Note 155.1 — Chapter V · THE PERIOD AFTER ALEXANDER

Signs of decay and of new life in later Paganism.—The Hellenistic period cannot be severed by any sharp dividing line from the Græco-Roman; but it belongs rather to the student of Roman religion and the Roman Empire to pursue the history of Hellenic polytheism through the first centuries of our era down to the establishment of Christianity. The religious phenomena of the period that has just been sketched present, on the one hand, the signs of decay, the decay of the old civic and political religion which fostered the growth of the Greek Polis, the intrusion from the East of demonology and magic, and on the other hand the working of new religious forces which prepare the way for Christianity. The cults of Apollo, Zeus and Athene were among the first to wither; yet a living and personal religious sense was in all probability more diffused through the Greek world under the Epigoni and the Roman Empire than it had been in the earlier centuries. Contact with the Oriental spirit brought to many a stronger intensity of religious life; religion is no longer preoccupied with the physical and political world, but its horizon lies beyond the grave and its force is ‘other-worldliness.’ Men flock to the mysteries, seeking communion with the divinity by sacrament, and sustaining their faith by mystic dogmas. The religious virtue most emphasised is purity, of which the influence is often anti-social; this was no longer always understood in a pharisaic sense, but its spiritual significance was proclaimed to the people and penetrated the sphere of temple-ritual. An inscription from a temple in Rhodes of the time of Hadrian contains a list of rules concerning righteous entrance into the shrine, “the first and greatest rule is to be pure and unblemished in hand and heart and to be free from an evil conscience.”155.1 Something similar was inscribed on the temple of Asklepios at Epidauros.155.2 The objective of the earlier Hellenic polytheism was the city, the tribe, the family; that of the later was the individual soul; the earlier religious morality looked rather to works and practice, the later rather to purity and personal intimacy with God, which gave the cue to the later ‘gnosis’ and theosophy. The gradual divorce of religion from political life was a loss which was not repaired for many centuries; but it was compensated by the rise of a humanitarian spirit which was to be infused into a new cosmopolitan religion.155.3