re credited. As
we have stated, they were conceived after the image of an Asiatic monarch,
and the religious terminology was evidently intended to display the
humility of their priests toward them. In Syria we find nothing analogous
to what existed in Egypt, where the priest thought he could compel the gods
to act, and even dared to threaten them.[74] The distance separating the
human and the divine always was much greater with the Semitic tribes, and
all that astrology did was to emphasize the distance more strongly by
giving it a doctrinal foundation and a scientific appearance. In the Latin
world the Asiatic religions propagated the conception of the absolute and
illimitable sovereignty of God over the earth. Apuleius calls the Syrian
goddess _omnipotens et omniparens_, "mistress and mother of all
things."[75]

The observation of the starry skies, moreover, had led the Chaldeans to the
notion of a divine eternity. The constancy of the sidereal revolutions
inspired the conclusion as to their perpetuity. The stars follow their ever
uncompleted courses unceasingly; as soon as the end of their journey is
reached, they resume without stopping the road already covered, and the
cycles of years in which their movements take place extend from the
indefinite past into the indefinite future.[76] Thus a clergy of
astronomers necessarily conceived Baal, "Lord of the heavens," as the
"Master of eternity" or "He whose name is praised through all
eternity"[77]--titles which constantly recur in Semitic inscriptions. The
divine stars did not die, like Osiris or Attis; whenever they seemed to
weaken, they were {130} born to a new life and always remained invincible
(_invicti_).

Together with the mysteries of the Syrian Baals, this theological notion
penetrated into Occidental paganism.[78] Whenever an inscription to a _deus
aeternus_ is found in the Latin provinces it refers to a Syrian sidereal
god, and it is a remarkable fact that this epithet did not enter the ritual
before the second century, at the time the worship of the god Heaven
(_Caelus_)[79] was propagated. That the philosophers had long before placed
the first cause beyond the limits of time was of no consequence, for their
theories had not penetrated into the popular consciousness nor modified the
traditional formulary of the liturgies. To the people the divinities were
beings more beautiful, more vigorous, and more powerful than man, but born
like him, and exempt only f