at Salamis, he devoted his maturity to the record of the great international struggle. Hither and thither he passed, collecting information, an eager student of human things. In Egypt he compared the gods with those of Greece, and attempted to distinguish two sets of elements in Hellenic religion, Egyptian and Pelasgic. He left notes on the Babylonians and the Persians, on the Scythians in the vast tracts east of northern Europe, on the Getæ south of the Danube.
When the conquests of Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.) threw open the gates of Asia, a stream of travellers passed into Persia and India, whose reports were utilised by the geographers of later days. The religion of Zoroaster, whose name was already known to Plato, attracted great attention. At the court of Chandragupta on the Ganges, at the opening of the third century B.C., Megasthenes, the ambassador of Seleucus (who had succeeded to the dominions of Alexander in Asia), set down brief memoranda on the usages and belief of the Hindus among whom he resided. Nearer home the representatives of Mesopotamian and Egyptian learning commended their national cultures to their conquerors. Berosus, priest of Bel in Babylon, translated into Greek a Babylonian work on astronomy and astrology, and compiled a history of his country from ancient documents; while his contemporary, Manetho, of Sebennytus in the Nile Delta, undertook a similar service for his native land.
Meanwhile the great library and schools at Alexandria had been founded. Hither came students from many lands; and the Christian fathers Eusebius and Epiphanius in the fourth century attributed to the librarian of the royal patron of literature, Ptolemy Philadelphus (285–247 B.C.), the design of collecting the sacred books of the Ethiopians, Indians, Persians, Elamites, Babylonians, Assyrians, Romans, Phœnicians, Syrians, and Greeks. The Jews had settled in Alexandria in considerable numbers; they began to translate their Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, and little by little they planted their synagogues all round the Eastern Mediterranean, and finally established their worship in Rome. The Egyptian deities in their turn went abroad. The worship of Serapis was introduced at Athens. Isis, the sister-wife of Osiris and mother of Horus, goddess of many functions—among others of protecting sailors—was carried round the Levant to Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, and as far north as the Hellespont and Thrace. Westwards she was borne to Sicily and South Italy. In due time she entered Rome, and in spite of senatorial orders five times repeated (in the first century B.C.), to tear down her altars and statues, she secured her place, and received homage all through the West from the outskirts of the Sahara to the Roman wall north of our own Tyne.
The introduction of Greek gods had begun centuries before. As early as 493 B.C., at a time of serious famine, a temple had been built to Demeter, Dionysus, and Persephonê; many others followed; resemblances among the native gods quickly led to identifications; and new forms of worship tended to displace the old. After another crisis (206 B.C.) the "Great Mother," Cybelê, the Phrygian goddess of Mount Ida, was imported. The black aerolite which was supposed to be her abode, was presented by King Attalus to the ambassadors of the Roman senate. The goddess was solemnly welcomed at the Port of Ostia, and was ultimately carried by noble Roman ladies on to the Palatine hill.
The history of later days was full of notes upon religion. Cæsar interspersed them among the narratives of his campaigns in Gaul; Tacitus drew on his recollections as an officer in active service for his description of the Germans. There was as yet no literature in Wales or Ireland to embody the Celtic traditions; and the Scandinavian Saga was unborn. But the geographers, like Strabo (first century A.D.), collected a great deal of material that must have been gathered ultimately from travellers, soldiers, traders, and slaves. A wise and gentle philosophic Greek, Plutarch of Chæronea in Bœotia (A.D. 46–120), student at the university of Athens, lecturer on philosophy at Rome, and finally priest of Pythian Apollo in his native city, is at home in many religions. Beside altars to the Greek gods Dionysus, Herakles, and Artemis, in his own streets, were those of the Egyptian Isis and Anubis. The treatise on Isis and Osiris (commonly ascribed to him) is an early essay in comparative religion. In the latter half of the second century the traveller Pausanias passes through Greece, describing its sacred sites, noting its monuments, recording mythological traditions, and observing archaic rites. In this fascinating guide-book to religious practice are survivals of ancient savagery, still lingering at country shrines, set down with curious unconsciousness of their significance. The historical method is as yet only in its infancy. But Pausanias rightly discerned that its first business is to know the facts.
