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

112 THE ORIENTAL RELIGIONS.
legionaries, but especially auxiliary troops, who were
transferred to the frontiers. Troopers and foot-soldiers
from those provinces furnished important contingents
to the garrisons of Europe and Africa. For instance,
a cohort of one thousand archers from Emesa was
established in Pannonia, another of archers from Da
mascus in upper Germany ; Mauretania received ir
regulars from Palmyra, and bodies of troops levied
in Ituraea, on the outskirts of the Arabian desert,
were encamped in Dacia, Germany, Egypt and Cappadocia
at the same time. . Commagene alone furnished
no less than six cohorts of five hundred men each
that were sent to the Danube and into Numidia. 20
The number of inscriptions consecrated by soldiers
proves both the ardor of their faith and the diversity
of their beliefs. Like the sailors of to-day who are
transferred to strange climes and exposed to incessant
danger, they were constantly inclined to invoke the
protection of heaven, and remained attached to the
gods who seemed to remind them in their exile of the
distant home country. Therefore it is not surprising
that the Syrians who served in the army should have
practised the religion of their Baals in the neighbor
hood of their camps. In the north of England, near
the wall of Hadrian, an inscription in verse in honor
of the goddess of Hierapolis has been found ; its author
was a prefect, probably of a cohort of Hamites sta
tioned at this distant post. 21
Not all the soldiers, however, went to swell the
ranks of believers worshiping divinities that had long
been adopted by the Latin world, as did that officer.
They also brought along new ones that had come from
a still greater distance than their predecessors, in fact