Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius Part 11

To Plutarch, theology is the crown of all philosophy.(2194) To form true and worthy conceptions of the Divine Being is not less important than to pay Him pious wors.h.i.+p. Plutarch's lofty conception of the Infinite and Supreme, like that of Maximus of Tyre, dominates all his system. In a curious treatise on Isis and Osiris, he reviews many a device of scholastic subtlety, many a crude guess of embryonic science, many a dream of Pythagorean mysticism, to find an inner meaning in the Egyptian myth.

Yet it embalms, in all this frigid scholasticism, the highest and purest expression of Plutarch's idea of the Supreme. In the end he breaks away from all lower mundane conceptions of the Divine, and reveals a glimpse of the beatific vision. "While we are here below," he says, "enc.u.mbered by bodily affections, we can have no intercourse with G.o.d, save as in philosophic thought we may faintly touch Him, as in a dream. But when our souls are released, and have pa.s.sed into the region of the pure, invisible, and changeless, this G.o.d will be their guide and king who depend on Him and gaze with insatiable longing on the beauty which may not be spoken of by the lips of man."(2195) To Plutarch G.o.d is the One, Supreme, Eternal Being, removed to an infinite distance from the mutable and mortal-the Being of whom we can only predicate that "He is," who lives in an everlasting "now," of whom it would be irrational and impious to speak in the terms of the future or the past.(2196) He is the One, the Absolute of Eleatic or Pythagorean philosophy, the Demiurgus of Plato, the primal motive power of Aristotle, the World-Soul of the Stoics. Yet Plutarch is as far removed from the Epicureanism which banishes G.o.d from the universe as he is from the pantheism of east or west, which interfuses the world and G.o.d.(2197) Plutarch never abandons the Divine personality, in whatever sense he may hold it. G.o.d is the highest perfection of goodness and intelligence, the Creator, the watchful and benevolent Providence of the world, the Author of all good. His power, indeed, is not unlimited. There is a power of evil in the world which must be recognised.

And, as good cannot be the author of evil, the origin of evil must be sought in a separate and original principle, distinct from, but not co-equal with, G.o.d: a principle recognised in many a theology and philosophy of east and west, and called by many names-Ahriman or Hades, the "dyad" of Pythagoras, the "strife" of Empedocles, the "other" of Plato.(2198) Its seat is the World-Soul, which has a place alongside of G.o.d and Matter, causing all that is deadly in nature, all moral disorder in the soul of man. Matter is the seat both of evil and good.(2199) In its lower regions it may seem to be wholly mastered by the evil principle; yet in its essence it is really struggling towards the good, and, as a female principle, susceptible to the formative influence of the Divine, as well as exposed to the incursions of evil. Plutarch's theory of creation is, in the main, that of the Timaeus, with mingled elements of Stoic cosmogony.

Through number and harmony the Divine Mind introduces order into the ma.s.s of lawless chaos. But while G.o.d stands outside the cosmos as its creator, He is not merely the divine craftsman, but a penetrating power. For from Him proceeds the soul which is interfused with the world and which sustains it. Through the World-Soul, G.o.d is in touch with all powers and provinces of the universe. Yet throughout the universe, as in the human soul, there are always present the two elements side by side, the principles of reason and unreason, of evil and of good.(2200)

The vision of the one eternal, pa.s.sionless Spirit, far removed from the world of chance and change and earthly soilure, was the conquest of Greek philosophy, travailing for 800 years. But it was a vision far withdrawn; it was separated by an apparently impa.s.sable gulf alike from the dreams of h.e.l.lenic legend and from the struggling life of humanity. The poets, and even the poet of divinest inspiration, had bequeathed a ma.s.s of legend, often shocking to the later moral sense, yet always seductive by its imaginative charm. How to reconcile the fictions of poetry, which had so long enthralled all imaginations, with higher spiritual intuitions, that was the problem. It was not indeed a new problem. It had driven Xenophanes into open revolt, it had exercised the mind of the reverent Pindar and the sceptical Euripides. It had suggested to Plato the necessity of recasting myth in the light of the Divine purity.(2201) But the new h.e.l.lenism of the second century was a great literary, even more than a theological or philosophic, movement; and the glory of Greek literature was inseparably linked with the glory and the shame of Greek mythology. To discard and repudiate the myths was to give the lie to the divine poets. To explain them away by physical allegory, in the fas.h.i.+on of the Stoic theology, or to lower the "blessed ones" of Olympus to the stature of earthly kings and warriors, after the manner of Euhemerus, was to break the charm of poetic legend, and violate the instincts of ancestral piety.(2202) And there were many other claimants for devotion beside the ancient G.o.ds of Rome and Greece. Persia and Phrygia, Commagene and Egypt, every region from the Sahara to c.u.mberland, were adding to the pantheon. Soldiers and travellers were bringing their tales of genii and daemons from islands in the British seas and the sh.o.r.es of the Indian Ocean.(2203) How could a man trained in the mystic monotheism of 800 years reconcile himself to this immense accretion of alien superst.i.tion?

On the other hand, from whatever quarter, a new spiritual vision had opened, strange to the ancient world. It is not merely that the conception of G.o.d has become more pure and lofty; the whole att.i.tude of the higher minds to the Eternal had altered. A great spiritual revolution had concurred with a great political revolution. The vision of the divine world which satisfied men in the age of Pericles or in the Punic wars, when religion, politics, and morality were linked in unbroken harmony, when, if spiritual vision was bounded, spiritual needs were less clamorous, and the moral life less troubled and self-conscious, could no longer appease the yearnings of the higher minds. Both morality and religion had become less formal and external, more penetrating and exigent. Prayer was no longer a formal litany for worldly blessings or sinful indulgence, but a colloquy with G.o.d, in a moment of spiritual exaltation.(2204) The true sacrifice was no longer "the blood of bulls,"

but a quiet spirit. Along with a sense of frailty and bewilderment, men felt the need of purification and spiritual support. The old mysteries and the new cults from the East had fostered a longing for sacramental peace and a.s.surance of another life, in which the crooked should be made straight and the perverted be restored.

In Maximus of Tyre,(2205) although he has no claim to the reputation of a strong and original thinker, we see this new religious spirit of the second century perhaps in its purest form. Man is an enigma, a contradiction, a being placed on the confines of two worlds. A beast in his fleshly nature, he is akin to G.o.d in his higher part, nay, the son of G.o.d.(2206) Even the n.o.blest spirits here below live in a sort of twilight, or in a heady excitement, an intoxication of the senses. Yet, cramped as it is in the prison of the flesh, the soul may raise itself above the misty region of perpetual change towards the light of the Eternal. For, in the slumber of this mortal life, the pure spirit is sometimes visited by visions coming through the gate of horn,(2207) visions of another world seen in some former time. And, following them, the moral hero, like Heracles, the model of strenuous virtue, through toil and tribulation may gain the crown. On this stormy sea of time, philosophy gives us the veil of Leucothea to charm the troubled waters. It is true that only when release comes at death, does the soul attain to the full vision of G.o.d.

