The attitude expressed in these words was widespread in the whole of the civilised world at the beginning of the Christian era. A feeling of the uncertainty of all things human weighed like a ghastly dream upon most minds. The general distress of the time, the collapse of the nation states under the rough hand of the Roman conquerors, the loss of independence, the uncertainty of political and social conditions, the incessant warfare and the heavy death-roll it involved – all this forced men back upon their own inner life, and compelled them to seek there for some support against the loss of outer happiness in a philosophy which raised and invigorated the soul. But the ancient philosophy had spent itself. The naïve interplay of nature and spirit, that ingenuous trust in external reality which had been the expression of a youthful vigour in the Mediterranean peoples, from which indeed the ancient civilisation was derived, now was shattered. To the eyes of men at that time Nature and Spirit stood opposed as hostile and irreconcilable facts. All efforts to restore the shattered unity were frustrated by the impossibility of regaining the primitive attitude. A fruitless scepticism which satisfied no one, but out of which no way was known, paralysed all joy in outward or inner activities, and prevented men from having any pleasure in life. Therefore all eyes were turned towards a supernatural support, a direct divine enlightenment, a revelation; and the desire arose of finding once again the lost certainty in the ordering of life by dependence upon an ideal and superhuman being.
Many saw in the exalted person of the Emperor the incarnation of such a divine being. It was not then always pure flattery, but often enough the expression of real gratitude towards individual Imperial benefactors, combined with a longing for direct proximity with and visible presence of a god, which gave to the worship of the Emperor its great significance throughout the whole Roman Empire.
An Augustus who had put an end to the horrors of the civil war must, in spite of everything, have appeared as a prince of peace and a saviour in the uttermost extremity, who had come to renew the world and to bring back the fair days of the Golden Age. He had again given to mankind an aim in life and to existence some meaning. As the head of the Roman State religion, a person through whose hands the threads of the policy of the whole world passed, as the ruler of an empire such as the world had never before seen, he might well appear to men as a God, as Jupiter himself come down to earth, to dwell among men. “Now at length the time is passed,” runs an inscription, apparently of the ninth year before Christ, found at Priene not long ago, “when man had to lament that he had been born. That providence, which directs all life, has sent this man as a saviour to us and the generations to come. He will put an end to all feuds, and dispose all things nobly. In his appearance are the hopes of the past fulfilled. All earlier benefactors of mankind he has surpassed. It is impossible that a greater should come. The birthday of the God has brought for the world the messages of salvation (Gospels) which attend him. From his birth a new epoch must begin.”15
It was not only the longing of mankind for a new structure of society, for peace, justice, and happiness upon earth, which lay at the root of the cult of the Emperors. Deeper minds sought not only an improvement in political and social circumstances, but felt disturbed by thoughts of death and the fate of the soul after its parting from its bodily shell. They trembled at the expectation of the early occurrence of a world-wide catastrophe, which would put a terrible end to all existence. The apocalyptic frame of mind was so widespread at the commencement of the Christian era that even a Seneca could not keep his thoughts from the early arrival of the end of the world. Finally, there also grew up a superstitious fear of evil spirits and Dæmons, which we can scarcely exaggerate. And here no philosophic musings could offer a support to anxious minds, but religion alone. Seldom in the history of mankind has the need for religion been so strongly felt as in the last century before and the first century after Christ. But it was not from the old hereditary national religions that deliverance was expected. It was from the unrestrained commingling and unification of all existing religions, a religious syncretism, which was specially furthered by acquaintance with the strange, but on that account all the more attractive, religions of the East. Already Rome had become a Pantheon of almost all religions which one could believe, while in the Far East, in Nearer Asia, that breeding-place of ancient Gods and cults, there were continually appearing new, more daring and secret forms of religious activity. These, too, in a short while obtained their place in the consciousness of Western humanity. Where the public worship of the recognised Gods did not suffice, men sought a deeper satisfaction in the numberless mystic associations of that time, or formed themselves with others of like mind into private religious bodies or pious brotherhoods, in order to nourish in the quiet of private ritualistic observance an individual religious life apart from the official State religion.
I
THE INFLUENCE OF PARSEEISM ON THE BELIEF IN A MESSIAH
Among no people was the longing for redemption so lively and the expectation of a speedy end of the world so strong as among the Jews. Since the Babylonian captivity (586–536 B.C.) the former Jewish outlook upon the world had undergone a great change. Fifty years had been spent by the Israelites in the land of the stranger. For two hundred years after their return to their own land they were under Persian overlordship. As a consequence of this they were in close connection politically and economically with the Achæmenidean Empire, and this did not cease when Alexander overthrew the Persian power and brought the whole Eastern world under Greek influence. During this lengthy period Persian modes of thinking and Persian religious views had influenced in many ways the old Jewish opinions, and had introduced a large number of new ideas. First of all the extreme dualism of the Persians had impressed a distinctly dual character upon Jewish Monotheism. God and the world, which in the old ideas had often mingled with one another, were separated and made to stand in opposition to each other. Following the same train of thought, the old national God Jahwe, in imitation of the Persian Ahuramazda (Ormuzd), had developed from a God of fire, light, and sky into a God of supernatural purity and holiness. Surrounded by light and enthroned in the Beyond, like Ahuramazda, the source of all life, the living God held intercourse with his creatures upon the earth only through the instrumentality of a court of angels. These messengers of God or intermediate beings in countless numbers moved between heaven and earth upon his service. And just as Angromainyu (Ahriman), the evil, was opposed to Ahuramazda, the good, and the struggle between darkness and light, truth and falsehood, life and death, was, according to Persian ideas, reproduced in the course of earthly events, so the Jews too ascribed to Satan the rôle of an adversary of God, a corrupter of the divine creation, and made him, as Prince of this world and leader of the forces of hell, measure his strength with the King of Heaven.16
In the struggle of the two opposing worlds, according to Persian ideas, Mithras stood in the foreground, the spirit of light, truth, and justice, the divine “friend” of men, the “mediator,” “deliverer,” and “saviour” of the world. He shared his office with Honover, Ahuramazda’s Word of creation and revelation; and indeed in most things their attributes were mingled. An incarnation of fire or the sun, above all of the struggling, suffering, triumphant light, which presses victoriously through night and darkness, Mithras was also connected with death and immortality, and passed as guide of souls and judge in the under-world. He was the “divine son,” of whom it was said that Ahuramazda had fashioned him as great and worthy of reverence as his own self. Indeed, he was in essence Ahuramazda himself, proceeding from his supernatural