Walters, Henry Beauchamp: Catalogue of the bronzes, Greek, Roman, and Etruscan in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum (London, 1899)

INTRODUCTION.

lvii

Dionysos, Demeter and Apollo.* * * § Under the influences of Orphism the Greeks
had taken up the study of Egyptian religions, and Hellanicos of Lesbos in the
same century discusses these questions in his AlyvrrTiaKd in this spirit.t In
B.C. 350 a sanctuary of Isis was actually erected at the Peiraeus, and this gave
rise to Athenian legislation about strange cults. Then a new impetus was given
to their study by the foundation of Alexandria and the works of Manetho,
Timotheus the Eumolpid and others. A definite Alexandrine triad came into
being, consisting of Serapis, Isis, and Harpocrates, the first-named being a com-
pound of Apis and Osiris; the name is a Hellenised form of Osor-Hapi. This
tendency to syncretism in religion was due to the notion that a triad was the
distinguishing feature of both Greek and Egyptian religions, and that these
triads were necessarily identical. It received warm support from the Ptolemies,
and the third ccntury saw a great extension of the cults in Egypt, a Serapeum
being founded at Memphis.

The first relations of Egypt with Italy date from the embassy of Ptolemy
Philadelphus to Rome in 273 B.C., which opened the door to Plellenistic
institutions and manners. The Alexandrine cults found a footing by degrees
in Southern Italy, and in the second century an Iseum was in existence at
Pompeii, and a temple of Serapis at Puteoli4 Under Sulla an Isiac college
was founded in Rome, and a few years later honours were paid to Serapis and
Isis on the Capitol. The triumvirs erected temples to them in B.C. 43, and the
cult appears to have appealed strongly to the Roman plebs. Under Augustus
there was a reaction, and the votaries of these deities were banished and
persecuted, but they were indulged by Caligula and Claudius and welcomed by
Nero. The cults were officially recognised by the Flavian Emperors, and
reached their apogee under Antoninus Pius and Septimius Severus.

With the exception of the Paramythia bronzes (No. 276, and perhaps the
Dione, No. 279), and similar figures, no very early types of these deities in art
can be traced. Under the Empire there seems to have been a reaction to the
ancient Egyptian types, the result of a study of Egyptology by Romans,§ and
figures of Emperors and Imperial ladies in Egyptian dress begin to appear (cf.
Nos. 1467, 1470, 1494). Harpocrates is to be regarded as a combination of the
infant Horus, with finger placed in childish fashion on his mouth, and the Greck
Eros with his childish form and wings. The treatment of the hair is common
to the figures both of Eros and Harpocrates, and some of the figures cannot be
easily differentiated. Those of Harpocrates are mostly very diminutive, and
were doubtless used as amulets.

Egypt was not the only part of the world from which extraneous religious
influences found their way to Rome, amid the cosmopolitan ideas which her
extending empire fostered ; all religions were welcomed at Rome, and new cults

* Herodotus (ii. 42, 50, 144, 156) alludes to this identification in unmistakable terms.

f Cf. Hist. Gr. Frag. ed. Didot, i. p. xxiii. ff., and p. 66.

X Nissen, Pompeianische Sludien, p. 174 ; C.I.L. i. 577 ; see La Faye, op. cit. p. 40.

§ We may recall the journey of Germanicus to Egypt cognoscendac antiquitalis (Tac. Ann. ii. 59).