For the Highest is separated from us by a great gulf. Yet the a.n.a.lysis of the soul which Maximus partly borrows from Aristotle, discovers His seat in us, the highest reason, that power of intuitive, all-embracing, instantaneous vision, which is distinct from the slower and tentative operations of the understanding. It is by this higher faculty that G.o.d is seen, so far as He may be, in this mixed and imperfect state.(2208) For the vision of G.o.d can only in any degree be won by abstraction from sense and pa.s.sion and everything earthly, in a struggle ever upwards, beyond the paths of the heavenly orbs, to the region of eternal calm "where falls not rain or hail or any snow, but a white cloudless radiance spreads over all."(2209) And when may we see G.o.d? "Thou shalt see Him fully," Maximus says, "only when He calls thee, in age or death, but meantime glimpses of the Beauty which eye hath not seen nor can tongue speak of, may be won, if the veils and wrappings which hide His splendour be torn away.(2210) But do not thou profane Him by offering vain prayers for earthly things which belong to the world of chance or which may be obtained by human effort, things for which the worthy need not pray, and which the unworthy will not obtain. The only prayer which is answered, is the prayer for goodness, peace, and hope in death."(2211)

How could a Platonist of the second century, we may ask, holding such a spiritual creed, reconcile himself to Greek mythology, nay, to all the mythologies, with all the selfish grossness of their ritual? Plutarch and Maximus of Tyre answer the question by a piously ingenious interpretation of ancient legend, and partly by a system of daemons, of mediating and ministering spirits, who fill the interval between the changeless Infinite and the region of sin and change.

In religion, they say, in effect, we must take human nature as we find it.

We are not legislating for a young race, just springing from the earth, but for races with conceptions of the Divine which run back through countless ages. There may be, here and there, an elect few who can raise their minds, in rare moments, to the pure vision of the Eternal. But heaven is so far from earth, and earth is so darkened by the mists of sense, that temple and image and sacred litany, and the myths created by the genius of poets, or imposed by lawgivers, are needed to sustain and give expression to the vague impotent yearnings of the ma.s.s of men.(2212) The higher intuitions of religion must be translated into material symbolism; "here we see, as through a gla.s.s darkly." And the symbols of sacred truth are as various as the many tribes of men. Some, like the Egyptian wors.h.i.+p of animals, are of a degraded type. The Greek anthropomorphism, although falling far short of the grandeur and purity of the Infinite, yet furnishes its n.o.blest image, because it has glorified by artistic genius the human body, which has been chosen as the earthly home of the rational soul.(2213) And the cause of myth and plastic art are really one; nay, there is no opposition or contrast, in fact, between poetic mythology and religious philosophy. They are different methods of teaching religious truth, adapted to different stages of intellectual development. Myth is the poetic philosophy of a simple age, for whose ears the mystic truth must be sweetened by music, an age whose eyes cannot bear to gaze on the Divine splendour unveiled.(2214) Philosophic theology is for an age of rationalism and inquiry; it would have been unintelligible to the simple imaginative childhood of the race. Maximus has the same faith as Plutarch that the mythopoeic age possessed, along with an enthralling artistic skill, all the speculative depth and subtlety of later ages. It is almost a profanity to imagine that Homer or Hesiod or Pindar were less of philosophers than Aristotle or Chrysippus.(2215) It was a.s.sumed that the early myth-makers and lawgivers possessed a sacred lore of immense value and undoubted truth, which they dimly shadowed forth in symbolism of fanciful tale or allegory.(2216) The myth at once hides and reveals the mystery of the Divine. If a man comes to its interpretation with the proper discipline and ac.u.men, the kernel of spiritual or physical meaning which is reverently veiled from the profane eye will disclose itself. And thus the later philosophic theologian is not reading his own higher thoughts of G.o.d into the grotesque fancies of a remote antiquity; he is evolving and interpreting a wisdom more original than his own. In this process of rediscovering a lost tradition, he pushes aside the ma.s.s of erroneous interpretations which have perverted the original doctrine, by literal acceptance of what is really figurative, by abuse of names and neglect of realities, by stopping at the symbol instead of rising to the divine fact.(2217)

The treatise of Plutarch on Isis and Osiris is the best ill.u.s.tration of this att.i.tude to myth. Plutarch's theology, though primarily h.e.l.lenic, does not confine its gaze to the Greek Olympus; it is intended to be the science of human religion in general. It gives formal expression to the growing tendency to syncretism. The central truth of it is, that as the sun and moon, under many different names, shed their light on all, so the G.o.ds are variously invoked and honoured by various tribes of men.(2218) But there is one supreme Ruler and Providence common to all. And the lower deities of different countries may often be identified by the theologian, under all varieties of t.i.tle and attribute. So, to Plutarch as to Herodotus, the immemorial wors.h.i.+ps of Egypt were the prototypes or the counterparts of the cults of Greece.(2219) There was a temple of Osiris at Delphi, and Clea, to whom Plutarch's treatise is addressed, was not only a hereditary priestess of the Egyptian G.o.d, but held a leading place among the female ministers of Dionysus.(2220) It was fitting that a person so catholic in her sympathies should have dedicated to her the treatise in which Plutarch expounds his all-embracing theology.

In this treatise we see the new theology wrestling in a hopeless struggle to unite the thought of Pythagoras and Plato with the grossness of Egyptian myth. It is a striking, but not a solitary, example of the misapplication of dialectic skill and learning, to find the thoughts of the present in the fancies of the past, and from a mistaken piety, to ignore the onward march of humanity. Arbitrary interpretations of myth, alike unhistorical and unscientific, make us wonder how they could ever have occurred to men of intellect and learning. Yet the explanation is not far to seek. More elevated conceptions of G.o.d, the purged and clarified religious intuition, do not readily find a subst.i.tute for the old symbolism to express their visions. Religion, beyond any other inst.i.tution, depends for its power on antiquity, on the charm of ancestral pieties. A religious symbol is doubly sacred when it has ministered to the devotion of many generations.

In interpreting the powerful cult of Isis, which was spreading rapidly over the western world, Plutarch had two objects in view. By reverent explanation of its legends and ritual, he desired to counteract its immoral and superst.i.tious tendencies;(2221) he also wished, in discussing a wors.h.i.+p so multiform as that of Isis, to develop his att.i.tude to myth in general. We cannot follow him minutely in his survey of the various attempts of philosophy to find the basis of truth in Egyptian legend. Some of these explanations, such as the Euhemerist, he would dismiss at once as atheistic.(2222) On others, which founded themselves on physical allegory, he would not be so dogmatic, although he might reject as impious any tendency to identify the G.o.ds with natural powers and products.(2223) As a positive contribution to religious philosophy, the treatise is chiefly valuable for its theory of Evil and of daemonic powers, and above all for the doctrine of the unity of G.o.d, the central truth of all religions.

