The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire

Each street, each market-place was full of Zeus —

and I could hardly see for the smoke of sacrifice"; but other gods, Asklepios, Bendis, Anubis and others, have set up shrines and the altars of Zeus are cold – cold as Chrysippus.[⁶¹⁷] Altogether the dialogue is a masterpiece of humour and irony.

In another piece, we find Zeus and the other gods in assembly listening to an argument going on at Athens. An Epicurean, Damis, and a singularly feeble Stoic are debating whether gods exist, and whether they exercise any providence for men. Poseidon recommends the prompt use of a thunderbolt "to let them see," but Zeus reminds him that it is Destiny that really controls the thunderbolts – and, besides, "it would look as if we were frightened." So the argument goes on, and all the familiar proofs from divine judgments, regularity of sun and season, from Homer and the poets, from the consensus of mankind and oracles, are produced and refuted there and then, while the gods listen, till it becomes doubtful whether they do exist. The Stoic breaks down and runs away. "What are we to do?" asks Zeus. Hermes quotes a comic poet in Hamlet's vein – "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" – and what does it matter, if a few men are persuaded by Damis? we still have the majority – "most of the Greeks and all the barbarians."[⁶¹⁸]

In Zeus Cross-examined the process is carried further. Cyniscus questions Zeus, who is only too good-natured and falls into all the questioner's traps. He admits Destiny to be supreme, and gets entangled in a terrible net of problems about fore-knowledge, the value of sacrifice and of divination, divine wrath, sin and so forth, till he cries "You leave us nothing! – you seem to me to despise me, for sitting here and listening to you with a thunderbolt on my arm." "Hit me with it," says Cyniscus, "if it is so destined, – I shall have no quarrel with you for it, but with Clotho." At last Zeus rises and goes away and will answer no more. But perhaps, reflects Cyniscus, he has said enough, and it was "not destined for me to hear any more."[⁶¹⁹] The reader feels that Zeus has said more than enough.

From the old gods of Greece, we naturally turn to the newcomers. When Zeus summoned the gods to discuss the question of atheism at Athens, a good many more came than understood Greek, and it was they who had the best seats as they were made of solid gold – Bendis, Anubis, Attis and Mithras for example. Elsewhere Momus (who is a divine Lucian) complains to Zeus about them – "that Mithras with his Persian robe and tiara, who can't talk Greek, nor even understand when one drinks to him" – what is he doing in heaven? And then the dog-faced Egyptian in linen – who is he to bark at the gods? "Of course,", says Zeus, "Egyptian religion – yes! but all the same there are hidden meanings, and the uninitiated must not laugh at them." Still Zeus is provoked into issuing a decree – on second thoughts, he would not put it to the vote of the divine assembly, for he felt sure he would be outvoted. The decree enacts that, whereas heaven is crowded with polyglot aliens, till there is a great rise in the price of nectar, and the old and true gods are being crowded out of their supremacy, a committee of seven gods shall be appointed to sit on claims; further, that each god shall attend to his own function, Athene shall not heal nor Asklepios give oracles, etc.; that philosophers shall talk no more nonsense; and that the statues of deified men shall be replaced by those of Zeus, Hera, etc., the said men to be buried in the usual way.[⁶²⁰]

Lucian's Alexander

More than one reference has been made to new gods and new oracles. Lucian in his Alexander gives a merciless account of how such shrines were started. He came into personal contact – indeed into conflict – with Alexander, the founder of the oracle of Abonoteichos, and his story is full of detail. The man was a quack of the vulgarest type, and, yet by means of a tame snake and some other simple contrivances, he imposed himself upon the faith of a community. His renown spread far and wide. By recognizing other oracles he secured their support. Men came to him even from Rome. Through one of these devotees, he actually sent an oracle to Marcus Aurelius among the Marcomanni and Quadi, bidding him throw two lions with spices into the Danube, and there should be a great victory. This was done, Lucian says; the lions swam ashore on the farther side, and the victory fell to the Germans.[⁶²¹] Lucian himself trapped the prophet with some cunningly devised inquiries, which quite baffled god, prophet, snake and all. He also tried to detach an eminent adherent. Alexander realized what was going on, and Lucian got a guard of two soldiers from the governor of Cappadocia. Under their protection he went to see the prophet who had sent for him. The prophet, as he usually did with his followers, offered him his hand to kiss, and Lucian records with satisfaction that he bit the proffered hand and nearly lamed it. Thanks to his guard, he came away uninjured. Alexander, however, after this tried still more to compass his death, which is not surprising.[⁶²²] There is other evidence than Lucian's, though it is not unnaturally slight, for the existence of this remarkable impostor.

