far as the
remotest limits of Germany. The Oriental reaction that we perceive from the
beginning of our era, in studying the history of art, literature, and
philosophy, manifested itself with incomparably greater power in the
religious sphere. First, there was a slow infiltration of despised exotic
religions, then, toward the end of the first {23} century, the Orontes, the
Nile and the Halys, to use the words of Juvenal, flowed into the Tiber, to
the great indignation of the old Romans. Finally, a hundred years later, an
influx of Egyptian, Semitic and Persian beliefs and conceptions took place
that threatened to submerge all that the Greek and Roman genius had
laboriously built up. What called forth and permitted this spiritual
commotion, of which the triumph of Christianity was the outcome? Why was
the influence of the Orient strongest in the religious field? These
questions claim our attention. Like all great phenomena of history, this
particular one was determined by a number of influences that concurred in
producing it. In the mass of half-known particulars that brought it about,
certain factors or leading causes, of which every one has in turn been
considered the most important, may be distinguished.

If we yielded to the tendency of many excellent minds of to-day and
regarded history as the resultant of economic and social forces, it would
be easy to show their influence in that great religious movement. The
industrial and commercial preponderance of the Orient was manifest, for
there were situated the principal centers of production and export. The
ever increasing traffic with the Levant induced merchants to establish
themselves in Italy, in Gaul, in the Danubian countries, in Africa and in
Spain; in some cities they formed real colonies. The Syrian emigrants were
especially numerous. Compliant, quick and diligent, they went wherever they
expected profit, and their colonies, scattered as far as the north of Gaul,
were centers for the religious propaganda of paganism just as the Jewish
communities of the Diaspora were for Christian {24} preaching. Italy not
only bought her grain from Egypt, she imported men also; she ordered slaves
from Phrygia, Cappadocia, Syria and Alexandria to cultivate her depopulated
fields and perform the domestic duties in her palaces. Who can tell what
influence chambermaids from Antioch or Memphis gained over the minds of
their mistresses? At the same time the necessities of war removed