianity ..whidujxe-irft^ 
 after this elimination may be classed iniib»«e^-Gatfigp.ri£S. Ejjsfc 
 corne the^OrientaJ. re1Rgions_native.^^^^ lying to J^, 
 
 *iQlith.,.aJad_ east -of the Mediterranean and . therefore, jaaaisly 
 outside, the sphere of Hellenic culture until aitgj,the cgnqjieats 
 of AJLexander. These religipnSj. born or .niirturedin,i\aia. Minor, 
 i*ersia, and Egypt, so ,soon as Alexander had carried out his 
 project of the marriage of Europe and Asia, poured westward 
 in a flood which a Roman satirist compared to the Orontes 
 emptying itself into the Tiber, and gained, according to a 
 well-known law in the history of religions, a far greater in- 
 fluence over the minds of men than they had exercised in their 
 native home. Ihe second category comprises the many strange 
 
 J Sects which the lirst-iPatkers-ofthfe Church grouped ~toge.ther 
 undex the generic name of Gnostics. The faith which these 
 
 \ professed was not, as it is sought to show later, one founded 
 on rehgion at all but rather on magic, and had long been present 
 in germ as a sort of heresy or alternative belief underlying 
 the worship of the gods of Olympus. FJQally^^^jgce^ arose 
 the ambitious religion of Manes, which aimed at sweeping 
 in?o~one~vasF¥yntKesis or eclectic church the -three religions 
 
 _of_Zoroasterj Buddha, and Christ, which at the time of its 
 
 , institution divided between them the allegiance of the civilized 
 world. 
 
 Bach of these categories shall be dealt with in turn ; but 
 
 1 Origen, contra Celsw, t. m. c. 44. Cf. Hatch, where last quoted. 
 
Introduction lix 
 
 before doing so, it may be well to say sometMng upon the 
 state of our knowledge concerning theln. Until lately, it was 
 a commonplace of religious history that the Catholic Church 
 had destroyed as far as possible all traces of the religions 
 that she had supplauted, which was picturesquely expressed 
 in the phtase that in her victory she had burned the enemy's 
 camp. That this was her conscious pohcy may be gathered 
 from the advice given by a Pope of the vlith cetitury, to " break 
 the idols and consecrate the tetnples " of the heathen^ ; but 
 of late many relics of the ancient faiths which had before 
 escaped us hsive been disinterred by the care of scholars. 
 During the last century, the lost heresiology of Hippolytus 
 and considerable fragments of works by Gnostic authors were 
 brought to light in circumstances to be described in their place^, 
 while the present decade has not oMy added to our stock of 
 Gilostic fragments, but has revealed to us on the western 
 frontier of China a hoard of Manichaean documents rich beyond 
 our hoJ)e3^- These are tiot only valuable by reason of the 
 informatioli they afford, but give us ground for the belief 
 that, as the interest in such matters becomes more widely 
 spread, many more documehts throwing light upon the subject 
 will appear. 
 
 One Word may be said in conclusion as to the relations 
 of these rival rehgions between themselves. Whoever stlidieS 
 the dociinieiits here described cannot fail to be struck by the 
 fact that certain ideas, phrases, and even words, seem common 
 to theni all. At the time that these documents Were written 
 this similarity excited no remark from the orthodox, as it 
 wias at once disposed of by the theory that these religions 
 were one and all the invention of the Devil, and therefore 
 riatiirally bore traces of their common origin. This explana- 
 tion, however convenient, does not satisfy the demands of 
 
 ^ Of. Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, 1899, 
 p. 38, n. 4. See also the edict of Constantine quoted in the concluding 
 chapter, infra. The steps which led up to the policy are well summarized 
 by Walter Johnson, Byways of British Archaeology, 1912, p. 25. 
 
 2 See Chap. VII infra. 
 
 ' See Chap. XIII infra. 
 
Ix Introduction 
 
 modem criticism, and it is therefore necessary to look further. 
 One way of accounting for the phenomenon is to suppose that 
 many if not all of the analogies noticed are due to the mistakes 
 of scribes and translators, who, when deahng with expressions 
 unfamiliar to them, were naturally inclined to repeat the same 
 phrases over and over again. This, as all know who have 
 had to do with ancient manuscripts, is accountable for much, 
 and it is extremely likely that a monk of the vth or vith cen- 
 tury transcribing an account of the opinions of, for instance, 
 the Ophites who flourished in Phrygia before the birth of Christ 
 at the same time with those of the Manichaeans found in Kome 
 three centuries later, would not hesitate to express views 
 essentially different by the same phrases and even the same 
 words. Add to this the jumble that persons untrained in 
 philology naturally make between names in a foreign language 
 and those of similar sound in their own tongue, coupled with 
 the fixed idea of finding in the traditions of the heathen a 
 confirmation of the historical truth of the Hebrew Scriptures, 
 and you have some explanation of the cause which makes 
 many proper names recur unexpectedly in otherwise unrelated 
 documents. Thus the Armenian bishop, Moses of Chorene, in 
 narrating the story which he says he obtained from Berossus, 
 the Chaldaean historian who wrote at the beginning of our 
 era, says that " Before the building of the Tower of Babel and 
 the multiphcation of tongues among the human race, after 
 the navigation of Xisuthros [i.e. Hasis-adra, the Babylonian 
 Noah] in Armenia, Zervan, Titan, and Japhet were princes of 
 the land. These persons," he adds, " seem to be Shem, Ham, 
 and Japhet^." Zervan is the name given by a late sect of 
 Zoroastrians to the " Boundless Time " whom they placed at 
 the origin of all things, while Titan belongs to the Hellem'c 
 mythology, and Japhet may either be Saturn's brother lapetus, 
 or the patriarch of the Book of Genesis. It is to be conjectured 
 that Berossus did not use these three names in the apposition 
 quoted or probably at all, and we can only guess vainly at 
 the real names which are concealed under those which Moses 
 of Chorene here gives. 
 
 ' Langlois, Collection des Historiens de I'Arminie, Paris, 1868, 1. 1. p, 388. 
 
Introduction Ixi 
 
 But when all allowance is made for mistakes like these, 
 there remains a fund of ideas common to all or many of the 
 religions hereafter treated of, which cannot be explained away 
 by any theory of verbal inaccuracy^. As an instance of this, 
 let us take the notion of an archetypal or heavenly man created 
 ages before the appearance upon earth of terrestrial man, who was 
 nevertheless made in the image and after the Ukeness of his pre- 
 decessor. This idea, as will be shown later, is met with among 
 the Phr^gian^Ophites, where " a Man and a Son of Man " 
 were said to be the origin of all subsequent things, as in the 
 Avestic literature of Persia where Gayomort, the son, according 
 to one story, of the Supreme God Ahura Mazda by his daughter 
 Spenta-armaiti, is made at once the pattern and the source 
 of the whole^ human race. The borrowings of Zoroastrianism 
 from Babylonia were not few, and we might conceive this to 
 be the survival of some old Babylonian tradition, such as 
 that which modern critics beheve to have been the origin of 
 the Creation and Flood stories of Genesis; and this theory 
 is strengthened by the predominant part which this " First 
 Man " plays in Manichaeism, itself a Babylonian faith, where 
 the Turkestan MSS. show him as a sort of intermediary between 
 the gods of light and this earth. But how shall we account 
 for the fact that in one of the earliest documents of the Pistis 
 Sophia, the collection of Gnostic writings hereafter described^, 
 a great angel named Jeu, who is spoken of many times as the 
 " overseer of the light " and the arranger of the Cosmos, is 
 also alluded to as the " First Man," in a way which shows 
 that the writer did not doubt that the allusion would be com- 
 prehended by his readers without further explanation*? The 
 
 1 The late Dr Salmon's theory that writers like Hippolytus may have 
 been taken in by a forger who made one document do duty for many 
 different sects is given in Chap. VII infra, but the arguments in its favour 
 are not conclusive. 
 
 ^ See Chap. X infra. 
 
 3 Sir Gaston Maspero, " Sur TEnn^ade," B.H.R. Jan.-Fev. 1892, p. 8, 
 says that the Egyptians regarded Osiris as the First Man, and J6quier 
 repeats the statement in his lAwe de ce qu'il y a dans rHadks, Paris, 1894, 
 pp. 9-10. Yet there seems no evidence that the Egyptians ever knew him 
 under that name. 
 
Ixii Inirodimtimi 
 
 Pistis Sophia, although doub,tless written in -Greek in the first 
 instance, comes :to us in a .Coptic dress, and the dociiments 
 therein contained show more affinities with the ^Egyptian than 
 with the Persian religion. How therefore can we accoimt for the 
 same idea appearing at almost the same time in countries 
 between the peoples of which there w;as always bitter hostility, 
 and which were separated moreover by the Arabian Desert 
 ,and the whole breadth of Asia Minor ? 
 
 It seems to the present writer that no solution of this a-nd 
 of the numerous other difficulties of which this is but one 
 .example can be profitably suggested, until we know more than 
 we do at present about the origin and dates of Zoroastrianism. 
 Although this religion is still with us,in the beliefs of the modern 
 Parsis, there is none about the origin of which we know less, 
 or concerning the antiquity of which there is greater discre- 
 pancy between ancient and modern writers. Thus, wMle 
 Plutarch, quoting as is generally supposed Theopompos of 
 Chios who flourished in the lyth century B.C., declares that 
 ,2^oroaster himself wrote 5000 years before the Trojan War^, 
 .modern writers of authority, like Prof. Williams Jackson and 
 Mdlle Menant, are inclined to bring down the date ,of the 
 .eponymous prophet or reformer of the Persian religion to 
 700 B.c.^ The discrepancy is too great to be bridged over 
 by any compromise, and the question has been further com- 
 ,plicated by the discovery a few years ago of inscriptions which 
 show that IVIithras, the Persian god whose worship formed 
 the most dangerous rival to that of the Christian Church 
 immediately before its alliance with Constantine, was one of 
 the most exalted deities of the presumably Aryan Hittites or 
 Mitannians at a date not later than 1272 B.C.* Signs are 
 
 ^ De Is. et Os. o. XLVi. 
 
 ^ See (Mdlle) D. Menant, " Parsis et Parsisme," Conjdrences au Mus^e 
 Quimet, 1904, and Prof. Williams Jackson as there quoted. The same date 
 ia accepted with some hesitation by Prof. Hope Moulton in his Early 
 Zoroastrianism (Hibbert 'Lectures), 1913, pp. 17 sqq. 
 
 ^ See H. G. Jacobi, " The Antiquity of Vedic Cultvire," Journal of the 
 Soyal Asiatic Society, 1909, pp. 720 sqq., where the texts reUed upon are 
 given and discussed. The correspondence which followed upon this paper 
 (see J.B.A.S. 1909, 1910) is full of interest. Fossey, "Les Fouilles 
 
Introduction Ixiii 
 
 not wanting that discovery in the near future may take this 
 line of advance, and if it should turn out that the religion which 
 Zoroaster reformed was established in Northern Mesopotamia 
 before the Homeric age, we may have to reconstruct all our 
 ideas of the origin of the Greek religion. There seems no 
 use therefore in dilating upon hypotheses which the course 
 of research may in a very few years prove to be entirely 
 erroneous 1. 
 
 In the meantime, the thing of immediate importance seems 
 to be to get the documentary evidence already at our disposal 
 as far as possible before the public, and this is attempted in 
 the pages which follow. The different religions are there 
 arranged in the chronological order of their greatest activity 
 in the West with the belief that this course will prove most 
 convenient to the reader. 
 
 Allemandes a Boghaz-Keui," Journal des Savans, July, 1909, p. 316, 
 would make the date of the inscription about 1900 b.o. 
 
 ^ After this was in print, there came to hand Mr Stephen Langdon's 
 translation of the Sumerian tablet from Nippur found by him at 
 Philadelphia, which narrates in a new and modified form the earliest 
 Babylonian legend of the Creation. Prom this it appears that the 
 goddess Nin-harsag, either on her own account or as the agent of the 
 god En-ki or Ea, " created two creatures with heads, feet, and face as a 
 model for mankind." See Mr Langdon's Preliminary Note in the Pro- 
 ceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1914, p. 196, n. 23. A fuU 
 transUteration and translation is promised later in the P. S. B. A. If 
 Mr Langdon's reading of the tablet is accepted, this may well prove to 
 be the origin of all the " First Man " legends mentioned on p. Ixi, attpra. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE CONQUESTS OF ALEXANDEE 
 
 A GLANCE at the map of Asia at the coming of Alexander will 
 convince us that all but a corner of the world known to the 
 ancients was then ruled by a single power. The Persian Empire, 
 sprawling like a huge octopus over the centre of the continent, 
 dominated it from its four capitals at the head of the Persian 
 Gulf, and stretched without a break from the Caspian Sea to 
 the Indian Ocean. In its eastern provinces were comprised 
 what is now Russian Turkestan from Krasnovodsk to Kashgar, 
 with the Khanates and the Pamirs, all Afghanistan, Seistan, 
 Baluchistan, the North- West Province, and part of the Punjab. 
 On the western side of the Great Central Desert came the coun- 
 tries which we now call Persia and Turkey in Asia containing 
 in themselves a territory half the size of the Continent of Europe, 
 together with the rich province to the south of the Caucasus 
 which has lately passed into the grip of Russia. From here one 
 long tentacle had stretched across the Sinaitic Peninsula and had 
 seized Egypt ; and, although another had shrunk back hurt from 
 its attack on Greece, it yet held positions on the Bosphorus and 
 the Hellespont which formed a standing menace that the raid 
 might be repeated. Apart from the Greek States which, as has 
 been well said, the Great King found easier to control through 
 their own venal orators than to conquer by his soldiers, there 
 remained outside his sway only the trading republic of Carthage 
 and the Italian cities just rising into prominence. Travellers' 
 tales, more than usually improbable and untrustworthy, were, 
 indeed, told of great coimtries swarming with men and fabulous 
 monsters lying beyond the African and Indian deserts on the 
 
 L. 1 
 
2 The Conquests of Alexander [ch. 
 
 southern, and the great ranges of mountains on the eastern, 
 frontier of the Empire^ ; but these gave as little concern to 
 its rulers as did the fringe of barbarian tribes, Cimmerians, 
 Hyperboreans, Gauls, and Scyths, who filled up the space 
 between the civilized world and the imaginary ring of waters 
 which was called the Outer Ocean. 
 
 That this vast dominion should be loosely compacted was 
 of the nature of things. The twenty or more provinces into 
 which it was divided enjoyed a large measure of self-government, 
 and had preserved, for the most part, their native laws and 
 customs unaltered. Each of these divisions was ruled by a 
 satrap who, like a Chinese viceroy, was allowed to maintain 
 armies and even fleets of his own. But a check, imperfect no 
 doubt but still existent, was exercised over his proceedings by 
 the presence of a Eoyal Secretary in each satrapy, whose busi- 
 ness it was to supervise the accounts, and to send up regular 
 reports to the capital of the doings, of his coadjutor^, while the 
 troops were under the command of a general appointed directly 
 by the Crown. From time to time, also, a Eoyal Commissioner 
 called the King's Bye visited the province with a strong guard 
 to hear complaints and to see that all was in order^. The satrap, 
 too, only held bis post during his master's pleasure, and was 
 liable at any moment to be removed to another province, de- 
 graded, or put to death, on the strength of a simple letter bearing 
 the Eoyal Seal ; and the tribute which each satrapy had to pay 
 to the Great King being settled at a fixed and known amount, 
 there was less chance than under some similar systems of devo- 
 lution that the satrap might squeeze out of bis subjects a sum 
 
 1 Such as the Arimaspi or one-eyed inhabitants of Russia, about whom 
 Herodotus (Bk ra. c. 116) quotes the legend that they stole gold from its 
 griffin guardians, and those myrmeces or great ants whom Megasthenes 
 (Strabo, Bk xv. c. 1, § 44) and other writers describe as digging for gold 
 on the Thibetan frontier — a story of which more than one rationalistic 
 explanation has been suggested. 
 
 " RawUnson's Herodotus (1862 edition), n. p. 462 for authorities. 
 
 ' Maspero, Histoire ancienne des Peuplea de POnent, Paris, 1904, p. 706. 
 Rawlinson, op. cit. p. 463, thinks this practice lapsed early, but Xenophon 
 seems clear that it was in force in his time (Cyropaedia, Bk vin. o. 6). 
 
i] The Conquests of Alexander 3 
 
 far greater than that which he transmitted to the Treasury^. 
 Above all, the Persians were of Aryan stock, and early showed 
 signs of the talent for governing older races which seems to have 
 stuck to the Aryans throughout their history. They made 
 excellent roads, and established swift running posts that did 
 much to make communication easy between the most important 
 parts of their empire ; while, as the satraps' standing armies 
 were composed either of native Persians or hired mercenaries, 
 the subject populations had an opportunity, rare enough in the 
 ancient world, of peacefully developing their internal resources 
 without constant fear of disturbance by foreign enemies, or 
 forced participation in wars of aggression^. It was only when 
 the word went forth from Babylon or Susa, Ecbatana or Perse- 
 polis, for the calling-out of the Ban of the whole Empire that the 
 other than Persian subject of Artaxerxes or Darius had to join 
 the levy of his satrapy, and, on orders given to him through an 
 interpreter, to assist the Great King in crushing some rebellious 
 satrap or repelling foreign invasion. At other times, he must 
 have known him only as a kind of divinity, having power to 
 throw down and to set up, to whom he might cry, not always in 
 vain, against the oppression of his own immediate ruler. Those 
 writers are no doubt justified who say that the government 
 of the Persian Empire was to the humbler classes of Asiatics 
 a great improvement upon any that had preceded it', and that 
 the rule of the Great King never awoke the fierce resentment 
 in its subjects aroused by the tyranny of the Semitic Assyrians, 
 or of the Chaldeans who were, in great part, of Mongoloid blood*. 
 
 ^ He was probably allowed a reasonable sum for the maintenance of 
 his court and government ; but if he exceeded this, was liable to severe 
 punishment. This appears from the execution by Alexander, on his 
 return from India, of the satraps who had been guilty of extortion. He 
 seems to have purposely preserved the Persian laws and customs on this 
 point imaltered. 
 
 2 This is the opinion of Rawlinson, op. cit. pp. 460 sqq. 
 
 3 Rawlinson, op. cit. p. 464 ; Winwood Reads, Martyrdom of Man, 
 1910, p. 56 ; Sayce, Arment Empires of the East, 1884, pp. 250, 251 ; 
 Maspero, op. cit. p. 721. 
 
 * Oppert, Le Pewple et la Langue des Mides, Paris, pp. 17 sqq. ; Maspero, 
 op. cit. p. 559, n. 11. 
 
 1—2 
 
4 Tlie Conquests of Alexander [ch. 
 
 It was doubtless the memory of this golden age, glorified as 
 remembrances generally are by the lapse of centuries, that 
 brought about the reaction to the Persian form of government 
 and culture which we shall have to discuss later in the countries 
 bled white by the Roman proconsuls. 
 
 Throughout this vast realm, Alexander's coming brought 
 about a change such as the civilized world has never seen before 
 or since. Among the world-conquerors who have been hailed 
 as heroes in after times, Alexander — surely the greatest indi- 
 vidual known to history — stands distinguished by the loftiness 
 of his aims and the swiftness with which they were attained. 
 It is wonderful that a boy of twenty with an army that cannot 
 have exceeded 50,000 men all told should succeed in overcoming 
 practically the whole of Asia in less time than it took the British 
 Empire with the third of a million to break down the armed resis- 
 tance of a few thousand Boers. More wonderful is it that he 
 should a little later contrive to transport a force of about 100,000, 
 comprising infantry, cavalry and artillery, over the three 
 thousand miles that separate Macedonia from Karachi, at the 
 same time preserving such perfect communication with his base 
 that he seems never to have remained for long without letters 
 from Europe, while the stream of recruits that reached him from 
 the same source must have been continuous and unchecked^. 
 Such a feat which, with all the aid which steam and electricity 
 can give us, would still tax to the utmost the powers of our 
 greatest modern generals, becomes almost miraculous when we 
 think that the greater part of his line of communications must 
 have lain through recently subjugated lands, and that his own 
 
 ^ Sir Thomas Holdich, in his excellent book The Oates of India (p. 104), 
 8aya that when he defeated the Aspasians or Yusuf zai in the Knner Valley 
 he sent the pick of their cattle back to Macedonia to improve the native 
 breed. Arrian, Anabasis, Bk iv. c. 25, however, in quoting the story from 
 Ptolemy, says only that Alexander " wished to send them " to tUl the soil. 
 It seems impossible that they could have survived the journey before the 
 days of steamships. StiU more incredible is the story in Plutarch, Life of 
 Alexander, c. L. that when Alexander was at Prophthasia (probably Forrah 
 in Seistan), he received some grapes grown on the coast of Greece. But 
 such stories, although coloured by age, may serve to show how perfect his 
 communications were always thought to have been. 
 
i] The Conquests af Alexander 5 
 
 advance led him into countries unmapped and known only to 
 him by the half fabulous tales of his enemies^. But the most 
 astonishing thing about these exploits is that they were all 
 performed with the conscious aim of making Asia Greek^, and 
 in this respect, as in all others, they were both original and 
 successful. Everywhere that Alexander passed, he left behind 
 him cities peopled by a mixture of his own veterans, of those 
 camp followers which, then as now, have always stuck to a 
 European army on the march, and of natives of the country 
 either found on the spot or drawn from some other part of Asia ; 
 and the permanence of these foundations still bears witness 
 to the foreseeing eye of their founder. Alexandria in Egypt, 
 Candahar, Secunderabad, all preserve to this day the memory 
 of his royal name, and the continued importance of Khojend, 
 Samarcand, Herat, Merv, and Cabul out of the many other 
 Alexandrias that he established on his conquering way show 
 that his statesmanlike perception of the chief markets of the 
 East was as sure as his strategical insight*. Nor did he neglect 
 other means of carrying out the great design that he had at 
 heart. In the great feast at Susa, which he celebrated on his 
 return from India, the " marriage of Europe and Asia," which 
 had always formed his guiding idea, took visible shape. He 
 had already wedded — it is said for love — the beautiful Roxana, 
 a princess from Bactria in the Eastern (or Upper) Provinces 
 
 ^ Holdich, op. cit. passim, says that he must have had information 
 from Persian sources, and that his route must have been laid beforehand. 
 Sir Thomas' opinion, as that of a soldier as well as a student, is entitled to 
 much respect. Yet the instances of Genghiz Khan and other Oriental 
 invaders are perhaps against any such necessity. 
 
 ^ Freeman, Historical Essays, 1873, second series, pp. 192, 193. 
 
 ^ Khojend was probably Alexandria eschata or the fiui;hest (East). 
 Samarcand, of which the ancient name was Maraoanda, is said by Baber 
 to be a foundation of Alexander's. Herat was Alexandria Ariana, and Merv 
 probably Alexandria Margiana, while Cabul seems to have been Ortospana. 
 Among the other Alexandrias which have retained their old importance 
 are Alexandria Arachosiana or Candahar, Alexandria Caucasiana or Begram, 
 and Alexandria Sogdiana or Hyderabad. See J. W. McOrindle, Invcmon 
 of India by Alexander the Great, 1896, pp. 36 sqq., and Droysen, HisUnre de 
 VHelUnisme, (French edition), Paris, 1883, i. pp. 408 sqq. 
 
6 The Conquests of Alexander [oh. 
 
 of his new Empire^, and now he took as a second consort Statira, 
 the daughter of Darius, who, as the scion of the last native king 
 of Persia, may be taken as the representative of its western 
 centre. Nearly a hundred of his superior officers and some ten 
 thousand of his humbler followers hastened to follow his example 
 and to receive Asiatic brides with the rich dowries assigned them 
 by the Conqueror*. Moreover the thirty thousand youthful 
 recruits from his new conquests, whom he had ordered five years 
 before to be trained in the Macedonian discipline and the Greek 
 language, now arrived', and Alexander set to work with his 
 usual energy to difiuse through his European army strong drafts 
 of his Asiatic subjects in order to cement still further the alliance 
 between the two Continents. Had he lived, it would have been 
 a mixed army of Asiatics and Europeans that he would have 
 led the following year to the conquest of the western world*. 
 
 Destiny, however, is, as men would have said in those days, 
 stronger than the immortal gods, and Alexander's early death 
 put an instant stop to all ideas of further conquest. It is idle, 
 until we know the causes of things, to speculate on what might 
 have been ; but it seems probable that if Nearchus' expedition 
 had sailed, the Conqueror's warlike plans would once again have 
 proved to have been perfectly laid, that he would have crushed 
 Carthage as easily as Thebes and Tyre, and that the Italian 
 States would have received the same master as the Bactrians and 
 Indians^. Yet so far as our immediate purpose is concerned, 
 Alexander's work was done once for all, and the policy typified 
 
 ^ Droysen, op. cit. p. 481. 
 
 ^ See last note. The second marriage is dramatically described by 
 Droysen, op. cit. i. pp. 638, 639. Of. Arrian, Arwhasis, Bk vn. c. 4 ; 
 Plutarch, Alexander, c. lxx. 
 
 ' Arrian, op. cit. Bk vn, c. 6 ; Plutarch, Alexander, c. lxxi. Cf. Droysen, 
 op. cit. I. p. 646. 
 
 * Droysen, op. cit. i. p. 660. It was probably the fear of this mixture 
 that caused the quarrel between him and his Macedonians at Opis. See 
 Arrian, op. cit. Bk vn. c. 8 ; Plutarch, Alexander, c. lxxi. 
 
 ' Droysen, op. cit. n. p. 34. MahafEy, Alexander's Empire, 1887, p. 38, 
 thinks that the Romans could never have withstood Alexander's cavalry 
 and siege artillery, although he notes that Livy patriotically decided other- 
 
i] The Conquests of Alexander 7 
 
 as the marriage of Europe and Asia was perhaps as well served 
 by his death as by his life. During Persian times, the Court of 
 the Great King had always proved a magnet drawing to itself 
 with irresistible force the ever-restless Greeks, and the road to 
 Susa was trodden in turn by politicians like Alcibiades, leaders 
 of mercenaries like Xenophon, and Greek philosophers, artists, 
 and courtezans innumerable. The traffic in mercenaries alone 
 must have been enormous when we find Greek troops forming 
 the stiffening of those huge armies of Darius which Alexander 
 overthrew at the Granicus, Issus, and Arbela^; while as for 
 the other sex, Themistocles, when turning his back on his own 
 country, could find no better or safer mode of approaching the 
 Persian Court than in a closed litter supposed to be conveying 
 a Greek woman to the harem of the Great King*. But when the 
 century-long wars for the succession to Alexander broke out 
 upon his death, there straightway appeared five courts where 
 before there had been but one, and these were now ruled over by 
 Greek and not by Persian kings. Mercenaries of all kinds were 
 in TiTgent demand in every one of them, while the setting free 
 of the millions in bullion and specie found by Alexander in the 
 Persian capitals caused an outbreak of luxury like that which 
 followed in Germany the pajrment of the French milliards. 
 Soon every Greek who had strength, beauty, or talents to sell 
 was on foot to seek his or her fortune in Asia, and with them 
 went everywhere the petty Greek trader, as enterprising and 
 as fearless in pursuit of gain as those countrymen of his whose 
 booths Lord Kitchener saw set up on the field of Omdurman 
 before the rout of the Mahdists was complete, and whose 
 locandas still greet one in the smallest villages on the Nile. 
 The stream of fortune-hunters, now in full flood, quickly over- 
 flowed from the ancient capitals to the numerous Antigonias, 
 Antiochias, Lysimachias, Nicomedias, and Seleucias which the 
 new kings everywhere founded in imitation of their dead master, 
 and even the most distant provinces began to receive their 
 
 1 Droysen, op. cit. i, pp. 186, 240, 333. There were 30,000 Greek 
 mercenaries fighting on the side of Darius at Issus, and 4000 of these 
 remained faithful till his death. Ihid. i. p. 368. 
 
 ^ Plutarch, Themistocles, c. xxvi. 
 
8 The Conquests of Alexander [oh. 
 
 quota of Greek citizens and Greek culture. As has happened 
 more than once in history, Asia woke suddenly from her sleep, 
 and acquired a veneer of foreign manners in hardly longer time 
 than it has taken Japan in our own days to adopt European 
 armaments, teaching and dress. When the Parthians overcame 
 Crassus, the Roman captives found the barbarian victors 
 amusing themselves with the plays of Euripides^ ; while the 
 Bactrian and Indian provinces, which the rise of the Parthian 
 power cut off from the western part of Alexander's Empire, 
 conceived such a taste for Greek art that the statues of Buddha 
 with which their capitals were afterwards decorated were carved 
 according to Greek instead of Hindu canons 2. The so-called 
 Indo-Greek kings of these parts, the Euthydemi, Diodoti, and 
 Eucratidae, of whom we know hardly more than the names, 
 no-'more thought of using other than Greek designs and in- 
 iscriptions for their coins than did the rulers of Pergamum or 
 Antioch^- The generation that had seen Alexander face to 
 face was hardly in its grave before the marriage of Europe and 
 Asia had become a very real and pregnant fact. 
 
 The importance of this for the history of religions can 
 hardly be exaggerated. Greek was spoken everywhere through- 
 out Asia, and for the first time in the world's history the 
 inhabitants of the civilized part of the earth had a common 
 tongue in which they could communicate their ideas to each 
 other. No doubt the language spoken by the offspring of 
 
 ' Plutarch, Crassus, c. xxxin. The play acted was the Bacchae, and 
 a Greek tragic actor, one Jason of Tralles, had been imported for the 
 principal part. In the essay De Alex, fortitudine, i. c. 5, Plutarch says 
 that no sooner had Alexander subdued Asia than Homer became a favourite 
 reading-book, and Persian, Susianan, and Gedrosian boys learned to chant 
 the. tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides. 
 
 ^ Droysen, op. eit. m. pp. 244, 255. 
 
 ^ Sylvain L6vi, "Bouddhisme et les Grecs," Revue de misloire des 
 Religions, 1891, p. 2 ; Percy Gardner, Catalogue of Bactrian and Indian 
 Coins in British Museum. Arts other than the plastic also received 
 attention. Amitrochates, son of the famous Chandragupta or Sandra- 
 cottus, wrote to Antioohus (Soter ?) to buy him some sweet wine, 
 dried figs, and a sophist. He received the other commodities, but was 
 told that it was not lawful to sell sophists in Greece. See Athenaeus, 
 Deipnosophistae, Bk xrv. u. 67 quoting Hegesander. 
 
i] The Conquests of Alexander 9 
 
 Greek colonists and their native spouses was not the tongue 
 of Sophocles or of Demosthenes any more than it was " the 
 strong-winged music of Homer " ; hutjtwas a better medium 
 f or th e transmission of metaphysical theories*tEan"TFeTounder 
 oFan^^^worKFrBligToir-hasrevSf had a£ his disposal before .or 
 ^srnce. The mlssTonaries whom modern nations send into the 
 distant parts of the earth for the propagation of the Christian 
 faith find one of their worst difficulties in the impossibility of 
 rendering its doctrines into the languages of peoples at another 
 stage of culture from themselves ; but no such barrier between 
 teacher and taught existed in the empire created by Alexander's 
 genius. The result of this possibility of intercommunication of 
 ideas was at once apparent. Anxious to show that they too 
 had a pedigree, the older nations of the world seized the 
 opportunity to inform their new masters of their own history 
 and traditions ; and, as all history was in those days sacred 
 history, they thus introduced to the Greeks their gods and 
 their beliefs as to the divine governance of the world. The 
 sacred books of the Chaldeans, of the Egyptians, of the 
 Jews, and no doubt of many other peoples whose records 
 are now lost to us, were translated into Greek ; and thus the 
 science of the history of religions was born. Writers like 
 Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch are still our chief guides for the 
 religions of the earliest populated parts of the ancient world ; 
 but how could these compilers have handed down to us the 
 traditions they have preserved save for writers like Berossus, 
 Manetho, and Philo of Byblus, who themselves wrote in Greek ? 
 Plutarch tells us that when he spent a year in Rome during the 
 reign of Trajan, he did not find it necessary to learn Latin, his 
 native tongue being apparently understood by everybody. One 
 may wonder how much of the sayings and doings of the Founder 
 of Christianity would have come down to us, had they not been 
 first recorded in the koiv] or lingua franca of the whole East^ 
 There were, however, other ways in which Alexander's con- 
 quests prepared the way for a religion which could make appeal 
 
 ^ Droysen, op. cit. m. p. 66. Cf. the Omnis Oriens loquitur of St Jerome 
 Prol. ad Episl. ad Oalatas ; and Deissmann, New Light on the New Testamen t 
 (English edition), 1907, p. 30. 
 
10 The Conquests oj^ Alexander [ch. 
 
 to men of every nation and language. Nothing is more difficult 
 for those brought up in a monotheistic faith, with its inbred 
 contempt for the worshippers of many gods, than to realize how 
 the ancients regarded the Divine. The peoples of classical anti- 
 quity seem to have everywhere believed in the gods of their 
 neighbours as absolutely as they did in their own, for they 
 imagined that their deities had, like men, only a limited sphere 
 of action, or, to put it scientifically, were subject to the same 
 conditions of space as their worshippers. Thus, the Syrians 
 thought that Yahweh of Israel was a mountain god, who could 
 not help his people when fighting in the plains^, and the Phi- 
 listines believed that the ark in which he lived would bring 
 prosperity or disaster to the place in which it happened to be 
 for the time being ^. This is almost an exact parallel to the 
 tale of the prince of Bactria, whose daughter was freed from 
 demoniacal possession by an image of the Egyptian god Khonsu 
 sent into Asia ad hoc, whereupon he decided that it would be 
 wise to keep so powerful a god in his own country, and did so 
 until frightened by a dream into sending the statue back®. 
 But such ideas, however natural they may be to isolated or 
 backward peoples, soon lost their hold upon the acute and 
 logical Greeks^, when, they cams i3lto.-.Kt mtact with ciyi Uzed 
 nations having pantheons diiiering wid©ly.-4Ecmi_tii,dr_own. 
 The phibsAjili&rs,Jndeed^ by ,diat of hard -.reason ing on the 
 subject, had formed before the time of AlexaaAeg a o oaoopt icm^ 
 of the Supreme Being which does not differ, jma.teri. ally from 
 that of the educated Christian of the present day. " Loyal," 
 says Pater, " to the ancient beliefs, the ancient usages, of the 
 religions of many gods which he had found all around him, 
 SftCiratfis^ -pierces through it to one unmistakable Person, of 
 perfect intelligence, power, and goodness who takes note of 
 him* " ; and the same thing might be said with even greaier 
 certainty of the deductions of Aristotle^, whose declared 
 
 1 1 Kings XX. 23. ^ 1 Sam. iv. 6, 7. 
 
 ^ Maspero, "La Fille du Prince de Bakhtan " in Conies Populaires de 
 VAncienne Sgypte, Paris, p. 159. 
 
 * Pater, Plato and Platonism, 1901, pp. 85, 86. 
 ' Aristotle, Metaphysica, Bk xi. o. 6. 
 
i] The Conquests of Alexander 11 
 
 ^aono theism caused hi m to be adopted in the Middle Ages as one 
 ofJheJDoctorsjii tha^ChiffcE But there is no reason to believe 
 that such lofty conceptions ever influenced in the slightest the 
 beliefs of the common people, who alone count for anything in 
 the evolution of the organized body of beliefs and practices 
 which we call a religion. Socrates so successfully concealed 
 his opinions in this respect from everybody but Plato, that 
 the clear and practical mind of Xenophon seems to have never 
 seen in him anything but a polytheist^ : and that Aristotle's 
 monotheistic teachings were not intended for the common herd 
 may be judged from the correspondence, whether actual or 
 imaginary, between him and Alexander himself, in which the 
 hero reproaches his former tutor for having published doc- 
 trines which should only be taught by word of mouth, and 
 learns in reply that his metaphysical theories would be unin- 
 telligible save to those whom he had himself instructed in 
 philosophy 2. 
 
 It is evident, therefore, that the great mass of Alexander's 
 subjects, whether Asiatics, Egyptians or Greeks, would require 
 something more than the sublime theorizing of the philosophers 
 before their religious ideas could be turned in the direction of 
 monotheism. Nine hundred years before, Amenhotep IV of 
 Egypt had indeed been led by his adoration of the material 
 sun to put forward a religious reform which had as its principal 
 feature the proclaiming abroad that there was only one God, 
 in whose sight all mankind was equal ; but the sole effect of 
 this premature attempt to elevate the religion of his people 
 was the loss of the external possessions of Egypt, and the post- 
 humous branding of his own memory as that of a criminal. 
 Possibly, too, the Hebrew Psalmists and Prophets had formed 
 a like conception of the Deity when they asserted that among 
 the gods there was none like unto Yahweh^ ; but that this 
 
 ^ Xenophon, Memorabilia, Bk i. o. 1, § 1-5. 
 
 ■^ Plutarch, Alexander, c. vii. 
 
 3 So I'. H. Woods, The Hope of Israel, Edinburgh, 1896, p. 205, where 
 he speaks of the religion of the Prophets and Psalmists, as " giving, on 
 the whole, by far the most perfect and, as compared with other ancient 
 literature, practically a unique example of monotheism." Yet as Winwood 
 
12 The Gmiquests of Alexander [ch. 
 
 idea seldom penetrated to their hearers is plain from their 
 incessant denunciation of these last for " whoring after " other 
 gods. The mere announcement of the unity of God had there- 
 fore in itself an insufficient attraction for the masses, and for 
 the doctrine to be popular they had to be led to it by other 
 ways than those of argument or authority. Now Aristotle 
 noted with his usual shrewdness of observation that the form 
 of religion in a state generally follows with fair closeness that 
 of its temporal government^, so that men will be more inclined 
 to believe in what the Greeks called " monarchy," or the active 
 rule of One First Cause, if they live under a despot or absolute 
 king than if they are members of a democracy. But when 
 did the world either before or after his time see such a bene- 
 ficent and godlike despot as Alexander ? The robber-kings 
 of Assyria had been accustomed to sweep across Western Asia 
 leaving behind them, as they boasted in their inscriptions, a 
 trail of vassal rulers impaled or flayed alive, of burnt cities, 
 and of plundered peoples. The Persians, as has been said, 
 had more idea of the rights of their inferiors, and did not re- 
 gard their subject territories as mere fields for exploitation ; 
 but the life of sensual luxury into which their kings sooner 
 or later subsided had its natural outcome in harem intrigues 
 and assassinations which deprived the central power of a great 
 part of its otherwise effective control over its satraps. But 
 Alexander was in this, as in all other respects, the perfect type 
 of the benevolent master who thinks more of his servants' 
 welfare than of his own personal gratification. Neither his 
 mother Olympias, domineering and masterful as she was, nor 
 his first mistress Barsine the widow of Memnon, nor his wife 
 Bozana of whom he is said to have been enamoured, nor the 
 Persian princess Statira to whom he gave his hand out of policy, 
 could boast that they ever influenced by one hairsbreadth the 
 direction of his sovereign will. As for his justice, the swift 
 
 Reade points out, Solomon must liav^e- thought there were other gods than 
 Yahweh, because he worshipped other gods^ op. cit. supra, p. 201. 
 
 1 Aristotle, PoUtica, Bk r. c. 2, § 7. Cf. Max Muller, Religions of India 
 (Hibbert Lectures), 1880, p. 292. 
 
i] The Conquests of Alexander 13 
 
 punishment that he measured out on his return from India to 
 those of his ofl&cers whom he found guilty of oppression and 
 malversation showed that under his far-seeing eye there would 
 be none of those abuses of delegated power fropi which the 
 satrapial system had suffered under his predecessors i. Modem 
 historians have sometimes called him cruel ; but in political 
 matters severity is often the truest mercy, and the blood that 
 he shed at Thebes and in Bactria probably saved a himdred 
 times the number of lives which unchecked rebellion would 
 have made it necessary to sacrifice ; while the accidental and 
 unpremeditated death of Clitus may well be pardoned to one 
 who found not only his dignity as man but his royal authority 
 wantonly outraged by a friend whom he had distinguished by 
 exceptional marks of kindness. In every other respect his 
 record is stainless. Although opposed at every step of his 
 short career by orators and demagogues who saw in him the 
 only obstacle to their unrestrained plunder of the fatherland, 
 no legend has survived to his dishonour. On the contrary, 
 all that we hear of him shows us for the first time in the world's 
 history a- conqueror who was at the same time a just and wise 
 ruler, merciful to his fallen foe, scorning even in war to take 
 mean advantage^, and chivalrous to the weak to a degree that 
 his age could neither understand nor imitate*. And with all 
 this, he united in his own person those superficial advantages 
 which have always been quick to win for their possessor the 
 devotion of the mob. To a talent for generalship which neither 
 Hannibal, Caesar, nor any modern general has equalled, he 
 joined a personal bravery which often reached the level of 
 recklessness and was always to be found in the forefront of 
 the hottest battle. Whether we see him charging at the head 
 of the Companion cavalry in the three great battles with Darius, 
 pursuing with a handful of his guard the routed Persian army 
 after Arbela, or first over the wall at Mooltan, Alexander is 
 
 ^ Arrian, op. cit. Bk vr. c. 27. 
 
 ' See bis repudiation of the night attack advised at Arbela: ov 
 KkiiTTm TTjv vUriv, " I steal no victory ! " Plutarch, Alexander, o. xxxi. 
 ' Plutarch, op. cit. c. xxL and c. xxx. 
 
14 The Conquests of Alexander [cH. 
 
 always performing these feats of hardihood which in a leader 
 strike more than anything the imagination of his soldiers. Add 
 to this a generosity which made him willing to strip himself of 
 his possessions to enrich his friends, a personal delight in that 
 pomp and pageantry which forms the most direct road to the 
 hearts of the proletariat, and a form, face and figure so dis- 
 tinguished that their one defect was for centuries after imitated 
 by all who wished to be thought models of manly beauty^, and 
 we can no longer wonder that his contemporaries looked upon 
 him as more than human. This wise and provident ruler of 
 the world that he had conquered was at the same time a youth 
 beautiful as Apollo, chivalrous as Bayard, clean as Galahad. 
 Is it surprising that his name alone of all the conquerors of 
 the East has endured through all changes of creed and culture, 
 that the fierce chiefs of the Central Asian tableland still boast 
 of him as their progenitor, and that the whole Mahommedan 
 world still hold him the king of the believing Genii ? No 
 Caesar, Attila, or Genghiz Khan has ever thus impressed the 
 imagination of future ages^. 
 
 Thus Alexander's coming gave an enormous impulse to that 
 monarchical principle of government which from his time on- 
 ward was to reign supreme for nearly two thousand years. 
 Philosophers and sophists hastened to declare that democracy 
 — as was indeed the fact — had proved itself incapable of 
 governing, and that in the rule of one man was to be found the 
 natural order of things and the only security for a well-ordered 
 State*. Every one of the Diadochi or Successors of Alexander 
 
 ^ The wry neck or, in Mr Hogarth's words, " the famous inclination 
 of his beautiful head towards the left shoulder " was imitated by dandies 
 as late as the time of Severus. For authorities see Hogarth, Philip and 
 Alexander of Macedon, 1897, p. 278, n. 2. 
 
 2 Droysen, op. cit. i. p. 218 and p. 479, n. 1. Major P. H. Sykes lately 
 found an inscription in Khorassan to Sulayman Shah who reigned from 
 1667-1694 A.J)., containing the words " His audience-chamber is the Sun ; 
 his Army the Stars ; his authority is like Alexander's," Journal of the 
 Boyal Asiatic Society, 1910, pp. 1152, 1153. 
 
 ^ Bouch6-Leclercq, Hist, des Lagides, Paris, t. I. p. 130, n. 2, points out 
 -that there was hardly a philosopher during the next three centuries who 
 did not write a treatise ne/Di rrjs jSno-iXein?. 
 
i] The Conquests of Alexander 16 
 
 hurried in turn to assume the diadem, and Rome had no sooner 
 contrived to crush her rival republic of Carthage than she too 
 fell imder the sway, first of dictators whose power was ad- 
 mittedly despotic, and then of emperors whose constitutional 
 limitations were about the same as those of Alexander. That 
 this was certain in time to react upon the universal conception 
 of the Divine, followed directly from the law underlying re- 
 ligious phenomena which had been enunciated by Aristotle : 
 but, before this could make way among the Greeks, thus 
 suddenly promoted to the position of the ruling race, it was 
 necessary that their own gods should be assimilated to those 
 of their eastern fellow-subjects, or in other words, should be 
 shown to be the same divinities under different names. Now, 
 a movement with this object, even before Alexander's coming, 
 had been set on foot in Greece itself, and was in fact the natural 
 outcome of the ideas as to the origin and governance of the 
 universe brought there by the philosophers of Ionia ^. It was 
 all very well for the masses — then as now, much given to 
 pragmatism or the reduction of every abstract idea to its most 
 material and practical expression — to believe that the power 
 of every god was limited to an area of so many square feet 
 surrounding his image or sanctuary ; but how could such a 
 notion be held by philosophers who had sought out the causes 
 of things, by travellers who had visited neighbouring countries 
 in pursuit of knowledge, or by soldiers who had fought there, 
 and had found it necessary to pay reverence to gods other 
 than their own ? It is said that in naturalistic religions like 
 those of Greece, there is always a tendency to consider as iden- 
 tical divinities with the same or like characteristics — to consider 
 for instance all gods with solar attributes as but difierent forms 
 of the sun-god — and the Greeks of the fourth century B.C. 
 had thus taken many foreign gods into their pantheon. It 
 was, as Socrates found out to his cost, an offence to bring the 
 worship of new gods into the city ; but the difficulty was got 
 
 ^ A parallel movement seems to have taken place in Babylonia, where 
 all the gods were at one period identified with Marduk or Merodach. See 
 Pinches, " Religious Ideas of the Babylonians," Transactions of the Victoria 
 Institute 1893, p. 10. 
 
16 The Conquests of Alexatider [ch. 
 
 over by the theory that the foreign divinity was only another 
 form of some god already worshipped by the citizens^, and 
 by keeping his cult as private as possible. Later, when the 
 popularity of the new deity seemed to be assured, an oracle of 
 Delphi was generally secured authorizing the adoption of his 
 worship under the name of his nearest Greek analogue, and in 
 this way many foreign worships were brought into Athens 
 itself*. Bendis, the moon-goddess of Thrace, had there from 
 early times a temple or Bendideion^, and the Syrian Adonis 
 was publicly wailed for in the city when Alcibiades was setting 
 out for Sicily*. This, too, was the more natural because the 
 Greeks always acknowledged that their older divinities ori- 
 ginally came to them from foreign parts. The myths in which 
 the traditions of their origins were preserved gave Crete or 
 Asia Minor as the birthplace of Zeus, an island in the Aegean 
 as that of Apollo and Artemis, and the whole scene of the earthly 
 trials of Demeter and Persephone was laid partly in Eleusis and 
 partly in Asia*. As for Africa, Herodotus boldly asserts that 
 the " names " of almost all the gods worshipped by the Greeks 
 came from Egypt*, and, although this is certainly not literally 
 true, it gave him an excuse for identifying all the Egyptian 
 deities of whom he had any knowledge with the Greek divini- 
 ties whom he thought they resembled. But when Alex- 
 ander's conquests had made the different subject nations really 
 acquainted with each other's religion, the process of theocrasia 
 or the fusion of one god with another received an impulse that 
 carried it beyond all bounds'. The divinities of Asia Minor 
 were naturally the first to be taken into the Greek pantheon, 
 especially by the Athenians, always mindful of their Ionian 
 
 ^ Maivry, Histoire des Religions de la Qrloe Antique, Paris, 1857, m. p. 73. 
 
 " Demosthenes, v. Midias, p. 63 ; Herodotus, Bk vn. c. 189. Such 
 gods were called by the peculiar epithet of Trv66xprj<TToi.. See inscription 
 from Smyrna quoted by Rayet, Revue Archdologiqiie, 1877, pp. 115-128. 
 
 ^ Xenophon, Hellenica, Bk n. c. 4. 
 
 * Plutarch, Alcibiades, o. cxvin. Cf. Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 
 11. 387 sqq. 
 
 ' Homeric Hymn to Demeter, passim. 
 
 • Herodotus, Bk n. c. 50. 
 
 ' Droysen, op. cit. i. p. 698. 
 
i] The Conquests of Alexander 17 
 
 kinship ; and the many-breasted goddess of Ephesus, Cybele 
 of Pessinus with her consort Atys or Attis, and the Sidonian 
 Astarte, were all worshipped in Greece after identification 
 with different Greek deities in the manner that had served to 
 naturalize the " Thracian " or Thessalian Dionysos, and the 
 (probably) Egyptian Hermes^- As we shall see later, the 
 Phrygian Sabazius and the Cretan Zagreus had already pre- 
 ceded them in secret, and Persian, Jewish, and perhaps Indian 
 gods were to follow. From Greece, the passion for theocrasia 
 spread both eastward and westward. The Greek kings of 
 Upper India found it necessary to identify on their monuments 
 the gods of their native subjects with the divinities of Homer ^, 
 and those of the Central Provinces and of Asia Minor did the 
 same with such effect that it is almost impossible for us to 
 distinguish their many Artemises, Aphrodites, and different 
 forms of Zeus from the gods worshipped under similar names 
 in ancient Greece^ As for the West, the Romans, even before 
 they became the masters of the world, took over the Greek 
 pantheon en bloc by the simple process of calling their own 
 Itahan deities by Greek names ; and if we still speak of Zeus 
 as Jupiter, Athena as Minerva, Ares as Mars, and Hermes as 
 Mercury, it is by reason of the syncretism brought into fashion 
 by Alexander's conquests. 
 
 Neither must we forget that the deification of Alexander 
 during his lifetime brought an entirely new conception of the 
 Divine into the European world. The divinization of the king 
 was indeed no new thing in Egypt, where the Pharaoh from 
 
 1 See Maury, Bd. de la Orice, t. m. oc. 15, 16. Aristophanes, Horae 
 fragment 1 of Didot, and Aves, 1. 874, is practically the earliest witness 
 for their introduction into Athens. Cf. the Scholiast upon the last 
 passage quoted, for their identification with Greek deities. M. Paul 
 Foucart, Les Associations Rdigieuses chez les Grecs, Paris, 1873, pp. 57 and 
 85, shows the great rush of foreign gods into Attica after the Persian War 
 and the mode in which their worship was propagated. 
 
 2 Percy Gardner, Catalogue of Coins, etc., passim. Goblet d'Alviella, 
 Ce que VInde doit a la Grece, Paris, 1897, p. 73, notes that these coins repro- 
 duce " the usual type of the classical divinities Hercules, Dionysos, Poseidon, 
 Helios, PaUas, Artemis, Nik6." 
 
 ^ Droysen, op. cit. m. p. 73. 
 h. 2 
 
18 The Conquests of Alexmider [CH. 
 
 the earliest times was looked upon after his enthronement as 
 the living form of the sun-god Horus ; but to the religious ideas 
 of the Greeks it was evidently a surprising shock. The dis- 
 tinguishing attribute of a Greek god was his deathlessness or 
 incorruptibility ; and although heroes like Theseus and Heracles 
 were fabled to have become immortal and therefore fit subjects 
 for worship, this was only because they were in the natural way 
 the progeny of the gods themselves, and as such were taken 
 into heaven by their fathers after death and the purging away 
 of their mortal nature^. Alexander, on the other hand, de- 
 manded from the Greeks as from his other subjects divine 
 honours during his life, and these were accorded to him with 
 servile readiness by the governments of Athens and other 
 Greek city-states, the Spartans not excepted^. What he meant 
 exactly by this demand it would be hard to say, because his 
 supposed sonship to Amen on which it was ostensibly based, was, 
 as Sir Gaston Maspero has shown, merely the form by which, 
 on a change of dynasty, the priests of Amen were accustomed 
 to legitimize the accession to the throne of a king who coidd 
 show no right thereto but force*. It is evident, too, that 
 Alexander did not himself take his deification very seriously, 
 since he allowed its propriety to be discussed before him at a 
 wine-party*; and his apologists, Arrian and Plutarch, are pos- 
 sibly well-founded when they declare that it was a mere political 
 device to secure the grudging obedience of his Macedonian 
 countrymen^. But his successors in this matter went far 
 beyond him. Ptolemy and Arsinoe, without any pretence of 
 divine descent, were proclaimed " Saviour-gods " for their Greek 
 as well as for their Egyptian subjects quite apart from any 
 
 1 CaUisthenes appears to have used this argument against the deifica- 
 tion of Alexander during his lifetime, Arrian, Anaha^is, Bk iv. c. 11. Cf. 
 Budge, Psevdo CaUisthenes' History of Alexander the Great, Cambridge, 
 1889, Bk m. c. 19, p. 135 ; Plutarch, Pelopidas, c. xvi. 
 
 2 Droysen, op. cit. i. p. 668. 
 
 8 Maspero, " Comment Alexandre devenait Dieu." Annuaire de I'Ecole 
 des Hautes JStudes, Paris, 1897 ; id. M. iSgyptol. t. vi. pp. 286 sqq. 
 
 * Mr Hogarth, Philip and Alexander, pp. 197 sqq.. rightly points out that 
 he never instituted any cult of himself, as did Demetrius Polioroetes. 
 
 ' Plutarch, Alexander, c. xxvxn ; Arrian, Anabasis, Bk vn. c. 29. 
 
i] The Conquests of Alexmider 19 
 
 identification of themselves witt Horus or any other native deity. 
 Antigonus, when claiming to be the strategos or generalissimo of 
 the whole Empire, was hailed as a god, which drew from the 
 rough old king a repartee more pointed than decent^. So, too, 
 was his son, Demetrius the City Taker, although at the time of 
 his deification he had not even an independent kingdom of his 
 own, but was merely ruling Greece as the viceroy of his father. 
 And the barriers between the Divine and the human being thus 
 broken down, men's minds soon became so familiar with the 
 idea that they not only thought men might become gods, but 
 declared that the gods were only deified men. The Athenians 
 in the hymns that they sang to Demetrius declared that he was 
 the only true god, and that the others were either asleep or too 
 far off to be taken into accoimt, or were not really gods at all ^. 
 But it is not with impunity that the religious ideas of a people 
 can be thus suddenly and violently affronted. Within a few 
 years from Alexander's death, Cassander's friend and envoy 
 Euhemerus put forward, with the aid of a literary fraud some- 
 thing like that of Psalmanazar, the theory that all the gods 
 worshipped by the Greeks had once been kings or at least dis- 
 tinguished men and women upon earth ^ — a doctrine that was 
 received with as much enthusiasm in the Rome of the Eepublic 
 as it once evoked in our own days among the followers of Herbert 
 Spencer*. Later, the Epicure an. jJttJlgsophy.-KJ-th- itajiappy 
 godsneither interfering with norj;aring about the^ doings of 
 mankind][^c^e_JoJJxa-assi«tajicaj)i--tiik..xai,^^ 
 AlthQUghJhs^taijx.p]liloso^iersjn^ their to 
 a mor e lofty idea of thjBjDdtyj itjsfaa. probably Jjotjintil. late 
 KijmantimesJ^at^^they^eyei'Ci^iaed- aajfthing like a grip- 
 33- the people. Whether for good or ill, it is certain that the 
 Greeks after Alexander's death never returned to the simple 
 
 ' Plutarch, de Is. et Os. c. xxiv ; id. AjiopMhegmata Antigon. 7. Of. 
 Droysen, op. cit. n. p. 295. Mr Tarn in his Antigonos Gonatas, Oxford, 1913, 
 p. 251, would transfer the story to his grandson, but his reasoning is not 
 convincing. 
 
 2 Athenaeus, Deipnosoph. Bk vi. c. 62. 
 
 ' Droysen, op. cit. m. p. 22 and note 2. 
 
 * Euhemerus' work was one of the first Greek books to be translated 
 into LatiiL See CScero, De Nat. Deor. c. 42. 
 
 2—2 
 
20 The ConqiLests of Alexander [CH. 
 
 faith in their national gods which had suflS.ced for their fore- 
 fathers. 
 
 This is a point that it is important to remember, because 
 without it, it is hard to understand the passion for innovation 
 in religious matters which seems for the next three centuries 
 to possess unchecked sway over mankind. It appeared as if 
 Alexander, who indeed had made all things new, had set free 
 the gods of the ancient world to wander from one end of his 
 Empire to the other, and the desire to proselytize appears for 
 the first time in the world's history. Buddhism must have been 
 prevalent in India for nearly a century before Alexander ; but 
 when it became the religion of the state in the reign of Asoka, 
 grandson of that Chandragupta or Sandracottus who had talked 
 with Alexander face to face, the Indian king boasted that he 
 had sent out missionaries for the propagation of his new faith 
 to the courts of Antiochus of Syria, Ptolemy of Egypt, Anti- 
 gonus of Macedonia , Magas of Cyrene and Alexander of Epirus^. 
 Whether the Indian missionaries ever reached the kings to 
 whom they were sent may be doubted, and it is certain that 
 these last did not pay the attention to them that Asoka claims ; 
 but it is quite possible that to the impulse given by such mis- 
 sions may be attributed some of the practices of the Jewish 
 sect of the Essenes, and perhaps the monastic seclusion affected 
 by certain worshippers of the Alexandrian god Serapis^. But 
 if Buddhism could thus find its way westward from so distant 
 a coimtry as India, how much more must this have been the 
 case with the other Oriental religions with which the Greeks 
 had already some slight acquaintance, and which, as we shall 
 see in the sequel, poured into Europe in such a flood that 
 Juvenal compared it to the Orontes emptying itself into the 
 Tiber. That the Greeks, ever eager for some new thing, were 
 quick to avail themselves of the new ideas thus thrust upon 
 them was only to be expected. But this rage for novelty was 
 
 1 Droysen, op. cit. in. p. 341, n. 3. Rhys Davids, Buddhist India, 
 1903, p. 298, thinks it possible that the missions although duly recorded 
 on stone were never sent. 
 
 2 See Chapter II infra. 
 
i] The Conquests of Alexander 21 
 
 too violent to be content to follow the slow process of assimi- 
 lation or theocrasia which was prevalent before Alexander. 
 Religious associations for the worship of foreign gods were 
 formed in which we may, if we like, see the first germs of the 
 Christian Church^. In these each member had to pay a sub- 
 scription towards the expenses of the cult, and the ofi&ce- 
 bearers instead of being appointed by the State were either 
 taken from the members in rotation or chosen by lot. 
 That these confraternities, as we should now call them, 
 were at first composed of natives of countries other than Greece 
 is shown by their clustering in the port of the Piraeus as the 
 quarter where foreigners naturally congregated^ ; and their 
 male members for the most part consisted of slaves, freedmen, 
 and stranger merchants, who thus found a meeting-place in 
 what was to them a foreign country. Their worship too was 
 secret or rather was confined to members of the confraternity 
 only, while its correctness of form was preserved by means of 
 written books or rituals, thereby presenting many points of 
 resemblance to that of the later Gnostics. But the super- 
 stitious, and especially the women who were always in Greece 
 much addicted to tJieoxenia or the reception of strange gods, 
 were early attracted by them, and they soon spread to every 
 great city in the Empire. Thus we see for the first time in 
 history bodies of men and women banded together, irrespective 
 of nationality and social rank, for the purpose of religious 
 observances, and religion becoming recognized as the affair of 
 the individual rather than of the state, while each member of 
 the association was directly interested in its extension. In 
 this way, the Greeks became worshippers not only of their own 
 sufficiently numerous deities but of those of well nigh the whole 
 East as well. Their inscriptions show that Persian, Phrygian, 
 and Lydian gods were worshipped by these associations, 
 together with a whole crowd of Semitic deities among whom. 
 
 ^ Poucart, Les Associations Religieuses, etc., pp. 66-84. Cf. Maviry, 
 Rel. de la Qrice, n. p. 427. The composition of hymns was peculiarly the 
 care of these associations ; Foucart, op. cit. p. 114. 
 
 ^ Poucart, op. cit. p. 85. 
 
22 The Conquests of Alexander [ch. 
 
 if M. Cumont is right, there may even have been included the 
 God of IsraeP. 
 
