CONGRES INTERNATIONAL D’HISTOIRE DES RELIGIONS. 49 
_ the ancient citadel was termed Gerousia (assembly of elders). 
Now the Spartans were the only people of Greece that possessed a 
representative body of that name. 
Mr. Pinches touched on bas-reliefs in connection with oriental 
religions in Western Hurope. A very curious circumstance fell 
under my notice thirty years ago, showing how orientalism had been 
introduced into the west of the Roman Empire. I was in a sub- 
terranean portion of an old castle in Newcastle-on-Tyne, where I 
noticed a bas-relief enclosing an effigy of the Persian god, Mithral 
leaning against a column; and it could only have been placed there 
through some Roman legionary, having served at the two opposite 
ends of the empire, first towards the rising, and subsequently 
towards the setting sun, at the then boundary of the Roman 
power between England and Scotland. 
It is very remarkable how far the Roman Empire extended and 
how far the soldiers were affected by Eastern religions. The old 
man who showed me round the dungeon made the remark, “ The 
Romans were never at a loss for the want of a god or two.” 
Then as to the mixture of Mosaic ritual together with the 
Eucharist and the Armenian churches practising sacrifice in their 
worship. I can readily believe that, as I have been told of the 
modern star worshippers of Babylon practising an amalgamation 
(1) of heathen rites along with (2) the Mosaic ordinance of 
dipping the live bird in the blood of the slain and letting it go 
free, and (3) of Christian Holy Communion. 
About Babism, the modern sect of the Persians, I may, perhaps, 
direct your attention to a work on the subject of religious sects in 
Persia including views on Babism, written, I think, by Brown in 
Persia. Our Lord is said by one authority to have borrowed the 
principles of His gospel from Hssenism. I cannot, while not 
holding with that, accept the suggestion that Hssenism is allied 
with the principles of the Pharisees; for the KHssenes were 
religious and simple in their lives. At any rate, they were never 
objects of our Lord’s blame, while the Pharisees and Sadducees 
were. 
Then as to the question of the identification of deities, two 
volumes* were published by a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, 
* Cults of the Greek States. 
