t was then
torn by factions, thrown upon the mercy of manifestoes, and ruined
economically and morally. The studies now being made in the history of that
period show more and more that debilitated Rome had become the imitator of
Persia.

In the opinion of contemporaries the court of Diocletian, prostrating
itself before a master who was regarded as the equal of God, with its
complicated hierarchy and crowd of eunuchs that disgraced it, was an
imitation of the court of the Sassanides. Galerius declared in unmistakable
terms that Persian absolutism must be introduced in his empire,[11] and the
ancient Caesarism founded on the will of the people seemed about to be
transformed into a sort of caliphate.

Recent discoveries also throw light upon a powerful artistic school that
developed in the Parthian empire and later in that of the Sassanides and
which grew up independently of the Greek centers of production. Even if it
took certain models from the Hellenic sculpture or architecture, it
combined them with Oriental motives into a decoration of exuberant
richness. Its field of influence extended far beyond Mesopotamia into the
south of Syria where it has left monuments of unequalled splendor. The
radiance of that brilliant center undoubtedly illuminated Byzantium, the
barbarians of the north, and even China.[12]

The Persian Orient, then, exerted a dominant influence on the political
institutions and artistic tastes of the Romans as well as on their ideas
and beliefs. The propagation of the religion of Mithra, which always
proudly proclaimed its Persian origin, was accompanied by a number of
parallel influences of the {142} people from which it had issued. Never,
not even during the Mohammedan invasions, had Europe a narrower escape from
becoming Asiatic than when Diocletian officially recognized Mithra as the
protector of the reconstructed empire.[13] The time when that god seemed to
be establishing his authority over the entire civilized world was one of
the critical phases in the moral history of antiquity. An irresistible
invasion of Semitic and Mazdean conceptions nearly succeeded in permanently
overwhelming the Occidental spirit. Even after Mithra had been vanquished
and expelled from Christianized Rome, Persia did not disarm. The work of
conversion in which Mithraism had failed was taken up by Manicheism, the
heir to its cardinal doctrines, and until the Middle Ages Persian dualism
continued to cause bloody struggles