The daemonology of the Platonists of the second century had its roots deep in the h.e.l.lenic past, as it was destined to have a long future. But it was specially evoked by the needs of the pagan revival of the Antonine age.

The doctrine had a.s.sumed many forms in previous Greek thought from the days of Hesiod, and it has various aspects, and serves various purposes, in the hands of Plutarch, Apuleius, and Maximus of Tyre. It was in the first place an apologetic for heathenism in an age distracted between a lofty conception of one infinite Father and legends of many lands and many ages, which were consecrated by long tradition, yet often shocking to the spiritual sense. As the conception of G.o.d became purer and seemed to withdraw into remoter distances, souls like Apuleius, wedded to the ancient rites, found in the daemons, ranging between earth and ether, the means of conveying answers to prayer, of inspiring dreams and prophecy, of ordering all the machinery of divination.(2224) To others, such as Maximus of Tyre, the doctrine seemed to discover a spiritual support for human frailty, guardians in temptation and the crises of life, mediators between the human spirit, immured for a time in the prison of the flesh, and the remote purity of the Supreme.(2225) To other minds the daemon is no external power, but dwelling within each soul, as its divine part, a kind of ideal personality,(2226) in following whose ghostly promptings lies the secret of happiness. Finally, the doctrine created an eschatology by which vistas of moral perfection were opened before purer spirits in worlds to come, and the infinite responsibilities of this life were terribly enforced by threats of endless degradation.(2227)

The daemons who came to the aid of mythology in the Antonine age, were composite beings, with a double nature corresponding to the two worlds of the Divine and human which they linked together. They are at once divine in power and knowledge, and akin to humanity in feeling and pa.s.sion.(2228) They are even liable to mortality, as was proved by the famous tale of the voice which floated to the Egyptian pilot from the Echinad isles, announcing that the great Pan was dead.(2229) Their sphere is the middle s.p.a.ce between the lofty ether and the mists of earth. This spiritual mediation, as Maximus points out, is not an exceptional principle. There is a chain of being in the universe, as it had been developed in the cosmic theory of Aristotle, by which the remote extremes are linked in successive stages, and may be blended or reconciled, in a mean or compound, as in a musical harmony. The principle is seen operating in the relation of the great physical elements. Thus, for example, fire and water are at opposite poles: they cannot pa.s.s immediately into one another, but air furnishes a medium between the two, and reconciles their opposition by partic.i.p.ating in the warmth of the one element and in the moisture of the other.(2230) The suggestions of cosmic theory seemed to receive support from many tales which, in that age of luxuriant superst.i.tion, were accepted even in educated circles. Travellers, returning from Britain, told weird stories of desolate islands in the northern seas which were the haunts of genii.(2231) A Spartan visitor to Delphi related how, on the sh.o.r.es of the Indian Ocean, he had met with a hermit of a beautiful countenance and proof against all disease, who spoke with many tongues, and derived his mystic powers from intercourse with the spirits which haunted those distant solitudes.(2232)

Plutarch also justifies his theory of daemons by an appeal to the authority of Hesiod, of Pythagoras and Plato, Xenocrates and Chrysippus.(2233) He might have added others to the list. For, indeed, the conception of these mediators between the ethereal world and the world of sense has a long history-too long to be developed within our present limits. Its earliest appearance in Greece was in the _Works and Days_ of Hesiod, who first definitely sketched a great scale of being-G.o.ds, heroes, daemons, and mortal men. Hesiod's daemons are the men of the golden age, translated to a blissful and immortal life, yet linked in sympathy with those still on earth-"Ministers of good and guardians of men."(2234) The conception was introduced at a time when new moral and spiritual forces were at work, which were destined to have a profound and lasting influence on paganism for a thousand years. The glamour of the radiant Olympus and the glory of heroic battle were fading. Men were settling down to humdrum toil, and becoming acutely conscious of the troubles and sadness of life.

With a craving for support and comfort which the religion of Homer could not give, the pessimist view of life, which colours Hesiod's poetry, sought consolation in a mysticism altogether strange to Homer, and even to Hesiod. The feeling that humanity had declined from a glorious prime and, in its weakness and terror at death, needed some new consolations, was met by a system which, although Orpheus may never have existed, will always be called by his name.(2235) The Chthonian deities, Dionysus and Demeter, sprang into a prominence which they had not in Homer. The immortal life began to overshadow the present, and in the mysteries men found some a.s.surance of immortality, and preparation for it by cleansing from the stains of time. That idea, which was to have such profound influence upon later thought, that there is a divine element in man, which is emanc.i.p.ated from the prison of the flesh at death, became an accepted doctrine. At the same time, the faith in helpers and mediators, half human, half divine, lent itself to the support of human weakness. The heroic soul who pa.s.sed victoriously through the ordeal of this life, might in another world become the guardian and exemplar of those who were still on earth.

In the Ionian and Eleatic schools the doctrine was held in some sense by all the great thinkers, by Thales, Anaximander, Herac.l.i.tus, Xenophanes. To Thales the world was full of daemons.(2236) In the mystic teaching of Herac.l.i.tus the universe teems with such spirits, for in the perpetual flux and change, the divine is constantly pa.s.sing into the death of mortal life and the mortal into the divine.(2237) Empedocles, in conformity with his cosmic dualism, first made the distinction between good and bad daemons, and followed Pythagoras in connecting daemonic theory with the doctrine of a fall from divine estate, and long exile and incarnation in animal forms.(2238) It was in the dim system of Pythagoras that the doctrine became a really religious tenet, as it was to the Platonists of the Antonine age. Pythagoras was more priest and mystic than philosopher. He had far more in common with the Orphici, with Abaris and Epimenides, than with Thales or Anaximander. His school, for we can hardly speak of himself, connected the doctrine of daemons with the doctrines of metempsychosis and purification and atonement in another world. Souls released from the prison-house of the flesh are submitted to a purgatorial cleansing of a thousand years. Some pa.s.s the ordeal victoriously, and ascend to higher spheres. Others are kept in chains by the Erinnyes. The beatified souls become daemons or good spirits, ranging over the universe, and manifesting themselves in dreams and omens and ghostly monitions, sometimes becoming even visible to the eye.(2239) But their highest function is to guide men in the path of virtue during life, and after death to purify the disembodied spirit, which may become a daemon in its turn. This is the theory, which, with some modifications, was adopted by the later Platonists. It was popularised by Pindar, "the Homer of the Pythagorean school." He was captivated by its doctrine of the migrations of the soul, of its ordeal in a future life, and its chastis.e.m.e.nt or elevation to lofty spiritual rank as daemon or hero. In the second Olympian ode, the punishment of the wicked and the beat.i.tude of n.o.ble spirits, in the company of Peleus and Achilles in the happy isles, are painted in all the glowing imagery of the Apocalypse.(2240)

