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Updated: May 19, 2025
Cæcilius for the moment lost his seat; but, instantly recovering it, took care to keep the animal from flagging; and the cries of the mob, and the howlings of the priests of Cybele cooperated in the task. At length the gloom, increasing every minute, hid him from their view; and even in daylight his recapture would have been a difficult matter for a wearied-out, famished, and intoxicated rabble.
Superstition culminated at Rome, for there were seen the priests and devotees of all the countries that it governed, "the dark-skinned daughters of Isis, with drum and timbrel and wanton mien; devotees of the Persian Mithras; emasculated Asiatics; priests of Cybele, with their wild dances and discordant cries; worshippers of the great goddess Diana; barbarian captives with the rites of Teuton priests; Syrians, Jews, Chaldaean astrologers, and Thessalian sorcerers.... The crowds which flocked to Rome from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean brought with them practices extremely demoralizing.
That enigmatic obscuration of light, that answer that is no answer, is, perhaps, the first thing in this world that a child born near here will see, and the last that a dying man will have to take for a message to the curious dead. She is immortal. Men have worshipped her as Isis and as Ashtaroth, as Venus, as Cybele, Mother of the Gods, and as Mary.
Cybele was supposed by the Greeks to have taught dancing on Mount Ida to the Corybantes, and they also say that it was in their country that Apollo revealed the Terpsichorean Art, and that of Music and Poetry. After all this, it is not very surprising that they make claim for the innovation of Pantomime.
Over the first scene, wherein he painted Philosophy, Astrology, Geometry, and Poetry making peace with Theology, is a woman representing Knowledge, who is seated on a throne that is supported on either side by a figure of the Goddess Cybele, each with those many breasts which in ancient times were the attributes of Diana Polymastes; and her dress is of four colours, standing for the four elements; from the head downwards there is the colour of fire, below the girdle that of the sky, from the groin to the knees there is the colour of earth, and the rest, down to the feet, is the colour of water.
The rites celebrated in honour of these deities are often of a questionable character and include dances by naked women and offerings of spirituous liquors and blood. Similar features are found in other countries. Prostitution formed part of the worship of Astarte and Anahit: the Tauric Artemis was adored with human sacrifices and Cybele with self-inflicted mutilations.
At different points in Asia Minor and in Crete a goddess was worshipped, originally without proper name, as the great source of all fertility, the mother of all things, even of the gods. Mount Dindymos in Phrygia was one of the chief centres of the cult, and there the Great Mother was known also as Cybele.
The image thus laid in the sepulchre was probably the same which had hung upon the tree. Throughout the period of mourning the worshippers fasted from bread, nominally because Cybele had done so in her grief for the death of Attis, but really perhaps for the same reason which induced the women of Harran to abstain from eating anything ground in a mill while they wept for Tammuz.
Her majesty, whose hair was arranged nearly like that of her royal consort, wore upon her head a band or fillet having something of the appearance of a crown of towers, such as encircles the brow of Cybele on Greek coins and statues. Her feet were encased in shoes of a clumsy make, also patterned. Her ornaments, besides the crown upon her head, were earrings, a necklace, and bracelets.
The man was plainly the father, a stalwart Roman, a lawyer, who had his office in the courts of the Forum, where business houses flanked the splendid temples of white marble, where the people worshipped their gods, Jupiter and Saturn, Diana and Cybele. "See," said Claudia, pointing a finger on which blazed on enormous emerald, "the Vestals are giving the signal. Their thumbs are reversed.
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