Note 308 — Chapter IV
Neil Buchanan translation
Footnote 308:
(return)
The age of the Antonines was the flourishing period of Gnosticism. Marquardt (Römische Staatsverwaltung Vol. 3, p. 81) says of this age: "With the Antonines begins the last period of the Roman religious development in which two new elements enter into it. These are the Syrian and Persian deities, whose worship at this time was prevalent not only in the city of Rome, but in the whole empire, and, at the same time, Christianity, which entered into conflict with all ancient tradition, and in this conflict exercised a certain influence even on the Oriental forms of worship."