void of all real
influence upon religion as the republican magistracies were powerless in
the state. Their fall had been made complete on the day when Aurelian
established the pontiffs of the Invincible Sun, the protector of his
empire, beside and above the ancient high priests. The only cults still
alive were those of the Orient, and against them were directed the efforts
of the Christian polemics, who grew more and more bitter in speaking of
them. The barbarian gods had taken the place of the defunct immortals in
the devotion of the pagans. They alone still had empire over the soul.

With all the other "profane religions," Firmicus Maternus fought those of
the four Oriental nations. He connected them with the four elements. The
Egyptians were the worshipers of water--the water of the Nile fertilizing
their country; the Phrygians of the earth, which was to them the Great
Mother of everything; the Syrians and Carthaginians of the air, which they
adored under the name of celestial Juno;[11] the Persians of fire, to which
they attributed preeminence over the other three principles. This system
certainly was borrowed from the pagan theologians. In the common peril
threatening them, those cults, formerly rivals, had become reconciled and
regarded themselves as divisions and, so to speak, congregations, of the
same church. Each one of them was especially consecrated to one of the
elements which in combination form the universe. Their union constituted
the pantheistic religion of the deified world.

All the Oriental religions assumed the form of mysteries.[12] Their
dignitaries were at the same time pontiffs of the Invincible Sun, fathers
of Mithra, {206} celebrants of the taurobolium of the Great Mother,
prophets of Isis; in short, they had all titles imaginable. In their
initiation they received the revelation of an esoteric doctrine
strengthened by their fervor.[13] What was the theology they learned? Here
also a certain dogmatic homogeneity has established itself.

All writers agree with Firmicus that the pagans worshiped the
_elementa_.[14] Under this term were included not only the four simple
substances which by their opposition and blending caused all phenomena of
the visible world,[15] but also the stars and in general the elements of
all celestial and earthly bodies.[16]

We therefore may in a certain sense speak of the return of paganism to
nature worship; but must this transformation be regarded as a retrogressi