From the days of the Renaissance and Reformation to the present, the Mystery Religions of antiquity have engaged the attention of classical scholars and theologians alike. During what may be called the precritical stage of the study of this subject, it was commonly believed that by the Mysteries a constant succession of priests or hierophants transmitted from age to age an esoteric doctrine, better and nobler than that of the popular religion. Whether this recondite science had been derived originally from the hidden wisdom of India or Egypt, or from the Old Testament, or even from a primitive revelation to all mankind, was debated with characteristic disregard for historical methodology.

Taylor's work will influence the study of Mk. for years to come. Therefore it deserves such detailed criticism as the following, which should be considered a tribute to the book's importance and to the great learning from which that importance derives. These, however, will be obvious to every reader; therefore this article is devoted to points which seemed to deserve correction rather than praise.

Mysteries of State as a concept of Absolutism has its mediaeval background. It is a late offshoot of that spiritual-secular hybridism which, as a result of the infinite cross-relations between Church and State, may be found in every century of the Middle Ages and has deservedly attracted the attention of historians for many years. After A. Alföldi's fundamental studies on ceremonial and insignia of Roman emperors, Theodor Klauser discussed more recently the origin of the episcopal insignia and rights of honor, and showed very clearly how, in and after the age of Constantine the Great, various privileges of vestment and rank of the highest officers of the Late Empire were passed on to the bishops of the victorious Church. At about the same time, Percy Ernst Schramm published his compendious article on the mutual exchange of rights of honor between sacerdotium and regnum, in which he demonstrated how the imitatio imperii on the part of the spiritual power was balanced by an imitatio sacerdotii on the part of the secular power. Schramm carried his study only to the threshold of the Hohenstaufen period, and he was right to stop where he did. For the mutual borrowings of which he speaks—insignia, titles, symbols, privileges, and prerogatives—affected in the earlier Middle Ages chiefly the ruling individuals, both spiritual and secular, the crown-wearing pontiff and the mitre-wearing emperor, until finally the sacerdotium had an imperial appearance, and the regnum a clerical touch.

The fourth oration of Libanius, an invective against a consularis Syriae of 389, contains a passage of unique interest (Or. iv,37). In the catalogue of this governor's misdeeds, not the least of which was that he had dubbed the celebrated rhetor of Antioch a “silly fool” (λῆρος), we read that Eutropius was unduly harsh in meting out punishment for minor criminal offenses. Specifically, he had not only permitted men to be flogged to death, but just the day before he had revived a refinement of indignity which had been long in abeyance because it was insulting to the regime: πληγῶν εἶδος πολὺν ἤδη χρόνον ἐξεληλαμένον ὡς ὑβρίζον τὸ σχῆμα τῆς πολιτείας, ἀνενεώσατο, κτλ. This consisted of placing an appliance of some sort—either a donkey's nose-bag, or else a mask resembling a donkey's face—over the face of the prisoner who was being flogged. The purpose was to arouse mirth and laughter at the expense of the culprit; to this end “the bell” contributed (ποιοῦντός τι καὶ τοῦ κώδωνος), and an incidental advantage was that the victim's tears were concealed, so that they won no pity from the onlookers.