The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire Part 29

Marcus Aurelius records his grat.i.tude "that remedies have been shown to me by dreams, both others, and against blood-spitting and giddiness."[66] Plutarch, Pausanias, Aristides--dreams {226} come into the scheme of things divine with all the devout of our period.

Artemidorus is their humble brother--not the first to give a whole book to dreams, but proud to be a pioneer in the really scientific treatment of them--"the accuracy of the judgments, that is the thing for which, even by itself, I think highly of myself."[67] The critic may take it "that I too am quite capable of neologisms and persuasive rhetoric (_ehuresilogein ka pithaneuthai_), but I have not undertaken all this for theatrical effect or to please the speech-mongers; I appeal throughout to experience, as canon and witness of my words," and he begs his readers neither to add to his books nor take anything away.[68] His writing is, as he says, quite free from "the stage and tragedy style."

Artemidorus takes himself very seriously. "For one thing, there is no book on the interpretation of dreams that I have not acquired, for I had great enthusiasm for this; and, in the next place, though the prophets (_manteon_) in the market-place are much slandered, and called beggars and quacks and humbugs by the gentlemen of solemn countenance and lifted eye-brows, I despised the slander and for many years I have a.s.sociated with them--both in Greece, in cities and at festivals, and in Asia, and in Italy, and in the largest and most populous of the islands, consenting to hear ancient dreams and their results."[69]

This patient research has resulted in principles of cla.s.sification.[70]

There are dreams that merely repeat what a man is doing (_enuphnia_); and others (_oneipoi_) which are prophetic. These last fall into two cla.s.ses--theorematic dreams, as when a man dreams of a voyage, and wakes to go upon a voyage, and allegoric dreams. The latter adjective has a great history in regions more august, but the allegoric method is the same everywhere, as an ill.u.s.tration will show. A man dreamed he saw Charon playing at counters with another man, whom he called away on business; Charon grew angry and chased him, till he ran for refuge into an inn called {227} "The Camel," and bolted the door, whereupon "the daemon" went away, but one of the man's thighs sprouted with gra.s.s.

Shortly after this dream he had his thigh broken--the one and sole event foretold. For Charon and the counters meant death, but Charon did not catch him, so it was shown that he would not die; but his foot was threatened, since he was pursued. The name of the inn hinted at the thigh, because of the anatomy of a camel's thigh; and the gra.s.s meant disuse of the limb, for gra.s.s only grows where the earth is left at rest.[71] The pa.s.sage is worth remembering whenever we meet the word allegory and its derivatives in contemporary literature.

Artemidorus has five books of this stuff--the last two dedicated to his son, and containing instances "that will make you a better interpreter of dreams than all, or at least inferior to none; but, if published, they will show you know no more than the rest."[72] The sentence suggests science declining into profession.

[Sidenote: Apuleius]

Far more brilliant, more amusing and more attractive than any of these men, whom we have considered since we left Lucian, is Apuleius of Madaura. Rhetorician, philosopher and man of science, a story-teller wavering between Boccaccio and Hans Andersen, he is above all a stylist, a pietist and a humorist. For his history we depend upon himself, and this involves us in difficulties; for, while autobiography runs through two of his works, one of these is an elaboration of a defence he made on a charge of magic and the other is a novel of no discoverable cla.s.s but its own, and through both runs a vein of nonsense, which makes one chary of being too literal.

The novel is the _Golden a.s.s_--that at least is what St Augustine tells us the author called it.[73] Pa.s.sages from this have been seriously used as sources of information as to the author. But there is another _a.s.s_, long attributed to Lucian though probably not Lucian's, and in each case the hero tells the tale in the first person, and the co-incidences between the Greek and the Latin make it obvious that there is some {228} literary connexion between them, whatever it is.

The scene is Greece and Thessaly, but not the Greece and Thessaly of geography, any more than the maritime Bohemia of Shakespeare. Yet in the last book Apuleius seems to have forgotten "Lucius of Patrae" and to be giving us experiences of his own which have nothing to do with the hero of the _a.s.s_, Greek or Latin.

