The devotees of the oriental gods generally adopted this syncretistic view, so that most, if not all, saw in their god the supreme all-embracing divinity whose divine nature was manifest in countless other gods. This belief is best expressed by Apuleius, who composed his famous Metamorphoses in the middle of the second century of our era. After his hero Lucius had passed through many hardships and adventures, the saving goddess Isis appeared in a vision and thus declared herself: “Lo, I am here, Lucius, moved by thy prayers, I, the parent of the universe, mistress of the elements, the primal offspring of the ages, greatest of divinities, queen of the dead, first among the celestials, the single form of gods and goddesses; I, who by my word rule the bright heights of heaven, the healthful breezes of the sea, the gloomy silent shades below. To my divinity, one in itself, the entire world does reverence under many forms, with varied rites, and manifold names. Hence it is that the primal Phrygians call me at Pessinus the Mother of the Gods, hence the Athenians, who are sprung from the ground on which they dwell, name me Cecropian Minerva, the wave-beat Cyprians Paphian Venus, the archer Cretans Dictynnan Diana, the Sicilians with their triple speech Stygian Proserpina, the people of Eleusis ancient Ceres, others Juno, others Bellona, some Hecate, again Rhamnusia; but the Aethiopians on whom shine the growing rays of the sun at his birth, the Arians, and the Egyptians, mighty in their ancient learning, worship me with the proper rites and call me by my true name Queen Isis.”[288] This revelation by the goddess not only squares with the pantheism of philosophic thought and with the doctrine of emanations of the divine, such as were believed in by the Neoplatonists, but it is also in harmony with the popular polytheism. At the beginning of the second century of our era the genial Plutarch first stated a philosophy of a universal syncretistic religion: “Not different gods among different peoples—gods of Barbarians, of Greeks, of the South, or of the North; but even as sun and moon, heaven and earth and sea are common to all, yet have different names among different peoples, so there is one Intelligence which rules in the world, one Providence which directs it; the same powers act everywhere. Honors, names, and symbols vary.”[289] This statement represents the attitude of all the more enlightened classes after the beginning of the second century. A pantheism, which made abundant provision for a subordinate polytheism, was the dominant belief. In fact Greco-Roman paganism ended in such a pantheism, in which the sun was the symbol of the supreme and all-embracing divinity.