he good of the state; it now pretended to offer to all men a
world-conception which gave rise to a rule of conduct and placed the end of
existence in the future life. It was more unlike the worship that Augustus
had attempted to restore than the Christianity that fought it. The two
opposed creeds moved in the same intellectual and moral sphere,[29] and one
could actually pass from one to the other without shock or interruption.
Sometimes when {211} reading the long works of the last Latin writers, like
Ammianus Marcellinus or Boethius, or the panegyrics of the official
orators,[30] scholars could well ask whether their authors were pagan or
Christian. In the time of Symmachus and Praetextatus, the members of the
Roman aristocracy who had remained faithful to the gods of their ancestors
did not have a mentality or morality very different from that of adherents
of the new faith who sat with them in the senate. The religious and
mystical spirit of the Orient had slowly overcome the whole social organism
and had prepared all nations to unite in the bosom of a universal church.

* * * * *

{213}

NOTES.

PREFACE.

1 We are indebted for more than one useful suggestion to our colleagues
Messrs. Charles Michel and Joseph Bidez, who were kind enough to read the
proofs of the French edition.

2 An outline of the present state of the subject will be found in a recent
volume by Gruppe, _Griechische Mythologie_, 1906, pp. 1606 ff., whose views
are sharply opposed to the negative conclusions formulated, with certain
reservations, by Harnack, _Ausbreitung des Christentums_, II, pp. 274 ff.
Among the latest studies intended for the general reader that have appeared
on this subject, may be mentioned in Germany those of Geffcken (_Aus der
Werdezeit des Christentums_, Leipsic, 1904, pp. 114 ff.), and in England
those of Cheyne (_Bible Problems_, 1904), who expresses his opinion in
these terms: "The Christian religion is a synthesis, and only those who
have dim eyes can assert that the intellectual empires of Babylonia and
Persia have fallen."--Very useful is the new book of Clemen,
_Religionsgeschichtliche Erklaerung des Neuen Testaments_, Giessen, 1909.

3 _Mon. myst. Mithra_, I, p. 342, n. 4; see the new texts commented on by
Usener, _Rhein. Museum_, LX, 1905, pp. 466 ff.; 489 ff., and my paper
"Natalis Invicti," _C. R. Acad. des inscr._, 1911.

4 See page 70. Compare also _Mon. myst. Mithra_, I,