[Sidenote: The _Apology_ of Apuleius]

In the _Apology_ he comes closer to his own career and he tells us about himself. Here he does not venture on the delightful a.s.sertion that he is the descendant of the great Plutarch, as the hero of the _a.s.s_ does, but avows that, as his native place is on the frontiers of Numidia and Gaetulia, he calls himself "half Numidian and half Gaetulian"--just as Cyrus the Greater was "half Mede and half Persian."

His city is "a most splendid colony," and his father held in turn all its magistracies, and he hopes not to be unworthy of him.[74] He and his brother inherited two million sesterces, though he has lessened his share "by distant travel and long studies and constant liberalities."[75] Elsewhere he tells us definitely that he was educated at Athens.[76] Everybody goes to the _litterator_ for his rudiments, to the grammarian next and then to the rhetorician--"but I drank from other vessels at Athens," so "Empedocles frames songs, Plato dialogues, Socrates hymns, Epicharmus measures, Xenophon histories, Xenocrates satires; your Apuleius does all these and cultivates the nine Muses with equal zeal--with more will, that is, than skill."[77]

Like many brilliant men of his day he took to the strolling life of the rhetorician, going from city to city and giving displays of his powers of language, extemporizing wonderful combinations of words. Either he himself or some other admirer made a collection of elegant extracts from these exhibition-speeches, still extant under the t.i.tle of _Florida_. His fame to-day rests on other works. In the course of his travels he came to Oea in his native-land, and there married the widowed mother of a fellow-student of his Athenian days. Her late husband's family resented the marriage; and affecting to believe that her affections had been gained by {229} some sort of witchcraft, they prosecuted Apuleius on a charge of magic. The charge was in itself rather a serious one, though Apuleius made light of it. His defence is an interesting doc.u.ment for the glimpses it gives into North African society, with its Greek, Latin, and Punic elements. The younger stepson has fallen into bad hands; "he never speaks except in Punic,--a little Greek, perhaps, surviving from what he learnt of his mother; Latin he neither will nor can speak."[78] On family life, on marriage customs, on the registration of births (c. 89);--on the personal habits of the defendant, his toothpowder (and a verse he made in its praise) and his looking-gla.s.s, we gain curious information. Above all the speech sheds great light on the inter-relations of magic and religion in contemporary thought. A few points may be noticed.

What, asks the prosecution, is the meaning of this curious interest Apuleius has in fish? It is zoological, says Apuleius; I have written books on fish, both in Greek and Latin,--and dissected them. That curious story, too, of the boy falling down in his presence? As to that, Apuleius knows all about divination by means of boys put under magical influence; he has read of it, of course, but he does not know whether to believe or not; "I do think with Plato," he owns to the court (or to his readers), "that between G.o.ds and men, in nature and in place intermediary, there are certain divine powers, and these preside over all divinations and the miracles of magicians. Nay, more, I have the fancy that the human soul, particularly the simple soul of a boy, might, whether by evocation of charm or by mollification of odour, be laid to sleep, and so brought out of itself into oblivion of things present, and for a brief s.p.a.ce, all memory of the body put away, it might be restored and returned to its own nature, which is indeed immortal and divine, and thus, in a certain type of slumber, foretell the future."[79] As for the boy in question, however, he is so ricketty that it would take a magician to keep him standing.