 The influence that these confraternities exercised in 
 familiarizing the minds of the Greek citizens with the re- 
 ligious practices and tenets of foreign countries must have 
 been very great. Every such association had a temple of its 
 own, in which it offered sacrifices to its own particular god. 
 But, after providing for this, the greater part of the subscrip- 
 tions went in providing a periodical banquet at which its 
 members could meet for social intercoiirse, and to which they 
 were no doubt sometimes allowed to bring guests. But at 
 these gatherings, as apparently at all others of the confrater- 
 nity, all were equal, and there were no distinctions of rank. 
 Moreover, in addition to the foreign members for whom the 
 institution was originally designed, they must early have begun 
 to admit Greeks ; and these were generally, though not always, 
 persons who were in the first instance led to them by a leaning 
 to foreign superstitions, and particularly to that orgiastic ritual 
 with which the worship of the Asiatic gods was generally 
 associated in Greek minds. It is noteworthy that among the 
 Greek names inscribed upon the stelae containing the lists of 
 members that have come down to us, those of women are far 
 more numerous than those of men. Yet they seldom seem 
 to have been of the highest class in their own community, 
 and it is difficult to conceive of a Greek matron leaving her 
 gynaeceum to take part with slaves and freedmen in nocturnal 
 feasts or orgies. Among those whom we know otherwise as 
 belonging to these confraternities are Phryne the celebrated 
 courtezan, Tryphera and Aristion, who followed the same 
 manner of life^, and Glaucothea the mother of .ffischines and 
 a perfume-seller, a trade then considered as disreputable as in 
 the reign of Louis XIV *. On the other hand, it seems to follow 
 from what Plutarch says, that King Philip of Macedon first saw 
 
 1 Pranz Cumont, " Hypsistos," Revue de I'lnstruction publique en Bel- 
 gique, 1897, pp. 5-6 ; id. Les Religions Orientales dans le Paganisme 
 Romain, Paris, 1906, p. 155 and note. 
 
 2 Fouoart, Ass. Rel. pp. 135, 136, 158. 
 ^ See Chapter IV infra. 
 
I J The Conquests of Alexander 23 
 
 and loved Olympias, mother of Alexander, at a meeting of one 
 of these confraternities i, and it is possible that outside Greece 
 proper they lost something of their disreputable associations. 
 It must not be supposed, however, that these associations 
 concerned themselves entirely with what we now call religion. 
 The state, in cities like Athens, regarded them with great jea- 
 lousy, and did its best to prevent them from forming a hierarchy 
 by stipulating that their officers should only hold office for a 
 year. This naturally prevented any continuity of policy such 
 as a corporation like the priesthood of Amen could pursue, and 
 set their chiefs upon making hay while the sun shone. Ignorant 
 and degraded as most of their members were, and generally 
 engaged in the pursuit of gain, it is not astonishing that they 
 shotdd thus have lent themselves to the worst and most danger- 
 ous because most profitable superstitions. The priests and 
 especially the priestesses of the confraternities were always 
 ready to lend themselves to the practices of divination and 
 magic, to the sale of love-philtres and poisons^, the interpre- 
 tations of dreams and miraculous cures. To these charlatans 
 came everyone who wanted his or her fortune told, or who 
 wished to get rid of a rival, or to obtain the favour of a dis- 
 dainful lover, or was simply tormented with idle fears or by 
 some bodily disease incurable by regular means. 
 
 "The set of charlatans and market-men who hang about and 
 wait round the altars of the Great Mother and Serapis ; and who 
 manufacture oracles either out of their own heads or by haphazard 
 out of certain books for the benefit of house-slaves and silly women " 
 
 is the contemptuous way in which Plutarch describes these 
 impostors'. Yet even in this way much was doubtless done 
 to spread the knowledge of foreign religions ; for many 
 must have resorted to the foreign temples for magic or 
 divination who would never have thought of joining the 
 association by which they were maintained, and in magic it is 
 
 ^ Plutarch, Alexander, c. n. 
 
 ^ See Toucart, op. cit. p. 158, for the cases of Ninos and Theoris, priest- 
 esses who were condemned for such traffic. 
 ' Plutarch, Pythian Responses, c. xxv. 
 
24 The Conquests of Alexander [ch. 
 
 always the least known gods and those worshipped by the races 
 of lowest culture who are thought to be the most powerful. 
 Moreover, many of these associations in time purified them- 
 selves by a sort of process of elimination from these undesirable 
 accessories, and, so soon as they succeeded in attracting the 
 adhesion of a sufficient number of respectable people, managed 
 to get the god they were formed to worship enrolled among the 
 native deities of the state or city. It was in this way that 
 foreign gods like Serapis and Mithras, from being the divinities 
 of a handful of foreign slaves, merchants or hostages, came, as 
 we shall see, to occupy the highest places in the national 
 worship of the Roman Empire. Thus Lucian tells us the story 
 of the impostor Alexander of Abonoteichos, who with the help 
 of a tame serpent with a cardboard mask gave himself out as 
 the priest of an incarnation of Asklepios the Greek god of 
 healing, and founded an association for its worship in Nicomedia 
 in Bithynia. Later, he persuaded one Rutilianus, a man of 
 consular rank who seems to have had influence at the Court 
 of Marcus Aurelius, to join him in the propagation of his new 
 cult and even to marry his daughter^- But the worship that 
 he thus set up must have afterwards been recognized by the city 
 of Nicomedia, for we find the representation of its god Glycon 
 upon a Nicomedian coin of the time of the Emperor Gordian, 
 the husband of Tranquillina^. 
 
 It was apparently in these associations that the new spirit 
 now manifest in the religion of the ancient world began to take 
 organized shape. Among the Persians and Egyptians the 
 priests were officers of state living on the property of their 
 several corporations, and therefore with a natural leaning, 
 except in the rare cases where their privileges or property 
 were threatened by the Crown, against all innovations and 
 interference with the established order of things. Among 
 the Greeks, both in Hellas itself and in her colonies oversea, 
 the priests with a very few exceptions were chosen from the 
 
 * Lucian, Alexander or Pseudamantis, passim. The story is well sum- 
 marized by Sir Samuel Dill, in Nero to Marcus, pp. 473 sqq. 
 
 " L6on Pivel, " Le Dieu Glycon a Nicom6die," Oazette Archeol. 1879, 
 p, 186. 
 
I J The Conquests of Alexander 25 
 
 native-born citizens at large either for their personal beauty, 
 or for the wealth which enabled them to give in honour of the 
 gods magnificent pageants and other festivals^. In no case 
 did they regard themselves as having any teaching or pastoral 
 mission, and were in no way interested in increasing the number 
 of the worshippers of the god to whose service they were elected 
 for a short term. Hence, their chief preoccupation was to 
 keep strictly to precedent in the celebration of the public acts 
 of worship entrusted to them, and they would have looked with 
 horror on any alteration of the traditional rites. But in the 
 associations founded for the worship of foreign gods, affairs 
 were conducted on utterly different lines. There seems to have 
 been a healthy spirit of emulation among the successive holders 
 of the priestly office, for the vote of thanks inscribed on marble 
 and displayed in the temple for the admiration of the confra- 
 ternity was the distinction most sought after by them, and the 
 deprivation of it was the most serious penalty exacted for dere- 
 liction of duty^. In order to obtain these rewards, it is plain 
 that the officers had to carry out to the full the Apostolic 
 injunction to be all things to all men, and there is actually a 
 case on record where a priestess is praised because during her 
 term of office she has offended nobody. This complaisance 
 seems to have extended itself from the officials to the deities 
 worshipped, who seem often to have been quite willing to 
 fulfil a double office, and to appear as Aphrodite or Astarte 
 to the Syrian and as Cybele to the Phrygian members of the 
 association*. By these means, they made it possible for 
 several nationalities to belong to the same association. 
 
 There was probably, however, a more intellectual side to 
 this spirit of accommodation. All, or nearly all, of these 
 associations celebrated mysteries or sacred dramas based on the 
 same lines as the Eleusinian and setting forth, it would seem, 
 the passion, death, and resurrection of some god. These 
 plays, when we consider the relatively slender number of the 
 
 1 Maury, Rd. de la Griee, u. pp. 418 sqq. Cf. Dollinger, Judenthum und 
 Heidenthum (English edition), I. p. 214. 
 
 2 Foucart, Ass. Eel. pp. 33-35. 
 ' Id. op. eit. pp. 150, 151. 
 
26 The Conquests of Alexander [oh. 
 
 initiates and the limited means at their disposal, must gene- 
 rally have been acted with maimed and abbreviated rites in 
 which a good deal was left to the imagination of the beholder. 
 But this very fact must have set the always curious and inquisi- 
 tive Greeks upon enquiry into the nature and origin of the 
 scenes thus indicated rather than acted, and this in its tarn 
 must have led to many discussions and explanations of the gods 
 there portrayed. For such conversations, too, there must have 
 been far greater opportunities in the case of those thiasi, 
 orgeones, or erani (as these associations were called), where 
 members were few and in the habit of meeting each other daily 
 than with the Eleusinian rites which were celebrated only once 
 or twice a year and then in the presence of a huge crowd 
 dispersed immediately after to the different parts of the Hellenic 
 world. It is hardly putting it too strongly to say that anything 
 like propagandism must have been confined to the smaller 
 societies. 
 
 To sum up^thfia, Alezander . united the whole civilized 
 world for the first,j;ime^ underji^ single h^ad^^ 
 common language and. culture. By the natural gifts of his 
 extraordinary personality, he at the same time set before it a 
 perfect model of kingship and thus ensured the persistence of 
 the monarchical principle for two millenia. This, his con- 
 scious work, had a direct effect on the evolution of monotheism, 
 while in other respects his conquests proved the turning point 
 in the history of religions. By breaking down the barriers 
 which racial and lingual divisions had hitherto set up between 
 different nations of the earth, these conquests led to a great 
 fusion of the religions hitherto professed by them, and thus 
 opened the door to the world-religions which were afterwards 
 to share between them his vast Empire. ,_Befo.r&iis-CQgiing 
 jyesee^j^ ancient J5riiild_4ivided into separate communities 
 gachwitTits own pantheon andi^Otms of worship and neither 
 Ijnowip^ nor Caring^rearfcly al)out those of its nef^boUrs. But 
 iinmediatelx. afterj_all_thi s is change d. The interchange of 
 ideas between East and West has thrown the different religions 
 of the world as it were into a melting-pot, in which the germs 
 of a different grouping of the human race are dimly visible. The 
 
i] The Conquests of Alexander 27 
 
 spirit of proselytism is abroad, and man now wants to impress 
 his own ideas of the Divine upon his fellows. Above all, we 
 see the beginning of those great associations of mankind for 
 religions purposes which are henceforth to be the principal 
 factors in the world's history, and whose evolution has con- 
 tinued unchecked down to the present day. All those that 
 followed Alexander were in this respect nothing more than his 
 conscious or unconscious imitators. The great princes and 
 generals who after his death parted his Empire among them, 
 and the Romans who gradually ate up the fragments left to 
 these princes' effete descendants, could but carry on the work 
 set on foot by the Great Conqueror. As Mr Hogarth has said, 
 very little that he did was ever undone, and for good or 
 ill, he has taken his place among the immortals^- Thus, from 
 the scientific point of view, there is none among the forerunners 
 of Christianity who did more to prepare and make ready its 
 way than Alexander. 
 
 ^ Hogarth, Philip and Alexander, pp. 277, 282. Cf. Bouoh6-Leclercq 
 in Droysen, op. cit. i. p. vii. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE ALEXANDRIAN DIVINITIES 
 
 When Alexander's marshals began immediately after his 
 death to divide his Empire among them, and Ptolemy the son 
 of Lagos claimed and received for his share the province of 
 Egypt, his more ambitious fellows must have smiled at his 
 moderation. Egypt was an acquisition that had never been 
 properly assimilated by the Persians, and although subjugated 
 by Cambyses very early in their history, had more than once 
 broken out into successful rebellion. Its inhabitants, then as 
 now, were a race separated from the rest of the world by 
 peculiarities of climate, devotedly attached to their own tradi- 
 tional institutions, and bitterly and obstinately hostile to the 
 foreigner. Moreover, the enormous resources of the country 
 were undeveloped, the importance of its new capital of 
 Alexandria as the natural entrep6t of trade between East and 
 Wesf- had not then been made manifest, and the agricultural 
 wealth which was afterwards to make Egypt the granary of 
 Europe had been ruined by civil commotions and foreign 
 invasions. Although Alexander was hailed by the Egyptians 
 as a deliverer, and, like other conquerors before and after 
 him, found little difficulty in coming to terms with the 
 colleges of greedy and unpatriotic priests who were ready 
 to welcome any foreign master so long as their own position 
 was assured^, he seems to have felt less interest in the unwarlike 
 and sevvile fellahin than in the free warriors of Bactria and India 
 who had fought so gallantly against him. Hence, he paid little 
 
 ^ Bouch6-Leolercq, Histoire des Lagides, Paris, 1903 etc. 1. 1, p. 121. Dr 
 MahafEy, Empire of the Ptolemies, 1895, p. 11, thinks differently, but the 
 importance of the city to the present day is against him. 
 
 ^ Bouch6-Leclercq, op. cit. t. i. p. 104. Cf, Mahaffy, E.P. p. 4. 
 
CH. ii] The Alexanxdrian Divinities 29 
 
 attention to their government, and Cleomenes, the ruler he had 
 set over Egypt, thus found himself free to practise extortion 
 on a scale which would certainly have brought down upon him 
 the condign vengeance of his master had it taken place further 
 east^. Or perhaps the Great Conqueror, among whose gifts 
 the habit of attending to everything in its turn must certainly 
 be reckoned, thought it well to let all things grow together till 
 the harvest, in the consciousness that the campaign in Arabia, 
 on which he was bent when struck down by the fatal fever, 
 woidd bring him close to the confines of Egypt and therefore 
 in a position to investigate on the spot the complaints against 
 Cleomenes which had already come to his ears. Be this as it 
 may, one of Ptolemy's first acts on reaching his satrapy was to 
 seize Cleomenes and to put him to death, a proceeding which 
 had, we learn, the full approval of his new subjects. This was 
 but the earliest of a long list of benefits which his rule was to 
 confer upon them, and which under his successors were to raise 
 Egypt to a greater height of prosperity than she had ever enjoyed 
 under her native Pharaohs. 
 
 It soon became evident also, that in choosing Egypt for his 
 portion Ptolemy knew very well what he was about. While 
 its western frontier was the Libyan desert and its southern 
 was guarded by the cataracts, its northern coast was so badly off 
 for harbours as to make it difficult to attack by sea, and it 
 was practically unassailable from the east save at the Pelusiac 
 or Port Said mouth of the Nile, and then only by an enemy 
 marching through Syria 2. Ptolemy, therefore, had ample time 
 to consolidate his power by annexing Gyrene, making friends 
 in his turn with the Egyptian priesthoods, and spending the 
 money raised by Cleomenes' exactions in the enlistment of 
 an army of mercenaries*. He also waylaid the body of Alex- 
 ander on its way to the tombs of the Macedonian kings at Aegae, 
 and installed it in a splendid sepulchre called the Sema at 
 
 1 Droysen, Hist, de VHdUnisme, t. n. p. 96 ; Bouch6-Leoleroq, op. cit. 
 1. 1, pp. 13, 14 ; MahafEy, E. P. p. 25. 
 
 ^ As Demetrius the City-Taker, found to his cost. Cf. MahafEy, E.P. 
 p. 57. 
 
 ' Droysen, op, cit. i. p. 14 ; Bouoh6-Leclercq, op. cit. I. p. 15. 
 
30 The Alexandrian Divinities [ch. 
 
 Alexandria, thereby securing to himself, in the opinion of the 
 time, a talisman of great power^. It was not long before the 
 wisdom of these preparations was put to the proof ; for, two 
 years after Alexander's death, Perdiccas, the Regent of the 
 Empire, had the new satrap tried in his absence for treason, 
 and led a great army out of Asia Minor by way of Damascus 
 to attack him. He found Ptolemy waiting for him in force at 
 Pelusium, and after some of the royal troops had gone over to 
 the enemy, and those under Perdiccas, in person had suffered 
 a severe repulse near Bubastis, Perdiccas was deposed and 
 murdered^- The new settlement of the Empire which followed 
 at Triparadeisos confirmed Ptolemy in the possession of Egypt, 
 and left him in comparative peace to organize a kingdom which 
 only ended three centuries later with Cleopatra '. 
 
 Of the able and statesmanlike measures which Ptolemy took 
 towards this end, only one need concern us here. The plan may 
 have been Alexander's own, for no one was more likely to know 
 Alexander's later mind than Ptolemy, who had been his master's 
 companion from his youth, had shared his exile when banished 
 by Philip, and had distinguished himself in India as one of his 
 most trusted lieutenants. It is not impossible that among 
 Alexander's plans for the government of his Empire, a religion 
 common to both Greek and barbarian may have been included ; 
 for it is difficult otherwise to explain the active part that he 
 took in the different religious observances of all his subjects, 
 while the constant inquisitiveness concerning them which he 
 showed can hardly have been merely archaeological*. At all 
 events, soon after Ptolemy found himself secure in the pos- 
 session of Egypt, he set himself to work to found a religion that 
 should unite both his Greek and his Egyptian subjects in the 
 bonds of a common faith. At first sight, no two things can 
 seem more dissimilar than the religions of the two nations ; 
 but there was one point where they drew very near to each 
 other, and it was to this that Ptolemy addressed himself. 
 
 ^ Droysen, op. cit. n. p. 103. 
 
 ^ Bouch6-Lecleroq, Hist, des Lag. l. pp. 24, 25. ^ /j,-^ j-_ p_ 26. 
 
 • Droysen, op. cit. I. pp. 346, 699, 670. Cf. D. G. Hogarth, Philip and 
 Alexander, p. 144. 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divinities 31 
 
 Now religion in Egypt had always been very much in the 
 hands of a professional priesthood who here, as elsewhere in 
 Africa, formed organized corporations greedy for political sway, 
 and sometimes proved more powerful than the king himself^. 
 So far as the monuments show, the first of these corporations 
 in point of time was that of the worshippers of the sun- god Ra, 
 the chief seat of whose worship was Annu, On, or Heliopolis 
 in the Delta. Its members were apparently the religious 
 advisers of the vth or Pyramid-building Dynasty, and to them 
 must be attributed the earliest or Heliopolitan recension of 
 the Booh of the Dead engraved on the walls of the chambers in 
 the Saqqarah Pyramids. This corporation seems to have 
 flourished unchecked until the Hyksos conquest, but was suc- 
 ceeded, when the invaders were cast out, by that of the priests 
 of Amen of Thebes who, after crushing the " heresy " or religious 
 revolt of King Amenhotep IV, gradually became the supreme 
 power in the state, and established the theocracy or rule of the 
 priest-kings, under which Egypt went rapidly down the hill. 
 The decadence was stayed for a time by an uprising of the 
 Libyan mercenaries, who placed their leader Sheshonq or 
 Shishak, Solomon's suzerain, upon the throne, and thus founded 
 the xxiind Dynasty. The deposed corporation of Amen there- 
 upon transferred themselves to Ethiopia or Nubia, where they 
 established a theocracy on the model of that at Thebes, and 
 whence they returned later with an army of Sudanese to again 
 enslave their native country. But Piankhi and his Ethiopians 
 found themselves unable to rule Egypt from Napata, and when 
 they finally retired behind the Cataracts, there was a brief but 
 brilliant revival of old Egyptian ideas under the Saite or Phil- 
 hellene kings of the Delta, who called in Greek and Carian 
 mercenaries to the support of their throne. It was in their 
 time that Herodotus visited the country, and Egypt began 
 
 ^ As when they seized the throne of Egypt at the close of the xxth 
 Dynasty. So in Nubia in the time of the Ptolemies, the king was a mere 
 puppet in the hands of the priests, who used to send him word when they 
 thought that he had reigned long enough. For the story of Ergamenes 
 (Ark-amen), who put an end to their rule, see Diodorus Siculus, m. 6. 3, 
 or Budge, History of Egypt, 1899, voL Vin. pp. 166 sqq. 
 
32 The Alexandrian Divinities [en. 
 
 again to play its part in the stirring events then fast coming 
 upon Western Asia. It seems probable also that under them, 
 the religious corporations, among whom the priests of Ptah of 
 Memphis, one of the oldest of the gods of Egypt, for the first 
 time take a prominent place, regained the influence which they 
 had never wholly lost. Then came the Persian invasion, and 
 although Egypt made more than one successful attempt to shake 
 ofE the yoke of the foreigners, it was at last riveted firmly on her 
 neck. After the flight of Nectanebo, the last king of the xxxth 
 Dynasty, she was never again ruled by a prince of Egyptian 
 blood 1. 
 
 During this long period — which is often quoted, not without 
 reason, as the classic instance of the evils attending the Priest 
 in Power — the mass of the Egyptian people had clung firmly 
 to the worship of one god whose vogue goes back to very early 
 times. While the rich and powerful were raising temples to 
 Ea and Amen and showering wealth upon their priesthoods, the 
 poorer classes remained faithful to Osiris and the gods of his 
 cycle with such effect that most of the other divinities found 
 it necessary to include him in their own cults. In the very earliest 
 recension of the Book of the Dead, we find Osiris invoked to- 
 gether with Ra in a way that gives no hint that one has any 
 superiority over the other ^ ; in the great recension of the xvinth 
 Dynasty, Osiris and Ea, already made into the " king of the 
 gods " by his union with Amen, are said to have " joined souls " 
 and become one ^ ; and in the Saitic period, Osiris became united 
 with Ptah and a very ancient divinity called Seker, in a triune 
 deity called Ptah-Seker-Osiris to whom everyone looked for 
 happiness after death*. So, when the bull Apis came to be 
 
 ^ See Breasted, History of Egypt, New York, 1909, passim ; of. Budge, 
 op. cit. 
 
 " Wiedemann, The Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of the Immortality of the 
 Sold, 1895, p. viii ; Maspero, ]St. Sgyptol. i. pp. 123, 167 ; ibid. n. p. 196, n. 1. 
 
 3 Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, 1904, i. pp. 148, 149 ; Erman, Handbook 
 of Egyptian Religion, 1906, p. 81. 
 
 * Erman, op. cit. p. 188. The fusion of Osiris with Ptah and Seker 
 was a good deal older than the Saites. Cf. Wiedemann, Religion of 
 the Ancient Egyptians, 1897, pp. 134, 135 ; Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian 
 Resurrection, New York, 1911, 1, p. 45. 
 
n] The Alexandrian Divinities 33 
 
 adored, lie was said to be the " life of Osiris," meaning probably 
 his earthly incarnation^, and there is fairly good evidence that 
 Osiris had long before absorbed into himself the personality 
 of several older deities, such as Khent-Amentit " Lord of 
 Amenti," and Apuat " the opener of the ways*." It is plain, 
 therefore, that the practice of theocrasia which we have seen 
 rife among the Greeks was known to the Egyptians from the 
 very earliest times 3. Yet, all this was effected without there 
 ever having been a special priesthood or college of priests of 
 Osiris such as Tmdoubtedly existed in the case of Ea, Amen, 
 and probably Ptah. It seems really a case of the survival of 
 the fittest, or, in other words, of the choice by the Egyptian 
 people of the worship of the god best suited to their wants, in 
 spite of the well-meant attempts of their rulers to draw their 
 attention to other deities. 
 
 The reason for this obstinacy of choice is perhaps to be found 
 in the legend or myth of Osiris, which was at once more con- , 
 sistent and more direct in its appeal to human sympathies than ' 
 those handed down concerning the other gods of Egypt. We are 
 told that Osiris was the first-born of Nut the sky-goddess by 
 Geb the earth-god, that he appeared upon earth as a man among 
 men, and became king of Egypt, which he ruled wisely and well, 
 teaching the Egyptians the art of agriculture, giving them just 
 laws, and instructing them in the proper worship of the gods. 
 Later, he travelled over the whole earth, civilizing and subduing 
 the nations not by force of arms but by persuasion and especially 
 by the art of music which he took with him. On his return, 
 he was entrapped and murdered by his jealous brother Set or 
 Typhon who, with the aid of seventy-two conspirators and an 
 Ethiopian queen called Aso, shut him up in a coffin and threw 
 him into the Nile, by which his body was carried out to sea. 
 
 ^ Budge, Oods of the Egyptians, u. p. 196. 
 
 2 Budge, O.E. n. pp. 118, 156, 264. So Neville, Journal of Egyptian 
 Archaeology, 1914, pp. 7, 8. M. Maspero thinks Apuat was originally god 
 of Siut and only a temple-companion of Osiris at Abydos, Rev. Critique, 
 1904, pt 2, pp. 194, 195. 
 
 ' Steindorff, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, New York, 1905, 
 p. 63; Erman, H.E.R. pp. 66, 57; Naville, The Old Egyptian Faith, 
 1906, pp. 146, 147. 
 
 L. 3 
 
34 The Alexandrian Divinities [ch. 
 
 We further learn that his sister;;wif e I^ who had reigned in 
 his stead during his absence, mourned greatly for his loss and 
 wandered far and wide seeking and lamenting him, until she 
 heard from some children that the coffin containing his remains 
 had been carried away by the Tanitic mouth of the Nile. Fol- 
 lowing this, she found that it had been washed ashore at Byblus 
 in Phoenicia and had been overgrown by a magnificent tamarisk, 
 which the king of the country had had cut down and made into 
 the roof-tree or pillar supporting his house. Then Isis disguised 
 herself as a servant and became the nurse of the king's son, 
 whom she would have made immortal but for the timidity of 
 his mother, who cried out when she saw the child surrounded 
 by the flames which were to burn away his mortality. On this, 
 the goddess revealed herself, took away the pillar containing the 
 coffin, and attempted to revive the corpse that it contained 
 by her embrace. Afterwards, she gave birth to her son Horus, 
 whom she destined from his cradle to be the avenger of his father. 
 Meanwhile, the murderer Set had seized the throne of Egypt, 
 and while hunting by moonlight came across the corpse of 
 Osiris, which he tore into fourteen pieces, and scattered them 
 throughout the land. Consequently Isis, who was at the time 
 visiting Horus at nurse in her city of Buto, had to begin again 
 her wanderings, sailing over the swamps in a boat of papyrus, 
 and burying the fragments of the body of Osiris wherever she 
 found them. One part, however, she could not find, this having 
 been thrown into the Nile and devoured by fishes ; and hence- 
 forth Osiris became king of the Underworld, where he rules 
 for ever over the dead, welcoming those who successfully win 
 through the ordeal of the judgment that all must undergo, 
 and providing for them a happy life like that which the rich 
 live on earth, in which agriculture plays a prominent part. 
 Then Horus grew up to man's estate, and having provided 
 himself with horse, fought three desperate battles with Set, 
 many of whose followers came over to him. But, although 
 he defeated his foe, he did not put an end to his existence, and 
 Set still lives, haunting the deserts and wild places, and even, 
 according to one variant of the story, ruling for a time over the 
 south of Egypt (or perhaps only a part of it), while the sway of 
 
nj The Alexandrian Divinities 35 
 
 Horus over the north remained unchallenged. As for the other 
 gods of the cycle, Nephthys, the twin sister and reflection of Isis, 
 was the wife of Set, but preferred to throw in her lot with Osiris, 
 by whom she had a son, Anubis the jackal, the messenger of Osiris, 
 who possessed many of the attributes of the Greek Hermes. So, 
 too, Thoth, the ibis, was the judge who pronounced, or perhaps 
 merely recorded, the final partition or arrangement between 
 Horus and Set, and most of the other members of the Egyptian 
 Pantheon were brought into the cycle one way or the other. 
 
 This is the legend of Osiris, as we find it in the tract de Iside 
 et Osiride, which is generally attributed to Plutarch and was 
 certainly written in the first century a.d. It has not been met 
 with earlier in a connected form ; but its main incidents are 
 sufficiently corroborated by the monuments of the time to con- 
 vince us that it fairly represents the popular belief of the 
 Egyptians during the Ptolemaic period^. Plutarch, or the 
 writer who assumed his name, gives us more than one explana- 
 tion of it coupled with analogies drawn from other mythologies, 
 which exhibit considerable archaeological knowledge and show 
 us how far the comparative study of religions had proceeded 
 even in his time. When he fails, it is generally from lack of 
 acquaintance with the earlier forms of the religions of Egypt, 
 which had evidently become in those days as much a mystery 
 to the priests as to their flocks, and which the labours of modern 
 Egyptologists have but recently begun to recover for us. Looked 
 at by their light, and stripped of its many transparent incon- 
 sistencies and anachronisms, it seems plain that the story is 
 not simple but compound, and represents an attempt to fuse 
 together the religious ideas either of different peoples or of the 
 same people at different stages of culture^. In the first place, 
 
 ^ Am^lineau, Essai sur le Chwsticisme Mgyptien, Paris, 1887, p. 144; 
 Budge, "Papyrus of Nesi-Amsu," in Archaeohgia, 1890, pt 2, p. 404; 
 Maspero, The Davm of Civilization, 1894, pp. 172-174; Erman, H..E.R. 
 p. 32; Budge, O.E. it. p. 150. Manifest allusions to the legend are to 
 be found in the Pyramid Texts. Of. Maspero, Les Inscriptions des 
 Pyramides de Saqqardh, Paris, 1894, pp. 105 aqq, 
 
 * This idea is treated at length in " The Legend of Osiris " in the Pro- 
 ceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1911, pp. 139-154. See also 
 " The Greek Worship of Serapis and Isis," P.S.B.A. 1914, pp. 79 sqq. 
 
 3—2 
 
36 The Alexandrian Divinities [ch. 
 
 we see in it the animal gods of Egypt — Horns the falcon, Set 
 the unknown animal or scha sacred to him, Annbis the jackal, 
 and Thoth the ibis — whom we now know to have been the totems 
 or rallying-signs of the different tribes who invaded Egypt, 
 probably from other parts of Africa, in predynastic times. 
 The Sches-Hor or Followers of Horus are so often alluded to 
 in early dynastic texts that there can be no doubt that the 
 tribe who had the falcon for their banner were originally the 
 royal or leading tribe of these invaders. The memory of this 
 fact was preserved in the custom, going back to the beginning 
 of the 1st Dynasty, which assigned to the ruler of Egypt on 
 his coronation a special name differing from that by which he 
 was usually known, and borne in a rectangle representing the 
 fagade or front of a palace surmoimted by a hawk^ Recent 
 excavations at Abydos in Upper Egypt have shown that this 
 custom was only once broken in the long course of Egyptian 
 history, when a king of the iind or nird Djmasty, whose 
 name is read Perabsen, cast out the falcon from above the 
 srekh or rectangle containing his " hawk " or Horus name, 
 and crowned it instead with the animal representing Set. 
 This breach of conventional usage — whether significant of a 
 political or a religious revolution or of some predominating 
 foreign influence cannot be exactly determined — was healed by 
 his immediate successor Khasekhmui, who bore both the falcon 
 and the Set-animal above his srekh with an inscription pro- 
 claiming himself " He who has caused the two gods to be at 
 peace " ; after which the rulers of Egypt returned to the hawk- 
 crowned srekh, which was never again abandoned down to the 
 last-known example under the Roman emperors. We may 
 assume thep,that the fundamental stratum of the Osirislgg^H 
 was ^ a traditio nmore or less historical which~preserved the 
 m^ory_iit-a^j^^glriOT"mipr6ma;cy'ocra^^^ ^the^eariregr — 
 
 historical times ^between the Tribes-represented by HorusliHcT" 
 ^^t^esp^Jtively. As the horse was a late comer jnto Egypt^and 
 seems to have been introduced there by the Bedouins of the 
 Sinaitic peninsula, where Perabsen's predecessors left their 
 
 1 See " The Titles of the Thinite Kings" in P.S.B.A. 1908, pp. 86-94. 
 121-128, 163-177. 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divinities 37 
 
 inscriptions, we may even read into it the statement that, 
 while the Horus or falcon tribe were helped in the war by 
 Bedouin cavalry, the followers of Set sought aid from the 
 Nubian or " Ethiopian " tribes above the Cataracts ^- 
 
 To this foundation, however, there must have been added 
 a myth conceived by a race in possession of a much higher 
 degree of culture and greater imaginative powers than any 
 with which the predynastic or protodynastic Egyptians can 
 be credited. The earliest gods of Egypt of whom we have any 
 record were, as we have seen, either animals or inanimate objects, 
 a fact which is sufficiently explained by their totemic origin^. 
 gut spread t hroughout the^bagmj^ the Mediteranean, we find 
 from the earliest times the worship _of_a god who was from his 
 bjrtE~nevef-a^ffi^ but a man and a man who suffered a 
 ventablelJeath and passion before his resurrection and deifica- 
 tion. Thus, in Crete we have th.e Jegend of the infan|[Zagreus, ^ 
 so n of Zeus and Persephone , who was treacherously seized by 
 the earth-born Titans, torn in pieces, and devoured, but was 
 afterwards reborn as Dionysos to reign over gods and men' So, 
 too, in Cyprus, Syria, and Phoenicia, we hear of Adonis, the 
 lover of Aphrodite, done to death by the boar's tusk, but return- 
 ing yearly from the shades to spend part of the year with his 
 mistress. In Asia Minor, again, was told the story of Atys, 
 lover of Cybele, mother of the gods, who fatally mutilated 
 himself in a fit of madness, but after death was resuscitated, 
 and thereafter reigned with Cybele over all Nature. All these 
 three legends bear too close a resemblance to that of Osiris for 
 the four to have grown up independently, and although the 
 point is not free from doubt, it is improbable that Egypt was 
 
 ^ In Plutarch's time the Ethiopians had a queen called Candace as in 
 Acts vni. 27. Cf. Strabo, Bk xvn. c. 1, § 54. One wonders whether 
 Plutarch in speaking of Aso did not confuse this title with an epithet 
 of Thueris, the hippopotamus-goddess and wife of Set, who is called in 
 a late magical text "Thueris, the great of sorcery, cat of Ethiopia." 
 See Griffith and Thompson, Stories of the High Priests of Memphis, 
 Oxford, 1900, p. 91. 
 
 ^ This is most clearly shown by M. Victor Loret in VSgypte an Temps du 
 Totimisme, Paris, 1906, passim. Cf. the same author's articles in Rev. 
 Sgyptol. 1902 and 1904. ' See Chapter IV, infra. 
 
38 The Alexandrian Divinities [ch. 
 
 the source from which the others were derived^. No direct 
 connection in ancient times can be traced between Egypt and 
 the inland country of Phrygia, which seems to be the birthplace 
 of the majority of these legends ; while it is of great importance 
 to remember that Isis, Osiris' queen and sister, is represented 
 in the early Egyptian myths as merely a magician or witch 
 cunning in spells^, whereas in the Phrygian and Syrian legends 
 the consort of the dying god is the " pother j)f all liv ing " or 
 in other words Nature herself. It seems therefore probable 
 that the legend of Osiris, like so many other things in Egypt, 
 was African as to its body, but Asiatic or European as to its 
 head. 
 
 It was therefore natural that inthis, lege nd of Osiris, Ptolsm iu. 
 
 ^^^OTCT'l5i3riEHe~5^fieg''p^^^^conta^^^ 
 of tBB~"Egyp1JOTfftan3"ISfevJ3E&8ks. The religious institution 
 wEch commanded the most respect among the Greeks of his 
 time was undoubtedly thg_!5J;TOteri^of^^gleus^ which were 
 yearly celebrated with a circumstance that drew upon them the 
 
 j attention of the whole Hellenic world. Messengers went forth 
 every year from Eleusis to all countries where Athenians could 
 be found, to proclaim the Sacred Truce that was to ensure 
 
 ■ peace during the celebration of the Mysteries. Then on the 
 appointed day in September, enormous numbers of Greeks from 
 all parts of the world gathered together in Athens for a festival 
 that lasted for nearly two weeks. First came the assembly of 
 the worshippers and the proclamation of the hierophant that 
 none but those unpolluted by crime and of intelligible speech 
 {i.e. not barbarians) might take part in the Mysteries. Then 
 
 1 See " Thel6lj:eek Worship of Serapis and Isis," P.S.B.A. 1914, pp. 94- 
 98, for this culture ge^ of the Eastern Mediterranean. The original home 
 of the m3rth was, possibly^ Babylonia. Cf. " Legend of Osiris " in P.S.B.A. 
 1911, quoted above. ^ 
 
 ^ See the story of Ra and Isis, Budge, O.E. pp. 360 sqq. 
 
 ' By far the best and most ccmsistent account of the Eleusinian Mysteries 
 is that given by M. Paul Foucart in his three memoirs, Becherches sur 
 I'origine et la nature des Mysthres d'Meusis, Les Orands Mysteres d'^leims, 
 and Le CuUe de Dionysos en Attique. AU these appeared in the Mdmoires 
 of the Acad6mie des Inscriptions, tt. xxxv. (1893), xxxvn. (1900), and 
 xxxvm. (1904) respectively. 
 
n] The Alexandrian Divinities 39 
 
 followed the solemn procession when the sacred objects, upon 
 which none but the initiated might look, were brought from 
 Eleusis under strong guard and lodged in the Eleusinion at the 
 foot of the Acropolis, their arrival being formally notified to 
 the priestess of Athena, the tutelary deity of the city. Next 
 was made the proclamation of " To the sea, the initiates ! " 
 whenaJ[l_,;g]3£„,w;ere Jo take ^art in the cerempnies "descended 
 to the harbour of Phalerum^ to wash theraselves and the 
 animals iritegded for sacrifice in the saltwater, in the belief 
 t^^j^,Ei3J3^des said, " Sea-waves wash away all sin." After 
 a, time spent in sacrificing and. Austejities, very proper for 
 bringin^"£Ee'worshippers into a receptive state of mihd7 there 
 was formed the"lofig procession which paced the Sacred Way, 
 twelve miles 'l6Hg^ from A^e^.to JSlgu^s^Jbeguiling^the road 
 with_hjEana_ana3ES^ses. addressed to lacchos, the infant 
 Dionysos*, who was supposed to lea3"^e~pr(5WSgionTfomTIir 
 iStEeniSTn temple, the laccheion, with a pause at the bridge 
 over the Cephisus, where the crowd exchanged coarse jokes and 
 sarcasms in a manner peculiarly Attic. Then came the arrival 
 by night of the procession at the Telesterion or Hall of Initiations 
 at Eleusis, the sky above which was made light by the glare of 
 the torches 3. There, after more sacrifices, a>j=ifli?.TP,d Tiq.iiqiiP.t,. 
 m. which it is not impossible that the mystic cyceon or con- 
 secrated drink was partaken of, and sacrifices in the temples of 
 Demeter, of Hades, and of Persephone with which the Hall was 
 surrounded, -the initiates were shown a sacred drama, like the 
 mystery-plays of the Middle Ages, acted by the priests of the 
 cult, whose office, contrary to the custom of Greek cults generally, 
 was confined to two families in which it was hereditary and 
 highly paid. This drama, the details of which were kept strictly 
 secret and can only be gathered from hints appearing in writers 
 
 ^ Pouoart, Les Qrands Mystires, p. 113. 
 
 2 lacchos was identified with Dionysos at least as early as the time of 
 Sophocles. Cf. Antigone, 11. 1130 sqq., and Dyer, The Gods in Greece, 1891, 
 p. 133. Very likely, as M. Pouoart suggests, he was originally the 
 personification of the cry repeated hy the procession of the initiated. See 
 Grds. Myst. p. 122. 
 
 ' It had an opening in the roof for this purpose. Foucart, Grds. Mygt. 
 p. 137. 
 
40 The Alexandrian Divinities [ch. 
 
 of a comparatively late date, seems to have set forth the Rape 
 of Persephone, daughter of Demeter the earth-goddess, who 
 was known and worshipped throughout Greece and her colonies 
 as the teacher of agriculture and giver of laws to mortals. The 
 initiates saw " with their own eyes " the capture of Persephone, 
 when playing with her companions in the sunny fields of Eleusis^, 
 by Hades or Pluto the king of the dead, who takes her to his 
 own gloomy abode beneath the earth, and the wanderings of 
 Demeter in search of her lost child. Then they were shown 
 how Demeter came to the house of Celeus, king of Eleusis, how 
 she became nurse to the king's child Demophoon, and was 
 detected by his mother attempting to burn away his mortal 
 part in the way which the Egyptian legend attributed to Tsis^. 
 The next act, probably reserved for epopts or initiates of the 
 second year only, exhibited the union of Zeus with Demeter*, 
 and the birth from the latter of a mysterious child in whom 
 some see the lacchos who conducted the procession from Athens 
 to Eleusis, but who was certainly Dionysos in one or other of 
 his forms*. We know also that the initiates took part in 
 
 ^ So Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus, c. n. The scene of the 
 Rape is laid in many different places. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter 
 calla it " the Mysian plain," meaning probably Mysia in Asia Minor. A 
 scholiast on Hesiod puts it in Sicily, Bacchylides in Crete, Orpheus in 
 " the parts about Ocean," Phanodemus in Attica, Demades in " woodland 
 glades." See Abel, Orphica, Fragm. 212, p. 239. Cf. Maury, Religions de 
 la Orice Antique, t. i. p. 479. 
 
 ^ Homeric Hymn to Demeter. 
 
 3 Poucart, Myst. d'M. p. 49 ; id. Qrds. Myst. pp. 68, 69. 
 
 * M. Foucart, OuUe de Diem. pp. 55-60, will not allow that lacchos was 
 ever identified with Dionysos and believes him to have been only the genius 
 that led the procession. Dyer, on the other hand (op. cit. p. 128), 
 makes lacchos the young or second Dionysos born of Semele. But Aris- 
 tophanes, Frogs, 1. 321, and Strabo, Bk x. c. 10 (p. 402 Didot), both give 
 him a higher position in the Mysteries than M. Fouoart would assign to him, 
 and the older opinion that he was the child whose birth was there shown 
 seems to hold good. Cf. Maury, Rel. de O. A. t. n. p. 341, and Arrian, 
 Anabasis, Bk n. c. 16, § 3 (p. 50, Didot). So Stephani, Gompte Rendu de 
 la Commission Imperiale ArchA>logique, 1859 (St Petersburg), p. 37, where 
 monumental evidence is given in its support. Cf. Daremberg and SagUo, 
 Diet, des Antiquity, s.v. Eleusinia (by F. Lenormant) ; Clem. Alex. Pro- 
 trept. 0. n. ; Libanius, vnep 'Apia-Toefidvovs, vol. I. pp. 447, 448 (Beiske). 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divinities 41 
 
 wanderings in dark passages and over obstacles and difficulties, 
 which were supposed to give them an idea of the sufierings of 
 the uninitiated dead in the next world, and that they were then 
 restored to upper air in a blaze of brilliant light, were shown the 
 mysterious objects brought with such care from Eleusis to Athens 
 and back again, were given a glimpse of the beatitudes awaiting 
 the dead who had been initiated in their lifetime, and were at the 
 same time instructed in certain mysterious phrases or formulas 
 which it seems fair to conclude they were to treasure as pass- 
 words through the realms of Hades ^. It seems probable from 
 this that the initiates were supposed to accompany Hermes the 
 Psychopomp or " leader of souls " as the messenger of Zeus 
 to the underworld, there to accomplish the deliverance of 
 Persephone and to witness her restoration to the heavenly 
 regions where she was again united to her sorrowing mother. 
 Finally, there appeared Triptolemus, Celeus' son and Demeter's 
 pupil, setting out in his car drawn by serpents to spread the 
 knowledge of agriculture throughout the world, " an ear of corn 
 reaped in silence " being, as we learn from a Christian writer, 
 the " mighty and wonderful and most perfect mystery " 
 exhibited to the highest degree of initiates^. 
 
 It will be noticed that we have spoken hitherto of initiates ; 
 for none might enter the Telesterion unless they had previously 
 been initiated, and two young Acarnanians who unwittingly 
 did so were formally tried for sacrilege and put to death ^. This 
 initiation, or entry into the ranks of those privileged to behold 
 these wonderful sights, began at the Little Mysteries, which 
 were celebrated six or seven months before the Great or 
 Eleusinian Mysteries properly so called, at Agra on the left bank 
 of the Ilissus. These mysteries of Agra were under the control 
 of the same sacred families as the Mysteries of Eleusis, for which 
 
 1 Fouoart, Myst. d'Sl. p. 66. 
 
 " Hippolytus, Phihsophumena, Bk v. c. 1, p. 171, Cniice. The whole 
 drama ia described by Pouoart, Myst. d'Sl. pp. 43-74 q.v. 
 
 " JAvy, XXXI. 14. Of. Foucart, Ords. Myst. p. 94. They betrayed 
 themselves by asking questions which showed they had not been initiated. 
 Hence the Upd or sacred objects could hardly have been statues, as some 
 have thought. 
 
42 The Alexandrian Divinities [ch. 
 
 they formed a necessary preparation. They were kept, if 
 possible, even more strictly secret than the Great Mysteries, 
 and the only direct evidence that has come down to us as to 
 their nature tells us that they also took the form of a sacred 
 drama, and that the scenes there enacted were taken from the 
 legend of Dionysos^- This Dionysos, however, was not in the 
 first instance the Theban god of wine bom from Semele and 
 celebrated by the poets, but his Cretan namesake Dionysos 
 Zagreus or " the hunter," who was said to have been begotten 
 by Zeus in the form of a serpent upon his own daughter Perse- 
 phone, and while still a child was, as has been mentioned above, 
 torn in pieces by the earth-born Titans from jealousy at hearing 
 that the child was to be made the ruler of the world. It was 
 also said that the scattered members of the baby-god were 
 collected by Demeter, put together and revivified, a myth which 
 late researches seem to show was alluded to in the Anthesteria, 
 a festival celebrated in the Dionysion at Athens in the same 
 Anthesterion or " flower month " as the Little Mysteries. 
 There is much reason to think that the Anthesteria showed 
 forth in a manner unintelligible to the beholders unless other- 
 wise acquainted with the details of the legend, the putting- 
 together of the different members — said to be fourteen in 
 number — of the infant Dionysos, his subsequent resurrection, 
 and his marriage with a priestess called "the Queen" who doubt- 
 less represented Demeter or Persephone. The inference seems 
 unavoidable that it was some part of this legend that was acted 
 in a manner impossible to misunderstand or mistake before the 
 eyes of those admitted to the Little Mysteries ^- 
 
 1 Foucart, CuUe de Dion. p. 68 ; Stephen of Byzantium in Hesychius, 
 Etymologiwm Magnum, s.v. 'Aypai. Cf. Maury, Eel. de la Orkce Ant. n. 
 p. 324. All that Stephen says is that here was acted a pantomime {filfirifia) 
 of the things that happened to Dionysos. 
 
 ^ All these ceremonies of the Anthesteria are reconstructed and de- 
 scribed by M. Foucart, CuUe de Dion. pp. 107-163. That the tearing in 
 pieces of Dionysos and the consequent origin of man was taught in the 
 Little Mysteries seems to follow from Pindar's words (Threnoi Frag. x. 
 7, p. 102, Cod. Bo.) that those who have been initiated have seen "the 
 God-given beginning of life." Transmigration seems to have been also 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divinities 43 
 
 We see then that between the legend of Osiris as told by 
 Plutarch and the legend of Eleusis as set forth in the Mysteries 
 there were resemblances so close as to make it almost impossible 
 that one should not be derived from the other, unless we are 
 prepared to consider them as having a common origin. As 
 Osiris was torn into fourteen pieces, so was Dionysos, the 
 difference in the agents of this " diaspasm," as it was called, 
 being due to the exigencies of Egyptian traditional history. 
 The wanderings of Isis, again, find an exact parallel in those 
 of Demeter, the object of the search differing slightly in the two 
 cases, while the mysterious birth of Horus, the successor of 
 Osiris, corresponds point for point with that of Dionysos in his 
 second form of lacchos. That both stories may have had their 
 source in the folk-lore explaining the phenomena of the annual 
 decay and rebirth of vegetation, Dr Frazer has shown with 
 great attention to detail in The Golden Bough and elsewhere^ to 
 be possible ; but this was too philosophical an idea for the 
 sixth century B.C., when the Mysteries of Eleusis were founded 
 or reduced to order''*. Herodotus, a century later, no doubt 
 expressed the views of the learned of his day when he asserted 
 that the worship of Dionysos was brought into Greece from 
 Egypt*, and among modern scholars M. Foucart, who has done 
 more than anyone to collate the few relics that remain to us 
 of the Eleusinian worship, fully supports him in this. It 
 
 taught in them (see Plutarch, Consolatory Letter, § x.). There were there- 
 fore three degrees of initiation at Eleusis : (1) The Little Mysteries show- 
 ing the history of Dionysos, (2) The Great Mysteries with the Bape of 
 Persephone and the Wanderings of Demeter, and (3) The Epopsy 
 (open to initiates of the second year only), showing the marriage of Zeus 
 and Demeter and the birth of the new Dionysos. 
 
 ^ Prazer, The Golden Bough (third edition), Part iv, c. 6 ; Part v, vol. i, 
 pp. 12, 263. 
 
 ^ The end of the Athenian monarchy and flight of the Pisistratids took 
 place about 500 B.C. (see Chapter IV, infra). The Eleusinia were pro- 
 bably reformed not long before. 
 
 ' Herodotus, Bk n. c. 49 ; Diod. Sic. Bk i. o. 96, § 4 sqq. It may, on 
 the other hand, have been introduced from Asia Minor or the Mediterranean 
 Islands, where it was certainly prevalent at a very early date. See articles 
 in P.S.B.A. for 1911 and 1914 above quoted. 
 
44 The Alexandrian Divinities [ch. 
 
 is therefore plain that the resemblances between the Diony- 
 siae and the Egyptian worship were many and salient. Hence 
 Ptolemy found his way clear when he invited Timotheos the 
 Bumolpid, a member of one of the sacred families in which the 
 Eleusinian priesthood was, as has been said, hereditary, and 
 associated with him the Egyptian priest Manetho in the task 
 of founding a religion which should be common to Egyptians 
 and Greeks alike ^. 
 
 In framing this new religion, the first care of the king and 
 his advisers was evidently to avoid shocking the religious and 
 artistic feelings of the Greeks. Ptolemy Soter's position seems 
 to have been much like that of a modern Governor- General 
 of India ; for, while he was not only tolerant but careful of the 
 religious susceptibilities of the native Egyptians, his own Court 
 remained in everything predominantly or exclusively Greek. 
 In Alexandria, the site of which under the native Pharaohs 
 had been the small fishing village of Rhacotis, he had practi- 
 cally virgin soil, in which it is doubtful whether any Egyptian 
 temple existed, and it was consequently, as Alexander intended 
 it should be, in all respects a Greek city. Greek was the language 
 there spoken, and it was to the care taken by Alexandrian 
 scholars to preserve the language and literature of Hellas in 
 its native purity, that we are indebted for most of what we know 
 of the classic tongue at its best. Its large garrison consisted 
 almost entirely of Greek soldiers drilled and armed in the Mace- 
 donian fashion, and to the great University or Museum, which 
 Ptolemy's munificence founded for the sustentation of scholars, 
 there flocked learned men from every part of the Hellenic 
 world*. Here, indeed, was the first instance of the endowment 
 
 1 Plutarch, de Is. et Os. o. xxvm: ; Tacitus, Hist. iv. cap. 83, 84. 
 Plutarch calls Timotheos the " exegete'," i.e. the interpreter or dragoman ; 
 so that his being a Eumolpid would seem to rest on the testimony of 
 Tacitus only ; but there were " exegetes " attached to the Eumolpids at 
 Eleusis, see Foucart, Ords. Myst. pp. 79 sqq. Bouoh6-Leclercq, Hist, des 
 Lagides, l. p. 118, thinks the names Timotheos and Manetho only cover 
 the fact that the new reUgion was compounded from the Eleusinian and the 
 Osirian cults. 
 
 ^ Bouch6-Leclercq {Hist, des Lagides, i. p. 129, n. 2) thinks the tradition 
 that the Museum was founded by Ptolemy II Philadelphus erroneous. The 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divinities 45 
 
 of research ; and the experiment had important results for most 
 of the modern sciences, not excluding that transmutation of 
 metals which made such wild work among some of the best 
 brains of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, but which Sir 
 William Ramsay has lately shown to be more capable of ac- 
 complishment than could have been expected from an alchemist's 
 dream. At the Museum, Eratosthenes, " the Inspector of the 
 Earth," first set on foot the serious study of geography, 
 Hipparchus laid the sure foundations of the modern science 
 of astronomy, and Hero invented the first steam engine. The 
 investigation of those secondary laws by which their insight 
 perceived nature to be governed was indeed the constant 
 occupation of King Ptolemy's " stufEed capons," as Timon of 
 Phlya contemptuously called them^. But these philosophers 
 would have been the first to receive with scorn the proposition 
 that anyone should be asked to worship the " brutish gods " 
 of Egypt under those animal forms in which they had long been 
 known to the more simple minded Egyptians. Osiris, the 
 " bull of Amenti," as he is called in the early texts, was 
 worshipped under the actual form of the bull Apis at Memphis 
 and as a ram or goat at Mendes. Isis was often portrayed with 
 the cow's head which commemorated one of the incidents of 
 her myth as set forth by Plutarch. Horus, who was in fact 
 an older god than either of them, was, as the totem of the royal 
 tribe of the first invaders, worshipped at Edfu and elsewhere 
 as a hawk, and although the Egyptian priests kept up as long 
 as possible the distinction between this " Horus the elder " 
 and Horus the son of Isis, it is certain that their Greek wor- 
 shippers saw no difference between the two. While Timotheos 
 was doubtless willing to recognize the Eleusinian deities, of 
 whose worship his family were the traditional guardians, in the 
 Egyptian triad of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, he must have been 
 sure that he could not ask his art-loving countrymen to do 
 them homage in the guise of beasts or birds. 
 
 date of Demetrius of Phalerum's leaving Athens to take charge of it 
 marks it as the foundation of Ptolemy Soter. Cf. Mahaffy, Empire of 
 Ptolemies, pp. 91, 92. 
 
 1 See Mahaffy, op. cit. p. 98. 
 
46 The Alexandrian DMnities [ch. 
 
 The difficulty was got over in a way that was characteristic 
 enough. The theocras ia or fusion of one god with another 
 which we have seen playing^FOclr- a prominent part in the 
 religion of both Egyptians and Greeks, was of the very essence 
 of the religion of Eleusis. At no time from the earliest mention 
 of the Eleusinian worship onwards, is it possible to draw any 
 sharp dividing line between Demeter and her daughter Perse- 
 phone, or as Mr Louis Dyer rather flamboyantly puts it, Demeter 
 and Persephone were at Eleusis " regarded as one, being so 
 filled with mutual love that all barriers between them melted 
 away^." " Excepting," he says again, " in her days of thought- 
 less youth, Demeter's Persephone is Demeter's self twice told," 
 and the same dogma seems to haive been prematurely revealed 
 by Xenophanes of Colophon, who was exiled for his declaration 
 that all the gods of his fellow-countrymen were but varying 
 forms of the one deity. This identity of the goddesses of Eleusis 
 must have been constantly present to the mind of the Greeks, 
 who hardly ever spoke of Demeter and Persephone save as 
 " the Goddesses Twain " or as the Mother-and-Daughter. But 
 this was only the first step in what was called without circum- 
 locution the " mystic theocrasia^," which went so far as to in- 
 clude in the persons of the Eleusinian deities nearly all the gods 
 of the Hellenic pantheon. In the original Cretan legend, the 
 infant Dionysos is the son of Zeus, whom he is destined to succeed 
 upon his throne, as Zeus had succeeded in the Homeric myths 
 his father Kronos, and this last, his father Ouranos. But the 
 Zeus of Eleusis was by no means the Zeus of Olympos whom 
 Homer hails as " father of gods and men," but who had to yield 
 the empire of the seas to his brother Poseidon and that of the 
 netherworld to his brother Hades. Originally known at Eleusis 
 
 ^ Dyer, Oods in Greece, pp. 178, 179, and pp. 73, 74. An inscription 
 making the identification has been found at Smyrna. See O. Bayet 
 in the Rev. Archdologique for 1877, pp. 175-178, where its date is 
 put at the middle of the third century B.C., and the vases of Gerhard 
 there quoted. Cf. Maury, Rel. de la Qrice, n. p. 362 ; F. Lenormant in 
 Daremberg and Saglio's Diet, des ArUiquitis, s.v. Elensinia, p. 549, and 
 authorities there quoted. 
 
 * Damascius, VU. Isidor, § 106. For definition of term, see ibid. 
 §§ 3, 5. 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divinities 47 
 
 as " the God " only, as Demeter with or without her daughter 
 was called " the Goddess," the Eleusinian god was also invoked 
 as Zeus Chthonios or the infernal Zeus, called by euphemism 
 Zeus Eubuleus (Zeus of Good Counsel), Pluto (Bringer of Riches) 
 and other similar names ^. But by whatever name he was called, 
 he was always the king of the dead, and was thus again brought 
 near to Dionysos, whom Heraclitus of Ephesus, two centuries 
 before Alexander, had declared to be the same god as Hades, 
 lord of the netherworld^. In this double capacity, Dionysos 
 was therefore the brother, father, and spouse of his consort 
 Demeter, of whom he was also the child. He might therefore 
 be considered one of the first instances known in the history 
 of religions as a god who was, according to the way in which 
 he was regarded, either father or son*. Nor did the theocrasia 
 stop here. The Asiatic forms of Dionysos, whether we call 
 them Atys, Adonis or by any other name, were often repre- 
 sented as of both sexes, a doctrine which is also denoted by 
 Dionysos' Orphic epithet of Mise, and led to his being portrayed 
 in effeminate shape*. Hence, Dionysos and Demeter or Perse- 
 phone might be regarded as the God under both the male and 
 female aspect. Moreover, Zeus was said to have ordered the 
 corpse of Dionysos to be buried at Delphi, where secret cere- 
 monies were celebrated in connection with it by five priests 
 called Hosioi ; and this seems to have led to the idea common 
 
 1 Foucaxt, Myst. WM. p. 34. He suggests that the real names were 
 " ineffable," i.e. only revealed to initiates. Xenocrates, whose date may 
 be put at 396-314 B.C., seems to have known of a supernal and infernal 
 Zens (Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk v. c. 11), and a fragment attributed to 
 Euripides identifies Zeus with Hades (id. loc. cit.). 
 
 ^ Plutarch, de Is. et Os. c. xxvm. ; Clem. Alex. Protrept. c. n. 
 
 * This was noticed by Clement of Alexandria, who {Strom. Bk v. c. 14) 
 says that Homer and Orpheus both " show forth " the Christian doctrine 
 in this respect. The verse he quotes from Orpheus makes Dionysos both 
 the father and son of Zeus. Cf. Abel's Orpkica, Frag. 237. 
 
 * As in the Orphic verse : " Zeus is a male, Zeus is an immortal vir^," 
 Abel, Orphica, Pr. 46. Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, p. 140, points out that 
 Xenocrates and the Stoics both made the same assertion. Cf. authorities 
 quoted by him and Euripides, Bacchae, U. 330-350. A statue from 
 Sm3n?na showing a markedly effeminate type of Dionysos is to be seen at 
 the Ashmolean Museum. 
 
48 The Alexandrian Divinities [ch. 
 
 to the classic poets Pindar, Aescliylus, and Euripides, that 
 Dionysos and Apollo were different forms of the same god, a 
 theory which is expressly confirmed by Plutarch^. But Apollo 
 " the Far-Darter " was always to the Greeks a sun-god, and 
 Horus from the first had the same character among the Egyp- 
 tians, the emblem of the sim-diskbeing often added to the Horus- 
 hawk of their protocol by the Pharaohs of the New Empire. 
 Thus the identi fi cation qi the go ds of the Osiris cycle with their 
 Greeli analogues was compete. I^f"w^"5gi:eec[,^^^Q^BajP^ 
 toTieTfFprSenTed asl^e^Greek Hades, Isis as De meter , and the 
 c^dJSorus as Apollo. Herodotus and pri^^b1y°other Greek 
 writers haa long D^ore made the same identifications^. 
 
