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

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THE ORIENTAL RELIGIONS.
as Turkestan and China. As soon as the merchants
had established their places of business in the islands
of the Archipelago during the Alexandrian period,
and in the Latin period under the empire, they founded
chapels in which they practised their exotic rites.
It was easy for the divinities of the Phoenician
coast to cross the seas. Among them were Adonis,
whom the women of Byblos mourned ; Balmarcodes,
"the Lord of the dances," who came from Beirut;
Marna, the master of rain, worshiped at Gaza; and
Maiuma, 16 whose nautical holiday was celebrated every
spring
Orient.
on the coast near Ostia as well as in the
Besides these half Hellenized religions, others of
a more purely Semitic nature came from the interior
of the country, because the merchants frequently were
natives of the cities of the Hinterland, as for instance
Apamea or Epiphanea in Coele-Syria,
or even of vil
lages in that flat country. As Rome incorporated the
small kingdoms beyond the Lebanon and the Orontes
that had preserved a precarious independence, the cur
rent of emigration increased. In 71 Commagene,
which lies between the Taurus and the Euphrates,
was annexed by Vespasian, a little later the dynasties
of Chalcis and Emesa were also deprived of their
of Damas
power. Nero, it appears, took possession
cus ; half a century later Trajan established the new
province of Arabia in the south (106 A. D.), and the
oasis of Palmyra, a great mercantile center, lost its
at the same time. In this manner Rome
autonomy
extended her direct authority as far as the desert,
over countries that were only superficially Hellenized,
and where the native devotions had preserved all their