Chapter 43. Gods from the East: Cybele and Attis, Isis and Serapis, and the Mystery Cults of Rome

Philosophy, as Chapter 42 showed, remained the creed of an educated few. Samuel Dill argues that the masses of the Roman Empire found their “Divine light” elsewhere: “the voice came to them at last from the regions of the East. It came through the worships of Isis and Mithra, which promised a hope of immortality, and provided a sacramental system to soothe the sense of guilt” [Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, #60232, Preface]. This chapter covers the main “oriental” cults other than Mithraism, which is treated in Chapters 22–26: the Phrygian Great Mother Cybele and her consort Attis, the Egyptian Isis, and Serapis, the god created under the Ptolemies. The political facts come first. Each of these cults reached Rome through acts of state, and each was at times treated as a threat to it. Their rites of initiation and promises of salvation follow. The chapter ends with the long-running controversy over “dying and rising gods” and their alleged parallels to Christ.

The Great Mother comes to Rome: religion as war policy

Carl Olson’s anthology states it directly: “The goddess Cybele—or ‘Magna Mater deum Idaea,’ as she was called in Rome—was the first oriental deity officially adopted by the Romans” [Olson (ed.), The Book of the Goddess, #39988, “Magna Mater: Great Mother of the Roman Empire”]. The chapter rebuilds the decision from Livy. The Hannibalic war “had strained the religious and social fabric of traditional Roman society”. Foreign cults in Rome between 218 and 205 BCE “came to be viewed by the Roman aristocrats as a threat to the overall authority of the Roman state”, and their rites “were officially banned by the magistrates in 213, but the cults themselves could not be suppressed”. In 205, after “frequent showers of stones”, the Sibylline books were consulted. An oracle was found saying that “if ever a foreign foe should invade the land of Italy, he could be driven out of Italy as defeated if the Idaean Mother should be brought from Pessinus to Rome”, and Delphi confirmed it [Olson (ed.), The Book of the Goddess, #39988].

Olson’s contributor stresses the calculation behind this piety. “By officially adopting a foreign cult, the Roman aristocrats could more effectively control the cult and its rites.” Aristocratic families who claimed descent from Aeneas’ Trojans could also treat the goddess of Mount Ida as “a sort of national Roman patroness”. And Rome “wanted to secure relations with King Attalus of Pergamum to form a common front in opposition to King Philip of Macedon”. “This combination of religious, political, and social factors led to the official adoption of the cult.” In Livy’s account, “King Attalus of Pergamum willingly handed over the goddess, in the form of a sacred black stone”, which was later set as the face of her cult statue. In Ovid’s version the goddess herself declares, “Rome is a place meant to be the resort of every god” [Olson (ed.), The Book of the Goddess, #39988]. She arrived on 4 April 204 BCE and was received by P. Scipio Nasica, judged “the best citizen”. When Hannibal was defeated in 201, “the prediction of the Sibylline books had come true”, and the Magna Mater was honoured “as the conqueror of Hannibal and as the mother of the Trojans”. Unusually for a foreign god, she received a temple inside the sacred boundary, on the Palatine, dedicated in 191 BCE [Olson (ed.), The Book of the Goddess, #39988]. Dill’s chapter “Magna Mater” likewise dates “its arrival from Pessinus in 204 B.C.” [Dill, Roman Society, #60232, Book IV ch. IV, contents].

Galli, castration and the Attis festival

The state took the goddess but tried to contain her clergy. According to Olson, the April ludi Megalenses were “intentionally ‘romanized’ … to minimize the dangerous, exotic oriental element of the cult”, with a magistrate’s sacrifice, plays and aristocratic banquets. But Ovid also describes eunuch priests running through the streets “whipping themselves into a frenzy”, and the pontifex maximus therefore “confined the rites of these priests to the temple sanctuary”. “Only oriental priests were allowed to serve the Magna Mater; Roman citizens were not allowed to hold priesthoods until the time of Emperor Claudius (41-54 C.E.)”, chiefly because “the priests of the goddess practiced self-castration; their very name, gallus (‘cock’) makes an ironic point of their condition” [Olson (ed.), The Book of the Goddess, #39988]. Ovid’s myth of Attis supplies the model. The Phrygian youth breaks his vow of chastity and, driven mad, “mangled … his body with a sharp stone … ‘Ah, perish the parts that were my ruin!’ His madness set an example, and still his unmanly ministers cut their vile members”. The galli imitated the act “using such instruments as a sharp stone, a potsherd, or a knife”. The Roman attitude was “a mixture of bewilderment and pity”. “Although Emperor Claudius reformed and reorganized the cult to allow Roman citizens to serve as priests … Emperor Domitian (81-96) forbade Roman citizens to practice emasculation” [Olson (ed.), The Book of the Goddess, #39988].