 This settled, the question of the material forms under which 
 the triad was to be worshipped by Ptolemy's new subjects 
 became easy. A convenient dream, so runs the story told in 
 Eoman times, revealed to the king the existence of a statue of 
 Hades or Pluto at Sinope in Pontus that was exactly fitted to 
 his purpose^. It is said to have been of colossal size, the work 
 of Bryaxis, the fellow-worker of Scopas, and to have been 
 composed of a mixture of the most precious metals with frag- 
 ments of gems, the whole being coloured with a dark varnish. 
 This statue was given up by — or according to another version 
 was stolen from — the city of Sinope, and was installed with great 
 pomp in the magnificent temple or Serapeum built for it at 
 Alexandria, which for centuries formed one of the wonders of 
 
 * Macrobius, Saturnalia, lib. i. c. 18, for authorities ; ako Pindar, 
 Threnoi, x. 8, p. 116 (Bergk) ; Plutarch, On the E at Delphi, c. ix. 
 
 ^ Lafaye, CuUe des Divinitda d'Alexandrie, Paris, 1884, pp. 6-12, and 
 authorities there quoted. Cf. Foucart, Oulte de Dion. pp. 66, 67. 
 
 ' So Plutarch and Tacitus where before quoted. The conflicting tra- 
 ditions on the subject have been reconciled by Krall, Ta^iitus und der 
 Orient, Th. i. Bd iv. 83, 84. Cf. Bouoh6-Leolercq, Hist, de la Dimnaiion, 
 t. m. p. 378, n. 1 ; id. Hist, de Lagides, t. i. p. 118 ; Lafaye, CuUe, etc. 
 pp. 16, 17. There is little doubt that the statue of Bryaxis represented 
 Asklepios as Bouch6-Leclercq (-Rei;. Hist. Bel. 1902, pp. 26, 27) surmises. 
 Isidore L6vy sums up the whole question in the ReviLe last quoted, 1911, 
 pp. 146, 147, and 1913, pp. 308 sqq. So Ad. Reinaoh, Rev. cit. pt 2, p. 69. 
 The statue is described by Rufinus Aquilensis, Hist. Ecd. Bk n. c. 23. 
 Cf. Dionysius, Periegetes, 11. 254, 256 (Didot, Oeogr. Or. mi. t. n. p. 116); 
 Amelung, Bev. ArcMol. 1903, pt 2, pp. 187-204. 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divinities 49 
 
 the Hellenistic world. It doubtless formed the model for all 
 the later representations of the new god called henceforth 
 Serapis (in Egyptian, Asar-hapi or Osiris in his manifestation as 
 Apis), which resemble each other in all important particulars. 
 They show a bearded man of mature age, whose features have 
 much of the majesty and dignity of the Phidian Zeus. On his 
 head he wears the modius, a crown of basket-work on which 
 are sometimes represented olive trees and which is said to be 
 a reproduction of the calathos or consecrated basket carried 
 in the sacred procession to Eleusis, and doubtless possessed 
 for the initiated some mystical or symbolical meaning^. He 
 is generally represented with an eagle at his feet, and by the side 
 of him appears a triple monster which may perhaps represent 
 the classical Cerberus with a serpent twisted roimd its body 
 and equipped with the heads of a lion, a dog, and a wolf. It 
 seems, therefore, that in choosing this statue the founders of 
 the Alexandrian religion had quite turned their backs on the 
 lighter and more joyous aspects of the mystic Dionysos, and 
 intended to regard him as the god of the dead merely^. The 
 same was not the case with his consort Isis, who is generally 
 represented as a young matron of stately appearance having 
 sometimes the crescent moon on her head, and sometimes a 
 crown of lotus flowers interspersed with ears of com. She is 
 dressed in a fringed tunic reaching to her feet, having over her 
 shoulders a mantle tied by its ends between the breasts in a 
 peculiar knot. In one hand she bears the sistrum or rattle used 
 in her worship, and in the other a horn of abundance or other 
 emblem, while the head is frequently covered by a long veil. 
 Both the attitude and the dress are always of the strictest 
 modesty, and the features wear an expression of gentle 
 
 1 Probably it had some reference to his character as god of vegetation, 
 as shown by his epithet of " IVugifer." The explanation of Maorobius, 
 Satvmalia, i. c. 20, which refers it to the sun, is absurd. Perhaps it may 
 be connected with his epithet of wdXvSiyiuov " receiver of many." So 
 j5E1. Aristides speaks of him as the receiver of souls. See p. 60 infra, 
 
 " See last note. The eagle was adopted as a kind of family crest by 
 
 the Ptolemies and appears on all their coins. See examples in MahafEy, 
 
 Emp. of the Ptolemies, pamm. What is probably a reproduction of 
 
 Bryaxis' statue is now at Naples and is described by Lafaye, op. cit. p. 274. 
 
 L. 4 
 
50 The Alexandrian Divinities [ch. 
 
 benevolence, in which it is possible to see a trace of melancholy. 
 The Alexandrian Horus is seldom represented otherwise than 
 in child form, the type being taken from the Egyptian Horus 
 known as Har-pa-khrat (Horus the Child) of which the Alex- 
 andrians made Harpocrates. In this form he was represented 
 with his finger in his mouth in accordance with the usual 
 Egyptian ideogram for childhood, and this gave rise to the 
 story among the Greeks that he was the god of silence. Some- 
 times he is shown with wings like the classical Eros, frequently 
 seated on the lotus or with the lotUs flower on his head, and very 
 often with the hawk which formed his proper emblem^. He 
 was seldom represented in a group containing Serapis, although 
 bas-reliefs and statues showing Serapis and Isis together are 
 common ; but groups representing Isis suckling Horus have 
 been found in some numbers. Generally it may be said that the 
 modius on the head is the distinguishing mark of the figure of 
 Serapis, the peculiar breast-knot that of Isis, while Horus can 
 seldom be recognized with certainty save by the gesture of the 
 forefinger in the mouth or, as the Greek artists preferred to re- 
 present it, on the lips. From this time forward, the Alexandrian 
 Greeks could worship the chief deities of their native fellow- 
 citizens under forms which they felt to be worthy of the Divine. 
 Thus, the worship of the great Egyptian triad under their 
 Greek forms was inaugurated, as was our own English Refor- 
 mation in the sixteenth century, as a measure of statecraft, by 
 a king who hardly oared to conceal that in doing so he had only 
 his own interest to serve. Yet it may be said at once, that so 
 far as its political purpose was concerned, the Alexandrian 
 religion was from the outset foredoomed to failure. The 
 Egyptians of Philhellenic times were of all the nations of the 
 earth at once the most superstitious and the most fanatically 
 attached to their traditional modes of worship. Although 
 until the rise of the theocracy, the importation of foreign gods 
 was not unknown, under the Ethiopians, the Persians, and 
 Alexander, the Egyptians had not scrupled to sacrifice their 
 nationality to their religion, and to accept a foreign governor 
 
 1 See Lafaye, pp. 259, 260. Except in amulets, representations of 
 Hafpoorates are not very common. Of. P.S.B.A. 1914, p. 92. 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divinities 51 
 
 so long as the worship of their native gods under types that 
 had been observed by them for more than four millenia remained 
 untouched. How then could they be expected to recognize 
 their native deities in forms beautified and dignified by Greek 
 art indeed, but so foreign to all their traditional ideas that 
 nothing distinctly Egyptian about them remained ? 
 
 To this question there could be but one answer, and it is 
 not extraordinary that the native Egyptians proved as recal- 
 citrant to their new king's endeavour to unite them in a common 
 worship with their Greek masters as the Jews did under the 
 somewhat similar attempt of Antiochus Epiphanes. The 
 Egyptian priests allowed Ptolemy to set up at Memphis, which 
 had become since the ruin of Thebes the religious capital of the 
 country, a Serapeum, doubtless modelled on that of Alexandria, 
 by the side of the native temple established for the delectation 
 of the living Apis and for -the solemn burial of his predecessors : 
 but they took care that it should be separated from the Egyp- 
 tian Serapeum by a long avenue of sphinxes, and that no Greek 
 prayers should ever be allowed to defile the purity of the native 
 Egyptian sanctuary^. Moreover, Egypt, resembling in this 
 perhaps all countries with strongly marked geographical 
 characteristics, has exhibited through all ages a wonderful 
 power of conquering her conquerors, or, in other words, of forcing 
 her foreign rulers to accept the ideas that they found there, 
 instead of adopting at their instance innovations on customs 
 consecrated by centuries of usage. Hence the Ptolemies, as 
 time went on, found it necessary to pay ever more and more 
 attention to the native Egyptian religion, and Ptolemy V 
 Epiphanes was crowned at Memphis, as is recorded on the 
 Rosetta Stone, with all the religious ceremonies that made him 
 in the eyes of the Egyptians the living Horus, son of the sun- 
 god, the beloved of Ptah and the rest, as fully as any of the 
 ancient Pharaohs^. All the Ptolemies, too, seem to have spent 
 
 ^ Manry in Revue des Deux Mondes, Sept. 1855, p. 1073 ; Mariette, 
 Le Sirwpewn de Memphis, ed. Maspero, Paris, 1882, i. pp. 114, 115, 124. 
 
 2 BouoM-Leoleroq, Hist, des Lagides, I. pp. 232, 233. Of. Mahaffy, 
 Empire of Ptolemies, pp. 204 sqq. The Egyptianizing tendencies of the 
 later Ptolemies shown by the decrees of the priests on the Rosetta and 
 
 4^2 
 
52 The Alexandrian Divinities [ch. 
 
 very considerable sums on the restoration and keeping-up of 
 the temples in Egypt dedicated to such thoroughly native gods 
 as Amon of Thebes and Horus of Edfu, besides those at Philae 
 and elsewhere raised not to the Alexandrian but to the Egyptian 
 Osiris and his cycle. What truth there is in the statement 
 of Macrobius that Ptolemy Soter compelled by " tyranny " 
 the Egyptians to take Serapis into their temples, it is impossible 
 to say ; but as his image in Greek form has never been found 
 in any of them, it is plain that the priests must have found some 
 way of evading the royal order, if it were really given ^- 
 
 Ptolemy, however, was building better than he knew, and 
 the hybrid cult which the provident old soldier had fashioned 
 as an instrument of government turned out to be the first, and 
 not the least successful, of the world-religions for which Alex- 
 ander's conquests left clear the way. During the wars of the 
 Diadochi, all the powers who at any time found themselves 
 Ptolemy's pawns in the mighty war game then played on a 
 board stretching from India to Thrace, thought to curry favour 
 with their rich ally by giving countenance to his new religion. 
 An association of Sarapiasts or worshippers of Serapis held 
 their meetings in the Piraeus not long after the institution of 
 the Alexandrian cult^ ; and before the death of Ptolemy Soter, 
 a Serapeum was built in Athens over against the Acropolis 
 itself^. Cyprus, Ehodes, Antioch, Smjona, and Halicarnassus 
 were not long in following suit, and before the end of the century 
 several of the islands of the .^gean together with Boeotia, which 
 was said by some to be the native country of Dionysos, had 
 adopted the new worship. In the second century B.C., the 
 temples of the Alexandrian gods were to be found in Delos, 
 Tenedos, Thessaly, Macedonia and the Thracian Bosphorus 
 in Europe, and in Ephesus, Cyzicus and Termessus among 
 
 Caaopus Stones were first pointed out by Revillout in the Revue Archdo- 
 logiqtie, 1877, pp. 331 sqq. A new decree of the same kind under Epiphanes 
 has been published by M. Daressy, Recueilde Travaux etc., 1911, pp. 1 sqq. 
 
 1 Macrobius, Saturn. Bk i. c. 7. 
 
 ^ Foucart, Les Associations Religieuses, p. 207, Inscr. 24 ; C.I.O. No. 120. 
 The tablet is now in the British Museum. 
 
 ^ Lafaye, Culte, etc. p. 35 ; Pausanias, Bk I. c. 18, 4. 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divinities 53 
 
 other places in Asia Minor^- But their greatest triumph was 
 awaiting them further west. Invited by Hiero II into Sicily, 
 they were not long in working their way up the coast, and a 
 hundred years before our era a temple to Serapis was in exist- 
 ence at Puteoli^. It was evidently no new foundation and had 
 probably been built some fifty years earlier, at which date 
 perhaps the first Isium at Pompeii was also in existence*^. 
 Somewhere about 80 B.C., the Alexandrian worship was intro- 
 duced into Eome itself, and thereafter no action of the 
 authorities was able to expel it*. Its temples were more than 
 once thrown down by order of the consuls; but they were always 
 rebuilt, and in 43 B.C., the aedile Marcus Volusius, who had been 
 proscribed by the triumvirs, found the linen robe and the dog's 
 head mask of a priest of Isis the most efficient disguise in which 
 to escape Sulla's bravos^. Under the Empire, the temple of 
 Isis in the Campus Martins became one of the fashionable 
 resorts of the Roman youth ; and, although Tiberius seized 
 the occasion of a real or pretended scandal in connection with 
 it to exile a large number of the faithful to Sardinia, his suc- 
 cessors were themselves initiated into the faith ; while under 
 Nero the worship of the Alexandrian gods was formally recog- 
 nized by the state®- From that time, it followed the Roman 
 arms into every quarter of the ancient world, and its monuments 
 have been found in Morocco, Spain, France, Great Britain, 
 Germany, and the Danube provinces. Ridicule was as power- 
 less to stop its march as persecution, and the satire of Juvenal 
 and Martial had no more effect on it than the banter of the 
 New Comedy, which was quick to observe that even in 
 
 1 Laiaye, op. cit. pp. 35-38 ; id. Dictionnaire des Antiques of Darem- 
 berg and Saglio, s.v. Isis ; Drexler in Roscher's Lexikon der Mythologie, 
 s.v. Isis, esp. p. 379. 
 
 ' Lafaye, op. cit. p. 40 ; G.I.L. I. 577. 
 
 ' Lafaye, see last note. 
 
 * Lafaye, op. cit. pp. 44 sqq. 
 
 ^ Lafaye, op. cit. pp. 4Ar-4n. For the story of Marcus Volusius see 
 Appian, de Belh Civili, Bk TV. o. 6, § 47. 
 
 « Tibullus, Elegiacs, l. iii. 23 ; ibid. I. vii. 27 ; Ovid, Am. n. xiii. 7 ; 
 id. op. cit. n. xiv. The story of the expulsion is told by Josephus, Anti- 
 quities, xvin. 0. 3. Cf. Lafaye, op. cit. chap, m passim. 
 
54 The Alexandrian Divinities [CH. 
 
 Menander's day the gilded youth of Athens swore " by Isis " or 
 " by Horus^." Under the Antonines, it probably reached its 
 apogee, when the Emperor Commodus appeared in the pro- 
 cessions of the cult among the bearers of the sacred images, 
 and few Romans seem to have been aware that the Alexandrian 
 gods were not Roman from the beginning. Like Ptolemy's 
 master, Ptolemy's gods might have boasted that they com- 
 manded the allegiance of the whole civilized world^. 
 
 The causes of this astonishing success must be looked for 
 within the religion itself. No name has come down to us of 
 any prophet or priest of the Alexandrian religion possessing 
 a commanding personality like St Paul, Mohammed, Luthffic, 
 or Calvin ; and we must therefore conclude that it was its own 
 intrinsic merits which thus commended it to so many widely- 
 differing peoples^. Foremost among these was, it would seem, 
 its extraordinary timeliness. M^^ss^^ii£><&xa(gi:&i^J^&^Jass^M' 
 djowa.J Ja&JaaEaeia^thafc speedk .a^^-^use .had«sek ,i^U:ietee«Q 
 neighbouring peoples, andhaidJitJie same time unit^^^iny 
 hundreds of Jealous and discordant, states^^ under, a. an gle he ^. 
 In the many royal courts which had been set up as a result 
 of the partition of Alexander's Empire, philosophers of every 
 school were chanting the political advantages of an enlightened 
 monarchy over the greedy scramble for place and power in- 
 separable from democracy, and the doctrine was bound sooner 
 or later to be applied to religion*. We have seen how far both 
 Egyptians and Greeks had before then carried the practice of 
 theocrasia, but the founders of the Alexandrian religion were 
 not slow in pushing it to its only legitimate conclusion. Serapis, 
 unlike the Greek Zeus, from the first declined to brook any 
 partition of his empire over nature. " Wouldst thou know 
 
 * Comicor. Graecor. Fragmenta of Didot, pp. 517 amd 629, aad Lafaye, 
 op. cit. p. 31. 
 
 ^ Lafaye, op. etloc. cit, and especially p. 62. 
 
 ^ So Parisotti, RieerchB sul cuUo de Iside e Sempide, Boma, 1888, 
 p. 52 sqq. ; and DUl, Nero to Marcus, pp. 564, 565 : " The iijstory of 
 the Isiac cult at Rome from Sulla to Nero is really the history of a great 
 popular rel%iou8 movement " 
 
 * See Chapter I, supra, pp. 12, 14. Cf. Droysen, op. cit. n. p. 471. 
 
n] The Alexandrian Divinities 55 
 
 what god I am," said his oracle at the Alexandrian Serapeum 
 to Nicocreon, the Cypriote king. " I myself will tell thee. 
 The heavenly cosmos is my head ; the sea my belly. My 
 feet are the earth ; my ears are in the aether. My far-beaming 
 eye is the radiant light of the sun^." In other words, Serapis 
 is himself the universe, which is probably the meaning to be 
 attached to the name given to Osiris in the Book of the Dead 
 which Egyptologists translate " Lord of Totality." But 
 Aeschylus had already said the same thing about Zeus*, and 
 as the gods of the Greeks were never anything else than the 
 powers of nature, Serapis thus comprised in his single person 
 the whole Greek pantheon. Hence " Serapis alone is Zeus " 
 came to be a sort of watchword in the Alexandrian religion to 
 be endlessly repeated on statues, gems, and all the other material 
 relics of the cult*. A little later and we find Serapis drawing 
 to himself the worship of all the Mediterranean gods who had 
 a common origin with Osiris and Dionysos. Adonis, as appears 
 from the beautiful idyll of Theocritus, in the reign of Ptoleqay 
 Soter's successor was worshipped as another form of Osiris in 
 the royal palace itself*. Atys, Cybele's lover, was also identified 
 with him 5 ; -aQdjas the Sto ic philosophy, whiph taught tha t ajl 
 ~^ 'for 
 
 t iii erBxi t ' fo rms of the one Divine energy, 
 
 1 Macrobins, Saturn. Bk i. c. 20. Bouch6-Leelercq (R.H.B. 1902, 
 t. XLVi. p. 19, n. 1) says these lines are a forgery of late date. Krall, 
 Tacitus, etc. Th. i, Bk iv., is of the contrary opiniou. Nicocreon of 
 Cyprus was certainly a contemporary of Ptolemy Soter, an,d helped him 
 against Ferdiccas. 
 
 2 Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk v. c. 14. So ^hus Aristides, in Serapidem, 
 p. 91 (Dindorf), says that Serapis " is present in all things and fills the 
 universe." 
 
 2 Lafaye, CuUe, etc., pp. 306, 307, 324, 325, for examples. Cf. Inscrip- 
 tion from Kios in Bithj^a given by Robiou in M&angea Qraux, Paris, 
 1884, pp. 601, 602 ; Parisotti, op. cit. p. 55. 
 
 * Theocritus, IdyU, xv. ; Dajnascius, Vit. Isidor. 106 ; Socrates, Hitf. 
 Bed. Bk m. c. 23. In Le Culte d'Adonis-Thmmnuz, Paris, 1901 (pp. 51- 
 54, 69, 109), M. Ch. Vellay has shown the fusion in early Christian times 
 of the legends of Adonis, Atys and Osiris, 
 
 6 Erazer, Golden Bough, Part iv, p. 357 and n. 1 ; cf. Stephen of By- 
 za,ntinm, s.v, 'Anafiovs ; Dolljnger, Jud. und Heid- i. p. 145 ; Decharme 
 in Daremberg and SagJio, s.v, Cybele for authorities. 
 
56 The Alexandrian Divinities [ch. 
 
 came into fashion, Serapis was equated with the numerous 
 sun-gods whose worship poured in from the Semitic east. 
 " The eternal sun " came to be one of his most-used epithets, 
 and he is often invoked as the equivalent of the Greek Helios 
 and of the Persian sun-god Mithras^. Nor did his consort 
 long remain behind him. " I, the parent of the works of 
 nature " is the style in which Isis announces herself to her 
 votary Lucius in Apuleius' romance, 
 
 " queen of all the elements, earliest offspring of the ages, highest of 
 godheads, sovereign of the Manes, first of the heavenly ones, one- 
 formed type of gods and goddesses. The luminous heights of heaven, 
 the health-giving breezes of the sea, the sad silences of the lower 
 world, I govern by my nod. I am she whose godhead, single in 
 essence, but of many forms, with varied rites and under many 
 names, the whole earth reveres. Hence the Phrygians, first born 
 of men, call me Pessinuntica, Mother of the Gods ; here the first 
 inhabitants of Attica, Cecropian Minerva, there the wave-rocked 
 Cypriotes, Paphian Venus ; the arrow-bearing Cretans, Diana 
 Diotynna ; the three-tongued Sicilians, Stygian Proserpine ; the 
 Eleusinians, the ancient goddess Ceres; — others Juno, others Bel- 
 lona, these Hecate, those Rhamnusia ; and they who are lighted by 
 the first rays of the sun-god on his rising, the Ethiopians, the Afri- 
 cans, and the Egyptians skilled in the ancient teaching, worshipping 
 me with ceremonies peculiarly my own, call me by my true name, 
 Queen Isis^." 
 
 As we shall see later (p. 64, infra) her spouse Osiris claimed 
 also to be the highest of godheads ; and the final unity of the 
 Divine essence to which the /xvari,Krj deoKpaala was logically 
 bound to lead could hardly be stated in clearer language^. 
 
 ^ Julian, ad Reg. Sol. Orat. iv. cc. 135, 136 ; Eusebius, Praep. Ev. 
 Bk m. 0. 15 ; Kenyon, Greek Papyri in British Museum, 1893, p. 65 ; 
 Wessely, Oriechische Zauberpapyri von Paris, etc., Wien, 1888, pp. 61 sqq. ; 
 Leemans, Papyri Oraeci Mus. Ant. Pub. Lugduni-Batavi, Leyden, 1885, 
 n. pp. 26, 27 ; Parthey, Zwei griech. Zauberpapyri, Berlin, 1866, p. 127. 
 
 ^ Apuleius, Metamorphoses, Bk xi. c. 5. 
 
 " So Ramsay, Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, Oxford, 1895, i. p. 92, 
 says that "the essentia] idea" of the mysteries was that all the gods 
 there worshipped were but different forms of the one. In the " Greek 
 Worship of Serapis and Isis," I have endeavoured to show how this idea 
 was elaborated in the cult of the Alexandrian divinities. 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divinities 57 
 
 Thus, we see that what has been called a monotheistic 
 pantheism instead of an incoherent mass of local worships was 
 one of the advantages of the Alexandrian cult. But in the 
 religion of the crowd, feeling plays a more important part than 
 reason, and the idea which it first gave mankind of what would 
 be now called the " fatherhood of God " was probably by far 
 its most alluring feature. It has frequently been said that the 
 Greeks although they feared, did not love their gods, and so 
 far as the Homeric deities are concerned, it is difficult to see why 
 they should. Apollo openly expresses his contempt for " pitiful 
 mortals, who like unto leaves now live in glowing life, con- 
 suming the fruit of the earth, and now again pine unto death^," 
 Hera does not hide her scorn for " the creatures of a day," and 
 the help that Athena gives the Greeks in their war against Troy 
 is expressly said to be due to no kindlier feeling than rage 
 at the slight which Paris had put upon her beauty^. As for 
 the Egyptian religion, if it ever exhibited the lofty conceptions 
 and sublime ideas with which the earlier Egyptologists were 
 inclined to credit it, it had long before Ptolemy's time lost all 
 trace of them, and had degenerated into " a systematized 
 sorcery " in which the gods were compelled to grant merely 
 material benefits directly they were demanded with the proper 
 rituaP. But when we turn from the Greek and Egyptian 
 creeds to the new faith which was compoimded from the two, 
 we are at once struck by the complete change which seems to 
 have come over the worshippers' conception of the Divine. 
 Isis, from the ■wily magician of Pharaonic Egypt, has now become 
 " the haven of peace and the altar of pity*." 
 
 " thou holy and eternal protectress of the race of men " 
 
 are the terms with which Lucius addresses her, 
 
 " thou who ever givest good gifts to comfort-needing mortals, thou 
 dost bestow upon the lot of the wretched the sweet affection of a 
 
 ^ Homer, Iliad, xxi. 462 (translation by Lang, Leaf and Myers). 
 
 ^ Cf. Penelope's speech on the jealousy of the gods, Odyssey, xxni. 208. 
 
 ' Sayoe, Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia (Gifford Lectures), 
 Edin. 1902, p. 201; Naville, The Old Egyptian Faith, pp. 308, 309; 
 Maspero, J<. Mgyptol. r. p. 163 and n. p. 277. 
 
 * Apuleius, Met. Bk xi. o. 15. 
 
58 The Alexandrian Divinities [ch. 
 
 mother. There is no day nor night nor smallest moment which is 
 not occupied with thy good deeds. Thou dost protect mankind by 
 sea and land, and scattering the storms of life dost stretch forth to 
 them thy saving hand, with which thou dost even spin anew the 
 hopelessly twisted web of the Fates, and dost temper the blasts of 
 fortune and restrain the hostile courses of the stars ^." 
 
 So iElius Aristides in his encomium of Serapis written after 
 having been saved from shipwreck, as he considered, by the 
 direct intervention of the god, tells us that Serapis is the god 
 who " purifies the soul with wisdom, and preserves the body 
 by giving it health^," that he alone 
 
 " is adored by kings as by private persons, by the wise as by the 
 foolish, by the great as by the small, and by those on whom he has 
 bestowed happiness as well as those who possess him alone as a 
 refuge from their trouble^," 
 
 that he is " the protector and saviour of all men*," " the most 
 loving of the gods towards men*," "greatly turned towards 
 mercy*," and " the light common to all men'." We hardly 
 want his elaborate demonstration that Serapis alone of all the 
 gods is ready to assist him who invokes him when in need, to 
 convince us that the reign of the warlike gods and goddesses 
 of Homer — always, as Renan says, brandishing a spear from 
 the top of an acropolis — is over, and that instead of them man 
 has at last found 
 
 " Gods, the friends of man 
 
 Merciful gods, compassionate " 
 
 who would certainly " answer him again," as a father would 
 his children. 
 
 The providence and beneficence of the Alexandrian gods 
 towards man, moreover, extended beyond the grave. In Homer, 
 we find a conception of the next world which for dreariness and 
 
 ' IbiA. c. 25. * Aristides, in Serapid. p. 89. 
 
 ' Ihid. toe. cit. * Ibid. p. 90. 
 
 6 Ibid. p. 97. 8 Ibid. loe. oit. 
 ' Ibid. p. 100. 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divinities 59 
 
 hopelessness is only paralleled by the Jewish ideas concerning 
 Sheol. " Nay, speak not comfortably to me of death, great 
 Odysseus," says the shade of Achilles to the hero who has 
 called him up from Hades. " Rather would I live upon the soil 
 as the hireling of another, even with a landless man who had 
 no great livelihood, than bear sway among all the dead who 
 are no more^." But the Eleusjnian Mysteries were hailed as 
 giving deliverance from these horrors, and as robbing death of 
 much of its terrors for those who had been initiated. " Blessed 
 is he," says Pindar in a passage in which commentators agree 
 to see a direct allusion to the Mysteries, " who has seen the 
 things that are Hnder the earth. He has seen the end of life; he 
 has seen also the God-sent beginning*." " Thrice blessed," says 
 Sophocles, " are they among mortals, who after having beheld 
 these mysteries, go to the house of Hades : for it is theirs alone 
 there to live, but to the others there will arrive all ills'." The 
 Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which may be about a centuiy 
 earlier than Pindar, is as emphatic as he as to the savmg grace of 
 initiation. " Happy," it says, " is the man on earth who has 
 seen these things. But he who has not been initiated in these 
 holy rites, who has not shared in them, never has the same lot, 
 when he has utterly faded away in the dark gloom'*." Those 
 who believe with M. Foucart in the Egyptian origin of the 
 Eleusinian rites will doubtless see in this a direct borrowing 
 from the Egyptian views regarding the beatitude awaiting the 
 justified or " triumphant " dead who in life had been wor- 
 shippers of Osiris. How much or how little of the Osirian 
 faith as to the state of these worshippers in the next world 
 passed into the Alexandrian religion cannot now be said ; but 
 it is certain that the protection of Isis and Serapis was held to 
 be as powerful in the life beyond the tomb as in this. 
 
 ^ Odyssey, xi. 491 sqq. (Butcher and Lang's translation). 
 
 " Piadar, Threnoi, Frag. x. p. 102, Cod. Bo. 
 
 " Sophocles, TriptoUmus (Plutarch, de Audiendis Poetis, 21 jf), Frag. 
 348 of Didot. 
 
 * Homeric Hymn to Demet&r, U. 480 sqq. So an inscription on the 
 statue of a faierophant quoted by M. Pouoart, Mysl. d'El. p. 65, says that 
 death to the initiated is not an evU but a good. 
 
60 The Alexandrian Divinities [cH. 
 
 " When the term of thy life is spent," 
 
 says the apparition of the goddess to Apuleius' Lucius, 
 
 " and thou at length descendest to the lower regions, there also, 
 even in the subterranean hemisphere, thou, dwelling in Elysian 
 fields, will often adore me who art propitious to thee, and whom 
 thou shalt see shining among the shades of Acheron and reigning 
 over the secret places of Styx^." 
 
 So, too, Aristides says of Serapis, that he is " the Saviour and 
 leader of souls, leading souls to the light and receiving them 
 again^," that " he raises the dead, he shows forth the longed- 
 for light of the sun to those who see, whose holy tombs contain 
 endless numbers of sacred books*," and that " we can never 
 escape from his sway, but he will save us, and even after death 
 we shall be the objects of his providence*." We may imagine, 
 if we please, although there is really no proof of any connection 
 between the two, that in its assertion of the fatherhood of God 
 as in earthly matters, the Alexandrian religion owed something 
 to the Stoic philosophy ; but it is fairly certain that in the 
 glimpses it afforded of the next world, its inspiration must 
 have been drawn either from Eleusis or from Egypt. 
 
 What we know, too, of the actual worship of the Alexandrian 
 triad shows that it was designed to attract the devotion of the 
 multitude with a skill that argues the existence behind it of 
 many centuries of priestcraft. It is still a moot point whether 
 Herodotus was well-founded when he asserted the existence of 
 " mysteries " in the Egyptian religion ^ ; and it is quite clear 
 that the scenes in the earthly life of Osiris and the gods of his 
 cycle which in the case of their Greek counterparts were care- 
 fully concealed from all but initiates, were in Egypt openly 
 
 1 Apuleius, Met. Bk xi. o. 6. 
 
 ^ Aristides, in Serapid. p. 93. 
 
 " Ibid. p. 95. « Ibid. p. 96. 
 
 5 Maspero says (" Les Hypog6es Royaux de Thebes," St. Sgyptol. u. 
 p. 178) that " if ever there were in Pharaonio Egypt mysteries and initiates, 
 as there were in Greece and Greek Eg3rpt," it was in the time of decay 
 evidenced by the rare books preserved in the tombs of the kings of the 
 xxth and later Dynasties. Later, ibid. p. 180, he says that they must 
 have been confined to a very small class. Of. ibid. p. 278. 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divmities 61 
 
 portrayed on the walls of the temples^- But Timotheos and 
 Manetho must have been too well aware of the prestige attach- 
 ing throughout the Hellenic world to the secret worships of such 
 centres of religion as Eleusis and Samothrace to forgo its 
 advantage for their new religion ; and the Alexandrian gods too 
 had a system of initiation which seems to have been modelled 
 upon that of the " Goddesses Twain." Thanks to Apuleius we 
 can, up to a certain point, follow the Alexandrian course of 
 initiation step by step. Those whom Isis singled out as fitted 
 for her service^ — which we may without uncharitableness inter- 
 pret as meaning those whom the priests thought likely to be 
 of use to the religion — were assigned a " mystagogue " who no 
 doubt gave them such instructions as he thought fit in the 
 meaning of the rites which he saw performed in the temple, 
 and the incidents in the life of the gods to which they were 
 attached. When after a course of such instruction, which was 
 of varying length, the mystagogue was convinced of the sound- 
 ness of the aspirant's vocation, the formal initiation began. 
 In strict accordance with a ritual which Apuleius assures u's 
 was written down in Egyptian characters and carefully pre- 
 served in the secret places of the sanctuary (ofertis adyti), the 
 aspirant underwent a solemn lustration with water or baptism 
 at the hands of the priest, and was ordered to abstain from all 
 food which had had life, from wine and from the company of 
 the other sex for a space of ten days*. This period was doubt- 
 less spent as far as possible within the temple precincts, much 
 importance being attached to the prolonged contemplation of 
 the statue of the goddess, which was, as we have seen, fashioned 
 in a manner worthy of Greek art, and was further adorned with 
 
 1 E.g. the mystic marmge of Zeus or Dionysos with Demeter, which 
 according to Hippolytus, Phihsophumena, Bk v. c. 1, § 8, p. 171, Cruice, 
 and Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. c. n., formed the crowning scene of 
 the Eleusinian Mysteries. At Dendera, the corresponding union of Osiris 
 and Isis, from which, according to M. Foucart, the Eleusinian legend was 
 derived, was depicted in the most realistic way on the temple walls. 
 See Mariette, Denddrah, Paris, 1875, t. rv. pi. 65 sqq., or Budge, O.E. 
 pp. 13^-137. 
 
 ^ Apuleius, Met. Bk xi. c. 21, queis tamen tuto possint magna religionism 
 crnnmitti silentia, numen deae aoleat elicere. ' Ibid. cc. 22, 23. 
 
62 The Alexandrian Divinities [ch. 
 
 rich robes and jewels after the manner of the Catholic images 
 of the Virgin. At the expiration of the ten days' retreat, the 
 candidate was clothed in a linen garment and was exhibited to 
 the general body or congregation of the faithful who presented 
 him with gifts. The secret ceremonies were then performed 
 before him, the nature of which are only revealed to us in the 
 guarded words of Apuleius' hero : 
 
 " I approached the bounds of death, and, borne through all the 
 elements, returned again to the threshold of Proserpine which I 
 had already trod. I saw at midnight the sun shining with pure 
 light, I came before the Gods of the Upper and Lower World, and 
 I worshipped them from anigh^." 
 
 Collating these hints — which Apuleius tells us are all that it 
 is lawful for him to give — with what we know of the origin of 
 the Alexandrian religion and with the scraps of information that 
 have come down to us regarding other ceremonies of a like nature, 
 we may gather from this that the candidate underwent a mock 
 death, being probably made to enact in his own person the 
 passion of Osiris and his shutting-up in a coffin 2, that he was 
 shown the happy lot of the initiated and the correspondingly 
 miserable fate of the uninitiated in the life after death, that he 
 was subjected to certain " trials," or proofs of his courage and 
 sincerity, by fire, water, earth, and air, and that he was finally 
 shown in a brilliant light the glorious company of the gods 
 represented either by their images, or by priests arrayed with 
 their best-known attributes. Nothing seems to have been 
 omitted that could impress the imagination of the neophyte, 
 and when the night of initiation was at length over, he was 
 again displayed before the congregation of worshippers clothed 
 in what was known as the Olympian garment {stola Olymjnaca) 
 consisting of a dress of byssus or linen embroidered with flowers, 
 over which was cast a rich mantle decorated with figures of 
 fabulous animals, and bearing in his right hand a flaming torch, 
 
 ^ Op. dt. end of c. 23. 
 
 "* Perhaps this is the meaning of the formula said by Clement of Alex- 
 andria, Protrept. c. n., to be repeated by the initiates at Eleusis : " I have 
 fasted...! have drunk of the cyceon...! have entered into the chest 
 
 (ttoittos)." 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divinities 63 
 
 while on his head was a crown of palm-leaves with leaves pro- 
 jecting, as he says, " like rays of light." In this costume he 
 was placed in a wooden pulpit before the statue of the goddess 
 in the public portion of the temple, and was thus exhibited for the 
 adoration of the crowd, when the ceremony of opening took 
 place^. As the last stage of the secret rite seems to have been the 
 successive imposition upon the initiate of twelve robes, doubtless 
 typifying the twelve signs of the Zodiac, we hardly want the 
 rayed crown, and the explicit words of Apuleius to inform us that 
 in this costume he was intended to represent the material sun 
 {exornatus instar Solis et in vicem simulacri constitutus)^. The 
 sun-god, however, was in the later phases of the Egyptian 
 religion not Osiris but either Ra or Horus', and this last-named 
 god was in the Alexandrian triad equated with the Greek Apollo. 
 It therefore seems likely that the initiate represented here the 
 child of Isis begotten, as has been said, by Osiris after his 
 death and passion, and this corresponds with the statement 
 put into the mouth of Isis and preserved by Proclus : "I am 
 that which has been, is, and will be. My garment none has 
 lifted. The fruit which I bore has become the sun*." It is 
 significant that the later and especially the Christian writers 
 speak of Oaitis and not Horus as the son of Isis ; but the 
 distinction between father and son in the Egyptian triads was 
 never sharply defined, and there are many signs that Horus, 
 the son of Isis, was looked upon as Osiris re-born^. 
 
 The initiation strictly so-called was concluded with a banquet 
 
 ^ Apuleius, Met. c. 24. 
 
 2 See last note. 
 
 ' Ra was always the material sun ; while Horus was probably in 
 ancient times the god of the sky : Maspero, St. Sgyptol. t. n. p. 229. With 
 the Middle Empire the emblem of Ra began to be added to that of Horus 
 as the " crest " of the Pharaoh's cognizance, showing that the Ung was 
 himself regarded as the representative of a composite divinity, Horus-Ra. 
 Of. " Titles of Thinite Kings," P.S.B.A. 1908, p. 89. 
 
 * Proclus, in Timaeum Platonis, i. 30 d. (Schneidewin). 
 
 ' Minucius Felix, Octamus, c. xxi. ; Amobiua, adv. Oentea, Bk i. c. 36 ; 
 Athenagoras, Preaheia, c. xxn. Of. also Griffith and Thompson, Stories of 
 High Priests of Memphis, pp. 107, 121 ; Maspero, tt. Sgyptol. n. p. 246, 
 and especially p. 361 ; P.S.B.A. 1914, pp. 92, 93. 
 
64 The Alexandrian Divinities [CH. 
 
 provided by the initiate in which he celebrated what he was 
 henceforth to regard as his natal day, as his formal entry into 
 the religion was considered by him as a re-birth. Nor was this 
 all. Twelve months after his initiation into the first degree 
 or Mysteries of Isis, Apuleius' hero is summoned to undergo a 
 further initiation, this time into the mysteries " of the Great 
 God and highest progenitor of the Gods, the unconquered Osiris 
 (magni dei deumque summi parentis, invicti Osiris)," of which 
 we are only told that a further preparation of ten days was 
 necessary and that the aspirant was in addition " enlightened 
 by the nocturnal orgies of the princely god Serapis (insurer 
 etiam Serapis principalis dei nocturnis orgiis illustratus)^." 
 Very shortly after this a third initiation was prescribed to Lucius 
 and was backed up by a dream in which Osiris " the God of the 
 great Gods, or rather the Highest of the Greater Gods and the 
 Greatest of the Highest and the Kuler of the Greatest {deus deum 
 magnorum potior et majorum summus et summorum maximus et 
 rriaximorum regnator Osiris) " appears to him ; but we learn 
 nothing of the nature of this fresh initiation, save that it was 
 preceded like the two others by a ten- days' fast^. No other 
 text or monument that has yet come to light gives any hint 
 as to the revelations made in these two last degrees or initiations ; 
 but it seems likely from the words above quoted that they were 
 concerned with the true nature of Osiris^, and that he must have 
 been finally proclaimed to the initiate as the one and only Source 
 of Being. The apparent inconsistency between this and Isis' 
 own statement given above that she is herself the " highest 
 of godheads. . .first of the heavenly ones, one-formed type of 
 
 1 Apuleius, Met. Bk xi. c. 27. 
 
 2 Op. cit. c. 28. 
 
 ' JSlius Aristides {in Serapid. p. 88) refuses to discuss this ; but 
 Athenagoras (see note 5 p. 63, supra) says that when the members of the 
 body of Osiris were found, they were presented to Isis with the remark that 
 they were the fruits of the viae Dionysus and that Semele was the vine 
 itself. But see p. 65, infra. Plutarch, de Is. et Os. c. lxxix. says that 
 " the priests of these days," meaning, as is evident from the context, the 
 priests of the Alexandrian divinities, " try to conceal" the fact that Osiris 
 rules over the dead. The old religion of Egypt never did ; but perhaps 
 this, too, was part of the secret teaching of the Alexandrian Mysteries. 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divinities 65 
 
 gods and goddesses " can perhaps be got over by supposing that 
 the Supreme Being was supposed to be at once the father and 
 mother of the inferior gods, an idea of which there are many 
 traces in the Egyptian myths of later Pharaonic times^. Some 
 connection between Osiris in his Egyptian form and the Greek 
 wine-god Bacchus may be implied by the dream which heralded 
 the second initiation showing " one clothed in consecrated linen 
 robes, and bearing thyrsi, ivy and certain things which I may 
 not mention^ " ; but M. Baillet has found a bronze statue of 
 the Ptolemaic period in which Osiris is represented with grapes 
 and a vine-shoot^, and it is therefore unlikely that any identi- 
 fication of the kind formed part of the secrets reserved for 
 initiates *- 
 
 This, therefore, seems to be all that can be usefully said 
 about the secret part of the worship of the Alexandrian gods. 
 But the founders of the cult must have always borne in mind 
 that while in every religion there are a few devotees who are 
 prepared to go all lengths in theology or enquiry into the nature 
 of their gods, the majority are attracted to it more from a vague 
 desire to enter into amicable relations with the spiritual world 
 than from any other feeling. Even with the Mysteries of 
 Eleusis, it is fairly certain that only a very small proportion 
 of those who attended the ceremonies really grasped the full 
 meaning of what they saw and heard. " Many are the thyrsus- 
 bearers," quotes Plato in this connection, " but few are the 
 mystes*" ; and it is plain that, as the Telesterion at Eleusis 
 could at the outside accommodate three thousand persons, the 
 greater part of the huge crowd in the lacchos procession must 
 have come only to look on*. But even this more or less 
 
 1 Maspero, ^t. Sgyptol. n. pp. 254-255, 361, 446 ; P.S.B.A. 1914, p. 92. 
 
 2 Apuleius, Met. o. 27. 
 
 3 " Osiris-Bacchus " in Agypt. Zeitschr. 1878, p. 106. 
 
 * Unless we suppose that the statue was one of those used in the 
 mysteries, see note 3 p. 64, siipra. Plutarch, however, in his address to 
 Klea makes no secret of the identification. See de Is. 'A Os. c. xxxv. 
 
 s Plato, Phaedr. in Abel's Orphiea, !Fragm. 228. Olympiodorus says 
 that the verse comes from Orpheus. 
 
 * Dyer, Oods in Greece, p. 209. He thinks the crowd sometimes 
 numbered 30,000, relying upon the story in Herodotus, Bk vm. o. 65, 
 
 L. 5 
 
66 The Alexandrian Divinities [oh. 
 
 careless multitude did much to spread the fame of the Eleusinian 
 religion, while it was doubtless from their ranks in the first 
 instance that the true initiates were drawn. With this in view, 
 the Alexandrian priests laid themselves out to cater for the 
 half-convinced crowd as well as for their real devotees, and did 
 so with a success which put the Eleusinian Mysteries entirely 
 in the shade. In this, they were much helped by the practice 
 of the native Egyptian temples in Pharaonic times which has 
 been clearly set forth by M. Moret. Every day in every temple 
 in Egypt there seems to have been a solemn Service of Opening 
 when the statue of the god was taken from its resting-place, 
 purified with incense, dressed, and anointed before the doors 
 were opened, and the public, or perhaps only the king as repre- 
 senting mankind in general, were admitted to adore the god^. 
 This practice was copied with great fidelity in the worship 
 of the Alexandrian gods, and " the morning opening of the 
 temple " (temjili matutinas apertiones) became an elaborate 
 ceremony in which the white curtains which hid the statue of 
 Isis from the gaze of the worshippers were drawn back (velis 
 candentibus reductis), and it was displayed blazing with actual 
 robes, gems, and ornaments, like a Madonna in Southern Europe 
 at the present day^. We also learn from Apuleius that prayers 
 to the goddess were offered at the same time, while one of the 
 priests made the circuit of the different altars within the temple, 
 pouring before each of them a libation of Nile water, and " the 
 beginning of the First Hour " was solemnly proclaimed, with 
 chants and shouts which have been compared to the muezzin 
 of the Mahommedans, but which more probably resembled 
 the choral singing of a morning hymn by the assembled con- 
 gregation^. We know also from a casual allusion in one of 
 Martial's Epigrams, that the eighth hour was also celebrated by 
 
 of the Spartan who before the battle of Marathon heard the lacchos-song 
 sung " as if by 30,000 persons." Cf. Poucart, Les Ods. Myst. p. 136. 
 
 ^ Moret, Le GuUe Divin Joumalier en Sgypte, Paris, 1902, p. 9. 
 
 2 Apuleius, Met. o. 20. Lafaye, Oulte, etc. p. 136, gives the "trousseau" 
 of a statue of Isis found in Spain including earrings, necklaces, etc. 
 
 ^ See the scene in the Herculaneum fresco described on p. 68, infra. 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divinities 67 
 
 a chant of the priests, and it seems likely that this announced 
 the closing of the temple to the profane, and was attended by 
 similar solemnities to those of the opening ^. But it is abundantly 
 plain that between these hours the temple remained open for 
 what may be called private worship, and that this took the form 
 of meditation or silent adoration before the statue of Isis. 
 Apuleius' Lucius repeatedly speaks of the pleasure that he 
 derived even before his initiation from the prolonged con- 
 templation of the goddess's image^, and the Roman poets 
 are full of allusions to the devout who passed much of their time 
 seated before her statue on benches, the place of which is clearly 
 marked out in Isiac temples like that of Pompeii'. That such 
 " meditations " were thought to have in them a saving grace 
 is apparent from a passage in Ovid, where he tells us that he 
 had seen one who had offended " the divinity of the linen-clad 
 Isis " sitting before her altar*, and it also seems to have been 
 part of the necessary preparation for those who sought initia- 
 tion. When we consider that the Eleusinian festivals were 
 celebrated at the most but twice a year, and then only in one 
 part of Greece, we see how greatly the daily services and 
 frequentation of the temples in nearly every large town in the 
 West must have operated in drawing to the Alexandrian 
 worship the devotion of the citizens. 
 
 In addition to these, however, there were far more elaborate 
 ceremonies of which we obtain a passing glimpse. At Her- 
 culaneum, were found early in last century two mural frescoes 
 portraying scenes in the worship of Isis, and of an Isis who, 
 from the style of the paintings and the place where they were 
 found, can be no other than the Alexandrian goddess. One of 
 these, now in the Museum at Naples, shows a temple surrounded 
 by trees, the porch of which is approached by a staircase and 
 
 1 Martial, Bk x. Epig. 48. Apuleius, Met. o. 17, describes the oere- 
 monies which iucluded a solemn dismissal of the people, and the kissing 
 by them of the feet of a silver statue of the goddess. 
 
 2 Apuleius, Md. c. 19. 
 
 » Lafaye, CuUe, etc. pp. 118, 119, and Plate facing p. 192. Cf. Ovid, 
 Propertius and Tibullus, where quoted by Lafaye, op. cit. p. 120. 
 * Ovid, Pontic. Epist. Bk i. Ep. 1, v. 51. 
 
 5—2 
 
68 The Alexandrian Divinities [ch. 
 
 is guarded by two sphinxes^- Before the door and at the head 
 of the stairs stands a priest with the shaven crown of the Alex- 
 andrian priesthood, holding with both hands an urn breast-high, 
 while behind him are two others, one of whom (probably a 
 woman) is completely clothed, wears long hair, and shakes 
 a sistrum, while the other is naked to the waist and has his 
 head shaved like the central figure. At the foot of the 
 staircase is another priest bearing a sistrum in his left hand 
 and a sort of pointed baton or hiltless sword in his right ^ 
 with which he seems to be commanding a body of persons of 
 both sexes, who from the shaven crowns of the men are evidently 
 a congregation or college of initiates, and are ranged in two 
 rows upon the steps. In the foreground are three altars, the 
 middle one with a fire burning on it, which an attendant is 
 fanning, while on the right of this is a flute-player seated on 
 the ground, having in front of him a priest with a wand like 
 that before described in either hand, and on the left a man and 
 a woman shaking sistra. The scene evidently represents a 
 religious service of some kind, and this may possibly be, as 
 M. Lafaye suggests, the Adoration of the Sacred Water or water 
 of the Nile, which as Plutarch and Apuleius both hint, was 
 considered the emblem of Osiris^- If so, we may further suppose 
 that the initiates are here singing antiphonally, or in two choirs, 
 the hymn to Serapis, a particular air on the flute being, as we 
 shall see, sacred to that god. The other fresco shows a temple 
 porch like its fellow, although the steps leading up to it are fewer 
 in number and the two sphinxes on either side of the opening 
 are here replaced by two Doric pillars ornamented with garlands. 
 The central figure is a bearded man of black complexion, 
 
 1 The Baron von Biasing thinks this is a copy of the Serapetun of 
 Alexandria. See Transactions of the Third International Congress of 
 Religions, Oxford, 1908, i. pp. 225 sqq. 
 
 ^ Is this the hacchos or short rod carried by the faithful in the lacohos- 
 procession at Bleusis ? See Scholiast in Knights of Aristophanes, 1. 408 
 (p. 48 of Didot). 
 
 ' Hippolytus puts it quite plainly : " Now Osiris is water." See 
 Philosophumena, Bk v. c. 7, p. 149, Cruioe. Of. Lafaye, CuUe, etc. p. 115. 
 So Origen, c. Cels. Bk v. o. 38, says that the fables of Osiris and Isis lead 
 men to worship cold water and the moon. 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divinities 69 
 
 crowned with the lotus and a chaplet of leaves. One hand rests 
 on his hip, and the other is raised in the air, which attitude, 
 perhaps from its likeness to that of the statue known as the 
 Dancing Faun, has given rise to the idea that it is a sacred 
 dance which is here represented^- Behind this figure are two 
 women, one of whom plays a tympanum or tambourine, two 
 children, and a priest or initiate with shaven crown, sistrum 
 in hand, and naked to the waist. In the foreground is the altar 
 seen in the other fresco, with a flame rising from it, and standing 
 to the right of it a priest with a sistrum and another musical 
 instrument in his hands, a flute-player, a child, a kneeling man, 
 a woman clothed in a long garment and bearing, besides the 
 sistrum, a palm-branch, and other worshippers. On the left 
 is a priest with a sistrum, a child bearing in one hand a basket 
 and in the other a small urn, while a woman crowned with 
 leaves, with a sistrum and a dish filled with fruits, kneels at 
 the head of the steps. From the black complexion of the 
 principal figure, M. Lafaye considers that he may represent 
 Osiris himself and that he is here shown at the moment of 
 resurrection, a scene which he considers, not without reason, 
 may have formed the concluding act in one of the sacred dramas 
 or mystery-plays undoubtedly associated with the worship of 
 the god. If so, it is unlikely that it formed part of the initiation 
 into the Mysteries, the particulars of which were carefully 
 concealed from the profane and would hardly have been painted 
 on the walls of temples or dwelling-houses. It seems more 
 probable that the scene in question, whatever be its meaning, 
 was acted in pantomime in, or rather before, the temple at a 
 particular period of the year, that the uninitiated were allowed 
 to be present at it as well as at the Adoration of the Sacred 
 Water, and that these two therefore were familiar and attractive 
 objects to the populace throughout the Roman world. 
 
 That the Passion — as it was distinctly called — and Resur- 
 rection of Osiris were yearly and openly celebrated by the 
 worshippers of the Alexandrian gods with alternate demon- 
 strations of grief and joy, the classical poets have put beyond 
 
 1 von Bissing in the paper quoted in note 1 p. 68, supra, suggests that 
 this is the dance of the god Bes. 
 
70 The Alexandrian Divinities [CH. 
 
 doubt. The celebration took place in the month of November 
 and began with a ten-day fast on the part of all the faithful 
 which was often spent in the temples. Then followed the 
 representation of the passion of and the seeking for Osiris, and 
 its result, which a Christian writer of the iiird century a.d.^ 
 thus sums up : 
 
 " You behold the swallow^ and the cymbal of Isis, and the tomb of 
 
 your Serapis or Osiris empty, with Ms Umbs scattered about Isis 
 
 bewails, laments and seeks after her lost son^ with her Cynocephalus* 
 and her bald-headed priests ; and the wretched worshippers of Isis 
 beat their breasts, and imitate the grief of the most tmhappy mother. 
 By and by, when the little boy is found, Isis rejoices, and the priests 
 exult. Cynocephalus the discoverer boasts, and they do not cease 
 year by year either to lose what they find, or to find what they lose." 
 
 " These," he says, " were formerly Egyptian rites, and now 
 are Roman ones " ; and it is plain that all the incidents of 
 which he speaks were perfectly familiar to the Roman people. 
 Juvenal 5 speaks of the bald-headed multitude uttering lamen- 
 tations and running to and fro, and of their exultant cries when 
 Osiris is found ; and the banquets in the temples and great 
 festivals and public games which celebrated the " Finding of 
 Osiris " when the Alexandrian worship was recognized by the 
 state must have made the recurrence of this chief festival of 
 the Alexandrian religion familiar to every one*. 
 
 How many lesser festivals than these formed part of its 
 public ceremonial we do not know, but they were probably 
 numerous enough. The Roman calendars tell us of a festival 
 of Isis Pharia, probably in her capacity of tutelary goddess of 
 
 ^ Minuoius Felix, Octavitia, c. 21. 
 
 ^ The swallow refers to the story that Isis changed herself into a 
 swallow who flitted round the pillar containing the coffin of Osiris. Plu- 
 tarch, de Is. et Os. c. xvi. 
 
 ' Evidently a confusion between Horus and Osiris which would have 
 been impossible had not the Isiacists looked upon Horus as Osiris re-born. 
 Of. Laetantius, Institutes, Bk i. c. 21, where the same confusion occurs ; 
 P.S.B.A. 1914, p. 93. 
 
 « The " dog-headed " Anubis. 
 
 ' Juvenal, Satir. vi. 1. 533 ; ibid. vrn. 1. 30. 
 
 • Lafaye, Culte, etc. p. 128. 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divinities 71 
 
 Alexandria, and of another of Serapis, both in the month of 
 April, while Plutarch speaks of the Birth of Horus celebrated, 
 as was natural with a sun-god, after the vernal equinox, when 
 nature awakens and the sun begins to show forth his power. 
 But there was another spring festival which took place on the 
 5th of March ^ to mark the reopening of navigation and commerce 
 after the departure of winter, in which the faithful went in 
 procession to the sea (or probably in its absence to the nearest 
 water), and there set afloat a new ship filled with offerings 
 which was known as the vessel of Isis. Apuleius has left us 
 a description of this festival at once so lively and so imbued with 
 the spirit of the devout Isiacist, that it may be pardonable to 
 quote from it at some length. The procession, which in the case 
 he is describing sets forth at dawn from the gates of Cenchreae 
 the eastern port of Corinth, is heralded by a carnival in which 
 burlesque representations of magistrates, gladiators, hunters, 
 and fishermen jostle with caricatures of ancient Greek heroes 
 and demigods like Bellerophon and Ganymede. After this had 
 dispersed, " the procession proper of the Saviour Goddess," 
 he says, set itself in motion, and may be described in his own 
 words^ : 
 
 " Women shining in white garments displayed their joy by divers 
 gestures, and crowned with spring blossoms strewed from their laps 
 flowers upon the road over which marched the holy throng. Others, 
 with glittering mirrors held behind them, showed to the advancing 
 Goddess their ready service. Others, who bore ivory combs, by the 
 motion of their arms and the twining of their fingers represented the 
 combing of her royal hair, while yet others sprinkled the ways with 
 drops of sweet-smeUing balsam and other unguents. A great crowd 
 also of both sexes followed with lamps, torches, candles and other 
 kinds of lights making propitious with Ught the source of the hea- 
 venly stars. Thereafter came gentle harmonies, and reeds and flutes 
 sounded with sweetest modulations. A graceful choir of chosen 
 youths foUowed, shining in snowy dresses of ceremony and singing 
 a beautiful hymn which by grace of the Muses a skilful poet had set 
 to music, although its theme recalled the prayers of our forefathers. 
 
 ^ Laiaye, CuUe, etc. p. 120. 
 ^ Apuleius, Met. co. 9, 10, 11. 
 
72 The Alexandrimi Divinities [cii. 
 
 Then came flute-players consecrated to the great Serapis, who on 
 the slanted reed held under the right ear, repeated the air usual in 
 the temple of the God, in order that everyone might be warned to 
 make room for the passage of the holy things. Then pressed on 
 the multitude of those who had been initiated into the divine 
 mysteries, both men and women of every rank and age, shining in 
 the pure whiteness of their Unen robes, the women with hair moist 
 with perfume and covered with a transparent veil, the men with 
 closely shaven hair and glistening heads. Earthly stars of the great 
 religion were these, who made a shrill tinkling with brazen silver 
 or even gold sistra. Then came the priests of the holy things, those 
 distinguished men who, tightly swathed in white linen from the 
 breast-girdle to the feet, displayed to view the noble emblems of 
 the most mighty God. The first held forth a lamp shining with 
 clear Ught, not exactly resembling those which give light to nocturnal 
 banquets, but in the form of a golden boat and emitting a broader 
 flame through its central opening. The second, clothed in the same 
 way as the first, carried in his two hands the little altars, i.e. the 
 auxilia to which the helping foresight of the high Goddess has given 
 a peculiar name. The third bore a palm-tree with tiny golden 
 leaves, and likewise the cadueeus of Mercury. The fourth exhibited 
 the emblem of Equity, a left hand represented with outstretched 
 palm, which from its inborn disinclination to work, and as being 
 endowed with neither skUl nor expertness, seems better suited to 
 typify Equity than the right. He also bore a golden vase in the 
 rounded shape of a female breast, from which he poured libations 
 of milk. The fifth carried a winnowing-fan composed of golden wires, 
 and yet another an amphora. 
 
 " Without interval, the Gods who have deigned to walk with 
 the feet of men go forward. Here — dread sight ! — is he who is the 
 messenger between the supernal and the infernal deities. Upright, 
 of a complexion black in some parts, golden in others, Anubis raises 
 on high his dog's head, bearing in his left hand the caduceus, and 
 shaking in his right the budding palm-branch*. Close upon his 
 footsteps, follows a cow, held on high in an erect posture — the cow, 
 fertile image of the Goddess who brings forth all things — which one 
 of the blessed ministry with pantomimic steps bears seated on his 
 shoulders. The chest containing the mysteries was carried by 
 
 1 Is this the " golden bough " of initiation ? Cf. Baillet, " Osiris- 
 Bacchus," cited p. 65, supra. 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divinities 73 
 
 another, thus wholly concealing the hidden things of the sublime 
 religion^. Yet another bore within his happy bosom the revered 
 likeness of the Supreme Divinity, resembling neither a domestic 
 animal, nor bird, nor wild beast, nor even man himself ; but yet 
 to be revered in the highest degree alike for its skilful invention, 
 and for its very novelty, and also as that unspeakable evidence of 
 the religion which should be veiled in complete silence. As to its 
 outward form, it was fashioned in glittering gold — an urn hollowed 
 out with perfected art with a round base and carved externally with 
 the marvellous images of the Egyptians. Its mouth was not much 
 raised and jutted forth in an extended spout with a wide stream ; 
 while on the opposite side was attached the handle bent far out 
 with a wide sweep, on which sate an asp in wreathed folds uplifting 
 the swollen stripes of his scaly neck." 
 