The daemonology of Pythagoras, along with the doctrine of metempsychosis in its moral aspect, was adopted by Plato, whether as a serious theory or as a philosophic myth. The chief pa.s.sages in Plato where the daemons are mentioned are suffused with such mythic colour that it would perhaps be rash to extract from them any sharp dogmatic theory.(2241) But Plato, holding firmly the remote purity of G.o.d, strove to fill the interval between the mortal and the Infinite by a graded scheme of superhuman beings. The daemon is a compound of the mortal and the divine, spanning the chasm between them. This is the power which conveys to G.o.d the prayers and sacrifices of men, and brings to men the commands and rewards of the G.o.ds, which operates in prophecy, sacrifice, and mystery. And again the daemon is a power which is a.s.signed to each soul at birth, and which at death conducts it to the eternal world, to receive judgment for its deeds, and perhaps to be condemned to return once more to earth. The reason in man, his truly divine part, is also called his daemon, his good genius. It is the power whose kindred is with the world of the unseen, which is immortal, and capable of a lofty destiny.

Like his master Plato, Maximus of Tyre seems to know nothing of the evil daemons, who, as we shall presently see, were used by Plutarch to account for the immorality of myth. To Maximus the daemons are rather angelic ministers, sent forth to advise and succour weak mortal men.(2242) They are the necessary mediators between the one Supreme and our frail mortal life. Dwelling in a region between earth and ether, they are of mingled mortal and divine nature, weaker than the G.o.ds, stronger than men, servants of G.o.d and overseers of men, by kins.h.i.+p with either linking the weakness of the mortal with the Divine. Great is the mult.i.tude of this heavenly host, interpreters between G.o.d and man: "thrice ten thousand are they upon the fruitful earth, immortal, ministers of Zeus," healers of the sick, revealers of what is dark, aiding the craftsman, companions of the wayfarer. On land and sea, in the city and the field, they are ever with us. They inspired a Socrates, a Pythagoras, a Diogenes, or a Zeno; they are present in all human spirits. Only the lost and hopeless soul is without the guardians.h.i.+p of such an unearthly friend.

The earlier Platonist or Pythagorean daemonology was not employed to explain or rehabilitate polytheism. Although Plato would not banish myth from his Utopia, he placed his ban on the mythopoeic poets who had lent their authority to tales and crimes and pa.s.sions of the G.o.ds. Myth could only be tolerated in the education of the young if it conformed to the standard of Divine perfection.(2243) G.o.d cannot be the author of evil, evil is the offspring of matter; it is a limitation or an incident of the fleeting world of sense. It is only relative and transitory, and can never penetrate the realm of the ideal. But to Plutarch evil was an ultimate principle in the universe, ever present along with the good, although not perhaps of equal range and power.(2244) And Plutarch would not banish and disown the poets for attributing to the G.o.ds pa.s.sions and crimes which would have been dishonouring to humanity. He would not abandon the ancient ritual because it contained elements of gloom and impurity which shocked a refined moral sense. Mythology and ritual, as they had been moulded by poets or imposed by lawgivers, were intertwined with the whole life of the people and formed an essential element in the glory of h.e.l.lenic genius.

The piety and aesthetic feeling of the priest of Delphi still clung to ancient ritual and legend, even when the lofty morality of the Platonist was offended by the grossness which mingled with their artistic charm.

Might it not be possible to moralise the pagan system without discrediting its authors, to reconcile the claims of reason and conservative religious feeling? Might it not be possible to save at once the purity and majesty of G.o.d and the inspiration of the poets?

To Plutarch the doctrine of daemons seemed to furnish an answer to this question; it also satisfied other spiritual cravings which were equally urgent. The need of some mixed nature to mediate between the ethereal world and the region of sense became all the more imperious as the philosophic conception of G.o.d receded into a more remote and majestic purity. The gradation of spiritual powers, which had been accepted by so many great minds from the time of Hesiod, at once guarded the aloofness of the Supreme and satisfied the craving of the religious instinct for some means of contact with it, for divine help in the trials of time. These mediating spirits were also made in Plutarch's theology to furnish an explanation of oracles and all forms of prophecy, of the inspired enthusiasm of artist, sage, and poet. Finally, the theory, with the aid of mythic fancy, cast a light on the fate of souls beyond the grave, and vindicated the Divine justice by a vision of a judgment to come.

Plutarch's daemonology, as he admits himself, is an inheritance from the past. The daemons are beings half divine, half human; they are G.o.dlike in power and intelligence, they are human in liability to the pa.s.sions engendered by the flesh. This host of spirits dwell in the borderland below the moon, between the pure changeless region of the celestial powers and the region of the mutable and the mortal. Linking the two worlds together by their composite nature, the daemons differ in degrees of virtue; some are more akin to the Divine perfection, others more tainted by the evil of the lower world.(2245) The good spirits, as they are described by Maximus of Tyre, are true servants of G.o.d and faithful guardians of human virtue. But the bad daemons a.s.sume a special prominence in the theology of Plutarch. Nor was the development unnatural. His conception of immortality, and the necessity of purification in another world, raised the question as to the destiny of souls whose stains were indelible. If purified souls are charged as daemons with offices of mercy, may not the impure prolong their guilt in plaguing and corrupting mankind?

May not the existence of such sombre spirits account for the evil in the world, the existence of which cannot be blinked? Although there are traces of this moral dualism long before Plutarch's time, both in Greek poetry and speculation, it was Xenocrates who first formulated the doctrine of evil daemons in relation to mythology.(2246) "It cannot be," he taught, "that unlucky days and festivals, conducted with scourgings and fasts, lamentations and lacerations and impure words and deeds, are celebrated in honour of the blessed G.o.ds or good daemons. They are rather offered to those powerful and terrible spirits of evil in the air whose sombre character is propitiated by such gloomy rites." These sinister spirits a.s.sert their vast power, and display their malevolence, not only in plague, pestilence, and dearth, and all the desolating convulsions of the physical world, but in the moral perversion and deception of the human race. They are accountable for all that shocks the moral sense in the impure or ghastly tales which the poets have told of the G.o.ds, and in the gloomy or obscene rites which are celebrated in their honour. The poets and early myth-makers have not invented the evil in myth and rite; they have been deceived as to the authors of the evil. Each of the blessed G.o.ds has attached to him a daemon who is in some respects his counterpart, wielding his power, but who may perpetrate every kind of moral enormity in his name, and who demands to be honoured and propitiated after his own evil nature. The bad daemons, in fact, masquerade as G.o.ds and bring disgrace upon them. It was not the Blessed Ones who mutilated a father, who raised rebellion in Olympus and were driven into exile, who stooped to be the lovers of mortal women. These are the works of spirits of evil, using their fiendish cunning to deceive a simple age. Its poetry was seduced to cast a magical charm over their l.u.s.ts and crimes; its superst.i.tion was terrified into appeasing the fiends by shameful orgies or dark b.l.o.o.d.y rites. Poets and founders of ritual have been faithful to supernatural fact, but they did not see that in the supernatural order there are evil powers as well as good. They are sound in their record but wrong in their interpretation. In this fas.h.i.+on Plutarch and his school strove to reconcile a rational faith with the grossness of superst.i.tion, to save the holiness of G.o.d and the glory of Homer.