Lucian and Peregrinus

Lucian has one or two incidental references to Christians.[⁶²³] Alexander warned them, in company with the Epicureans, to keep away from his shrine. But we hear more of them in connexion with Proteus Peregrinus. Lucian is not greatly interested in them; he ridicules them as fools for being taken in by the impostor; for Peregrinus, he tells us, duped them with the greatest success. He became a prophet among them, a thiasarch, a ruler of the synagogue, everything in fact; he interpreted their books for them, and indeed wrote them a lot more; and they counted him a god and a lawgiver. "You know," Lucian explains, "they still worship that great man of theirs, who was put on a gibbet in Palestine, because he added this new mystery (teletèn) to human life." In his mocking way he gives some interesting evidence on the attention and care bestowed by Christians on those of their members who were thrown into prison. He details what was done by the foolish community for "their new Socrates" when Peregrinus was a prisoner. When he was released, Peregrinus started wandering again, living on Christian charity, till "he got into trouble with them, too, – he was caught eating forbidden meats."[⁶²⁴]

Lucian differs from Voltaire in having less purpose and no definite principles. He had no design to overthrow religion in favour of something else; it is merely that the absurdity of it provoked him, and he enjoyed saying aloud, and with all the vigour of reckless wit, that religious belief was silly. If the effect was scepticism, it was a scepticism founded, not on philosophy, but on the off-hand judgment of what is called common-sense. Hidden meanings and mysteries were to him nonsense. How little he was qualified to understand mysticism and religious enthusiasm, can be seen in his account of the self-immolation of Peregrinus on his pyre at the Olympian games[⁶²⁵] – perhaps the most insufficient thing he ever wrote, full of value as it is. Peregrinus was a wanderer among the religions of the age. Gellius – who often heard him at Athens, calls him a man gravis atque constans, and says he spoke much that was useful and honest. He quotes in his way a paragraph of a discourse on sin, which does not lack moral elevation.[⁶²⁶] To Lucian the man was a quack, an advertiser, a mountebank, who burnt himself to death merely to attract notice. Lucian says he witnessed the affair, and tells gaily how, among other jests, he imposed a pretty miracle of his own invention upon the credulous. He had taken no pains to understand the man – nor did he to understand either the religious temper in general, or the philosophic, or anything else. His habit of handling things easily and lightly did not help him to see what could not be taken in at a glance.

What then does Lucian make of human life? On this he says a great deal. His most characteristic invention perhaps is the visit that Charon pays to the upper world to see what it really is that the dead regret so much. It is indeed, as M. Croiset points out, a fine stroke of irony to take the opinion of a minister of Death upon Life. Charon has left his ferry boat and comes up to light. Hermes meets him and they pile up some mountains – Pelion on Ossa, and Parnassus on top, from the two summits of which they survey mankind – a charm from Homer removing Charon's difficulty of vision. He sees many famous people, such as Milo, Polycrates and Cyrus; and he overhears Croesus and Solon discussing happiness, while Hermes foretells their fates. He sees a varied scene, life full of confusion, cities like swarms of bees, where each has a sting and stings his neighbour, and some, like wasps, harass and plunder the rest; over them, like a cloud, hang hopes and fears and follies, pleasures and passions and hatreds. He sees the Fates spinning slender threads, soon cut, from which men hang with never a thought of how quickly death ends their dreams; and he compares them to bubbles, big and little inevitably broken. He would like to shout to them "to live with Death ever before their eyes" – why be so earnest about what they can never take away? – but Hermes tells him it would be useless. He is amazed at the absurdity of their burial rites, and he astonishes Hermes by quoting Homer on the subject. Last of all he witnesses a battle and cries out at the folly of it. "Such," he concludes, "is the life of miserable men – and not a word about Charon."[⁶²⁷]