 This description will leave little doubt on the mind of the 
 reader as to the supreme importance in the religion of the urn 
 which is being held up for the adoration of the faithful in the 
 fresco from Herculaneum before described ; and this is borne 
 out by a bas-relief in the Vatican in which a similar urn to that 
 described by Apuleius is represented as being carried in pro- 
 cession^. "They say," says Hippolytus speaking of the wor- 
 shippers of Isis, " that Osiris is water," and Celsus, according 
 to Origen, confirms him in this*. According to this last, Isis 
 represented the earth, and the doctrine may therefore be an 
 allegory representing the fertilization of the land by the Nile. 
 It is more likely, however, that it is to be attributed to one of 
 the older cosmogonies current in Egypt, wherein water, per- 
 sonified by the god Nu, is the origin of everything*. The main 
 
 1 Probably the pudendum of Osiris. See Hippolytus, PhMosophumena, 
 Bk v. c. 7, p. 149, Cruice ; Socrates, Hist. Eccl. Bk v. c. 16 ; Clem. Alex. 
 Protrept. c. n., says the Corybantes did the same thing with that of 
 Bacchus. 
 
 2 Lafaye in Daremberg and Saglio's Diet, des Antiq. s.v. Isis. 
 
 ' See note 3 p. 68, supra. Of. Leemans, Papyri Or. pp. 26, 27. 
 
 * Maspero, St. Sgyptol. n. p. 345, says this Nu was "neither the 
 primordial water, nor the sky, but a very ancient god, common to all 
 humanity," whom he compares to the Thian of the Chinese, the Dyaus 
 of the pre-Vedic, and the Uranos-Oceanos of the pre-Hellenic peoples. 
 " At the beginning," he continues, " he is himself the Celestial Ocean." 
 
74 The Alexandrian Divinities [CH. 
 
 point to note for our present purpose is that an urn or vase 
 containing liquid, was, in the public ceremonies of the Alex- 
 andrian religion, the recognized symbol of the Supreme Being. 
 Apuleius next describes the procession as having reached 
 the seashore where the images of the gods were arranged in 
 order ^ : 
 
 " Then the Chief Priest, pouring forth with chaste mouth the most 
 solemn prayers, consecrated and dedicated to the goddess, after having 
 thoroughly purified it with a lighted torch, an egg, and some sulphur, 
 a ship made with the highest art and painted all over with the 
 wonderful pictures of the Egyptians. The shining sail of this blessed 
 bark had the words of a prayer woven in it ; and these words re- 
 iterated the petition that the navigation then commencing might 
 be prosperous. And now the mast was stepped, a round piece of 
 pine, lofty and smooth, and conspicuous from the handsome appear- 
 ance of its truck, and the poop with its twisted goose-neck shone 
 covered with gold-leaf, while the whole hulk was gay with polished 
 citron wood. Then all the people, both the religious and the pro- 
 fane, heaped emulously together winnowing-fans laden with spices 
 and such like offerings, and poured upon them crumbled cakes 
 made with milk, until the ship, filled with magnificent gifts offered 
 in fulfilment of vows, was loosed from its moorings and put to sea 
 with a gentle breeze that seemed to spring up on piu;pose. After 
 her course became indistinct to us by reason of the distance that 
 she was from our eyes, the bearers of the holy things again took up 
 each his own load, and joyfully returned to the fane in the same 
 solemn procession as before. But when we arrived at the temple, 
 the Chief Priest and the bearers of the divine effigies, and those who 
 have been already initiated into the ever to be revered secrets, 
 entering into the chamber of the Goddess put away the breathing 
 images with due ceremony. Then one of them, whom men call the 
 Scribe, standing before the doors and having called together as if 
 for a discourse the company of the Pastophori^ — which is the name 
 of this sacrosanct college — forthwith recited from a lofty pulpit 
 prayers written in a book for the Great Prince, the Senate, the 
 Equestrian Order, and the whole Roman people, their sailors and 
 
 ' Apuleius, Met. Bk xi. c. 16. 
 
 ^ The bearers of the sacred Pastes (box or coffin ?). He says elsewhere 
 that this particular college dated from " the days of Sulla," i.e. 87-84 B.o. 
 
n] The Alexandrian Divinities 75 
 
 sliips, and all who are under the sway of our native land, and then 
 closed the address according to the Greek rite thus : ' Let the people 
 depart^.' Which announcement was followed by a shout of the 
 people showing that it was favourably received by all. Then the 
 multitude, rejoicing exceedingly and bearing olive-branches, laurel- 
 twigs, and chaplets, after having kissed the feet of a statue of the 
 goddess fashioned in silver which stood on steps [within the porch ?], 
 departed to their own homes." 
 
 What most strikes one in this account by an eye-witness, 
 which must have been written about the year 170 a.d., is the 
 entirely modern tone of it all. In the scene that passes under 
 Lucius' eyes, there is hardly anything that might not be seen 
 at an Italian festa at the present day. The joyous crowd, 
 respectful rather than devout, and not above introducing a 
 comic or rather a burlesque element into the day's rejoicing, 
 the images and sacred vessels carried solemnly along, the crowd 
 of tonsured priests, and the chants and hymns sung in chorus, 
 the return to the temple, with its prayers for Church and State, 
 and its dismissal of the people — all these are paralleled every 
 day in countries where the Catholic Church is still dominant. 
 Not less modem, too, is the way in which Lucius alludes to the 
 faith of which all these things illustrate the power. For him, 
 there is no other god than Isis — " thou who art all^," as one of 
 her votaries calls her on his tombstone, in whom " single in 
 essence, though with many names^," all other gods are contained. 
 Hence, he can think of no other religion than her worship. It 
 is always with him " the holy " or " the sublime religion," and 
 the goddess is she whom the whole earth adores. It is she in 
 whom one can trust not only for happiness beyond the tomb, 
 but for present help in all the troubles of this life, and to devote 
 oneself to her service, to thoroughly learn, to understand her 
 nature, is the proudest lot which can befall man while upon 
 earth. Hence all her initiates were " earthly stars," her priests 
 were all happy or blessed in that they were allowed to be near 
 
 1 The reading has been contested, but is well established. Of. the 
 concluding words of the Mass : " Ite, missa est." 
 
 2 "Una quae es omnia," C.I.N. 3580. The stone was found at Capua. 
 ^ Apuleius, Met. Bk xi. c. 5. 
 
76 The Alexandrian Divinities [CH. 
 
 and even to carry and handle the divine images, and the religion 
 was a real bond which united people of all ranks and ages. We 
 feel that we have here got a very long way from the time when 
 the power of each god was supposed to be limited to the small 
 space surrounding his sanctuary. 
 
 That this change had been brought about by the work of 
 the Isiac priesthood, there can be little doubt. Between the 
 foundation of the Alexandrian religion by Ptolemy and the 
 date at which Apuleius wrote, a space of five centuries elapsed, 
 and this must have seen many changes in the constitution 
 of what may be called the Isiac Church. The Greeks always 
 set their faces against anything like a priestly caste set apart 
 from the rest of the community, and the priests of the Hellenic 
 gods were for the most part elected, like modem mayors of 
 towns, for a short term only, after which they fell back into the 
 ranks of the laity with as little difficulty as do municipal officers 
 at the present day. The Eleusinian Mysteries were indeed 
 committed to certain families in whom their priesthood was 
 hereditary ; but no professional barriers existed" between these 
 families and the rest of the citizens ; and we find Callias, the 
 " torch-bearer " and one of the highest officials at the Mysteries, 
 not only fighting in the ranks at Marathon, but distinguishing 
 himself by his " cruelty and injustice " in retaining an unfair 
 share of the plunder for himself i. The Eumolpidae and 
 Lycomidae of Eleusis, also, were probably maintained not by 
 any contribution from the state, but by the revenues of the 
 temple lands and by the fee of a few obols levied from each 
 initiate. But the Alexandrian Church in Egypt must from the 
 first have been endowed and probably established as well. 
 To judge from the analogous case of the dynastic cult or 
 worship of the sovereign, which Ptolemy Soter set up, the 
 " sublime religion " was in its native Egypt maintained by a 
 tax on the revenues of those tvahf or temple lands held in mort- 
 main with which the native gods of Egypt were so richly pro- 
 vided from the earliest times. When the Alexandrian religion 
 became a missionary faith and established itself in Athens and 
 other parts of the Hellenic world, it no doubt depended in the 
 ^ Plutarch, Aristides, c. v. 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divinities 77 
 
 first instance on the voluntary contributions of the associations 
 of Sarapiasts or Isiaci founded for its maintenance. But we 
 may be sure that politic princes like the first three Ptolemies, 
 who were besides the richest and most opulent of all the 
 Successors of Alexander, did not let these outposts of their 
 empire languish for lack of funds, and we may guess that 
 the subscriptions of their members were supplemented in 
 case of need by large donations from the King of Egypt or 
 from those who wished to stand well with him. When the 
 faith passed into Western Europe and into territories directly 
 under Roman sway, it had already attained such fame that a 
 large entrance-fee could be demanded from the initiates, and 
 Apuleius tells us more than once that the amount of this was in 
 every case fixed by a special revelation of the goddess, and was 
 no doubt only limited by the length of the aspirant's purse and 
 the strength of his vocation^. Like other Greek priests of the 
 time, also, the ministers of the Alexandrian religion found a way 
 of adding to their income by the practice of divination or fore- 
 telling the future, and the oracle of Serapis at Alexandria soon 
 became as celebrated in the Hellenistic world as that of Delphi. 
 There were probably more ways than one of consulting this ; 
 but the one which seems to have been specially its own, and 
 which afterwards spread from Egypt into all the temples of the 
 faith in other countries, was by the practice of incubatio which 
 meant sleeping either personally or by deputy in the precinct 
 of the god until the consultant had a dream in which the god's 
 answer was declared. Such a practice seems to date from the 
 dream sent to Ptolemy Soter at the foundation of the religion, 
 and doubtless formed a great source of revenue to its priesthood ^. 
 The highest personages in the Roman Empire deigned to resort 
 to it, and Vespasian was vouchsafed a divine vision in the 
 temple of Serapis when he consulted the god about " the affairs 
 
 1 Aptdeius, Met. cc. 21, 28, 30. . 
 
 " See p. 48, supra. Oracles given in dreams were, however, an old 
 institution in Egypt. See the dream of Thothmes IV concerning the 
 Sphinx, Breasted, History of Egypt, p. 325, and Arwient Records, Chicago 
 1906, vol. n. No. 815. 
 
78 The Alexandrian Divinities [ch. 
 
 of the Empire^." Not unconnected with this were the miracu- 
 lous cures with which Serapis, originally perhaps by confusion 
 with Asklepios the Greek god of healing*, was credited. The 
 sick man was given a room in the temple precincts, where he 
 doubtless lived the regular and orderly life of a modem hospital, 
 and before long dreamed of a remedy for the malady on which 
 his thoughts were concentrated. As the mind sometimes 
 influences the body, and a belief in the healing power of the 
 medicine is often of more importance than its nature, he very 
 often recovered, and was no doubt expected to be generous 
 in his offerings to the god who had intervened in his cure. Nor 
 were worse means of raising money unknown to the Alexandrian 
 priests, unless they have been greatly belied. They are said 
 to have acted as panders and procurers for the rich, and it was 
 the seduction of a noble Koman lady by a lover who assumed the 
 garb of the god Anubis which led to their expulsion from the 
 Pomoerium under Tiberius'. Astrology, too, which depended 
 entirely on mathematical calculations and tables, was peculiarly 
 an Alexandrian art, and the same Manetho who had been one 
 of the persons consulted at the founding of the Alexandrian 
 religion was said to have taught its principles to the Greeks. 
 Whether this be so or not, it is certain that in Ovid's time the 
 Alexandrian priests used to beg in the streets of Eome after 
 the fashion of the Buddhist monks from whom they may have 
 indirectly borrowed the practice, and that it was thought 
 " unlucky " to reject their importunities*. 
 
 It is plain, however, that, by the time Apuleius wrote, the 
 
 1 Tacitus, Hist. Bk iv. cc. 81, 82. 
 
 ^ Asklepios or Esoulapius was one of the gods absorbed by Serapis. 
 It is most probable that the great statue by Bryaxis in the Alexandrian 
 Serapeum was originally an Asklepios. See Bouoh6-Leclercq, Rev. de 
 I'Hist. des Bel. 1902, pp. 26, 27, 28. There seems also to have been a chapel 
 to him in the Greek Serapeum at Memphis. See Brunet de Presle, 
 "Le S6rap6um de Memphis," Paris, 1865, pp. 261-263. Of. Porshall, 
 Greek Papyri in the British Museum, 1839, p. 33, and note 1 p. 80, 
 infra. 
 
 * Josephus, Antiquities, Bk xvni. cc. 3, 4. 
 
 * LovateUi, II Oulto d' Iside in Roma, Boma, 1891, p. 174 ; Ovid, 
 Pontic. Epist. Bk I. Ep. i. 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divinities 79 
 
 necessity for any such shifts had passed away. The Alexandrian 
 religion had then become a state religion, and was served by a 
 fully organized and powerful priesthood. As there were not 
 less than seven temples of Isis in Rome itself, the number of 
 the Roman faithful must have been very considerable, and on 
 their offerings and the gifts of the state, a large staff of priests 
 was maintained. We hear not only of a high priest in each 
 temple to whom all the lesser ministers of the cult were 
 apparently subject^, but of hierophants, scribes, stolists or ward- 
 robe-keepers, singing-men and singing-women, and a host of 
 subordinate functionaries down to the neocoros or temple- 
 sweeper and the cliduchos or guardian of the keys. Women as 
 well as men were eligible for some of these offices, and the in- 
 scriptions tell us of a female oneirocrites or interpreter of dreams 
 and of several canephorae or carriers of the sacred basket, besides 
 many priestesses whose functions are not defined^. The high 
 priest and the more important officers lived in the temple and 
 probably devoted their whole time to its service * ; but the 
 lesser offices seem to have been capable of being held concur- 
 rently with lay occupations, like that of the churchwardens 
 at the present day. But one and all were devoted to the faith 
 and its propagation, and formed in the words of Apuleius " a 
 sacred soldiery " for its extension and defence. It is probable 
 that they were all drawn in the first instance from the ranks of 
 the initiates only. 
 
 These were what may be called the secular clergy of the 
 Alexandrian Church ; but there was in addition a body of 
 devotees attached to it whose mode of life singularly reminds 
 us of that afterwards adopted by the Christian monks. A 
 lucky chance has revealed to us some fragments of papyrus 
 found on the site of the Serapeum at Memphis, which contain 
 among other things the petitions of a Macedonian named 
 Ptolemy the son of Glaucias to King Ptolemy VI Philometor 
 
 1 AsM. Lafaye {Gulte, etc. p. 132) points out, the hierophant in Apuleius 
 calls the other priests " his company," auiis numerus (Met. u. 21). 
 ^ For aU these, see Lafaye, op. cit. chap, vn : Le Sacerdoce. 
 * Lafaye, op. cit. p. 150. 
 
80 The Alexandrian Divinities [CH. 
 
 about the year 166 B.c.^ From these it is evident that there 
 were at that time a body of recluses lodged in the Serapeum 
 who were vowed to a seclusion so complete that they might not 
 stir forth from their cells under any pretence, and when the 
 king visited Memphis he had to speak with his namesake and 
 petitioner through the window of the latter's chamber. These 
 recluses were in some way devoted to the service of the god, 
 and their stay in the temple was to all appearance voluntary, 
 although in Ptolemy's case, it had at the time he wrote lasted 
 already fifteen years. He does not seem to have been driven to 
 this by poverty, as he speaks of a considerable property left him 
 by his father ; and as the object of his petitions is to champion 
 the rights of two priestesses of Serapis who had been wrongfully 
 deprived of their dues of bread and oil by the officials of the 
 temple, he seems to have been in some sort given to the per- 
 formance of " good works." How he otherwise occupied his 
 time, and whether his title or description of Karoxo^ implied 
 any connection with the oracle of Serapis is still a disputed 
 point. Yet the correspondence in which his name appears 
 shows clearly the existence within the Serapeum of a large 
 population of both men and women living at the expense of the 
 temple revenues, some of whom took part in the ritual of the 
 services there celebrated, while others were fixed by their own 
 vows in the strictest seclusion. Whichever way the controversy 
 alluded to above is decided, it seems plain that there is here a 
 parallel between the practice of the Catholic Church with its 
 division of the clergyinto regular and secular and the Alexandrian 
 
 ' These fragments are scattered among the different European 
 museums. Some are in the Vatican Library and were published by 
 Mgr. Angelo Mai in 1833 (Brunet de Presle, "Les Papyri Greos du Louvre," 
 Mim. de I' Acad, des Inacript. xvm. pt 2 (1865), p. 16), others in the 
 Leyden Museum (Leemans, Papyri Qraeci, I. pp. 6 sqq.), others in the 
 Louvre (Brunet de Presle, op. cit. p. 22), and the largest number in the 
 British Museum (Kenyon, Greek Papyri, p. 1). The whole story, so far as 
 it haa been ascertained, is told by Brunet de Presle, op. cit. pp. 261-263, 
 and by Sir Frederic Kenyon, op. cit. pp. 1-6, and the questions arising out 
 of it are admirably summed up by M. Bouch6-Leoleroq in his article, " Les 
 Reolus du S6rap6um de Memphis '' in Melanges Perrot, Paris, 1903, p. 17. 
 
n] The Alexandrian Divinities 81 
 
 religion, which until the discovery of the papyri some fifty years 
 ago was entirely unsuspected. 
 
 It has been said above that the Alexandrian religion reached 
 its apogee in the time of the Antonines. How it came to decline 
 in power cannot be traced with great exactness, but it seems 
 probable that it only lost its hold on the common people from 
 the greater attractions presented by other religions competing 
 with it for the popular favour. Other cults began to press in 
 from the East, including the worship of Mithras, which in the 
 time of Diocletian finally supplanted it in the favour of the state, 
 and acquired perhaps a stronger hold on the army from reasons 
 to be examined in detail when we come to deal with the Mithraic 
 religion. But the rise of Christianity is in itself sufficient to 
 account for its decline in popularity among the lower classes of 
 the Empire. To them the Catholic Church, purged and 
 strengthened by a sporadic and intermittent persecution, 
 offered advantages that the Alexandrian religion could never 
 give. In this last, the possession of wealth must always have 
 assured its possessor a disproportionate rank in the religion, 
 and without the expenditure of a large sum of money, it was 
 impossible, as we have seen, to arrive at its most cherished 
 secrets. Nor do we find in any of the few documents of the 
 faith that have come down to us any parallel to that wide and 
 all-embracing spirit of charity which in its early days made the 
 Christian Church a kind of mutual benefit society for all who were 
 willing to enter into her fold. To the poorest as to the wealthiest, 
 the Catholic Church, too, always held out the promises of a 
 faith to be understood by all and free from the mystery 
 with which the cardinal doctrines of the Alexandrians were 
 shrouded from all but the highest initiates. Its promises of 
 happiness beyond the grave also were extended to even the 
 most degraded, and the fulfilment of them was taught to be 
 dependent on conduct within the reach of even the pauper or 
 the repentant criminal rather than on the long, difficult and 
 expensive course of instruction which its rival demanded. Nor 
 were more material inducements neglected. The highest offices 
 within the Church were open to the lowest of its members, and 
 it was quite possible for a slave or a freedman to ascend the chair 
 
 L. 6 
 
82 The Alexandrian Divinities [ch. 
 
 of Peter, there to negotiate on equal terms with emperors and 
 proconsuls. Unlike the religions of the ancient world which 
 were first converted by Alexander's conquests from national 
 into universal cults, the Christian religion was from its foundation 
 organized on the democratic lines laid down in the text : " He 
 that is greatest among you shall be your servant^." Moreover, 
 the predictions of the Christian missionaries as to the immediate 
 coming of the Second Advent began to spread among the masses 
 outside the Church, and found a soil ready to receive them in 
 the minds of superstitious men trampled on by the rich, harried 
 by the tax-gatherers, and torn this way and that by constant 
 insurrections and civil wars stirred up, not by the Roman 
 mob (kept quiet as it was with State doles) but by its too 
 ambitious masters. Quite apart from the spiritual comfort that 
 it brought to many, and from the greater unity and simplicity 
 of its doctrines, we can hardly wonder that the proletariat 
 everywhere turned eagerly to the new faith. 
 
 The effect of this upon the Alexandrian religion must have 
 been fatal. Unfortunately the destruction of pagan literature 
 has been so great that we know hardly anything about its decline 
 from the mouths of its adherents 2. What we are able to perceive 
 is that the persons who adhered to the Alexandrian faith after 
 the time of the Antonines generally practised many other 
 religions as well. Alexander Severus had in his palace a 
 lararium or private chapel in which, like most of the later 
 Roman emperors, he placed statues of the gods whose worship 
 he particularly affected. We find there Serapis and Isis, indeed, 
 but surrounded with a great crowd of other divinities together 
 with the images of philosophers like Socrates and Apollonius of 
 Tyana, and — if the Augustan History is to be believed — that 
 
 ^ Matth. xxiii. 11. Cf. the Pope's title of " Servant of the Servants of 
 God " {Servua servorum Dei). 
 
 ^ Julian in his letters {Ep. 52) speaks of Alexandria even in his time 
 as being given up to the worship of Serapis. It is probable that in this, 
 as in other matters, the philosophic Emperor believed what he wished to 
 believe. Yet his contemporary, Ammianus Marcellinus, Hist. Bk xxn. 
 c. 16, § 20, speaks of the elements of the sacred rites being still preserved 
 there in secret books, by which he seems to be referring to the worship 
 of the Alexandrian divinities. 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divinities 83 
 
 of the Founder of Christianity Himself^. So, too, the funeral 
 inscription of Ulpius Egnatius Faventinus, an augur of high rank 
 who flourished in the reign of Valens and Valentinian, records 
 that the dead nobleman was a priest of Isis, but a hierophant 
 of Hecate, a hieroceryx of Mithras, and a " chief Herdsman " 
 of Bacchus as well. So, again, Fabia Aeonia PauUina, wife of 
 Vettius Praetextatus, a Prefect and Consul Designate of about 
 the same period, describes herself on her tombstone as conse- 
 crated at Eleusis to Dionysos, Demeter, and Persephone, and a 
 hierophantis of Hecate, but merely a worshipper of Isis^. We 
 see here a great change from the exclusive fervour of Apuleius' 
 Lucius, who thinks it only just that Isis should require him to 
 devote his whole life to her service. 
 
 But a violent end was soon to be put even to the public 
 exercise of the Alexandrian religion. The conversion of Con- 
 stantine had left it unharmed, and we find Julian writing to the 
 Alexandrians during his brief reign as if the supremacy of their 
 religion in Egypt's capital at any rate was assured^- But under 
 Theodosius, an order was obtained from the Emperor for the 
 demolition of the " heathen " temples at Alexandria, and 
 Theophilus, " the perpetual enemy of peace and virtue*," who 
 was bishop of the city at the time, was not the man to allow the 
 decree to remain a dead letter. According to the ecclesiastical 
 historians*, he began operations on the temple of Dionysos, 
 which he converted into a Christian church. In the course of 
 doing so, he professed to have discovered certain emblems of 
 virility which seem to have been used in the Mysteries to 
 illustrate the legend of the Diaspasm or tearing in pieces of the 
 god, and these he had paraded through the city as evidence of 
 what the heathens, according to him, worshipped in secret. 
 The same emblems were also used in the worship of Isis, where 
 
 ' See Renan, Hibbert Lectures, 1884, p. 197, for authorities. 
 
 2 OreUi, Inscript. Latin, select, pp. 406^12. All these have now been 
 transferred to the Corp. Inscr. Latin, q.v. 
 
 3 See note 2 p. 82, swpra. 
 
 * Gibbon, Decline and Fall (Bury's edition), m. p. 200. 
 5 Theodoret, Hist. Ecci. Bk v. c. 23 ; Socrates, Hist. Bccl. Bk v. o. 16 
 Sozomen, Hist. Eccl. Bk m. c. 15. 
 
 6—2 
 
84 The Alexandrian Divinities [ch. 
 
 they probably were shown to initiates as explaining the loss of 
 the generative power by Osiris after his death and passion^. 
 Hence their profanation was in the highest degree offensive to 
 the last adherents of the Alexandrian religion, who, few in 
 number but formidable from their position and influence, threw 
 themselves into the Vorld-famed Serapeum and determined to 
 resist the decree by force of arms. The Christian mob of 
 Alexandria, hounded on by the bishop and his monks, assaulted 
 the temple which the philosopher Olympius and his followers 
 had converted into a temporary fortress, and many attacks 
 were repulsed with loss of life to the besiegers. At length, a 
 truce having been negotiated until the Emperor could be com- 
 municated with, a fresh decree was obtained in which the 
 defenders of the temple were promised a pardon for their 
 share in the riot, if the Serapeum were quietly given up to the 
 authorities. This offer was accepted, and Theophilus had the 
 pleasure of seeing Bryaxis' colossal statue of Serapis demolished 
 under his own eyes without the event being followed by the 
 predicted earthquake and other catastrophes which we are told 
 the Christians as well as the heathens confidently expected. 
 The magnificent Serapeum with all its wealth of statues and 
 works of art was destroyed, and a church dedicated to the 
 Emperor Arcadius was afterwards erected on its site. 
 
 Thus in the year 391, the chief seat and place of origin of the 
 Alexandrian religion was laid waste, and the religion itself 
 perished after a successful reign of seven centuries. Ecclesias- 
 tical writers say that this was followed by the conversion of 
 several of the " Hellenists " or adherents of the worship of 
 Serapis and Isis to Christianity^, and there seems every likeli- 
 hood that the story is founded on fact. Is this the reason why 
 we find so many of the external usages of Isis- worship preserved 
 in or revived by the Catholic Church ? Macaulay, in speaking 
 of the contest between Catholicism and Protestantism at the 
 Keformation compares it to the fight between Hamlet and 
 Laertes where the combatants change weapons. The com- 
 parative study of religions shows that the phenomenon is more 
 widespread than he thought, and that when one religion finally 
 1 See note 1 p. 73, supra. * Socrates, op. cit. Bk v. c. 17. 
 
ii] The Alexandrian Divinities 85 
 
 supplants another, it generally takes over from its predecessor 
 such of its usages as seem harmless or praiseworthy. The 
 traditional policy of the Catholic Church in this respect was 
 declared by Saint Gregory the Great, when he told the apostle 
 to the Saxon heathens that such of their religious and tradi- 
 tional observances as could by any means be harmonized with 
 orthodox Christianity were not to be interfered with^, and this 
 was probably the policy pursued with regard to the converts 
 from the worship of Serapis. Gibbon^ has painted for us in 
 a celebrated passage the astonishment which " a TertuUian or 
 a Lactantius " would have felt could he have been raised from 
 the dead to witness the festival of some popular saint or martyr 
 i n a Christian church at the end of the fifth century. The incense, 
 the flowers, the lights, and the adoration of the relics of the saint 
 would all, we are told, have moved his indignation as the appan- 
 age of heathenism. Yet none of these things would have been 
 found in a temple like that of Delphi, where probably no more 
 than one worshipper or sacred embassy penetrated at a time, 
 and where nothing like congregational worship was known. 
 It was, however, the mode of worship to which the Hellenistic 
 world had become daily accustomed during the seven centuries 
 that the Alexandrian religion had endured, and it is not to be 
 wondered at that the converts brought it with them into their 
 new faith. The worship of the Virgin as the Theotokos or 
 Mother of God which was introduced into the Catholic Church 
 about the time of the destruction of the Serapeum, enabled the 
 devotees of Isis to continue unchecked their worship of the 
 mother goddess by merely changing the name of the object of 
 their adoration, and Prof. Drexler gives a long list of the statues 
 of Isis which thereafter were used, sometimes with unaltered 
 attributes, as those of the Virgin Mary^. The general use of 
 images, the suspension in the churches of ex voto representations 
 of different parts of the human body in gratitude for miraculous 
 
 1 Kenan, Marc Aurik, Paris, 1882, p. 630, for authority, Cf. Gibbon, 
 Decline and Fall (Bury's edn.), iv. pp. 78, 79. 
 
 ^ Gibbon, op. cit. m. 
 
 ^ Drexler in Bo3cher's Lexikon, s.v, Isis. Cf. Maury, Bel. de la Grece, 
 t. n. p. 222. 
 
86 The Alexandrian Divinities [ch. 
 
 cures of maladies^, and the ceremonial burning of candles, 
 may also be traced to the same source ; while the institution 
 of monachism which had taken a great hold on Christian Egypt, 
 is now generally attributed to St Pachomius, who had actually 
 been in his youth a recluse of Serapis^. Prof. Bury, who thinks 
 the action of the earlier faith upon the later in this respect 
 undeniable, would also attribute the tonsure of the Catholic 
 priesthood to a reminiscence of the shaven crowns of the 
 initiates of Isis, to which we may perhaps add the covering of 
 women's heads in churches*. 
 
 These instances are for the most part fairly well known, 
 and some have been made use of in controversy between Pro- 
 testants and Catholics ; but it is probable that there were also 
 many resemblances between the external usages of the two 
 faiths which would, when they flourished side by side, strike 
 even the superficial observer, but the traces of which are now 
 well nigh lost*. " Those who worship Serapis are Christians, 
 and those who call themselves bishops of Christ are vowed to 
 Serapis," wrote the Emperor Hadrian^ from Alexandria on his 
 visit there in a.d. 124, and this would possibly explain the 
 respectful and almost mournful tone in which, as Renan noted, 
 the Christian Sibyl announces to Serapis and Isis the end of their 
 reign*. It is not impossible that the resemblance which thus 
 deceived the Emperor was connected with the celebration of 
 
 1 Amm. Marcell. op. dt. Bk xxn, c. 13. According to Deubner, 
 De incubatione, Leipzig, 1900, c. iv. Cyril of Alexandria had to establish the 
 worship of two medical saints in the Egyptian hamlet of Menuthis near 
 Canopus to induce the people to forget the miraculous cures formerly 
 ■wrought there in the sanctuary of Isis. 
 
 * Bury in Gibbon, op. cit. vol. rv. Appendix 3, p. 527. 
 
 * Cf. Apuleiua' description of the veiling of the women's heads in the 
 Isis procession, p. 72, supra. 
 
 * A writer in Maspero's Recueil de Travaux for 1912, p. 75,- mentions 
 that the Isiao sistrum or rattle is still used by the Christians of Abyssinia. 
 
 ' Vopiscus, Satuminus {Hist. AugvM. Scriptor. vi. t. n. pp. 718-730). 
 The authenticity of the letter has been defended by Lightfoot, Apostolic 
 Fathers, 1891, l. p. 481. The date is fairly well fixed by the death of 
 Antinous in 122 a.d., and Hadrian's visit to Syria a few years later. 
 Ramsay {Church in Roman Empire, 1903, p. 336) makes it 134 a.d. 
 
 * Renan, Marc Aur. p. 433. 
 
n] The Alexandrian Divinities 87 
 
 the Eucharist among certain sects of Christians i. The Ador- 
 ation of the Sacred Water as the emblem of Osiris, which we 
 have seen represented on the Herculaneum fresco, has many 
 points in common with the exhibition of the Sacrament of the 
 Mass to the people, and it is possible that the words of conse- 
 cration were not altogether different in the two cases. " Thou 
 art wine, yet thou art not wine, but the members of Osiris," says 
 a magic papyrus in the British Museum in the midst of an address 
 to " Asklepios of Memphis," the god Esculapius being one of 
 the gods with whom Serapis in his day of poWer was most often 
 confounded^. So, too, M. Revillout has published an amaiorium 
 or love-charm in which the magician says, "May this wine become 
 the blood of Osiris*." It is true he sees in it a blasphemous 
 adaptation of the Christian rite ; but this is very unlikely. 
 It has been shown elsewhere* that many — perhaps all — of the 
 words used in the ceremonial magic of the period are taken from 
 the rituals of religions dying or extinct, and the papyrus, which 
 dates somewhere about the ivth century a.d., may possibly 
 
 ^ In the Catholic Church at this period the Eucharist was celebrated, 
 if we may judge from the First Apology of Justin Martyr (c. lvi), in a very 
 simple manner, but apparently in the presence of all the faithful. In that 
 part of the Apostolical Constitutions (Bk vm. c. 66), which is probably 
 later in date than Justin, the catechumens, heterodox, and unbelievers 
 are directed to be excluded before consecration (see Hatch, Hibbert 
 Lectures, p. 301). It does not follow that the ceremonial was as simple 
 with the Gnostics. Marcus is said by Irenaeus (Bk i. c. 6, pp. 116, 117, 
 Harvey) to have made the mixture of wine and water in the cup to appear 
 purple and to overflow into a larger vessel ; while similar prodigies attend 
 the celebration in the Pistis Sophia and the Bruce Papyrus, for which see 
 Chap. X, infra. As such thaumaturgy was intended to astonish the on- 
 lookers, it is probable that the elements were displayed before the whole 
 congregation. That the later form of the ritual of the Christian sacra- 
 ments was taken from the Gnostics, see Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 295- 
 305, and 307-309, and de Faye, Introduction a I'j^t. du Onosticisme, Paris, 
 1903, pp. 106, 107. 
 
 ^ Kenyon, Greek Papyri, p. 105. Sir Frederick Kenyon questions the 
 theocrasia of Serapis and Esculapius, but see Bouch6-Leclercq, Rev. Hist. 
 Bel. 1902, p. 30. 
 
 3 Revillout, Rev. Mgyptol. 1880, p. 172. 
 
 « "The Names of Demons in the Magic Papyri," P.8.B.A. 1901, 
 pp. 41 sqq. 
 
88 The Alexandrian Divinities [ch. 
 
 have here preserved for us a fragment of the ritual in use in the 
 Alexandrian temples. " Give him, Osiris, the cooling water " 
 is the epitaph often written by the worshippers of Isis on the 
 tombs of the dead^, and it may seem that we have here a hint 
 of mystic communion with the deity brought about by the 
 drinking of his emblem. 
 
 The resemblances between the Alexandrian and the Christian 
 religion thus sketched, refer, however, merely to matters which 
 are either external or superficial, or which, like the worship of 
 the Virgin, the use of images and relics, and the institution of 
 monachism, could be abandoned, as was the case at the German 
 Reformation, without necessarily drawing with them the 
 repudiation of the cardinal tenets of Christianity. That the 
 Christian Church owed at her inception any of her more funda- 
 mental doctrines to the Alexandrian religion is not only without 
 proof, but is in the highest degree unlikely. The Apostles and 
 missionaries of the Apostolic Age, living as they did in daily 
 expectation of the return of their Risen Lord, had no need to 
 go to an alien faith for the assertion of His divinity, of the truth 
 of His resurrection, or of His power of salvation ; nor do the 
 Fathers of the Ante-Nicene Church speak of Serapis and Isis 
 as entitled to any peculiar reverence or as differing in any 
 respect from the other gods of the heathen. Whether the 
 tenets of the Alexandrian religion may not have had some 
 influence on the discussions which raged round the definition 
 of the Divine nature and attributes at the earlier Ecumenical 
 and other Councils of the Church is another matter. The con- 
 ception of the Supreme Being as a triune god was a very old 
 one in Egypt, and reappeared, as we have seen, unchanged in 
 the worship of Serapis, Isis, and Horus. " Thus from one god 
 I became three gods," says Osiris in his description of his self- 
 creation in a papyrus dated twelve years after the death of 
 Alexander^ ; and the dividing-line between the three persons 
 of the Alexandrian triad is so often overstepped that it is plain 
 that their more cultured worshippers at one time considered 
 
 1 Lafaye, Cvlte, etc. p. 96, and inscriptions there quoted. 
 ^ Budge, " Papyrus of Nesi-Amsu," p. 442. 
 
n] The Alexandrian Divinities 89 
 
 them as but varying forms of one godhead^. Hence, the 
 Trinitarian formulas set out in the Creeds of Nicaea and of 
 St Athanasius would be less of a novelty to those familiar with 
 the Alexandrian religion than to those brought up in the un- 
 compromising monotheism of the Jews. Too little is known 
 of the steps by which the full assertion of the doctrine of the 
 Trinity was reached for any discussion of the matter to be here 
 profitable^- The deepest influence that the Alexandrian religion 
 exercised upon the Church was probably not direct, but through 
 those scattered and heretical sects which, although finally 
 condemned and anathematized by her, yet ever acted as feeders 
 by whom she obtained converts from among the heathen. To 
 these we may now turn our attention. 
 
 1 See "The Greek Worship of Serapis and Isis," P.S.B.A. 1914, 
 pp. 93, 94. 
 
 ^ That the Trinitarian doctrine of the Creed of Nicaea evolved gradually 
 wfll now, I suppose, be admitted by aU. Mr Conybeare, Apology of Apol- 
 lonius, 1894, p. 14, probably goes too far when he says that " the doctrine 
 of the Trinity in Unity " is not met with tiU the end of the third century. 
 So Guignebert, VSvolution des Dogmes, Paris, 1910, pp. 293, 294, teUs 
 us how in his opinion the dogma followed " at some distance " the assertion 
 of the Divinity of Christ. Hamack, Expansion of Christianity, Eng. ed. 
 1904, n. pp. 257, 258, seems to attribute the first formulation of the dogma 
 to TertuUian who, according to him, owed something to the Gnostics. 
 It is at any rate plain that neither Hennas, nor the Apologists, nor Irenaeus, 
 nor Clement of Alexandria, nor Origen were in accord with later orthodoxy 
 on the point. Monsignor Duchesne, Early History of the Christian Church, 
 Eng. ed. 1909, p. 20, puts the matter very frankly when he suggests that 
 the average Christian troubled himself very little about it. " This is the 
 Christian doctrine of the Trinity," he says after defining it, " not certainly 
 as it was formulated later in opposition to transient heresies, but as it 
 appeared to the general conscience of the early Christians. . . .The generaUty 
 of Christians in the first century even in apostolic days stood here almost 
 exactly at the same point as present-day Christians. Theologians knew, 
 or at any rate said, far more about it." 
 
OHAPTEK III 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF GNOSTICISM 
 
 The worship of the Alexandrian gods was in every sense a 
 religion. Not only did it form a common bond between men 
 .and women of different rank and origin, but it had its roots 
 in the idea of propitiating the spiritual world. In the belief 
 of its votaries, the blessings of health, of riches, of long life, 
 and of happiness in this world and the next, were the gifts of 
 Serapis and Isis, which they might extend to or withhold from 
 mortals as seemed to them good^. But now we approach 
 beliefs and practices, for the most part formed into organized 
 cults, which were founded on the opposite idea. Those treated 
 of in this and the seven succeeding chapters all have as their 
 common root the notion that it is possible instead of propitiating 
 tojcompel the spiritual powers. If these beings, greater and 
 strongertEan'TinaH'~3S~tfe^!i.^ere thought to be, were once 
 invoked by their real names and with the proper ceremonies, 
 it was said that the benefits demanded of them would follow 
 as a matter of course without regard to the state of mind of 
 the applicant and without the volition of the invisible ones 
 themselves entering into play. This idea appears so early in 
 the history of religions that it is thought by some to be the very 
 source and origin of them all. A number of able writers, of 
 
 ' Thus an Orphic verse, preserved by a commentator on Plato, says that 
 Dionysos " releases whom he wills from travail and sufiering." See Abel's 
 Orphica, Fr. 208, p. 237. Servius in his commentary on Virgil's Pii-st Georgia, 
 after declaring that Dionysos or " Liber Pater " is identical with the Osiris 
 torn in pieces by Typhon, says that he is called Liber because he liberates. 
 Of. fragment and page quoted. 
 
CH. m] The Origin of Ghiosticism 91 
 
 whom Lord Aveburyi was one of the earliest, and Dr Frazer^ 
 is one of the latest examples, contend that there was a time in 
 the history of mankind when man trusted entirely to his sup- 
 posed powers of compulsion in his dealings with the invisible 
 world, and that the attempt to propitiate it only developed 
 out of this at a later period. It may be so, and the supporters 
 of this theory are certainly not wrong when they go on to say 
 that the same idea probably inspired those earliest attempts 
 at the conquest of Nature which formed the first gropings of 
 man towards natural science*. Up till now, however, they 
 have failed to produce any instance of a people in a low state 
 of culture who practise magic — as this attempted compulsion 
 of the spiritual world is generally called — to the exclusion of 
 every form of religion ; and until they do so, their thesis cannot 
 be considered as established. On the contrary, all researches 
 into the matter lead to the conclusion that magic generally 
 begins to show itself some time after the religious beliefs of a 
 people have taken an organized shape, and most prominently 
 when they have passed their period of greatest activity*. This 
 is particularly noticeable in the case of Ancient Egypt, which 
 affords, as M. George Foucart has lately shown with much skill^, 
 a far more lively and complete picture of the evolution of 
 religious ideas than can be found in the beliefs of savages. Here 
 
 I.Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation, 6th ed., pp. 332, 333, and 349. 
 
 2 The Golden Bough, 3rd ed. pt i. vol. I. p. 226, n. 2. Cf. Hubert 
 and Mauss, Esquisse d'une Thdorie gindrale de la Magie, Paris, 1904, p. 8. 
 Goblet d'AlvieUa, reviewing Dr Frazer's 2nd edition, Rev. Hist. Bel. 
 t. XLvm. (Jvdy-Aug. 1903), pp. 70, 79 rebuts his theory. Mr E. S. 
 Hartland, at the British Association's Meeting in 1906, propounded the 
 view that both magic and religion were based on the conception of a 
 transmissible personality or mana. Cf. id. Bitual and Belief, 1914, 
 pp. 49 sqq. 
 
 ^ Hubert and Mauss, op. cit. p. 7. 
 
 * Thus the German Reformation, which (whatever be its merits) was 
 certainly accompanied by a general questioning of ideas tiU then considered 
 the very basis of all religion, was followed by the terrible outbreak known 
 as the Witch Mania of the xvith century. See Mackay, Extraordinary 
 Popular Delusions, 1869, pp. 101-191. Other authorities are quoted in 
 " Witchcraft in Scotland," Scottish Review, 1891, pp. 257-288. 
 
 * Histoire des Beligions et Mithode Comparative, Paris, 1912, pp. 21-61. 
 
92 The Origin of Gnosticism [ch. 
 
 we see beliefs and practices, once religious in every sense of the 
 term, gradually becoming stereotyped and petrified until all 
 memory of their origin and reason is lost, and the religion itself 
 lapses into the systematized sorcery before referred to. 
 
 This phenomenon appears with great regularity in history ; 
 and it is an observation very easily verified that the practice 
 of magic generally spreads in places and times where the popular 
 religion has become outworn^. As, moreover, enquiry shows 
 us that words taken from the rituals of dead faiths play the 
 chief part in all ceremonial magic^, we might be led to conclude 
 that magic was but an unhealthy growth from, or the actual 
 corruption of, religion. But if this were the case, we should 
 find magicians despoiling for their charms and spells the rituals 
 of cults formerly practised in their own countries only ; whereas 
 it is more often from foreign faiths and languages that they 
 borrow. The tendency of all peoples to look upon earlier and 
 more primitive races than themselves as the depositaries of 
 magical secrets is one of the best known phenomena'. Thus, 
 in modern India, it is the aboriginal Bhils and Gonds who are 
 resorted to as sorcerers by the Aryans who have supplanted 
 them*, while the Malays seem to draw their magic almost 
 
 1 See note 4 on p. 91, supra. Cf. also the great increase of magical 
 practices which followed the attempted overthrow of religion by the 
 philosophers after Alexander. 
 
 2 Some instances, such as " hocus-pocus " {hoc est corpus meum), are 
 given in P.8.B.A. xx. (1898), p. 149. An excellent example is found in a 
 spell to cause invisibility in a magic papyrus at Berlin where the magician 
 is directed to say among other word.s anok peusire pevta set tako " I am that 
 Osiris whom Set murdered " — evidently a phrase from some Egyptian 
 ritual extinct centuries before the papyrus was written. See Parthey, 
 Zwei griechische Zauberpapyri, 1866, p. 127, 1. 252. Cf. Erman, " Die 
 Agyptischer Beschworungen " in AgyptiscM Zeitschrift, 188.3, p. 109, n. 1. 
 
 3 Tylor, Primitive Culture, 1871, i. pp. 102-104. Cf. Crookes, Popular 
 Religion and Folklore of Northern India, 1896, n. p. 283 ; Hubert and 
 Mauss, op. cit. pp. 26, 27 ; A. R6ville, Religion dea Peuples non-cimlisis, 1883, 
 n. p. 173. 
 
 * Crookes, op. cit. u. p. 261, says that witchcraft in Northern India is at 
 present almost specialized among the Dravidian, or aboriginal people — of 
 which fact Mr Rudyard Kipling makes great vise in his charming story 
 " Letting in the Jungle." 
 
ni] The Origin of Gnosticism 93 
 
 entirely from the beliefs of their Arab conquerors^- So, too, 
 in Egypt we find that the magicians of the xixth Dynasty 
 made use in their spells of foreign words which seem to be 
 taken from Central African languages*, and those of early 
 Christian times use Hebrew phrases with which they must 
 for the first time have become acquainted not very long before^. 
 At the same time there are many proofs that magic is some- 
 thing more than a by-product of religion. No people, however 
 backward, who do not practise magic in some or other of its 
 forms, have yet been discovered ; while at the same time it 
 has always persisted among those nations who consider them- 
 selves the most highly civilized. Thus, we find the Mincopies 
 who inhabit the Andaman Islands and are thought by some to 
 be the lowest of mankind, threatening with their arrows the 
 spirit that is supposed to cause tempests, and lighting fires 
 on the graves of their dead chiefs to drive him away*. At 
 the other end of the scale we have the story of the Scottish 
 Covenanter, 
 
 " John Scrimgeoui, minister of Kinghorn, who, having a beloved 
 child sick to death of the crewels, was free to expostulate with his 
 Maker with such impatience of displeasure, and complaining so 
 bitterly, that at length it was said unto him, that he was heard for 
 that time, but that he was requested to use no such boldness in time 
 coming " : 
 
 and a similar story is told of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the 
 
 1 W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic, 1900, pp. 533 sqq. 
 
 ^ Chabas, Le Papyrus Magique Harris, 1860, pp. 151, 162 sq. Erman, 
 Life in Ancient Egypt, Eng. ed. p. 355, whUe admitting that the Egyptians, 
 thought the words in question belonged to a foreign tongue, says that they 
 were " pure inventions." He is certainly wrong, for some of them can be 
 identified. 
 
 3 Leemans, Papyri Oraeci Mus. Antiq. Lugduhi-Batavi ; Wessely, 
 Oriechische Zavberpapyrus von Paris und London, and Nev£ Qriechische 
 Zavberpapyri, Wien, 1893, passim. Of. Kenyon, Greek Papyri in the 
 British Museum, p. 62. So in mediaeval magic, the words in the spelk 
 unintelligible to the magician are generally Greek. See Reginald Scot,. 
 Discovery of Witchcraft (1651), p. 168. 
 
 * R6ville, Rel. des Peuples non-civilisis, n. p. 164. 
 
94 The Origin of Gnosticism [CH. 
 
 Jesuits^. It seems then that magic is so inextricably intertwined 
 with religion that the history of one of them cannot be effectually 
 separated from that of the other, and neither of them can be 
 assigned any priority in time. This does not mean, however, 
 that they are connected in origin, and it is probable that the 
 late Sir Alfred Lyall was right when he said that magic and 
 religion are in their essence antagonistic and correspond to two 
 opposing tendencies of the human mind^- The same tendencies 
 lead one man to ask for what he wants while another will prefer 
 to take it by force, and it is even possible that the same alter- 
 native of choice is sometimes manifested in the lower animals^. 
 Now it is evident that in the practice of cults where the idea of 
 the compulsion of the invisible powers is prominent, the essential 
 factor will be the knowledge of the proper means to be adopted 
 to attain the end sought. But this does not at once strike the 
 observer, because at first sight these appear to be the same as 
 those used in the cults which rest on the idea of propitiation. 
 Prayers and sacrifices indeed appear in magical quite as often 
 as in the case of propitiatory rites, but the reason of them is 
 entirely different. Prayer in a religion — could any such be 
 found — entirely free from all admixture of magic or compulsion, 
 would be based on the attempt to move the pity of the divinity 
 invoked for the miserable and abased state of the suppliant, or 
 by some other means. A striking example of this can be found 
 in the Assyrian prayers from the palace of Assur-bani-pal, 
 which might be, as the rubric informs us, made to any god*. 
 Says the suppliant : 
 
 ^ Scott in the Heart of Midlothian quotes the first story, I think, from 
 Peter Walker, but I have not been able to find the passage. For Ignatius 
 Loyola, see Bohmer, Les Jisuites, French ed. 1910, p. 10. Cf. Alphand^ry, 
 B.H.R. 1911, p. 110. 
 
 ^ Asiatic Studies, 1882, p. 77. 
 
 ^ E.g. well-fed dogs who worry sheep, and cats who steal fish and other 
 delicacies rather than have them given to them. The actions of the 
 animals show in both cases that they know that what they are doing is 
 displeasing to their owners. 
 
 « Sayce, Gifford Lectures, pp. 420 sqq. For these penitential psahns 
 generally, see Jastrow, The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, Boston, 
 1898, chap. xvm. 
 
iiij The Origin of Gnosticism 95 
 
 " my god my sins are many, my transgressions are great. 
 I sought for help, and none took my hand. 
 I wept, and none stood by my side ; 
 I cried aloud, and there was none that heard me. 
 I am in trouble and hiding, and dare not look up. 
 To my god, the merciful one, I turn myself, I utter my prayer. 
 
 The feet of my goddess I kiss and water with tears 
 
 Lord, cast not away thy servant. ..." 
 
 The same spirit may be noticed in the early religions of the 
 Greeks, although here the worshipper uses, as his means of 
 propitiation, flattery rather than entreaty, as when the Achilles 
 of the Iliad tries to move Zeus by an enumeration of his difEerent 
 titles, addressing him as " Father Zeus, that rulest from Ida, 
 most glorious, most great^," and Athena is appealed to by 
 Nestor in the Odyssey as " Daughter of Zeus, driver of the spoil, 
 the maiden of Triton^ " and so on. As, however, magical ideas 
 come to the front, we find these prayers giving way to others 
 containing neither appeals for mercy nor flattery, but merely 
 long strings of names and attributes, all designed to show an 
 acquaintance with the antecedents and supposed natural 
 disposition of the divinity addressed, and inspired by the fear 
 that the one name which might exert a compelling effect upon 
 his answer might accidentally have been omitted®- So, too, 
 the sacrifices, which in early times were chosen on the sole 
 principle of giving to the god what was best and costliest, came 
 later to be regulated by the supposed knowledge of what was 
 especially appropriate to him for reasons based on sympathetic 
 magic or the association of ideas. Thus, swine were sacrificed 
 to Demeter, he-goats to Dionysos, cattle and horses to Poseidon, 
 and rams to Heracles*, instead of the animals, chosen only for 
 their youth and beauty and with or without gilded horns, that 
 
 1 II. m. n. 280 sqq. (Lang, Leaf, and Myers trans, p. 57). 
 
 2 Odyss. m. U. 373 sqq. (Butcher and Lang trans, p. 43). 
 
 ^ According to Maspero, Si. Sgyptol. i. p. 163, this was always the case 
 in Egypt, at least in historic times. " Prayer," he says, " waa a formula of 
 which the terms had an imperative value, and the exact enunciation of which 
 obliged the god to concede what was asfced of him." 
 
 * Maury, Beligions de la Qrice Antique, n. pp. 97 sqq. 
 
96 The Origin of Gnosticism [ch. 
 
 we read about in the Iliad and Odyssey^. Clearly such dis- 
 tinctions necessitate a much closer knowledge of the divine 
 nature than where the answer to prayer or sacrifice depends 
 merely on the benevolence of the deity. 
 
 It is also evident that such ideas will give rise to curiosity 
 with regard to the nature and history of the gods, to their 
 relations with one another, and to the extent and division of 
 their rule over Nature, which would hardly affect those who 
 think that all events depend simply upon the nod of the super- 
 human powers^- Hence it is evident that one of the first con- 
 sequences of a large admixture of magic in a religion will be a 
 great increase of myths and legends in which the actions of the 
 gods will be recounted with more or less authority, and some 
 observed natural phenomenon will be pointed to as evidence of 
 the truth of the stories narrated^. Moreover, the means by 
 which the consequence of any volimtary or involuntary trans- 
 gression of the supposed commands of the gods can be averted 
 will be eagerly sought after, and these, whether they take the 
 form of purifications, lustrations, or other expiatory rites, will 
 all be strictly magical in character, and will generally consist 
 in the more or less detailed representation of some episode in 
 their history, on the well-known principle of magic that any 
 desired effect can be produced by imitating it*. In all these 
 cases it is knowledge and not conduct which is required, and thus 
 it is that gnosticism or a belief in the importance of acquaintance 
 with the divine world, its motives, and the influences to which 
 it is subject, enters into religion. Then it comes about that man 
 begins to trouble himself about the origin of the universe and 
 its end, the cause of his own appearance upon the earth, and the 
 position that he occupies in the scale of being. Hence theo- 
 gonies or tales relating how the gods came into existence, and 
 
 ^ II. X. L 292 ; Odyss. xi. 1. 30, and where before quoted. 
 
 * Perhaps it is to this last view that we should attribute the well- 
 known indifference of the Semitic peoples to mythology and science. 
 
 ^ E.g. the Rainbow in Genesis ix. 12-16. Erman, in his History of 
 Egyptian Religion, p. 31, points out that Egyptian mythology is found 
 only in magical books. 
 
 * Frazer, Golden Bough, 3rd ed. pt i. vol. i. p. 52. 
 
ni] The Origin of Gnosticism 97 
 
 their kinship to one another, cosmogonies or accounts of the 
 creation of the world, and apocalypses or stories professing to 
 reveal the lot of man after death and the fate to which our 
 universe is destined, take shape to an extent unknown to religions 
 which remain merely or chiefly propitiatory. 
 
 There is, however, another and a less sublime kind of know- 
 ledge which is everywhere associated with the appearance of 
 gnosticism. This is the knowledge of ceremonies and formulas, 
 of acts to be done and of words to be said, which are thought 
 to exercise a compelling effect on the supra-sensible world, 
 and which we may class together under the generic name of 
 ceremonial magic. Our acquaintance with these at the period 
 under discussion has lately been much enlarged by the deci- 
 pherment and publication of the so-called Magic Papyri found 
 for the most part in Egypt and now scattered throughout the 
 principal museums of Europe^. These turn out on investigation 
 to be the manuals or handbooks of professional sorcerers or 
 magicians, and to range in date from the iiird century before 
 to the ivth or vth after Christ. They contain, for the most part 
 without any order or coherence, details of the different cere- 
 monies used for the personal aggrandizement of the user, for 
 gaining the love of women and (conversely) for putting hate 
 between a man and his wife ; for healing disease and casting 
 out devils ; for causing dreams, discovering thieves, and gaining 
 knowledge of the thoughts of men and of things past and to 
 come ; and for obtaining, by other than direct means, success 
 in athletic competitions. In others, we find directions for 
 evoking gods or spirits who may thus be bound to the service; 
 of the magician, for raising the dead for necromantic purposes, 
 and for the destruction of enemies, mingled with technical 
 recipes for making ink and for the compounding of drugs. A 
 feature common to nearly all these charms is their illustration 
 by certain roughly-drawn pictures and formulas which seem at 
 first to be mere strings of letters without sense. 
 
 A few specimens of these charms may help to make this 
 
 1 The principal collections of these are indicated in note 3 on p, 93, 
 mpra. Cf. " The Names of Demons in the Magic Papyri," P.8.B.A. 1901, 
 
 L. 7 
 
98 The Origin of Gnosticism [ch. 
 
 description clearer. In a papyrus now in the British Museum 
 which is said from the writing to date from the ivth century a.d.i, 
 we find the following charms for obtaining an oracular response 
 in a dream : 
 
 " Take of the inner leaves of the laurel and of virgin earth and 
 wormwood seeds flour and of the herb cynocephalium (and I have 
 heard from a certain man of Heracleopolis [now Ahnas el-Medineh] 
 
 that he takes of the leaves of an olive-tree newly sprouted) 
 
 It is carried by a virgin boy ground up with the materials afore- 
 said and the white of an ibis' egg is mixed with the whole 
 compound. There must also be an image of Hermes clad in the 
 chlamys, and the moon must be rising in the sign of Aries or 
 Leo or Sagittarius. Now let Hermes hold the herald's wand, and 
 do thou write the spell on hieratic paper. And take a goose's 
 windpipe, as I also learned from the Heracleopolite, and insert 
 it into the figure so as to be able to blow into it. When you 
 wish for an oracular answer, write the spell and the matter in 
 hand, and having cut a hair from your head, wrap it up in the 
 paper and tie it with a Phoenician knot, and put it at the feet 
 of the caduceus, or, as some say, place it upon it. Let the figure 
 be in a shrine of limewood, and when you wish for an oracular 
 answer place the shrine with the god at your head, and make 
 invocation, ofEering frankincense on an altar and some earth 
 from a place where there is growing corn, and one lump of sal 
 ammoniac. Let this be placed at your head and lie down to sleep 
 after first saying this, but giving no answer to anyone who may 
 address you: 
 
 " Hermes, lord of the world, inner circle of the moon 
 Round and square, originator of the words of the tongue 
 Persuading to justice, wearer of the chlamys, with winged sandals 
 Boiling an ethereal course under the lower parts of the earth 
 Guide of spirits, greatest eye of the. sun 
 Author of all manner of speech, rejoicing with lights 
 Those mortals whose life being finished are under the lower parts 
 of the earth. 
 
 1 Kenyon, Gk. Pap. in Brit. Mus. p. 77. This is the date of the MS. 
 The spells themselves are probably much older. 
 
Ill] The Origin of Gnosticism 99 
 
 Tkou art called the foreknower of destinies, and the divine vision 
 Sending oracles both by day and by night. 
 Thou dost heal all the ills of mortals with thy medicines. 
 Come hither, blessed one, greatest son of perfect memory 
 Appear propitious in thy own shape, and send a propitious form 
 That by the excellence of thy divining art I, a hallowed man, may 
 
 receive what I need. 
 Lord grant my prayer, appear and grant me a true oracle ! 
 
 " Make the adjuration at the risings of the sun and moon. 
 
 " (The inscription to be written on the paper wrappings of the figure.) 
 
 " Huesemigadon, Oriho Baubo, noi oMre soire soire 
 Kanthara, Eresohchigal, sanMstS, dodehakisti " etc. 
 
 In this charm we have nearly all the typical elements of 
 the magic of the period. The windpipe of a goose or other 
 long-necked animal was, we learn from. Hippolytus, inserted 
 into the hollow head of the metal statue of the god, in order 
 that the priest might use it as a speaking tube, and thus cause 
 the statue to give forth oracular responses in a hollow voice ^. 
 Hence its use would be thought particularly appropriate when 
 an oracle was sought, although in circumstances where it would 
 be ineffective for purposes of deceit. The fragment of a hymn 
 in hexameter verse to a god whom it addresses as Hermes is 
 doubtless of great antiquity and taken from the ritual of some 
 half-Greek, half-Oriental worship such as we may imagine to 
 have been paid to the Cabiri, in which a god identified by 
 the Greeks with their own Hermes was particularly honoured. 
 The words of the spell to be written on the paper are by no means 
 the mere gibberish they seem, although they have been so 
 corrupted that it is almost impossible to recognise even the 
 language in which they are written. The word Huesemigaddn 
 is, however, an epithet or name of Pluto the ruler of Hades, 
 
 1 Philosophumena, Bk iv. c. 28. Hippolytus is probably wrong in 
 thinking this a conscious imposture. The magician, like his clients, does 
 not connect cause and effect in such cases. Sir Alfred Lyall told Lord 
 Avebury that he had often seen Indian sorcerers openly mixing croton 
 oil with the ink in which their charms were written so as to produce 
 a purgative effect when the ink was washed off and swallowed. See 
 Lubbock, Origin of Civilization, p. 24. 
 