Then those mysterious "somethings" which Apuleius keeps {230} wrapped up in a napkin? "I have been initiated in many of the mysteries of Greece. Certain symbols and memorials of these, given to me by the priests, I sedulously preserve. I say nothing unusual, nothing unknown. To take one instance, those among you who are _mystae_ of Father Liber [Bacchus] know what it is you keep laid away at home, and worship in secret, far from all profane eyes. Now, I, as I said, from enthusiasm for truth and duty toward the G.o.ds, I have learnt many sacred mysteries, very many holy rites, and divers ceremonies"--the audience will remember he said as much three years ago in his now very famous speech about aesculapius--"then could it seem strange to anyone, who has any thought of religion, that a man, admitted to so many divine mysteries, should keep certain emblems of those holy things at home, and wrap them in linen, the purest covering for things divine?" Some men--the prosecutor among them--count it mirth to mock things divine; no, he goes to no temple, has never prayed, will not even put his hand to his lips when he pa.s.ses a shrine,--why! he has not so much as an anointed stone or a garlanded bough on his farm.[80]

One last flourish may deserve quotation. If you can prove, says Apuleius, any material advantage accruing to me from my marriage, "then write me down the great Carmendas or Damigeron or _his_ ... Moses or Jannes or Apollobeches or Darda.n.u.s himself, or anyone else from Zoroaster and Ostanes downwards who has been famous among magicians."[81] Several of these names occur in other authors,[82] but the corruption is more interesting. Has some comparative fallen out, or does _his_ conceal another name? Is it _ihs_, in fact,--a reference to Jesus a.n.a.logous to the suggestion of Celsus that he too was a magician?

The philosophical works of Apuleius need not detain us, but a little s.p.a.ce may be spared to his book _On the G.o.d of Socrates_, where he sets forth in a clear and vivid way that doctrine of daemonic beings, which lies at the heart of ancient {231} religion, pre-eminently in this period, from Plutarch onwards. His presentment is substantially the same as Plutarch's, but crisper altogether, and set forth in the brilliant rhetoric, to which the Greek did not aspire, and from which the African could not escape, nor indeed wished to escape.

Plato, he says, cla.s.sifies the G.o.ds in three groups, distinguished by their place in the universe.[83] Of the celestial G.o.ds some we can see--sun, moon and stars[84] (on which, like a true rhetorician, he digresses into some fine language, which can be omitted). Others the mind alone can grasp (_intellectu eos rimabundi contemplamur_)--incorporeal natures, animate, with neither beginning nor end, eternal before and after, exempt from contagion of body; in perfect intellect possessing supreme beat.i.tude; good, but not by partic.i.p.ation of any extraneous good, but from themselves. Their father, lord and author of all things, free from every nexus of suffering or doing--him Plato, with celestial eloquence and language commensurate with the immortal G.o.ds, has declared to be, in virtue of the ineffable immensity of his incredible majesty, beyond the poverty of human speech or definition--while even to the sages themselves, when by force of soul they have removed themselves from the body, the conception of G.o.d comes, like a flash of light in thick darkness--a flash only, and it is gone.[85]

At the other extremity of creation are men--"proud in reason, loud in speech, immortal of soul, mortal of member, in mind light and anxious, in body brute and feeble, divers in character, in error the same, in daring pervicacious, in hope, pertinacious, of vain toil, of frail fortune, severally mortal, generally continuous, mutable in the succession of offspring, time fleeting, wisdom lingering, death swift and life querulous, so they live."[86] Between such beings and the G.o.ds, contact cannot be. "To whom then shall I recite prayers? to whom tender vows? to whom slay victim? on whom shall I call, to {232} help the wretched, to favour the good, to counter the evil? .... What thinkest thou? Shall I swear 'by Jove the stone' (_per Iovem lapidem_) after the most ancient manner of Rome? Yet if Plato's thought be true, that never G.o.d and man can meet, the stone will hear me more easily than Jupiter."[87]

"Nay, not so far--(for Plato shall answer, the thought is his, if mine the voice) not so far, he saith, do I p.r.o.nounce the G.o.ds to be sejunct and alienate from us, as to think that not even our prayers can reach them. Not from the care of human affairs, but from contact, have I removed them. But there are certain mediary divine powers, between aether above and earth beneath, situate in that mid s.p.a.ce of air, by whom our desires and our deserts reach the G.o.ds. These the Greeks call daemons, carriers between human and heavenly, hence of prayers, thence of gifts; back and forth they fare, hence with pet.i.tion, thence with sufficiency, interpreters and bringers of salvation."[88] To cut short this flow of words, the daemons are, as is familiar to us by now, authors of divination of all kinds, each in its province. It would ill fit the majesty of the G.o.ds to send a dream to Hannibal or to soften the whetstone for Attius Navius--these are the functions of the intermediate spirits.[89] Justin's explanation of the theophanies of the Old Testament may recur to the reader's mind, and not unjustly.[90]

