Note 152.1 — Chapter V · THE PERIOD AFTER ALEXANDER

The mysteries of Mithras embodied much the same eschatologic ideas and hopes; but these came to the Græco-Roman world only in the latest period before the establishment of Christianity, and had little hold on Hellenic society proper. Doubtless the most attractive mystery for the Hellenes was the Orphic, and we have many proofs of its activity and life in the two centuries before and after the beginning of our era; and we can well understand the causes of its popularity. Its deity had become Hellenised long ago; the Orphic formulæ were free from barbarous jargon and admitted the familiar divine names; the insistence on purification was congenial to many Hellenic temperaments; there was probably nothing surviving in the ritual that was objectionable to the cultivated Hellene; and finally its picture of Paradise seems to have accorded with the trend of the Hellenic imagination. The numerous grave-inscriptions of these centuries rarely express any definite Orphic sentiment or allude to any specially mystic faith; but we know that the sacred hymn of the votaries was buried with them from the fourth century down to the Roman Imperial period; and we have the evidence of Plutarch attesting the prevalence of these societies and their power of appeal, for, when he is consoling his wife for the death of their child, he reminds her of the promises of future happiness held out by the Dionysiac mysteries, into which they have both been initiated.152.1