But the bad daemons who were called in to save the ancient cults proved dangerous allies in the end. Few who really know him will be inclined to question the sincere monotheistic piety of Plutarch. And a sympathetic critic will even not withhold from him a certain respect for his old-world attachment to the forms of his ancestral wors.h.i.+p. He knew no other avenue of approaching the Divine. Yet only the imperious religious cravings and the spiritual contradictions of that age could excuse or account for a system which was disastrous both to paganism and philosophy. The union of gross superst.i.tion with ingenious theology, the licence of subtlety applied to the ancient legends, demanded too much credulity from the cultivated and too much subtlety from the vulgar. It undermined the already crumbling polytheism; it made philosophy the apostle of a belief in a baleful daemonic agency. If a malign genius was seated beside every G.o.d to account for the evil in nature or myth, might not a day come when both friends and enemies would confound the daemon and the G.o.d?(2247) Might not philosophy be led on in a disastrous decline to the justification of magic, incantations, and all theurgic extravagance? That day did come in the fourth century when Platonism and polytheism in close league were making a last stand against the victorious Church. Even then indeed a purer Platonism still survived, as well as a purer paganism sustained by the mysteries of Mithra or Demeter. But the paganism which the Christian empire found it hardest to conquer, and which propagated itself far into the Christian ages, was the belief in magic and occult powers founded on the doctrine of daemons. And the Christian controversialist, with as firm a faith in daemons as the pagan, turned that doctrine against the faith which it was invented to support. The distinction of good and bad daemons, first drawn by Xenocrates and Chrysippus, and developed by Plutarch, was eagerly seized upon by Tatian and S. Clement of Alexandria, by Minucius Felix and S. Cyprian.(2248) But the good became the heavenly host of Christ and His angels; the bad were identified with the pagan G.o.ds. What would have been the anguish of Plutarch could he have foreseen that his theology, elaborated with such pious subtlety and care, would one day be used against the gracious powers of Olympus, and that the spirits he had conjured up to defend them would be exorcised as maleficent fiends by the triumphant dialectic of S.

Augustine.(2249)

The daemonology of Plutarch also furnished a theory of prophetic powers, and especially of the inspiration of Delphi. It was in the porticoes of the shrine of Apollo, or among the monuments of ancient glory and devotion, that the most interesting of Plutarch's religious essays were inspired. He probably bore the honours of the Delphic priesthood down to the last days of his long life. But in the years when Plutarch was ordering a sacrifice or a procession, or discussing antiquarian and philosophic questions with travellers from Britain or the eastern seas, Delphi had lost much of its ancient power and renown. Great political and great economic changes had reduced the functions of the oracle to a comparatively humble sphere. It was no longer consulted on affairs of state by great potentates of the East and West. The farmers of Boeotia or the Arcadian shepherds now came to seek the causes of failure in their crops or of a murrain among their herds, to ask advice about the purchase of a piece of land or the marriage of a child. So far back as the days of Cicero the faith in oracles had been greatly shaken,(2250) and even the most venerable shrines were no longer resorted to as of old. Powerful philosophic schools, the Cynic and the Epicurean, poured contempt on all the arts of divination. Many of the ancient oracles had long been silent.

In Boeotia, where, in the days of Herodotus, the air was full of inspiration,(2251) the ancient magic only lingered around Lebadea. Sheep grazed around the fanes of Tegyra and the Ptoan Apollo. While in old days at Delphi, the services of two, and even three, Pythian priestesses were demanded by the concourse of votaries, in Plutarch's time one priestess sufficed.(2252) But the second century brought, along with a general religious revival, a restoration of the ancient faith in oracles. The voice of Delphi had been silenced for a time by Nero, and the sacred chasm had been choked with corpses because the priestess had branded the emperor as another Orestes.(2253) But the oracle, although shorn of much of its glory, recovered some of its popularity in the second century. It received offerings once more from wealthy votaries. The emperor Hadrian characteristically tested its omniscience by a question as to the birthplace of Homer. Curious travellers from distant lands, even philosophers of the Cynic and Epicurean schools, came to visit the ancient shrine, to make the round of its antiquarian treasures, and to discuss the secret of its inspiration.(2254) A new town sprang up at the gates of the sanctuary; sumptuous temples, baths, and halls of a.s.sembly replaced the solitude and ruins of many generations. The G.o.d himself seemed to the pious Plutarch to have returned in power to his ancient seat.(2255)

The revival of Delphi gladdened the heart of Plutarch as a sign of reviving religion and h.e.l.lenism. And although the oracle no longer wielded an oec.u.menical primacy, its antiquities and its claims to inspiration evidently attracted many curious inquirers. We are admitted to their conversations in the Delphic treatises of Plutarch. His characters bear the names of the old-world schools, but there is a strangely modern tone in their discussions. Sometimes we might fancy ourselves listening to a debate on the inspiration of Scripture between an agnostic, a Catholic, and an accommodating broad Churchman. Plutarch himself, or his representative, generally holds the balance between the extreme views, and tries to reconcile the claims of reason and of faith. It is clear that even in that age of religious revival there was no lack of a scepticism like that of Lucian. Even in the sacred courts of Delphi the Epicurean might be heard suggesting that, because, among a thousand random prophecies of natural events, one here and there may seem to tally with the fact, it does not follow that the prediction was sure and true at the moment of deliverance;(2256) the wandering word may sometimes. .h.i.t the mark. The fulfilment is a mere coincidence, a happy chance. Boethus, the sceptic, is easily refuted by the orthodox Serapion, who makes an appeal to well-known oracles which have been actually fulfilled, not merely in a loose, apparent fas.h.i.+on, but down to the minutest details of time, place, and manner.(2257) In these discussions, although the caviller is heard with a tolerant courtesy, it is clear that faith is always in the ascendant. Yet even faith has to face and account for an apparent degeneracy which might well cause some uneasiness. For instance, is it not startling that, in the name of the G.o.d of music, many oracles should be delivered in trivial, badly-fas.h.i.+oned verses?(2258) Can it be that Apollo is a meaner artist than Hesiod or Homer? On the other side, it may be said that the G.o.d is too lofty to care to deck his utterances in the graces of literary form, or, by a more probable theory, he inspires the vision but not the verse. But what of the oracles of later days, which are delivered in the baldest prose? Is this not a disturbing sign of degeneracy? Can this be worthy of the G.o.d? The defender of the faith has no difficulty in quieting the suspicion. Even in the great ages we know that oracles were sometimes delivered in prose,(2259) and in ancient times excited feeling ran naturally into verse.(2260) The stately hexameter was the appropriate form of utterance when the oracle had to deal with great events affecting the fate of cities and of nations. Inspiration is not independent of surrounding circ.u.mstances, and the functions of the oracle have changed since the days of Croesus and Themistocles. The whole style of human life and the taste of men are less imposing and stately. The change in the style of the oracle is only part of a general movement.(2261) For ages simple prose has taken the place of artistic rhythm in other departments besides the sphere of prophecy. We do not despise the philosophy of Socrates and Plato, because it does not come to us clothed in verse, like the speculations of Thales, Parmenides, and Empedocles. And who can expect the simple peasant girl, who now occupies the tripod, to speak in the tones of Homer?(2262) The dim grandeur of the old poetic oracles had indeed some advantages, in aiding the memory by the use of measured and musical expression, and in veiling the full meaning of the G.o.d from irreverent or hostile eyes. But their pompous ambiguity, providing apparently so many loopholes for evasion, brought discredit on the sacred art, and encouraged the imitative ingenuity of a host of venal impostors who, around the great temples, cheated the ears of slaves and silly women with a mockery of the mysterious solemnity of the Pythian verse.(2263)

