Although many, if not most, of these eastern religions were probably mysteries, requiring that their devotees should undergo certain initiatory rites before being admitted to full participation in the sacred service, we shall confine ourselves to sure ground and shall consider briefly the mysteries of Isis, of Mithras, and of the Great Mother of the Gods—especially those of Isis, because Apuleius, from whose work I quoted a moment ago, has left us a rather full account of the initiation of his hero Lucius, whose experiences in this part of the Metamorphoses are apparently the author’s own. Isis and Osiris were ancient gods whose worship had been wide spread in Egypt from very early times; they had been carried by Egyptian traders to some other parts of the Mediterranean world before the conquests of Alexander. But the form of the Isiac religion which ultimately spread over the Greco-Roman world was a conscious mingling of Egyptian and Hellenic elements. The Ptolemies naturally desired to unite the Greeks and Egyptians under their rule, and Ptolemy Soter (306-285 B.C.), the first of the line, according to Plutarch, employed Manetho, a priest at Heliopolis in Egypt, and Timotheus, one of the sacred family of the Eumolpidae in Eleusis, to work out a modified religion of Isis, with whom was now associated a new divinity, Serapis, said to have been originally Hades of Sinope, a Greek colony on the south shore of the Black Sea. Thus Greek elements were grafted on the Egyptian stock, Serapis being identified with Osiris. The ancient forms apparently were largely retained, and the priesthood remained Egyptian; but Greek became the common language for the ritual, while Greek artists made statues of Isis and her consort, and Greek poets sang the goddess’s praise. Thus the spread of this composite religion was rendered easy, especially as its mysteries claimed to give that assurance of salvation for which men longed.