of these religions, and
in a certain measure their ritual. But the conciseness of the lapidary
style and the constant repetition of stereotyped formulas naturally render
that kind of text hardly explicit and sometimes enigmatical. There are
dedications like the _Nama Sebesio_ engraved upon the great Mithra
bas-relief preserved in the Louvre, that caused a number of {17}
dissertations to be written without any one explaining it. And besides, in
a general way, epigraphy gives us but little information about the liturgy
and almost nothing regarding the doctrines.

Archeology must endeavor to fill the enormous blanks left by the written
tradition; the monuments, especially the artistic ones, have not as yet
been collected with sufficient care nor interpreted with sufficient method.
By studying the arrangement of the temples and the religious furniture that
adorned them, one can at the same time determine part of the liturgic
ceremonies which took place there. On the other hand, the critical
interpretation of statuary relics enables us to reconstruct with sufficient
correctness certain sacred legends and to recover part of the theology of
the mysteries. Unlike Greek art, the religious art at the close of paganism
did not seek, or sought only incidentally, to elevate the soul through the
contemplation of an ideal of divine beauty. True to the traditions of the
ancient Orient, it tried to edify and to instruct at the same time.[22] It
told the history of the gods and the world in cycles of pictures, or it
expressed through symbols the subtle conceptions of theology and even
certain doctrines of profane science, like the struggle of the four
elements; just as during the Middle Ages, so the artist of the empire
interpreted the ideas of the clergy, teaching the believers by means of
pictures and rendering the highest religious conceptions intelligible to
the humblest minds. But to read this mystic book whose pages are scattered
in our museums we must laboriously look for its key, and we cannot take for
a guide and exegetist some Vincent de Beauvais of Diocletian's period[23]
as when looking over the marvelous {18} sculptured encyclopedias in our
Gothic cathedrals. Our position is frequently similar to that of a scholar
of the year 4000 who would undertake to write the history of the Passion
from the pictures of the fourteen stations, or to study the veneration of
the saints from the statues found in the ruins of our churches.

B