The more serious question as to the cause of the extinction of oracles brings the discussion nearer to the great problem of the sources of inspiration. It is true that the fact may be accounted for to some extent by natural causes. Oracles have never ceased, but the number has been diminished. G.o.d measures His help to men by their needs, and as they grow more enlightened they feel less need for supernatural guidance. This, however, is evidently dangerous ground. But surely the poverty and depopulation of Greece are enough to account for the disappearance of oracles. A country which can hardly put three thousand hoplites in the field-as many as Megara alone sent forth to fight at Plataea-cannot need the many shrines which flourished when Greece was in its glory.(2264) But it may be admitted that oracles can and do disappear. And this is in no way derogatory to the power of G.o.d. For it is not the great G.o.d Himself who utters the warning or the prophecy by the voice of the priestess. Such a doctrine is lowering to His greatness and majesty. In prophecy and divination, as in other fields, G.o.d operates, through instruments and agents, on a given matter, and in concurrence with physical causes. The matter in this case is the human soul, which, in greater or less degrees, can be acted on by supernatural influences.(2265) The exciting cause of the "enthusiasm" or inspiration, applying a sudden stimulus to the soul, may be some vapour or exhalation from the earth, such as that which rose from the cleft beneath the Delphic tripod.(2266) Lastly, there is the daemon, a supernatural being, who, by his composite nature, as we have seen, is the channel of sympathy between the human and the Divine.(2267) But among the causes of afflatus or inspiration, some may, in cases, disappear and cease to operate. The intoxicating fume or vapour is a force of varying intensity and may exhaust itself and be spent, as a spring may fail, or a mine may be worked out.(2268) The daemon may migrate from one place to another, and with its disappearance, the oracle will become silent, as that of Teiresias at Orchomenus has long been, just as the lyre becomes silent when the musician ceases to strike the strings.(2269)

In all this theory Plutarch is careful to guard himself against a purely materialistic theory of the facts of inspiration.(2270) Physical causes may a.s.sist and predispose, but physical causes alone will not account for the facts of inspiration. The daemon is a necessary mediator between the human soul and G.o.d, a messenger of the divine purpose. But the real problem of inspiration is in the soul of man himself, in the possibility of contact between the soul and a supernatural power. This question is illuminated in Apuleius and Plutarch and Maximus of Tyre by a discussion of the daemon of Socrates. It was by a natural instinct that the Antonine Platonists went back to the great teacher of Plato for support of the system which was to link religion with philosophy by the daemonic theory.

In Plutarch's dialogue on the Genius of Socrates, the various theories of that mysterious influence current in antiquity are discussed at length.

The language in which Socrates or his disciples spoke of its monitions lent itself to different interpretations. Was his daemon an external sign, as in augury, an audible voice, or an inner, perhaps supernatural light, a voice of reason, speaking to the soul's highest faculty, through no uttered word or symbol?(2271) The grosser conceptions of it may be dismissed at once. The daemon of Socrates does not belong to the crude materialism of divination, although the philosopher could forecast the disaster of Syracuse.(2272) Nor was it any ordinary faculty of keen intellectual shrewdness, strengthened and sharpened by the cultivation of experience. Still less was it any hallucination, bordering on insanity, which is merely a perversion of the senses and reason. It was rather a spiritual intuition, an immediate vision, not darkened or weakened by pa.s.sing through any symbolic medium of the senses, a flash of sudden insight such as is vouchsafed only to the select order of pure and lofty spirits, in whom from the beginning the higher portion of the soul has always risen high above the turbid and darkening influence of the senses.(2273) That such a faculty exists is certain to the Platonist and the Pythagorean. But in the ma.s.s of men it is struggling against fleshly powers, sometimes defeated, sometimes victorious, inspiring ideals, or stinging with remorse, until perchance, late and slowly, after chastis.e.m.e.nt and struggle, it emerges into a certain calm. Pythagoreans, such as Apollonius, taught that the diviner, the mantic, faculty in man was more open to higher influences when emanc.i.p.ated from the body in sleep, and that it could be set free in waking hours by abstinence and ascetic discipline.(2274) Plutarch laid stress on the latter part of this theory, but ridiculed the notion that the soul could be most clear and receptive when its powers were relaxed. But the capacity of the higher reason in the loftier souls is almost without limit. The reason, which is the daemon in each, when unimpeded by bodily obstruction, is open to the lightest, most ethereal touch. Spirit can act directly by immediate influence upon spirit, without any sensuous aid of word or sign.(2275) The influence is a "wind blowing where it listeth," or a strange sudden illumination, revealing truth as by a flash. The disembodied spirit, cleansed and freed from the servitude of the body, and now a real daemon, possesses all these powers and receptivities in the fullest measure. But it gains no new power when it quits the body, although its spiritual faculties may have been dulled and obstructed by the flesh. The sun does not lose its native radiance when for a moment it is obscured by clouds.(2276) And thus a Socrates may even here below have a spiritual vision denied to us; a Pythia may be inspired by the daemon of the shrine to read the future of a campaign. Nor is there anything more wonderful in prediction than in memory.(2277) In this unresting flux of existence, the present of brief sensation is a mere moment between the past which has ceased to be and the future which is to be born. If we can still grasp the one, may we not antic.i.p.ate the other?

