The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism [1911] - Get a Free Blog

80 THE ORIENTAL RELIGIONS.
Asia Minor and Greece, in the islands of the Archi
pelago, 18 and as far as the Hellespont and Thrace.^
At Delos, where the inscriptions enable us to study
this worship somewhat in detail, it was not merely
practised by strangers, but the very sacerdotal func
tions were performed by members of the Athenian
aristocracy. A number of funereal bas-reliefs, in which
the deified dead wears the calathos of Serapis on his
head, prove the popularity of the belief in future life
propagated by these mysteries. According
to the
Egyptian faith he was identified with the god of the
dead. 20
Even after the splendor of the court of Alexandria
had faded and vanished ;
even after the wars against
Mithridates and the growth of piracy had ruined the
traffic of the ^gean Sea, the Alexandrian worship
was too deeply rooted in the soil of Greece to perish,
although it became endangered in certain seaports
like Delos. Of all the gods of the Orient, Isis and
Serapis were the only ones that retained a place among
the great divinities of the Hellenic world until the end
of paganism. 21
* * *
It was this syncretic religion that came to Rome
after having enjoyed popularity in the eastern Medi
terranean. Sicily and the south of Italy were more than
half Hellenized, and the Ptolemies had diplomatic re
lations with these countries, just as the merchants of
Alexandria had commercial relations with them. For
this reason the worship of Isis spread as rapidly in
those regions as on the coasts of Ionia or in the Cyclades.
22
It was introduced into Syracuse and Catana
during the earliest years of the third century by Agath-