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After providing a brief summary of the most significant aspects of the reception of the cult of Isis in Rome and of its relationship with political power, this chapter focuses on Apuleius’ Asinus Aureus in order to analyze some aspects of the Isiac cult that may have justified its success among Romans: its universal character, its connection to justice, and its capacity to produce direct communication between individual goddess and religious institutions. The cult of Isis seems to be, as a whole, one of the best examples of the connection between political aspects of religion and the lives of the individuals taking part in it. Its difficult reception in the Roman world, particularly during the first centuries of its implementation, can be seen as a typical case of action-reaction (action on the part of its coreligionists, initially restricted to the lower social classes; reaction by political institutions, which either allowed for the cult’s existence, or created limitations and prohibitions in accordance with the political interests that marked different periods). On the other hand, the growing popularity of the cult derived overall from the nature of the divinity and from its communicative potential. For the Egyptians, Isis was the goddess of life, protector and mother of Pharaohs, the protagonist in the story of Osiris’ resurrection, the mother of Horus and goddess of a thousand names. Isis embodied therefore a multitude of divine attributes and abilities. On 1 LÓPES SALVÁ, 1992: 163: «Isis (...) era una diosa universal (...) por su capacidad de adaptación a todas las circunstancias, y que además prestaba atención individualizada a sus devotos concediéndoles salud y bienestar». the other hand, the myth related to the goddess was rooted on a divine narrative of suffering and triumph over adversity, thus increasing people’s ability to identify with the goddess. On the whole, Isis and her narrative represent a matrix that is simultaneously divine and human, protective and magnanimous, and capable of a kind of justice that is as intelligible as it is universal, and therefore very difficult to associate with any other deity worshipped among Greeks and Romans. Nevertheless, before achieving such definition, this goddess and her cult underwent a process of evolution in and around the city of Alexandria, which became a locus for the cult’s development and promoted its cultural reception within the Greco-Roman context. Isis’ first appearance in the Greek space, however, took place at an earlier stage and is indebted to the deep tradition of exchanges between the Greek and Egyptian material cultures. Archaeology attests explicit references to the goddess Isis the Archaic and Classical periods. During the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C. the cult was already present, according to archaeological information, in most Greek cities. However, the cult of Isis that spread in Greece and resulted from the hellenization of the cult that took place in Alexandria The renewal of the goddess in the Alexandrian context was traditionally justified by a political necessity of Ptolemy I (305-282 B.C.) to find an element of religious homogeneity that would unify the two distinct populations living in Egypt by creating a common identity. In this way, Alexandria would have witnessed, in this period, the birth of Sarapis, a Hellenized version of Osiris, whose association with Isis would appeal to both Egyptians and Greeks, thus becoming inseparable divinities in the Greco-Roman world, as the epigraphic evidence shows. Today, this thesis of the Ptolemaic creation of Sarapis and the political motives underlying the promotion and the propagation of the cult outside of Egypt is rejected by many scholars in favour of a perspective which supports the notion of a spontaneous expansion, promoted by merchants and travellers, by Greeks who served in the Egyptian army and also by slaves. This new way of thinking, however, does not hinder the idea 272 alexandrea ad aegyptvm: the legacy of multiculturalism in antiquity 2 For the Hellenization of the cult of Isis, vide NAOUM, 2008. 3 Vide HEYBOB, 1975, especially the references to the inscriptions, pages 7-9. 4 Among others, see the discussion of the problem in HEYBOB, 1975: 2-6; LÉVÊQUE, 1987: 153; LÓPES SALVÁ, 1992: 164-165. 5 ALVAR (2008) observes: «There were a number of quite different versions of Sarapis’ origins. Few nowadays credit the story that the friends of Alexander had consulted the god in his temple in Babylonia when the King was dying. It has been suggested that this was some kind of oracular Baal subsequently identified with Sarapis. By this account, Serapis might have been taken to Sinope from Babylonia, and thence to Alexandria. Most scholars however have tried to solve the problem by distinguishing between the introduction of the god’s statue at the end of the fourth century B.C. and the “creation” of a new cult, most likely in the reign of Ptolemy II. It seems clear that there were at least two, perhaps several, quite different accounts which have become indissolubly fused, so that there can be no final clarity. (...) It is surely more plausible to think that various syncretistic pressures, both native-Egyptian and Graeco-Egyptian, put their stamp on the new god, who, perhaps originally conceived already by Alexander, was then read through the prism of various other deities that seemed to possess analogous features. Though he was marginal among Alexander’s gods, Sarapis became important once Egypt came to be ruled by a Macedonian

The Cult of Isis in Rome: some aspects of its Reception and the Testimony of Apuleius’ Asinus Aureus