It is thus that, by a far-reaching theory of inspiration, Plutarch strove to rehabilitate the faith in oracular lore. The loftier philosophic conception of the Supreme is saved from contamination with anything earthly by the doctrine of daemons themselves released from the body, yet, through the higher faculty in all souls, able to act directly upon those still in the flesh. The influence is direct and immediate, yet not independent of purely physical causes or temperament. "The treasure is in earthen vessels." But the full vision is only reserved for the spirit unpolluted and untroubled by sense and pa.s.sion. Plutarch is preparing the way for the "ecstasy" of later Neo-Platonism. All this speculation of course lent itself to a revival of heathen superst.i.tion. Yet it is interesting to see how, in many a flash of insight, Plutarch reveals a truth for all generations. We, in our time, are perhaps too much inclined to limit the powers of the human spirit to the field of sense and observation. The slackening hold on faith in a spiritual world and a higher intuition may well be visited by the proper Nemesis, in the darkening of the divine vision, whether as religious faith or artistic inspiration. The dream of an earthly paradise enriched with every sensuous gratification by a science working in bondage to mere utility may have serious results for the spiritual future of humanity. It may need a bitter experience to dispel the gross illusion; yet men may once more come to believe with Plutarch that, as it were, at the back of every soul there is an opening to the divine world from which yet may come, as of old, the touch of an unseen hand.

BOOK IV.

_ADSCENDENTIBUS DI MANUM PORRIGUNT_

CHAPTER I

SUPERSt.i.tION

Superst.i.tion in all ages is a term of unstable meaning. Men even of the same time will apply it or deny its application to the same belief. The devout beliefs of one period may become mere superst.i.tions to the next.

And, conversely, what for a time may be regarded as alien superst.i.tion, may in course of time become an accepted portion of the native creed. This was the history of those Eastern cults which will be described in coming chapters. At first, they fell under Cicero's definition of superst.i.tion, viz. any religious belief or practice going beyond the prescription of ancestral usage.(2278) But a day came when they were the most popular wors.h.i.+ps of the Roman world, when great n.o.bles, and even the prince himself, were enthusiastic votaries of them.(2279) The religion of Mithra, when it was confined to an obscure circle of slaves or freedmen at Ostia, was a superst.i.tion to the pontifical college. It took its place with the cult of the Roman Trinity when Aurelian built his temple to the Sun and endowed his priesthood.(2280)

Plutarch devoted a treatise to the subject of superst.i.tion. And his conception of it is more like our own, less formal and external, than that of Cicero. He develops his view of the degradation of the religious sense by contrasting it with atheism. Atheism is a great calamity, a blindness of the reason to the goodness and love which govern the universe. It is the extinction of a faculty rather than the perversion of one.(2281) But superst.i.tion both believes and trembles. It acknowledges the existence of supernatural powers, but they are to it powers of evil who are ready to afflict and injure, to be approached only in terror and with servile prostration. This craven fear of G.o.d fills the whole universe with spectres. It leaves no refuge whither the devil-wors.h.i.+pper can escape from the horrors which haunt him night and day. Whither can he flee from that awful presence? Sleep, which should give a respite from the cares of life, to his fevered mind, swarms with ghostly terrors.(2282) And death, the last sleep, which should put a term to the ills of life, only unrolls before the superst.i.tious votary an awful scene of rivers of fire and blackness of darkness, and sounds of punishment and unutterable woe.(2283) To such a soul the festivals of ancestral religion lose all their solemn gladness and cheering comfort. The shrines which should offer a refuge to the troubled heart, even to the hunted criminal, become to him places of torture. And the believer in a G.o.d of malignant cruelty betakes himself in despair to dark rites from foreign lands, and spends his substance on impostors who trade upon his fears. Better, says the pious Plutarch, not believe in G.o.d at all, than cringe before a G.o.d worse than the worst of men. Unbelief, calamity though it be, at least does not dishonour a Deity whose existence it denies. The true impiety is to believe that G.o.d can be wantonly faithless and revengeful, fickle and cruel.(2284)

The earnestness, and even bitterness, with which Plutarch a.s.sails the degrading fear of the supernal Powers have caused some rather shallow critics to imagine that he had a sympathy with scepticism.(2285) How such an idea could arise in the mind of any one who had read his treatise on the Genius of Socrates or on Isis and Osiris, or on the Delays of Divine Justice, it is difficult to imagine. Plutarch's hatred of superst.i.tion is that of a genuinely pious man, with a lofty conception of the Divine love and pity, who is revolted by the travesty of pure religion, which is repeated from age to age. It is the feeling of a man to whom religion is one of the most elevating joys of life, when he sees it turned into an instrument of torture. But the force of the protest shows how rampant was the evil in that age. Lucretius felt with the intensity of genius all the misery which perverted conceptions of the Divine nature had inflicted on human life.(2286) But the force of Roman superst.i.tion had endlessly multiplied since the days of Lucretius. It was no longer the exaggeration of Roman awe at the lightning, the flight of birds, the entrails of a sacrificial victim, or anxious observance of the solemn words of ancestral formulae, every syllable of which had to be guarded from mutilation or omission. All the lands which had fallen to her sword were, in Plutarch's day, adding to the spiritual burden of Rome. If in some cases they enriched her rather slender spiritual heritage, they also multiplied the sources of supernatural terror. If in the mysteries of Isis and Mithra they exalted the soul in spiritual reverie and gave a promise of a coming life,(2287) they sent the Roman matron to bathe in the freezing Tiber at early dawn and crawl on bleeding knees over the Campus Martius, or purchase the interpretation of a dream from some diviner of Palestine or a horoscope from some trader in astral lore.(2288) The Platonist, nourished on the pure theism of the _Phaedo_ and the _Republic_, and the priest of that cheerful shrine, which the young Ion had each bright morning swept with myrtle boughs and sprinkled with the water of the Castalian spring,(2289) whose holy ministry gladdened even the years of boyhood-a man with such experience had a natural horror of the dark terrors which threatened to obscure the radiant visions of Delphi and Olympus.

Livy complained of the neglect in his day of signs and omens which formerly were deemed worthy of historical record.(2290) The contempt for augury in the time of Cicero was hardly concealed among the cultivated.(2291) The details of parts of the ancient bird-lore eluded the researches of the elder Pliny. The emperor Claudius, lamenting the neglect of the ancient science, demanded a decree of the Senate to restore it to its former efficiency.(2292) These are some signs of that general decay of old Roman religion in the last century of the Republic, which was partly due to philosophic enlightenment partly to the confusion and demoralisation of civil strife, but perhaps even more to the dangerous seductions of foreign superst.i.tions.(2293) Among the counsels of Maecenas to Augustus none is more earnest and weighty than the warning against these occult arts.(2294) Augustus is advised to observe, and enforce the observance of the time-honoured ancestral forms, but he must banish sorcerers and diviners, who may sow the seeds of conspiracy against the prince. The advice was acted on. While the emperor rebuilt the fallen temples and revived the ancient Latin rites, 2000 books of unlicensed divination were in one day given to the flames.(2295) The old religion, which had absorbed so much from the augural lore of Etruria,(2296) was itself certainly not free from superst.i.tion. The wrath of the Lemures,(2297) the darkness of the inner forest, the flash of lightning, the flight of birds, the entrails of a sacrifice, excited many a fear, and might cause a man to suspend a journey, or break up an a.s.sembly of the people. But the Romans had, in the early ages, after their orderly legal fas.h.i.+on, reduced the force of these terrors by an elaborate art which provided a convenient resource of statecraft, and a means of soothing the alarms of the crowd.

