very characteristic because it is so consistent with the Roman spirit which
by temperament and tradition demanded that religion should support morality
and the state.

The Asiatic religions fulfilled the requirements. The change of regime,
although unwelcome, brought about a change of religion. The increasing
tendency of Caesarism toward absolute monarchy made it lean more and more
upon the Oriental clergy. True to the traditions of the Achemenides and the
Pharaohs, those priests preached doctrines tending to elevate the sovereign
above humanity, and they supplied the emperors with dogmatic justification
for their despotism.[22]

It is a noteworthy fact that the rulers who most loudly proclaimed their
autocratic pretentions, like {39} Domitian and Commodus, were also those
that favored foreign creeds most openly.

But his selfish support merely sanctioned a power already established. The
propaganda of the Oriental religions was originally democratic and
sometimes even revolutionary like the Isis worship. Step by step they
advanced, always reaching higher social classes and appealing to popular
conscience rather than to the zeal of functionaries.

As a matter of fact all these religions, except that of Mithra, seem at
first sight to be far less austere than the Roman creed. We shall have
occasion to note that they contained coarse and immodest fables and
atrocious or vile rites. The Egyptian gods were expelled from Rome by
Augustus and Tiberius on the charge of being immoral, but they were called
immoral principally because they opposed a certain conception of the social
order. They gave little attention to the public interest but attached
considerable importance to the inner life and consequently to the value of
the individual. Two new things, in particular, were brought to Italy by the
Oriental priests: mysterious methods of purification, by which they claimed
to wash away the impurities of the soul, and the assurance that a blessed
immortality would be the reward of piety.[23]

These religions pretended to restore lost purity[24] to the soul either
through the performance of ritual ceremonies or through mortifications and
penance. They had a series of ablutions and lustrations supposed to restore
original innocence to the mystic. He had to wash himself in the sacred
water according to certain prescribed forms. This was really a magic rite,
because bodily purity acted sympathetically upon the soul, or {40} else it