The Claudian spring cycle (15–27 March) dramatized death and return: the entry of the pine tree at the equinox, mourning for Attis, the “Day of Blood” (24 March) of flagellation and self-castration, the “sacred night” in which new galli were inducted, and then the Hilaria. In the myth, “the mother goddess mourns him so violently that he returns to life”. The most solemn rite was the taurobolium, in which a bull was killed on a perforated platform so that its blood bathed the initiate standing in a pit below [Olson (ed.), The Book of the Goddess, #39988]. Dill writes of “the fascination of the worship of the Great Mother”, which was “still powerful in the days of S. Augustine”. He describes “vagabond priests in Thessaly described by Apuleius” and “their wild orgies”. He also argues that “from a gross origin, they became transmuted into a real spiritual power”, with the taurobolium “a challenge to the Church” in the last age of the Empire [Dill, Roman Society, #60232, Book IV ch. IV, contents].

Serapis: a god made by a king

Serapis shows religion created by policy from the start. Cristian Gănescu, an author of the esoteric shelf, writes that in the third century BCE “the pharaoh Ptolemy Soter raised Osiris to the rank of national god, under the name Serapis (Oser-apis, or Osiris-Apis)”, Apis being the bull form of Osiris venerated at Memphis. “In a short time, Manetho and Timotheus sketched the main features of the new cult of Serapis. For the practice of the cult, the pharaoh Ptolemy Soter built at Alexandria a vast sanctuary called the Serapeum, in which the statue of Serapis (Osiris-Apis) was enthroned. It is said that the model of the statue of Serapis was received by the pharaoh in a dream” [Gănescu, Tainele inițiaților Vechiului Egipt, #11850]. Miron Ciho’s academic study places this within Ptolemaic royal religion. Temples were “the consequence of the goodwill of the Lagid kings and Roman emperors towards Egyptian religion, from Ptolemy I Soter down to Decius”. Hellenistic ruler cult drew on “oriental and in particular Achaemenid influence”, and Ptolemy I himself kept a founder’s cult (ktistes) at Ptolemais [Ciho, Civilizația Egiptului greco-roman, #18260, ch. I]. Dill’s chapter “Isis and Serapis” lists “the new propaganda of the Ptolemies—Theories of the origin of Serapis—The new Egyptian Trinity” [Dill, Roman Society, #60232, Book IV ch. V, contents].

Isis: theology, initiation and Roman suspicion

The main literary source on Isiac theology is Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride. Ciho devotes a monograph to it, including a full translation of the Osiris myth and a chapter on “Plutarch and Egyptian eschatology”. He concludes that Plutarch’s intention “was above all the presentation of a Platonic interpretation of the myth”, without ignoring the sources he thought most credible [Ciho, Civilizația Egiptului greco-roman, #18260, ch. IV, ch. VII]. Dill likewise uses the treatise as the model of how philosophy reinterpreted myth “to discover the kernel of truth which is reverently veiled” [Dill, Roman Society, #60232, Book III ch. III, contents].

For initiation the key text is Apuleius’ Metamorphoses XI. Arthur Darby Nock notes that in Met. XI 29 “Lucius has to undergo a new initiation at Rome in order to wear an Isiac vestment on festal days” [Nock, The Roman Army and the Roman Religious Year, #60166]. Dill lists “the initiation of Lucius”, “the faith in immortality”, daily offices (“Matins and Vespers”), and an “Isiac presbytery” whose rule of life “Tertullian holds … up as an example” [Dill, Roman Society, #60232, Book IV ch. V, contents].

The politics was turbulent. Dill traces “efforts of the Government in the first century B.C. to repress the worship—A violent struggle with varying fortunes—The triumvirs in 42 B.C. erect a temple of Isis—Persecution of eastern worships in the reign of Tiberius”. After that “there was little opposition”, and “Domitian builds a temple of Isis, 92 A.D.” [Dill, Roman Society, #60232, Book IV ch. V, contents]. Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, writing as alternative historians, put the conflict in class terms: “The popular masses of Rome loved the cult of the goddess Isis and embraced it wholeheartedly. Popular movements of this type were always treated with suspicion by the authorities, who considered them a starting point for subversive currents; consequently the Isiacs of Rome were subjected to numerous persecutions. In the end, the Senate ordered the destruction of the temples dedicated to the gods Isis and Serapis” [Picknett & Prince, Misterul templierilor, #17309]. They go further than the academic sources. Their picture captions claim that studies have revealed “Jesus was an initiate of the cult of Isis and Osiris” and that a secret belief in Isis, disguised as devotion to Mary Magdalene and the Black Madonnas, lay at the root of European “heresy” [Picknett & Prince, Misterul templierilor, #17309].