 7—2 
 
100 The Origin of Gnostieism [ch. 
 
 and occurs in that connection, as has been shown elsewhere, 
 in many of these magic spells^. The Orthd Baubd which follows 
 it is generally found in the same context and seems to cover 
 the name of that Baubo who plays a prominent part in the 
 Mysteries of Eleusis and appears to have been confused in later 
 times with Persephone, the spouse of Pluto*. Ereshchigal 
 [Eres-ki-gal], again, is a word borrowed from the first or 
 Sumerian inhabitants of Babylonia, and means in Sumerian 
 " the Lady of the great {i.e. the nether) world," being a title 
 frequently used for Allat the goddess of hell, who appears in 
 the very old story of the Descent of Ishtar and is the Baby- 
 lonian counterpart of Persephone*. Why she should have 
 been called dodekakiste or the 12th cannot now be said ; but it 
 is possible that we have here a relic of the curious Babylonian 
 habit of giving numbers as well as names to the gods, or rather 
 of identifying certain numbers with certain divinities*. On 
 the whole, therefore, it may be judged that the words of the spell 
 once formed part of the ritual of a Sumerian worship long since 
 forgotten and that they travelled across Western Asia and were 
 translated as far as might be into Greek, when that language 
 became the common tongue of the civilized world after Alex- 
 ander's conquests. 
 
 This may be taken for a spell having its origin in, or at any 
 rate depending for its efficacy upon, the relics of some Western 
 
 1 P.S.B.A. xxn. (1900), pp. 121 sqq. An explanation of the name is 
 attempted by Giraud, Ophitae, Paris, 1884, p. 91, n. 5. 
 
 2 Daremberg and Saglio, Diet, des Antiq. s.v. Baubo. The name Ortho 
 perhaps suggests that of the very ancient goddess later called Artemis 
 Orthia, whose original name seems to have been Ortbia only. Cf. M. S. 
 Thompson's paper " The Asiatic or Winged Artemis " in J.H.8. vol. xxix. 
 (1909), pp. 286 sqq., esp. p. 307. 
 
 3 P.S.B.A. xxn. (1900), p. 121, and see Griffith and Thompson, Demotic 
 Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden, p. 61 and note. 
 
 * Probably, however, it refers to the number of letters in the name in 
 some more or less fantastic spelling or cryptogram. When Hippolytns 
 speaks of the Demiurge laldabaoth as " a fiery God, a fourth number " 
 (Philosophumena, Bk v. o. 7, p. 153, Cruice), there can be Uttle doubt that 
 he is referring to the Tetragrammaton or four-lettered name of Jehovah. 
 Cf. the " hundred-lettered " name of Typhon, p. 104, infra. 
 
Ill] The Origin of (xnosticism 101 
 
 Asiatic faith. The following taken from another papyrus now 
 in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris shows acquaintance 
 with the Egyptian religion — ^probably through the Alexandrian 
 or Isiacist form of it described in Chapter II — and is perhaps 
 a more salient example of the compulsive element common to 
 all magic, but particularly associated with the Egyptian magi- 
 cians. It is given in the shape of a letter purporting to be 
 addressed by a certain Nephotes to the Pharaoh Psamtik whom 
 the Greeks called Psammetichos, and who managed, as has been 
 said above, to drive out the Ethiopians and to rule Egypt by the 
 help of Greek mercenaries. There is no reason to suppose that 
 this attribution is anything more than a charlatanic attempt to 
 assign to it a respectable origin ; but it is probable from certain 
 indications that it was really taken from an earlier hieratic 
 or demotic MS. of pre-Christian times. It has been published 
 by Dr Karl Wessely of Vienna^ and is written in Greek characters 
 of apparently the nird century a.d. 
 
 " Nephotes to Psammetichos king of Egypt, the ever living, 
 greeting. Since the great god [Serapis ?] has restored to thee an 
 eternal kingdom, and Nature has made thee an excellent adept, and 
 I am also willing to show forth to thee the love of art which is mine — 
 I have sent to thee this ceremony, a holy rite made perfect with all 
 ease of working, which having tested, you will be amazed at the 
 unexpected nature of this arrangement. You will see with your 
 own eyes in the bowl in what day or night you will and in what 
 place you will. You will see the god in the water, receiving the word 
 from the god in what verses you will. [It will reach also ?] the 
 world-ruler and if you ask a question of him he will speak even of 
 all the other things you seek. [A description of the ointment to be 
 used doubtless once followed, but has been omitted in the Paris MS.^] 
 
 ^ Oriechische Zauberpapyri von Paris und London, pp. 24-26. 
 
 2 The use of ointment for magical purposes is well known, and it was 
 the incautious use of an ointment of this kind which changed Lucius, the 
 hero of Apuleius' romance, into an ass. The use of ointments which had 
 the property of translating the user to the Witches' Sabhath frequently 
 X)ccurs in the witch-trials of the Renaissance, and it has been suggested 
 that drugs producing hallucinations were thus applied. The word koivt] 
 often found in these spells seems to point to some ointment or preparation 
 used in all the magic ceremonies described. 
 
102 The Origin of Gnosticism [CH. 
 
 Having thus anointed yourself and having put together before the 
 rising of the sun in this forna (?) what things you will, when the 
 third day of the moon has come, go with the mystagogue upon the 
 roof of the house, and spread upon the earth a clean linen cloth, 
 and having crowned yourself with black ivy at the 5th hour after 
 noon, lie down naked on the linen cloth, and order him [the mysta- 
 gogue] to bind your eyes with a bandage of black linen ; and having 
 laid yourself down like a corpse [or, on your back ?], close your eyes, 
 making the sign of consecration towards the sun with these words : — 
 " mighty Typhon of the sceptre on high, sceptred ruler, God of 
 Gods. King Aberamenihou^, hill shaker, bringer of thunder, 
 hurricane, who lightens by night, hot-natured one, rock shaker, 
 destroyer of wells, dasher of waves, who disturbs the deep with 
 movement. lo erbit autauitnini. I am he who with thee has 
 uprooted the whole inhabited world and seeks out the great Osiris 
 who brought thee chains. I am he who with thee fights on the side 
 of the gods (some say against the gods). I am he who has shut up 
 the twin sides of heaven, and has lulled to sleep the invisible dragon, 
 and who has established the sea [and ?] the red springs of rivers. 
 Until thou shall no longer be lord of this dominion, I am thy soldier, 
 I was conquered [and hurled] headlong by the gods. I was thrown 
 down by [their] wrath in vain [or, because of the void]. Awake ! 
 I come as a suppliant, I come as thy friend, and thou wilt not cast 
 me out, earth-caster. King of the gods, aemonaebarotherree- 
 th6rabeaneimea\ Be strong, I entreat ! Grant me this grace that, , 
 when I shall command one of the gods themselves to come to my 
 incantations, I may see them coming quickly ! Name basanaptatou 
 eaptou mind phaesmi paptouminoph aesimS trauapti peuchri, trauara 
 ptoumiph, mouraianchmichaphapta nunirsaaramei. lad aththaraui- 
 minoJcer horoptoumith attaui mini charchara ptoumai lalapsa trauei 
 
 1 Aber-amenti : " Lord (lit. Bull) or Conqueror of Amenti," the Egyp- 
 tian Hades. The name is of frequent occurrence in all these spells. Jesus, 
 in one of the later documents of the Pistis Sophia, is called Aberamenthd, 
 in circumstances that would make the title peculiarly appropriate. 
 
 2 A palindrome containing the same word or sentence written both 
 forwards and backwards. The phrase here given {aemcmaebardth) is 
 probably Hebrew, which the scribe may have known was written the 
 reverse way to most European languages. It is noteworthy that a mistake 
 in transcription is made when the phrase is written backwards. 
 
Ill] The Origin of Gnosticism 103 
 
 trauei mamophortoula^ aeiio iou o&oa eai aeiidi iao aii ai iao^. On 
 your repeating this three times, there will be this sign of the alliance^. 
 But you having the soul of a magician wiU be prepared. Do not 
 alarm yourself, for a sea-hawk hovering downwards will strike with 
 his wings upon your body*. And do thou having stood upon thy 
 feet clothe thyself in white garments, and in an earthen censer 
 scatter drops of frankincense speaking thus : ' I exist in thy sacred 
 form. I am strong in thy sacred name. I have lighted upon the 
 flowing-forth of thy good things, Lord, God of Gods, king 
 demon. Atthouin ihouihoui tauanti laoaptato.^ Having done this, 
 you may descend like a god, and will command the [order ?]^ of 
 Nature through this complete arrangement of autoptic [i.e. clair- 
 voyant] lecanomancy. It is also a way of compelling the dead to 
 become visible. For when you wish to enquire concerning [any] 
 events, you must take a brazen jar or dish or pan, whichever you 
 will, and fill it with water, which if you are invoking the celestial 
 gods must be living [Qy. running or sparkling ?] ; but, if the terres- 
 trial divinities, from the sea ; and if Osiris or Sarapis, from the 
 river [Nile ?] ; and, if the dead, from a well. Take the vessel upon 
 your knees, pour upon it oil made from unripe olives, then bending 
 over the vessel repeat the following invocation and invoke what god 
 you will and an answer will be given to you and he will speak to you 
 concerning all things. But if and when he shall have spoken, dismiss 
 
 1 This sentence was probably once Egyptian from the frequent recur- 
 rence of p and i as the initial letters of words. They are the masculine and 
 feminine forms of the definite article in Coptic. 
 
 ^ These " boneless strings of vowels," as C. W. King calls them in his 
 Qnostics and their Remains, 1887, p. 320, are thought by him to cover 
 the name of Jehovah. Another theory is that they are a musical 
 notation giving the tone in which the spell is to be pronounced. 
 
 ' StJo-Too-tf. The text gives the most usual meaning of the word : but 
 it may here mean something like the " materialization " spoken of by 
 spiritualists. 
 
 * The word used (n-Xao-^ia) properly means image. But no image or 
 idol has been mentioned. It is curious that in the Mithraio mysteries, we 
 hear of the initiates, apparently during the reception of a candidate, 
 "striking [him ?] with birds' wings." Cf. the text attributed (doubtfully) 
 to St Augustine in Cumont, Textes et Monuments relatifs aux Mystkres 
 de Miihra, BruxeUes, 1896, t. n. p. 8. 
 
 ' Some word like oiKovofila seems to have been omitted by the scribe. 
 
104 The Origin of Gnosticism [ch. 
 
 him with the dismissal which you wUl wonder at, using the same 
 speech. 
 
 " Speech to be said over the vessel. Amoun auantau laimautau 
 riptou mantaui imantau lantou laptoumi ancMmach araptoumi. 
 Hither, such and such a god ! Be visible to me this very day and do 
 not appal my eyes. Hither to me such and such a god ! giving ear 
 to my race [?]. For this is what anchor anchor achachach ptoumi 
 chancho charachoch chaptoumS choraharachoch aptoumi miehochaptou 
 charach ptou chancho clmracho ptenachocheu, a name written in a 
 hundred letters, wishes and commands. And do not thou, most 
 mighty king, forget the magicians among us ; because this is the 
 earliest name of Typhon, at which tremble the earth, the abyss. 
 Hades, heaven, the sun, the moon, the place of the stars and the 
 whole phenomenal universe. When this name is spoken, it carries 
 along with its force gods and demons. It is the hundred-lettered 
 name, the same name as last written. And when thou hast uttered 
 it, the god or the dead person who hears it will appear to thee and will 
 answer concerning the things you ask. And when you have learned 
 all things, dismiss the god only with the strong name, the one of the 
 hundred letters, saying ' Begone, Lord, for thus wills and commands 
 the great god ! ' Say the name and he will depart. Let this treatise, 
 mighty king, be kept to thyself alone, being guarded from being 
 heard by any other. And this is the phylactery which you should 
 wear. It should be arranged on a silver plate. Write the same 
 name with a brazen pen and wear it attached with a strip of ass's 
 skini." 
 
 The purpose of the charm just given is, as will be seen, 
 to produce apparitions in a bowl containing liquid after the 
 fashion still common in the near East^. It amply bears out 
 the remark of lamblichus that the Egyptian magicians, differing 
 therein from the Chaldaean, were accustomed in their spells 
 to threaten the gods', and many other instances of this can 
 
 ^ Because the ass was considered a Typhonic animal. 
 
 ^ The form of hypnotism known as crystal-gazing. A full description 
 is given in Lane's Modem Egyptians, 1896, pp. 276 aqq. Cf. " Divination 
 in the xvnth Century," National Review, 1899, pp. 93-104, for its practice 
 in England. 
 
 * See the letter of Porphyry to Aneho quoting Chaeremon. That this 
 practice was peculiar to the Egyptian magicians is stated by lamblichus. 
 
nij The Origin of Gnosticism 105 
 
 be found in other passages of the magic papyri. But it should 
 be noticed that in this case the magician is dealing with a power 
 thought to be hostile alike to man and to the beneficent gods. 
 Typhon, who is, as Plutarch tells us, the Greek equivalent of 
 the Egyptian Set, was looked upon in Hellenistic times as essen- 
 tially a power of darkness and evil, who fights against the gods 
 friendly to man with the idea of reducing their ordered world 
 to chaos. Yet the magician avows himself on his side, and 
 even speaks of his name as being able to compel the heavenly 
 gods, to whom he must therefore be superior. lamblichus tries 
 to explain this, and to refine away the obvious meaning of such 
 spells, but their existence certainly justifies the accusation of 
 trafficking with devils brought by the early Christian Fathers 
 against the practisers of magic. 
 
 Another charm may be quoted for the purpose of showing 
 the acquaintance, superficial though it was, with the religions 
 of all nations in the Hellenistic world and the indifference with 
 regard to them which the practice of magic necessitated. It 
 appears in the papyrus in the British Museum last quoted from 
 and is directed to be spoken over " the lamp " which plays so 
 great a part in all magical processes^. Of its real or supposed 
 author, Alleius Craeonius, nothing is known : 
 
 " A spell of Alleius Craeonius spoken over the lamp. Ochmarmacho, 
 the nourat chrSmiUon sleeping with eyes open, nia, lao equal-num- 
 bered^ soumpsinis siasias, lao who shakes the whole inhabited world, 
 come hither unto me and give answer concerning the work [i.e. the 
 
 de Mysteriis, Bk rv. c. 7. A good instance is given by Maspero, " Sur deux 
 Tabellae Devotionis " in Sf. Sgyptol. 1893, t. ii. p. 297, where a magician 
 threatens, if his prayer be not granted, to go down into the secret places 
 of Osiris and destroy his shroud. 
 
 ^ Kenyon, Greek Papyri in the British Museum, pp. 79-81. 
 
 ^ Or isopsephic, i.e. composed of letters having an equal numerical 
 value. One of the many forms of juggling with words and letters current 
 in the early Christian centuries. The " number of the beast " in Revelation 
 xiii. 18. where, as is now generally admitted, 666 covers the name of Nero 
 Caesar which has that numerical value in Hebrew, is the most famiUar 
 instance. Other instances can be found in the Epistle of Barnabas, c. 9, 
 Hilgenfeld, N.T. extra Canonem receptum. Lips. 1884, and Hippolytus, 
 Philosophumena, Bk VT. o. 48, p. 318, Cruice. 
 
106 The Origin of Ghiosticism [ch. 
 
 matter in hand] hototh phouphnoun noueboui in the place prepared 
 for thy reception [?]. Take an inscription^ with on the obverse 
 Sarapis seated holding the royal sceptre of Egypt and upon the 
 sceptre an ibis. On the reverse of the stone, carve the name and 
 shut it up and keep it for use. Take the ring in your left hand, 
 and a branch of olive and laurel in your right, shaking it over the 
 lamp^, at the same time uttering the spell seven times. And, having 
 put it (the ring) upon the Idaean finger* of your left hand, facing 
 and turning inwards [Qy. away from the door of the chamber ?] 
 and having fastened the stone to your left ear, lie down to sleep 
 returning no answer to any who may speak to you : 
 
 " ' 1 invoke thee who created the earth and the rocks [lit. the 
 bones] and all flesh and spirit and established the sea, and shakes 
 the heavens and did divide the light from the darkness, the great 
 ordering mind, who disposes all, the everlasting eye. Demon of 
 Demons, G-od of Gods, the Lord of Spirits, the unwandering Mon. 
 lao ouei [Jehovah ?] hearken unto my voice. I invoke thee the 
 ruler of the gods, high-thundering Zeus, king Zeus Adonai, Lord 
 Jehovah [?]. I am he who invokes thee in the Syrian tongue as the 
 great god Zaalair iphplwu* and do thou not disregard the sound in 
 Hebrew ablanathanalba^ ahrasiloa. For I am siUhacMouch lailam 
 hlasaloth lao ieo nehuth sabiothar both arbath iao laoth Sabaoth patoure 
 zagourS Baruch adonai eloai iabraam^ barbarauo naysiph, lofty- 
 minded, everliving, having the diadem of the whole ordered world, 
 siepi saktieti of life (twice) spM nousi (twice) sietho (twice). Chthe- 
 thonirinch oiadiol ani lao asial Sarapiolso ethmourisini sem lau lou 
 lurinch.' 
 
 ^ The context shows that a scarab set in a ring is indicated. 
 
 ^ A rude drawing representing the magician in this attitude often 
 appears in the margin of papyri such as that quoted in the text. See Wessely, 
 Oriech. Zavberp. p. 118. 
 
 ' Doubtless the index, because the Idaean DaotyU were said to be the 
 first of men. 
 
 ■* This seems to be a corruption of some name like Baal-zephon. The 
 confusion of f for ^ in these papyri is very common. 
 
 5 A Hebrew name meaning " Thou art our father." It was thought 
 especially valuable because it could be read either way. 
 
 • Of these words, laoth Sabaoth is " Jehovah of hosts " ; patoure zagoure, 
 "who openeth and shutteth" (cf. Revelation i. 8); Baruch adonai eloai 
 iahraam, "Blessed be the Lord God of Abraham." All are fairly good 
 Hebrew not very much corrupted. 
 
in] The Origin of Gnosticism 107 
 
 " This spell loosens chains, blinds, brings dreams, causes favours, 
 and may be used for any purposes you wisli." 
 
 In this spell, we have Zeus and Yahweh associated with 
 Serapis in the apparent belief that all three were the same god. 
 Although the magician parades his learning by using the name 
 of one of the Syrian Baals, and it is possible that some of the 
 unintelligible words of the invocation may be much corrupted 
 Egyptian, he is evidently well acquainted with Hebrew, and 
 one of the phrases used seems to be taken from some Hebrew 
 ritual. It is hardly likely that he would have done this unless 
 he were himself of Jewish blood ; and we have therefore the 
 fact that a Jewish magician was content to address his national 
 god as Zeus and to make use of a " graven image " of him under 
 the figure of the Graeco-Egyptian Serapis in direct contravention 
 of the most stringent clauses in the Law of Moses. A more 
 striking instance of the way in which magicians of the time 
 borrowed from all religions could hardly be imagined. 
 
 The uncertain date of the charms under discussion prevent 
 any very cogent argument as to their authorship being drawn 
 from them ; but there are other grounds for supposing that the 
 use of magic was never so wide-spread as in the last three 
 centuries before and the first three centuries after the birth of 
 Christ, and that this was mainly due to the influx of Orientals 
 into the West. One of the indirect effects of Alexander's con- 
 quests was, by substituting Greek kings for the native rulers who 
 had till then governed the countries lying round the Nile and 
 the Euphrates, to break up the priestly colleges there established, 
 and thus to set free a great quantity of the lower class of priests 
 and temple-servants who seem to have wandered through the 
 Hellenistic world, selling their knowledge of curious arts, and 
 seeking from the credulity of their fellows the toilless livelihood 
 that they had till then enjoyed at the expense of the state. 
 The names given to the most famous of these charlatans in the 
 early Roman Empire — Petosiris, Nechepso, Astrampsuchos^, 
 
 ^ Astrampsuchos appears, oddly enough, as the name of one of the 
 celestial guardians of a heaven in one of the documents of the Bodleian 
 Bruce Papyrus which is described in Chap. X, infra. See Am61ineau, Le 
 
108 The Origin of Grnosticism [CH. 
 
 and Ostanes^ — are iu themselves sufficient to show their origin; 
 and " Chaldaicus " passed into the common language of the time 
 as the recognized expression for the professional exponent of 
 curious arts. Even in the time of Sulla there seems to have 
 been no lack of persons who, if not magicians, were at all events 
 professional diviners capable of interpreting the Dictator's 
 dreams^, and the writers of the Augustan age allude frequently 
 to magic, such as that taught by the papyri just quoted, as 
 being generally the pursuit of foreigners. The Thessalian 
 magicians are as celebrated in the Roman times which Apuleius 
 describes as in those of Theocritus. The Canidia or Gratidia 
 of Horace had also a Thessalian who assisted her in her incan- 
 tations^. But these, like the Chaldaean and Egyptian sor- 
 cerers just mentioned, were at the head of their profession, 
 and in many cases made large sums out of the sale of their 
 services. The taste for magic of the poorer classes, slaves, and 
 freedmen, was catered for by the crowd of itinerant magicians, 
 among whom the Jews (and Jewesses) seem to have been the 
 most numerous, who used to hang about the Circus Maximus*. 
 Renan is doubtless perfectly right when he says that never 
 were the Mathematici, the Chaldaei, and the Goetae of all kinds 
 so abundant as in the Rome of Nero^. Their prevalence in the 
 great cities of the eastern provinces of the Empire may be judged 
 from the frequency of their mention in the New Testament*. 
 
 It would, of course, be very easy to consider all such practices 
 as the result of deliberate and conscious imposture. This is 
 
 Papyriis Chiostique Bruce, Paris, p. 109, who transcribes it Etrempsuohos, 
 while Schmidt {Koptisch-gnostische Schriften, Leipzig, 1905, Bd. i. p. 345) 
 writes Strempsuchos. Hippolytus gives the name as that of one of the 
 Powers worshipped by the Peratae, v. Philosophumena, Bk v. c. 14, 
 p. 196, Cruice. 
 
 1 M. Maspero contends that this name is a corruption of an epithet of 
 Thoth. See ^t. Sgyptol. v. p. 259. 
 
 ^ See Plutarch, Sulla, passim, especially co. ix. xxvrn. and xxxvn. 
 from which last it appears that he consulted " the Chaldaeans." 
 
 '^ Horace, Epode, v. 
 
 * Juvenal, Sat. vi. 
 
 5 Renan, L' Antichrist, Paris, 1873, p. 28, n. 4, for authorities. 
 
 ' Acts xiii. 8 ; ibid. xix. 13-19. Cf. Renan, op. cit. p. 421. 
 
Ill] The Origin of Gnosticism 109 
 
 the course taken by Hippolytus in the Philosophumena, in which 
 the heresiologist bishop gives a description of the tricks of the 
 conjurors of the iiird century accompanied by rationalistic 
 explanations which sometimes make a greater demand on the 
 credulity of the readers than the wonders narrated^. These 
 tricks he accuses the leaders of the Gnostics of his time of learning 
 and imitating, and the accusation is therefore plainly dictated 
 by the theological habit of attempting by any means to discredit 
 the morals of those who dissent from the writer's own religious 
 opinions*. But a study of the magic papyri themselves by no 
 means supports this theory of conscioiis imposture. The spells 
 therein given were evidently written for the use of a professional 
 magician, and seem to have been in constant employment. Many 
 of them bear after them the note written in the hand of the scribe 
 that he has tested them and found them efficacious. The pains, 
 too, which the author takes to give variations of the process re- 
 commended in them — as for example in the quotations from a 
 " man of Heracleopolis " in the first of the spells given above- 
 all show that he had a more or less honest belief in the efficacy 
 of the spells he is transcribing. The recording in the same 
 papyri of what would be now called " trade secrets " such as 
 recipes for the manufacture of ink all point the same way, and 
 go to confirm the view that the magicians who made use of them, 
 although willing to sell their supposed powers over the super- 
 natural world for money, yet believed that they really possessed 
 them. 
 
 This is the more likely to be true because many of the 
 phenomena which these spells are intended to produce are what 
 would now be called hypnotic. The gods and demons invoked 
 are supposed to appear sometimes in dreams, but more generally 
 to a virgin boy gazing fixedly either at a lamp or at the shining 
 
 ^ Book IV. c. 4, passim, especially the device for making sheep cut off 
 their own heads by rubbing their necks against a sword, or for producing 
 an earthquake by burning upon coals the dung of an ichneumon mixed 
 with magnetic ore (pp. 99, 111, Cruice). TertuUian, de Praescript. c. 43, 
 accuses the Gnostics of frequenting magicians and astrologers. 
 
 ■ Philosophumena, Bk iv. c. 15, pp. 112, 113, Cruice. 
 
110 The Origin of Ghiosticism [CH. 
 
 surface of a liquid. This is, of course, the form of " crystal- 
 gazing " or divination by the ink-pool still used throughout 
 the East, a graphic description of which is given in Lane's 
 Modern Egyptians ^ In this case as in the charms for the healing 
 of disease — especially of epilepsy and other nervous maladies — 
 given in the same papyri, the active agent seems to be the 
 power of suggestion, consciously or unconsciously exercised 
 by the operator or magician. A full but popular explanation 
 of these phenomena from the standpoint of modem science 
 will be found in the lectures on " Hypnotisme et Spiritisme " 
 deUvered at Geneva by Dr ^fimile Yung in 1890^, while the subject 
 has been treated more learnedly and at greater length by a great 
 number of writers, among whom may be specially mentioned 
 M. Pierre Janet*, the successor and continuator of the researches 
 of the celebrated Charcot at the Salpetriere. 
 
 The influence that such practices exercised upon the, 
 development of the post-Christian sects or schools generally 
 classed together under the name of Gnostic is not very clearly 
 defined. It may, indeed, be said that the great diffusion of 
 the magical rites that took place during the centuries immedi- 
 ately preceding, as in those immediately following, the birth 
 of Christ, predisposed men's minds to the search for a cosmogony 
 or theory of the universe which should account for its evolution 
 as part of an orderly and well-devised system rather than as the 
 capricious and, as it were, incoherent creation of the gods. 
 That some such force was at work may be gathered from the 
 fact that magical beliefs and practices seem to have crept into 
 the religion of the whole civilized world at this period. But 
 that the schools calling themselves Gnostic owed their develop- 
 ment directly or exclusively to them is an idea that must be 
 repudiated. Hippolytus, as has been said, does, indeed, make 
 some such charge, but only in general terms and without any 
 evidence in its support. When later he goes through the sects 
 seriatim, he only reiterates it in the cases of Simon Magus, of 
 
 1 Paisley, 1896, pp. 277-284. 
 
 ^ Hypnotisme et Spiritisme, Geneve, 1890, passim. 
 
 " L'Automatisme Psychologique, Paris, 1899, passim. 
 
Ill] The Origin of Gnosticism 111 
 
 his successor Menander, and of Carpocrates of Antioch ; and 
 it is probable from the context that in all these cases he is only 
 referring to what seemed to him the superstitious attention 
 paid by the " heretics " in question to the externals of worship, 
 such as the use of pictures and statues, lights and incense, which 
 seem in many cases to have been borrowed directly from 
 paganism. 
 
 This attention to the details of ritual, however, did in itself 
 contain the germ of a danger to the survival of any organized 
 cult in which it was present in excess, which was to receive 
 full illustration in the later forms of Egyptian Gnosticism 
 properly so-called. As will be shown in its place, the seed of 
 Gnosticism fell in Egypt upon soil encumbered with the debris 
 of many older faiths which had long since passed into the stage 
 of decay. Nor could the earnestness or the philosophic insight 
 of the great Gnostics of Hadrian's time, who started their pro- 
 paganda from Alexandria, contend for long with the inherited 
 preconceptions of a degraded and stubborn peasantry who had 
 learned for millennia to regard all religion as sorcery. Here 
 Gnosticism degenerated quickly into magic of the least enlight- 
 ened and basest kind, and thus lost all right to be considered 
 in any sense a religion^- The case was different in other parts of 
 the Roman Empire, where a better intellectual equipment and 
 the practical syncretism or fusion of worships offered more 
 favourable ground for the development of new faiths not 
 appealing to the members of one nationality only. 
 
 That this idea of Gnosticism or of the importance of know- 
 ledge — -were it only the knowledge of charms and spells — in 
 dealing with the spiritual and invisible world was bound to 
 play a prominent part in the evolution of the world-religions 
 which Alexander's conquests bad rendered possible is therefore 
 evident. Some writers have gone further and have declared 
 that Christianity itself may be " only an episode — though a 
 very important episode — in the history of Gnosticism^." But 
 
 1 This is treated more fully va. Chap. X, infra. 
 
 2 Cf. " Cerinthus and the Gnostics " in the London Qvarterly, Oct. 1886, 
 p. 132. 
 
112 The Origin of Gnosticism [CH. 
 
 to say this, as will presently be shown, is to go too far, and 
 Christianity, although she obtained many converts from those 
 Gnostic sects with which the Church of the Apostolic and 
 sub- Apostolic ages found itself in competition^, yet proved in 
 the long run to be the most bitter enemy of Gnosticism. From 
 the first, the Catholic Church seems to have recognized that the 
 ideas which lay at the root of Gnosticism— to which word I 
 have ventured here to give a meaning more extended than that 
 which it connotes in heresiological writers — were opposed to 
 religion altogether ; and if allowed to triumph would have had 
 their end in the development of a science, which, if not absolutely 
 atheistic, would at least reduce the necessary action of the 
 spiritual world upon this to the vanishing point^. It would 
 indeed be quite possible to argue that such ideas must always 
 appear when a people of inferior culture, but of vigorous intellect, 
 come into frequent contact for the first time with a material 
 civilization higher than their own. It is sufficient for the 
 present purpose to have shown that they were widely spread 
 during the centuries which immediately preceded the appear- 
 ance of Christianity, and that they count for something in the 
 evolution of the many heretical sects who came to trouble most 
 seriously the peace of the Catholic Church in the early centuries 
 of our era. The same causes, however, must have been at 
 work some time before, and it is impossible to explain some of 
 the features of Gnosticism in its more extended sense without 
 going back to an early period of Greek history. For it was in 
 Greece that the Orphic teaching first appeared, and it is to this 
 that most of the post-Christian Gnostic heresies or sects attri- 
 buted, not untruly, their own origin. 
 
 Connected in practice with, yet entirely different in origin 
 
 ^ Thus Epiphanius had been a Nicolaitan, St Ambrose of Milan a 
 Valentinian, and St Augustine a Manichaean before joining the CathoUc 
 Church. 
 
 2 So Hippolytus objects not only to the astrology of his time, but to 
 the arithmetical calculations on which it was professedly based. The 
 estimates attributed to Archimedes of the relative distances of the 
 earth from the sun, moon and planets are marked out by him for special 
 condemnation. Cf. Philosophumena, Bk iv. c. 1, pp. 67-76, Cruice. 
 
ni] The Origin of Gnosticism 113 
 
 from, this magic was the astrology or star-lore which after the 
 conquest of the Euphrates valley by the Persians began to 
 make its way westwards. It would seem that its birthplace 
 was the plains of Chaldaea, where the clear air brings the starry 
 expanse of the sky nearer, as it were, to the observer than in 
 the denser and more cloudy atmosphere of Europe, while the 
 absence of rising ground not only enables him to take in the 
 whole heaven at a glance, but gives him a more lively idea of the 
 importance of the heavenly bodies. There the careful and 
 patient observation of the Sumerian priests at a period which 
 was certainly earlier than Sargon of Akkad {i.e. 2750 B.C.) 
 established the fact that certain groups of stars appeared and 
 disappeared at regular intervals, that others moved more swiftly 
 than their fellows, and that the places of both with reference to 
 the apparent path of the sun varied in a way which corre- 
 sponded with the recurrence of the seasons. Primitive man, 
 however, does not distinguish between post hoc and propter hoc, 
 or rather he assumes unhesitatingly that, if any natural pheno- 
 menon occurs with anything like regularity after another, the 
 first is the cause of the second. Hence the swifter stars soon 
 came to be clothed in the minds of the early astronomers with 
 attributes varying with the phenomena of which they were 
 supposed to be the cause. Thus, the planet or " wandering " 
 star which we call Jupiter came to be known as the " god of 
 good winds," the Hyades and Pleiades were looked upon as 
 the bringers of rain, and the stars whose appearance ushered 
 in the cold and darkness of winter were considered as hostile 
 to man^. As time progressed, however, these observations; 
 accumulated — largely, one would think, because of the im- 
 perishable material on which they were recorded — and it then 
 began to be perceived that the movement of the heavenly bodies 
 were not due to their individual caprice or will, but were dictated 
 by an inexorable and unchangeable law. In the drawing of 
 this conclusion, the patient and logical mind of the Mongoloid 
 inhabitants of Sumer, ever mindful at once of the past and the 
 future of the race, no doubt played its full part. 
 
 1 P. Jensen, Die Kosmologie der BtAylonier, Strassburg, 1890, pp. 140 
 sqq. and especially p. 295. 
 
 8 
 
114 The Origin of Gnosticism [CH. 
 
 The efiect of this change in the mental attitude of man 
 towards the imiverse was to introduce an entirely new con- 
 ception into religion. At first the Babylonians, pushing, as 
 man generally does, the application of their last discovery 
 further than the facts would warrant, declared that all events 
 happened in a regular and prearranged order ; and that man 
 could therefore predict the happening of any event directly 
 he knew its place in the series. Thus in the " astrological " 
 tablets preserved in the palace of Assur-banipal at Nineveh, 
 some of which certainly go back to the reign of Sargon of 
 Akkad^, we read : 
 
 " In the month of Nisan 2nd day, Venus appeared at sunrise. 
 
 There will be distress in the land An ecHpse happening on 
 
 the 15th day, the king of Dilmun is slain, and someone seizes his 
 throne.... An eclipse happening on the 15th day of the month 
 Ab the king dies, and rains descend from heaven, and floods fill 
 the canals. . . . An ecUpse happening on the 20th day, the king 
 of the Hittites in person seizes the throne.. . .For the 5th month 
 an eclipse on the 14th day portends rains and the flooding of canals. 
 The crops will be good, and king will send peace to king. An eclipse 
 on the 15th day portends destructive war. The land will be filled 
 with corpses. An echpse on the 16th day indicates that pregnant 
 women will be happily deUvered of their offspring. An echpse 
 on the 20th day portends that hons wQl cause terror and that reptUes 
 will appear ; an eclipse on the 21st day that destruction wiU overtake 
 the riches of the sea^." 
 
 ^ See the tablets made for this king and published by Sir Henry EawUn- 
 son in the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, vol. m. Many of these 
 are translated by Sayce in " The Astronomy and Astrology of the Babylo- 
 nians," Trans. 8oc. Bibl. Arch. vol. m. ( 1874), pp. 145-339. I have taken the 
 lowest date for Sargon, on the authority of Mr King, Chronicles of Early 
 Babylonian Kings, 1907, 1, p. 17, although the well-known text of Nabonidus 
 would make him a thousand years earlier. The origin of Babylonian 
 astronomy is discussed by Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, 
 chap. xxni. The immense antiquity attributed to the Babylonian 
 observations by the classical authorities quoted in Sayce's paper may be 
 considerably reduced if we substitute hmax for solar years ; yet there seems 
 little doubt that the star worship which arose from them went back to the 
 " oldest period of Babylonia." Cf. Sayce, Clifford Lectures, 1902, p. 480. 
 
 ^ Jastrow, op. cit. pp. 365 sqq. 
 
in] The Origin of Gnosticism 115 
 
 These events are evidently predicted from a knowledge of 
 what happened immediately after the occurrence of former 
 eclipses and other celestial phenomena, and it is perhaps cha- 
 racteristic of the lot of man that most of them are mifavourable 
 and that the disasters greatly outnumber the good things. But 
 it is plain that as time went on, the observers of the stars would 
 begin to perceive that even such unusual celestial phenomena 
 as eclipses occurred at intervals which, although long compared 
 with the lifetime of a man, could yet be estimated, and that the 
 element of chance or caprice could therefore be in great measure 
 eliminated from their calculation. Then came about the con- 
 struction of the calendar, and the formation of tables extending 
 over a long series of years, by which the recurrence of eclipses 
 and the like could be predicted a long time in advance. All this 
 tended to the formation of different ideas of the laws which, it 
 was now seen, governed man's life, and the shape which these 
 now took were equally erroneous, although at first sight more 
 rational than those held by the first observers. 
 
 This new idea was in effect that system of " correspondences " 
 which occupied a prominent place in nearly all religious systems 
 from the time of Assyria's apogee to the triumph of Christianity, 
 and which through the mediaeval Cabala may be said to retain 
 to the present day some shadow of its former power over the 
 minds of the superstitious. This was the notion that the earth 
 in effect is only a copy of the heavens, and that the events which 
 happen here below are nothing but a copy of those which are 
 taking place above^. If any great catastrophe such, as the 
 iall of an empire like that of Assyria or the sudden death of a 
 man distinguished above his fellows like Alexander occurs, it 
 is because of some conjunction or meeting of hostile stars ; 
 
 ^ Among modem German archaeologists Winckler and Jeremias have 
 pushed the effect of this " astral theory " of the xmiverse beyond all limits. 
 Their position is at once exposed and refuted by Rogers in The Religion of 
 Babylonia and Assyria, 1908, pp. 212 to end. Yet such a view of the 
 universe as is given in the text was undoubtedly held by many during the 
 six centuries here treated of, and can be seen as it were underlying most of 
 the reUgions of the time. That it had its origin in Babylonia seems most 
 probable. See Cumont, Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and 
 Romans, 1912, pp. 1-26, and authorities there quoted. 
 
 8—2 
 
116 The Origin of Gnosticism [ch. 
 
 and if some great and unexpected benefit such as universal 
 peace or an abundant harvest smiles upon mankind, it is because 
 those stars most generally favourable to him have recovered 
 temporary sway. The result was a sort of mapping-out of the 
 heavens into regions corresponding to those of the earth, and 
 the assigning of a terrestrial " sphere of influence " to each^. 
 But as the predictions made from these alone would have been 
 too speedily and too evidently falsified in most cases by the 
 march of events, it became necessary to attribute a predominant 
 influence to the planets, whose swifter and more irregular move- 
 ments introduced new factors into the situation. These planets 
 were decided to be seven in number, Uranus and Neptune 
 not having yet been discovered, and the Sun and Moon being 
 included in the list because they were thought like the others 
 to move round the earth. Hence all terrestrial things were 
 assumed to be divided into seven categories corresponding to 
 the seven planets, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, the Sun, 
 Jupiter, and Saturn, and to be in an especial way under the 
 influence of the heavenly bodies of which they were the earthly 
 representatives. 
 
 Into the details of the so-called science of astrology thus 
 founded, it is not our purpose to enter. To do so would occupy 
 a greater space than is at our disposal, and would involve 
 besides the discussion of a great many documents only just 
 beginning to come to light, and the exact meaning of which is 
 still uncertain^. But it may be mentioned here that astrology 
 entirely changed its character when it came into contact with 
 the dawning science of mathematics, which is perhaps the most 
 enduring monument which bears witness to the fertility and 
 inventiveness of the Greek mind. So soon as the observations 
 of the Babylonians were placed at their disposal, the Greek 
 
 ^ Cumont (work last quoted), p. 18. The idea appears plainly enough 
 in astrological works like Ptolemy's Tetrahiblos. It was not confined to 
 Babylonia, for the Egyptians thought the earthly Nile corresponded to a 
 heavenly one. 
 
 " Cumont's Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Oraecorum of which 
 10 volumes have been published wiU be of great use in this respect. See also 
 Kroll's Vettii Valentis Anthologiarum Libri, 1908. 
 
ni] The Origin of Ghiosticism 117 
 
 mathematicians set to work in real earnest to discover the laws 
 of the universe and established the science of astronomy pretty 
 much on the basis on which it stands at the present day. The 
 discovery of the Metonic cycle, of the trigonometrical method 
 of measuring the celestial sphere, and of the precession of the 
 equinoxes all followed in succession, and the prediction of 
 eclipses, conjunctions of stars, and other celestial phenomena 
 which had before been more or less a matter of guesswork, now 
 became a matter of calculation presenting no mystery to anyone 
 versed in mathematics. The heavens were mapped out, the 
 stars catalogued, and tables w.ere produced which enabled the 
 place of any particular star to be found at a given moment 
 without the actual inspection of the heavens^. 
 
 The result of this improved state of things was not long in 
 reacting both upon religion, and its congener, magic. On the 
 first of these, the efiect was much the same as that produced 
 by the discoveries of Copernicus in the xvith century and those 
 of Darwin in the xixth. - We do not know enough of the history 
 of thought at the time to be aware if the Greek additions to the 
 ascertained laws of Nature aroused the same resentment in 
 priestly minds as did those of the Prussian and the English 
 philosophers ; but it is evident that if they did so, the quarrel 
 was speedily made up. Every religion in the Graeco-Roman 
 world which sought the popular favour after the discoveries 
 of Hipparchus, took note of the seven planetary spheres which 
 the geocentric theory of the imiverse supposed to surround 
 the earth, and even those known before his time, like Zoro- 
 astrianism and Judaism, hastened to adopt the same view of 
 the universe, and to modify the details of their teaching to accord 
 with it. The seven stoles of Isis are as significant in this respect 
 as the seven-stepped ladder or the seven altars in the mysteries 
 of Mithras, while the seven Amshaspands of the Avesta and the 
 attention paid to the seven days of the week by the Jews go to 
 show how even the most firmly held national traditions had to 
 bow before it. As for magic, the sevenfold division of things 
 
 ^ Cumont, Astrology and Bel. pp. 12, 13. Cf. Theon of Alexandria's 
 Commentary on the Ilird book of the Almagest (Abb6 Halma's ed.), 1813> 
 t. I. p. 1. 
 
118 The Origin of Gnosticism [CH. 
 
 which implied that each planet had its own special metal, 
 precious stone, animal, and plant, placed at the disposal of the 
 magicians an entirely new mode of compulsion which lent itself 
 to endless combinations ; while, for the same reason, special 
 conjurations were supposed, as we have seen, only to exercise 
 their full influence under certain positions of the stars. Perhaps 
 the climax of this state of things is reached in one of the Gnostic 
 documents described later, where the salvation of Christian souls 
 in the next world is said to be determined by the entry of one of 
 the beneficent planets into one or other of the signs of the 
 Zodiac^. 
 
 One of the most important results of this impulse was the 
 sudden importance thus given to the worship of the material sun, 
 which henceforth forms the centre of adoration in all non- 
 Christian religions. As we have seen, in the worship of Isis, 
 the newly-made initiate was made to personify the daystar 
 in the public, as no doubt he had done in the secret, ceremonies 
 of the cult. All the post- Alexandrian legends of the gods were 
 turned the same way, and Serapis, Mithras, Attis were all 
 identified with the sun, whom philosophers like Pliny and 
 Macrobius declared to be the one supreme god concealed behind 
 the innumerable lesser deities of the Graeco-Roman pantheon^. 
 Even the Christians could not long hold out against the flood, 
 and the marks of the compromise to which the Catholic Church 
 came in the matter may perhaps be seen in the coincidence 
 of the Lord's Day with Sunday and the Church's adoption of 
 the 25th day of December, the birthday of the Unconquered 
 Sun-God, as the anniversary of the birth of Christ^. It is 
 certainly by no accident that the emperors whose reigns im- 
 mediately preceded the establishment of Christianity all turned 
 towards the worship of the sun-god who was looked upon as 
 
 ^ In the Pistis Sophia (for which see Chapter X, infra) the soul of a 
 sinless man who has not found the mysteries has to wait until the planets 
 Jupiter and Venus come into a certain aspect with the sun, " iSaturn and 
 Mars being behind them." It is then reincarnated and wins for itself life 
 eternal, pp. 387, 389 (Copt.). 
 
 ^ Pliny, N.H. Bk n. c. 4. Macrobius, Saturnalia, Bk i. cc. 18-23. 
 
 * Goblet d'Alviella in Rev. Hist. Rel. lxv. (May-June, 1912), p. 381. 
 
in] The Origin of Gnosticism 119 
 
 the peculiar divinity of the family to which Constantine be- 
 longed^. 
 
 To Gnosticism, whether we use the word in the sense in 
 which it has been used in this chapter, or in its more restricted 
 connotation as the generic name of the earlier heresies which 
 afflicted the nascent Church, the development of astrology came 
 as a source of new life. Henceforth to the knowledge of the 
 history of the personal dispositions and of the designs of the 
 gods, had to be added that of the laws governing the movements 
 of the stars. Moreover, the new theory introduced into Gnosti- 
 cism an element which had hitherto been foreign to it, which 
 was the idea of destiny or of predetermined fate^. If all things, 
 as the astrologers said, happened in a certain regular order of 
 which the movements of the stars were at once the cause and the 
 symbol, it follows that their course is determined beforehand, 
 and may possibly be capable of being ascertained by man. 
 Hence came in aU the ideas as to the predestination of certain 
 souls to happiness and of others to misery both in this world and 
 the next, which play such an important part in the religions of 
 the centuries under consideration, and the influence of which 
 is by no means extinct at the present day. It is true that, as 
 M. Cumont has recently pointed out, man is never rigidly true 
 to his beliefs, and has generally invented some compromise by 
 which either the favour of the gods or his own conduct is 
 supposed to free him from the worst effects of a predetermined 
 fate. Such compromises appear furtively here and there in 
 Christian Gnosticism, but without sufficient prominence to take 
 away the effect of the general notion that man's fate in the 
 next world is determined before his birth in this. 
 
 The general effect of these considerations is, it is thought, 
 that the Gnosticism which came to trouble the peace of the 
 Christian Church during its infancy and adolescence had its 
 
 1 Aurelian and Diocletian each instituted a worship of the sun-god, 
 the deity of the second Flavian family. 
 
 ^ Cumont, Astrology and Bel. pp. 28, 29. He is probably right when 
 he points out that irregular phenomena like comets and shooting stars 
 gave a loophole for the opponents of a rigid predestinarianism of which 
 thev were not slow to avail themselves. 
 
120 The Origin of Gnosticism [ch. ni 
 
 roots, first in the decay of the earlier faith, which showed itself 
 in the popular taste for cosmogonical and other myths, until 
 then wholly or partly absent from the ideas of the more civilized 
 nations of the Persian Empire. On the top of this, came the 
 great spread of ceremonial magic which seems to have followed 
 the first introduction of something like upright and just govern- 
 ment by the Aryan conquerors of the East ; and then the idea 
 of a universe ruled not by the unchecked will of capricious 
 gods, but by the regular and ordered movement of the stars. 
 The predestinarian view of the fate of the individual which 
 naturally follows from this last conception, as has just been said, 
 was subject to exceptions and compromises, but yet appears 
 as a kind of background or framework to all the religions 
 (orthodox Christianity excepted) which came into prominence 
 during the six centuries to which our survey is limited. But 
 before deahng with those hitherto unnoticed, it is necessary 
 that we should glance at those pre-Christian forms of Gnosti- 
 cism, the earliest of which was perhaps that which appeared 
 simultaneously in most parts of the Greek world at the begin- 
 ning of the vth century before Christ and is generally known 
 as Orphism. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 PRE-CHEISTIAN GNOSTICS : THE ORPHICI 
 
 All scholars seem now agreed that the legendary Orpheus 
 never really existed^, and that the many verses and poems 
 attributed to him were the work of various hands, one of the 
 earliest of their authors being Onomacritos of Athens, who fled 
 with the Pisistratids to the court of Xerxes at Susa in the first 
 decade of the vth century b.c.^ Yet there is little doubt that 
 the peculiar myths alluded to in these poems were known at 
 an early date in Crete, whence they probably found their way 
 into Athens with Epimenides, the Cretan wizard or wise man 
 who was sent for to purify the city from the guilt incurred by 
 the murder of Cylon*. This event evidently marks a turning 
 on the part of the Greeks towards purifications and other 
 magical rites unknown in Homer's time* ; but the tendency, 
 
 ^ Lobeck in his Aglaophanms, Konigsberg, 1829, vol. i. pp. 233-1104, 
 makes this clear. It was also the opinion of Aristotle according to Cicero 
 (de Nat. Dear. Bk i. c. 38). Other authorities are coUeoted by Purser in 
 his article " Orphioa" in Smith's Diet, of Greek and Soman Antiquities, 1890, 
 vol. n. who quotes with approval Preller's remark that Orpheus was " eine 
 litterarische CoIIectivperson." See also Paul Monceaux in Daremberg and 
 Saglio's Diet, des Antiq. s.v. Orphica. 
 
 ^ Herodotus, Bk vrr. c. 6. Tatian, adv. Oraeeos, c. xli. ; Clem. Alex. 
 Strom. Bk i. c. 21 ; Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hypotyp. rn. p. 115 b. Cf. Purser, 
 art. cit. 
 
 ' K. O. Miiller, Hist, of the Literature of Ancient Greece, Eng. ed. vol. I. 
 pp. 308, 309 ; and authorities quoted by O. Kern, de Orphei, Epimenidis 
 Pherecydis Theogoniis, Berlin, 1888, p. 6. 
 
 * The first mention of such rites is said to have been made by Arotinua 
 of Miletus in his Mthiopis, where he describes Ulysses as purifying Achilles 
 for the murder of Thersites. See Grote's History of Greece, 4th ed. vol. I. 
 pp. 23, 24. 
 
122 Pre-(Jliristian Gnostics: the Orphici [CH. 
 
 to whomever due in the first instance, undoubtedly received a 
 great impulse from the break-up of the Pythagorean school in 
 Italy about 500 B.c.i This event, which in its effects may be 
 compared to the dispersion of the priestly corporations of 
 Babylon and Egypt which followed Alexander's conquests, 
 sent wandering a great number of speculative philosophers 
 trained in the formation of associations for political and other 
 purposes, and they probably joined forces with a previously 
 existing Orphic sect, nearly all the early Orphic poems being 
 ascribed, with more or less likelihood, to Pythagoreans^. There 
 are certain features in these poems which, if we met with them 
 after the reform of the Zoroastrian religion by the Sassanian 
 kings, we should certainly attribute to Persian influence ; but 
 this can hardly be done so long as we remain ignorant of what 
 the Persian religion was in the time of the Achaemenides. The 
 most probable account of the matter is that the religious 
 teaching attributed to Orpheus was of Asiatic and particularly 
 of Phrygian provenance, that it had long been current in Crete 
 and the other islands of the Mediterranean, that a part of it 
 came into Greece through Thrace in the time of the Pisistratids, 
 and that it was finally put into an organized and consistent 
 shape by those Pythagorean philosophers who made their way 
 back to Greece after the overthrow of their political power in 
 Magna Graecia*. It found in Pindar a warm adherent, and was 
 well known to and spoken of with reverence by the three great 
 
 1 K. O. Miiller, op. cit. i. pp. 310, 311. 
 
 2 Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk i. o. 21. 
 
 * The search for its original home seems hopeless at present. It might 
 easily be connected with Babylonian beliefs, and the Orphic Dionysos has 
 too many features in common with Tammuz, the lover of Ishtar, for the 
 resemblance to be entirely accidental. But other elements in the story, such 
 as the mundane egg, are found in the Vedas, and may point to an Indian 
 origin. The discovery a few years ago at Boghaz Keui in Cilicia of inscrip- 
 tions showing that the Vedic gods were worshipped in Asia Minor at least 
 as early as 1270 B.C., makes it very difficult to say whether the Vedic gods 
 may not have reached India from Asia Minor or vice versa. In this case, 
 it is possible that Onomacritos may have learned some of the legends at 
 the Court of the Great King at Susa. 
 
iv] Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Orphici 123 
 
 tragic poets Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides^. Its greatest 
 influence, however, was probably exerted through the Eleiisinian 
 and other mysteries which it captured and transformed. It 
 continued to dominate them from before the time of Herodotiis 
 down to the prohibition of these secret rites by the Christian 
 emperors, and Orpheus was thus said by everyone to be their 
 founder^. 
 
 The whole of this teaching centred round the legend of 
 Dionysos who is described by Herodotus as the youngest— that 
 is to say the last-adopted — of the great gods of Greece^. This 
 Orphic Dionysos was the Cretan form of the god worshipped 
 all round the Mediterranean, who was always represented in 
 human form, and as suffering a violent death and then rising 
 again from the dead. But to this nucleus, the Orphic poets 
 added at different times and by degrees a great quantity of 
 other myths which together formed a complete body of doctrine 
 setting forth the origin of the world, and of man, and his life 
 after death. First, they said, existed Chronos or Time " who 
 grows not old," from whom sprang Aether and the formless 
 Chaos. From these was formed a silver egg which, bursting 
 in due time, disclosed Eros, or Phanes the first born, a shining 
 god, with wings upon his shoulders, at once male and female, and 
 having within himself the seeds of all creatures. Phanes creates 
 the Sun and Moon and also Night, and from Night begets 
 Uranos and Gaea (Heaven and Earth). These two give birth 
 to the Titans, among whom is Kronos, who emasculates his 
 father Uranos and succeeds to his throne. He is in turn 
 deposed by Zeus, who swallows Phanes, and thus becomes the 
 father of gods and men*. 
 
 1 Pindar, Isthm. vi. i. 3 ; AeschyL Sisyphus Drapetes, fr. 242 of Didot ; 
 Sophocles, Antigmie, \L 1121 sqq. ; Euripides, Bhesus, 11. 942 sqq. Of. 
 Dollinger, Jtid. und Held. Eng. ed. vol. i. p. 259. 
 
 2 Demosthenes, adv. Aristog. i. p. 773. Cf. Maury, Bel. de la Orice, n. 
 p. 320 ; Daremberg and Saglio, Diet, des Antiq. s.v. Orphioa and Eleusinia, 
 for other authorities. 
 
 ' Herodotus, Bk n. cc. 145, 146. 
 
 * This is the " Theogony of the Rhapsodists," which seems to have been 
 the most popular of all the Orphic theogonies. The different texts in which 
 
124 Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Orphici [CH, 
 
 This part of the Orphic story comes to us almost entirely 
 from Neo-Platonic sources, and possesses several variants. It 
 is so manifestly an attempt to reconcile the popular theology 
 of Greece found in Homer and Hesiod with different Oriental 
 ideas of the origin of the world that we might consider it to have 
 been concocted in post-Christian times, were it not that Aristo- 
 phanes had evidently heard about Chaos and the mundane egg, 
 and its production of Eros and Night, which confused genealogy 
 he burlesques in The Birds^. It is probable also, as Alfred 
 Maury pointed out, that this legend was first taken by the 
 Orphics from the philosophers of Ionia, and especially from that 
 Pherecydes of Syros who is said to have been Pythagoras' 
 master^. Attempts have been made to derive it from Indian, 
 Egyptian, Chaldaean, and even Jewish sources ; but its resem- 
 blances to parallel beliefs among some or all of these nations 
 are too few and sparse for any useful conclusion to be drawn from 
 them. One of its most marked features is its succession of 
 divine rulers of the universe, which the Orphics made use of to 
 exalt their own god Dionysos to the highest rank. The story 
 they told of this Dionysos was that he was originally the Phanes 
 whom Zeus swallowed, but that at his second birth he became 
 the offspring of Zeus by Persephone, the daughter whom Zeus 
 had himself begotten on one of the earth-goddesses who is some- 
 times called Rhea, sometimes Cybele, and sometimes Demeter. 
 Persephone, described by the Orphics as the " especial " or 
 " single " daughter of Zeus^, was seduced by her father in 
 
 it is preserved have been collected by Abel, Orphica, Lips. 1885, pp. 48-140. 
 It is well summarized by Purser in Smith's Diet, of Antiq. where before 
 quoted. Cf. Daremberg and SagUo, s.v. Orpheus. 
 
 1 Aristoph. Aves, U. 691-706. 
 
 ^ Religions de la Orice, t. m. p. 310. 
 
 ' Movvoyeveia. See Orphic Hymn on p. 142, infra. Persephone has 
 also Zeus for her father in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 1. 396. The 
 epithet cannot imply that she was his only daughter, as he had other 
 daughters among the Homeric gods, such as Athena and Aphrodite, but 
 rather that she was " unique," or one of a kind. The mistaking of the word 
 Movo-ycj/i/s for fiovoyevvrjTos by Christian and Jewish writers has led to 
 much confusion ; and Renan (V&glise Chrdtienne, Paris, 1879, p. 200, n. 2) 
 notes that George the Syncellus calls Bar Coziba, the Jewish Messiah, 
 
iv] Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Orphici 125 
 
 the form of a serpent, and in due course brought to light 
 Dionysos, sometimes called Zagreus or " the Hunter." This 
 god, who had the horns of a bull^, became the darling of his 
 father, who destined him for his successor and allowed him, 
 while yet a child, to sit on his throne and to wield the thunder- 
 bolts^- But the Titans, the monstrous sons of Earth, either 
 spurred on by jealousy at the child being given the sovereignty 
 of the world, or incited thereto by Hera, laid a plot for his 
 destruction. Beguiling him with childish toys such as a top, 
 a hoop, and a mirror, they stole upon him unawares with 
 blackened faces, and, in spite of his struggles and his transfor- 
 mation into many shapes, tore him limb from limb, cooked his 
 several members in a cauldron, and ate them. The heart, 
 however, was saved from them by Pallas Athene, who bore it 
 to Zeus, who swallowed it, and it thus passed into the Theban 
 Dionysos, son of Zeus and Semele, who was in turn Zagreus 
 re-born. Zeus also blasted the Titans with his lightning, 
 while he ordered Apollo to collect the uneaten members of 
 the little god and to bury them at Delphi. A variant or perhaps 
 a continuation of the story makes Demeter, having, as the earth 
 goddess, received the members of the little god, put them to- 
 gether and revivify them, and join herself in marriage with the 
 resuscitated corpse, whence the infant lacchos is born*. 
 
 Movoyevris. See the story of the begettal of Persephone which Maury, 
 op. cit. m. pp. 321, 322, quotes from Clement of Alexandria and Arnobius. 
 Both authors derive from it the name of Brimo given to Demeter in the 
 Mysteries. Cf. Chap. VIII, infra. 
 
 ^ Orphic Hymn xxx in Abel's Orphiea, where he is called " First-be- 
 gotten, of a double nature, thrice-born, Bacchic king, Hunter, Ineffable One, 
 Hidden One, two horned, and of double form." Cf. his epithet " buU-faced " 
 in Orphic Hymn xlv. So Clement of Alexandria quotes a verse from some 
 unnamed poet that " the buU has begotten a serpent, the serpent a bull," 
 Protrept. c. n. 
 
 " As in the statue at Megalopolis in Arcadia described by Pausanias, 
 Bk vm. c. 31, where Polycleitos portrayed the young god with a cup and 
 a ihyrsos, besides wearing cothurni, but with the eagle and the name of 
 Zeus ^iXios. AeL Aristides, in Dionysum, says that Dionysos is Zeus 
 himself, a doctrine which Justin Martyr, Cohort, c. xv, attributes to Orpheus. 
 
 ^ The story with fiill references to authorities is given by Maury, Rel. de 
 la Qrkce Antique, t. m. pp. 342 sqq. ; Purser in Smith's Diet, of Oreeh and 
 
126 Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Orphici [CH. 
 
 In this part of the story, also, the desire of the authors to 
 fit it in with the existing mythology is manifest. At Eleusis 
 from very early times there had been worshipped with mys- 
 terious rites a divine couple who were known only as " the God " 
 and " the Goddess^." This pair were, as we may guess from an 
 allusion in Hesiod, otherwise called Zeus Chthonios or the 
 infernal Zeus, god of the underworld, and Demeter^, the ancient 
 earth-goddess, who was worshipped with her lover under the 
 various names of Ma, Cybele, Astarte, Rhea and Isis throughout 
 Asia Minor, Syria, Phoenicia and Egypt. As the lover of the 
 earth-goddess in all these cases sufiered death and resurrection, 
 the Orphics had to work these episodes into the history of 
 their Dionysos Zagreus. But they carried the idea further than 
 any of their predecessors by connecting this death and re-birth 
 with the origin of man and his survival after death^. Man, 
 
 Roman Antiquities, 1890, s.v. Orphica ; Cecil Smith, " Orphic Myths on Attic 
 Vases," J.H.S. 1890, pp. 343-351 ; Dyer, The Gods in Qreece, 1891, p. 128; 
 Paul Monceaux ia Daremberg and Saglio's Diet, des Antiq. s.v. Orphica. 
 The eating of a god or other being in order to obtain possession of the 
 victim's qualities ia a common idea among primitive peoples, as is set forth 
 at length in Frazer, Oolden Bough, 3rd ed. pt v, vol. n. ch. 10. It was 
 familiar to the Egyptians, as is seen in the Pyramid Texts of the vith 
 Dynasty, where the glorified King Unas is represented as chasing, catching, 
 cooking, and eating the gods in the next world in order to assimilate their 
 powers. See Maspero, Les Pyramides de Saqqarah, pp. 67 sqq. So in a 
 magic papjrrus now at Leyden, the magician threatens the god Set whom 
 he is invoking, that if he is not obedient, he will speak to " the Great God " 
 (Serapis ?) who will tear Set " Umb from limb and give his powers to a 
 mangy dog sitting on a dung-hill to eat." See Leemans, Papyri Oraeci, 
 vol. n. pp. 18, 19. 
 
