Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/218

 rationem dignamque divinitate speciem reformaret." But while serving as an example of Plutarch's general method of inquiry, a particular motive for the choice of this special myth as subject would doubtless be furnished by the great prevalence and popularity of the worship of Isis during the Græco-Roman Empire of this period. Its passionate excitements were hostile to the calm cultivated by the Roman in matters of Religion, and Isis had undergone a prolonged struggle before her temples were allowed to stand erect in Rome. The patrician indignation of Lucan—nos in templa tuam Romana accepimus Isin! —expressed, however, rather the sentiment of the Republic than the conviction of the Empire. Juvenal alludes to the Isiacæ sacraria lenæ—the fanum Isidis—the temple of the goddess in the Campus Martius, in terms which, however severe from the moral standpoint, leave no historical doubt as to the established character of the cult and its institutions. In the later romance of Apuleius, the hero Lucius owes his re-transformation into human shape to the power of Isis, and makes a pilgrimage of gratitude to the very temple to which Juvenal makes so scathing an allusion.

The detailed description given by Apuleius of the ceremonies connected with the worship of the goddess in so important a place as Cenchreæ, the port of Corinth, bears emphatic witness to the established popularity of her rites. Even in Plutarch's tract the*