he civilization of the Seleucid
empire is little known, and we cannot determine what caused the alliance of
Greek thought with the Semitic traditions.[48] The religions of the
neighboring nations {122} also had an undeniable influence. Phoenicia and
Lebanon remained moral tributaries of Egypt long after they had liberated
themselves from the suzerainty of the Pharaohs. The theogony of Philo of
Byblos took gods and myths from that country, and at Heliopolis Hadad was
honored "according to Egyptian rather than Syrian rite."[49] The rigorous
monotheism of the Jews, who were dispersed over the entire country, must
also have acted as an active ferment of transformation.[50] But it was
Babylon that retained the intellectual supremacy, even after its political
ruin. The powerful sacerdotal caste ruling it did not fall with the
independence of the country, and it survived the conquests of Alexander as
it had previously lived through the Persian domination. The researches of
Assyriologists have shown that its ancient worship persisted under the
Seleucides, and at the time of Strabo the "Chaldeans" still discussed
cosmology and first principles in the rival schools of Borsippa and
Orchoe.[51] The ascendancy of that erudite clergy affected all surrounding
regions; it was felt by Persia in the east, Cappadocia in the north, but
more than anywhere else by the Syrians, who were connected with the
Oriental Semites by bonds of language and blood. Even after the Parthians
had wrested the valley of the Euphrates from the Seleucides, relations with
the great temples of that region remained uninterrupted. The plains of
Mesopotamia, inhabited by races of like origin, extended on both sides of
an artificial border line; great commercial roads followed the course of
the two rivers flowing into the Persian Gulf or cut across the desert, and
the pilgrims came to Babylon, as Lucian tells us, to perform their
devotions to the Lady of Bambyce.[52] {123}

Ever since the Captivity, constant spiritual relations had existed between
Judaism and the great religious metropolis. At the birth of Christianity
they manifested themselves in the rise of gnostic sects in which the
Semitic mythology formed strange combinations with Jewish and Greek ideas
and furnished the foundation for extravagant superstructures.[53] Finally,
during the decline of the empire, it was Babylon again from which emanated
Manicheism, the last form of idolatry received in the Latin wor