he countries bordering the eastern shores
of the Mediterranean and hence are generally known as Oriental cults. And
among these oriental religions are included both Judaism and Christianity.

*The state cults.* However, the worship of the divinities of Graeco-Roman
theology by no means died out during the first three centuries of the
Christian era. It continued to flourish in the state cult of Rome, and the
municipal cults of the Italian and provincial towns. With the romanization
of the semi-barbarous provinces Graeco-Roman deities displaced or
assimilated to themselves the gods of the native populations. Druidism,
the national religion of Gaul and Britain, was suppressed chiefly because
it fostered a spirit of resistance to Roman rule. But the most widespread
and vigorous of the state cults was the worship of the princeps.

*The imperial cult.* We have already discussed the establishment of the
imperial cult by Augustus, as a visible expression of the loyalty of the
provincials and their acknowledgment of the authority of Rome and the
princeps. We have also seen how this cult was perpetuated by the
provincial councils organized for that purpose. After the death of
Augustus the imperial cult in the provinces gradually came to include the
worship of both the ruling Augustus and the _Divi_, or deceased emperors,
who had received deification at the hands of the Senate. This practise was
established in all the eastern provinces after the time of Claudius, and
in the West under the Flavians. In Rome where the cult of the ruling
princeps was not practised, Domitian converted the temple of Augustus into
a temple of the _Divi_ or the Caesars.

*The pagan Oriental cults.* The pagan Oriental cults whose penetration of
the European provinces is so marked a feature in the religious life of the
principate were the cults of the peoples of western Asia and Egypt which
had become Hellenized and adapted for world expansion after Alexander's
conquest of the Persian empire. From this time onward they spread
throughout the Greek culture world but it was not until the establishment
of the world empire of Rome with its facilities for, and stimulus to,
intercourse between all peoples within the Roman frontiers that they were
able to obtain a foothold in western Europe. Their penetration of Italy
began with the official reception of the cult of the Great Mother of
Pessinus at Rome in 205 B. C., but the Roman world as a whole held aloof
from