 1 Foucait, Myst. d'M. pp. 27, 28. 
 
 ^ Poucart, where last quoted ; Hesiod, Works and Days, 1. 465 (p. 39, 
 Didot). 
 
 ' Such ideas may, however, have been current in the religions of the 
 Eastern Mediterranean long before Orphic times. Dr Budge in his book 
 Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, i. p. 28, reiterates what he has 
 before stated elsewhere, i.e. that Osiris was to his worshippers "the god-man, 
 the first of those who rose from the dead," and that his death and resurrec- 
 tion were therefore supposed to be in some way beneficial to mankind. 
 This is very likely, but I know of no Egyptian text that in anyway connects 
 the creation of man with the death of Osiris. On the contrary, a text which 
 
iv] Pre-Christian Ghiostics: the Orphici 127 
 
 they said, was made out of the ashes of the Titans, and was 
 therefore born to sorrow, his soul being buried in his body as in 
 a charnel-house^. But he also had within him a spark of the 
 life of Zagreus, the infant ruler of the universe^, and this enables 
 him to purify himself from the guilt of the earthborn Titans, 
 and so to leave the circle of existence and cease from wickedness. 
 For that the soul of man after leaving his body went, imless 
 purified, to inhabit the bodies of other men and even animals, 
 passing from one to the other as in a wheel or endless chain, 
 was a dogma which the Orphics had taken over from the 
 Pythagoreans'. How now was this purification to be obtained 'i 
 The answer that the earlier Orphics gave to this question 
 must have astonished the pleasure-loving and artistic Greeks. 
 The true Orphic, they were told, must make his whole earthly 
 
 Dr Budge has himself published makes men and women to come into being 
 from the tears which came forth from the eye of the god Khepera, here 
 probably to be identified with Nu, the primaeval Ocean or Deep. See 
 Budge, The Oods of the Egyptians, vol. i. p. 299. The Zoroastrian religion, 
 in the late form in which we have it in the Bundahish (see West, S.B.E. 
 Oxford, 1880, Pahlavi Texts, pt i.), does indeed make man spring from the 
 death of Gayomort, the First or Primaeval Man, slain by Ahriman. If we 
 choose to suppose that this conception went back to the times of Zoroaster 
 himself, that is to say, about 700 B.C., Onomacritos might easily have 
 found this part of the story at the Court of Susa. Cf. Bousset, Haupt- 
 probleme der Gnosis, Gottingen, 1907, pp. 215-223. It is significant that, 
 according to Pausanias, Bk vra. c. 37, it was Onomacritos who first made 
 the Titans evil powers, or as he says " contributing to the sufiEerings of 
 Dionysos." 
 
 ^ Clement of Alexandria, Strom. Bk m. c. 3, quotes this expression from 
 " Philolaos the Pythagorean." Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, Bk iv. p. 157 c 
 (Teubner) from " Euxitheus the Pythagoric." It evidently went back to 
 the earliest Orphic teaching reduced to writing. 
 
 2 See Lobeok, Aglaophamus, i. p. 566, for authorities. 
 
 ' kvkXov t' aXXva-ai Kai ava\jfv^ai KaKorrjTOS. The Une is attributed 
 to Orpheus by Simplicius in his Commentary on Aristotle, de Caelo, n. 
 p. 168 (ed. Karsten). According to Proolus, in Plat. Tim. v. 330 a, b, it 
 was part of a prayer which Orphics used when being initiated in the mys- 
 teries of " Demeter and Cora." The Pythagorean doctrine of transmigra- 
 tion and its adoption by the Orphics are well set out by Luebbert in his 
 Commentatio de Pindaro dogmatis de migratione animarum cuUore, Bonn, 
 1887, q.v. 
 
128 Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Orphici [CH. 
 
 life a preparation for the next. He must partake at least once 
 of a mystic sacrifice, in which a living animal was, in memory 
 of the fate of Zagreus, torn in pieces and eaten raw ; but there- 
 after he must never again eat any food that has had life nor 
 even eggs, and he must observe perfect chastity^, and wear 
 only linen garments even at his burial, nor must he go near a 
 sepulchre. 
 
 " We aim at' a holy life, whence I am become a my stes of Idaean 
 [i.e. Cretan] Zeus," says the Orphic in a sunaving fragment of 
 Euripides' Cretenses, " and having completed the hfe of night- 
 wandering Zagreus and the raw flesh-devoiuing feasts, I uplifted 
 the torches of the mountain mother, and having been purified by 
 expiatory offerings, I was hailed as Bacchus by the Curetes.... 
 But now clothed in white garments, I fly the generation of mortals, 
 and to a corpse I draw not nigh, and I shun the eating of things which 
 have had life^." 
 
 The meaning of this is fairly plain and is in everything a 
 great deal more magical than rehgious. By a weU-known rule 
 common to nearly aU people in a low state of culture, the victim 
 sacrificed to a god becomes a god himself^ ; and, as the eating 
 of the victim makes him part of the eater, it has the same efEect 
 on the votary as the swallowing of Phanes by Zeus had upon 
 this last, the Dionysiac soul in the participant of the sacrifice 
 is thereby strengthened, and he becomes so far identified with 
 the god as to bear his name. Henceforth, however, he must 
 have no further dealings with Titanic matter, and in particular 
 must shun the corpse which represents the Titanic part of man 
 without the Dionysiac, and must do nothing which can start 
 
 ^ All these prohibitions persisted, and we meet with them ia nearly all 
 the religions hereafter described including the Manichaean. The filiation 
 may well be direct, as such sects as the Valentinians grew up in an atmo- 
 sphere of Orphic teaching. If, however, it should appear that the Orphic 
 notions on this subject were derived from some Western Asiatic source, it 
 is plain that the Ophites and Manichaeans may have drawn theirs from the 
 same fount and independently. 
 
 " Euripides, Cretenses, p. 733 (Didot). The fragment is found in 
 Porphyry, de Abstineniia, Bk iv. c. 19. Cf. Euripides, Hippolytus, 1. 952. 
 
 ' See Frazer and Maspero as quoted in note 3 p. 125, supra. 
 
iv] Pre-Christian Ghiostics: the Orphici 129 
 
 another being on " the ceaseless round of changing existences^." 
 If he were successful in observing these austerities to the end, 
 he might hope that, when his soul was released from its prison 
 house, it would be reunited to Dionysos, and rest for ever free 
 from the stains of matter. This was in effect the formal teaching 
 of Pythagoras with regard to the transmigration of souls, and 
 depended on the view that the soul, or incorporeal part of man, 
 had once formed part of the soul of the universe diffused through- 
 out Nature. " I have heard," says Cicero, " that Pythagoras 
 and the Pythagoreans. . . never doubted but that we possess 
 minds plucked from the universal divine mind " ; a phrase 
 that he explains in discussing the nature of the gods by saying 
 that Pythagoras '" thought there was a mind spread through 
 and pervading the whole nature of things whence our minds 
 are plucked^." A similar doctrine of transmigration appears 
 clearly in Pindar^, who was one of the first to give voice to the 
 Orphic teaching, which his lays did much to diffuse. The 
 addition that the Orphic poets made to the doctrine was doubt- 
 less the attribution to Dionysos and the Eleusinian goddess 
 of the task of presiding over and arranging these rebirths. 
 
 Yet the austerities prescribed by the Orphic life, however 
 fitted to a philosophic school, could hardly be practised by 
 people engaged in the business of the world. It was impossible, as 
 the Pythagoreans had probably found, for people to devote them- 
 selves entirely to the welfare of their souls, and yet to live among 
 their fellows. Hence some other means by which man could be 
 assured a happy lot after death had to be devised, and there seems 
 
 1 That this was the regular Orphic phrase is plaia from the verse quoted 
 above, note 3 p. 127. Cf. the gold plates of Naples, p. 133, infra. 
 
 2 Ct. Luebbert, op. cit. p. v. The confusion in Cicero between animus 
 and anima, or mind and soul, is curious. Of. Olympiodorus, Gomment. ad 
 Plat. Phaed. as given in Fr. 225 of Abel's Orphica (p. 245). 
 
 3 Orpheus is mentioned in the ivth Pythian ode as the '" father of songs," 
 and in fragments of the Threnoi as " the golden-sworded son of Oiagreus," 
 p. 116 (Bergk). In the vnth Isthmian ode, Dionysos is made the temple- 
 companion or assessor {TrdpeSpos) of Demeter. The delights of the blessed 
 dead are set forth in fragments of the Threnoi (see Fragment x. 1, 2, 3, 4 of 
 Teubner, pp. 95, 96, Cod. Boeckh) ; their reincarnation as heroes in a frag- 
 ment from the same poem : ibid. Frag. x. 4, p. 98, Cod. Bo. 
 
 9 
 
130 Pre-Christian Gtiostics: the Orphici [CH. 
 
 no doubt that the post-Pythagorean Orphics taught that this 
 was to be found in participation in the mysteries or secret 
 rites already in existence in Greece before the commencement 
 of their teaching. Whether the Eleusinian Mysteries were in 
 their inception anything more than the worship of the Chthonian 
 or infernal deities, as the gods presiding over agriculture and 
 vegetation considered as a symbol of generation and death, 
 is still undecided^ ; but there can be no doubt that under 
 Orphic influence they underwent a complete change. Dionysos, 
 identified with Hades or Zeus Chthonios, begins, after the 
 break-up of the Pythagorean school, to take part in them by 
 the side of Demeter and Persephone, and the story of his 
 mysterious birth from the goddess, and his identification as 
 Zagreus with lacchos, the child-god leading the procession, 
 seems from this period onwards to have been told in them^. 
 But the mode in which the Mysteries were regarded by the 
 Greeks in general materially altered after the introduction of 
 the Orphic teaching, and this also can hardly be attributed to 
 anything else than the direct influence of its professors. We 
 are told on all sides that no religious teaching formed part of 
 the Mysteries of Eleusis, and that on the contrary the initiates 
 were simply shown certain scenes and objects, and heard certain 
 mysterious words on which they were left to put their own 
 
 1 The earlier idea espoused by Creuzer and others (see Guigniaut, 
 Religions de l' Antiquity, vol. m. passim, and especially pp. 1207, 1208) that 
 the Chthonian gods were worshipped as the sjrmbols of generation and death 
 seems a good deal nearer the truth than the " Corn-spirit " theory set on 
 foot by the Oolden Bough that they were the gods of agriculture and vegeta- 
 tion. Of course both explanations can be read into what we know of the 
 Mysteries. Why these last should have been kept secret even before the 
 rise of Orphism is hard to see. M. Paul Poucart's view that they came 
 originally from a foreign country (according to him from Egypt) offers one 
 explanation of this ; but see n. 2 p. 139, infra. 
 
 2 So r. Lenormant in Daremberg and SagUo's Diet, des Ant. s.v. 
 Eleusinia. See, too, his article on Dionysos Zagreus in the Gazette Archio- 
 logique, 1879. So Purser in Smith's Diet, of Antiq. as last quoted (cf. 
 article "Eleusinia"). Aeschylus, Sisyphus Drapetes, frag. 242, p. 238, Didot, 
 and Alcmaeonis, in Etymologicum Magnum, s.h.v. both know of Zagreus, 
 and Sophocles, Antigone, IL 1140-1154 identifies Dionysos and lacchos. 
 
iv] Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Orphici 181 
 
 interpretation^. But the Orphics discovered in them a sacra- 
 mental or purifying grace which was thought to have a kind of 
 magical effect on the lot alike in this life and after death of 
 those who took part in them. It was enough to have seen these 
 mysteries, as the poets aver^, for man's place in the next world 
 to be changed for the better, and thus it is the knowledge thus 
 obtained, and not conduct or favour, which is thought to in- 
 fluence his destiny. The doctrine thus baldly stated moved 
 to indignation Diogenes the Cynic, who pointed out that 
 Patecion the brigand, who had been initiated, had earned for 
 himself by this one act happiness after death, while Epa- 
 minondas, best of patriots, by the fact that he had not been 
 initiated, was condemned to be plunged in mud and to undergo 
 other tortures'. 
 
 The very important part in Orphic practice played by this 
 belief in the magical power of initiation has lately been put 
 beyond doubt by the discovery of certain inscriptions in the 
 tombs of worshippers of the Orphic deities at places so far apart 
 as Petelia in Magna Graccia, Calabria, Eleutherna in Crete, Naples, 
 and Kome. On palaeographic grounds their dates are said to 
 range over at least three centuries, the earliest having apparently 
 been made in the rvth or iiird century B.C., and the latest in the 
 1st or iind century of our era. They are all engraved on thin 
 gold plates, are in Greek hexameter verse, and in the opinion 
 of scholars are all taken from the same ritual, and therefore 
 afford evidence of the permanence and fixity as well as of the 
 wide spread of the Orphic teaching*. They contain instructions 
 
 1 Synesiiis (PtoL Episcop.), Dion (Migne, Script. Or. t. 66, pp. 1153-1156), 
 says so plainly. Cf. Galen, de Usu Partium (Kuhn's Medici Oraeci, Claudius 
 Galenus, vol. rv. pp. 702, 703), and Plutarch, de Defect. Orae. p. 422 {Moralia, 
 vol. I. p. 514, Didot). 
 
 2 Sophocles, Triptokmus (Frag. 348, Didot). Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 
 IL 480 sqq. (p. 565, Didot). See also Chap. II, supra. 
 
 3 Plutarch, de audiend. Poet. rv. 76 (Reisk) ; Diogenes Laertius, Vit. 
 Phil. c. VI. 
 
 * They have been many times described, especially by Kaibel and 
 Comparetti (for references see Monceaux in Daremberg and Sagho's Diet, 
 des Antiq. s.v. Orphioa). The translations in the text are by Prof. Gilbert 
 
 9—2 
 
132 Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Orphici [CH. 
 
 to the dead as to the things to be done and avoided by him or 
 her in the next world and also the formulas to be repeated to 
 the powers there met with, which will have the efEect of magically 
 procuring for the deceased an exalted rank among its inhabitants. 
 One of the earliest in date, found at Petelia and now in the 
 British Museum, runs thus : 
 
 " Thou shalt find to the left of the House of Hades a well-spring 
 And by the side thereof standing a white cypress. 
 To the well-spring approach not near ; 
 But thou shalt find another by the Lake of Memory. 
 Cold water flowing forth, and there are guardians before it. 
 Say : I am a child of Earth and of Starry Heaven^ 
 But my race is of Heaven (above). This you know yourselves. 
 And lo ! I am parched with thirst and I perish. Give me quickly 
 The cold water flowing forth from the Lake of Memory^. 
 And of themselves they will give me to drink from the Holy Well- 
 Spring." 
 
 Another set of plates from tombs at Eleutherna, now in the 
 National Museum at Athens, is to this effect : 
 
 ' I am parched with thirst and I perish. — Nay, drink of Me 
 The well-spring flowing for ever on the right where the cypress is 
 Who art thou «... 
 Whence art thou ? I am the son of Earth and of Starry Heaven." 
 
 The magical and gnostical purport of this is plain. As in 
 the Egyptian Booh of the Bead, to which these plates bear a 
 great resemblance, their aim was to give the deceased person 
 in whose tomb the inscription was buried', the knowledge of 
 the infernal or subterranean regions which was to make his 
 entry into them safe and profitable. That his soul or immaterial 
 
 Murray and are taken from his Appendix to Miss Jane Harrison's Prole- 
 gomena to Study of Qreek Religion, 1903, q.v. 
 
 1 The same phrase is used in the Orphic Hymn xm. with regard to 
 Kronos, Abel, Orphica, p. 66. 
 
 " This idea reappears in one of the documents of the Pistis Sophia. 
 See Chap. X, infra. 
 
 3 So Aelius Aristides {in Serapidem, p. 98) speaks of the light of the sun 
 being restored by Serapis " to those whose tombs contain holy books." 
 
iv] Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Orphici 133 
 
 part was a part of Dionysos, the descendant of Uranos and Ge^, 
 and more directly the offspring of Demeter the earth-goddess 
 by Zeus, the god of the sky, had already been shown to the dead 
 on his initiation. But it was necessary that he should prove 
 to the gods of death and generation that he knew this, when they 
 would have no alternative but to admit him to all the privileges 
 attached to his high descent and the rank he had attained in 
 the scale of being by initiation. This is made plainer still by 
 the statements put into the mouth of the dead by the gold 
 plates from Naples, now in the Naples Museum, which read 
 thus : 
 
 " Out of the Pure I come, Pure Queen of those Below, 
 And Eukles and Eubouleus^ and other Gods and Demons ; 
 For I also avow that I am of blessed race. 
 And I have paid the penalty for deeds unrighteous 
 Whether it is that Fate laid me low, or the Gods Immortal, 
 Or [that Zeus has struck me ?] with star-flung thunderbolt 
 I have flown out of the sorrowful weary Wheel ; 
 I have passed with eager feet to the Circle desired ; 
 I have sunk beneath the bosom of Despoena^, Queen of the Under- 
 world 
 I have passed with eager feet to [or from] the Circle desired ; 
 And now I come a suppliant to Holy Persephone 
 That of her grace she receive me to the seats of the Hallowed." 
 
 Then comes Persephone's answer 
 " Happy and Blessed One, Thou shalt be God instead of Mortal," 
 
 ^ As Foucart, Oulte de Dionysos, p. 34, n. 3, has pointed out, this cannot 
 refer to the Titanic part of man, which he was enjoined by the Orphics to 
 mortify as far as possible. There is something to be said for M. Foucart's 
 view that the dead is here shown as another Osiris, son of the earth-god 
 Geb and the sky-goddess Nut. It is curious that this last is always por- 
 trayed on Egyptian monuments with a star-spangled body, while I know 
 of no Greek representation of Uranos which connects him with the stars. 
 
 2 " Of good counsel." A name of Dionysos, as appears from the Orphic 
 Hymns given later in this chapter. 
 
 ^ A name of Demeter, Persephone, and some other Chthonian goddesses. 
 See Aristophanes, Theamophoriazusae, 1. 286. It probably means merely 
 " mistress." 
 
134 Pre-Christian Gnostics: the OrpUci [cH. 
 
 while a prose formula " A kid I have fallen into milk " which 
 seems to have been a password among the Orphics is written 
 in the midst of the verses and appears upon this and several 
 of the other plates^. 
 
 In the Naples plate, we have the teaching, more or less dimly 
 indicated in the quotations from the Orphic poems which occur 
 in classical and patristic writers, brought to a focus. The dead 
 has during his earthly life taken part in the mystic rites which 
 have told him whence life comes and whither it is tending. He 
 now has the right to demand from the deities who preside over 
 the death and rebirth of mortals that he be reheved from the 
 endless round of incarnations ; and he backs up this request 
 by proof of the knowledge he possesses of their nature and his 
 own origin, at the same time uttering passwords which he has 
 received on his initiation. The effect of this, although out of 
 reverence represented as an act of grace on the part of the 
 divinities addressed, is in fact magical or automatic. The 
 powers addressed perforce grant the request of the dead and he 
 becomes like them a god^, freed from the necessity for any 
 further deaths and rebirths. The same idea is traceable 
 throughout the whole of the Egyptian Book of the Dead from 
 which it may have been directly derived*, and also in other 
 
 1 It has been suggested that this is a figure for the initiated dead 
 receiving all that they wish. It should be noted, however, that in the 
 Zoroastrian religion the flood of molten metal which is to burn the wicked 
 is to feel to the faithful like warm milk. So N. Soderblom, La Vie Future 
 d^apris la Matd&sme, Paris, 1901, p. 266, quoting the Dinkard and the 
 Bunddhish. The phrase is discussed by M. Salomon Reinach in Revue 
 ArMol. 1901, n. pp. 202-213, and Cidtes, Mythes et Religions, Paris, 
 1909, t. n. pp. 123-134. M. Alhne, in Xenia, Athens, 1912, connects it 
 with the supposed Orphic idea that blessed souls inhabit the Milky Way. 
 
 ^ Perhaps not directly. There is some reason for thi nkin g that the soul 
 of the true Orphic was supposed to pass through the intermediate stages of 
 hero and demon : see Hild, ^tude sur les Demons, Paris, 1881, p. 144, where 
 the subject is excellently treated. Cf. Pindar, Threnoi, Frag. x. 4, p. 98, 
 Cod. Bo. The deification of the dead was also a Pythagorean doctrine, 
 as appears in the Aurea Carmina, II. 70, 71, ed. Gaisford. 
 
 ' This is the suggestion of Foucart, Myst. d'£l. p. 72. That the 
 Egyptian dead was supposed to become one with Osiris himself is an idea 
 that appears as early as the Pyramid Texts, cf . Maspero, Les Pyramides de 
 
iv] Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Orphiei 135 
 
 religions with which it would seem the Orphic teaching can 
 have had no connection^. But the point to remember at 
 present is that it appears henceforward in all the cults or sects 
 to which we have given the generic name of Gnostic*. 
 
 How this idea was propagated in Greece and her colonies 
 is a question over which still hangs a great deal of obscurity. 
 There exist a great number of quotations from poems attributed 
 to Orpheus, which were clearly the composition of the Orphic 
 school, and all these are, like the gold plates, in hexameter verse. 
 These, as Damascius implies, were recited by professional 
 declaimers called Rhapsodists* at the different games and 
 festivals held in honour of the gods, as were once the so-called 
 Homeric Hymns and the poems of Pindar, which they perhaps 
 succeeded and displaced. In this way they doubtless became 
 familiar to many thousands who would otherwise never have 
 heard of the Orphic teaching, and our conviction on this point 
 is strengthened when we see how very numerous the festivals 
 in which the Chthonian gods were celebrated really were. 
 Besides Eleusis, we hear of the worship of Dionysos, Demeter 
 and Persephone as infernal deities in Achaea, in the Argolid, 
 in Arcadia, in Messenia, in Sparta, and in other parts of the 
 Peloponnesus*. It also spread through Boeotia, where the 
 national cult of Dionysos no doubt ensured it a good reception, 
 and thence early passed into the islands of the Aegean. Crete 
 had, as we have seen, practised it even before it came to 
 Athens ; and Demeter and Persephone were not only worshipped 
 in Sicily, but were taken to be the tutelary gods of the island. 
 The Ionian colonists also took the worship of the Eleusinian 
 triad with them into Asia and they were adored in parts of 
 
 Saqqarah, passim, where the dead kings are each in turn hailed as " this 
 Osiris." 
 
 ^ Buddhism, for instance, which can hardly have reached the West 
 before the death of Onomaoritos. 
 
 2 As in the Pistis Sophia, where Jesus says to his disciples, " Know ye 
 not that ye are all gods. . .", p. 247 (Copt.). 
 
 ^ For Damascius, Quaest. de primis principiis, see Abel's Orphica, Frag. 
 48. Cf. as to Rhapsodists, Maury, Bel. de la Orice, i. pp. 240, 345, 346. 
 
 * See Maury, op. cit. u. pp. 370 sqq. 
 
136 Pre-GliHstian Ghiostics: the OrpMci [ch. 
 
 Asia Minor as far distant from Greece as Cyzicus^- At all, or 
 nearly all, these places, mysteries were celebrated having more 
 or less likeness to those of Eleusis, and were followed by games 
 and festivals like the Eleusinia, at which the songs of the 
 Rhapsodists would be heard^- The frequent Dionysia, or 
 festivals of Dionysos, scattered all over the Greek-speaking 
 world, but especially in its Northern or Balkan provinces, no 
 doubt ofiered an even better opportunity for making known 
 these poems. 
 
 The Orphic poets, also, by no means confined their songs to 
 the worship of the deities adored at Eleusis. The Thracians, 
 including in that name the inhabitants of Macedonia and 
 Thessaly, always had extraordinary ideas about the future life, 
 and Herodotus describes how they used to gather weeping round 
 the new-born child, bewailing his entry into this miserable 
 world, while they rejoiced over the death of any of their fellows, 
 declaring that he had thus obtained a happy deliverance from his 
 troubles^. These, however, were the very doctrines of the 
 Orphics, who declared that the body was the grave of the soul, 
 and that the life of the world to come was the only one worth 
 living. Hence the mythical Orpheus was said to have been a 
 Thracian, and the worship of Bacchus or the Theban Dionysos 
 as the god of wine to have come into Attica from Thrace by way 
 of Boeotia, a theory which derives some colour from the orgiastic 
 dances and ravings of the Maenads and Bacchanals, who seem 
 therein to have reproduced the rites of the savage Thracians*. 
 When the Phrygian divinities — Cybele the Mother of the Gods, 
 and her consort Attis — were brought into Greece, the Orphics 
 seized hold of their legends also, and so transformed them that 
 it is now impossible for us to tell how much of them is Asiatic, 
 
 "• Maury, op. cit. n. p. 374. 
 
 ^ Such as the Mysteries of Samothraoe, held in honour, according to one 
 aooount, of Pluto, Demeter, and Persephone, together with Hermes. See 
 Maury, op. cit. n. pp. 306 sqq. for authorities. It was at these m3rsteries 
 that Philip of Maoedon was said to have first seen and loved Olympias 
 (Plutarch, Alexander, c. 2). 
 
 ' Herodotus, Bk v. c. 4. 
 
 * See Maury, Bel. de la Orice, n. p. 203, for authorities. 
 
iv] Pre-ChHstian Ghiostics: the Orphici 137 
 
 and how much is the result of Orphic interpolation^. The same 
 thing may be said of the worship of the Syrian Adonis, whose 
 mystic death turned him into the spouse of Persephone, and 
 enabled the Orphics to identify him with Eubuleus or the infernal 
 Zeus or Dionysos, and of that of the Thracian moon-goddess 
 Bendis, early worshipped in Athens, whom an Orphic verse 
 preserved by Proclus declares to be Persephone herself^. 
 
 The foreign god, however, in whose worship the Orphic 
 doctrine is most plainly visible was Sabazius, who also seems 
 originally to have come from Phrygia. He is described in an 
 early Greek inscription as " Lord of all' " and said later to be 
 the son of Cybele. The Greeks, however, quickly identified 
 him with Dionysos Zagreus*, and an orgiastic worship of him 
 penetrated into Athens some time before Alexander's conquests. 
 This seems to have been well known to Aristophanes, who 
 declaims in the Lysistrata against the " wantonness " of the 
 Athenian women, who gave themselves up to the pursuit of 
 this god and the Syrian Adonis^. But the associations formed 
 for the worship of these divinities seem to have been recruited 
 almost entirely from among the courtezans of the Piraeus and the 
 trades dependent on them, and more than one of its priestesses 
 were put to death for " impiety " or interference with the religion 
 of the State. The low estimation in which it was generally 
 held may be judged from the invective of Demosthenes against 
 
 1 As in the Orphic Hymn to Mise given on p. 143, infra, where the 
 Eleusinian Dionysos, called also Eubuleus and lacchos, is identified with 
 Cybele, the Cyprian Aphrodite, and the Egyptian Isis. See, too, the Hymn 
 " of the Great Mysteries " given in the Philosophumena of Hippolytus, 
 where Dionysos is equated with Adonis, Osiris, the god of Samothrace, 
 Attis, and others. See n. 1 p. 139, and Chap. VIII, infra. 
 
 2 See last note ; Proclus, in Plat. Polit. p. 353 (Abel's Orphica, Frag. 
 184). 
 
 3 iravKolpavos. C.I.O. t. n. No. 3791 (Bo.). Cf. the Aeschylean descrip- 
 tion of Zagreus as the "Highest of All" {■n-avvTrepTare navTav) quoted by 
 Gaisford in his notes to Etymologieum Magnum (see Cycli Fragmenta of 
 Didot, s.v. Epigoni vel Alcmaeonis). 
 
 * Cf. the 2a/3dfie. . .of Ba/cx"" ^i-ovv<tov of Hymn XLvm. Abel's Orphica. 
 
 ^ Lysistrata, U. 386-390. Cf. Foucart, Les Ass. Bel. pp. 61-64, who 
 quotes nearly all the available authorities in his notes. See also Monceaux 
 in Daremberg and Saglio's Diet, des Antiq. s.v. Sabazios. 
 
138 Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Orphici [CH. 
 
 his rival Aeschines, whose mother Glaucothea was a priestess 
 of Sabazius, and who had himself in his youth assisted her in 
 her duties^ : 
 
 " When you became a man, you knew by heart the books of your 
 mother and helped her to make up others ; and you nightly gave 
 the initiated the nebride (fawn-skin) and baptized them and purified 
 them, wiping ofi the clay and bran, and raising them after the 
 purifications, teaching them to say ' I have shunned evil. I have 
 found good.' ... By day you led fine thiasi (confraternities) 
 through the streets crowned with leaves of fennel and poplar, 
 you heading the procession and squeezing the broad-jawed serpents, 
 waving them above your head while you shouted Evoe Saboi and 
 danced Hyes Attis, Attis Eyes ; and the old women hailed you 
 as leader of the dance, and chief, and chest-bearer, and sieve-bearer, 
 and with such like titles ; while you received from them as your 
 pay sops and twisted loaves and cakes. Who would not think him- 
 self lucky with such a Ufe ! " 
 
 The whole of this tirade may be explained by reference to 
 the Orphic teaching about Dionysos Zagreus. The fawn-skin 
 or nebride was worn, as appears on thousands of vases, in the 
 Dionysiac rites as in those relating to the burial of Osiris. The 
 clay and bran are thought to refer to the disguise which the 
 Titans assumed when stealing upon the infant god, and the 
 speech about shunning evil apparently denotes the putting away 
 of the Titanic nature and the resolution in future to cultivate 
 the Dionysiac soul. The serpents are explained by a custom 
 peculiar to the Sabazian rites of putting a live serpent into the 
 bosom of the initiate's garment and taking it out at the foot 
 in memory of the shape in which Zeus begot Dionysos on his 
 daughter Persephone. The mystic cry of " Evoe " is a well 
 known feature of the orgiastic worship of Dionysos ; while 
 " Saboi " seems to cover some name or epithet of Sabazius^, 
 and the phrase " Hyes Attis " shows the connection with Attis, 
 
 1 Demosthenes, de Corona, pp. 259 sqq. Cf. Poucart, Les Ass. Rel. p. 67, 
 n. 1. 
 
 ^ In the Orphic Hymn to Hippa (Hymn xlix. Abel's Orphica, p. 84), 
 the mysteries of the " pure Sabos ? " {dyvoii ^dfiov) are alluded to in terms 
 which make it possible that the name was one of the epithets of the lacohos 
 of Eleusis. 
 
iv] Pre-Christian Qnostics: the Orphid 139 
 
 whose identity with Dionysos forms the subject of more than 
 one Orphic Hymn^. In all this also it may be noticed that there 
 is no pretence of considering conduct as influencing the destiny 
 of the initiate or even of conciliating the divinity invoked. The 
 whole of the rites described are entirely magical, and owe all 
 their efficacy to the knowledge of the right means to be used 
 to compel the spiritual world to perform the votaries' will. 
 It is obvious that people with such ideas will be in no great hurry 
 to extend the advantage of their discoveries to others less lucky 
 than themselves and will on the contrary do much to keep them 
 a secret confined to a few*. 
 
 Did the Orphics, however, at any time form themselves into 
 a church or brotherhood pledged to mutual support and the 
 propagation of the faith ? Some writers of authority have 
 thought so^ ; but there seems to be no evidence available to 
 
 1 In a hymn preserved for us by Hippolytus (Philosophumena, Bk v. 
 0. 1, p. 176, Ouice) the " multiform Attis," who has just been declared " in 
 a hymn of the Great Mysteries " to be the god who is called Adonis, Osiris, 
 Adam (by the Samothracians), Corybas and Pappas, is thus addressed : 
 " I will sing Attis, son of Rhea, not with the sound of trumpets, nor with 
 the Idaean flutes in harmony with the songs of the Cuietes. But I will 
 mingle with my lay Phoebus' music of lutes. Evoe Evan, since thou art 
 Pan, since thou art Bacchus, since thou art the shepherd of white stars." 
 In the address to Musaeus with which the collection of Orphic Hymns 
 begins, the Mother of the Gods, Attis, Men, Aphrodite Urania, and Adonis 
 are invoked together. See Abel's Orphica, p. 58. In Roman times Attis 
 and Sabazius seem to be identified, while Adonis is often confounded with 
 them. See Maury, Rd. de la Orece, m. p. 102 and n. 4. 
 
 ^ This is, perhaps, the only satisfactory reason that can be assigned for 
 the secrecy with which the Mysteries of Eleusis, of the Great Mother, and 
 the rest were surrounded. The notion put forward by the Fathers that 
 the mystic rites were kept secret because of their obscenity has little weight 
 when we consider the PhaUophoria and the Terms, or street statues of 
 Hermes, which were pubUoIy exhibited. The existence of secret rites 
 among primitive folk like the black races of Africa and the native Austra- 
 lians can be explained in the same way. 
 
 * Purser, ubi cit. supra, speaks of it as " an ascetic rehgious brotherhood," 
 as did K. 0. MuUer, Introduction to a Scientific System of Mythology (Eng. 
 ed.), p. 318, andLitt. of Ant. Greece, i. p. 307. DoUinger, Jud. und Heid. I. 
 p. 161, says truly that there is no evidence that at any time there existed 
 a regularly formed association of Orphici in Greece. So Monceaux in 
 Daremberg and SagUo, s.v. Orpheus. 
 
140 Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Orphici [CH. 
 
 warrant the supposition. Although the worshippers of Cybele, 
 Attis, Adonis, Dionysos, the Eleusinian deities, and Sabazius, 
 were by no means averse from announcing the nature of their 
 faith on their tombstones, we nowhere find any funeral inscrip- 
 tions declaring the dead to have belonged to any body of 
 worshippers calling themselves Orphici. A more likely theory 
 is that the Orphics were banded together in the small indepen- 
 dent associations known as Thiasi, Erani, or Orgeones^, like 
 those which we have seen founded at Athens and elsewhere for 
 the worship of foreign gods. It would seem probable enough ; 
 but as yet all documentary evidence is entirely lacking. Records, 
 generally in the shape of stelas or tablets containing the lists 
 of members and the regulations of the associations, have been 
 found in some numbers for the thiasi of nearly all the gods 
 honoured by the Orphic poets who were not the gods of the 
 Greek States ; but among them no association calling itself 
 Orphic has yet been discovered. What we do know is, that in 
 the days of Plato, there was a class of strolling charlatans 
 called Orpheotelestae who were accustomed to haunt the doors 
 of the rich with a heap of books said to have been written by 
 Orpheus, out of which they ofEered, in exchange for money, 
 to perform ceremonies of purification and initiation which they 
 affirmed would purge from the recipient all trace of personal 
 or inherited guilt and assure him a happy lot in the next world^. 
 They also told fortunes, ofEered to dispose of enemies, and 
 sometimes gathered together in some numbers so as to make a 
 more vivid and imposing representation of the pains of the 
 uninitiated in Hades, and thus induce the superstitious to pay 
 the price of their charms*. They had a certain amount of 
 success, and Theophrastus in his Characters exhibits his Deisi- 
 daemon or Superstitious Man as going to them with his wife 
 and family to be purified once a month*. Such vagabonds 
 could hardly have made a living had there been any organized 
 
 ' This was the opinion of Guigniaut, Religions de I'AntiquM, Paris, 1825, 
 t. III. p. 1203. 
 
 2 Plato, Republic, Bk u. c. 7, is the classical passage. Cf. Bollinger, 
 op. cit. I. pp. 165-167, and references there given. 
 
 ' See DolUnger as in last note. * Theophrastus, Characteres, c. xvi. 
 
iv] Pre-Christian Ghwstics: the Orphici 141 
 
 body ready to render like services in a regular way, and the fact 
 of their existence and the contempt with which they are spoken 
 of by the writers of the period go some way to show that no 
 more regular Orphic brotherhood or sect was ever known in 
 Greece. 
 
 There have nevertheless come down to us upwards of eighty 
 hymns attributed to Orpheus which all bear a certain likeness 
 to each other and were evidently intended by the compiler for 
 use in some religious or magical ceremony^- They are, like all 
 the fragments of Orphic poems that we have, in hexameter 
 verse, and most of them conclude with an invocation to the 
 divinity to whom they are addressed to be present or to aid in 
 the accomplishment of some " work," while this invocation 
 often alludes to " mysteries " and " initiates." More than one 
 text of these hymns exist, and the difEerences between them are 
 so small that it is plain that their contents must for a long time 
 have been known and settled. Much variety of opinion exists 
 among the learned as to their date, the theory of their first 
 modern commentator being that they were the actual hymns 
 used in the Eleusinian Mysteries^, while Petersen thought that 
 they were composed in the ist or iind century of our era, 
 although he admitted that some eight or nine of them were 
 probably older*. One of the latest and best opinions seems to be 
 that of Prof. Albrecht Dieterich, who thinks that the collection 
 dates from the period between 200 B.C. and the birth of Christ, 
 and that it was probably made on the sea-coast of Asia Minor and 
 that of Egypt near Alexandria*. That the hymns were brought 
 
 1 There are 88 in the text published by Abel {Orphica, pp. 55-102). 
 This iacludes the Hymn to Ares generally classed among the Homeric 
 Hymns. 
 
 2 The celebrated Thomas Taylor the Platonist. Pausanias, Bk ix. 
 CO. 27 and 30, says that the Hymns of Orpheus were short and few, and that 
 the Lycomidae knew and sung them in the Mysteries. 
 
 * Abel, Orphica, p. 55, n. 1. 
 
 * Dieterich, de Hymnis Orphicis, Marp. Catt. 1891. Otto Kern in the 
 Festschrift presented to Prof. C. R. B. Weidmann, 1910, points out that 
 there is no trace of the worship of the Emperor in the H3mins, and that 
 these must therefore aU be anterior to the Christian era ; also that the 
 Egyptian deities are so seldom named in them, that the coUeotion cannot 
 have been made in Egypt. He thinks it comes from Asia Minor. 
 
142 Pre-Christian Ghtostics: the Orphici [CH. 
 
 together for some religious or magical use associated with the 
 Orphic teaching, is evident from the Preface, which purports 
 to be an address to Musaeus, the legendary son of Orpheus, 
 although it is really an invocation to all the gods worshipped 
 by the Orphics, including several who are not specially addressed 
 in the hymns which follow. Of the 87 or 88 hymns common to 
 most of the codices, all but nine bear after their titles a specifica- 
 tion of the particular perfume — frankincense, myrrh, spices 
 and the like — to be burnt while they are sung or recited. Most 
 of the texts bear also an endorsement in another hand reading 
 " Comrade ! use [it] with good fortune ! " and this has induced 
 Prof. Dieterich and others to conclude that the collection was 
 made for the liturgic use of some confraternity or thiasus 
 professing Orphic doctrines^. The following Hymn to Perse- 
 phone will perhaps give a fair notion of the lines upon which 
 these hymns are framed : 
 
 Hymn to Persephone^. 
 " Persephone, daughter of great Zeus, come, thou beloved one, 
 On]y-begotterL* goddess, accept the offerings well pleasing to thee. 
 Much-honoured consort of Pluto, dear giver of life, 
 Praxidice, decked with love-locks, chaste ofispring of Deo. 
 Giver of birth to the Eumenides, queen of those below the earth, 
 Virgin whom Zeus begot in unspeakable nuptials* 
 Mother of the loud-shouting, many-formed Eubuleus^. 
 
 1 The collection may have been used as an oracle or divining-book like 
 any other poems written in hexameters. See a curious instance of this in 
 Kenyon, Qreek Papyri in British Museum, pp. 83 sqq. 
 
 ^ This is numbered xxix. in Abel's text. This, and the hymns of 
 Hecate, Pluto, the Curetes, Dionysos Bassareus, the Ever-Uving Deliverer 
 (Bacchus), Aphrodite, Nemesis, Nomos, and the doubtful one to Ares are 
 the only hymns out of the original collection which have not the note 
 appended as to the perfume to be burnt. 
 
 * Mouvo-yeVfia, " Unique," see n. 3 p. 124, supra. 
 
 * So Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. c. n. speaks of " the mysteries of 
 Demeter, and Zeus' wanton embraces of his mother and the wrath of 
 Demeter. . .also the entreaties of Zeiis, and the drink of gall, the pluoking- 
 out of the hearts of sacrifices and deeds we dare not name." Arnobius, adv. 
 Gentes, Bk v. cc. 20, 21, teUs substantially the same story. 
 
 ' See n. 2 p. 133, supra. In these hymns it is used alwajrs as an epithet 
 either of Bacchus or Hades with whom the mystic Bacchus was identified. 
 
iv] Pre-Christian Gnostics: the OrpMei 143 
 
 Playfellow of the Hours, light-bringer of glorious form, 
 Dread ruler of all, virgin teeming with fruit 
 Brilliant-rayed, horned-one, the sole desire of mortals. 
 Vernal one, who rejoicest in the breath of the meadows 
 Who dost bring to light the sacred shape of green fruit buds. 
 Who in autumn time wast wedded in a ravished bed : 
 Who art alone the life and death of much-enduring mortals. 
 Persephone ! For thou dost ever nourish and slay all things. 
 Hear, blessed goddess, and send up fruits from the earth 
 Granting us in abundance peace and gentle-handed health 
 And a life of happiness, such as leads old age untroubled 
 To thy realm, queen, and to dread Pluto." 
 
 By the side of this we may perhaps put the Hymn to Dionysos 
 in the same collection. It is probably later than the other in 
 date, the syncretism which equates Persephone with Aphrodite, 
 Cybele, and Isis pointing to a post-Alexandrian origin. 
 
 [Hymn] of Mise — Perfume : Stoeax'-. 
 " I invoke the law-giving, rod-bearing, Dionysos 
 The never-to-be-forgotten seed, Eubuleus of many names 
 Who art^ sacred and sacrosanct Mise, inefiable queen ! 
 Male and female, of double nature, the redeemer [or curse-loosing]* 
 
 lacchos 
 Whether thou art delighting in the sweet-smelling temple of Eleusis 
 Or art solemnizing mysteries with the Mother in Phrygia, 
 Or art rejoicing in Cyprus with the fair-crowned Cytherea, 
 Or dost exult in the pure wheat-bearing plains 
 With thy mother divine, black-robed, august Isis 
 And thy busy nurses* near the Egyptian stream, 
 Be gracious and come thou benevolent to accompHsh our tasks." 
 
 ^ No. xui. in Abel's Orphica. Persephone was called Mise Kore at 
 Pergamum (C. Radet, Reime des Mitudes anciennes, January-March, 1911, 
 p. 77), which shows how closely she had become identified with her consort. 
 Otherwise the word is only known, I behave, as a name of Dionysos. 
 ^ re. . .r€. ^ Avtreios, 
 
 * Doubtless the bees, who throughout Asia Minor were said to be 
 the attendants of the Great Goddess. The priestesses of the Ephesian 
 Artemis were called MeXura-ai or Bees, and there were Me'Xio-o-at at Eleusis. 
 See Foucart, Ords. Myst. pp. 66, 67. Cf. Aristophanes, Frogs, L 1274. So 
 were those of Cybele : cf. Lactantius, Div. Inst. Bk i.e. 22. Cf. also, A. B. 
 Cook, " The Bee m Greek Mythology " in J.H.8. xv. (1895), pp. 17 sqq. 
 
144 Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Orphici [CH. 
 
 Whatever date be assigned to these hymns, it is at least 
 admitted by all commentators that they were composed for the 
 use of persons professing Orphic doctrines, and we shall be on 
 safe grounds if we assume that they represent the later state 
 of the Orphic teaching. Collating them with the fragments 
 of Orphic verses preserved in the quotations of writers during 
 the late Pagan and early Christian centuries, we are able to 
 reconstitute the whole Orphic creed, as it was known shortly 
 before the triumph of Christianity. We see from this that the 
 Orphics attributed the actual beginning of the imiverse to their 
 god Dionysos, who first appeared from the egg formed from 
 Night or Chaos. In that manifestation, he was bisexual^, and 
 thus mother, as well as father, of all the gods and goddesses of 
 the popular pantheon, the swallowing of his heart by Zeus 
 making him one with the Homeric " father of gods and men." 
 His second birth was due to the ineffable, or mystic, union of 
 Zeus and Demeter, and he was in infancy torn in pieces and 
 eaten by the Titans as narrated above. From the ashes of 
 these last, men were born, while Dionysos himself became 
 Hades, the King of the Dead, over whom he rules with his 
 consort Persephone, the daughter, as Dionysos is the son, of 
 Zeus and Demeter, and perhaps known to the initiate as 
 only the female form of her consort^ This pair preside over 
 the life and death of mortals, the soul or Dionysiac spark 
 within each man or woman having to pass repeatedly through 
 the bodies of other human beings and animals until finally 
 purified, when it will be united with Dionysos and thus become 
 god^. But the process can be made easier and shorter by the 
 saving grace of the Mysteries, which by the knowledge they 
 confer on the initiate of the constitution and ramification of 
 
 ^ &i<l)vri. See Orphic Hymn vr. in Abel's Orphica. 
 
 2 As in the Orphic Hymn to Mise quoted above. Of. Dyer, op. cit. 
 pp. 178, 179. 
 
 ^ That this may have been thought to be the result of the mystic union 
 of the initiate with Dionysos seems possible from the statement of Plutarch, 
 that this last was born as a man, but by his merit was translated from this 
 earthly and suflfermg body, Life of Pelopidas, o. xvi. Cf. Budge, Psevdo- 
 Callisthenes' Life of Alexander the Great, p. 135. 
 
iv] Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Orphici 145 
 
 the divine nature, of the geography, so to speak, of the next 
 world, and of the magical words and formulas to be there re- 
 peated, give him a vast advantage over his less favoured fellows^- 
 The third incarnation of Dionysos, god of wine, begotten by 
 the father of gods and men on Semele, daughter of Cadmus, 
 after the heart of the infant Zagreus had been sewn in his thigh, 
 must be looked upon as a concession to the popular belief in 
 a difierent mythology. To those initiated, whether in the 
 Eleusinian or in other mysteries, the last incarnation of Dionysos 
 was that brought about by the union of Zeus in serpent shape^ 
 with Persephone, and he must have been the child whose mystic 
 birth was acted in the Mysteries of Eleusis where he was iden- 
 tified with lacchos, the leader of the procession. 
 
 The effect of this creed, the real symbol of the greatest 
 movement which ever took place within the religion of the pre- 
 Christian Greeks, upon the religions that followed its appearance, 
 remains to be considered. In the first place, Orphism went 
 a great way towards weaning the minds of men from the idea 
 of separate gods for different nations, and towards teaching them 
 that all their national and local deities were but different forms 
 of one great Power, who was himself the source of all being. 
 There can be little doubt that the Orphics thus regarded their 
 god Dionysos, whom they made one with his father Zeus, 
 and hailed as being in himself female as well as male, and the 
 common type of all goddesses as well as of all gods. By their 
 readiness to identify him alike with the chthonian god of Eleusis, 
 and with all the foreign gods — ^Adonis, Attis, Sabazius, and 
 Osiris — with whom they were brought in contact, they showed 
 how far they were willing to go in the path of syncretism ; and, 
 but for the rise of Christianity and other religions, there can be 
 little doubt but that the whole of the Graeco-Eoman deities 
 
 1 A sort of echo of this is perhaps to be fouud in the idea prevalent in 
 the primitive Church that martyrs for the faith passed direct to a state of 
 blessedness without waiting hke the rest of the faithful for the Last Judg- 
 ment. Cf. Revelation vi. 9-11 ; Neander, Oh. Hist. I. p. 463. 
 
 ^ Zeus Chthonios or the Zeus below the earth. The serpent was always 
 to the Orphic poets a symbol or pictorial representation of earth. 
 
 L. 10 
 
146 Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Orphici [CH. 
 
 would eventually have merged in Dionysos^. Yet although 
 in this, as well as in their sanguine idea of the perfectibility of 
 man's nature, the Orphics may seem to have done somewhat 
 towards elevating and purifying religion, it seems plain that 
 their influence was on the whole hostile to it, and had they ever 
 aimed at and attained supreme power, would have ended in 
 the negation of all religion whatever. Whether the Orphics 
 originally demandled from their followers any moral as well as 
 material purification cannot now be said ; but the proceedings 
 of the Orpheotelestae show us how very early in their teaching 
 all such ideas were dropped, and the magical theory of the 
 efficacy of the Mysteries as a means of salvation came to out- 
 weigh everything else in the eyes of their votaries. The com- 
 pulsion of the gods, however, is an idea that, once rooted in the 
 mind of man, is sure to bring forth most unwholesome fruit ; 
 and Orphism seems to have brought with it from the beginning 
 all the worst practices of magic. The Orpheotelestae did not 
 scruple, as has been said, to undertake to rid their initiates of 
 an inconvenient adversary* ; and although this may not at the 
 outset have implied anything worse than idle curses, it was at 
 any rate murder in intention, and in Greece, as everywhere 
 else, early led to the calling-in of the aid of poison. Magical 
 rites, too, generally bring with them a more or less pronounced 
 worship of devils or evil beings as such, and there are many 
 signs that the Orphics by no means confined their invocations 
 to powers supposed to be friendly, to man. Among the Orphic 
 Hymns may be found an invocation to the Titans, who were 
 the legendary enemies of Zeus Dionysos and all the celestial 
 gods, and it is probable that this instance is not a solitary one*. 
 The worship of gods given up to evil generally results in the 
 depravation of the morals of their votaries, and the purposes 
 for which they are invoked are seldom sublime. Most of this 
 
 ^ This seems to be the upshot of the remarks in Pseudo-Callisthenes 
 (Budge, op. cit. supra), pp. 8, 12, 40-48, 127, 135. The same idea is 
 specially marked in the writings of Proclus and other Neo-Platoniats and 
 by them attributed to Orpheus. Of. Abel's Orphica, s.v. Teletai, passim. 
 
 2 Plato, Bepvhl. Bk ii. c. 7. 
 
 ' No. xxxvn. in Abel's Orphica, p. 78. 
 
iv] Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Orphici 147 
 
 evil sorcery seems to have centred rotmd the cult of Hecate, 
 herself a mystery goddess revered at Eleusis and especially dear 
 to the Orphics^. Down to the very end of paganism, and 
 indeed, onward through the Middle Ages and the Kenaissance, 
 Hecate remained the mistress of magicians and the patron saint 
 of sorcerers^. 
 
 One other consequence of the Orphic teaching deserves to be 
 noted. The syncretistic tendency, which led the true Orphic 
 to regard Zeus, Apollo, Hades, and all the gods and goddesses 
 of the popular pantheon as so many varying forms of his own 
 Dionysos, must have always rendered him indifferent as to 
 what deity received his public devotions. Secure in the sacra- 
 mental grace bestowed upon him by the mere participation in 
 the Mysteries, and fortified by the knowledge of the formulas 
 which were by themselves sufficient to ensure him a happy lot 
 in the next world, it is plain that he must always have held 
 himself at liberty to adore any god or goddess worshipped by 
 those among whom he found himself, and that he must have 
 been ready to conform outwardly to any religion which seemed 
 to ofEer him any personal advantage. Knowledge, not faith, 
 was to him the one thing needful to the soul, and he would be 
 as httle Ukely to think of enduring persecution for opinion's 
 sake as to approve of inflicting it. The secret rites and the 
 secret formulas comprised the whole of his reUgion. 
 
 To sum up, then, the practical result of their speculations, 
 the Orphics taught that the universe had passed through several 
 stages of evolution since it was formed from chaos by its First 
 God or Divine Workman. Each of these stages was described 
 as the reign of a fresh ruler or supreme divinity, who was the 
 " son " of the foregoing or, as it would seem, a new incarnation 
 of him. Man came into being through the mystic death and 
 dispersion throughout the universe of one of the last of these 
 incarnations, and therefore contains within himself a spark 
 
 1 See Maury, La Magie et L'Astrologie dans VAntiquiti et en Moyen Age, 
 Paris, 1860, pp. 54, 55, for authorities. The Orphic Hymns above quoted 
 begin with an invocation to Hecate. 
 
 '^ As in Shakespeare's Ma,d)eth. 
 
 10—2 
 
148 Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Orphici [ch. iv 
 
 of the Divine nature which is capable of purification from the 
 contamination of soulless matter. This is effected in the 
 ordinary way by a succession of deaths and rebirths in the 
 course of which man's soul would pass into that of other animals 
 and human beings. But the process was thought to be 
 shortened by participation in certain mysteries or secret rites 
 handed down by tradition, wherein the hidden constitution and 
 purpose of Nature were disclosed to the initiate, and he was 
 equipped with mysterious names and formulas thought to 
 possess magical power. These, by their mere utterance, gave 
 him the right to demand his release from the painful circle of 
 rebirths which was the common lot of mankind, and in effect 
 turned him into a being superior to man. The possession of 
 this wonder-working knowledge or gnosis was not however 
 granted indiscriminately to all, but remained a secret confined 
 to a favoured few, who were pledged under sufficiently severe 
 sanctions not to disclose it. That all religions professed by 
 mankind were equal and indifferent in the eyes of the Orphic 
 seems to follow logically from this, as does the position that he 
 might himself profess any of them that seemed to him expedient. 
 We shall find all these features present in the many sects of 
 post-Christian Gnostics. 
 
CHAPTEE V 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS : THE ESSENES 
 
 It comes as rather a wrench to leave the graceful, if vain, 
 speculations of the Greeks, with their joyous and free life and 
 their passionate worship of beauty, which saw in every shifting 
 aspect of nature the revelation of some Being more perfect and 
 glorious than man, for the gloomy and misanthropic monotheism 
 of the Palestinian Jews. Nor is the change made more pleasant 
 when we consider the contrast between the ideas of the two 
 nations as to the perfectibility of man's nature and his lot 
 after death. While the Greeks under Orphic influence had 
 come to look upon their gods as usually well-disposed to man- 
 kind^ and even willing to share their power and place with, at 
 any rate, a few highly-gifted or fortunate men, the fanatics 
 among the Jews who returned from the Babylonian Captivity 
 seem to have seen in their national Deity a jealous and uncom- 
 promising tyrant, possessed with a hatred for humanity in 
 general, and only extending a modified favouritism to one small 
 nation not distinguished by any specially attractive quahties^ 
 
 ^ So Eiiripides makes Iphigenia (7. in Taur. \. 400) say, " I think not 
 that any one of the gods is bad." Cf. J. A. Hild, St. sur les Dimons, pp. 53, 
 136. In sharp contrast to the Jewish idea exemplified in Deuteronomy of 
 a god whose " name is Jealous " is Plato's description of the Creator in 
 the TimcEtLS (40 c), " He is not jealous, for he is good, and in him that is 
 good no jealousy exists." 
 
 ^ It should be noted that what is said here of the Jews applies not to 
 the Hebrew race in general, but only to those members of it who settled 
 in Palestine after the return from the Captivity. Winwood Reade puts the 
 matter with no less truth than point when he says (Martyrdom of Man, 
 p. 203) : " The people who did return were chiefly the fanatics, the clergy, 
 and the paupers. The harvest. . .was worthy of the seed." 
 
150 Pre-Ghristian Gnostics: the Essenes [ch. 
 
 To this nation, Yahweh had, according to their own traditions, 
 promised exclusive temporal advantages ; but in spite of this 
 promise they had become in turn the slaves or tributaries of 
 the Egyptians, the Philistines, the Assyrians, Chaldaeans, and 
 Persians, and had been more than once forcibly removed by 
 their masters from the land that they looked upon as their 
 God-given inheritance. Moreover, the grace, such as it was, of 
 the Deity they worshipped was held by them to extend to this 
 life only, after which they thought they would either perish 
 like the beasts or would lead at the best a shadowy and colour- 
 less existence in Sheol or Hades, like that which called forth 
 the complaints of the Achilles of the Odyssey^. Hence the 
 soil of Judaea at the coming of Alexander might have seemed 
 to anyone to be as unlikely a field for the propagation of ideas 
 resembling those of the Orphics as could well be imagined. But 
 the Jews, with all their pragmatism and narrowness of ideal, 
 have always shown a power of assimilating the ideas of others 
 and of adapting themselves to the usages of the peoples among 
 whom they are cast by a sort of protective mimicry like that 
 to which the preservation of certain insect types is said to be 
 due. This quality had already stood them in good stead during 
 their different periods of captivity in Egypt and Chaldaea, 
 where before Alexander's conquests they had contrived to get 
 a good deal of the financial management of their captors' afiairs 
 into their own hands, and where they doubtless acted as spies 
 and guides to the armies of the Great Conqueror^. For these 
 services Alexander after his fashion royally rewarded them ; 
 but the real crisis of the nation's fate approached when Alex- 
 ander's work was done, and when the different nationalities 
 which he had forced, as it were, into the melting-pot, became 
 tired of acting as pieces in the war game played by his generals 
 and successors, and began to look favourably upon the security 
 offered by the Koman government. In this new order of the 
 world, Palestine, which had hitherto owed its autonomous 
 
 1 B. H. Charles, A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life 
 (Jowett Lectures), 1899, pp. 33-50, and authorities there quoted. 
 
 2 J. P. MahafEy, Empire of the Ptolemies, pp. 85, 86. 
 
v] Pre-Christian Gnostics : the Essenes 151 
 
 existence to the fact that it formed a useful buffer state or 
 neutral ground separating the two great powers Egypt and 
 Syria and was not vehemently desired by any other nation, 
 saw the reason for her ^wast-independence vanishing. Ptolemy 
 Soter, with his usual prescience, had early seen the advantage 
 of getting this borderland into his own custody, and had 
 captured Jerusalem, it is said, one Sabbath morning, when the 
 superstition of the inhabitants deterred them from defending it 
 effectually!. The story, as thus told, probably owes something 
 to the necessity for flattering the national vanity ; but it is 
 evident that the politic Lagides knew how to reconcile the 
 Jews to the easy yoke of their suzerainty, and under the early 
 Ptolemies the Jews remained generally faithful to Egypt. 
 When Egypt's sway became enfeebled after the reign of 
 Ptolemy IV Philopator, Antiochus the Great seized upon 
 Palestine, probably with the connivance of a part of its in- 
 habitants^ ; and although it remained fairly contented with 
 its new masters until Antiochus' death, in the reign of his 
 successor, Antiochus Epiphanes, the Jews found themselves 
 confronted with a very disagreeable dilemma. For Antiochus 
 Epiphanes, after his successful attack upon Egypt had been 
 frustrated by the Romans, saw plainly enough that only an 
 empire united and homogeneous in faith and culture could 
 resist for long the new power rising in the West*, and resolved 
 to force on the complete Hellenization of the Jews at all hazards. 
 How he failed is told in the Books of the Maccabees, although 
 his failure brought little good to his rebellious subjects, who 
 soon passed with the rest of his empire into the hands of the 
 victorious Romans. 
 
 To this end, the splitting- up of the chosen people into warring 
 sects materially contributed. Josephus, writing somewhere 
 about the year 70 a.d., tells us that there existed in his day 
 three " philosophic " sects among the Jews*. The first two of 
 these were the Pharisees and Sadducees familiar to everybody 
 
 ^ Droysen, HdUnisme, n. p. 155. 
 
 2 MahafEy, op. cit. p. 87 and n. 1 ; ibid. p. 293 and nn. 1 and 2. 
 
 ' W. D. Morrison, Jews under Roman Rule, pp. 5, 6. 
 
 * Jos. de Bell. Bk n. c. 8, passim. 
 