But foreign and unregulated superst.i.tions, from the second century B.C., were pouring in from the East to put a fresh load on the human spirit or to replace the waning faith in Italian augury. In 139 B.C. Cornelius Scipio Hispalus vainly strove by an edict to stop the inroads of the star readers.(2298) But treatises on this pretended science were in vogue in Varro's time, and are quoted by the great savant with approval.(2299) These impostors were swarming in Rome at the time of Catiline's conspiracy,(2300) inflating the hopes of the plotters. Suetonius has surpa.s.sed himself in the collection, from many sources, of the signs and wonders which foreshadowed the great destiny, and also the death of Augustus. And it is noteworthy that, among these predictions, are some founded on astrology.(2301) On the day of the emperor's birth, P.

Nigidius, a learned astrologer, found that the position of the stars foretold a coming master of the world. Augustus himself received a similar forecast from Theagenes, a star-reader of Apollonia. He had his horoscope drawn out, and a silver coin was struck with the stamp of Capricorn.

This fatalist superst.i.tion infected nearly all the successors of Augustus in the first and second centuries. Astrology is essentially a fatalist creed, and the heir to the great prize of the princ.i.p.ate, with the absolute control of the civilised world, was generally designated by that blind impersonal power whose decrees might be read in the positions of the eternal spheres, or by signs and omens upon earth. Suetonius, Tacitus, Dion Ca.s.sius, have chronicled, with apparent faith, the predictions of future power which gathered round the popular candidate for the succession, or the dark warnings of coming disaster which excited the prince's fears and gave courage to enemies and rivals. It is not hard to see why the emperors at once believed in these black arts and profoundly distrusted their professors. They wished to keep a monopoly of that awful lore, lest it might excite dangerous hopes in possible pretenders.(2302) To consult a Chaldaean seer on the fate of the prince, or to possess his horoscope, was always suspicious, and might often be fatal.(2303) The astonis.h.i.+ng thing is, that men had such implicit faith in the skill of these Eastern impostors, along with such distrust of their honesty. They were banished again and again in the first century, but persecution only increased their power, and they always returned to exercise greater influence than ever.(2304) Never was there a clearer proof of the impotence of government in the face of a deep-seated popular belief.

Tiberius, who had probably no real religious faith, was, from his youth, the slave of astrology.(2305) An adept had, at his birth, predicted his lofty destiny.(2306) He had in his train one Thrasyllus, a noted professor of the science, who had often to read the stars in the face of death, and he was surrounded in his gloomy retirement at Capreae by a "Chaldaean herd."(2307) Claudius was pedantic and antiquarian in his religious tastes, and, while he tried to revive old Roman augury, he banished the astrologers.(2308) A great n.o.ble who had the temerity to consult them as to the time of the emperor's death shared the same fate. Nero, who despised all regular religion, except that of the Syrian G.o.ddess, was the prey of superst.i.tious terror. The Furies of the murdered Agrippina, as in Aeschylean tragedy, haunted him in dreams, and he used the aid of magic to evoke and propitiate the awful shade.(2309) When, towards the end of his reign, his prospects grew more threatening, the appearance of a comet drove him to consult Balbillus, his astrologer, who advised that the portended danger should be diverted from the emperor by the destruction of the great n.o.bles. Some of the craft had predicted that Nero should one day be deserted and betrayed, while others consoled him with the promise of a great monarchy of the East with its seat at Jerusalem.(2310) The terrible year which followed Nero's death was crowded with portents, and all the rivals for the succession were equally slaves of the adepts, who exploited their ambitions or their fears. The end of Galba was foreshadowed, from the opening of his reign, by ominous dreams and signs.(2311) The hopes of Otho had long been inflamed by the diviner Seleucus,(2312) and by Ptolemaeus, who was his companion during his command in Spain.(2313) When he had won the dangerous prize, Otho was tortured by nightly visions of the spirit of Galba, which he used every art to lay. Yet this same man set out for the conflict on the Po in defiant disregard of omens warranted by the ancient religion.(2314) His end, which, by a certain calm n.o.bility, seemed to redeem his life, was portended by a sign which Tacitus records as a fact. At the very hour when Otho was falling on his dagger, a bird of strange form settled in a much frequented grove, and sat there undisturbed by the pa.s.sers-by, or by the flocks of other fowls around.(2315) The horoscope of Otho's rival Vitellius had been cast by the astrologers, and their reading of his fate gave his parents acute anxiety. He used to follow the monitions of a German sorceress. Yet, like so many of his cla.s.s in that age, he had but scant respect for accredited beliefs. It was noted with alarm that he entered on his pontificate on the black day of the Allia.(2316) The astrologers he probably found more dangerous than helpful, and he ordered them to be expelled from Italy.(2317) But it is a curious sign of their conscious power and their audacity, that a mocking counter edict to that of Vitellius was immediately published by unknown hands, ordaining the death of the persecutor within a certain day.(2318)

The emperors of the Flavian dynasty, although their power was stable and the world was settling down, were not less devoted to Eastern superst.i.tions than any of their predecessors. Vespasian indeed once more exiled the astrologers, but he still kept the best of them in his train.(2319) He had consulted the oracle on Mount Carmel, and obeyed the vision vouchsafed in the temple of Serapis.(2320) His son t.i.tus, who may have had romantic dreams of an Eastern monarchy, consulted foreign oracles, wors.h.i.+pped in Egyptian temples, and was a firm believer in the science of the stars.(2321) Domitian was perhaps the most superst.i.tious of all his race. The rebuilder of Roman temples and the restorer of Roman orthodoxy had also a firm faith in planetary lore. He lived in perpetual fear of his sudden end, the precise hour and manner of which the Chaldaeans had foretold in his early youth.(2322) Among the many reasons for his savage proscription of the leading n.o.bles, one of the most deadly was the possession of an imperial horoscope. On his side too, the haunted tyrant diligently studied the birth-hour of suspected or possible pretenders to the throne. In the last months of his reign his terror became more and more and more intense; never in the same s.p.a.ce of time had the lightning been so busy. The Capitol, the temple of the Flavians, the palace, even Domitian's own sleeping chamber, were all struck from heaven.

In a dream, the haunted emperor beheld Minerva, the G.o.ddess whom he specially adored, quitting her chapel, with a warning that she could no longer save him from his doom. On the day before his death, the emperor predicted that, on the next, the moon would appear blood red in the sign of Aquarius. On his last morning, a seer, who had been summoned from Germany to interpret the menacing omens and who had foretold a coming change, was condemned to death.(2323)