[293] Lydus, _de mens._ IV, 59. Cf. Cumont, _The Oriental Religions_, pp. 55 ff. Some scholars doubt the evidence and would place the introduction of the festivals in the time of the Antonines; so Wissowa, _Religion und Kultus der Römer_^2, p. 322. [294] The same name was used in the festival of Isis. Cf. p. 273. [295] _CIL._ X, 1596. [296] _Ibid._ VI, 497-504; cf. _IGSI._ 1019, 1020. [297] Prudentius, _Persiteph._ 10, 1011 ff.; Anon., _Carmen contra Paganos_ 57 ff. [298] _CIL._ VI, 512, iterato viginti annis expletis taurobolii sui. Probably we should read taurobolio suo. [299] _Ibid._ VI, 510. [300] Apuleius, _Met._ XI, 25. IX CHRISTIANITY In the previous lectures we have traced the development of Greek religious thought from the Homeric poems to the third century of our era; we have seen how Greece extended her intellectual dominion over the entire Mediterranean world which the military and political genius of Rome bound into one empire; and we have examined the chief oriental mysteries which spread throughout the same area. We now turn to Christianity. In dealing with this it will be necessary to review at some length the work of Jesus and the doctrines of Paul, that we may have in mind the material which was later brought into accord with the philosophic thought and the intellectual habits of the Roman Empire outside that district in which Christianity had its birth. But before we do this we should recall some characteristics of the ancient world in the earliest centuries of our era. In the first place we must realize that it was a Greco-Roman world, one in which the civilizations of two great peoples—the one intellectual, the other political—had been compounded. In the eastern half of the Empire Greek influence dominated. Alexander’s conquests had made Greek the common language of a great area with the result that in the East Greek thought and Greek habits of expression—that is to say, Greek philosophy and Greek rhetoric—were practically native. The West also, as I have earlier tried to show, had received Greek philosophy and Greek rhetoric more than a century and a half before our era, so that indeed over all the Roman Empire common habits of thought and universal modes of expression prevailed. The eastern half of the Empire contained Alexandria, which had been the chief intellectual center from the third century before our era; in the West was Rome, the center of that imperial power which made the world a political unit; yet western thought owed not merely its form but almost its existence to Greek influences.