apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

466 EPISTLE OF S. POLYCARP.
and the pagan rites with a flexibility which would have astonished the
founders and early disciples of the sect. When he was inaugurating
the war with the Marcomanni, he gathered priests from all quarters,
celebrated foreign rites of all religions, and purified Rome with every
kind of ceremonial'. The slaughter of victims on this or a similar
occasion was on a scale so great that in a satire of the day the
white cattle were represented as
complaining that his victory would be
their annihilation ^ When a young man, he took the most active
interest in his duties as a member of the Salian college, of which he was
prelate and soothsayer and master^ As sovereign, he was reported also
to have consulted Chaldean fortune-tellers and Egyptian magicians^ Of
the Caesar-worship, which had grown up in imperial times, he was the
most active promoter. Not only was he a party to the deification of
his predecessor Antoninus — this might have been forgiven him— but he
himself took the
initiative in conferring
divine honours on his worthless
brother Verus and his shameless wife Faustina, with the usual apparatus
of a high-priesthood, a sacerdotal college, and recurring festivals^. Thus
paganism profited by the high personal character and the wise and
beneficent rule of the reigning emperors. Nor did it disdain an appeal
to the lower cravings of a superstitious ignorance. Astrology, dreams,
—
auguries, witchcraft these and other degraded types of the religious
sentiment meet us at every turn in exaggerated forms. The archcharlatans
Peregrinus Proteus and Alexander of Abonoteichos were
strictly contemporaries of Polycarp, and Asia Minor was the chief scene
of their activity. The rising tide of this pagan reaction brought in on its
surface from far and wide the refuse of the basest superstitions and
impostures. Support was sought for the growing
sentiment in the
assimilation of foreign religions. The rites of Syria and of Egypt
had for some generations been naturalized in these parts. A more
recent accession was the Mithraic worship derived from Persia, which
culminated in the later years of the Antonines. Its horrors and its
mysticism invested it with a strange fascination for the devotee for whom
the more sober forms of heathen religion had lost their attractions. Even
'to'
^
Capitolin. Marcus 13 ' Tantus autem p. 456. The distich runs thus;
terror belli Marcomannici fuit, ut undique
01 jBoes
ol \evKol MdpKCi! tw Kalaapi x^lpeip'
sacerdotes Antoninus acciverit, peregrines rj" 5^ c^ vLKTJays, a/j-fxes onrojXSfieda.
ritus impleverit, Romam omni genere lus-
^ Capitolin. A/ara/s 4 'fuit in eo sacertraverit,
retardatusque a bellica pro fee- dotio et praesul et vates et magister.'
* tione sit; celebravit et, Romano ritu lec- Capitolin. Marcus 19, Dion Cass,
tisternia per septem dies'. Ixxi. 8. See below, p. 488.
^
Ammian. xxv. 4. 17, quoted above,
^
Capitolin. i^/a;r