How the cults spread, and how they differed from Christianity

Nock’s Cambridge Ancient History chapter explains the mechanism. “Oriental cults sometimes came to Greece as a result of political considerations, but in a far larger measure they were brought by soldiers, trading groups or individuals, and slaves” [Nock, The Development of Paganism in the Roman Empire (CAH XII ch. 12), #60218]. Nock draws two distinctions. Mithraism had “no ceremony which could be made into a public rite, and Mithras never became a civic god … the cult and the temples were always private” [Nock, CAH XII ch. 12, #60218, p. 429]. And “in Christianity initiates were not, as in the Oriental mystery-religions other than Mithraism, an inner circle”. In the pagan cults public worship “was open to all worshippers and not only to initiates; initiations were something additional, not available at all times, in all shrines or to any who could not pay enough” [Nock, CAH XII ch. 12, #60218].

The “dying and rising god” controversy

The parallels with Christianity were noticed early, and they are still argued over. Olson’s contributor writes that “the similarities between the spring rites of Attis, the celebration of his death and miraculous rebirth symbolized by the evergreen tree, and the Easter cycle of Christian holidays are striking”, down to the palm-bearers and the wooden cross [Olson (ed.), The Book of the Goddess, #39988]. Earl Lee, following Frazer (“the dying god is found in many pagan religions”), quotes a list of pagan saviours: “the Egyptian Osiris was called Savior, so was Horus; so was the Persian Mithras; so was the Greek Hercules … So also was the Phrygian Attis called Savior, and the Syrian Tammuz or Adonis likewise—both of whom … were nailed or tied to a tree, and afterwards rose” [Lee, From the Bodies of the Gods, #65592, ch. 22]. Merlin Stone reads the same material as evidence of an older religion. The son/lover of the Goddess “occurs and recurs throughout the legends of the Goddess religion”, from “the most ancient legends of both Sumer and Egypt” down to “the first centuries of Christianity”, and in it the king “played the role of the son/lover to the high priestess of the Goddess” [Stone, When God Was a Woman, #87745].

The critical side is set out in The Origins of Biblical Monotheism. It explains that the category “received great currency after the work of Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941), but more recently J. Z. Smith, H. Barstad, and other scholars” have challenged it. It argues that Frazer turned Robertson Smith’s “more nuanced differentiation of these gods” into a single rubric, and that “within the field of anthropology, Frazer’s comparative approach never recovered” [Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism, #64008, ch. 6].

A third view, from within Christianity, treats the borrowing as corruption. C. J. Koster writes that “‘Zeus Helios Great Serapis’ was the exceedingly common formula”. He says that “not only did the statues of Zeus and Serapis resemble each other, but we … are alarmed at the striking similarity between these statues and that of the images of our Messiah which have been made by the Church”. He quotes Jerome, who exclaimed when a church was erected on the site of the Serapeum: “The Egyptian Serapis has become Christian!” [Koster, Come Out of Her My People, #86909, nos. 140–144]. Mehran Keshe puts the derivation at the level of the calendar. In KSW 464, given on the night he calls “Shabe Yalda”, the “birth of Mitra”, he tells Western listeners that “you celebrate the 25th of December as the birth of Christ” because of the Romans. The session’s topic index records “Christmas copy of Mitra” [Keshe, Knowledge Seekers Workshop 464, #378176].

Key points

• Olson’s anthology calls Cybele “the first oriental deity officially adopted by the Romans” (204 BCE). The adoption was driven by the Hannibalic war, the Sibylline books, Trojan-descent politics and the alliance with Attalus of Pergamum.
• Rome controlled the cult: the galli’s rites were confined to the temple sanctuary, citizens were barred from the priesthood until Claudius, and Domitian forbade citizens to castrate themselves.
• Gănescu says Manetho and Timotheus shaped the cult of Serapis under Ptolemy I, who built the Serapeum from a statue model seen in a dream. Ciho places this within Ptolemaic royal religion.
• Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride is a Platonic reading of the Isis myth (Ciho). Apuleius’ Lucius undergoes a further initiation at Rome (Nock).
• Dill records repression of Isis in the first century BCE and under Tiberius, followed by imperial patronage (Domitian, 92 CE). Picknett & Prince describe Senate-ordered destruction of the temples of Isis and Serapis.
• Nock: the cults spread through soldiers, traders and slaves. Mithras never became civic, and unlike the pagan mysteries Christianity did not keep initiates as an inner circle.
• Lee, Stone and Olson’s contributor stress the Attis/Osiris/Adonis parallels to Christ. The Origins of Biblical Monotheism records that Frazer’s approach “never recovered” in anthropology.
• Koster (Serapis imagery; Jerome’s “Serapis has become Christian!”) and Keshe (KSW 464, Christmas as a copy of Mitra’s birth) give two further derivation claims.