ative Italian,
Celtic and Iberian divinities were still alive. Though eclipsed by foreign
rivals, they lived on in the devotion of the lower classes and in the
traditions of the rural districts. For a long time the Roman gods had been
established in every town and had received the homage of an official clergy
according to pontifical rites. Beside them, however, were installed the
representatives of all the Asiatic pantheons, and these received the most
fervent adoration from the masses. New powers had arrived from Asia Minor,
Egypt, Syria, and the dazzling Oriental sun outshone the stars of Italy's
temperate sky. All forms of paganism were simultaneously received and
retained while the exclusive monotheism of the Jews kept its adherents, and
Christianity strengthened its churches and fortified its orthodoxy, at the
same time giving birth to the baffling vagaries of gnosticism. A hundred
different currents carried away hesitating and undecided minds, a hundred
contrasting sermons made appeals to the conscience of the people.

Let us suppose that in modern Europe the faithful {197} had deserted the
Christian churches to worship Allah or Brahma, to follow the precepts of
Confucius or Buddha, or to adopt the maxims of the Shinto; let us imagine a
great confusion of all the races of the world in which Arabian mullahs,
Chinese scholars, Japanese bonzes, Tibetan lamas and Hindu pundits would be
preaching fatalism and predestination, ancestor-worship and devotion to a
deified sovereign, pessimism and deliverance through annihilation--a
confusion in which all those priests would erect temples of exotic
architecture in our cities and celebrate their disparate rites therein.
Such a dream, which the future may perhaps realize, would offer a pretty
accurate picture of the religious chaos in which the ancient world was
struggling before the reign of Constantine.

The Oriental religions that successively gained popularity exercised a
decisive influence on the transformation of Latin paganism. Asia Minor was
the first to have its gods accepted by Italy. Since the end of the Punic
wars the black stone symbolizing the Great Mother of Pessinus had been
established on the Palatine, but only since the reign of Claudius could the
Phrygian cult freely develop in all its splendor and excesses. It
introduced a sensual, highly-colored and fanatical worship into the grave
and somber religion of the Romans. Officially recognized, it attracted and