In the same way and in the same spirit Menippus visits the Lower World, where he sees Minos judging the dead. Minos too seems to have been interested in literature, for he reduced the sentence upon Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, on the very proper ground of his generosity to authors. But the general picture has less humour. "We entered the Acherusian plain, and there we found the demi-gods, and the heroines, and the general throng of the dead in nations and tribes, some ancient and mouldering, 'strengthless heads' as Homer says, others fresh and holding together – Egyptians these in the main, so thoroughly good is their embalming. But to know one from another was no easy task; all become so much alike when the bones are bared; yet with pains and long scrutiny we began to recognize them. They lay pell-mell in undistinguishable heaps, with none of their earthly beauties left. With so many skeletons piled together, all as like as could be, eyes glaring ghastly and vacant, teeth gleaming bare, I knew not to tell Thersites from Nireus the fair… For none of their ancient marks remained, and their bones were alike, uncertain, unlabelled, undistinguishable. When I saw all this, the life of man came before me under the likeness of a great pageant, arranged and marshalled by Chance," who assigns the parts and reassigns them as she pleases; and then the pageant ends, every one disrobes and all are alike. "Such is human life, as it seemed to me while I gazed."[⁶²⁸] Over and over again with every accent of irony the one moral is enforced – sometimes with sheer brutality as in the tract on Mourning.

Menippus asked Teiresias in the shades what was the best life. "He was a blind little old man, and pale, and had a weak voice." He said: "The life of ordinary people is best, and, wiser; cease from the folly of metaphysics, of inquiry into origins and purposes; spit upon those clever syllogisms and count all these things idle talk; and pursue one end alone, how you may well arrange the present and go on your way with a laugh for most things and no enthusiasms."[⁶²⁹] In fact, "the unexamined life" is the only one, as many a weary thinker has felt – if it were but possible.

Criticism of Lucian

Goethe's criticism on Heine may perhaps be applied to Lucian – "We cannot deny that he has many brilliant qualities, but he is wanting in love … and thus he will never produce the effect which he ought."[⁶³⁰] Various views have been held of Lucian's contribution to the religious movement of the age; it has even been suggested that his Dialogues advanced the cause of Christianity. But when one reflects upon the tender hearts to be found in the literature of the century, it is difficult to think that Lucian can have had any effect on the mass of serious people, unless to quicken in them by repulsion the desire for something less terrible than a godless world of mockery and death, and the impulse to seek it in the ancestral faith of their fathers. He did not love men enough to understand their inmost mind. The instincts that drove men back upon the old religion were among the deepest in human nature, and of their strength Lucian had no idea. His admirers to-day speak of him as one whose question was always "Is it true?" We have seen that it was a question lightly asked and quickly answered. It is evident enough that his mockery of religion has some warrant in the follies and superstitions of his day. But such criticism as his, based upon knowledge incomplete and sympathy imperfect, is of little value. If a man's judgment upon religion is not to be external, he must have felt the need of a religion, – he must have had at some time the consciousness of imperative cravings and instincts which only a religion can satisfy. Such cravings are open to criticism, but men can neither be laughed out of them, nor indeed reasoned out of them; and however absurd a religion may seem, and however defective it may be, if it is still the only available satisfaction of the deepest needs of which men are conscious, it will hold its own, despite mockery and despite philosophy – as we shall see in the course of the chapter, though two more critics of religion remain to be noticed.

Sextus Empiricus

Lucian was not the only man who sought to bring the age back to sound and untroubled thinking. There was a physician, Sextus – known from the school of medicine to which he belonged as Sextus Empiricus – who wrote a number of books about the end of the second century or the beginning of the third in defence of Scepticism. A medical work of his, and a treatise on the Soul are lost, but his Pyrrhonean Sketches and his books Against the Dogmatists remain – written in a Greek which suggests that he was himself a Greek and not a foreigner using the language. Physicists, mathematicians, grammarians, moralists, astrologers, come under his survey, and the particular attention which he gives to the Stoics is a material fact in fixing his date, for after about 200 A.D. they cease to be of importance. His own point of view a short extract from his sketches will exhibit fully enough for our present purpose.

