Note 145.1 — Chapter V · THE PERIOD AFTER ALEXANDER

The spirit of syncretism grows stronger and more pervading through the later Greek and Græco-Roman periods, and dominates the later Orphic and Gnostic thought; and the inscriptions, usually the best record of the popular religious practice, attest its wide diffusion. We find the deities of diverse lands—Egypt, Syria and Greece—linked together in the same formula of thanksgiving and the same offering dedicated to them all. And the name Zeus is applied to so many gods of the East that in the cult-formulæ it seems often to have lost all its personal and concrete value and acquired the vaguer meaning of ‘God.’ The Jewish Jahivé himself—under the name Ἰάω—was occasionally identified with him and at times, it seems, even with Dionysos.145.1