The Oriental Religions in Roman PaganismCumont, Franz
Religion
The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism
Cumont, Franz
Paganism -- Rome; Religions; Rome -- Religion
1 We are indebted for more than one useful suggestion to our colleagues
Messrs. Charles Michel and Joseph Bidez, who were kind enough to read the
proofs of the French edition.
2 An outline of the present state of the subject will be found in a recent
volume by Gruppe, _Griechische Mythologie_, 1906, pp. 1606 ff., whose views
are sharply opposed to the negative conclusions formulated, with certain
reservations, by Harnack, _Ausbreitung des Christentums_, II, pp. 274 ff.
Among the latest studies intended for the general reader that have appeared
on this subject, may be mentioned in Germany those of Geffcken (_Aus der
Werdezeit des Christentums_, Leipsic, 1904, pp. 114 ff.), and in England
those of Cheyne (_Bible Problems_, 1904), who expresses his opinion in
these terms: "The Christian religion is a synthesis, and only those who
have dim eyes can assert that the intellectual empires of Babylonia and
Persia have fallen."--Very useful is the new book of Clemen,
_Religionsgeschichtliche Erklaerung des Neuen Testaments_, Giessen, 1909.
3 _Mon. myst. Mithra_, I, p. 342, n. 4; see the new texts commented on by
Usener, _Rhein. Museum_, LX, 1905, pp. 466 ff.; 489 ff., and my paper
"Natalis Invicti," _C. R. Acad. des inscr._, 1911.
4 See page 70. Compare also _Mon. myst. Mithra_, I, p. 341. The imitation
of the church is plain in the pagan reform attempted by the emperor Julian.
5 See Harnack, _Militia Christi_, 1905.
6 I have collected a number of texts on the religious "militias" in _Mon.
myst. Mithra_, I, p. 317, n. 1. Others could certainly be discovered:
Apuleius, _Metam._, XI, 14: _E cohorte {214} religionis unus_ (in
connection with a mystic of Isis);--Vettius Valens (V, 2, p. 220, 27, Kroll
ed.): [Greek: Stratiotai tes heimarmenes]; (VII, 3, p. 271, 28) [Greek:
Sustrateuesthai tois kairois gennaios]. See Minucius Felix, 36, Sec. 7: _Quod
patimur non est poena, militia est._--We might also mention the commonplace
term _militia Veneris_, which was popular with the Augustan poets
(Propertius, IV, 1, 137; see I, 6, 30; Horace, _Od._, III, 26, and
especially the parallel developed by Ovid, _Amor._, I, 9, 1 ff., and _Ars
amat._, III, 233 ff.)--Socrates, in Plato's _Apologia_ (p. 28 E),
incidentally likens the philosophic mission imposed on him by the divinity
to the campaigns he waged under the orders of the archons, but the
comparison of God with a "strategus" was developed especially by the
Stoics; see Capelle, "Schrift von der Welt," _Neue Jahrb. fuer das klass.
Altert._, XV, 1905, p. 558, n. 6, and Seneca, _Epist._, 107, 9: _Optimum
est Deum sine murmuratione comitari, malus miles est qui imperatorem gemens
sequitur_.--See now also Reitzenstein, _Hellenistische Mysterienreligion_,
1910, p. 66.
7 See _Rev. des etudes grecques_, XIV, 1901, pp. 43 ff.
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