"The aim of the Sceptic is ataraxia [freedom from mental perturbation or excitement] in matters which depend on opinion, and in things which are inevitable restraint of the feelings (metriopátheian). For he began to philosophise in order to judge his impressions (phantasías) and to discover which of them are true and which false, so as to be free from perturbation. But he came to a point where the arguments were at once diametrically opposite and of equal weight; and then, as he could not decide, he suspended judgment (epéschen), and as soon as he had done so, there followed as if by accident this very freedom from perturbation in the region of opinion. For if a man opines anything to be good or bad in its essential nature, he is always in perturbation. When he has not the things that appear to him to be good, he considers himself tortured by the things evil by nature, and he pursues the good (as he supposes them to be); but, as soon as he has them, he falls into even more perturbations, through being uplifted out of all reason and measure, and from fear of change he does everything not to lose the things that seem to him to be good. But the man, who makes no definitions as to what is good or bad by nature, neither avoids nor pursues anything with eagerness, and is therefore unperturbed. What is related of Apelles the painter has in fact befallen the Sceptic. The story goes that he was painting a horse and wished to represent the foam of its mouth in his picture; but he was so unsuccessful that he gave it up, and took the sponge, on which he used to wipe the colours from his brush, and threw it at the picture. The sponge hit the picture and produced a likeness of the horse's foam. The Sceptics then hoped to gain ataraxia by forming some decision on the lack of correspondence between things as they appear to the eye and to the mind; they were unable to do it, and so suspended judgment (epéschen); and then as if by accident the ataraxia followed – just as a shadow follows a body. We do not say that the Sceptic is untroubled in every way, but we own he is troubled by things that are quite inevitable. For we admit that the Sceptic is cold sometimes, and thirsty, and so forth. But even in these matters the uneducated are caught in two ways at once, viz.: by the actual feelings and (not less) by supposing these conditions to be bad by nature. The Sceptic does away with the opinion that any one of these things is evil in its nature, and so he gets off more lightly even in these circumstances."[⁶³¹]

A view of this kind was hardly likely to appeal to the temper of the age, and the influence of Scepticism was practically none. Still it is interesting to find so vigorous and clear an exponent of the system flourishing in a period given over to the beliefs that Lucian parodied and Apuleius accepted. Sextus, it may be added, is the sole representative of ancient Scepticism whose works have come down to us in any complete form.

One very obscure person of this period remains to be noticed, who in his small sphere gave his views to mankind in a way of his own.

In 1884 two French scholars, MM. Holleaux and Paris were exploring the ruins of Oinoanda, a Greek city in Lycia, and they came upon a number of inscribed stones, most of them built in a wall. What was unusual was that these were neither fragments of municipal decrees nor of private monuments, but all formed part of one great inscription which dealt apparently with some philosophic subject. In June 1895 two Austrian scholars, MM. Heberdey and Kalinka, re-collated the inscription and found some further fragments, and now the story is tolerably clear, and a curious one it is.[⁶³²]

It appears that the fragments originally belonged to an inscription carved on the side of a colonnade, and they fall into three series according to their place on the wall – one above another. The middle series consists of columns of fourteen lines, the letters 1-½ to 2 centimetres high, fifteen or sixteen in a line, – each column forming a page, as it were; and it extends over some twenty-one or two yards. The lowest series is in the same style. On top is a series of columns added later (as the inscription shows) and cut in letters of 2-½-3 centimetres, generally ten lines to the column – the larger size to compensate for the greater height above the ground, for it was all meant to be read. The inscription begins: —

"Diogenes to kinsmen, household and friends, this is my charge. Being so ill that it is critical whether I yet live or live no longer – for an affection of the heart is carrying me off – if I survive, I will gladly accept the life yet given to me; if I do not survive, DO…"

Diogenes of Oinoanda

There ends a column, and a line or two has been lost at the top of what seems to be the next, after which come the words "a kindly feeling for strangers also who may be staying here," and the incomplete statement which begins "knowing assuredly, that by knowledge of the matters relating to Nature and feelings, which I have set forth in the spaces below…" It is evident that Diogenes had something to say which he considered it a duty to make known. This proves to have been the Epicurean theory of life; and here he had carved up for all to read a simple exposition of the philosophy of his choice.

