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

NOTES EGYPT. 231
(Dc Decal., 16, II, p. 193 M., and passim ). The pagan writers
were no less scandalized (Cicero, Nat. dcor., Ill, 15, etc.) ex
cept where they preferred to apply their ingenuity to justify
it. See Dill, loc. tit., p. 571. The features of this cult in
ancient Egypt have been recently studied by George Foucart,
Revue des idees, Nov. 15, 1908, and La methode comparative
ct I histoire des religions, 1909, pp. 43 ff.
12. Macrobius, Sat., I, 20, 16.
13. Holm, Gesch. Siziliens, I, p. 81.
14. Libanius, Or., XI, 114 (I, p. 473 Forster). Cf. Drexler
in Roscher, op. tit., col. 378.
15. Pausan., I, 18, 4: 2apd7ri5os 8i>
irapa TlroXc/taiou Oebv elffrj-
ydyovro. Ruhl (op. tit., p. 4) attaches no historic value to this
text, but, as he points out himself, we have proof that an
official Isis cult existed at Athens under Ptolemy Soter, and
that Serapis was worshiped in that city at the beginning of
the third century.
16. Dittenberger, Or. gr. inscr. sel, No. 16.
17. Apul., Mctam., XI, 17.
18. Thus it is found to be the case from the first half of
the third century at Thera, a naval station of the Ptolemies
(Hiller von Gartringen, Thera, III, pp. 85 ff. ; cf. Ruhl, op. cit.,
p. 59), and also at Rhodes (Rev. archcol, 1905, I, p. 341).
Cult of Serapis at Delos, cf. Comptes rcndus Acad. inscr., 1910,
pp. 294 ff.
19. A number of proofs of its diffusion have been collected
by Drexler, loc. cit., p. 379. See Lafaye, "Isis" (cf. supra),
p. 577 ; and Ruhl, De Sarapide ct Isidc in Graecia cultis, 1906.
20. This interpretation has already been proposed by Ra-
vaisson (Gazette archcologiquc, I, pp. 55 ff.), and I believe it
to be correct, see Comptes Rcndus Acad. Inscr., 1906, p. 75, n. I.
21. The power of the Egyptian cult in the Oriental half of
the empire has been clearly shown by von Domaszewski (Rom.
Mitt., XVII, 1902, pp. 333 ff.), but perhaps with some exag
geration. All will endorse the restrictions formulated by Har-
nack, Ausbreitung des Christen turns, II, p. 274.
22. The very early spread of Orphic doctrines in Magna
Graecia, evidenced by the tablets of Sybaris and Petilia (Diels,