The daemons are framed of a purer and rarer matter than we, "of that purest liquid of air, of that serene element," invisible therefore to us unless of their divine will they choose to be seen.[91] From their ranks come those "haters and lovers" of men, whom the poets describe as G.o.ds--they feel pity and indignation, pain and joy and "every feature of the human mind"; while the G.o.ds above "are lords ever of one state in eternal equability," and know no pa.s.sions of any kind. The daemons share _their_ immortality and _our_ pa.s.sion. Hence we may accept the local diversities of religious cult, rites nocturnal or diurnal, victims, ceremonies and ritual sad or gay, Egyptian {233} or Greek,--neglect of these things the daemons resent, as we learn in dream and oracle.

The human soul, too, is "a daemon in a body"--the _Genius_ of the Latins. From this we may believe that after death souls good and bad become good and bad ghosts--_Lares_ and _Lemures_--and even G.o.ds, such as "Osiris in Egypt and aesculapius everywhere."[92] Higher still are such daemons as Sleep and Love, and of this higher kind Plato supposes our guardian spirits to be--"spectators and guardians of individual men, never seen, ever present, arbiters not merely of all acts, but of all thoughts," and after death witnesses for or against us. Of such was Socrates' familiar daemon. Why should not we too live after the model of Socrates, studying philosophy and obeying our daemon?

[Sidenote: _The Golden a.s.s_]

The _Golden a.s.s_ is the chief work of Apuleius. _Lector intende; laetaberis_, he says in ending his short preface, and he judged his work aright. The hero, Lucius, is a man with an extravagant interest in magic, and he puts himself in the way of hearing the most wonderful stories of witchcraft and enchantment. Apuleius tells them with the utmost liveliness and humour. Magical transformations, the vengeance of witches, the vivification of waterskins--one tale comes crowding after another, real and vivid, with the most alarming and the most amusing details. For example, we are told by an eye-witness (like everybody else in the book he is a master-hand at story-telling) how he saw witches by night cut the throat of his friend, draw out the heart and plug the hole with a sponge; how terrified he was of the hags to begin with, and then lest he should himself be accused of the murder; how the man rose and went on his journey--somewhat wearily, it is true; and how, as they rested, he stooped to drink, the sponge fell out and he was dead.

Lucius meddles with the drugs of a witch, and, wishing to transform himself to a bird, by the ill-luck of using the wrong box he becomes an a.s.s. He is carried off by robbers, and, while he has the most varied adventures of his own, he is enabled to record some of the most gorgeous exploits that {234} brigands ever told one another in an a.s.s's hearing.[93] What is more, a young girl is captured and held to ransom, and to comfort her for a little, the old woman who cooks the robbers' food--"a witless and bibulous old hag"--tells her a story--"such a pretty little tale," that the a.s.s, who is listening, wishes he had pen and paper to take it down. For, while in aspect Lucius is an a.s.s, his mind remains human--human enough to reflect sometimes what "a genuine a.s.s" he is--and his skin has not, he regrets, the proper thickness of true a.s.s-hide. The tale which he would like to write down is _Cupid and Psyche_. "_Erant in quadam civitate_," begins the old woman--"There were in a certain city a king and a queen."