The uppermost row contains his account of his purpose and something upon old age – very fragmentary. There follow a letter of Epicurus to his mother, and another letter from some one unidentified to one Menneas, and then a series of apophthegms and sentences. Thus fragment 27 is a column of ten lines to this effect: "Nothing is so contributive to good spirits, as not to do many things, nor take in hand tiresome matters, nor force oneself in any way beyond one's own strength, for all these things perturb nature." Another column proclaims: "Acute pains cannot be long; for either they quickly destroy life and are themselves destroyed with it, or they receive some abatement of their acuteness." These platitudes are, as we may guess, an afterthought.

The middle row, the first to be inscribed, deals with the Epicurean theory of atoms – not by apophthegm or aphorism, but with something of the fulness and technicality of a treatise. "Herakleitos of Ephesus, then, said fire was the element; Thales of Miletus water; Diogenes of Apollonia and Anaximenes air; Empedocles of Agrigentum both fire and air and water and earth; Anaxagoras of Clazomenæ the homoeomeries of each thing in particular; those of the Stoa matter and God. But Democritus of Abdera said atomic natures – and he did well; but since he made some mistakes about them, these will be set right in our opinions. So now we will accuse the persons mentioned, not from any feeling of illwill against them, but wishing the truth to be saved (sôthênai)." So he takes them in turn and argues at leisure. The large fragment 45 discusses astronomy in its four columns – in particular, the sun and its apparent distance and its nature. Fr. 48 (four columns) goes on to treat of civilization, – of the development of dress from leaves to skins and woven garments, without the intervention "of any other god or of Athena either." Need and time did all. Hermes did not invent language. In fr. 50, we read that Protagoras "said he did not know if there are gods. That is the same thing as saying he knew there are not." Fr. 51 deals with death – "thou hast even persuaded me to laugh at it. For I am not a whit afraid because of the Tityos-es and Tantalus-es, whom some people paint in Hades, nor do I dread decay, reflecting that the [something] of the body … [three broken lines] … nor anything else." At the end of the row another letter begins (fr. 56) "[Diogen]es to Anti[pater] greeting." He writes from Rhodes, he says, just before winter begins, to friends in Athens and elsewhere, whom he would like to see. Though away from his country, he knows he can do more for it in this way than by taking part in political life. He wishes to show that "that which is convenient to Nature, viz. Ataraxia is the same for all." He is now "at the sunset of life," and all but departing; so, since most men, as in a pestilence, are diseased with false opinion, which is very infectious, he wishes "to help those that shall be after us; for they too are ours, even if they are not yet born"; and strangers too. "I wished to make use of this colonnade and to set forth in public the medicine of salvation" (tà tês sôtêrías protheînai pharmaka, fr. 58). The idle fears that oppressed him, he has shaken off; as to pains – empty ones he has abolished utterly, and the rest are reduced to the smallest compass. He bewails the life of men, wasted as it is, and weeps for it; and he has "counted it a good man's part" to help men as far as he can. That is why he has thought of this inscription which may enable men to obtain "joy with good spirits" (tê[s met' euthu]mías charâ[s]), rather than of a theatre or a bath or anything else of the kind, such as rich men would often build for their fellow-citizens (fr. 59).

The discussion which follows in the third series of columns need not here detain us. Diogenes appeals for its consideration – that it may not merely be glanced at in passing (fr. 61, col. 3); but it will suffice us at present to note his statement that his object is "that life may become pleasant to us" (fr. 63, col. 1), and his protest – "I will swear, both now and always, crying aloud to all, Greeks and barbarians, that pleasure is the objective of the best mode of life, while the virtues, which these people now unseasonably meddle with (for they shift them from the region of the contributive to that of the objective) are by no means an objective, but contributive to the objective" (fr. 67, col. 2, 3). Lastly we may notice his reference to the improvement made in the theory of Democritus by the discovery of Epicurus of the swerve inherent in the atoms (fr. 81).

Altogether the inscription is as singular a monument of antiquity as we are likely to find. What the fellow-citizens of Diogenes thought of it, we do not know. Perhaps they might have preferred the bath or other commonplace gift of the ordinary rich man. It is a pity that Lucian did not see the colonnade.

Side by side with Lucian, Sextus and Diogenes it is interesting to consider their contemporaries who were not of their opinion.