In Rome, where ritual tradition held its ground with extraordinary tenacity amid the decay of belief, Marcus Terentius Varro, renowned for his wide learning (116–28 B.C.), devoted sixteen books of his great treatise on Antiquities to "Divine Things." Like so many other precious works of ancient literature it has disappeared, but its contents are partly known through its use by St. Augustine in his famous work on "The City of God." Following a division of the gods by the chief pontiff Mucius Scævola, he treated religion under three heads. In the form presented by the poets' tales of the gods it was mythical. Founded by the philosophers upon nature (physis) it was physical. As administered by priests and practised in cities it was civil. It was an old notion that religion was a legal convention imposed by authority for purposes of popular control; and Varro does not disdain to declare it expedient that States should be deceived in such matters. This police-notion long regulated public custom, and tended to render the identification of deities presenting superficial resemblances all the more easy.
By this time the origin of the term "religion" had begun to excite interest, as its meaning began slowly to change. Varro's contemporaries, Cicero (106–43 B.C.) and Lucretius (about 97–53), discussed its derivation. Cicero connected it with the root legere, to "string together," to "arrange"; while Lucretius found its origin in ligare, to "bind." Philology gives little help when it speaks with uncertain voice. More important is the primitive meaning which Mr. Warde Fowler defines as "the feeling of awe, anxiety, doubt, or fear, which is aroused in the mind by something that cannot be explained by a man's experience or by the natural course of cause and effect, and which is therefore referred to the supernatural." It has nothing to do at the outset with any special rites or doctrines. It is not concerned with state-usage or with priestly law. In its adjectival form "religious days" or "religious places" are not days or places consecrated by official practice; they are days and places which have gathered round them man's sentiments of awe and scruple. The word thus came to be applied to anything that was in some way a source or embodiment of mysterious forces. The naturalist Pliny can even say that no animal is "more full of religion than the mole," because strange medicinal powers were supposed to reside in its heart and teeth.
But, on the other hand, a new use of it passes into Roman literature in the writings of Cicero. The feeling of awe still lies in the background, but the word takes on a reference to the acts which it prompts, and thus comes to denote the whole group of rites performed in honour of some divine being. These make up a particular cult or worship, ordained and sanctioned by authority or tradition. "Religion" thus comes to mean a body of religious duties, the entire series of sacred acts in which the primitive feeling is expressed. Roman antiquity conceived these as under the care of priesthoods, legitimated by the State. Around them lay a fringe of superstitions, which a hostile critic like Lucretius could also sum up under the same term. And thus in an age when philosophy was addressing itself to the whole question of man's relation to the world and its unseen Rulers, and a single word was wanted to describe his attitude to the varied spectacle, "religion" was at hand to fill the place. It covered the whole field of human experience, and as different nations presented it in different forms, it became possible to speak of "religions" in the sense of separate systems of worship and belief. The champion of Christianity naturally distinguished his religion as the true from the false; and over against the multiformity of polytheism he set the unity of the faith of the Church.
Of these "religions" history and philosophy sought to give some account. As will be seen hereafter (Chap. VI), Babylon and Egypt both claimed a divine origin for their rites, their arts, and laws. Plutarch expressly defends the idea of revelation in the cases of Minos of Crete, the Persian Zoroaster, Zaleucus the shepherd legislator of the Locrians, Numa of Rome, and others. Pan was in love with Pindar, and Æsculapius conversed with Sophocles: if such divine diversions were allowed, how much more should these greater attempts for human welfare be prompted from heaven! Numa had been enabled through Camena Egeria to regulate the ceremonial law as priest-king, and pontiffs, augurs,