The old and universal fairy-tales of the invisible husband, the cruel sisters, and the impossible quests are here woven together and brought into connexion with the Olympic pantheon, and through all runs a slight thread, only here and there visible, of allegory. But if Psyche is at times the soul, and if the daughter she bears to Cupid is Pleasure, the fairy-tale triumphs gloriously over the allegory, and remains the most wonderful thing of the kind in Latin. Here, and in the _Golden a.s.s_ in general, the extraordinarily embroidered language of Apuleius is far more in keeping than in his philosophic writings. His hundreds of diminutives and neologisms, his ant.i.theses, alliterations, a.s.sonances, figures and tropes, his brilliant invention, his fun and humour, here have full scope and add pleasure to every fresh episode of the fairy-tale and of the larger and more miscellaneous tale of adventure in which it is set--in the strangest setting conceivable. Cupid and Psyche is his own addition to the story of the a.s.s--quite irrelevant, and like many other irrelevant things in books an immense enrichment.

Another development of the original story which is similarly due to Apuleius alone is the climax in the last book. The a.s.s, in the Greek story, becomes a man by eating roses. In the Latin, Lucius, weary of the life of an a.s.s, finds himself by moonlight on the seash.o.r.e near Corinth, and amid "the silent {235} secrets of opaque night," he reflects that "the supreme G.o.ddess rules in transcendent majesty and governs human affairs by her providence." So he addresses a rather too eloquent prayer to the Queen of Heaven under her various possible names, Ceres, Venus, Diana and Proserpine. He then falls asleep, and at once "lo! from mid sea, uplifting a countenance venerable even to G.o.ds, emerges a divine form. Gradually the vision, gleaming all over, and shaking off the sea, seemed to stand before me." A crown of flowers rests on her flowing hair. Glittering stars, the moon, flowers and fruits, are wrought into her raiment, which shimmers white and yellow and red as the light falls upon it. In one hand is a sistrum, in the other a golden vessel shaped like a boat, with an asp for its handle.[94] She speaks.

[Sidenote: Isis]

"Lo! I come in answer, Lucius, to thy prayers, I mother of Nature, mistress of all the elements, initial offspring of ages, chief of divinities, queen of the dead, first of the heavenly ones, in one form expressing all G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses. I rule with my rod the bright pinnacles of heaven, the healthful breezes of the sea, the weeping silence of the world below. My sole G.o.dhead, in many an aspect, with many a various rite, and many a name, all the world worships." Some of these names she recites, and then declares her "true name, Queen Isis."[95] The next day is her festival, she says, and her priest, taught by her in a dream, will tender Lucius the needful roses; he will eat and be a man again. But hereafter all his life must be devoted to the G.o.ddess, and then in the Elysian fields he shall see her again, shining amid the darkness of Acheron, propitious to him.

The next day all falls as predicted. The procession of Isis is elaborately described.[96] The prelude of the pomp is a series of men dressed in various characters,--one like a soldier, another like a woman, others like a gladiator, a philospher and so forth. There is a tame bear dressed like a woman, and a monkey "in a Phrygian garment of saffron." Then come women in white, crowned with flowers, some with mirrors hanging on their backs, some carrying ivory combs. Men and women follow with torches and lamps; then a choir of {236} youths in white, singing a hymn, and fluteplayers dedicated to Serapis. After this a crowd of initiates of both s.e.xes, of every age and degree, dressed in white linen and carrying sistra,--the men with shaven heads.

Then came five chief priests with emblems, and after them the images of the G.o.ds borne by other priests--Anubis with his dog's head, black and gold--after him the figure of a cow "the prolific image of the all-mother G.o.ddess" ("which one of this blessed ministry bore on his shoulder, with mimicking gait")--then an image of divinity, like nothing mortal, an ineffable symbol, worthy of all veneration for its exquisite art. At this point came the priest with the promised roses--"my salvation"--and Lucius ate and was a man again. The priest, in a short homily, tells him he has now reached the haven of quiet; Fortune's blindness has no more power over him; he is taken to the bosom of a Fortune who can see, who can illuminate even the other G.o.ds.

Let him rejoice and consecrate his life to the G.o.ddess, undertake her warfare and become her soldier.[97]

The pomp moves onward till they reach the sh.o.r.e, and there a sacred ship is launched--inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphics, purified with a burning torch, an egg, and sulphur, on her sail a vow written in large letters. She is loaded with aromatics; and "filled with copious gifts and auspicious prayers" she sails away before a gentle breeze and is lost to sight. The celebrants then return to the temple, but we have perhaps followed them far enough.

