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When "Atys" was performed first in 1676, the eager throng began to pour in the theatre at ten o'clock in the morning, and by noon the building was filled. The King and the Count were charmed with the work in spite of the bitter dislike of Boileau, the Aristarchus of his age.

The young equestrians were divided into three companies; one was commanded by Ascanius himself, mounted on a beautiful Sidonian steed which had been given him by Queen Dido; a second by the youthful Priam, a son of that Polites whom Pyrrhus slew at the fall of Troy; and the third by Atys, a boy who was Ascanius' especial friend and companion.

Bacchus, Adonis, Dionysius, Apollo, Hercules, Hermes, Thammuz, Jupiter, Jehovah, Jao, or Jah, Moloch, Baal, Asher, Mahadeva, Brahma, Vishnu, Mithra, Atys, Ammon, Belus, with many another, these are all the Life-Giver under different names; they are the Sun, the Creator, the Phallus. Red is their appropriate colour.

The lascivious form of a naked Venus was tortured into the discovery of some moral precept, or some physical truth; and the castration of Atys explained the revolution of the sun between the tropics, or the separation of the human soul from vice and error. The theological system of Julian appears to have contained the sublime and important principles of natural religion.

By him several colonies, called the ancient Latins, were transplanted. From this time, all the princes, who reigned at Alba, had the surname of Sylvius. From Latinus sprung Alba; from Alba, Atys; from Atys, Capys; from Capys, Capetus; from Capetus, Tiberinus, who, being drowned in crossing the river Albula, gave it a name famous with posterity.

But I will send you a picked band of hunters, and bid them use all zeal to kill this foe of your harvests." With this promise the Mysians were quite content, but Atys, who overheard it, was not. "Why, my father," he demanded, "do you now keep me from the wars and the chase, when you formerly encouraged me to take part in them, and win glory for myself and you?

It is in these short lyrics of personal passion or emotion that the genius of Catullus is most eminent; but the same high qualities appear in the few specimens he has left of more elaborate lyrical architecture, the Ode to Diana, the marriage-song for Mallius and Vinia, and the Atys.

Lastly, the mother of Atys is said to have been a virgin, who bore him from placing in her bosom a ripe almond or pomegranate; and in his third transformation Bata is born from a chip of a tree being swallowed by the princess.

"Ah!" cried Atys, "then I cannot blame you for keeping this tender watch over me. But, father, do you not wrongly interpret the dream? It said I was to die stricken by an iron weapon. A boar wields no such weapon. Had the dream said I was to die pierced by a tusk, then you might well be alarmed; but it said a weapon.

Then a fine bust of a laughing satyr will arrest the attention of the visitor; then a colossal foot in a sandal, under the front of a sarcophagus; then the votive torso, supposed to be that of an Athelete; then a red marble swan found in a vineyard near the Villa Pinciana; then a terminal statue of a satyr; then a bust of Diogenes; then a bust, conjectured to be part of the figure of a dying Amazon; then a bust of Atys.