Perhaps, while the stone-masons were day by day carving up the long inscription at Oinoanda, others of their trade were busy across the Ægæan with one of another character. At any rate, the inscription which M. Julius Apellas set up in the temple of Asklepios in Epidauros, belongs to this period. Like Diogenes, he is not afraid of detail.

Marcus Julius Apellas

"In the priesthood of Poplius Ælius Antiochus.

"I, Marcus Julius Apellas of Idrias and Mylasa, was sent for by the God, for I was a chronic invalid and suffered from dyspepsia. In the course of my journey the God told me in Ægina not to be so irritable. When I reached the Temple, he directed me to keep my head covered for two days; and for these two days it rained. I was to eat bread and cheese, parsley with lettuce, to wash myself without help, to practise running, to drink citron-lemonade, to rub my body on the sides of the bath in the bath-room, to take walks in the upper portico, to use the trapeze, to rub myself over with sand, to go with bare feet in the bath-room, to pour wine into the hot water before I got in, to wash myself without help, and to give an Attic drachma to the bath-attendant, to offer in public sacrifices to Asklepios, Epione and the Eleusinian goddesses, and to take milk with honey. When for one day I had drunk milk alone, the god said to put honey in the milk to make it digestible.

"When I called upon the god to cure me more quickly, I thought it was as if I had anointed my whole body with mustard and salt, and had come out of the sacred hall and gone in the direction of the bath-house, while a small child was going before holding a smoking censer. The priest said to me: 'Now you are cured, but you must pay up the fees for your treatment.' I acted according to the vision, and when I rubbed myself with salt and moistened mustard, I felt the pain still, but when I had bathed, I suffered no longer. These events took place in the first nine days after I had come to the Temple. The god also touched my right hand and my breast.

"The following day as I was offering sacrifice, a flame leapt up and caught my hand, so as to cause blisters. Yet after a little my hand was healed.

"As I prolonged my stay in the Temple, the god told me to use dill along with olive-oil for my head-aches. Formerly I had not suffered from head-aches, but my studies had brought on congestion. After I used the olive-oil, I was cured of head-aches. For swollen glands the god told me to use a cold gargle, when I consulted him about it, and he ordered the same treatment for inflamed tonsils.

"He bade me inscribe this treatment, and I left the Temple in good health and full of gratitude to the god."[⁶³³]

Pausanias

Pausanias speaks of "the buildings erected in our time by Antoninus a man of the Conscript Senate" – a Roman Senator in fact,[⁶³⁴] – in honour of Asklepios at Epidauros, a bath, three temples, a colonnade, and "a house where a man may die, and a woman lie in, without sin," for these actions were not "holy" within the sanctuary precincts, and had had to be done in the open air hitherto.

A more conspicuous patient of Asklepios is Ælius Aristides, the rhetorician. This brilliant and hypochondriacal person spent years in watching his symptoms and consulting the god about them. Early in his illness the god instructed him to record its details, and he obeyed with zest, though in after years he was not always able to record the minuter points with complete clearness. He was bidden to make speeches, to rub himself over with mud, to plunge into icy water, to ride, and, once, to be bled to the amount of 120 litres. As the human body does not contain anything like that amount of blood, and as the temple servants knew of no one ever having been "cut" to that extent – "at least except Ischyron, and his was one of the most remarkable cases," the god was not taken literally.[⁶³⁵] The regular plan was to sleep in the Temple, as already mentioned, and the god came. "The impression was that one could touch him, and perceive that he came in person; as if one were between asleep and awake, and wished to look out and were in an agony lest he should depart too soon, – as if one held one's ear and listened – sometimes as in a dream, and then as in a waking vision – one's hair was on end, and tears of joy were shed, and one felt light-hearted. And who among men could set this forth in words? Yet if there is one of the initiated, he knows and recognises [what I say]."[⁶³⁶]

None of the cases yet quoted can compare with the miracles of ancient days to be read in the inscriptions about the place – stories of women with child for three and five years, of the extraordinary surgery of the god, cutting off the head of a dropsical patient, holding him upside down to let the water run out and putting the head on again, – a mass of absurdities hardly to be matched outside The Glories of Mary. They make Lucian's Philopseudes seem tame.