From now on to the end of the book the reformed Lucius lives in the odour of sanct.i.ty. He never sleeps without a vision of the G.o.ddess.

He pa.s.ses on from initiation to initiation, though the service of religion is difficult, chast.i.ty arduous, and life now a matter of circ.u.mspection--it had not been before. The initiations are, he owns, rather expensive.[98] "Perhaps, my enthusiastic reader, thou wilt ask--anxiously enough--what was said, what done. I would speak if it were {237} lawful to speak, thou shouldst know if it were lawful to hear.... Hear then, and believe, for it is true. I drew near to the confines of death; I trod the threshold of Proserpine; I was borne through all the elements and returned. At midnight I saw the sun flashing with bright light. G.o.ds of the world below, G.o.ds of the world above, into their presence I came, I worshipped there in their sight."

Garments, emblems, rites, purifications are the elements of his life now. Nor does he grudge the trouble and expense, for the G.o.ds are blessing him with forensic success. In a dream, Osiris himself "chief among the great G.o.ds, of the greater highest, greatest of the highest, ruler of the greatest," appears in person, and promises him--speaking with his own awful voice--triumphs at the bar, with no need to fear the envy his learning might rouse. He should be one of the G.o.d's own Pastophori, one of "his quinquennial decurions." So "with my hair perfectly shaved, I performed in gladness the duties of that most ancient college, established in Sulla's times, not shading nor covering my baldness, but letting it be universally conspicuous." And there ends the _Golden a.s.s_.

Was it true--this story of the a.s.s? Augustine says that Apuleius "either disclosed or made up" these adventures. Both he and Lactantius had to show their contemporaries that there was a difference between the miracles of Apuleius and those of Christ.[99] The Emperor Septimius Severus, on the other hand, sneered at his rival Albinus for reading "the Punic Milesian-tales of his fellow-countryman Apuleius and such literary trifles."[100]

[Sidenote: Apuleius and his initiation]

Between these two judgments we may find Apuleius. He is a man of letters, but he has a taste for religion. Ceremony, mystery, ritual, sacraments, appeal to him, and there he stands with his contemporaries.

But a man, in whose pages bandit and old woman, a.s.s and Isis, all talk in one Euphuistic strain, was possibly not so pious as men of simpler speech. Yet his giving such a conclusion to such a tale is significant, and there is not an absurdity among all the many, in which he so gaily revels, but corresponded with something that men believed.

{238}

In conclusion, we may ask what Lucian of Samosata and Diogenes of Oinoanda had to offer to Aristides and Pausanias and Apuleius; and what they in turn could suggest to men whose concern in religion goes deeper than the cure of physical disease, trance and self-conscious revelling in ceremony. Some spiritual value still clung about the old religion, or it could not have found supporters in a Plotinus and a Porphyry, but (to quote again a most helpful question) "how much else?"

Chapter VII Footnotes:

[1] On the other hand see a very interesting pa.s.sage in Tertullian, _de Anima_, 30, on the progress of the world in civilization, and population outstripping Nature, while plague, famine, war, etc., are looked on as _tonsura insolescentis generis humani_.

[2] Marcus Aurelius was born about 121 A.D. and died in 180. The other two were born in or about 125.

[3] e.g. viii, 17.

[4] The one pa.s.sage is in xi, 3.

[5] Or, the English equivalent, Utopia.

[6] Marcus Aurelius, ix, 28-40, with omissions. Phrases have been borrowed from the translations of Mr Long and Dr Rendall.

[7] This sheds some light on his comparison of the Christians to actors, xi, 3.

[8] Cf. Tertullian, _Apol._ 5, _Hadria.n.u.s omnium curiositatum explorator_.

[9] _Piscator_, 19.

[10] _Quomodo historia_, 24.

[11] _Bis accusatus_, 27.