itively, but cannot as yet be
strictly defined. It was at once philosophic and religious, literary and
popular. The entire neo-Platonist school used the names of those venerable
masters, but it cannot be determined how much it really owes to them. A
selection of poems that has often been quoted since the third century,
under the title of "Chaldaic Oracles" ([Greek: Logia Chaldaika]) combines
the ancient Hellenic theories with a fantastic {125} mysticism that was
certainly imported from the Orient. It is to Babylonia what the literature
of Hermes Trismegistus is to Egypt, and it is equally difficult to
determine the nature of the ingredients that the author put into his sacred
compositions. But at an earlier date the Syrian religions had spread far
and wide in the Occident ideas conceived on the distant banks of the
Euphrates. I shall try to indicate briefly what their share in the pagan
syncretism was.

We have seen that the gods from Alexandria gained souls especially by the
promise of blessed immortality. Those from Syria must also have satisfied
doubts tormenting all the minds of that time. As a matter of fact the old
Semitic ideas on man's fate in after-life were little comforting. We know
how sad, dull and hopeless their conception of life after death was. The
dead descended into a subterranean realm where they led a miserable
existence, a weak reflection of the one they had lost; since they were
subject to wants and suffering, they had to be supported by funeral
offerings placed on their sepulchers by their descendants. Those ancient
beliefs and customs were found also in primitive Greece and Italy.

This rudimentary eschatology, however, gave way to quite a different
conception, one that was closely related to the Chaldean astrology, and
which spread over the Occident towards the end of the republic. According
to this doctrine the soul returned to heaven after death, to live there
among the divine stars. While it remained on earth it was subject to all
the bitter necessities of a destiny determined by the revolutions of the
stars; but when it ascended into the upper regions, it escaped that fate
and even the limits of time; {126} it shared equally in the immortality of
the sidereal gods that surrounded it.[60] In the opinion of some, the soul
was attracted by the rays of the sun, and after passing through the moon,
where it was purified, it lost itself in the shining star of day.[61]
Another more purely astrologi