Mingled with the old gods of Italy were the gods of the many nations who had been subjected to the authority of Rome. The Roman was ever ready to recognize the points of similarity between the gods of a conquered people and his own ancestral deities. So Julius Caesar writes of the Gauls: "They especially honor Mercury, and after him Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva." In a like spirit, long before Caesar, during the weary siege of Veii, which lasted ten years, the besiegers admired the "Juno Regina" of Veii, who had inspired the city's splendid resistance; and Livy relates how, when at length the place fell, the captors with all reverence drew near the sacred image, and asked if she were willing to follow them to Rome. On receiving a sign of acquiescence, the idol symbol of the goddess was brought to the city of the conquerors.
This spirit of accommodation tended to facilitate the settlement of the conquered people. There were no religious antipathies to be guarded against. In many cases, as we have seen above in the instance of Veii, the strange gods of the conquered were brought to Rome and even adored there. These introductions of foreign, especially of oriental gods, who had apparently little in common with the ancient Italian deities, began before the days of the Empire. We read of the triumvirates, after the death of Julius Caesar, building a temple to Isis and Serapis. Rapidly the influence of oriental cults increased at Rome. Mithras, adored in far distant Persia, became in the early days of the Empire a favorite divinity among the lower classes of the metropolis of the world. In the latter days of the Antonines this eastern cult grew more and more popular. In the third century the temples of Mithras became perhaps the most sought after and thronged of the many Pagan sanctuaries in Rome and in the great provincial centers.
It is a debated question whether or no this curious admixture of oriental cults, this gradual association of the deities of Egypt and Syria and Persia with the ancient worship of Italy and of Rome, injured or strengthened Paganism.
On the one hand it is clear that the introduction of the emotional rites of the Syrian divinities, the mysteries of Egyptian Isis, the strange and picturesque ritual of the Persian Mithras, to take prominent examples, accorded ill with the original designs of Augustus, so happily set forth by his friend and confidant Virgil. These eastern forms of worship really had little in common with the comparatively calm, grave devotion paid to the gods whom Augustus professed to revere, and of whom Virgil sang. The emotional extravagances of eastern religion were distrusted at heart by the old Roman spirit which Augustus and his friends, by their zeal and industry, contrived to awake.
On the other hand it has been ably argued that without this oriental admixture of passion and mystery, the ancient Roman cult, with its simple ritual, its cold and majestic creed, would never have obtained a permanent hold on the great cosmopolitan cities over which a Tiberius and a Trajan, a Hadrian and a Marcus ruled; that never without this new element of oriental worship could Paganism have held its. own for more than two centuries and a half against the transparent truth, the quiet earnestness, and the sublime teaching of that Christianity which in the end swept all these false religions away.
The answer to such interesting and debatable questions; it will never be fully supplied. One thing, however, is clear. Under the Empire Paganism, allied as it was with the majesty of Rome, was a real power; and though the eventual issue of its long contest with Christianity was, as we see now, never for an instant doubtful, it was a long and deadly struggle, and was only won by the brave patience, the constant endurance of suffering, the quiet, burning faith, of several generations of Christian men and women in many lands, who in countless instances welcomed death and torture rather than deny their beautiful true creed.
To a superficial observer it seems strange, on first thought, that the Roman who more than tolerated all religions, who even had welcomed the gods of every nation with whom he came in contact, yet made a stern exception of the religion of the Christian, and the Christ whom the Christian worshipped. It seems, indeed, strange how it came to pass that in Rome, the religious as well as the secular capital of the world, where the gods of all the peoples of the vast empire possessed special sanctuaries and altars, Christ alone was proscribed, and His votaries alone were reckoned as outlaws and enemies of the State.
But, after all, this singular position of Christianity in the Roman Empire, this standing alone among all religions as the one proscribed and forbidden, was owing to the conduct of the Christians themselves. Other religions, eastern and western, were content to dwell together, content mutually to acknowledge and respect each other. And in Rome, the religious capital of the world, as we have noticed, the Persian Mithras, the Egyptian Isis, and the Roman Jupiter each had their temples, their sanctuaries and their altars, side by side. The sanctity of each was acknowledged by the Roman people. The worshippers among the citizens and dwellers in Rome indifferently adored at one or other of these shrines. But the Christian was sternly forbidden by the tenets of his holy faith to make any such concession. To him the Egyptian Isis, the Persian Mithras, the Roman Jupiter were equally abhorrent. They were, each and all idols. In. the words of his sacred oracles, "He that sacrificeth unto any God, save unto the Lord only, he shall be destroyed." (Exod. xxii. 20.)
In the above study Christianity is dwelt upon as being the solitary example of a religion not tolerated by the Roman power. The Jew is not noticed here; although the Jewish religion too, owing to its intense horror of all idolatry, would have stood outside the pale of cults acknowledged by Rome. "Judaea gens contumelia numinum insignia" (the Jewish race conspicuous for its contempt for the gods), wrote Pliny. But at a comparatively early date in the Empire the Jewish religion became involved in the grave political complications which disturbed all the relations of the Jewish nation and the Empire. Before A. D. 70 the immemorial sacred capital of the Jews was stormed and captured by Titus as the result of the great Jewish revolt in the reign of Vespasian. The people, however, still stubbornly refused to submit, and the long succession of formidable uprisings was only closed in A. D. 136, when Jerusalem was again taken, and this time razed to the ground. The people were banished, and vast numbers perished. After this terrible punishment, inflicted by the Emperor Hadrian, the Jews may be said to have existed no more as a localized nation. Henceforth the scattered and impoverished people were not of sufficient importance to be objects of any real jealousy or dread on the part of the Imperial Government. They were too few and too insignificant. Nor is it unlikely that this poor, impoverished remnant, in spite of their exclusive religion, were looked on often
It was this stern, rigid refusal of the Christian to share in the common toleration of religions which excited the bitter wrath of all the Pagan world; it was this which united all the Pagan religions against him. He was the common enemy of them all, and to crush him, to destroy him and his exclusive faith, was the aim of every serious Pagan. Thus the restless persecution of the Christian by the votaries of all the Pagan religions in every portion of the world of Rome during the first three centuries is largely accounted for.
It was indeed a war to the death, and the history of early Christianity chronicles the events of that long, weary conflict and its result.