152 Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Essenes [oh. 
 
 through their mention in the New Testament, and the third 
 was the " Essenes." These Essenes — a name which by 
 some has been thought to mean " the Pure^ " — he describes 
 as a small sect numbering not more than 4000 in all, and 
 scattered throughout the villages of Palestine. They lived 
 entirely by manual labour, such as agriculture, and were extra- 
 ordinarily hospitable to other members of the same sect, so 
 that an Essene never found it necessary to take anything with 
 him on a journey, but could always obtain what he wanted from 
 his fellow-sectaries, even though personally unknown to them. 
 As to their doctrines, he tells us that though " Jews by birth " 
 they abjured marriage^, and only recruited their ranks by 
 adoption. They practised, on the same authority, the fullest 
 community of goods, and forbade conversation on worldly 
 matters before the rising of the sun, at which they repeated 
 certain traditional prayers, " as if they made supplication for 
 his rising." Their meals were always eaten in common and in 
 a sacramental manner, purification in cold water and the 
 donning of white garments being a necessary preliminary*. 
 Sobriety and restraint in speech were, he says, among their 
 most marked characteristics, and they avoided the taking of 
 judicial oaths, averring that " he who cannot be believed with- 
 out swearing by God is already condemned." Initiation into 
 the sect was both long and difficult. The novice on his first 
 reception was presented with a hatchet, a girdle and a white 
 garment, but was not allowed to associate with the rest of the 
 order, it being held that they would be defiled if he did so. 
 In spite of this, he was forced to observe the austerities of the 
 order for a year before being allowed " the waters of purifi- 
 cation," and for two years further before being admitted to full 
 
 1 Or " the Pious.'' See Morrison, op. cit. p. 327 ; A. Jiilioher ia Encyc. 
 Bibl. s.v. Essenes, col. 1397, n. 1. 
 
 ^ Tliere was, says Josephus, loc. cit. § 13, another order of Essenes which 
 married and had children. The reason given for the celibacy of the first 
 order is not the Orphic one, ibid. § 2. 
 
 ^ Cf. the Agapae or love-feasts of the Greek thiasi and the Christian 
 Church. There is no authority, however, for supposing that the meal was 
 regarded by the Essenes as a sacrifice. 
 
v] Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Essenes 153 
 
 association with the other members and the common meal^ 
 After this probation, he was sworn on 
 
 " the most tremendous oaths to be just towards all men and faithful 
 to the order, not discovering any of their doctrines to others, no, 
 not though he should be compelled to do so at the risk of his life." 
 Moreover, he had to swear 
 
 " to communicate their doctrines to no one in any other manner 
 than that in which he had received them himself ; to abstain from 
 robbery^ and that he would equally preserve the books belonging to 
 the sect and the names of the angels." 
 
 Their doctrine concerning the future life was : 
 
 " That bodies are corruptible and that the matter of which they are 
 made is not permanent ; but that souls are immortal, and continue 
 for ever ; and that they come out of the most subtle air, and are 
 united to their bodies as in prisons, into which they are drawn by 
 a certain natural enticement^ ; but that when they are set free from 
 the bonds of the flesh, they then, as released from a long bondage, 
 rejoice and mount upward*." 
 
 ^ The girdle has been thought to be identical with the kosti or sacred 
 thread of the Parsis. The use of the hatchet or pick was to bury the ejecta, 
 perhaps for sanitary reasons. The Essenes were said to be further divided 
 into four classes ( Josephus, loc. cit. § 10), but Josephus does not say what 
 these classes were, and it is doubtful whether there is any foundation for 
 the statement. 
 
 ^ Ibid. § 7. From the context, it would seem that " robbery " here 
 means the attempt to obtain possession of the secrets of the order by 
 stealth. In an earlier part of the same section the neophyte is said to be 
 sworn to " keep his hands clear from theft, and his soul from unlawful 
 gains." 
 
 ' I.e. by sexual desire. The same idea is met with in the doctrines of 
 Simon Magus, see Chap. VI, infra, and in many other sects. Cf. Cumont, 
 Becherches sur le Manichdisme, BruxeUes, 1908, pt I. Appx 1, "La Seduc- 
 tion des Archontes " for particulars. 
 
 * Dr Kohler, apparently a Rabbi of New York, gives other particulars 
 of the Essenic initiation, including a song describing Heaven and Hell. 
 This he takes from the Testament of Job described by him in the Festschrift 
 called Kohut's Semitic Studies, Berlin, 1897, pp. 265 sqq. Among other 
 things, he thinks the initiate was told that Satan was the cosmocrator, or 
 
154 Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Essenes [ch. 
 
 Finally, Josephus tells us that the Essenes take great pains 
 in "studying the writings of the ancients and choose out of 
 them what is most for the advantage of their soul and body," 
 that they were much given to the practice of medicine, and had 
 those among them " who undertake to foretell things to come 
 by reading the holy books and using several sorts of purifica- 
 tions, and being perpetually conversant in the discourses of 
 the prophets," — a statement which is explained by another 
 passage^ wherein he tells us that they believed " fate forms all 
 things and nothing befalls men but according to it." From 
 yet another passage^ we learn that they were excluded from the 
 Temple worship and offered their sacrifices for themselves 
 instead of through the regular Jewish priesthood'. 
 
 That Josephus' account of the Essenes is fairly accurate 
 and well informed appears from the fact that Philo of Alexandria, 
 writing some fifty years earlier than he, also asserts that they 
 numbered " in his opinion about 4000," and explains their 
 abstention from the Temple worship as being due to their 
 objection to sacrificing living animals*. Philo further tells us 
 that there were among them no makers of warUke weapons, that 
 they refrained from trade and had no slaves ; but that their 
 principal study was that of the Jewish Law and the " enquiry 
 into the being of God and the creation of the universe." 
 
 ruler of the world, and that the sacred gttdle was an amvdet which would 
 enable him both to defy Satan's snares, and to see the wonders of the world 
 of angels. But I do not see that he brings forward any proof that either 
 this book or what he calls the whole Job hterature is attributable to the 
 Essenes. 
 
 ^ Joseph. Aviiq. Bk xm. c. 5, § 9. 
 
 " Id. op. cit. Bk xvm. c. 1, § 5. 
 
 ' Their supposed sun-worship seems to resolve itself into the usual 
 Jewish prayer at dawn, see Cheyne, Jewish Religious Life after Exile, New 
 York, 1898, note on p. 251, and Jtilioher, Encyc. Bibl. s.v. Essenes. 
 
 * Philo Judaeus, Quod Omnis Probus Liber, c. xn. ; id. Apologia in 
 Eusebius, Praep. Evang. Bk vni. o. 13. The authenticity of both works 
 has been attacked (for the controversy v. Morrison, op. cit. p. 347, n. 2) 
 with some success. While therefore there can be no doubt that they are 
 from the pen of some of Philo' s school, it is not impossible that they may 
 be later than Josephus and have copied his statements. 
 
v] Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Essenes 155 
 
 According to him, on the seventh or holy day when no work 
 was done, they were accustomed to meet together, when one 
 
 " takes up the holy volume and reads it, and another of the men 
 of the greatest experience [among them] comes forward and 
 explains what is not very intelligible, for a great many precepts are 
 delivered in enigmatical modes of expression and allegorically." 
 
 He at the same time confirms Josephus' statement as to their 
 having all goods in common. 
 
 Pliny in his Natural History also speaks of the Essenes ; 
 but adds little to our knowledge, except the remark that it 
 was the irksomeness of this present life which in his opinion 
 gave rise to the sect^. Of the Christian heresiologists, Hip- 
 polytus in his Philosophumena merely repeats the statements 
 of Josephus with the doubtfully accurate addition that the 
 Essenes believed in a final conflagration of the world* and the 
 eternal punishment of the damned ; while Epiphanius in his 
 Panarion shows plainly that he had no first-hand knowledge of 
 the Essenes and did not understand the traditional accounts of 
 the sect which must have been extinct a long time before he 
 wrote*. Porphyry in his treatise on Abstinence avowedly quotes 
 from Josephus only*. 
 
 We see, then, that all we really know about the Essenes is 
 contained in the accounts of Josephus and Philo ; but on this 
 slender foundation there has been raised a vast superstructure 
 of conjecture which the unprejudiced reader will probably 
 consider too heavy for its base. The Essenes have been claimed 
 by different writers as merely a strict order of Pharisees, as 
 
 I Pliny, Hist. Nat. Bk v. o. 15: In diem ex aequo convenarum turba 
 renascitur large frequentantibus, quos vita fesaos ad mores eorum fortunae 
 fluctus agitat. 
 
 ^ Hippolytus, PMlosophumena, Bk rs. c. 27, pp. 465, 466, of Cruice. 
 Later, he attributes the same doctrine to the Pharisees. His desire to show 
 that in both oases it was derived by the Jews from the Pythagoreans or 
 the Stoics is manifest. 
 
 ' Epiphanius, Panar. Bk i. t. i. Haer. x. c. 1 (pp. 75, 76 of Oehler, 
 vol. n. pt 1). Epiphanius makes them a Samaritan sect. 
 
 * Porphyrius, de Abstinentia, Bk iv. 
 
156 Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Essenes [ch. 
 
 Zoroastrians, and as Buddhists. It has been argued that 
 St John Baptist was an Essene and even that Jesus Himself 
 belonged to the sect^. A more probable theory is that the 
 Essenes derived some of their tenets from the Orphics, whose 
 views were particularly prevalent at Alexandria in the time of 
 the early Ptolemies, as well as in Asia Minor under the Seleucids. 
 From the death of Alexander the Great until that of Antiochus 
 Epiphanes, Palestine was, as we have seen, successively under 
 the sway of these two rival dynasties, and it was the rapid 
 progress of the Jews towards Hellenization in culture, religion, 
 and morals that brought about the Maccabaean uprising, in 
 connection with which we first hear of the Essenes^. Hence 
 this is the time when, if ever, we should expect the Orphic 
 teaching to affect the Jews, and it is difficult to see whence the 
 Essenes derived their views of the pre-existence of the soul — if 
 that be indeed the construction to be placed upon the scanty 
 and obscure words of Josephus — except from Orphism*. Save 
 for this, however, there is no very cogent reason for attributing 
 to this Jewish sect an Orphic origin. The use of white garments 
 is in a hot climate too general a practice to be really charac- 
 teristic, while the abstinence from the procreation of children 
 and from food that has had life, although common to the 
 Essenes and the Orphics*, may easily have come to the Jews 
 
 1 Jiilicher in Encyc. Bibl. ubi cit. and Ritschl and Lucius there quoted ; 
 J. B. Lightfoot, Epistles to Colossians and to Philemon, 1876, pp. 82-93, 
 348—419, and Hilgenfeld, Die Ketzergeschichte des TJrchristenlhums, Leipzig, 
 1884, p. 156 ; Arthur LiUie, Buddhism in Christendom, 1887, passim ; id. 
 Buddha and Buddhism, Edinburgh, 1900, pp. 159 sqq. Buddhism is however 
 posterior in time to Orphism, as Buddha did not die till B.C. 483 (see Fleet in 
 J.S.A.S. 1909, p. 22), which was some years after the break-up of the 
 Pythagorean school. 
 
 ^ See note 1 p. 154, supra. 
 
 ' There is no evidence of a belief in the pre-existence of the soul in 
 Persian religion until the rise of the worship of Mithras in the ist century B.C. 
 See Chap. XII, infra. Marshall (Hastings' Did. of Bible, s.v. Pre-existence) 
 would find proof of the doctrine among the Jews in the Book of Wisdom 
 and Philo. Both are much later than Orphism. 
 
 * But see note 2 p. 152, supra. Jewish priests after the Exile were for- 
 bidden to wear wool or to touch corpses, prohibitions which have an Orphic 
 twang. See Ezekiel xliv. 17, 23. 
 
v] Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Essenes 167 
 
 from more quarters than one. To the Essene refusal to take 
 oaths and to engage in trade there is no parallel whatever in 
 the Orphic teaching^. 
 
 But, although there is thus little sign of a direct connection 
 of the Essenes with the Orphics, there can hardly be any doubt 
 that the Jewish sect were Gnostics in the larger sense in which 
 the word is used above. The one distinguishing fact which 
 stands out from Josephus' account of them is that they had 
 secret doctrines of a kind differing from the beliefs of the rest 
 of the Jews. This is shown by the great pains taken by them 
 in the choice of neophytes, the " tremendous oaths " by which 
 they, who forbade swearing in general, enforced secrecy upon 
 them, and the prohibition to confide their teaching to any save 
 by a long and tedious process of initiation. The only hints we 
 have as to the nature of these doctrines are contained in Philo's 
 statement that they were given to the enquiry into the being 
 of God and the creation of the universe, and in that of Jose- 
 phus that the initiate into these secrets was sworn " to preserve 
 the books of the sect and the names of the angels." Dr Kohler 
 and other Jewish writers see in Philo's statement a reference to 
 the speculations of the later Jewish Cabala upon what is there 
 called " the Mystery of the Chariot " and " the Mystery of the 
 Creation^ " ; or in other words how the universe came forth 
 from God and how it is governed. Although the proof of this 
 is slender, it seems probable from the tendency of the whole of 
 the Apocryphal literature of the time which dealt principally 
 with the same subjects. It is evident that the Essene interpre- 
 tation of the Old Testament, then recently made familiar to the 
 Jews by the Alexandrian translation into Greek known as the 
 Septuagint, must have been different in some respects from that 
 of the other Jews, and that it must have been in some way 
 likely to shock those who held by the traditional interpretation, 
 as otherwise there would have been no necessity for the Essenes 
 
 So fax from despising wealth, many of the Orphic Hymns pray for 
 riches. Cf. Hymns x. xm. xiv. xix. xl. etc. in Abel's Orphica. 
 
 K. Kohler, Testament of Job, in Kohnt's Semitic Studies, Berlin, 1897, 
 pp. 281, 282 ; Isidore Loeb in La Grande EncyclopMie, Paris, s.v. La Cabbale 
 Jnive, p. 587. 
 
158 Pre-Christian Grnostics: the Essenes [CH. 
 
 to bind their neophytes to so strict a secrecy. From Philo's 
 language on this point it would seem that they interpreted both 
 the Law and the Prophets in some non-natural manner, and it 
 is likely enough that this took the shape of the juggling with 
 the numerical values of the letters of which we find at least one 
 instance in the Revelation of St John, and to which we shall 
 have to return later ^- 
 
 What now can be said in explanation of Josephus' statement 
 that the Essenes were sworn to secrecy as to the " names of 
 the angels " ? The personal name of no angel appears in the 
 Old Testament except in the Book of Daniel, now generally ad- 
 mitted to have been written in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, 
 and there is on the face of it no reason why any Jew should 
 wish to keep those there given— Gabriel and Michael — secret. 
 But the knowledge of the name of an inhabitant of the spirit 
 world was at the time of which we are speaking held throughout 
 the Bast to give a magician full power over the being named, 
 and this belief was universal in the magic of all the nations 
 amongwhom the Jews hadfound themselves since the Captivity^. 
 There is thus every likelihood that the Essenes used " the names 
 of the angels " for magical purposes, and this is borne out by 
 the tradition that it was as exorcists of demons and healers of 
 disease that they were afterwards celebrated^. The manner in 
 which these names were used may be judged from the tradition 
 among the Jews that each tribe or order of demons was governed 
 by an angel, and that his subjects were bound to obey upon 
 being addressed by his name*. 
 
 ^ Rev. xiii. 18. A. Hausrath, History of New Testament Times (Eng. 
 ed.), 1878, vol. i. pp. 113-117, gives all the different processes of what is 
 called the "Practical" Cabala with illustrations. Of. Ad. Franck, La 
 Kabbale, Paris, 1843, p. 167, n. 2. 
 
 ^ J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3rd ed. pt n. voL i. pp. 318-334, 
 gives references to, I think, all the authorities for this belief, which even 
 at the present day is universal among primitive people. 
 
 ^ Morrison, op. cit. p. 338, for authorities. Exorcism for the healing of 
 disease followed naturally from their demonology, which taught that 
 diseases were caused by demons. See Hausrath, Hist, of N. T. Times 
 (Eng. ed.), i. p. 127. 
 
 * Hausrath, op. cit. I. pp. 124, 125 ; Olem£.ntine Homilies, Bk v. c. 5. 
 
v] Pre-Christian Ghiostics: the Essenes 159 
 
 It was partly, and perhaps mainly, from this sect of the 
 Essenes that there came, according to the general opinion of 
 scholars, the apocryphal or secret literature which, from the 
 name of its principal book, may be described under the generic 
 name of Enochian^. In the Booh of Enoch in its various forms 
 was set forth a vast system of teaching on matters which the 
 Canonical books of the Old Testament hardly touch. Here we 
 have a complete cosmogony in which the mundane egg^ of the 
 Orphics plays its part ; and the duties of the innumerable orders 
 of angels and their connection with the heavenly bodies, the 
 rebellion of Satan and his host against God, the fall of the 
 Watchers, or angels set over the earth, through the beauty of 
 mortal women, and the arrangement of the difierent heavens 
 and hells all find a place in it*. But it also deals at great 
 length with that Messianic hope which had for two centuries 
 been dangled by the Prophets before Israel, and which, thanks 
 to the materialistic sense in which it was interpreted by the 
 vast majority of Jews, was to lead directly to their extermina- 
 tion as a nation*. The Booh of Enoch and its many successors 
 and imitators are full of predictions of the coming of a Messiah, 
 who should lead the chosen race to the conquest of the world, 
 and, what was to them probably an even more alluring prospect, 
 to the overthrow and enslavement of all the other peoples in it^. 
 
 ^ F. C. Porter in Hastings' Diet, of Bible, s.v. Apocrypha, and WeU- 
 hausen as there quoted. A list of the books comprised in the expression 
 used in the text with conjectural dates and authorship is given by R. H. 
 Charles in the same work, s.v. Apocal3rptioal Literature. Cf. article 
 under same heading (also by Charles) ia Encyclopaedia Biblica. Prof. 
 Charles is less iacUned than earlier writers (e.^. Lightfoot and Kohler, 
 opp. cit.) to credit the Essenes with the composition of the whole of this 
 literatvu:e ; but he admits that part of the Book of Enoch, chap, cviii. 
 1-15, is by Essene hands. The other parts attributed to the Essenes by 
 SiefEert, Tideman, and Chejme are indicated by him in The Book of Enoch, 
 Oxford, 1893, pp. 13, 14, 21. 
 
 2 The Book of the Secrets of Enoch (Morfill and Charles trans.), Oxford, 
 1896, p. 32. 
 
 2 Charles, Book of Enoch, cit. sup. pp. 24-33. 
 
 « Id. op. cit. chap. xc. 28-38 ; of. id. Crit. Hist. p. 192. 
 
 6 Charles, Book of Enoch, xo. 30. 
 
160 Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Essenes [oh. 
 
 In the earlier parts of the Bthiopic version — which is in itself, 
 as Dr Charles has pointed out, but " a fragmentary survival 
 of an entire literature that once circulated under the name of 
 Enoch^ " — it is described how 
 
 " the Holy and Great One will come forth from His dwelling, the 
 God of the world, and going from thence He will tread on Mount 
 Sinai and appear with His hosts, and in the strength of His might 
 appear from heaven^." 
 
 The judgment and destruction of all but the elect is next 
 described, and the hurling down of the sinning angels into " the 
 abyss of fire," while the elect — that is, the Jews, or perhaps 
 only the Essenes — are to live among millennial blessings of a 
 material kind and in the enjoyment of universal peace*. This 
 seems to represent fairly the earlier Essene teaching upon this 
 point, and there is reason to suppose that it was written before 
 the Maccabaean struggles, after which the decadence of the 
 Syi'ian Empire under Antiochus Epiphanes — hard pressed as 
 he was by the Romans on one side and the Parthians on the 
 other — allowed the Jews to obtain a temporary independence, 
 and to set up a kingdom of their own for the first and last time 
 in their history*. But the wine of military success and political 
 independence proved too strong for the heads of the race which 
 had hitherto been the tributaries and subjects of the Persian, the 
 Greek, the Egyptian, and the Syrian Empires in turn, and, like 
 their kinsmen the Arabs of Mohammed's time and the Mahdists 
 in our own, nothing less would now satisfy the fanatical among 
 them than universal domination. In the later parts of the same 
 work, the aspirations of the writers become more bloodthirsty 
 and less spiritual, and we hear of a time " When the congregation 
 
 1 Charles, Book of Enoch, p. 24. 
 
 ^ Id. op. cit. chap. i. 4. ' Id. op. cit. chap. i. 8. 
 
 " David had the Philistines for suzerain, as Solomon had Egypt, cf. 
 Stanley A. Cook, ia Encyc. Bihl. s.v. David, and Maspero, Hist. anc. des 
 Peuples de rOrient, 1904, pp. 391, 422. Their successors, too, up to the 
 Captivity seem to have always been tributaries to Assyria, Chaldaea, 
 or Egypt. After that event, they were of course vassals to the Persian and 
 Macedonian Empires. 
 
v] Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Essenes 161 
 
 of the righteous will appear^," a phrase which seems to cover the 
 coming-forth of some sect or society till then kept in seclusion, 
 " Then," it goes on to say, " will the kings and the mighty 
 perish, and be given into the hand of the righteous and holy^." 
 In another part of the same book, we hear of angels being sent to 
 
 " the Parthians and Medes, to stir up the kings and provoke in them 
 a spirit of unrest, and rouse them from their thrones, that they may 
 break forth from their resting-places as lions and as hungry wolves 
 among the flocks*." 
 
 These are to make one final assault upon Jerusalem, and 
 
 " to tread under foot the land of His elect ones and the land of His 
 elect ones will be before them a threshing floor and a path. But 
 the city of My righteous [i.e. Jerusalem] will be a hindrance to their 
 horses, and they will begin to fight among themselves, and their 
 right hand will be strong against themselves, and a man will not 
 know his brother, nor a son his father or his mother, till the number 
 of corpses through their slaughter is beyond count, and their punish- 
 ment be no idle one. And in those days Sheol will open his jaws, 
 and they will be swallowed up therein, and their destruction will 
 be at an end. Sheol will devour the sinners in the presence of the 
 elect*." 
 
 This, according to the author who has made the most exhaustive 
 study of the Enochian literature yet attempted, must have 
 been written after the spirit which had inspired the Maccabaean 
 revolt had died away under the tyranny and luxury of the later 
 
 ^ Charles, Booh of Enoch, chap. xxxviiL 1. 
 
 2 Op. cit. chap, xxxviii 5. Cf. xlvi. 4, " And this Son of Man whom 
 thou hast seen will arouse the kings and the mighty ones from their 
 thrones, and will loosen the reins of the strong and grind to powder the 
 teeth of the sinners." 
 
 * Op. cit. chap. Ivi. 5. This verse, which Dr Charles considers an 
 interpolation, was evidently written in 40 B.C., when a Parthian army 
 imder Pacorus invaded Palestine and put a puppet of their own on the 
 throne of Jerusalem, and before 39 B.C., when PubUus Ventidius Bassus 
 drove the Parthians back to their own country. Cf. Morrison, Jew», etc., 
 pp. 58-61, and authorities there quoted. 
 
 * Charles, Book of Enoch, chap. Ivi. 6-8. 
 
 L. 11 
 
162 Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Essenes [CH. 
 
 Jewish kings^. It seems very difficult, in the face of the many 
 interpolations that the documents have undergone at the hands 
 of Jewish and even Christian writers, to decide how much of 
 these prophecies can be attributed directly to the sect of the 
 Essenes ; but there can be little doubt that they accurately 
 represent the hope of supremacy over the nations which they 
 shared with the Pharisees and the other fanatics among the 
 Jewish nation. Only thus can we 'explain the community of 
 goods and the very un-Jewish contempt for money-making 
 which formed the most singular features of Essene practice^. 
 To those who expected to be immediately put in possession of 
 the whole earth all desire for worldly advancement must have 
 been a matter of indifEerence. A similar conviction led to the 
 maintenance of the same practice in the Christian Church so 
 long as she continued to believe in the nearness of the Parusia 
 or Second Coming of her Founder*. 
 
 From this dream of imiversal dominion, nothing seemed 
 able to arouse the poorer Jews. In vain did the Sadducees, 
 who comprised those of the nation who had become rich either 
 by trading with the Gentile or by dependence on the luxurious 
 Jewish Court, try to persuade the people that they had better 
 make the best of the Hellenist culture thrust upon them than 
 try to arrest its progress by fighting against powers that would 
 crush them like glass when once sufficiently provoked*. In 
 vain did the Syrian Empire, warned by the mistakes of Antiochus 
 
 ^ Charles, op. cit. p. 108. He there puts the date of the SimiUtudes, as 
 this portion of the Book of Enoch is called, about a quarter of a century 
 before the Parthian invasion. In that case, the prediction in the text 
 would be about the only instance of fulfilled political prophecy known. 
 But the discrepancy is doubtless to be explained by the theory of inter- 
 polation after the event. 
 
 ^ As in the admittedly Essene portion of the Book of Enoch (Charles, 
 op. cit. chap, cviii. 8) : " Who loved God and loved neither gold nor silver, 
 nor any of the goods of the world." 
 
 ' Compare with this the desire to rid themselves of this world's goods 
 which seized upon the inhabitants of Western Europe in 1000 a.d., when 
 it was believed that the Second Advent was at hand, and donations to the 
 Church beginning " in view of the approaching end of the world " were 
 common. 
 
 * Sohiirer, Hist, of Jewish People (Eng. ed.), n. pp. 167, 158. 
 
v] Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Essenes 163 
 
 Bpiphanes in Hellenizing the Jews against their will, accord 
 them the largest possible religious Uberty and even acknowledge 
 their right to self-government in exchange for tribute^. When 
 the Romans, whom, according to their own account, they had 
 called in to protect them against their Syrian overlords, destroyed 
 once for all their chance of remaining an independent state, they 
 not only gave the Jews the fullest Uberty to practise their own 
 religion, but set over them first a vassal king and then tetrarchs 
 of Semitic blood, who might be supposed to moderate the too 
 pronouncedly Western ideas of the Roman governor of Syria^. 
 But these concessions were no more effective in inducing the 
 Jews to settle down quietly as the peaceful tributaries of a great 
 empire than had been the severities of Antiochus. They seized 
 every opportunity to revolt, every time with the accompani- 
 ment of horrible atrocities committed upon those unfortunate 
 Gentiles who for a moment fell into their power, until, some 
 sixty years after the Destruction of the Temple by Titus, 
 Hadrian had to wage against them the awful war of extermina- 
 tion which extinguished their nationaUty for ever. At the 
 Fair of the Terebinth, when every able-bodied Jew left alive 
 in Palestine was sold into slavery, the nation must have realized 
 at last the vanity of its dream*. 
 
 During this time, that is to say, between the years 168 B.C. 
 and 135 a.d., the flood of Apocalyptic literature never ceased to 
 pour forth. All of it was what is called pseudepigraphical, that 
 is to say, the books of which it was composed were falsely 
 attributed to Enoch, the sons of Jacob, Moses, Job, Ezra, 
 Baruch, and other personages of the Old Testament. Not all 
 of these have come down to us, but a considerable number of 
 books have survived. The pre-Christian ones that we have, 
 
 ^ Josephus, Anliq. Bk xm. cap. 2, 3, where the tributes and taxes are 
 set forth. Morrison, op. cit. p. 360, notes that the Jews showed no hostility 
 to the tribute payable to the Greek kings, and that it was the Roman 
 system of taxation which most embittered their feelings against the Gentiles. 
 
 " Morrison, op. cit. pp. 41, 42. 
 
 ' Benan, in L'^glise ChrMenne, chap, xi, tells the story with as 
 much grace as truth. His account is largely taken from the investigations 
 of Hartwig Derenbourg, himself of Jewish blood. Cf. Morrison, op. eil. 
 pp. 198-206. 
 
 11—2 
 
164 Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Essenes [oh. 
 
 included, beside the Ethiopian Book of Enoch quoted above, the 
 Testaments of the XII Pairiwrcha, the Psalms of Solomxin, and 
 part of the Sibylline Oracles. Later probably than the begin- 
 ning of our era, appeared the Book of the Secrets of Enoch, which 
 Dr Charles thinks was written in Egypt, the Wisdom literature, 
 certainly having the same place of origin, the Book of Jubilees 
 or little Genesis, the Assumption of Moses, the rest of the 
 Sibyllines, the Apocalypse of Ba/ruch, the later books of Macca- 
 bees, and the Fourth Book of Esdras^. One and all of these 
 deal with the glories before the Jewish nation, when by super- 
 natural help it will be able to turn the tables on its would-be 
 civilizers, and one and all breathe the most virulent hatred 
 against every body who is not a Jew^. They show no consensus 
 of opinion as to the future lot of the Gentiles ; for, while some 
 teach that the victories of the Messiah will end in their complete 
 
 1 They are arranged in the text as near as possible in the order of their 
 probable dates. As to these and on the question of authorship, see Charles, 
 Crit. Hist. pp. 172-226. The SibylUne Oracles can now be consulted in 
 the scholarly edition of Rzach (Sibyllina Oracula, 1891), and in Dr Charles' 
 Apocrypha of the O.T. (see below). The Greek text of the Psalms of 
 Solomon with a French translation and critical introduction has been 
 published by Dr J. Viteau and M. Frangois Martin (Les Psaumes de Salomon, 
 Paris, 1911). (The Odes of Solomon recently recovered for us by Dr Rendel 
 Harris are most probably Christian hymns.) The Latin text of the 4th 
 Book of Bsdras is given by Bensly and James in Cambridge Texts and 
 Studies, vol. m. No. 2, and an English translation of part of it appears in 
 the Apocrypha of the A. V. (see Speaker's Commentary for a good text and 
 commentary by Lupton). The Wisdom Literature, i.e. the Wisdom of 
 Solomon and Ecclesiasticus, also appears in the Apocrypha of the A.V. 
 as do the Books of Maccabees. Enghsh versions of all the other books with 
 critical notes and introductions have been published by Prof. Charles as 
 follows: Book of Enoch, Oxtoid, 1893 ; Book of the Secrets of Enoch, 0:KioTd, 
 1896 ; Apocalypse of Baruch, 1896; Assumption of Moses, 1897; Book of 
 Jubilees, 1902 ; and Testament of the XII Patriarchs, 1908. AU the 
 above appear in English dress m Dr Charles' Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha 
 of the O.T., Oxford, 1913. 
 
 " See note 2 p. 149, swpra. The essentially Jewish tendency towards 
 hyperbole and exaggeration in language must, however, be allowed for. 
 As someone has said, " Jacob I have loved, and Esau I have hated," in the 
 mouth of a Jew means little more than that on the whole the speaker 
 prefers Jacob to Esau. See also note 1 p. 163, supra. 
 
v] Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Essenes 165 
 
 annihilation, others declare that they will be preserved to 
 become, as Isaiah had prophesied, the servants and hand- 
 maidens of the Jews, to build up the walls of Jerusalem, and 
 to be the herdsmen, ploughmen, and vinedressers of Israel^. 
 Others again, held that the Gentiles would be hurled into 
 Gehenna with the sinning angels* — even those who were dead 
 being raised again for that purpose— and would there be 
 tormented for ever in the presence of the Jews, who were to 
 find one of their chief pleasures in the sight of their sufEerings*. 
 
 " And I saw all the sheep that had been left, and all the beasts of 
 the earth, and all the birds of the heaven," 
 
 says the pseudo-Enoch in a vision wherein he describes under 
 this figure the nations which had not been destroyed by the 
 celestial hosts of the Messiah, 
 
 " falling down and doing homage to those sheep [i.e. the Jews] and 
 making petition to and obeying them in every thing*." 
 
 For the world was made for the Jews and the perversity of the 
 Gentiles was divinely ordained for the express purpose that their 
 " punishment " might be great^., 
 
 " All this I have spoken before thee, Lord," says the Apocryphal 
 Ezra, " because thou madest the world for our sakes. As for the 
 other people which also came of Adam, thpu hast said that they are 
 nothing, but are like unto spittle, and hast likened the abundance 
 of them unto a drop that falleth from a vessel*. And now Lord 
 behold, these heathen, which have ever been reputed as nothing, 
 
 have begun to be lords over us, and to devour us If the world 
 
 now be made for our sakes, why do we not enter into possession 
 of our world ? How long shall this endure ? " And then comes 
 Yahweh's answer : " Behold I will call together all the kings of the 
 earth to reverence me, which are from the rising of the Sun, from the 
 South, from the East, and Libanus : to turn themselves one against 
 
 ^ Isaiah xiv. 2 ; Ix. 10 ; Ixi. 5. All these passages are now said to 
 be post-ExUic by Charles, Grit. Hist. p. 115. 
 
 2 Charles, Apocalypse of Baruch, chap. xxx. 4, 5 ; chap, xxxvi. 11 ; 
 4 Esdras vii. 87. 
 
 3 Charles, Book of Enoch, chap, xlviii. 9 ; Ixii. 9-12. 
 
 * Op. cit. chap. xc. 30. ° See note 3 p. 106, infra. 
 
 • Cf. Isaiah xl. 15. 
 
166 Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Essenes [CH. 
 
 another, and repay that they have done to thee. Like as they do 
 yet this day unto my chosen, so will I do also, and recompense in 
 their bosom^." " After the signs have come of which thou wast 
 told before," says the Apocalypse of BarucJi, " when the nations 
 become turbulent, and the time of My Messiah is come, He shall 
 both summon all the nations, and some of them He shall spare and 
 some of them He shall slay. These things therefore shall come upon 
 the nations which are to be spared by Him. Every nation which 
 knows not Israel, and has not trodden down the seed of Jacob, 
 shall indeed be spared. And this because some out of every nation 
 shall be subjected to thy people. But all those who have ruled 
 over you, or have known you, shall be given up to the sword^." 
 
 So in the Book of Jubilees we are told that God 
 " sanctified [Israel] and gathered it from amongst all the children of 
 men ; for there are many nations and many peoples, and aU are His 
 and over all hath He placed spirits in authority to lead them astray 
 from Him. But over Israel He did not appoint any angel or spirit^." 
 As for the delight in the sufferings of the damned Gentiles it 
 is poetically expressed in the Assumption of Moses : 
 " For the Heavenly One will arise from His royal throne 
 And He will go forth from His holy habitation 
 
 And His wrath will burn on account of His sons 
 ******** 
 
 And the horns of the Sun will be broken and he shaU be turned 
 
 into darkness ; 
 And the moon shall not give her light, and be turned wholly 
 
 into blood 
 
 And the circle of the stars shall be disturbed 
 ******** 
 
 For the Most High will arise, the Eternal God alone, 
 And He will appear to punish the Gentiles 
 And He wUl destroy all their idols 
 Then thou, Israel, shalt be happy 
 And thou shalt mount upon the neck of the eagle* 
 And the days of thy mourning will be ended 
 ******** 
 
 1 4 Esdras vi. 55-59 ; xv. 20, 21. 
 ^ Charles, Apocalypse of Baruch, chap. Ixxii. 2-6. 
 ^ Charles, Book of Jubilees, ohap. xv. 31, 32. 
 * I.e. the Roman Empire. 
 
v] Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Essenes 167 
 
 And thou shalt look from on Hgli and shalt see thy enemies in 
 
 Gehenna, 
 And thou shalt recognize them and rejoice 
 And thou shalt give thanks and confess thy Creator^." 
 
 And in what has been called the Apocalypse of Salathiel, we 
 hear that the righteous Jews will " have joy in seven ways " : 
 
 " First of all they shall see with great joy the glory of him who 
 receives them up, for they shall rest in seven orders. The first 
 order because they have striven with great labour to overcome 
 ' the innate evil thought^ ' which was fashioned together with 
 them, that it might not lead them astray from life into death. The 
 second order, because they see the round in which the souls of the 
 ungodly wander and the punishment that awaits them ^." 
 
 A comparison of the dates of these documents lends little 
 support to the view that this hatred of the Gentiles was wrung 
 from the Jews by oppression ; and there seems grounds for 
 supposing that it had been present to their minds ever since 
 their return from the Captivity*. Tacitus was certainly justified 
 when he speaks of the nation as animated by bitter enmity 
 against the rest of the human race^. 
 
 How far the Essenes were responsible for the whole of this 
 later literature, it is now impossible to say. Nearly every one 
 of the books above quoted have been claimed as of Bssene 
 origin by some scholar or another®, and those who, like 
 
 1 Charles, Assumption of Moses, chap. x. 3, 5, 7, 8, 10. 
 ^ Evidently a reminiscence of the Zoroastrian demon who is opposed to 
 the Amshaspand Vohu Mano or "Good Thought." See Chapter VI,infra. 
 3 4 Esdras vii. 91-93. 
 
 * The earhest document quoted is the part of the Book of Enoch which 
 Prof. Charles considers was written between 166-161 b.o. ; the latest, the 
 Fourth Book of Esdras, which he puts at 90 a.d. Yet he shows that the 
 hatred of the Gentiles and the hope that they would be eternally destroyed 
 or made slaves to Israel were present many centuries earUer and are to be 
 found in the writings attributed to Ezekiel, Haggai, Joel, and Zachariah, 
 as well as in Isaiah. Cf. Grit. Hist. p. 160. 
 
 ^ Tacitus, Historia, Bk v. c. 5. 
 
 • Thus Jellinek, Ueher das Buck der Jubilaen und das Noah-Buch, 
 Leipzig, 1856, passim, says that the Book of Jubilees is of Essene origin, 
 
168 Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Essenes [ch. 
 
 Dr Charles, are inclined to reduce Essene influence upon them 
 to a minimum, admit that considerable interpolations have 
 been made in most of the documents by Essene hands. More- 
 over, all those books which do not purport to be by Enoch 
 himself either mention his name with peculiar reverence, or give 
 the same account of celestial physics and other matters as the 
 Ethiopic Book of Enoch, or quote it directly^- There seems, 
 therefore, little doubt that all this literature came forth from 
 the same school, and that it was directly or indirectly the result 
 of Essene teaching. 
 
 A point more difficult to determine is how the Essenes 
 managed to reconcile their secret doctrines with the reverence 
 for the Mosaic Law and its promulgator which they undoubtedly 
 professed^. There is no direct evidence with regard to this 
 save Philo's remark quoted above as to their allegorical inter- 
 pretation of Scripture. This, too, may have had its origin in 
 Orphic practice, for we know that the Orphics were accustomed 
 to carry allegory so far as to both materiahze their gods, as 
 when they spoke of Bacchus as Wine, and to deify abstractions, 
 as when they made hymns to Health, Peace and other abstract 
 conceptions as if they were actual persons^- But besides this, 
 the Essenes probably practised a mode of interpretation peculiar 
 to themselves, which they kept secret or confined to members 
 of the sect. Something of the kind was not unknown among the 
 Greeks, for some of the Orphic gold plates found in Magna 
 
 and Schmidt and Merx, Archiv fiir zvissenschaffliche Erforschung des Alten 
 Testaments, i. n. (1868) pp. 111-152, make the same claim for the Assump- 
 tion of Moses and so on. For the Book of Enoch itself see above. 
 
 ^ For the quotations from Enoch in the Testament of the XII Patriarchs 
 see Charles, Introduction to that book, p. lix ; for those in the Book of 
 Jubilees see B. of J. pp. 13. 36, 37, 53, 62-64, 102, 134, 146, 150, 212, 
 213 ; in the Apocalypse of Baruch, see A. of B. p. 101 and notes ; in the 
 Assumption of Moses, see A.of M. x. 4, 9. 
 
 2 Josephus, vM cit. m note 4 p. 151, sujrra, says (§ 8) that they honoured 
 the name of Moses next after that of God Himself ; and that any who 
 blasphemed him was pvinished capitally. 
 
 3 Cf. Abel's Orphica, Fr. 160, 161, 162, 202, 203, 204. From the Orphics 
 the practice passed into the Mysteries and the writings of the post- 
 Christian Gnostics. See Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 1888, pp. 69, 74-75. 
 
v] Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Essenes 169 
 
 Graecia are intended to be read acrostically^, and the Graeco- 
 Egyptian magic papyri contain many instances of a similar 
 use of the Homeric poems by which they could be converted 
 into an oracle or fortune-teUing book^. By such means any 
 document can of course be made to mean anything, and the 
 Essenes seem to have added to this the practice of isopsephism 
 or regarding words as equivalent in sense which had the same 
 numerical value. The most familiar instance of this is in the 
 Revelation of St John where " the number of the Beast " is said 
 to be " the number of a man ; and his number is six hundred 
 threescore and six " ; or, in other words, Nero Caesar, whose 
 name written in Hebrew letters is equivalent to the number 
 given*. In hke manner we read in the Booh of Enoch, in the story 
 of the sinning angels : 
 
 " This is the number of Kesbeel, who showed the head of the oath 
 to the holy ones when he dwelt high above in glory, and its name is 
 Beqa. And this angel requested Michael to show him the hidden 
 name, that they might mention it in the oath, so that those who 
 revealed all that was hidden to the children of men might quake 
 before that name and oath. And this is the power of that oath, 
 for it is powerful and strong, and he placed this oath Akae in the 
 hand of Michael*." 
 
 ^ Like the Gold Plate of Caeoilia Secundina, Chapter IV, p. 133, supra. 
 So the Sibylline Oracles contaia the acrostic IXQYS which covers the 
 name and titles of Jesus, Renan, L'Sglise Ohr&ienne, p. 535 and note. 
 The Greeks must have caught the taste for such devices, for an acrostic 
 is found in a treatise on astronomy by Eudozos of Cnidos copied in the 
 second cent. B.C. Many other instances are given by Brunet de Presle, Las 
 Papyrus Qrecs du Musie, du Louvre, Paris, 1865, pp. 43, 44. He says with 
 some reason that the practice was borrowed by the Greeks from the Jews. 
 
 2 Kenyon, Gk. Pap. in B. M., Papyrus CXXI, pp. 83 sqq. 
 
 ^ Hausrath, op. cit. pp. 114-116, where many other instances are given. 
 The explanation of " Nero(n) Caesar " as the Number of the Beast is in 
 fact as old as Irenaeus, who remarks that the variant 616 given in some 
 texts is due to the omission of the final n in Latin. It does not seem to be 
 seriously disputed by any modern theologian. Isopsephism however was 
 not the invention of the Essenes, but of the Babylonians, among whom it 
 was in use, to judge from Berossos, in the time of Alexander. See Alexander 
 Polyhistor in Cory, Ancient Fragments, 2nd ed. p. 25. 
 
 * Charles, Book of Enoch, chap. Jxix. 13-15. Cf. id., TheApoc. etc. of the 
 O.T., n. p. 234, where he has made some verbal alterations in the reading. 
 
170 Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Essenes [CH. 
 
 From the context, it would appear that the words Akae and 
 BSqa both cover the Tetragrammaton or four-lettered name 
 ol JHVH, by means of which omnific word it is said the 
 heavens and earth were created^- The mysterious name of 
 Taxo given in the Assumption of Moses as that of the pro- 
 tagonist against Antiochus is doubtless to be interpreted in 
 some such fashion^. 
 
 Of the history of the Essenes as an organized sect, we know 
 hardly anything. If we accept Josephus' account of their 
 numbers as relating to his own time^, it would seem that they 
 were flourishing at the date of the Destruction of the Temple 
 under Titus. This event would probably affect them little 
 directly, because, as we have seen, they took no part in the 
 Temple worship ; and, scattered as they were through the 
 villages of Palestine, they may easily have escaped the punish- 
 ment meted out by the Komans to those towns which were the 
 strongholds of the rebellion. But it is extremely improbable 
 that they can have survived the War of Extermination under 
 Hadrian, when the partizans of the false Messiah kept up a 
 futile resistance in the country as well as in the towns, and 
 Hadrian's general, Severus, had in consequence to lay the land 
 desolate*. Moreover, it is not improbable that the sect may 
 have taken an active part in the Revolt, which they may easily 
 have looked upon as the fulfilment of their Messianic hopes, 
 and may thus have perished under the stern measures of 
 repression which the fanaticism and barbarities of the rebels 
 forced upon the conquerors. At any rate, we hear Uttle more 
 of the Essenes after this date. But the fantastic method of 
 interpreting Scriptures which they practised and probably 
 introduced, lingered long, and, after being used by the earliest 
 
 ^ Hausrath, op. et loc. cit. 
 
 * Charles, A. of M. chap. ix. 1, and the note beginning on p. 35, op. cit. 
 Hausrath, op. cit. sup. pp. 116, 117, thinks the name is arrived at by the 
 process called Atbaah. 
 
 ^ If the authenticity of the Fragment quoted above from Philo could 
 be established, it would seem probable that Josephus simply copied the 
 figure from this last, and that 4000 was the number of the Essenes about 
 20 A.D. 
 
 * Kenan, L'Sglise ChrMenne, p. 209. 
 
v] Pre-Christian Gnostics: the Essenes 171 
 
 Chiistian writers^, was revived, as has been said, by the Cabalists 
 of the Middle Ages, and has even survived into our own time. 
 It was especially high in favour with those numerous bodies of 
 heretics who in the first three centuries of our era asserted that 
 knowledge was the one thing needful for salvation and were 
 thus called, both by themselves and by their opponents the 
 Fathers of the Church, by the generic and distinctive name of 
 Gnostics^. 
 
 ^ Hausrath, op. cit. pp. 116, 117, for examples. By the method called 
 Temura he gets Momah hageddlah for Armageddon in the Canonical Apoca- 
 lypse. So Justin Martyr, Cohort, c. xxiv. says that Moses is unintelligible 
 without mystic insight, and that the name of Christ contains a hidden 
 meaning (2md Apol. o. vi.). 
 
 ^ Thus Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. Bk i. u. xn. § 11, p. 146, Harvey, makes 
 Marcus the heresiarch show that Alpha and Omega, the name given to 
 Jesus [?] in Revelation, means the Dove which descended upon Him at 
 His baptism, because it has the same numerical value (Trfpia-repa) of 801. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 PRE-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS : SIMON MAGUS 
 
 We see, then, that the Essenes, in spite of the quietism and 
 love of peace that they professed, became in the long run either 
 the instigators of political revolt or, at best, the tools of those 
 who thought to make use of the fanaticism excited by their 
 teaching in order to throw off the yoke of the Gentiles. But 
 these fanatics were almost exclusively the Jews of Judaea, 
 whose adherence to their own institutions caused them to leave 
 Babylon, where they were fairly well off, to be cooped up in a 
 land which in no time can have yielded an easy subsistence to 
 a large number of souls^. That people so circumstanced, con- 
 fronted with a power vastly superior to their own, and resolutely 
 bent on compelling its subjects to enter into its own system of 
 orderly government, should have looked to rebellion and super- 
 natural help as their sole means of escape, was only to be 
 expected. But there were besides a great number of Jews 
 dispersed among the heathen, who had succeeded in acquiring 
 vast wealth together with the power which wealth brings with 
 it ; and these were by no means inclined to upset the settled 
 order of things which the rise of the Roman Empire had brought 
 into the East. To the humble fisherman, vinedresser or hus- 
 bandman of Judaea, daily vexed and harassed by the Roman 
 tax-gatherer and Roman police measures, the Roman peace, 
 the freedom from foreign conquest, and the higher standard of 
 
 ' The fanaticism of the Palestioian Jews in time affected their co- 
 religionists elsewhere, as when the Jews in Asia Minor rebelled and com- 
 mitted atrocities in the reign of Trajan. See Morrison, Jews under 
 Boman Rule, p. 191, and Renan, Les Svangihs, Paris, 1877, p. 503. 
 Probably such outbreaks were condemned by those of the nation who had 
 anything to lose, as was certainly the case during the Revolt under Hadrian. 
 
CH. vi] Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus 173 
 
 comfort that came in with the legions, must have appeared far 
 less desirable than they did to the rich trader of Alexandria, 
 Caesarea, or Damascus, whose aptness in taking advantage of 
 the foibles of his rulers had enabled him to imitate their luxury 
 and in some cases to share their power^. Yet, with the tenacity 
 peculiar to their nation, even these rich Jews outside Palestine, 
 while adopting gladly enough the material benefits of the 
 Graeco-Roman civilization, clung firmly to the one exclusively 
 national possession which remained to them, the Law of Moses 
 with all its observances. They were, however, quite sharp 
 enough to see that the rules laid down for the conduct of a 
 loosely- compacted mass of nomad tribes suddenly flung among 
 hostile neighbours were unfitted to a more settled civilization ; 
 and the thinkers among them were put to much pains to discover 
 some means by which they could claim their share of Hellenistic 
 culture without ceasing to be Jews*. At first this generally 
 took the form of pseudonymous writings bearing the name of 
 some author respected by the Greeks, and designed to prove 
 that all the Hellenistic arts, sciences, and doctrines were derived 
 from the Hebrew patriarchs. Thus, verses were ascribed to 
 Orpheus and the Sibyl, and historical works to Hecataeus of 
 Abdera and a certain Aristaeus, having for their object the 
 praise of the Jewish nation, which were certainly not written 
 by the authors whose names were appended to them. So 
 Artapanus' book " On the Jews " claimed that the Egyptians 
 were indebted to the Hebrews for all they knew, including even 
 the worship of their gods, and that this went back to the days 
 of Abraham, who availed himself of his stay in Egypt to teach 
 astrology to the Pharaoh of his time*. 
 
 History, however, was at all times much less to the taste of 
 the Jews than metaphysics, and the many teachers of philosophy 
 
 1 Morrison, op. cit. p. 375 ; Mahaffy, Qreek lAfe and Thought, 1887, 
 pp. 468-482 ; Greek World under Roman Sway, 1890, p. 47. 
 
 " Schiirer, History of the Jewish People, Eng. ed. n. pp. 157, 158. One 
 of the best proofs of this tendency is the fashion among all classes of 
 Jews at this period of giving their children Greek names. See Mahaffy, 
 Qreek Life and Thought, p. 480. Even among the Apostles we have 
 Andrew and Philip. 
 
 » Schiirer, op. cit. n. pp. 206, 306, 309 ; Morrison, op. cit. p. 395. 
 
174 Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus [ch. 
 
 scattered through the Hellenistic world found in them eager 
 scholars, who were willing to Usten respectfully to any doctrine, 
 so long as it could be shown to be not inconsistent with their 
 national religion and traditions. The most sincere attempt 
 thus to combine Hellenic and Jewish teaching that has come 
 down to us is that of Philo of Alexandria, who wrote probably 
 shortly after the Birth of Christ. In his system^, God is unde- 
 finable and has no qualities that can be perceived by man. As 
 He is absolutely perfect, He cannot come into contact with 
 matter, and all His dealings with it must therefore be conducted 
 through intermediate beings. These intermediate beings are 
 the powers or attributes of God, inconsistently, as Zeller points 
 out, figured by Philo "as at once independent hypostases and 
 immanent determinations of the Divine existence^." All the 
 Divine Powers are summed up in the Logos or Word of God, 
 who is not only their chief but their source, and the great 
 intermediary between God and the universe. He is neither 
 unbegotten nor begotten after the manner of finite things, but 
 is the vicegerent and ambassador of God, who constantly makes 
 intercession for the world. As for man, his soul is itself nothing 
 but one of those powers of God which in another state of 
 existence are called angels or daemons, and it is his material 
 body which is the source of all evil, and the prison of the soul. 
 Man can only free himself from this by resisting the allurements 
 of the senses, which God puts it into his heart to do. By such 
 resistance, he can exceptionally and occasionally acquire such 
 virtue that, even in this life, he may attain to the Divine Vision, 
 when he will be " lifted above and out of himself," and the Spirit 
 of God will henceforth dwell in him and " stir him like the 
 strings of a musical instrument." In the ordinary way, however, 
 
 ^ Sohurer, op. cit. n. pp. 369-380, following, as he tells us, ZeUer, gives 
 an excellent and coherent account of PhUo's system, which see. As Schiirer 
 points out {op. cit. n. p. 368), Philo " hellenized " so thoroughly that 
 practically the only Judaic elements in his system are the assertion of 
 monotheism, a contempt for image-worship, and the claim that the Jews 
 possessed through the Mosaic revelation the highest religious knowledge. 
 
 * Schiirer, op. cit. n. p. 372. For a definition of hypostasis in this 
 connection and its original equivalence to ovaia and svhstantia (as in the 
 Quicungue wdt), see Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 1888, p. 275. 
 
vi] Pre-Christian Gfnostics: Simon Magus 175 
 
 his emancipation will only take place when his soul returns to 
 its original incorporeal condition, a reward which is bestowed on 
 those who have kept themselves free from attachment to this 
 sensuous body^. 
 
 That people holding tenets so far removed from anything in 
 the Law and the Prophets should form themselves into smaU 
 sects or societies^ and take other means for their propagation is 
 only natural, and no doubt many such sects of which we have 
 lost all trace existed in secret among the Hellenizing Jews at 
 the beginning of the Christian era*. Such a sect were probably 
 the Sethiani described by Hippolytus, whose " entire system," 
 according to the author of the Philosophumena, was derived 
 from " the ancient theologians Musaeus, Linus, and Orpheus, 
 who elucidates especially the ceremonies of initiation as well 
 as the Mysteries themselves*." So far as Hippolytus explains 
 their system, which he appears to have very imperfectly under- 
 stood, it set forth three principles, which he calls " Light, 
 Darkness, and an intermediate one which is Spirit " ; but all 
 the passages quoted from the " Paraphrase of Seth," which he 
 declares to be the work of the sect in question, refer for their 
 authority to the Old Testament, which it is evident the Sethiani 
 received as a real revelation^. But the one of these half- Jewish 
 
 1 Were those who did not attain to this height in PhUo's opinion 
 annihilated or re-incarnated ? His view that for the wicked this hie is the 
 real hell (De congr. erud. grat. § xi.) would suit either theory ; but in de 
 Cherub. § i. it is plain that he contemplates the eternal punishment of the 
 danmed. 
 
 2 Secret, not from the jealous motive of the Gnostics, but because if their 
 opinions had become generally known they would have been cast out of the 
 synagogue. 
 
 * So Renan, Les Svangiles, p. 452. It is quite possible that the sect of 
 the Essenes may have included many divisions. 
 
 * Hippolytus, Philosophumena, Bk v. c. 3, p. 218, Cruioe. 
 
 ^ M. de Taye is probably right in saying {^tude Critique dea Documents 
 du Gnosticisme Chritien, Paris, 1913, pp. 352, 353) that the Sethiani were 
 never a very important sect. Stahelin's theory (Die Gnostischen Quellen 
 Hippolyts, Leipzig, 1890) that Hippolytus was deceived by a forger who 
 drew all his " heresies " from one document (see CJhapter VII, infra) is too 
 fantastic to be correct, but it has done good service in calling attention to 
 the family likeness between most of the systems which he sketches. Cf. 
 
176 Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus [ch. 
 
 half-Gentile sects of which we have the most detailed account 
 is that which passed under the name of Simon Magus, whom 
 the Fathers of the Church were unanimous in describing as the 
 parent and origin of all later Gnosticism^. 
 
 This Simon, the New Testament describes as a man who 
 had formerly " used sorcery, and bewitched the people of 
 Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one : to whom 
 all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying ' This man 
 is the great power of God^'." The author of the Acts then 
 goes on to say that Simon " believed " and was baptized by 
 Philip, and that when Peter and John came from Jerusalem to 
 Samaria, " he offered them money saying : Give me also this 
 power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the 
 Holy Ghost." It is from this offer, which seems to betray a 
 desire to set up a Church of his own, that his name, curiously 
 enough, has since been associated in ecclesiastical law with the 
 offence of buying and selling benefices or cures of souls^. Of 
 Simon's future career, however, the Acts of the Apostles tell 
 us nothing save that he left Peter with the request for the 
 Apostle's prayers on his behalf. It is evident, from the text 
 quoted above, that both Simon's sorceries and his acclamation 
 by the people as " the great power of God " took place before 
 his conversion to Christianity, whether this was real or feigned. 
 Hence, Simon must have been at the time already the leader of 
 a school or sect, and as the events narrated are in the same 
 book set out before the Conversion of St Paul and his preaching 
 to the Gentiles, this sect must have been a pre-Christian one*. 
 B. de Paye, Iviro. a I'M. du Gnosl., Paris, 1903, p. 68. We are not likely 
 to reach any more definite conclusion unless some lucky discovery reveals 
 to us the sources of Hippolytus' compilation. 
 
 1 Irenaeus, Bk i. o. 16, p. 191, Harvey ; Hippolytus, Philosophumena, 
 Bk VI. c. 20, p. 267, Cruice; Augustine, de Haeres. lib. cc. i., n., m.; 
 Praedestinatus, de Haer. Bk i. o. 1 ; Pseudo-TertuUian, adv. omn. Haer. 
 c. I. etc. 
 
 2 Acts viii. 9, 10. 
 
 ' Prom the story in Acts, it appears that what Simon tried to buy was 
 the power of ordination. The offence in modern ecclesiastical jurisprudence 
 seems to be the obtaining the priestly office by purchase rather than by 
 merit or gift. 
 
 * Cf. Am61ineau, Orwaticisme jSijyptien, p. 51. 
 
vi] Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus 177 
 
 That this sect was also one of those which sought to reconcile 
 Judaism with Hellenism seems antecedently probable. Samaria 
 had been stripped of a great part of its former inhabitants by 
 Alexander the Great and Ptolemy Soter, who had colonized it 
 by " Macedonian " settlers, probably of Syrian blood^. These 
 colonists had accepted without difficulty the religious reforms 
 of Antiochus Epiphanes, and had offered that king, according 
 to Josephus, to dedicate their temple on Mt Gerizim to Zeus 
 Hellenics^. Later, on the death of Antiochus, John Hyrcanus, 
 the ethnarch or high-priest of the Jews, on the same authority, 
 " revolted from the Macedonians," invaded Samaria, besieged 
 its chief city and, when he gained possession of it, entirely de- 
 molished it*. Gabinius, when proconsul of Syria, rebuilt this 
 and other cities which had been destroyed by the Jews, and 
 Herod the Great about 25 B.C. restored and beautified it while 
 renaming it Sebaste in honour of Augustus*- These events had 
 intensified the hatred already existing between the Jews and the 
 Samaritans, and this was not diminished by the possession by 
 the latter of the Mt Gerizim temple which was in some sort the 
 rival of that of Jerusalem*. To judge from its later develop- 
 ments, the religion of the Samaritans at the beginning of the 
 Christian era retained little of Judaism besides a reverence for 
 the Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses*, and its other elements 
 were apparently Greek. We should therefore expect to find 
 in Simon's teaching before his meeting with the Apostles, a 
 leaning towards a mixed religion in which Greek elements 
 played the chief part, although the sanction attached to it 
 might be Jewish. 
 
 > Morrison, op. cit. p. 351. Cowley in Cheyne's Encyclopaedia Biblica, 
 s.v. Samaritans, omits this ; but see Josephus, Ant. Bk xii. c. 2, § 1. 
 
 ^ Josephus, op. cit. Bk xrr. c. 5, § 1. 
 
 3 Ibid. op. cit. Bk xm. c. 10, § 3. 
 
 ^ Ibid. op. cit. Bk xv. c. 9, § 5. 
 
 ^ " Neither at Jerusalem, nor on this mountain [Gerizim] shall men 
 worship the Father," John iv. 21. 
 
 ' Cowley in Encyc. Bibl. s.v. Samaritans, col. 4260. According to 
 Benan, Les ^vangiles, p. 451, the Samaritans at the beginning of our era 
 were divided into a great number of sects, all more or less attached to 
 Simon. The authorities he quotes are, however, too late to establish this 
 satisfactorily. 
 
 t. 12 
 
178 Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus [oh. 
 
 Such an expectation is abundantly justified by the evidence 
 of post-Apostolic writers. The documents known as the Cle- 
 mentine Homilies and Recognitions are now generally admitted 
 to be a kind of religious novel or romance composed for edifica- 
 tion, and no consensus of opinion exists as to their date, which 
 has been taken by many learned critics as ranging from the 
 1st to the ivth century a.d.^ They set forth with much detail 
 how Simon, after his first meeting with St Peter in Samaria, 
 everywhere opposed the chief of the Apostles, and followed 
 him about on many of his journeys, disputing with him at 
 great length, until finally put to flight by the superior dialectic 
 of Peter^. The Apocryphal Acts of Peter and Paul, which seem 
 to be either wholly or in part earlier than 275 a.d., further 
 narrate that Simon attempted to convert to his heresy the 
 Emperor Nero, by flying over the Campus Martins at Eome in 
 a car drawn by demons ; but was vanquished by St Peter, who 
 by a solemn adjuration caused him to fall violently to the earth 
 and thus to perish miserably*. This story became later the 
 universal tradition of the Catholic Church. All the patristic 
 writers agree that Simon Magus was accompanied in his 
 missionary journeys by a woman" of immoral life whom he 
 called the Ennoia or Thought of God, and declared to be a 
 reincarnation of Helen of Troy*, while one of the Clementine 
 documents makes her, together with Simon, to have been 
 
 ^ The question was discussed and resolved, as far as it could be in the then 
 state of our information, by Salmon in Smith's Dictionary of Christian 
 Biography, s.v. Clementines. Mgr. Duchesne, Early History of the Christian 
 Church, Bng. ed. 1909, p. 96, n. 2, sums up in favour of their ultimate 
 derivation from the Preaching of Peter composed at the end of the nnd or 
 beginning of mrd cent. He thinks the Clementines orthodox save for a 
 slight Arian tendency. 
 
 ^ So Theodoret ; but this was a common form in the patristic accounts 
 of such disputes. It is repeated in the dispute of Archelaus with Manes, 
 mentioned, in Chapter XIII, infra, which see. 
 
 ' See Tischendorf's edition, passim. The age of the book may be 
 guessed by its containing the Quo Vadis story quoted by Origen. 
 
 * Irenaeus, Bk i. c. 16, p. 191, Harvey; Hippolytus, Bk vi. c. 1, § 19, 
 p. 264, Cruice ; Epiphanius, Panar. Bk i. , Haer. xxi. c. 2 (p. 125 of 
 Oehler's vol. n. pt. 1). 
 
vi] Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus 179 
 
 among the followers of John the Baptist^. There is no external 
 corroboration of either story ; and such accusations of im- 
 morality were too frequently bandied about between the early 
 Christians and their adversaries for any particular weight to 
 be laid upon them^. Nor need the latest German theory, that 
 Simon Magus is in the Clementine literature but a pseudonym 
 for St Paul as the supposed opponent of St Peter, be discussed 
 here^. 
 
 The first writer who gives us any authoritative account 
 of Simon's pre-Christian teaching is Hippolytus, who in his 
 Philosophumena quotes freely from a book which he attributes 
 to Simon and calls the Great Announcement^. Whether this 
 be really Simon's work or no, its quotation in the Philoso- 
 phumena at least proves that a sect bearing his name existed 
 in the sub- Apostolic age, and that they held the doctrines set 
 forth in Hippolytus' quotations from this document, which can 
 hardly have been due to anyone else in the first instance than 
 Simon himself*. In the Great Announcement the First Cause of 
 
 1 Clementine Homilies, n.. o. 23. 
 
 2 Marcion and Marcus, both leaders of Gnostic sects, were both accused 
 by the Catholics of seduction, while the Pagans naturally put the worst 
 construction on the intimacy existing between confessors and martyrs and 
 their converts, as is evidenced by the story of Paul and Thekla. 
 
 * This seems to have been first set on foot by Baur and the Tubingen 
 school, and has lately been revived by Schmiedel in the Encyc. Bihl. s.v. 
 Simon Magua. Even if we were to admit that it was well founded with 
 regard to the Clementines, it would not get rid of the testimony of the Acts 
 and of Justin Martyr that Simon Magua had an actual historical existence. 
 
 * 'hrroc^acris /ie-yaXj;. " Declaration " would perhaps be a better trans- 
 lation of the word ; but that given in the text is the one used by most 
 writers on the subject. 
 
 5 Simon's authorship of the book has been defended by Renan (Les 
 
 Apdtres, Paris, 1866, p. 267 and note) and attacked by many other writers. 
 
 Salmon, op. cit., Schmiedel, op. cit., and Stock in the Encyclopaedia Britan- 
 
 nica (last edition), s.v. Simon Magus, aver that there were two Simons, one 
 
 the personage of the Acts, and the other, a Gnostic leader of the nnd cent. 
 
 to whom or to whose followers the Great Announcement is to be attributed. 
 
 This theory, although attractive, would prove too much ; for Justin Martyr, 
 
 himseU a Samaritan, has no doubt that Simon the heresiarch is the Simon 
 
 of the Acts, and if he is wrong in this, a matter which may well have been 
 
 within his own personal knowledge, Hippolytus is our best and earhest 
 
 authority for Simon's doctrines. 
 
 12—2 
 
180 Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus [ch. 
 
 all things is declared to be fire, on the strength of the statement 
 in Deuteronomy that " God is a burning and consuming fire^." 
 This Infinite or Boundless Power, as he calls it, Simon held to 
 be not simple but two-fold, having two natures, a hidden and a 
 manifold one, so intermingled that " the hidden one is concealed 
 in the manifest, and the manifest comes into being from the 
 hidden one," by which, as we shall see later, he meant male and 
 female. The manifest, again, can be perceived by the senses 
 like things with an actual existence, while the hidden nature 
 can only be apprehended by the mind, or in other words imagined. 
 In all this he seems at first sight to be echoing, as Hippolytus 
 points out^, the notions of Plato upon the Intelligible {t6 
 vorjTov) and the Sensible (to ala-drjrov), those of Aristotle on 
 Power or Potentiality {SvvafMi^) and Actual Existence (evipyeia), 
 and, as Hippolytus does not say, those of Philo upon the First 
 Cause and the Logos'. The Cosmos or ordered universe came 
 into being, Simon goes on to say, from the unbegotten or self- 
 existent fire, by means of six " Roots " called respectively 
 Mind (Not)?) and Thought ("EvvoiaY, Voice (^avi]) and Name 
 ("Ovo/iia), Reason (AoYicr/id?) andDesire ('Ei^dv/j.rjai,';). Although 
 it is not here formally stated, it is noteworthy that this is a 
 system of couples or pairs, the name of one of each of the above 
 pairs being masculine and the other feminine^. In these six, 
 
 1 Deut. iv. 24. 
 
 ' Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk vi. c. 1, § 9, p. 247, Cruice. 
 
 ^ As when he says that the Logos is not God, but his reflection. See 
 PhUo, de Somn. i. 41 (p. 656 of Mangey). " Just as those who cannot gaze 
 upon the sun may yet gaze upon a reflection of it." Cf. Hatch, H. L. p. 248. 
 
 * IrenaeuB and Epiphanius (where before quoted) both call this second 
 partner in the first pair of " Roots " "Evvoia. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk vi. 
 c. 1, § 13, p. 251, Cruice, has 'Knlvoia. Does this mean " after-thought " 
 or " second thought " as showing her posteriority to Nous ? At any rate 
 it is some indication that he is copying from a different source than that 
 of his predecessors. King (Gnostics and their Remains, 2nd ed. p. 61) would 
 translate 'Evdvixriais by " thought," while he calls 'Evvom " Intelligence." 
 The Abb6 Cruice translates 'Ev6viJ.r}(ns " Conceptio." It seems here to mean 
 Desire not in a fleshly but a mental sense. 
 
 * The names of 'Ovojun and 0mvfj are placed in the reverse order to the 
 others, inasmuch as in this pair the feminine comes first. This is curious 
 because in the same section they are compared to the Sun and Moon, th& 
 sex of which is transposed in several mythologies. 
 
vi] Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus 181 
 
 Simon imagined that the Boundless Power existed potentially, 
 but not actually, that is to say, that each of them represented 
 one particular aspect or quality under which the Supreme Being 
 might be considered, but had no existence apart from Him, 
 while it required the addition together of all the six to make 
 up His entire being. A similar conception seems to underlie 
 the Zoroastrian idea of the six Amshaspands, from which it is 
 likely enough that Simon copied this part of his system^- It is 
 here that we meet for the first time in Gnosticism with the idea 
 of emanation or the flowing-forth of the Divine nature, which 
 differs entirely from that of creation, whether e nihilo or from 
 pre-existing matter, inasmuch as the emanation still remains 
 connected with the parent source and never forms an entity 
 distinct from it^. 
 
 We see, then, that in Simon's system, the primal world was 
 a hebdomad or consisted of seven Powers, being the three pairs 
 of Roots enimierated above together with a seventh, their 
 source, in whom they were all summed up*. But after this, 
 and apparently created by it, is a second or intermediate world, 
 as to which the Great Announcement thus expresses itself : 
 
 1 The names of the Amshaspands of Zoroaster are, Vohu Mano, or Good 
 Mind, and Asha Vahiahta, or Truth ; Khshathra Yairya, or Right Law, 
 and Spenta Armaiti, or Wisdom ; Haurvetat, or Good Health, and Ameretat 
 or Immortality. The likeness between this and Simon's system has been 
 noticed by, among others, Harvey the editor of Iienaeus, in his Introduction 
 to that author, pp. Ixv sqq. For the resemblance between post-exiUc 
 Judaism and Zoroastrianism, see Cheyne, Jewish Religious Life, pp. 157, 
 210, 251, 257 sqq. But see p. 197, infra. 
 
 2 Emanation is well defined by MaUet (Culte de Neit a Sais, Paris, 1888, 
 pp. 212, 213) as " a perpetual flowing-forth, which does not imply any 
 effort, and which consequently neither exhausts nor even diminishes the 
 productive principle." Emanations, however, he goes on to say, become 
 weaker and less perfect the further they get from their first source. The 
 first mention I can find of the word is in Plutarch [de Is. et Os. o. xux.) 
 who says that the visible Cosmos is " the flowing forth {airoppor)) and 
 displayed image of Osiris." 
 
 ' Curiously enough, the author of the Clementine Homilies adopts this 
 notion for orthodoxy, when he makes St Peter (xvii. c. 9) declare that God 
 possesses six " extensions " having the nature of six infinites and that He 
 with them makes up the " mystery of the hebdomad." 
 
182 Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus [ch. 
 
 " Uato you therefore I say wtat I say, and write what I write. 
 The writing is this. There are two stocks of all the Aeons put 
 together, having neither beginning nor end, springing from one Root, 
 the which is Power-Silence, invisible, incomprehensible (dKaToXr/Trros)!. 
 Of which two stocks, one appears above, which is a great Power, the 
 Mind of the universes, which pervades all things, and is male : the 
 other [appears] below, a great Thought, is female, and gives birth to 
 all things. Thus, these, corresponding to one another 2, form a pair 
 (o-v^uyia), and show forth the Middle Space (8iao-Ti;/Aa), an incom- 
 prehensible air having neither beginning nor end. In this is the 
 Father who sustains (/Sao-ra^mv) all things and nourishes all those 
 things which have a beginning and end^. This is he who standeth, 
 hath stood, and shall stand*, being both a male and female power 
 after the likeness of the pre-existing Boundless Power*, which has 
 neither beginning nor end, but exists in Oneness (Moi/ott/s). For 
 the Thought which came forth from the power in Oneness became 
 two*. And each of them was one. For he, when he contained her 
 within himself, was alone, nor was he the first, although he existed 
 before, but having appeared from himself, a second came into being. 
 But he was not called Father before [Thought] had named him 
 Father. Just as, then, he drawing forth himself from himself 
 
 ^ I.e. " which cannot be grasped," " intangible," as in the Athanasian 
 Creed. 
 
 ^ dvTiaToixfa> " sct Over against each other." It seems to be a term 
 used in logic. 
 
 ^ This is not the Supreme Father, but the Logos or his representative in 
 the world succeeding his. It is with this being that Simon according to 
 the author of the Clementines {Horn. n. c. 24) identified himself. 
 
 ^ '0 cards, aras, trTrja-oficvos. This seems to be the expression which 
 the author of the Canonical Apocalypse is trying to reach in his fearful 
 solecism djro 6 av koI 6 ijv koi 6 €p)(6iifvos. See Revelation i. 4. 
 
 ^ So the Supreme Being of Simon is androgyne. 
 
 * The difficulty in deducing both male and female divinities from a 
 male or sexless Supreme being has led to some strange mythology. The 
 Egyptians cut the knot in an effective if coarse way. " Thus from one 
 god I became three gods," says the Egyptian deity " the Lord of the 
 Universe," in his account of the Creation. See Budge, " Papyrus of Nesi- 
 Amsu," and Egyptian Hieratic Papyri in the British Mitseum, pp. xiii, xiv 
 and 14, 15. Was the author of the Apophysis acquainted with this story ? 
 The Clementines make Simon's associates Egyptians or rather Alexandrians. 
 See Clem. Horn. Bk iv. 0. 6. 
 
vi] Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus 183 
 
 manifested to himself his own Thouglit, so the same Thought when 
 she appeared did not create him, but, beholding him, concealed the 
 Father, that is to say. Power, within herself, and [thus] there exists 
 a male-and-female {i.e. hermaphrodite) Power-and-Thought. For 
 Power does not in any way differ from Thought, they being one. 
 Without the things which are above is found Power ; without those 
 which are below. Thought. Thus, there is that, also, which appeared 
 from them, the which being one is found to be two, a male-and-female 
 containing the female within itself. This one is Mind in Thought ; 
 for they, being one when undivided (dxaipiaros) from one another, 
 are [yet] found to be Two^." 
 
 This statement seems at first to be merely an explanation 
 and recitation of what has been previously said as to the emana- 
 tion of the " Eoots " from the Boundless Power, and by no 
 means justifies the words of the Great Announcement in which 
 it is magniloquently proclaimed to be " the Book of the Show- 
 ing-forth of Voice and Name from the Thought of the Great 
 Boundless Power. Wherefore it will be sealed up and hidden 
 and veiled and will rest in the habitation wherein the root of the 
 worlds is established (6efj,eXi6(o)^." But when we examine the 
 words just quoted by the light of the other systems said to be 
 derived from Simon's, we see that they really indicate the belief 
 of the author in a succession of worlds, wherein every later or 
 lower one is a reflection, as in a glass, of that which was above 
 it^. These lower worlds, like the primal one, should each 
 contain three pairs of " Roots," emanating from one source 
 like rays from a lamp or other source of light. It also seems that 
 this source is, alike in the primal world and its successors, in 
 itself potentially both male and female, that is to say, the 
 female nature, which alone has the power of conception or 
 producing new beings, was originally concealed within the other 
 as a thought is concealed within the mind, and only becomes 
 
 1 Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk vi. c. 1, § 18, pp. 261, 262, Cruice. 
 
 2 Op. cit. Bk VI. 0. 1, § 9, p. 246, Cruice. 
 
 ' Am61ineau, Onosticisme Sgyptien, p. 39, makes this perfectly clear. 
 Cf. Ad. Eranok, " Le Gnosticisme ifigyptien " in Journal des Savants, AvrU, 
 1888, pp. 212, 213. Hatch {H.L. p. 205) points out that it is the doctrine 
 of " Philo and the Platonists." 
 
184 Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus [ch. 
 
 comprehensible when utterance is given to it. Hence each of 
 these Powers or, as Simon here calls them for the first time, 
 aeons, like the Supreme Being, has a double aspect. Seen from 
 below, that is to say, as it appears to the aeon which succeeds 
 it, it is female, that is to say, a source of being. To that which 
 is above it, or earlier in emanation, it is male, that is to say, it 
 is the cause of conception, and also the sustainer and director 
 at once of the conceiver and of that which she conceives^. 
 
 Why now did Simon, or whoever wrote under his name, use 
 such obscure and at first sight unintelligible terms for his 
 speculations on the nature of the Supreme Being and the origin 
 of the world ? Simply, it would seem, that he might reconcile 
 two things which like certain chemicals found themselves in 
 presence of each other without any affinity for combination. 
 These were the Mosaic Law which, since the Captivity, both 
 Jew and Samaritan held themselves bound to treat as divinely 
 inspired^, and the Greek " theological " ideas which then per- 
 vaded the whole civilized world and were at the time accepted 
 by all educated men who thought about such subjects in much 
 the same way as are in these days the conclusions of physical 
 science*. This forced him and others who attempted to found 
 a religion acceptable to both Jew and Greek, to use language 
 which could be interpreted in their own sense by either. His 
 Supreme Being is One, as Israel declared that her God was One, 
 but, by a not immodest metaphor, he contains within himself 
 
 1 As will be seen later, the post-Christian Gnostics of the nnd cent, 
 generally attributed the existence of evil to the escape of one of the syzygies 
 from the control of her spouse and her consequent fall into matter. See 
 Chapter VIII, infra. 
 
 2 The excessive reverence of the Samaritans for the Pentateuch is well 
 brought out by Cowley in the Encyc. Bihl. s.v. Samaritans. He says it was 
 the only part of the Jewish books which they took over and held sacred 
 (col. 4260). Simon in the Oreat Announcement thought it necessary to 
 " explain " each of the Five Books separately. See Hippolytus, op. cit. 
 Bk VI. c. 1, §§ 15, 16, pp. 253-258, Cruice. 
 
 2 Throughout all the philosophical and religious literature of the time, 
 it seems to have been sufficient to quote " Orpheus and the other theolo- 
 gists " to command a hearing. See Clement of Alexandria, passim, for 
 examples. 
 
VI j Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magiis 185 
 
 the power of becoming both male and female, as Adonis, or Attis, 
 or Dionysos, or, to take the mythological person he most 
 resembles, the Orphic Phanes, was both male and females- 
 Simon also goes out of his way to affirm that his first syzygy or 
 pair. Mind and Thought, are in the second world called Heaven 
 and Earth, and thus forms a pretty close parallel to the Orphic 
 couple Uranos and Ge^. But he is careful to mix with this 
 explanations which shall also accord with the account of 
 creation given in the Book of Genesis. He who standeth, hath 
 stood, and will stand, i.e. the Eternal Being who is not liable 
 to fall or corruption, and is the " Father " of the " Middle 
 Space " is no less the " I am that I am " of Exodus than the 
 Father of gods and men of Homer. So, too, his companion 
 from the beginning, called Silence, because she has no inde- 
 pendent existence until he gives utterance to his thought, 
 resembles the Nux or Night of Orpheus from whom Phanes 
 begot Heaven and Earth ; but she is also, as Simon expressly 
 says, the Spirit of God which moved over the face of the waters 
 in the Mosaic account of the Creation*. If, again, Simon makes 
 his first pair of " Eoots " in the second world Heaven and 
 Earth, his second pair, Voice and Name, he declares to be 
 equivalent to the Sun and Moon, and his third, Reason and 
 Desire, to Air and Water*. This, he expressly says, is because 
 the Book of Genesis says that three clear days elapsed before 
 the Sim and Moon came into being, and these three " days " 
 are an allusion to the Boundless Power and the first pair Mind 
 and Thought*. To a much greater extent than Philo, therefore, 
 Simon uses the religious traditions of both Greeks and Hebrews 
 to give sanction to his own speculations. 
 
 The use of the word aeon, which our English Testament 
 translates " age " (saeculum) as the generic name of the six 
 Roots or Powers reflected in the second universe, seems also 
 to have pecuHar signification in this connection. Among the 
 
 1 See Chapter IV, p. 123, supra. 
 
 ^ See especially Fr. 239 in Abel's OrpUca. 
 
 2 Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk vi. c. 1, § 14, pp. 252, 253, Cruioe. 
 * Ibid. Bk n. c. 1, § 13, pp. 251, 252, Cruioe. 
 
 5 Ibid. loe. cit. Cf. Am61ineau, Gnost. Sg. p. 39. 
 
186 Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus [CH. 
 
 Greeks, Hesiod sang of a golden age, succeeded by others of 
 silver, of brass, of one unnamed metal, and finally one of iron ; 
 and the Orphics, working after their manner on older materials, 
 assigned the first of these ages to their god Phanes, and the 
 others to Night, Uranos, Kronos, and Zeus in succession, 
 asserting that the last age would be that of Dionysos^. The 
 use of the word by Simon seems to show that he conceived his 
 emanations or " Roots " as succeeding one another and perhaps 
 depending from one another Uke the Unks of a chain. But 
 as he had already personified these emanations, we have the 
 curious result that he considered them both as persons — or, to 
 be more accurate, aspects of the Deity — ^and spaces of time. 
 Nor was this all. The great spread given to the Chaldaean 
 star-worship throughout the Bast by the events described in 
 Chapter III above, had caused the stars to be accepted by every 
 nation in the Hellenist world as the most convenient types of 
 divinity^. The planets, including in that phrase the Sim and 
 Moon, were all known by the names of the most important 
 gods in the various pantheons of all the nations of antiquity, 
 and were thought in some not very clearly defined way to be 
 identified with the divinities whose names they bore*. Even 
 before the time of Alexander, the Platonic cosmogony had made 
 of the stars and planets habitations where the souls of men 
 were supposed to rest on their way to mortal bodies* ; and 
 Philo, while admitting that the stars were the rulers of earthly 
 
 1 Abel's OrpUca, pp. 186, 254, 255. 
 
 ^ " The visible and generated Gods." So Alcmaeon of Crotona and 
 Xenoorates both call stars and planets gods. See Clem. Alex. Protrept, 
 c. VI. ; Plato, Timaeus, o. xv. The prophets of the Jews, indeed, blamed 
 their co-religionists for " worshipping the sun towards the east " as Ezekiel 
 saw them doing in the Temple, or for " serving all the host of heaven" as 
 Jeremiah says the inhabitants of Jerusalem did ; but theii- reproaches 
 make it plain that the bulk of the nation were in this respect like their 
 Gentile neighbours. 
 
 ^ So Clem. Alex. Strom. Bk vi. c. 13, says the worship of the sun, moon, 
 and stars was instituted, so that the nations might not become utterly 
 godless. 
 
 * See Bouch^-Leclercq, L'Astrologie grecque, Paris, 1899, p. 21, for 
 references. 
 
vi] Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus 187 
 
 tilings, could do no more than remind his readers that they 
 were not independent rulers, but only viceroys of Yahweh^. 
 Hence Simon, when he called three of his aeons by the names of 
 Earth, Sun, and Moon, made them places or worlds as well as 
 persons and periods of time. It was an extraordinary complica- 
 tion of ideas from which none of the Gnostics who followed him 
 succeeded in entirely freeing themselves*. 
 
 To return, however, to Simon's system of emanations. 
 Have we any right to consider that the Heaven and Earth, Sun 
 and Moon, and Water and Air, with which he peopled his second 
 universe, were those which are perceptible by our senses, or did 
 he regard them as existing above our ken and as merely the 
 patterns which were in their turn reflected into our universe ? 
 Hippolytus unfortunately breaks off his quotations from the 
 Great Announcement at this point, and his own report of Simon's 
 doctrines is neither lucid nor implicitly to be trusted. Irenaeus, 
 however, writing half a century before Hippolytus, declares 
 that it was the female aeon Thought, whom we have seen is 
 equivalent in the second or intermediate world to Ge or Earth, 
 " who, comprehending the wish of the Father, descended to 
 the lower regions, and there produced angels and the lower 
 authorities {al KaTco i^ova-'iai) who made the universe {ic6<t^io<;Y.'" 
 If we believe, as seems most probable, that Simon carried his 
 theory of the lower world being a reflection of the upper through- 
 out all existing things, it follows that the second world, contain- 
 ing as we have seen Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon, and 
 
 ^ Philo, de Monarch. Bk I. c. 1. 
 
 ^ Except perhaps Marcion. But we have so little literatiire remaining 
 which can with any certainty be attributed to the Marcionites that we 
 cannot speak with any certainty as to his phraseology. In his treatise 
 against the Valentinians (c. xx.) TertuUian gibes at that sect for " thinking 
 the different heavens intelligent, and for making angels of them." 
 
 3 Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 16, § 2, p. 192, Harvey. Theodoret, Haer. Fab. 
 Bk I. c. 5, echoes the statement, and Hippolytus, Bk vi. c. 1, § 19, p. 263, 
 Cruice, gives what is probably the original Greek of Irenaeus. Hatch, 
 H. L. pp. 185, 186, points out that PhUo held not only that the angels 
 were God's instruments in making the worlds, but the patterns after which 
 they were made. Cf. Philo, de Monarch. Bk n. c. 6. 
 
188 Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus [CH. 
 
 Air and Water together with " the Father " in whom the six 
 were contained, was the pattern or paradigmatic world which 
 was reflected in the lower universe to which we belong. In this 
 case it is probable that the six " Boots " again changed their 
 generic name, and after having been called powers (8wi/a/i6t?) 
 in the primal world, and aeons in the second, were now desig- 
 nated angels and authorities. If this conjecture is right, we 
 have here a parallel to the chain of being fabled by the Orphics 
 which, beginning with the gods, descended through demi-gods, 
 heroes, and demons down to men. An accurate knowledge of the 
 difierent ranks of this supramundane hierarchy was, as has been 
 said, of great importance for magical purposes such as exorcism, 
 and its description occupied a great part of the Enochian 
 literature^. 
 
 Simon, however, had still to account for the creation of man 
 and the part which he played in the scheme of the universe. 
 His reverence for Moses prevented him from directly contra- 
 dicting the statement in Genesis that Yahweh " formed man out 
 of the dust of the ground," and this he echoes in the words of 
 the Septuagint, which speaks of God moulding (eVXao-e) man 
 by " taking dust (xoO?) from the Earth (Fij)." The part here 
 played by the Yahweh of Genesis he transfers to " the Father " 
 of his second or intermediate world ^; and as Genesis says that 
 God made man in his own image, he is also compelled to 
 say that man was originally made in the likeness of the Father. 
 But " the Father " of Simon's intermediate world was, as we 
 have seen, an hermaphrodite, or rather a male containing a 
 female power within himself. Hence man was originally both 
 male and female, or in the words of the Great Announcement 
 
 ^ These " orders " of supernatural beings passed into orthodox Chris- 
 tianity. Cf. the fiT-f Bpovoi, fiT-f KvpLoTfjTes, fiVf dpxat, fiTf e^ovcriai of 
 Coloss. i. 16, whence the " Thrones, Dominations, Virtues, Princedoms, 
 Powers " of Milton. The functions of all these different orders axe set out 
 by Dionysius the Areopagite so-called, and present a certain likeness to 
 Simon's ideas as given in the text. See Lupton in Diet. Christian Biog. 
 s.v. Dionysius. 
 
 " That is Zeus, " Father of Gods and Men " ; not the Juppiter 
 Optimus Maximus of later philosophy. 
 
 ' Possibly an allusion to the " rib " story of Genesis. 
 
vi] Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus 189 
 
 " not simple, but double according to image and resemblance^," 
 But this was clearly not the man of this world as we know him, 
 but the Heavenly or Archetypal Man who remained in the world 
 above ours, and was, as Philo held, a man-woman^. How did 
 Simon account for the separation of the sexes, and its influence 
 upon subsequent humanity ? 
 
 The answer to this question involves Simon's ideas as to 
 the cause of evil in this world and the means by which man can 
 escape from it. Man was, as we have seen, formed out of dust, 
 but to make him, in the words of Genesis, " a living soul," it 
 was necessary that he should be animated by the breath 
 (irvevfjia) of the Divinity. So efficiently was this done that 
 everyone, as Simon said, has within him potentially but not 
 in act, " that which is blessed and incorruptible," that is to 
 say, " He who standeth, hath stood and will stand," or in 
 other words the " Father " of the intermediate world. " He 
 it is," he goes on to say, " who stood above in the Unbegotten 
 Power, who stands below, coming into being by reflection (eV 
 elKovi) in the rush of the waters, and will stand above by the 
 side of the blessed and Unbegotten Power if he should receive 
 reflection or image [eav i^eiKoviad^)^." For " there are three 
 who stand, and unless there are three aeons that stand, the 
 unbegotten one, who according to them [Qy. the Hebrews ?] 
 was borne over the face of the water, is not in her proper place 
 in the universe {ov Koa^fielTai.)^. The which unbegotten one is 
 fashioned by resemblance as perfect and heavenly, but becomes, 
 in regard to Thought alone, inferior to the Unbegotten Power." 
 This Unbegotten Power, he goes on to say in words that remind 
 one of several different myths^, is the " One power cloven in twain 
 
 ^ ov;^ dirKovv, ahXa biirKovv Kar eiKova Kal Ka6^ ofiolaxriv. Hippolytus, 
 Bk VI. c. 1, § 14, p. 253, Cruioe. 
 
 ^ So Philo, Legg. Allegor. in. p. 1089, Mangey; Quis rer. divin. 
 p. 503 id. Cf. DoUinger, Jud. und Heid. Eng. ed. n. p. 430. 
 
 3 Hippolytus, Bk vi. c. 1, § 17, p. 259, Cruice. 
 
 * See last note. 
 
 ^ So lacchos is at once the father, son, and spouse of Persephone. 
 Horus is by his identification with Osiris in Mke manner the son, spouse 
 and brother of Isis. The seeking and finding seems to be an allusion to 
 this last pair. Cf. P.S.B.A. 1914, p. 93. 
 
190 Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus [oh. 
 
 above and below, who gives birth to itself, increases itself, seeks 
 itself, finds itself, being its own mother, its own father, its own 
 sister, its own spouse {av^vyo^), its own daughter, its own son, a 
 mother- father [and is] one, being the root of all the universes^." 
 It was the Thought of this Power who was charged with bringing 
 the Divine Spark to this world ; but apparently, while she was 
 brooding over the face of the waters, she was seized by the 
 angels and authorities whom she had produced, " through 
 motives of jealousy, because they were unwilling to be looked 
 upon as the progeny of any other being^." These words are 
 put into the mouth of Simon by Irenaeus, who goes on to say 
 that Thought was thus prevented from returning to the Father 
 and was shut up in a human body. At this point, the account 
 of Irenaeus agrees with that of the Philosophumena which 
 narrates that (according to Simon) the world-making angels 
 caused Thought (Ennoia) to enter one body after another, 
 including that of Helen of Troy {causa teterrima belli), until she 
 finally entered into the body of Simon's companion Helena 
 whom he found in a brothel at Tyre*- Hippolytus says, 
 however, that Simon made up this part of the story out of 
 shame as regards his disciples* in order to explain his company- 
 ing with Helena, and it may be noticed that he nowhere quotes 
 the Great Announcement in its support*. Epiphanius, who seems 
 
 ^ Hippolytus, Bk ve. o. 1, § 17, p. 259, Cniice. For the yuijiT/p, narrip 
 of the text it is necessary to read iMrjTpondTap unless we are to believe 
 that the author is here repeating without rhyme or reason the state- 
 ment already made in the same sentence that the power he is describing 
 is its own mother and its own father. The expression luiTpmrarmp is 
 found in an address to Zeus attributed to Orpheus and quoted by Clement 
 of Alexandria, Strmn. Bk v. c. 14. d. Ergs. 238, 239 of Abel's Orphica. He 
 remarks concerning it that, by this prfrponaruip, Orpheus meant not only 
 birth fiom the Mi) ciV, but also " gave occasion to those who bring in the 
 emanations and perhaps imagine a spouse of God," — ^which gives some 
 coloiu: to the surmise that Clement may have been acquainted with Simon's 
 writings. 
 
 2 Irenaeus, Bk i. c. 16, § 2, p. 192, Harvey. A similar motive was 
 assigned by the Or'phics for the murder of the infant Dionysos by the Titans. 
 
 ' Hippolytus, Bk r. c. 16, § 19, pp. 263, 264, Cruice. 
 
 * Toi/f pa6r)Tas al&ovfievos toxjtov tov fivdov tirXaaev, loc. eit. 
 
 ' See ibid., p. 264, Cruice. 
 
vi] Pre-Christian Ghiostics: Simon Magus 191 
 
 to have used the same documents as Irenaeus, gives a different 
 reason for the conduct of the world-making angels from that of 
 Irenaeus, and makes out that they were seduced by the beauty of 
 "Epinoia," as he calls Ennoia or Thought, the female aeon who 
 had come down, and detained her below out of sensual desire^ 
 Both Irenaeus and Epiphanius are agreed that Simon in some 
 way " redeemed " Helena, although they do not say in what 
 way, and Hippolytus declares that Simon having purified 
 Helena, in like manner brought salvation to men by his own 
 discernment^. Why Simon should thus have power of salvation 
 he does not explain directly, but he, Irenaeus, and Epiphanius 
 alike tell us, by what seems to be a wilful or unconscious 
 misinterpretation of the account in the New Testament*, that 
 Simon gave himself out as the Supreme God, who, seeing that 
 the angels mismanaged this world from their desire for rule, 
 came here to put it right and descended through the different 
 worlds, changing his shape in each to accord with that of the 
 rulers therein, until he appeared here as man, " although he was 
 not a man*." Hippolytus further says, as does Irenaeus, that 
 
 ^ Epiphanius, op. cit. Bk i., Haer. xxi. c. 11 (p. 125 of vol. n. pt i. of 
 Oehler). Probably this idea is a mere echo of the story in Genesis vi. 2, 
 of the " sons of God " being captivated by the " daughters of men," which 
 is much insisted on in the Enochian literature. Of. Oumont, Rech&rches 
 sur le Manichiisme; La Seduction des Archontes or Chapter XIII, infra for 
 later elaborations of the legend. 
 
 ^ Tfjv Se ^"EXevrjv XvTpaxTiifjLevos, ovras to7s dvdpa>7rots (raTrjpiav TrapifTxe 
 8ia T-ijs Ihlas iTriyvaxreais. See note 3 p. 190, SUpra. The iniyvatris of the 
 text seems to indicate that Simon discovered the way of salvation not by 
 any revelation from a higher power, but by his own intelligence and 
 examination. Cf. what he says (Hippoljrtus, Phil. Bk VL c. 16, p. 256, 
 Cruioe) about the knowledge of Gentile writings being sufficient for the 
 €77iyv(0G'is Tav oKtav. 
 
 ^ Acts viii. 9, 10, only says that Simon bewitched the people of Samaria, 
 giving himself out to be some great one (Xiywv eivaL nva iavrov piyav) ; 
 and that it was the people who said of him : " This man is the so-called 
 great power of God " {Ovtos itrnv rj hivapis Tov 6eov fj Kakovp.4vrj jupydXi;). 
 He was therefore only in the same position as Paul and Barnabas 
 in Phrygia when they were hailed by the populace as Zeus and Hermes 
 respectively. Cf. Acts xiv. 12. 
 
 * Irenaeus, Bk i. c. 16, § 2, p. 193, Harvey ; Epiphanius as in n. 1 
 supra. This episode of the Saviour changing his form so as not to be 
 
192 Fre-Chi'istian Gnostics: Simon Magus [ch. 
 
 Simon was alleged " to suffer in Judaea in the likeness of Jesus, 
 although in appearance only, and to have appeared to the Jews 
 as Son, to the Samaritans as Father, and to the other nations as 
 the Holy Spirit^." His death he accounts for by the story, 
 found nowhere else in post-Christian literature, that at some 
 place, the name of which has slipped out of the text of the 
 Philosophumena, Simon 
 
 " taught sitting under a plane-tree. Moreover, exposure being at 
 hand through long delay, he said that if he were buried aUve he would 
 rise again the third day. And a grave having been dug by his orders 
 by his disciples, he directed that he should be buried. His disciples 
 did what he commanded, but he remained there to this day. For he 
 was not Christ^." 
 
 In all this account, Hippolytus gives an entirely different 
 account from that of the Clementines, with the manifest purpose 
 of holding Simon up to obloquy as one of the " false Christs " 
 predicted in the New Testament. It is obvious also that, so 
 far from giving us Simon's pre-Christian teaching, he is here 
 
 recognized by the powers of the heavens through which he passes on his 
 way to earth, is a favovirite one in the post-Christian Apocryphal literature. 
 Cf . R. H. CJhailes, The Ascension of Isaiah, p. 62. In the Pistis Sophia (for 
 which see Chapter X, infra), Jesus in like manner changes His appearance in 
 each heaven on His descent to earth. When He returns in His proper shape 
 the spirits in every " place " into which He enters fling themselves on their 
 faces and cry : " How did the Lord of the Universe change himself, so that 
 we knew him not ? " : see p. 21 Copt, et al. The " Docetic " theory which 
 made the earthly body of Jesus a phantasm or illusion appears again in 
 the heresy of the Valentinians and elsewhere. See Chapter IX, infra. 
 
 * Hippoljrtus, loc. cit. p. 265, Cruice. 
 
 ^ Ibid. § 20, p. 267, Cruice. The story here told is in direct con- 
 tradiction to the received tradition of the Church, that Simon met his 
 death when attempting to fly heavenward before the Emperor Nero. That 
 given in the text seems to be taken from the doings of some Indian Yogi, 
 and the idea of Simon teaching " sitting under a plane tree " is distinctly 
 Buddhistic. It is mentioned by no other writer than Hippolytus ; but 
 Justin Martyr {First Apolog. c. 26) says that he persuaded his followers that 
 he would never die, and that some in Justin's day still beheved this. A 
 sort of echo of it appears in the Acts of Peter and Paul, where it is said that 
 the body of Simon after being dashed to pieces was kept by the Emperor 
 Nero for three days " to see whether he would rise again." 
 
vi] Pre-Christian Ghfiostics: Simon Magus 193 
 
 handing down a garbled account of some tradition of the 
 heresiarch's disciples after his death. 
 
 That the stories told by the Fathers, except when they are 
 quoting immediately from the Great Announcement, are not a 
 trustworthy account of Simon's doctrines is evident from their 
 manifest inconsistency. If Simon's disciples believed, as Hip- 
 polytus says, in the lawfulness of promiscuous intercourse, why 
 should he feel called upon to justify to them by an artifice his 
 connection with Helena ? If, too, Simon, or the Supreme 
 Being in his likeness, came down from the highest heaven to 
 earth for the sake of redeeming his spouse Epinoia there held 
 captive, why did he not return with her when recovered, and 
 for what purpose did he simulate death in Judaea ? Nor is 
 there any plausible reason assigned for the angels' detention 
 of Epinoia on earth by Hippolytus, which he attributes, Uke 
 Irenaeus before him, to jealousy and the desire for ride, any 
 more than by Epiphanius, who will have it to be caused 
 by their concupiscence — a story probably derived from the 
 account of the Watchers in the Book of Enoch. Hippolytus 
 makes Epiuoia come to earth to estabhsh, instead of taking 
 away, the rule of the angels, who were by his account her own 
 progeny ; and if the angels were, as Epiphanius says, inflamed 
 with love for her, the last thing they would be hkely to "do 
 would be to transform her out of her first and heavenly shape, 
 and finally place her in a brothel — as they are said to have 
 done with Helena, Simon's mistress. 
 
 The key to Simon's theory on the connexion between the 
 salvation of mankind and its division into sexes is probably 
 to be found in a paragraph in the Philosophumena in which 
 Hippolytus seems to quote directly from the Great Announce- 
 ment : 
 
 " And because," he says, " the beginning of the generation of 
 things which are begotten^ is from fire, he [Simon] devises (KaTavoci) 
 a certain similar figure. Generation of all such things exists, [and] 
 the beginning of the desire of generation comes from fire. So, for 
 example, to desire changeable generation is called being inflamed 
 
 ^ dno TTvpbs t) ipxv '"'7^ yeveceas fori, tS>v yevvanevtov. 
 L. 13 
 
194 Pre-Christian Onostics: Simon Magus [CH. 
 
 with. love. But tte fire, wticli is one, undergoes two changes. In 
 the man," he says, " the blood which is hot and yellow as typifying 
 fire is changed into seed ; but in the woman, the self-same blood is 
 changed into milk^. And the [result of the ?] change of the masculine 
 blood is begetting ; but the [result of the ?] change of the feminine, 
 the nourishment of that which is begotten 2. This," he says, "is the 
 flaming sword turning both ways to guard the way to the Tree of 
 Life. For the blood turns into seed and milk, and that power 
 becomes [at once] mother and father of the things which are born, 
 and the increase of those which are nursed, having no need of any 
 external help and being sufficient unto itself. The Tree of Life," he 
 says, " is guarded by the flaming sword turning both ways, as we have 
 said, [and] the seventh power which contains all things, and which 
 is stored up in the six powers, [comes forth ?] from the sword. For, 
 if the flaming sword did not turn both ways, that beautiful tree would 
 be corrupted and destroyed. But if the Word which is stored up 
 potentially in them (the six powers), being the lord of the proper 
 place, is turned into seed and milk, withia it is born the Word of 
 souls, beginning from the smallest spark, which will be magnified 
 and will increase and will become a boundless power, unchangeable 
 in the unchanging aeon, and it is born no more until [it reaches ?] 
 the boundless aeon'." 
 
 ^ Clement of Alexandria (Potedagogua, Bk i. o. 6) says practically the 
 same thing. 
 
 ^ Kal yivirai rj rov appevos TpOTrrj, yivfo-ii- rj Se rijs drjXeias fpoirij, Tpo<j)fi 
 Tov yevvcapevto. Note the curious jingle between t/dottij and Tpo<|)i), ■ye'veo-is 
 and yepvcofievco, 
 
 3 Hippolytus, Bk vi. 0. 1, § 17, pp. 259, 260, Cruioe. That this 
 refers to the conjunction of man with his twin-spul or affinity is certain 
 from Hippolytus' former quotation from the Apophasis, that man was 
 made by God ovx dirXovv, aWa ^mXovv Kar' eiKova Kal KaO^ 6jiolti>aiv not 
 single, but two-fold according to copy and resemblance " : and that he 
 wiU " perish with the world " unless he be made into the Ukeness of the 
 Spirit who was borne upon the face of the waters, and who was, like that 
 of which it was the reflection, androgyne (Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk vi. c. 1, 
 p. 253, Cruice). " But if he be made into this likeness,'' Hippolytus 
 continues, " and is born from an indivisible point as it is written in the 
 Apophasis, that which is small will become great. And that which is 
 great will exist in the boundless and incorruptible aeon, which will not be 
 born again." Besides the idea of the indivisible point, which we shall meet 
 with again in the Bruce Papyrus (for which see Chapter X, infra), it seems 
 
vi] Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus 195 
 
 The meaning of this very comphcated and confused imagery 
 — ^which we may be sure Hippolytus has purposely made as 
 obscure and ridiculous as possible — seems to be this. In the 
 two superior or heavenly worlds which we have called the primal 
 and the second, the " roots " are male and female after the 
 model of the Supreme Being. But this only means that the 
 female is the external manifestation of the male, within whom 
 she has at one time been contained. No thought of sex, as 
 we understand it, enters into their relations, and no progeny 
 follows from their conjugation, the lower world coming into 
 life after the pattern of the upper by an impidse which, although 
 due in the first instance to the male, is translated into action 
 by the female member of the first syzygy. But with our 
 universe and the appearance of man, a change in the system 
 takes place. Although our world, constituted after the heavenly 
 model, contains the three pairs. Heaven and Earth, Sun and 
 Moon, Air and Water, and is animated by the breath of Ufe 
 brought from above by Epinoia or Bnnoia, man is formed 
 from previously-existing matter and is therefore largely made 
 up of an element hostile or repugnant to God. Lest the Divine 
 spark within him should free itself from matter and return to 
 the world above, each human soul has been divided, as Plato 
 tells us in the Symposium'-, and the two parts placed in different 
 bodies so that the male is imperfect without the female and the 
 female without the male, and the soul can make no effort to 
 raise itself in the world of being until it meets and is conjoined 
 with its affinity. This is probably in Simon's view the device 
 
 evident that Simon was here teaching that those who find their twin-souls 
 will rise in the scale of being and thus escape the cycle of changing exis- 
 tences dreaded by the Orphics (see Chapter IV, av/pra). An explanation of 
 the metaphor of the flaming sword is suggested later. See note 3 on p. 67 
 of vol. It, infra. 
 
 1 Plato, Sympodum, cc. 17, 18. Diotima later on in the same Dialogue 
 says that it is an old story that those who are in love are seeking their 
 lost half. In one of the documents of the Pistia Sophia, it is said that 
 " the servants of the Sphere of Destiny " after maldng the soul of man, 
 divide it into two parts, and give one part to a man and another to a woman 
 who are then bound to come together (no matter how far apart they may 
 be) and to unite, when a new soul is the result (Pistis Sophia, p. 346, 
 Copt.). 
 
 13—2 
 
196 Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus [oh. 
 
 of the angels, who have brought it about, according to Hippo- 
 lytus, in order that Bpinoia, the mother of Ufe, may remain 
 longer in the world and therefore prolong their rule^. But they 
 are defeated by the Divine arrangement, which compels the 
 two parts of the soul, after having once entered upon the round 
 of mutable generation (^ fiera^Xrirr} yeveait), to change into one 
 body after another according to the Orphic theory of trans- 
 migration until each meets with its twin. Thus did the soul 
 of Helen of Troy pass from one body into another until in 
 the shape of Helena of Tyre it met with its own affinity in the 
 body of Simon. Then it became again bisexual after the image 
 of the boundless power to which it would again rise. Thus 
 must it be with all mankind until all the souls are thus dis- 
 entangled from matter^. According to Hippolytus, this event 
 is to coincide with the dehverance {\vai<;) of the world, which 
 seems to mean that it is to be freed from the rule of the angels. 
 Irenaeus and Epiphanius twist this into the assertion that it 
 is to be dissolved, while one of the later Gnostic documents 
 says that it is to be " caught up," that is to say, reabsorbed 
 by the world of which it is the image. But Hippolytus expressly 
 
 1 So in the Pistis Sophia (p. 37, Copt.), Jesus says that the angels bound 
 in the stars were, until His coming, in the habit of turning about and devour- 
 ing their own matter, from which the souls of men and other animals were 
 made, in order that their rule might endure the longer. 
 
 ^ Probably this is the meaning of the well-known saying of Jesus, 
 generally quoted as comiag from the Oospel according to the Egyptians, 
 in answer to Salome's enquiry as to the time of the coming of His 
 kingdom : "Orav to t^s altr)^vvT]S evdvfia TraTTfa-rjTe, Koi orav ysvrjrai to. 
 8vo ev, Koi TO e^o) as to etrcij; kol to appfv fi€Ta t^s 6i)KeiaSy o^t€ appev 
 oStc 6fi\v. " When ye tread under foot the garment of shame, 
 and when the two shall be one, and the outside as the inside, and the 
 male with the female, neither male nor female." See Hilgenfeld, N. T. 
 extra Canon, recept., Lipsiae, 1884, vol. iv. p. 44. " The outside as 
 the inside " may refer to the body and the rib which was in the Genesis 
 story taken out of it. So the Pislis Sophia (p. 378, Copt.) speaks of 
 ' ' the Light of Lights, the places of Truth and Goodness, the place of 
 the Holy of Holies, the place of the Holy of all Holies, the place in which 
 there is neither male nor female, nor shape, but Light everlasting, unspeak- 
 able." Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk v. c. 7, p. 146, Cruice, carrying this a step 
 further, speaks of heaven as a place " where there is neither male nor 
 female, but a new creature, a new man who is androgyne {appriv66r]\vs)." 
 
vi] Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus 197 
 
 includes this last doctrine among those invented by " those 
 who imitated the error " of Simon Magus, or in other words by 
 his successors^, and it need not therefore be here discussed. 
 Whence Simon derived the doctrine of which we get gUmpses 
 in the Great Announcement wiU probably remain in doubt until 
 we recover more fragments of that document. It appears 
 likely, however, that he drew from a number of sources. Even 
 in his day and after the wholesale depopulation of Samaria by 
 the Syrians, Egyptians, and Jews, there must have remained 
 many of the inhabitants who were lineal descendants of that 
 mixed Semitic and Persian stock who " feared the Lord and 
 served brazen images." Hence his speculations may well have 
 been influenced by the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism and 
 Mazdeism, and some have thought that they can see in them 
 traces of the primitive fire worship of the Magi^. Yet he 
 need not have gone so far, for, as we have seen, his idea of fire 
 as the origin of all things might well be taken from a too literal 
 interpretation of a passage in the Samaritan Pentateuch. So 
 with regard to the six " roots," although they may have been 
 mere copies of the Persian Amshaspands, they may also have 
 come from a Pythagorean or Orphic source, since Athamas the 
 Pythagorean is said to have taught that " there are four roots — 
 fire, water, air, earth ; for from these is the genesis of what is 
 produced," and a verse of Empedocles is preserved which 
 makes the same assertion^. The likeness of Simon's system 
 to Egyptian and Alexandrian teaching is even closer. In 
 ancient Egypt there was, as M. Maspero thinks, a well-defined 
 system of correspondences including three worlds, each of which 
 was a likeness or reflection of the preceding. At Hermopolis, 
 too, there was worshipped an ogdoad or family of four pairs of 
 gods and goddesses who on the same authority were merely 
 attributes of one higher deity*. So in the tract de Iside et 
 Osirid^, we are told that genesis or coming into being is the 
 image or reflection in matter of that which really exists, and 
 
 1 Hippolytus, Bk vr. c. 1, § 19, p. 266, Cruice ; Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 16, 
 § 2, p. 194, Harvey ; Epiphanius, Haer. xxi. o. 2, p. 124, Oehler. 
 
 2 Franck, Le Onost. Sg. p. 212. ' Clem. Alex. Strom, vt. c. 2. 
 ^ Maspero, M. Sgyptol. n. pp. 187 and 385. 
 
 ^ de Is. et Os. co. Lm. uv. and un. 
 
198 Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus [ch. 
 
 that Horus, who seems here to represent the perceptible world, 
 is the elKciiv or image of the vo7]t6<; Koa/jbo'i or ideal world, and 
 is the child of this last world and matter. After all, there is 
 little more in this than an extension of Plato's theory of ideas 
 which are the paradigms or patterns of perceptible things : but 
 as Simon, according to the Clementines^, had studied in Alex- 
 andria he may well have acquired such a notion either from 
 Plato's writings direct, or, as is more likely, from the Alexandrian 
 religion of Serapis and Isis as set forth in the tract in question. 
 Of the history of the Simonian sect, we know very little 
 more than has been said. The Fathers accuse the Simonians 
 of leading immoral lives, of teaching the advisability of pro- 
 miscuous intercourse, and of being addicted to magic^- Irenaeus 
 declares that they worshipped an image of Simon in the likeness 
 of Jupiter, and another of Helena in the shape of Athena', to 
 which Hippolytus adds that they were exceedingly angry if 
 any one ventured to call these statues either Simon or Helena 
 and instantly cast him forth of the sect as being ignorant of 
 their mysteries*. Eusebius — a very late witness — adds to this 
 that they worshipped these images with " prostrations and 
 incense and sacrifices and libations^," which taken with the 
 other statements seems to show that the Simonians, or perhaps 
 only the pre-Christian followers of Simon, really took part in 
 the worship of the Greek gods Zeus and Athena, possibly by 
 waj^ of complaisance with the Greek and Roman rulers of 
 Samaria, and that the likening of their statues to Simon and 
 Helena was only the patristic gloss on the fact. Epiphanius goes 
 further and attributes to them " mysteries of iniquity " and 
 secret and obscene rites, including the filthy parody of the 
 Eucharist depicted by the late J. K. Huysmans in his novel 
 of Ld,-Bas^. But this also was an accusation common to the 
 adherents and opponents of Christianity at the time he wrote. 
 
 1 Clem. Bam. n. c. 22. 
 
 2 Irenaeus, Bk I. o. 16, § 3, p. 194, Harvey; Hippolytus, op. cit. 
 Bk VI. 0. 1, § 20, p. 266, Cruice. 
 
 ' Irenaeus and Hippolytus where last quoted. 
 
 * Hippolytus where last quoted. 
 
 " Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. Bk n. o. 13. 
 
 « Epiph. Haer. xxi. c. 4 (p. 125, vol. n. pt I., Oehler). 
 
vi] Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus 199 
 
 He also says that their sacrifices were offered to " the Father 
 of the Universes " (twv oXwv) through the rulers and authorities^, 
 and that they thought that the God of the Jews was one of the 
 angels in this lower universe who created man and divided the 
 nations among them by lot^, an idea of which there is a trace 
 m the Book of DanieP. But it is plain that Epiphanius, in his 
 desire to prove that Simon is the parent of all subsequent 
 heresy, is here mixing together the opinions of different Gnostic 
 sects with a result inconsistent even in his own eyes. That the 
 later Simonians had secret rites after the manner of those 
 described by Lucian in the case of Alexander of Abonoteichos* 
 is likely enough, but rests on no real proofs. 
 
 Of the extent and persistence of the religion set on foot by 
 Simon we have some few indications, although these, too, hardly 
 agree with one another. Irenaeus declares that he was succeeded 
 in the leadership of the sect by Menander®, another Samaritan, 
 and this is confirmed by Epiphanius, Philaster, and all the 
 lesser writers on heresy down to and including Eusebius''. 
 Although there seems nothing new in the doctrine which they 
 assign to Menander, it is very probable that, after Simon's 
 death, the tenets of the sect underwent a good deal of modifica- 
 tion. According to Theodoret, the Simonians spread chiefly in 
 Syria, Phrygia, and Rome^. Justin Martyr, writing in the reigil^ 
 of Antoninus Pius, speaks of their school as still existing ap- 
 parently in Rome^. Origen, in the following reign, says indeed 
 
 ^ See last note. 
 
 2 Epiph. Haer. xxrv. o. 1, p. 145, Oehler. It is here attributed to 
 Basilides, but Epiphanius has before said that this last borrowed his ideas 
 from " Simon and Satornilus." 
 
 3 Dan. X. 13. 
 
 * Lucian, PsevdomarUis, passim. 
 
 * Epiphanius says that Simon taught none could be saved unless he 
 learned [Simon's] system of initiation (iivaraycoyia). See Epiph. Haer. 
 XXI. c. 4, p. 127, Oehler. 
 
 ° Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 17, p. 195, Harvey. 
 
 ' Epiph. Haer. xxn. p. 133, Oehler ; Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. Bk m. c. 26. 
 Of. Justin Martyr, First Apol. c. 26. Schmiedel, s.v. Simon Magus in 
 Encyc. Bihl., says the exact contrary — a curious sUp. 
 
 8 Theodoret, Haer. Fab. I. 1. 
 
 ' See note 7 supra. 
 
200 Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus [CH 
 
 in his tract against Celsus that there were no Simonians to be 
 found anywhere throughout the world^ ; but he was probably 
 mistaken in this, as Busebius in the reign of Constantine speaks 
 of them as still numerous, although forced to hide themselves^. 
 After this, and so soon as the Church, now triumphant, began 
 in her turn to persecute, they no doubt either became converted 
 to Christianity or joined other sects. 
 
 In these matters, as in many others concerning the Gnostics, 
 the Fathers of the Church were badly informed. The Gnostic 
 indifference to outward forms of religion made it very easy for 
 any body of Gnostics to conceal themselves in time of persecu- 
 tion*, and thus to resist in the most practical way any attempt 
 to estimate their true strength, or the relations of the different 
 sects to one another. Gnosticism was, as the Church was to find 
 out later, a hydra, the heads of which when cut off renewed 
 themselves with amazing rapidity. Moreover, the very essence 
 of Gnosticism was secrecy for all but the initiated, and if we may 
 judge from the words of the Great Announcement quoted above, 
 the Simonians took abundant care when they committed any of 
 their doctrines to writing that the result should be unintelligible 
 without a good deal of previous instruction. But if the fragments 
 quoted are, as seems fairly certain, the work either of Simon 
 Magus himself or of some prominent and early member of his 
 school, the Fathers were abundantly justified in regarding him 
 as the source of all subsequent Gnosticism. The syncretic 
 religion which they unfold seems to have been admirably 
 adapted to catch those " barbarian " enquirers, of whom there 
 were evidently many in the first years of our era, who were 
 trying by might and main to reconcile the traditions of Judaism 
 with the Greek learning and culture for the first time brought 
 within their reach. The system of terribly forced interpreta- 
 tion of the Jewish scriptures employed by the Simonians was 
 
 ^ Origen, cont. Cdsus, Bk vi. o. 11. 
 
 2 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. Bk n. o. 13. 
 
 3 Tertullian, Scorpiace, o. 1. Eusebius, H. E. Bk n. o. 1, says, speaking 
 of his own times, that those who follow Simon's most scoundrelly , 
 {ijLcapojTdrriv) heresy were baptized into the Church, and kept their own 
 doctrines in secret till detected and expelled. Of. Origen, c. Oels. Bk vi. 
 c. 11. 
 
vi] Pre-Christian G-nostics: Simon Magus 201 
 
 probably their own invention, and would certainly never have 
 passed muster in a community possessed of a modicum of 
 literary sense^ ; yet it enabled them, as has been said, to turn 
 their backs upon the plain meaning of the books of the Old 
 Testament. By their doctrine of emanation, whether derived 
 from Persian sources or not, they contrived, perhaps for the 
 first time, to bridge the huge gulf fixed by the philosophy and 
 physics of the time between their Supreme Being and the gross 
 matter which was thought to exist independently of and in 
 opposition to him ; while their scheme of redemption, like that 
 of the Orphics from whom they apparently borrowed, went far, 
 as they boasted, to rob death of its terrors. 
 
 These features we find reproduced in the teachings of nearly 
 every later sect and school into which we shall have to enquire, 
 and although our information as to their doctrines is not exact 
 enough to enable us to determine the extent of the obligations 
 of all of them to the teaching of Simon, the chances are that in 
 every case there was a more or less conscious borrowing. Nor 
 did the influence of the Samaritan magus cease with the sup- 
 pression of the many heresies which the Fathers declared to 
 be inspired by him. His speculations as to the succession 
 of heavens and of orders of heavenly beings passed into the 
 teaching of the Church^ and obtained too £rm a footing there 
 to be dislodged until the German Reformation. The memory 
 of them extended even beyond its pale, and while, in the viith 
 century of our era, they came to inspire such cosmology as is 
 taught in the Koran, the system of Sephiroth or successive 
 
 ^ It was of course quite different from the Cabalistic methods, ridiculous 
 as those were, of the Essenes and other Jews, from the acrostics of the 
 Orphics, and from the allegories of Philo. With a touching belief in the 
 verbal inspiration of the Pentateuch, Simon and his followers claimed that 
 every word of it must be true and a revelation even when transferred into 
 another context. Thus they claimed to teach obstetrics from geographical 
 phrases. The only modern parallel is to be found among the Puritans of 
 our own Civil War, who, as Sir Walter Scott wrote, wore accustomed to 
 pervert the language of Scripture by adapting it to modern events, and 
 kept a Bible lying on the Table of the House for reference as to the better 
 conduct of its business. 
 
 2 See J. Turmel, " L'Ang61ologie dcpuis le faux Denys I'Arfiopagite," 
 Bev. d'Eist. ef Litt. Bel. Paris, t. nr. No. 3 (1898), pp. 219 sqq. 
 
202 Pre-Christian Gnostics: Simon Magus [ch.vi 
 
 emanations of the Deity, which underlies the farrago of mystical 
 nonsense called in the Middle Ages the Cabala of the Jews,, is 
 directly derived from them. It may even be said that the 
 influence of Simon's doctrines is not even now extinct in Europe, 
 for in the writings of Swedenborg, which still find exponents, 
 many of his ideas seem to be revived. 
 
 That Simon's system as described in the Great Announce- 
 ment was the residt either of deep philosophic speculation or 
 of original thought can hardly be said. Its one novel feature 
 was the rather clumsy fusion of the Orphic cosmogony with 
 the Mosaic account of creation, which reads like a parody on 
 Philo's well-thought-out doctrine. Philo was born, apparently, 
 about 25 B.C., and was therefore in all probability a few years 
 older than Simon, so that such a parody is not altogether 
 impossible. One of the main differences between the two 
 systems is that to the asceticism of Philo and the Essenes Simon 
 opposed, not perhaps a recommendation to Ucence, but a 
 theory making the union of the sexes part of the scheme for 
 the redemption of mankind. By so doing, he probably made 
 a much stronger appeal to Samaritans and Jews alike than did 
 the strict celibacy demanded by Orphics, Essenes, and the other 
 pre-Christian Gnostics. It is probable also that he included in 
 his propaganda some sort of thaumaturgy or wonder-working 
 of the kind employed, according to Lucian, by Alexander of 
 Abonoteichos and, according to Irenaeus, by the Jewish im- 
 postor Marcus. Although the stories about this in the Clemen- 
 tines are manifestly fiction, we cannot absolutely reject the 
 universal testimony of the Fathers that Simon and his followers 
 made use of incantations and magical arts, and these are 
 probably the " sorceries " with which the writer of the Acts 
 declares he bewitched the Samaritans. Charlatanism, or more 
 or less conscious imposture of this kind, was rife, as will be 
 presently shown, among the lower classes of Palestine in his 
 day, and would agree well with the bombastic language of the 
 extracts from the Great Announcement which Hippolytus has 
 preserved for us. 
 
 End of Vol. I.